The Dictatorship
How Trump’s ‘America First’ became a global affair
Moments after he took the oath of office in the Capitol Rotunda on Jan. 20, 2025, President Donald Trump made a promise to Americans.
“We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into,” he said, vowing to avoid the “catastrophic events abroad” that had consumed his predecessor.
One year later, the United States has carried out nearly 600 military strikes across three continents, according to military watchdog ACLED — more than during President Joe Biden’s entire term — while Trump has threatened force against allies and adversaries alike and launched a global tariff war that has rattled markets and raised consumer prices. After vowing to end America’s proclivity to police the world, in just one year, Trump has launched a deadly operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro; struck 35 vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing 115 alleged drug-smugglers; bombed targets in Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria and Iran; and threatened military action against countries including Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and Greenland.
While food and housing remain unaffordable for many Americans, military spending continues to balloon — the operation to capture Maduro alone is estimated to have cost $500 million alone, and the drug boat strikes and military buildup in the Caribbean is in the “$800 million range,” according to Democratic leadership of the House and Senate Armed Services committeeswho said they have yet to receive exact figures from the Pentagon.
It’s not just isolated strikes and targeted operations. Trump has suggested the U.S. could spend years administering Venezuela, and has threatened to take over Greenland — actions that could cost American taxpayers even more.
Still, the Trump administration and its allies continue to frame his approach as putting America First.
“President Trump didn’t campaign on ‘no involvement in foreign affairs,’” said a White House official granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It was the opposite: He said, for example, that Iran having nuclear weapons was the single greatest threat to the country.”
Asked why running Venezuela, a country in South America, is “America First,” President Trump told MS NOW that “we want to surround ourselves with good neighbors. We want to surround ourselves with stability. We want to surround ourselves with energy. We have tremendous energy in that country. It’s very important that we protect it. We need that for ourselves. We need that for the world.”
The official added: “Presidencies are measured in years. Sentiment goes in waves. I’m very confident that after four years, next to nobody will regret their vote.”
But foreign policy experts question the way the administration has pursued its agenda on the global stage.
“I think it gives the president way too much credit to suggest that there’s coherence to the set of impulses that he and his cabinet are indulging as they engage the world,” said Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “They are overwhelmingly destructive to America’s security and to our prosperity by destroying the alliances, the soft power, the magnetism and the economic dynamism that have made the United States so successful.”
Military action represents only one dimension of the president’s international focus. He has exerted massive economic pressure in the form of tariffs, which he has framed as correcting unfair trade relationships, but which economists say have created economic volatility and raised prices for American consumers.
On April 2, which the president called “Liberation Day,” he announced what he termed “reciprocal” tariffs that established a 10 percent baseline tax on all U.S. imports and sharply higher rates for dozens of nations with trade surpluses. Though global markets have widely recovered from the hit, economic experts conclude that tariffs have caused immense economic volatility, negatively impacted GDP and broadly increased consumer prices.
Trump has also leveraged tariffs as a diplomatic weapon, most recently by threatening to impose 10 percent tariffs on eight European nations until a deal is reached for the United States to purchase Greenland, despite the self-governing territory’s opposition to such an arrangement.
The president has consistently maintained that tariffs, despite short-term disruptions and higher costs for American consumers, will lead to long-term economic prosperity.
Despite the Trump administration’s argument that its military and economic actions will ultimately make Americans safer and better off, his attention spent abroad comes at the expense of using that political capital to address affordability — and the public’s mood is souring.
An AP-NORC poll found 56 percent of Americans think Trump has overstepped on military interventions abroad, largely driven by Democrats and independents.
Although independents are pulling away from the president, especially when it comes to actions abroad, the backlash from his MAGA base has not yet reached a critical mass.
Schake says that’s because there hasn’t been any real cost to Trump’s aggressive interventionist approach.
“There haven’t been any American servicemen and women killed, there haven’t been dramatic consequences,” she told MS NOW.
“So he hasn’t really paid a price for anything yet.”
Julia Jester covers politics for MS NOW and is based in Washington, D.C.
Jake Traylor
Jake Traylor is a White House correspondent for MS NOW.
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President Donald Trump called the celebrations in the streets of Iran “fantastic” following the killing of the country’s supreme leaderAyatollah Ali Khamenei, during a brief phone call with MS NOW on Saturday night.
Trump told MS NOW that he’s seen the celebrations in Iran and in parts of America, after joint U.S.-Israel airstrikes killed Khamenei.
“I think it’s fantastic,” the president said of the celebrations. “I’ve seen them in Los Angeles, also — celebrations.”
“I’ve seen them in Los Angeles, celebrations, celebrations,” Trump said, accentuating the point.
The interview took place roughly 11 hours before the Pentagon announced the first U.S.military casualties of the war. U.S. Central Command said three American service members were killed in action, and five others had been seriously wounded.
Revelry broke out in Iran, the United States and across the globe on Saturday, with Iranians cheering the death of Khamenei, who led Iran with an iron fist for more than 30 years, cracking down on dissent at home and maintaining a hostile posture with the U.S. and Israel.
Asked how he was feeling after the strike on Khamenei, whose death was confirmed just a few hours earlier, Trump said it was a positive development for the United States.
“I think it was a great thing for our country,” he said.
The call — which lasted less than a minute — came after a marathon day, which began in the wee hours of the morning with strikes on Iran and continued with retaliatory ballistic missiles from Tehran targeting Israel and countries in the Middle East region that host U.S. military bases.
The day ended with few answers from the White House to increasing questions about the long-term future of Iran, how long the U.S. will continue operations there, and the metastasizing ramifications it could have on the world stage. In fact, the president has done little to convince the public to back his Iran operation, nor to explain why the country is at war without the authorization of Congress.
On perhaps the most consequential day of his second term, Trump did not give a formal address to the public, nor did he hold a press conference. Instead, he stayed out of public view at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Palm Beach, Florida, where he attended a $1 million-per-plate fundraising dinner on Saturday evening.
But throughout the day, Trump took calls from reporters at various new outlets, including from MS NOW at around 11 p.m. ET.
The strikes, known formally as “Operation Epic Fury,” came after months of talks over Iran’s nuclear program, and warnings from Trump that he would strike Tehran if they did not agree to his often shifting conditions.
At 2:30 a.m. ET on Saturday, Trump posted a video to social media announcing the operation, which he said was designed to “defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.”
“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war,” Trump said when he announced the strikes on Iran.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
Laura Barrón-López covers the White House for MS NOW.
Three U.S. service members were killed and five seriously wounded as the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran, U.S. Central Command said Sunday morning.
The three service members — the first Americans to die in the conflict — were killed in Kuwait, a U.S. official said.
Several others sustained minor injuries from shrapnel and concussions but will return to duty, the Pentagon said. The identities of the dead and wounded have not been made public.
“The situation is fluid, so out of respect for the families, we will withhold additional information, including the identities of our fallen warriors, until 24 hours after next of kin have been notified,” Central Command said in a statement.
The U.S. and Israel launched sweeping airstrikes on Iranon Saturday, killing Ayatollah Ali Khameneithe country’s supreme leader for nearly four decades. Iran has vowed retaliation and hit several U.S. military bases across the region.
According to U.S. Central Command, Iran has also attacked more than a dozen locations, including airports in Dubai, Kuwait and Iraq, and residential neighborhoods in Israel, Bahrain and Qatar.
Israel Defence Forces said Sunday that Iran fired missiles toward the neighborhood of Beit Shemesh, killing civilians. The missile hit a synagogue, killing at least nine people, according to the Associated Press.
AP reported that authorities said at least 22 people were killed and 120 others wounded when demonstrators tried to attack the U.S. Consulate in Karachi in Pakistan.
The violence came after the United States and Israel attacked Irankilling its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Police and officials at a hospital in Karachi said that at least 50 people were also wounded in the clashes and some of them were in critical condition.
On Sunday, Israel Defence Forces said on X, “It’s official: All senior terrorist leaders of Iran’s Axis of Terror have been eliminated.”
President Donald Trump told CNBC’s Joe Kernen on Sunday that the operation in Iran is “moving along very well, very well — ahead of schedule.”
In a phone call with MS NOW late Saturday, Trump called the celebrations in the streets of Iran “fantastic” following the killing of Khamenei.
Confirming Khamenei’s death, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday: “We have eliminated the tyrant Khamenei and dozens of senior figures of the oppressive regime. Our forces are now striking at the heart of Tehran with increasing intensity, set to escalate further in the coming days.”
The exchange of hostilities comes after weeks of fragile negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over Iran’s nuclear operations.
Esmail Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry, called the joint U.S-Israeli attack an “unprovoked, unwarranted act of aggression” in an interview with MS NOW’s Ali Velshi on Sunday. He said Iran’s nuclear program has been used a pretext for the attack.
“We have every right to defend our people because we have come under this egregious act of aggression,” Baghaei said.
Trump announced the attack early Saturday during a short video posted on his Truth Social account. He called for an end to the Iranian regime and urged Iranians to “take back the country.”
Negotiators and mediators from Oman were supposed to meet in Vienna on Monday to discuss the technical aspect of a potential nuclear deal.
Rep. Eric Swawell, D-Calif., told MS NOW’s Alex Witt on Sunday afternoon that the president’s military operation in Iran was illegal, echoing what many lawmakers have said in citing that under the U.S. Constitution only Congress can declare war.
“This is a values argument. We don’t just lob missiles into other countries when we are not provoked, attacked and have no plan for what comes next,” he said.
“We have been shown zero evidence that anything changed in Iran from last year when the president did not come to Congress and took a strike on Iran,” Swalwell said.
In June the U.S. struck three Iranian nuclear sites. Trump said the facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated.” But experts and U.S. officials said the sites were damaged but not destroyed.
Erum Salam is breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian and is a graduate of Texas A&M University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Follow her on X, Bluesky and Instagram.
Akayla Gardner is a White House correspondent for MS NOW.
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