The Dictatorship
Trump’s foreign policy vision is coming into focus. And it’s worse than we may have imagined.
This is an adapted excerpt from the Feb. 12 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
Donald Trump’s foreign policy vision is starting to come into focus — and it is worse and more dangerous than you may have imagined. The president and his MAGA allies appear poised to rapidly undo the American-led global, democratic order.
The unraveling began Wednesday with an announcement from Trump’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, that America was pulling back from defending its allies.
These institutions and orders were established precisely because of the competitive, conquering aspirations of rising empires and fascist regimes.
“We must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective,” Hegseth said during a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels on Wednesday. “Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.”
“The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” Hegseth added. “We’re also here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.”
On Thursday, Hegseth attempted to walk some of those comments back, telling reporters that “everything is on the table” in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.
But part of the reason this type of rhetoric is so dangerous has to do with what NATO stands for and when it was created. These institutions and orders were established after World War II precisely because of the competitive, conquering aspirations of rising empires and fascist regimes throughout the world. NATO was formed by the U.S. 76 years ago to pledge that an attack on one member was an attack on all — what is known as Article 5. It started with 12 countries and now has 32 members.
The only time Article 5 was invoked was when all the allies joined together in one fight: when they all came to the United States’ aid after Sept. 11, 2001, and pledged their troops and materiel to the war in Afghanistan. Canadians, Italians, Danes, Spaniards, Norwegians, Estonians, Latvians and more gave their lives for the U.S.’ war on terror. Because that is how alliances work. Allies are supposed to have each other’s back. At least they were before Wednesday.
Not long after Hegseth spoke, Senate Republicans voted to confirm Tulsi Gabbard as the next director of national intelligence. Gabbard is a policy lightweight whose greatest foreign policy achievement was visiting Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, along with his top clericwho threatened suicide bombings in the United States. (Last month, Gabbard told senators she was unaware of the cleric’s threat at the time of their meeting.) She’s also been accused of siding with Russia and President Vladimir Putin over the U.S. intelligence consensus. But all that sat just fine with every Republican in the Senate except Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who joined 47 Democrats and independents in voting against Gabbard.
At almost the same moment Gabbard was being confirmed Wednesday, Trump was getting off the phone with another international leader: Putin. Trump took to social media to break the news about what he called a “highly productive” call with Putin, writingin part:
we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine. President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, ‘COMMON SENSE.’ We both believe very strongly in it. We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations.
The glaring thing here is that the country on the receiving end of Russia’s aggression, Ukraine, did not seem to be looped in on developments relating to their future. Trump even dodged a reporter’s question on whether he considered Ukraine an “equal member” in the negotiation process.
We should be clear about what we’re watching: Trump is disassembling the U.S.-led international order to the benefit of the global authoritarians he envies and admires.
Politically, Trump has succeeded in selling isolationism to a lot of Americans. It is true that our leading role in the world has been largely a product of a bipartisan elite consensus and sometimes it feels pretty removed from democratic majorities, who tend to believe America gives out too much foreign aid and “polices” the world. Believe me, I’ve spent two decades critiquing the many shortcomings and downright cruelties of that same order. But however imperfect that order is, what Trump wants to replace it with is far, far worse.
The current international order was created by the U.S. and its allies to prevent the world from the unthinkable. When there were rising tensions between the victorious nuclear superpowers, institutions like NATO and the United Nations were formed in part to prevent the Cold War from becoming a nuclear holocaust.
But there’s another reason Trump is eager to jettison the old order in favor of an anarchic world in which strong countries do what they want. When you hear Putin’s claim that Ukrainians are really just misguided Russians, you can hear echoes of the Nazis’ claim that Austrians and Czechs were just Germans. What Trump is doing now is sending the message to everyone around the world that not only is territorial acquisition by force OK but the U.S. is interested in pursuing it: from Greenland to the Panama Canal to Canada as the 51st state to envisioning the Gaza Strip as an American-owned development project.
The emerging Trump doctrine appears to be that democracies are weak and soft and that we will side with autocracies over them. It’s disastrous. Not just for America’s place in the world but also for the cause of peace.
The emerging Trump doctrine appears to be that democracies are weak and soft and that we will side with autocracies over them.
The idea that the path to peace is to throw overboard democracies in favor of authoritarian regimes is a dangerous idea. And it’s the fundamental throughline of Trump’s worldview. He seems to hate our allies and to love our enemies, possibly because our enemies see the world as he does: transactional and ripe for the picking.
With loyal, morally flexible subordinates like Hegseth and Gabbard, Trump is essentially reorienting American politics as friendly to dictators and authoritarian regimes and fundamentally hostile to democracies. It is shaping up to be the most radical transformation of America’s role in the world since Franklin D. Roosevelt — and it will likely not end well.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes”at 8 p.m. ET Monday through Friday on BLN. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is”A Colony in a Nation” (W. W. Norton).
Allison Detzel
contributed
.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren is endorsing Michigan Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed, MS NOW has learned.
“He’s growing a movement of working people all across Michigan,” Warren says of El-Sayed in a video announcing the pick. “Michiganders deserve a senator who will fight for you, not for special interests running millions of dollars in TV ads to buy this seat.”
The announcement makes Warren the latest high-profile progressive leader to pick a side in the El-Sayed versus Rep. Haley Stevens race that is both a marquee primary battle for a must-win seat ahead of November, and one that’s increasingly framed as a test of establishment versus outsider with big implications for the Democratic Party’s future.
The primary has seen millions pour in already — with pro-Stevens groups having a multimillion-dollar advantage on the airwaves.
Warren and El-Sayed are set to make two stops in the Mitten State next weekend — one week before Election Day and one week after Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, D-N.Y., barnstormed the state for El-Sayed.
“Eventually, we have to ask ourselves: Is the answer to our problems to turn to the same playbook over and over again?” the New York congresswoman asked a crowd in Detroit over the weekend.
For Warren, it’s a change of heart, after initially backing State Sen. Mallory McMorrow in the primary. McMorrow dropped her bid earlier this month and is not expected to endorse in the primary.
“Senator Warren’s vision for our future — one where corporations can’t buy politicians and people can afford to put food on the table — speaks to Americans everywhere,” El-Sayed told MS of Warren’s endorsement, calling her “a generational voice for Americans who are tired of the status quo.”
The primary is August 4th.
Ali Vitali is MS NOW’s senior congressional correspondent and the host of “Way Too Early.” She is the author of “Electable: Why America Hasn’t Put a Woman in the White House … Yet.”
The Dictatorship
‘It’s a circus’: Republicans have big doubts about their newest reconciliation bill
With just four legislative days until the House breaks for its long August recess, Republicans are racing against the clock to advance their latest reconciliation bill this week. Lawmakers are skeptical they can get it done.
In the House, Republicans are struggling to unite their razor-thin majority on such a tight timeline. In the Senate, the questions about whether the GOP can pass this reconciliation bill are more like doubts.
On both sides of the Capitol, Republicans are naming their price for supporting the package — spending cuts, a stronger version of the SAVE America Act, provisions to defund Planned Parenthood and plenty of parochial asks — making an already difficult effort even harder.
“I do not think it’s likely to get done by next week, but we’ll see,” one House Republican told MS NOW, requesting anonymity to discuss the internal deliberations. “I really don’t think it’s going to happen by next week. I’d be very surprised.”
This lawmaker said Republicans are being pulled in multiple directions.
“Moderates want one thing. The budget hawks want another. And then you have the independent ones that are kind of just everywhere in between,” this GOP lawmaker said. “And it makes it a lot harder with such a slim majority.”
Senate Republicans were even blunter. Asked if there was a good chance the GOP could get the package done with the little time they have left in Washington, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, wasn’t very hopeful.
“Nope,” she said, making it clear she’s “not a fan” of what Republicans are currently considering.
The House kicked off the effort last week, unveiling a $95 billion budget resolution aimed at funding the Iran war, implementing parts of the SAVE America Act and addressing some affordability concerns nationwide.
It’s the party’s latest attempt at passing the GOP voting bill after the measure twice failed to overcome the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster and the Senate parliamentarian ruled that its current language isn’t compliant with the strict reconciliation rules.
The next hurdle is getting the budget resolution passed on the House floor, where Republican opposition is already mounting.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who frequently breaks from the GOP, told MS NOW last week he’s “probably a no,” raising concerns that the ultimate package would become “a slush fund for funding the war in Iran.” And Rep. Kevin Kiley of California, who left the GOP to become an Independent earlier this year, told MS NOW that Republicans shouldn’t count on his vote.
“I’m very skeptical of this approach,” he said.
If all Democrats vote against the budget resolution, as expected, Republicans can only afford to lose three votes and still adopt the measure, assuming full attendance. With two of those spots likely already accounted for, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., will need to keep the rest of his conference on board.
The White House, for its part, is running a full-court press to get the reconciliation package to President Donald Trump’s desk. Vice President JD Vance met with House Republicans last week to discuss the effort, relaying that the president supports the package and urging lawmakers to get as much of the SAVE America Act passed as possible, according to three members at the meeting.
Even if Republicans clear the House, they would still have to pass a Senate budget resolution, draft legislation, survive another review by the Senate parliamentarian and assemble a majority in the chamber before sending the package back to the House for final approval.
With just about 20 legislative days planned for the House and Senate before the midterms, Republicans are fairly pessimistic about their chances of passing the package.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do — it’s a pretty significant lift.” Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., told MS NOW. “We’ve got a lot of convincing to do on our side for a lot of reasons.”
Another House Republican put the odds of this third reconciliation bill passing at 50-50.
“It’s just doing a lot,” the lawmaker said. “The fiscal conservatives are concerned, some people are concerned about the war… So that combination, I think, will prove to be difficult.”
Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said he needs the spending in the reconciliation bill to be offset by cuts, which is not part of House GOP leadership’s current plan.
Burlison was less optimistic about the bill’s odds.
“I would say probably it’s a 40% chance,” he told MS NOW.
Even Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has been cautious. When MS NOW asked him how realistic it is to get the bill passed, he said, “If I had to handicap it on a scale of one to 10, I don’t know what to say at this point.”
His members have been even more frank about their gripes with reconciliation 3.0.
After it was reported that House GOP leadership wasn’t planning to include cuts in the bill, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said the package “should be fully paid for,” pointing to the ballooning debt.
“Our national debt is a runaway train,” he wrote on X.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told reporters “there needs to be a ban on funding for Planned Parenthood” in the final product, while also saying he didn’t want to see “any federal taxpayer money go to transgender treatment, surgeries, hormone therapies, etc., for minor children.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., meanwhile, took aim at the proposal potentially including language pertaining to the SAVE America Act. If the package includes any language related to the voting bill, Tillis told reporters he’ll “absolutely” vote against it.
“And I’ll slow other things down, too,” he said. “It’s a waste of time. It’s an exercise in futility, and those are the only positive things I can think of to say about it.”
The inclusion of the SAVE America Act is causing problems for other Republicans — just for a different reason.
After the Senate parliamentarian ruled against including the SAVE America Act in reconciliation, Johnson floated a workaround. He proposed creating a federal fund that states could draw from to implement voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements.
To some Republicans, however, that’s not a suitable option.
“If it’s really gonna be language that just is bribing the states, like with a few million bucks, I don’t think that’s strong enough,” Burlison told reporters.
Another House Republican said the SAVE America Act provisions were “100% snake oil.”
“Nothing in the bill is enforceable when it comes to the SAVE Act,” the lawmaker said. “It’s a complete falsehood. It’s very troubling.”
Beyond the policy, some Republicans have gripes with the process.
Murkowski, who said there’s little chance Republicans get the bill passed, said she’s not in favor of “multiple reconciliations.” (The GOP has passed two other party-line bills in the past year.)
Murkowski also took issue with Republicans seeming to subvert the normal appropriations process through these party-line bills.
“I don’t like to appropriate through reconciliation,” Murkowski said. “That’s the direction that we’re going here.”
Still, there are some Republicans who are optimistic.
Asked by MS NOW last week if he was confident this latest reconciliation bill would pass, Johnson gave a definitive “Yes.”
And other members are backing him up.
“It’s more likely than not,” a House Republican said. “There are plenty of issues to still iron out, but people kind of said we couldn’t get the first reconciliation package done as well. Now, in hindsight, it seems inevitable.”
But the pessimism within the Republican ranks seems to be outweighing the optimism. From the tight legislative timeline and competing policy demands to the razor-thin majorities and difficult Senate rules, the GOP’s luck on reconciliation bills may have finally run out.
Asked about the reconciliation push, one member summed it up this way: “It’s a circus.”
Jack Fitzpatrick and Nora McKee contributed to this report.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
The Dictatorship
3 U.S. troops killed in Middle East and 1 missing after Iranian attacks, CENTCOM says
Three American service members — two in Jordan and one in Iraq — were killed in action and one remains missing after Iranian attacks over the past few days, U.S. Central Command said.
The U.S. military on Sunday carried out new airstrikes in response to “swiftly punish” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The names of the killed service members were being withheld until 24 hours after their families were notified, CENTCOM said. Four others were taken to hospitals and have since been discharged, according to CENTCOM. Others were evaluated for minor injuries and have returned to duty. Another service member was wounded and continues to receive medical treatment for a minor injury.
CENTCOM announced on Sunday that a third U.S. service member in northern Iraq was killed in action July 18 following an attempt to detonate unexploded ordnance from an Iranian drone.
The latest fatalities bring the United States’ combat death toll related to the Iran war to 17. In addition, a soldier died from a noncombat-related incident in Kuwait. Hundreds of other troops have been injured.
In a social media post on Saturday afternoon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote, “Godspeed, heroes,” adding: “Their sacrifice only stiffens our resolve.”
The U.S. and Iran have traded strikes for the past week, with Iran hitting neighboring nations where American military bases are located. Iran has again closed the Strait of Hormuz — access to which has been a major factor in the war — and the U.S. restored its blockade on Iranian ports.
At least 50 people have been killed and more than 500 injured in Iran since the U.S. resumed its bombing campaign, according to Iran’s Ministry of Health.
A senior Iranian government official told MS NOW on Saturday that the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran is “no longer valid” after days of fighting. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be able to discuss sensitive issues, said the U.S. had consistently breached the ceasefire and added that Iran had no plans to negotiate while it’s under attack.
A senior foreign diplomat inside Tehran who is linked to Iran-U.S. negotiations told MS NOW that “there is no hope of peace in the near future.” The diplomat, who did not want to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the topic, said it would “take a miracle” to return to negotiations.
The renewed hostilities threaten to upend the fast-deteriorating agreement that the two countries signed last month. Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi told state TV that Iran is suspending its commitments to the memorandum of understanding with the U.S., The Associated Press reported Saturdayaccusing the U.S. of violating its own commitments under the deal.
It’s unclear where mediation efforts stand at the moment. Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement Saturday that the U.S. violation of the MoU proved the “worthlessness and invalidity” of President Donald Trump’s signature and warned of heavy repercussions for the U.S., state broadcaster IRIB reported.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
Inzamam Rashid is a MS NOW contributor and Monocle’s Gulf Correspondent based in Dubai. He has previously reported for Sky News and the BBC
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