Standing in his white golf shoes on a lush green, President Donald Trump told those gathered at the ribbon-cutting for his golf course in Scotland on Tuesday that his administration has “put out fires all over the world” and “stopped about five wars.”
Since returning to the White House on Jan. 20, the Trump administration has worked to negotiate the end of multiple conflicts between foreign nations, most recent between Thailand and Cambodia.
Trump has “restored America’s standing on the world stage,” Anna Kelly, White House deputy press secretary, told The Daily Signal, adding, “his foreign policy accomplishments speak for themselves.”
“No one has done more for global stability than President Trump, who in just six months has ended wars between Israel and Iran; the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda; India and Pakistan; and more, which makes our homeland safer,” Kelly said. “Every action the president takes has put ‘America First’ while bringing the world closer to peace.”
Trump campaigned on placing the interests of America and its citizens first. He also campaigned on ending conflicts between foreign nations. While some may see a tension between Trump’s “America First” agenda and repeated engagement in global conflicts, the president does not view these as mutually exclusive, according to multiple sources who have worked for the president.
“Peace around the world is in America’s interest,” Hogan Gidley, who served as White House deputy press secretary under Trump’s first administration, told The Daily Signal.
“Not everything that happens all over the globe necessarily affects America,” Gidley said, “but Donald Trump has strategically gotten involved exactly where he has needed to, to protect America and her interests, both at home and abroad.”
Gidley called it “lunacy” to claim Trump’s involvement in settling international conflicts isn’t part of “Make America Great Again,” because “he defines what it is because he created it.”
Just four months into Trump’s second term, tension exploded between Pakistan and India, the two nations engaging in missile strikes and drone attacks. Both nations are nuclear-armed, raising concerns over a full-fledged war between the neighboring South Asian countries. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance spoke with leaders from both nations, helping to facilitate a ceasefire in May.
In June, the Trump administration facilitated a peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. The peace deal ended a 30-year conflict in Africa between the two.
In what was arguably Trump’s boldest foreign policy move to date, the president ordered the U.S. to bomb Iran’s key nuclear sites in June. The strikes not only damaged Iran’s nuclear program, but also effectively ended a nearly two-week conflict between Israel and Iran.
Of course, two of the major international conflicts Trump campaigned on ending continue to rage on.
In the case of Russia and Ukraine, Trump has shown his frustration with both, first with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a heated exchange in the Oval Office in February, and more recently with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
During a recent interview with the BBC, Trump said he was “disappointed” with Putin. The president has now given Russia less than two weeks to reach a peace deal with Ukraine or face new tariffs and sanctions from America.
While a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine has not yet been reached, Gidley says, Trump has brought the world leaders “to the table.”
“Having dealt with Putin in the first term, and Zelenskyy for that matter, he’s uniquely suited to get involved,” Gidley said of Trump.
The former White House deputy press secretary recalls sitting in the room with Trump while the president negotiated with other world leaders and says it was fascinating to watch the way foreign leaders reacted when Trump told them “no.”
During a meeting with Chinese officials, Gidley recalls, Trump’s reaction when Chinese leader Xi Jinping told Trump China was not going to adhere to a pledge to buy U.S. agricultural products.
“Donald Trump just says, ‘Go get me [Shinzo] Abe from Japan,’” and Abe comes in and within an hour makes the biggest trade deal between America and Japan for agriculture products we’d ever seen,” Gidley recounted. Abe served as prime minister of Japan during Trump’s first administration.
During his first administration, Trump met with North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un and became the first sitting U.S. president to step foot inside North Korea. In a statement this week, Kim Yo Jong, the sister of dictator Kim Jong Un, called her brother’s relationship with Trump “not bad.”
While Gidley said it would “be nice if every foreign leader loved Donald Trump … instead what he gets is a healthy dose of fear, love, and respect, and that is something we have been sorely lacking for generations in this country from our leaders on both sides of the aisle.”
The essence of “America First,” according to Victoria Coates, who served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first term, is “prioritizing what is good for America,” which in turn “winds up being good for the rest of the world.”
Trump’s approach to foreign affairs “is the opposite” of that of Presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama “in which subjugating America to a global agenda is the path to a better world,” Coates said. Trump has also avoided “the excesses of … George W. Bush’s administration, in which America had to do everything for everyone,” she added.
Since returning to office, Trump has also repeatedly spoken of the need to end the war between Israel and Hamas.
The president remains loyal to supporting Israel’s efforts to secure its safety and dismantle Hamas, while also, in recent days, pledging increased aid to the civilian population in Gaza.
“President Trump approaches these conflicts from the very first moment from the perspective of ‘Let’s just stop the killing,’ but also with an understanding of what’s in the best interests of the United States,” Tim Murtaugh, who served as the communications director for Trump’s 2020 Trump campaign, told The Daily Signal.
“It’s in the country’s interests to have peace, particularly in these parts of the world, and Trump is the only person on the planet who is positioned to make deals happen,” Murtaugh added.
“America is back,” he said, “and that’s very much an ‘America First’ thing.”
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