Washington Wednesday: The America first foreign policy

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 26th of February.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Time now for Washington Wednesday.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump presented himself as the candidate ready to recalibrate America’s priorities—from energy to immigration.

A month into the new administration, activists from across the country gathered to celebrate at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference.

President Trump was there with them.

TRUMP: Over the past month we've confirmed an all star team of warriors, patriots, visionaries and put the America First agenda into action.

MAST: Already, conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and beyond are testing the America First strategy on the global stage. That’s a welcome change to conservatives, even if they don’t all agree on America’s role.

Washington Bureau reporter Leo Briceno has more.

ROBERT VARESCHI: I’m with Trump. Gotta stop the killing.

LEO BRICENO: Robert Vareschi, a veteran, came to CPAC with a hat full of military pins, and concerns about U.S. involvement in foreign wars.

VARESCHI: Zelenskyy out there, we sent him $350 billion bucks, nobody knows where it is. … I’m with Trump on that. Negotiated settlement there. Sanctions against Russia. Tighten the sanctions on Iran, and we gotta trade with China. Reciprocal tariffs.

Many Americans share Vareschi’s concern that the United States is overextending itself in foreign conflicts. Trump ran for reelection on a commitment to get the U.S. out of the business of global policeman.

ED YOUNG: I think our country is a mess right now. A mess of corruption so deep we couldn’t have imagined it.

Ed Young is a TikTok influencer and Trump advocate who attended CPAC. He says America’s cultural and governance problems should be addressed before intervening in international conflicts, like the war in Ukraine.

YOUNG: We’ve done an awful lot for them but it’s time we took care of our own nightmare that we’ve got here.

Young’s friend Michael O’Neal agrees.

MICHAEL O’NEAL: Before we can help any others, we have to be healthy again. We’re not healthy.

Former President Joe Biden used to describe the United States’ enormous resource commitments to Ukraine as a moral imperative. Here he is speaking at the NATO summit in September.

BIDEN: When Russia invaded Ukraine, we could have stood by and merely protested. But Vice President Harris and I understand that that was an assault on everything this institution is supposed to stand for. And so, at my direction, America stepped into the breach to provide massive security, economic, and humanitarian assistance.

Three years after Russia invaded Ukraine, many conservatives want to see more results for the aid we sent. And at CPAC, they applauded speakers who framed conflicts overseas with a mind towards how U.S. interests are served—or not served. Here’s Vice President J.D. Vance answering questions about developments in talks to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

VANCE: The president believes this and he’s absolutely right; peace is in the interest of Russia, it’s in the interest of Ukraine, it’s in the interest of Europe, but most importantly peace is in the interest of the American people.

Jeff Culp came to CPAC from New Jersey with his fiancee, both of them sporting MAGA hats. He says the U.S. should not have to play global policeman for countries facing challenges.

JEFF CULP: It should be their own governments. But they’re mostly corrupt. So that’s the problem we have. It’s all over the world.”

Others view America First through a more mainstream Republican lens. Former White House official KT McFarland spoke during a breakout session on Israel.

MCFARLAND: I was President Trump's Deputy National Security Advisor. But before that I was in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan administrations working for Henry Kissinger…

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan put America’s rivalry with the Soviet Union in moral terms.

REAGAN: I urge you to beware the temptation of pride the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

I asked McFarland about how the U.S. can confront authoritarian nations like Russia and China while also putting itself first.

MCFARLAND: Trump’s a businessman, he understands the power of markets. The United States is the largest market in the world. So other countries—including China—need to sell stuff to us a whole lot more than we need to buy stuff from them. That gives us enormous leverage.

Trump is also using economic leverage in negotiations with Ukraine. On Saturday, he spoke at CPAC, and said the U.S. should see some sort of return on the billions of dollars in foreign aid invested in the frontlines of Ukraine.

TRUMP:Europe gave it in the form of a loan. They get their money back. We gave it in the form of nothing. So I want them to give us something for all of the money we put up and I’m going to try to get the war settled and I'm going to try to get all that death ended. So we’re asking for rare earth—and oil—anything we can get.

Economic self-interest also appears to be a key component in conversations about what’s next for Gaza.

Trump has called for the United States to take over the contentious region, suggesting it could be turned into something new with American control.

But is that an America-first idea? Here’s former White House official McFarland.

MCFARLAND: Now, this is interesting because—so every time there have been these middle east wars, right, there’s rubble then it gets rebuilt, aid comes in, then the bad guys move right back in to distribute the aid so they just perpetuate, perpetuate, perpetuate. So, President Trump is saying ‘break the cycle.

For McFarland and others, replacing that cycle with economic leverage and peace negotiations serves not only American interests, but other nations as well.

MCFARLAND: America first is when the countries of the world aren’t fighting each other and when President Trump is standing with Israel. That is America first.

That’s it for Washington Wednesday.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno in National Harbor, Maryland.

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