Donald Trump dismissed the notion that the United States has the moral high ground in the world, and said the country should conduct itself accordingly.
In an interview with The New York Times published Wednesday, the GOP nominee for President said that the US has little authority to exert itself and “lecture” abroad, and said the US must “fix our own mess” before intervening in other nations’ affairs.
“Look at what is happening in our country,” he noted. “How are we going to lecture when people are shooting policemen in cold blood?”
When asked about the unfolding situation in Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has purged 50,000 members of the government and military in response to a failed coup attempt, Trump didn’t see a role for the US to criticize the crackdown.
“When the world sees how bad the United States is and we start talking about civil liberties, I don’t think we are a very good messenger,” he claimed.
Awkwardly, Trump himself appears determined to heighten those contradictions. Just this week alone he proposed two additional authoritarian initiatives. A Reuters report on Wednesday revealed that the Trump campaign may be drawing up its own plans to purge civil servants who worked in the Obama administration. Trump also said he would have the Attorney General investigate Black Lives Matter protesters.
Earlier in the Republican Primary, Trump said he would ban Muslims from entering the US, and loosen of libel laws to retaliate against critical journalists. He has also encouraged his supporters to assault protesters at his rallies.
In what were perhaps his most newsworthy comments, the real estate mogul suggested he might not comply with mutual defense obligations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). When questioned if he would commit US military forces to defend a NATO member from Russian aggression, Trump said only in cases with the member country has “fulfilled their obligations to us.”
Trump has previously criticized the NATO alliance, accusing other countries of not paying their fair share in dues to the organization. Members are required to commit to spending 2 percent of their GDP on the military. Currently, only five nations, including the US, hit that target.
“Either they pay up, including for past deficiencies, or they have to get out. And if it breaks up NATO, it breaks up NATO,” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post in April.
He told The Times this week: “We are going to take care of this country first before we worry about everyone else in the world.”
NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg shot back at The Donald in a statement to BuzzFeed.
“Solidarity among allies is a key value for NATO,” he said. “Two world wars have shown that peace in Europe is also important for the security of the United States.”
Trump’s rival, the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, Hillary Clinton also attacked Trump’s wavering on NATO.
“For decades, the United States has given an ironclad guarantee to our NATO allies: we will come to their defense if they are attacked, just as they came to our defense after 9/11,” Clinton policy adviser Jack Sullivan said on Wednesday. “Donald Trump was asked if he would honor that guarantee. He said… maybe, maybe not.”
Despite Trump’s latest appeal for the US to focus on problems at home before interfering in the affairs of other nations, Trump has been vocal in his support to use military force against the Islamic State.
“I would bomb the shit out of them,” he said on the campaign trail last year.
Trump’s claims to focus on issues at home, also, might take a backseat if he is elected–if the recent past is any indication. There is precedent for a far-right, Islamophobic Republican campaigning against intervention, but embracing it wholeheartedly, in the end.
In the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush repeatedly bashed the idea of “nation building.”
“I’m not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say, ‘This is the way it’s got to be,'”Bush said. By the end of his first term, he had presided over the invasion of two countries.
