Before the Big Lie Came the ‘America First’ Lie

Trump lost my trust long before January 6.

“There’s a domestic enemy in the White House, and let’s not mince words about this.” —Nancy Pelosi, January 7, 2021

In newly released video footage, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi correctly identifies Donald Trump as a “domestic enemy.” It was the day after a horde of Trump supporters had violently raided the U.S. Capitol in a failed attempt to halt the certification of the 2020 election. 

It wasn’t hyperbole. The insurrection was a direct result of Trump’s Big Lie that Joe Biden stole the election. It was a fable dreamed up by a man who was willing to sacrifice our democracy rather than admit that he lost. And he came damn close on January 6, 2021.

It was also a defining moment for many Republicans, marking their final break with the leader of their party. It was the last straw for my friend Stephanie Grisham, who joined me and fellow Republicans Geoff Duncan and Adam Kinzinger at the Democratic National Convention last week to speak on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz. She spoke eloquently of how her experiences that day changed her mind about Trump irrevocably.

As a national security official, my ‘moment’ came a bit earlier, because I was privy to something I call the America First Lie. It preceded the Big Lie and made him an enemy to the world order long before his insurrectionist scheming. It’s a big reason why 200 Bush, McCain, and Romney alums have publicly endorsed Harris for president since the convention ended, and why 'Republicans for Harris' coalitions are springing up across the country.

What is the America First Lie? It’s the myth that Donald Trump’s foreign policies always advance American interests. Sure, all candidates will tell you as much about their leadership agenda. But unlike how it is with most presidential candidates, we don’t have to guess what Trump’s foreign policy would be. We lived it already…

IRAN

Just this week, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed an appeal to reinstate the criminal case charging Trump with hoarding classified documents. Thank goodness. When I first heard about the documents case two years ago, my immediate concern was the exponential damage such a reckless breach of national security could cause. When I learned that the documents included extremely sensitive intelligence information about Iran, I was hardly surprised. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018—isolating the U.S. from its European allies, and increasing tensions in the Middle East (for those who think he would be adept at handling the current complicated situation we’re seeing today)—and became obsessed with striking Iran. We came awfully close in early 2020, but that was quickly memory-holed after the pandemic hit. Never mind the fact that these actions led to Iran resuming its nuclear program, and it’s still growing strong today. Way to go, Trump.

I remain worried about those documents. Members of the military and intelligence communities or their sources may well have been compromised, and carelessly putting so many individual lives at risk is unforgivable. But it all fits. The deranged anger many of us witnessed Trump express toward the military and intelligence communities runs deep. It will be even worse the second time around if he returns to the Oval Office surrounded solely by enablers.

NORTH KOREA

From the very start of the Trump Administration, many across the U.S. government worked to prepare for a potential escalation with North Korea. The planning went on for months, taking abundant resources, personnel, and investment to war-game worst-case scenarios. Recall that before Trump “fell in love” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, he recklessly taunted “Rocket Man” on Twitter with threats of “fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.” We quickly mobilized in the White House. Was this a threat of nuclear war? How could we walk back a potential national security disaster? Thankfully sanity prevailed, largely due to cooler heads like Gens. James Mattis and Mark Milley, whom Trump later smeared.

Trump eventually returned to his natural posture of kowtowing to dictators, even saluting a North Korean general. And what did it all get the U.S. in return? Nothing except humiliation. The love affair with Kim didn’t produce a single reduction in North Korea’s deployment of nuclear-armed missiles.

CHINA

We may never know the origins of the novel coronavirus that emerged in China in 2019 and led to the global COVID-19 pandemic. What you may not know is that you have Trump to thank for that. As a member of the pandemic task force, I was in the room when Trump specifically ordered us to “take it easy” on China, even as the virus began infecting and killing Americans. Why? Trump’s personal admiration for a dictator—in this case, Xi Jinping—won the day. And let’s not forget that he was working a trade deal at the time, in the midst of an election year.

Publicly, his racist “China virus” framing belied his obsequiousness to Xi behind the scenes. This was a trend with Trump—his transactional and highly personal view of foreign relations prevented any meaningful statecraft in pursuit of American interests. It was all bluster and tough talk on the outside masking weakness beneath. By nearly every measure, China became stronger during the Trump administration. Is it any wonder that it relishes the thought of a second Trump term?

AFGHANISTAN

In this campaign, Trump and his followers have taken to casting him as the “anti-war” candidate, a deeply ironic claim for someone who ordered the use of the “Mother of All Bombs” three months into his presidency. Trump is now trying to lay the difficult Afghanistan exit at Kamala Harris’ feet, but it was all set in motion with Trump’s Taliban negotiations. There was also a big helping of short-sighted ineptitude.

One issue that was particularly close to my heart was the fate of our Afghan allies, who served as lifelines for many of us who spent time in Afghanistan. Trump had four years to put a plan in place. But in meetings, Stephen Miller would peddle racist hysteria, and his watch dogs across the government made an already cumbersome visa process even more challenging by gutting the system of personnel and resources. The system wouldn’t budge, no matter how much pressure the Pentagon, National Security Council, and other agencies brought to bear. In truth, Trump never planned to rescue a single one of our Afghan allies. The harsh reality is that years of backlog in processing applications left the Biden Administration with a significant challenge that they have been working to resolve and continue to address today.

Evacuating these refugees along with our troops was the least we could have done for these heroic people. The world was watching, and we failed. Just like with the Kurds in Syria, Trump made it that much harder to gain the trust of potential allies who assist our troops in harm’s way overseas. Following the Trump-ordered withdrawal, Syrian Kurds endured a bloody Turkish assault, a betrayal that left them vulnerable and abandoned. My former boss, Mike Pence, had to make a last-minute trip to ease tensions that erupted in the aftermath within national security circles and lawmakers from both parties regarding the fallout from this chaotic decision. Our betrayal of our longtime allies was seen as ceding ground to Russia and Iran in the region. 

VENEZUELA

Trump’s mismanagement of the Venezuela nation-building attempt was especially frustrating to me as someone who directly worked on the issue as part of former Vice President Mike Pence’s staff. Nicolas Maduro may be one of the only global dictators Trump doesn’t openly embrace. He’s a bad guy who needs to go, and we convinced Trump of that in 2019. He publicly championed Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s true leader, then called him “weak” and a “joke” and proceeded to turn his back on the entire situation.

The poorly executed effort had one aim: to entice Latino voters. As a Latina, and someone who witnessed this during my White House tenure, I found this entire political stunt not only disingenuous but also damaging to the broader efforts to address the escalating migration crisis. Trump was repeatedly cautioned about this by the national security community and others across his administration. I was there for the shouting matches in these policy meetings. Our southern neighbor, Mexico, also warned us that Trump’s actions would worsen the migration crisis and strain our border relations. Indeed it did. It left behind a humanitarian and refugee crisis as well—and Maduro remains to this day. And by the way, it also meant U.S. companies had to cease operations in Venezuela, which didn’t just hurt Venezuelans; it hurt Americans.

These are just a few of many examples of Trump policies that failed to put America first. But it doesn’t faze Trump. Earlier this month, he correctly identified the Venezuelan leader as a dictator. Then a week later, he told Elon Musk that if he loses the election in November, he’d like to meet Musk in Venezuela for dinner, because “it’ll be a far safer place to meet than our country.”

Dictatorial birds of a feather flock together, I suppose. So much for America First.

We didn’t forget the granddaddy of them all: Russia. Stay tuned for our deep dive on Trump’s persistent bromance with Vladimir Putin—and the damage it has caused to Western democracy—next time.

Until then,

Olivia