President Donald Trump is lashing out against popular conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson. The acrimony emanates from Carlson’s strong opposition to the White House’s indirect military support for Israel’s war against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Trump declared he invented “America First” and he decides what it means while making his case for the potentially catastrophic war of aggression against Tehran.
On Monday, the president demeaned the influential pundit. Trump told reporters “I don’t know what [Carlson] is saying. Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen.” In an interview with The Atlantic magazine this weekend, Trump was asked about Carlson’s comments against the war.
Trump responded “Well, considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides [what it means]. For those people who say they want peace—you can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon. So for all of those wonderful people who don’t want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon—that’s not peace.”
“America First” is a political slogan which has seen a phenomenal resurgence in the wake of Trump’s first presidential campaign. It has been used by politicians in both major parties and dates back more than a century ago. It originated as a rallying cry for neutrality during the First World War and was used as part of President Woodrow Wilson’s 1916 reelection campaign. The following year, Wilson betrayed his supporters by ordering American forces into the war and imposing conscription. Since then, the antiwar, nationalist slogan has been deployed by non-interventionists, particularly on the right, exemplified best by Pat Buchanan.
Despite Trump’s continued insistence otherwise, his own intelligence agencies confirmed this year that there is no evidence Tehran is building a nuclear weapon nor has there been any suggestion that a political decision has been made to abrogate Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s fatwa against pursuing weapons of mass destruction.
On Friday, following Israel’s surprise bombing attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, residential areas, and military sites, Carlson released a newsletter denouncing US involvement in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war. It begins by quoting from Trump’s first inaugural address, “From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first. America first.”
The newsletter then reads, “Now that [Netanyahu] and his war-hungry government have executed their long-awaited assault, [Trump] faces a legacy-altering decision: to support or not to support?”
Carlson insists, “The United States should not at any level participate in a war with Iran. No funding, no American weapons, no troops on the ground. Regardless of what our “special ally” says, a fight with the Iranians has nothing to offer the United States. It is not in our national interest.”
The newsletter continues, with Carlson warning the consequences of supporting Israel will include future blowback terrorism against “the West” and “thousands of immediate American deaths, all in the name of a foreign agenda.” He concluded that a preferable option would be to “drop Israel” and “let them fight their own wars.” Carlson emphasized that because of the massive US military and financial aid to Tel Aviv, Trump is already “complicit in the act of war.”
