The U.S. government has been shut down for 23 days with no sign of resolution, and President Donald Trump is going to Asia.
The president’s weeklong trip is focused on trade deals and peace deals, the White House says. It comes during a foreign-policy-heavy swing for the president — one that some in his political movement are calling out as a departure from MAGA’s “America First” mantra.
In recent days, the U.S. has bombed more of what the Trump administration alleges are drug boats in international waters, and Trump has threatened direct action against Venezuela. He also announced that his administration would bail out Argentina with a cash swap of up to $20 billion and quadruple imports of low-tariff Argentinian beef to drive down prices in the U.S.
The administration has moved troops to Israel to help enforce the president’s Gaza peace plan, and on Wednesday, in a move to pressure Putin to end the war in Ukraine, Trump approved sanctions on two of Russia’s largest oil giants.
“Trump has been far more engaged around the world than the ‘America First’ crowd expected him to be,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and former adviser to Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign. “I’m sure he wakes up every day thinking about factory workers in Ohio, but he’s also thinking about soldiers in Ukraine.”
The White House argues that “America First” is still the modus operandi of this administration. Foreign policy wins translate into domestic wins, they say.
“It’s America first,” a White House official told NOTUS. “People falsely and very stupidly think that’s isolationism; it’s not. It’s more nuanced … People think about ‘America First,’ and they’re not looking at the layers beneath it. They’re not looking at the whole Trump doctrine.”
What exactly the Trump doctrine is appears to be more elusive. NOTUS asked more than a dozen Republican lawmakers, current and former administration officials and experts how they would characterize Trump’s foreign policy program. Few were able to pin it down, though some expressed skepticism about its direction.
Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that despite how Trump presents his foreign policy, the president is often interested in the domestic politics of other countries.
“This is not liberal internationalism of the traditional variety, which realists would criticize for privileging support for democratic forces over America’s interests,” Wertheim said. “But it is a new, specifically Trumpian form of domestic interventionism.”
Even those supportive of Trump’s moves aren’t certain it is part of a singular “doctrine.”
“I don’t know that he would think about it as a doctrine per se,” said Victoria Coates, a former deputy national security adviser in Trump’s first term and vice president of The Heritage Foundation’s Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy Institute. “He approaches both international crises and opportunities on a case-by-case basis, assessing them through the lens of what is in the best interests of the United States.”
Some of those directives, like Trump’s push to end Israel’s war in Gaza, appear to be legacy-building vehicles that could notch him what he’s greatly desired, a Nobel Peace Prize. Trump rarely completes a press availability without mentioning his work to end “eight wars, nine coming.”
But other efforts, like propping up the Argentinian government with a $20 billion bailout, have left supporters asking how the president’s decisions square with his “America First” ethos.
“I think the only misalignment that anyone would really point to is Argentina,” a MAGA ally close to the White House told NOTUS. “A lot of people have faith in the president. So I don’t think that Argentina is a deal-breaker for anyone. I think that people are frustrated by it.”
The Argentina announcements were among the areas some Republican lawmakers expressed skepticism regarding Trump’s foreign policy decisions.
“There’s some things I like. There’s some things I’m less enthused about. But, you know, let’s see where he gets to his issues,” Sen. Josh Hawley told NOTUS. “I’ve never been a big fan of bailouts. I will tell you what I’d like to do when it comes to payments to people. I’d like to start with American farmers. I think that farmers in my state and probably around the country, who are being retaliated against by our erstwhile trading partners, could use some support.”
In Congress, Trump’s most vocal Republican critic on foreign policy is also among the most faithful to MAGA: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“It’s a revolving door at the White House of foreign leaders, when Americans are, you know, screaming from their lungs,” she told Axios last week. “If me saying those things are considered breaking with my party, then what is the Republican Party? I thought we were ‘America First’?”
The White House official rejected any assertion that the president has focused more on foreign policy than domestic issues, saying that the administration’s scale of international wins may have eclipsed the scale of its domestic wins as of late, resulting in a more lopsided view.
The official attributed the uproar over Argentina to “misinformation” with the administration’s actions, saying that Trump “can do both” — protect the farmers and shore up a strategic ally.
The fractures between the administration and staunch America Firsters have appeared most clearly when Trump is making moves suggesting long-term intervention — such as when bombers struck Iran’s nuclear capabilities on behalf of Israel, and now the Argentinian bailout.
Democrats, and some Republicans, have chastised the president for acting unilaterally without involving Congress on military actions and alienating allies with high tariffs, casting the decisions as chaos that will cede influence to rivals like China.
But few Republican senators have publicly criticized Trump’s operations against Venezuela, where the U.S. has used military assets to strike boats and kill individuals it has accused of smuggling drugs. Trump authorized covert CIA action in Venezuela, a move that mirrors the neoconservative interventionism traditionally associated with pre-Trump Republicanism.
“I like what they said about South America. Instead of the Monroe Doctrine, it’s the ‘Don-Roe’ Doctrine,” Sen. John Cornyn said.
Most Republicans who spoke with NOTUS defended the president’s new world order, and said that fundamentally for Trump, chaos is the point.
“The great thing about this president is that no one knows if he is being serious or if he’s not being serious,” the MAGA ally said. “But no one wants to fuck around and find out.”