In early 2025, earlier than Donald Trump was even sworn into workplace, he despatched a airplane together with his identify in big letters on it to Nuuk, Greenland, the place his son, Don Jr., and different MAGA allies preened for cameras and stomped across the mineral-rich Danish territory that Trump had been casually threatening to invade or by some means purchase like stereotypical American vacationers — like they owned it already.
“Don Jr. and my Reps touchdown in Greenland,” Trump wrote. “The reception has been nice. They and the Free World want security, safety, energy, and PEACE! It is a deal that should occur. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”
Upon returning, certainly one of Trump’s so-called reps, an influential MAGA podcaster, instructed his viewers that it was completely crucial that America purchase Greenland. Why?
“It makes America dream once more, that we’re not simply this unhappy, low-testosterone, beta male slouching in our chair, permitting the world to run over us. It’s the resurrection of masculine American vitality. It’s the return of Manifest Future.”
Wow. What an endorsement.
The concept America is, basically, owed Greenland as ordained by God, and that buying it was going to perform nothing wanting resurrecting each the American dream and “masculine American vitality” was fairly the preposterous promise. Nevertheless it was made in earnest by somebody Trump voters cherished and trusted: Charlie Kirk.
It was an enormous shift in a really quick time frame from the best way Kirk and different MAGA acolytes had been speaking. Kirk had lengthy purchased into Trump’s “America First” advertising pitch, and he typically used it as a cudgel in opposition to all kinds of liberal ills.
“Americans ought to come first,” he’d insist, arguing for a complete halt to immigration at instances. “The very last thing America wants proper now could be a brand new battle,” he’d argue because it pertained to international coverage and meddling in different international locations’ affairs. He believed america was based as an “America First” Christian nation. And he warned {that a} vote for Kamala Harris was a vote for WWIII.
As Trump touted an finish to “without end wars” whereas on the marketing campaign path, Kirk and others within the manosphere — together with beforehand Trump-skeptical media personalities — determined “America First” was Trump’s calling card, his raison d’être, his most compelling doctrine. Gone have been the times of George W. Bush’s cowboy neoconservatism — actual males minded their very own enterprise. And should you couldn’t abide the opposite extra sordid stuff — say, the truth that Trump was a convicted legal — placing an finish to America’s interventionist international coverage ought to trump all of it.
That was the pitch to voters made for years by MAGA influencers who promised nothing was extra morally crucial than America retreating from the world.
Till it wasn’t.
Kirk was hardly alone in flipping the script to instantly defend the factor they’d been instructed would by no means occur. Now, they have been telling us, intervention, threatening to invade sovereign nations, possibly even getting concerned in some international wars, and even Trump’s tariffs — an financial interventionist coverage — weren’t solely OK, they have been essential to creating America nice once more. (And males, too.)
The shameless abandonment of rules is so completely comical in its scope and pace, calling it “hypocrisy” nearly provides it an excessive amount of mental heft. They merely don’t care.
This week Sen. Rick Scott is boasting that Trump, along with toppling the Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela, may even see to the toppling of the Cuban authorities “this 12 months,” after spending years touting Trump’s America First agenda.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, one other of Trump’s “America First” foot troopers, is now overtly warning the chief of Iran that Trump goes to kill him — “Change is coming to Iran.”
After lambasting simply two months in the past our “countless cycle of regime change,” DNI Tulsi Gabbard is now providing “kudos” to the Trump administration for the seize of Maduro in a constitutionally questionable operation that ended with Trump insisting “we’re in cost” now.
These folks have been both by no means severe about America First, ending without end wars, and minding our enterprise, or they’re so wholly owned by Trump that his unhinged whims simply matter extra.
However, as he threatens to take Greenland and Canada, and invade Colombia and Mexico and Cuba, it’s very clear Trump was by no means severe about America First. Simply as he was by no means severe about releasing the Epstein recordsdata. Or making America reasonably priced once more. Or draining the swamp. Or changing Obamacare. Or myriad different slick slogans he pitched to get elected.
However are his voters severe about America First? Whereas MAGA falls in line to defend Trump’s imperialist warmongering and oil-grabbing, a lot of his voters didn’t join this. Midterms are across the nook. We’ll know their reply quickly sufficient.
S.E. Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp Unfiltered” on CNN.
