Tag: America First

Trump goes to the United Nations to argue against everything it stands for

 In his third annual speech to the United Nations General Assembly, President Donald Trump delivered a clear message in favor of nationalism and national sovereignty and against globalism.

But three years into Trump’s presidency, that kind of rhetoric is no longer as shocking as it once was. Most of the world has heard it from him before.

Trump, in an oddly subdued speech in New York on Tuesday, reprised his case that all nations should exert their sovereignty, protect their borders, and reject any mutual and international cooperation that doesn’t put their country’s own interests first. For Trump, it’s “America First;” for everyone else it’s “[Insert Country Here] First.”

“If you want democracy, hold on to your sovereignty,” Trump said. “And if you want peace, love your nation.”

Trump touted the “great” new trade deals he’s working on and lambasted China’s trade practices. He criticized the Iranian regime for its “bloodlust.” He tried to elevate his stalled diplomacy with North Korea. He condemned the socialist regime of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. He denounced illegal immigration and even made time to complain about perceived censorship of conservative viewpoints by social media companies and to attack social justice advocates.

It was classic Trump — only without the enthusiasm he usually displays when discussing these pet topics. If anything, Trump seemed bored by his own speech.

There were two rare but notable exceptions: Trump’s stern notice to China that the US is closely watching how it handles the unrest in Hong Kong, and his call to end the criminalization of homosexuality around the world.

The rest, though, was standard Trump fare, and few of the world leaders gathered to hear him speak seemed surprised or rattled by his words. He couldn’t even manage to garner any of last year’s surprised laughs.

The world knows by now who Trump is.

Trump’s schtick isn’t shocking anymore. But it shows just how much of an outlier the US is.

“The future does not belong to globalists; it belongs to patriots,” Trump said at the start of his speech.

It seemed like a throwaway line but it was actually a clear articulation of what Trump and leaders of his ilk have been arguing for the past few years: Populist nationalism is the future andmultinational cooperation and mutual trust is the past — even if that’s the very vision the United Nations is trying to promote and protect.

And that message has permeated. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who spoke shortly before Trump, cited the US president’s defense of the sanctity of national sovereignty to push back against worldwide criticism of Bolsonaro’s handling of the Amazon fires. “They even called into question that which we hold as a most sacred value, our sovereignty,” Bolsonaro said at one point.

Trump was sandwiched between a slew of authoritarians and wanna-be authoritarians (Bolsonaro before and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and then Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan afterward), and while the US president paid lip service to democracy, his defense of it didn’t fit with his nationalistic rhetoric.

Trump and some of these other speeches stood in stark contrast to that of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who addressed the crowd before the world leaders began to take the stage and warned of the “disquiet” currently plaguing the world.

He was mostly referring to the world’s problems — armed conflicts, increasing inequality, the threat of climate change. But Guterres’s argument is that nations need to band together to address these challenges and to promote the rights of all citizens, no matter their homeland. Guterres believes the forum to do so is the United Nations.

Trump’s argument is, as it always has been, that every country needs to look after itself.

[Vox]

Trump golf club in New York asks to hire more foreign workers

One of President Trump’s golf clubs is asking permission from the federal government to hire more foreign workers.

The Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York, filed petitions with the Department of Labor seeking permission to hire foreign staffers to be servers and cooks at the property.

BuzzFeed News first reported on the petitions, which were posted on Wednesday.

The club is making the request through the H-2 visa program, which allows American companies to employ foreign workers using temporary work visas, under the condition that no U.S. workers are qualified for or want the jobs.

The property is asking to hire 14 seasonal workers, with work dates starting in mid-May and ending at the end of October. Servers would earn a minimum wage of $15.20 an hour, with the possibility of overtime pay at $22.80 an hour.

Cooks would make $14.36 an hour, with the possibility of overtime at $21.54 an hour.

Trump properties have sought permission to hire foreign workers in the past. His Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., won permission to hire 70 foreign employees last year.

Trump defended the practice during a GOP primary in 2016, saying that it was “very, very hard to get people” for the jobs.

[The Hill]

Trump Eulogizes Anti-Equality Activist as “Hero”

Donald Trump eulogized conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly Saturday, praising her as an underdog and linking the anti-feminist movement she led to his anti-establishment campaign.

“She loved her country, she loved her family and she loved her god,” Trump said at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. “The legacy will live on every time some underdog outmatches and outguns, defies the odds and delivers a win for the people.”

“America has always been about the underdog and always been about defying the odds,” he added.

Schlafly died Monday at 92. An early supporter of the Religious Right, she was most well-known for her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and becoming one of the leading female critics of the feminist movement.

Trump praised Schlafly for being “America First,” a phrase he’s used to articulate his international policies on trade, immigration and other global affairs.

“And in all her battles, she never strayed from the one guiding principle: she was for America and was always ‘America First,'” he said. “People have forgotten that nowadays. With Phyllis, it was America First.”

Trump — who famously never apologizes, at least not publicly — also said Schlafly was someone who “never apologized.”

“She never wavered, never apologized and never backed down in taking on the kingmakers. She never stopped fighting for the fundamental idea that the American people ought to have their needs come before anything or anyone else,” he said.

Trump said Schlafly believed in the power of everyday American to challenge “the rigged system” he said.

“The idea that so called little people or the little person that she loved so much could beat the system often times the rigged system, you’ve been hearing a lot about it,” he added.

“That the American grassroots is more powerful than all of the world’s special interests put together. And that’s the way Phyllis felt.”

In her latest book — “The Conservative Case for Trump” — released Tuesday, Schlafly argued that conservative Christians should follow high-profile evangelical leaders such as Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins in supporting Trump’s candidacy.

“Trump has gone to great lengths to court national leaders in the social-conservative movement and has convinced many of the most prominent ones that he genuinely supports their policy positions,” she and co-authors Ed Martin and Brett M. Decker wrote.

Reality

Many of us were not alive or politically aware in the 1970’s and at the height of Schlafly’s prominence, so when the media described her as simply “ant-feminist activist” they didn’t paint a full enough picture.

Phyllis Schlafly was indeed an activist who was more than against feminism, she did everything in her power to make sure that every woman would be back in the kitchen under complete and total subservience to their husband. Her claim to fame was her fight against the Equal Rights Amendment, a constitutional amendment to forbid sexism by U.S. federal and state governments.

Schlafly had strong-held white supremacist views, was staunchly anti-LGBT rights, and denied the concept that women could be raped by their husbands.

“By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape.”

When the Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for minors, she lead the movement for the impeachment of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was the deciding vote in the case.

This is who Donald Trump calls a “hero.”

But she’s not a racist!

Here is Phyllis Schlafly in her own words bemoaning that today’s immigrants aren’t white enough to her liking.

Here is Schlafly on record claiming Hispanics are not like the GOP, because of illegitimate pregnancies and an inability to understand the Bill of Rights.

Here is Phyllis Schlafly in an interview saying that Obama is intentionally bringing in ebola to make the U.S. more like Africa.

Here is a column written by Schlafly upset that disaster relief resources, things that save lives, are printed in non-English languages. Again these pamphlets save lives of actual real Americans who do not speak English.

You were saying?

Bonus

For an extra laugh, head over to Conservapedia, created by Phyllis Schlafly’s son Andrew, a conservative alternative to Wikipedia, who he found to be too factual and didn’t contain enough bias. Needless to say it is an embarrassment and highly unreliable.

Trump’s ‘America First’ Has Ugly Echoes From U.S. History

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump delivered his most comprehensive foreign policy speech to date in Washington, outlining a general vision for international relations that would reconfigure American responsibilities abroad to put “America first.”

Trump said during a speech organized by the National Interest magazine:

“My foreign policy will always put the interests of the American people and American security above all else. That will be the foundation of every single decision that I will make. ‘America First’ will be the major and overriding theme of my administration.”

The speech included no dramatic new policy proposals that might generate headlines, such as his past calls to bar Muslims from entering the United States or to build a wall on the frontier with Mexico.

The real estate mogul said that a Trump administration would install a foreign policy vision that “replaces randomness with purpose, ideology with strategy, and chaos with peace.” He said that as president he would call for summits with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, and with Asian allies in the Pacific. Chief among his goals would be to update existing organizations to “confront shared problems, like terrorism and migration.”

Where he was specific, like rejecting the terms of last year’s nuclear deal with Iran, calling for more investment in missile defense in Europe and accusing the Obama administration of tepid support for Israel, he was firmly within the Republican mainstream.

(h/t Washington Post, Reuters, CNN)

Reality

Although Trump called for the United States to “shake the rust off of America’s foreign policy,” he delivered few specific proposals, instead focusing on outlining a broad framework the rests on demanding respect for the United States abroad.

It is extremely unfortunate that in his speech outlining his foreign policy goals, Donald Trump chose to brand his foreign policy with the noxious slogan “America First,” the name of the isolationist, defeatist, anti-Semitic national organization that urged the United States to appease Adolf Hitler.

At best the Trump campaign simply did not perform adequate research, which highlights how they are not prepared for presidential politics. At worst they are again appealing to white supremacists with another dog-whistle message.

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOW8O_D_Uvw