The Trump Years: America First

Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.

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Sean Rameswaram: Four years ago, Donald Trump from reality TV won the presidency, and our shared reality hasn't been the same since. The relentless pace of headlines, controversies, and tweets has rendered the country divided at present and unable to fully recollect the past. I've seen the tweet about tapes. Lordy, I hope there are tapes. We struggle to remember what this president said or did last month, let alone in 2017. This October, leading up to the 2020 election, we're going to help you remember. In the coming weeks, we're bringing you The Trump Years, a series that looks back on what Donald Trump did during his four years as president of the United States and what it means for the future of the American political experiment.

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Sean Rameswaram: On today's show, America First. We're breaking down President Trump's America First vision domestically and then internationally. And domestically, it's really all about immigration. Nicole Norea, you cover immigration at Vox.

Nicole Norea: I feel like the story of Donald Trump and immigration begins well before he enters the Oval Office. So it really dates back to the campaign trail in 2015. He famously delivered a speech descending his golden escalator at Trump Tower announcing that he was running for president. And we are going to make our country great again. Two things stood out in that speech on immigration. He said, when Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. And that would become the first of many derogatory statements he would make about Mexicans publicly. And he also said that he would build a wall. A great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.

Sean Rameswaram: He also talked about immigration at other points during the campaign, like in 2016 when he gave a speech in Phoenix, Arizona, laying out his vision for what the immigration system should look like. He basically said that the immigration system is broken, it hurts lower-class Americans, and it increases crime. And he also laid out how he would change it with policies that were largely informed by the ideas of immigration restrictionists who have long looked for an opportunity to change the immigration system in a way that maintains a non-Hispanic white majority population. But, you know, the wall really was the symbol of the Trump campaign, and it did set the tone for his presidency, even though there were these other plans.

Nicole Norea: Build that wall. Build that wall. Build that wall. Build that wall. Build that wall. It's the wall that sets the tone, but it's also the Muslim ban, which is like the first thing he does when he enters office, yeah?

Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, definitely. I mean, in January 2017, just as he walked in the door, he issued the Muslim ban, as some people have called it, travel ban, by what the Trump administration says. And there was immediate chaos in airports. Huge nationwide protests erupted once again on President Donald Trump's second weekend in office.

Nicole Norea: To be sure, the Muslim ban, the travel ban, it's still in effect four years later, yeah?

Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, it is. And it's been expanded to other countries, primarily African countries, actually. Nigeria was one of the countries that was added to the list. And that could impact hundreds of thousands of people.

Nicole Norea: President Trump doesn't seem to talk about the wall as much as he used to. What's up with that?

Sean Rameswaram: So I think building the wall was kind of a useful shorthand for his general philosophy on immigration, which is primarily focused on keeping people out. But it was actually one of his least successful immigration policies. Mexico obviously never paid for it. Congress wouldn't fund it. He's still way behind on construction and is currently racing to complete two miles of wall per day ahead of the election, often cutting through national forests and wildlife preserves to do it. But even though he didn't quite deliver on that promise, he has really succeeded in fundamentally changing the immigration system in so many other ways.

Nicole Norea: Remind us which ones?

Sean Rameswaram: So I divided up into three categories. The first being the southern border, which has been the focus of his administration for years now. But we've also seen him focus on internal enforcement and deportations and then cutting back legal immigration. All right, well, let's go through them. What's going on at the southern border? What's the latest?

Nicole Norea: So one of the first policies that he pursued while in office was called the zero tolerance policy. Where basically the government decided to prosecute anyone who crosses the border without authorization. This is what Donald Trump just sent on Twitter moments ago. Quote, we cannot allow all of these people to invade our country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no judges or court cases, bring them back from where they came. And under previous administrations, those people would have been released under certain conditions, such as if they didn't pose a risk to public safety. And from that policy came family separations starting in early 2017. Basically, they were tearing parents from their children, sending the children away to facilities halfway across the country and without tracking them in a nationalized system. So to this day, families are still trying to be reunited to no avail.

Sean Rameswaram: And the Trump administration, though they've denied any sort of administration-wide policy of family separations, did in fact use that policy to deter immigrants from coming across the border, as we know now from reporting.

Nicole Norea: Some other big policies that have really defined Trump's philosophy on the southern border is the remain in Mexico policy. The Trump administration's immigration crackdown on the southern border is expanding. All asylum seekers are now required to remain in Mexico to await their day in U.S. immigration court. And basically, there are now thousands of people waiting in migrant camps on the southern border, literally right across the Rio Grande, waiting for a chance to be able to argue in front of an immigration judge that they deserve asylum. And more recently, under the pandemic, we have also seen the Trump administration use emergency powers to close the U.S.-Mexico border entirely and basically turn away anyone who's coming from a country where there is a risk of communicable disease, which at this point, unfortunately, includes Mexico.

Sean Rameswaram: Right, which we talked to you about recently on our episode on ICE and forced hysterectomies.

Nicole Norea: Let's talk a bit more about ICE and what President Trump has accomplished internally within the United States.

Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, so there are currently 10 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. And under Trump, immigration enforcement has really been empowered to go after those people. 680 undocumented immigrants were arrested yesterday in Mississippi. Wednesday's raids marked the largest workplace raid in one state ever, surpassing a 2008 Mississippi plant operation where 595 immigrants were arrested.

Nicole Norea: We've seen mass deportations, though still not more than there were under the Obama administration. In addition to that, Trump has also tried to roll back a really popular program on both sides of the aisle, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. That's the program that was instituted by President Obama that it protects these approximately 700,000 so-called dreamers. These are the young immigrants who came here as children. It protects them from deportation. The Supreme Court actually ruled against his attempt to roll back the DACA protections earlier this year. But we could still see him try to do that next year if he's reelected.

Sean Rameswaram: You mentioned that even with all of this focus on undocumented immigrants living in the United States, President Trump still hasn't managed to deport more undocumented immigrants than even President Obama, though it seems like there's way more attention on this issue under President Trump than there was under President Obama. The abolish ICE slogan comes to mind.

Nicole Norea: How is it that he wasn't even able to deport as many people as President Obama when it's so much more of a sort of essential focus of his?

Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I think the answer is he's managed to keep a lot more people out. His focus really has been on the southern border and in preventing asylum seekers from coming over the border or just people who are trying to migrate illegally. So we've actually seen the numbers go down from something like 140,000 last May to 50,000 in most recent months. And that's pretty significant.

Nicole Norea: So I think that's something that we can see him holding up as one of his primary accomplishments in his first term. And of course, one area where President Trump has focused a lot more attention than his predecessor is on lowering legal immigration into the United States, which we have covered on the show as well.

Sean Rameswaram: What do his accomplishments look like four years later there?

Nicole Norea: Well, so Trump famously said once that he wanted to prevent people from coming from shithole countries to the U.S. He defined those as primarily non-white non-European countries. He, first of all, implemented the public charge rule, which is kind of wonky, but basically it created a wealth test for people applying for certain visas or permanent residency, and it effectively bans poor immigrants. He also gutted the refugee program, and we're currently taking in fewer refugees than ever. We used to take in over 100,000 people a year from all over the world. And Trump just announced that next year will only take in up to 15,000, which is the lowest cap on refugee admissions we've ever had.

Sean Rameswaram: So what's been the upshot of this overall? Four years of President Trump reducing undocumented immigration, reducing legal immigration, passing travel bans, expanding travel bans. How has this changed this notion that the United States is this nation of immigrants, that this is the place for the world's tired and poor and huddled masses for them to find opportunity.

Nicole Norea: I mean, I think Ken Cuccinelli, who's second in command at the Department of Homeland Security, summarized it pretty well. He famously changed the Statue of Liberty, quote. Would you also agree that Emma Lazarus's words etched on the Statue of Liberty, give me your tired, your poor, are also part of the American ethos?

Sean Rameswaram: They certainly are.

Nicole Norea: Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge. And we've really seen the effects of that philosophy play out.

Sean Rameswaram: Trump has been really effective at keeping immigrants out. By some estimates, he's cut legal immigration by 49%. He has brought migration at the southern border practically to a halt. As of this point, even if he doesn't move forward, he's already vastly transformed the American immigration system. And the effects of that could very much outlast his presidency for decades to come.

Nicole Norea: Why isn't President Trump talking about this more? I mean, it's an area where he's been comparatively very successful.

Sean Rameswaram: I think you're right. There has been a shift in Trump's rhetoric recently. But I guess now what we're seeing is really, you know, while migrant caravans and international criminal gangs like MS-13 were kind of being used as scapegoats in his rhetoric before, we're now seeing Antifa and BLM replacing them as what he considers to be the top public enemies.

Nicole Norea: It's still sort of surprising to me, though, that, you know, at the debates, at the RNC, he doesn't talk that much about immigration when it was so key to firing up his base and firing what seemed like himself up in rallies after rally after rally.

Sean Rameswaram: Does talking about law and order, like, fit as the perfect substitute for this issue that is so essential to who Donald Trump is as a politician?

Nicole Norea: I think it does. It all part of the same theme really. And his supporters I think have been satisfied with the job he done on immigration. They use the build the wall as a rallying cry to this day. But I think now it may be more about there being a sect within the Republican Party that is interested in averting the reality of a minority-majority country, which could come about as early as the 2040s. And that would be devastating to them electorally.

Sean Rameswaram: After the break, how President Trump's America First policy has worked around the world.

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Sean Rameswaram: Jen Williams, you're the foreign editor here at Vox, your co-host of the Worldly Podcast. I just spoke to Nicole about how Trump's America First policy looked here in the United States with regard to immigration. But I wanted to ask you how it's looked abroad. How has this America first vision been realized around the world?

Jen Williams: Yeah, so after four years, he's got a pretty solid story to tell, right? He's got a pretty good record to sell to the American people for re-election. The problem is that when you actually look a little bit closer at the specifics of all of the things that he accomplished, it's not quite as shiny as it looks at first glance.

Sean Rameswaram: What's the best story he could sell? What's the best version of it?

Jen Williams: So you'll actually hear him at rallies kind of give the greatest hits. So he talks about pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. The disastrous Iran nuclear deal. And imposed the toughest ever sanctions on the world's number one state sponsor of terrorism. He also assassinated a high-ranking Iranian general. Qasem Soleimani. Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel, but we caught him. He's in the process of pulling a lot of U.S. troops out of the Middle East. He made this peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan to kind of help that process along. He actually moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. That's something that politicians of both parties have been promising to do when they were on the campaign trail. And then when they got into office, both Republicans and Democrats were like, no, not doing that. He actually did it. And we recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. He confronted North Korea on their nuclear weapons program. He even had this, like, meeting, several meetings with Kim Jong-un. I built this relationship. And we would go back and forth. And then we fell in love. OK? No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters. And they're great letters. We fell in love.

Sean Rameswaram: He's gotten tough on China. He tried to negotiate a new trade deal. They signed kind of like the preliminary version of a trade deal. He renegotiated the NAFTA agreement. So he did like a lot of these things. He pressured U.S. allies to pay more for their own defense, you know, in NATO. These are all things that he campaigned on and are all things that are very much under the America First kind of agenda.

Jen Williams: Well, I'm sure there's lots of different ways to measure the success of all of these policies, but let's just talk about making America and the world safer. How do these policies measure up in that regard?

Sean Rameswaram: So it depends on who you ask, but you're asking me. So I guess I would say not a whole lot safer. Take North Korea, for instance. So the country hasn't tested any more ICBMs. ICBMs are intercontinental ballistic missiles. These are like the big missiles that could potentially bring a nuclear weapon from North Korea all the way to the United States. So Kim hasn't tested any more of those since he and Trump started, you know, these talks. They also haven't held another nuclear test, you know, testing a nuclear weapon, which like those are really good things. But they're also not anything that is, you know, has anything to do with what Trump actually did. There's no agreement. There's no progress. These talks have stalled. And meanwhile, North Korea continues to enhance its nuclear and ballistic missile program. That's according to a new yet-to-be-published U.N. report seen by CBS News. The report also says Pyongyang may be developing a submarine capable of carrying ballistic missiles.

Sean Rameswaram: If anything, their nuclear program is more robust than it was when Trump took office, even though he's had these talks. So we see the kind of same kind of thing over and over again. So go to Iran, right? He pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal promising that he was going to renegotiate it and get an even better one. Well, there is no better deal that we have yet. There's no deal. Meanwhile, Iran has taken steps to being able to build a nuclear weapon if it decided to do so.

Jen Williams: Right. And staying in the Middle East? I mean, what about Iraq and ISIS and Afghanistan?

Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. I mean, when he came into office, he promised to, you know, crush ISIS. And to his credit, he kind of did, right? He basically took the gloves off the military and said, you know, go in there and do what you need to do. To get rid of this ISIS caliphate. So in that respect, yeah, like on balance, much safer. But in Afghanistan, it's not quite as clear. He made a peace deal with the Taliban and, you know, was in the process of bringing down the number of troops. But those conflicts like aren't still settled, like the underlying conflicts going on, like the Taliban still hasn't made an agreement with the Afghan government. Like there still a war going on. He just done stuff to get the U.S. out of here. So it doesn't matter what happens to the rest of you guys all these countries that we invaded a long time ago. We just going to get out and you guys figure it out from here.

Jen Williams: And that seems to sort of align with Trump pulling out of international agreements and saying that our allies need to cough up more money in our international accords, be it NATO or NAFTA or anything else.

Sean Rameswaram: I mean, yes and no, right? So he has, you know, pushed NATO allies to pay more for their own defense. But that's also something that previous presidents pushed for. And a lot of the countries like Germany to do that, well, they were already going to do that anyway. What he's done, on the other hand, is alienate a lot of these allies. In yesterday's meeting, the president openly questioned whether NATO should defend countries that don't pay their fair share on defense, while adding Canada was, in the president's words, only semi-delinquent. So it's not like he got a ton out of it, but what he did to get there was really damaging.

Jen Williams: And I imagine that hasn't made it easier to spread American values abroad.

Sean Rameswaram: Oh yeah, we're not doing that anymore. Like, that's just over. It's just completely done? Trump doesn't really care about those values like democracy and freedom of speech. Like, he's fighting that stuff here at home. So it's not like he, you know, really cares about spreading that around the world. So we're just kind of done with that. Think about Hong Kong, right? Hong Kong police fired pepper balls at protesters and arrested hundreds of people on Sunday. China passed this national security law, cracked down hardcore in Hong Kong. And the Trump administration hasn't really done much.

Jen Williams: Also in China, like the Uyghurs of China's government is putting, you know, Uyghur Muslims in what are effectively concentration camps. They call them re-education camps by like the thousands. And Trump, you know, according to John Bolton's book, Trump even told Xi Jinping of China that like, yeah, that's a good idea that you should do that.

Sean Rameswaram: And I guess related to that lack of leadership on democracy abroad is this sort of cozying up to strongmen abroad, be it Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil or Kim Jong-un in North Korea or, of course, Vladimir Putin in Russia.

Jen Williams: Yeah, like Trump's really good at making like Democratic allies really mad at him and at making authoritarian leaders really happy. Getting along with Russia would be a good thing, not a bad thing. And just about everybody agrees to that, except very stupid people.

Sean Rameswaram: Like, recently, everyone pretty much believes Vladimir Putin had his main opposition leader, this guy named Alexei Navalny, poisoned. Right. The guy almost died. And Trump keeps getting asked about it. So I don't know exactly what happened. I think it's tragic. It's terrible. It shouldn't happen. We haven't had any proof yet, but I will take a look.

Jen Williams: Yeah, we do. But he, like, still refuses to say anything. So it's the kind of same kind of thing, right? Like, he has these close relationships with these authoritarian foreign leaders, and it's really disturbing.

Sean Rameswaram: What might four more years of Donald Trump in the White House look like for our foreign policy? A lot of experts I talk to really fear that if he wins a second term, that he could do really lasting damage to America's standing in the world, right? Pulling out of international organizations like the WHO, the World Health Organization, the Paris Climate Accords. Like, these are things that after a few years that a new president could get back in. But after like eight years, like that's a really long time and the world's going to move on. And the United States is going to be kind of left behind. So it's not really America first. It's America left behind.

Jen Williams: You know, pulling the U.S. back isn't going to make the U.S. stronger in the world. It's going to make us have less influence. And that means that other actors, particularly China, are going to have more room to do whatever they want. And what they want is not democracy.

Sean Rameswaram: Jen Williams, she's one of the hosts of the Worldly podcast from Vox.

Jen Williams: On this week's episode, she and her co-hosts talk about the protests in Nigeria and Thailand.

Sean Rameswaram: We'll continue our series on the Trump years next Friday with a look at the two big investigations President Trump faced, Mueller and that little to do over one perfect phone call to Ukraine. You can find more on our series at vox.com slash Trump years.

Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained.

Sean Rameswaram: And now, the ones we lost along the way.

Sean Rameswaram: H.R. McMaster. Where did H.R. McMaster go wrong as National Security Advisor? Taking the job. Fired. Joe Hagen. Resigned. Mira Rickardell. The First Lady. Melania Trump, she's now stepping in using her voice to call for the dismissal of one specific staffer, the deputy national security adviser. Fired. Tom Homan. Resigned. Jeff Sessions. President Trump wrote on Twitter, quote, the Russian witch hunt hoax continues all because Jeff Sessions didn't tell me he was going to recuse himself. I would have quickly picked someone else. So much time and money wasted. So many lives ruined. And Sessions knew better than most that there was no collusion. Fired. Ty Cobb. Resigned. Nadia Shadlow. Resigned. Scott Pruitt. Pruitt had an EPA staff member try to set up a meeting with the CEO of Chick-fil-A to get a franchise for his wife. Resigned. David Shulkin. Fired.

Sean Rameswaram: We all have moments where we could have done better, like cutting your own hair. Oh, yikes. Or forgetting sunscreen, so now you look like a tomato. Ouch. Could have done better. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it. Learn more at schwab.com.