America First or Israel First?

Trump's "To Be or Not To Be"

On the Escalation show of Radio Sputnik, Alexander Dugin warns that Trump has betrayed his original MAGA project, abandoning “America First” in favor of “Israel First” and threatening new wars that could spin out of control, thus opening up an abyss which only Trump himself can decide to reverse.

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Radio Sputnik, Escalation Host: I’d like to start with the topic of the United States and find out what’s going on over there, because just recently Pentagon head Pete Hegseth stated that the situation in the world today is comparable to 1939. As he put it, he hopes for 1981. We all understand what those years mean: 1939 was the start of the Second World War, 1981 was a tense moment when there really could have been conditions for a Third World War and a nuclear confrontation. Now it’s unclear: are these just words, or is he talking about an inevitable future that awaits all of us?

Alexander Dugin: Of course: in recent days and weeks, we’ve seen a sharp rise in the degree of escalation. Our expectations and the hopes of many people around the world — that a conservative policy, Trump’s conservative revolution, would truly change the course of world events, that Trump would follow his words and promises to voters and focus on domestic problems, abandoning interventions in other regions — these hopes have been shattered to pieces. Alas, those promises, the image of a new American policy — the end of the Fourth Turning and the beginning of the First, the end of the agony of liberal hegemony, the establishment of a new conservative golden age — all the things that had been worked on during the 2016–2018 election campaign by Trump’s most consistent ideological supporters have now all collapsed.

Therefore, the point is that Trump, despite changes in rhetoric, has essentially become almost indistinguishable in foreign policy from Biden, from the globalists. It’s the same hegemony, the same desire to hold on to the unipolar world, despite the fact that, after his inauguration, Trump took several steps toward recognizing a multipolar world, promised to stop conflicts and wars, to make a deal with Russia, to stop supporting the terrorist Kiev regime. But not even a year has even passed, and nothing remains of that program — not even close. And now we are returning to the line that would have existed even without Trump: the line of the Democrats, of Biden, possibly of Kamala Harris, with an escalation of relations between the rising multipolar world — where Russia plays a central role — and the agony of the unipolar world, doomed and falling into the abyss.

Western hegemony is collapsing, but the question is this: will it collapse alone into that abyss, or will it drag all humanity with it?

Judging by the latest, already grim and apocalyptic movements in American policy under Trump and his military machine, the plan seems to be such: if Western hegemony is coming to an end, then let it burn with a blue flame and destroy everything — nothing for you, nothing for us.

Host: May I ask about this change in Trump’s policy? From the beginning, he kept saying that he wanted to make America great again — that’s his main slogan and key phrase. Inside the country, he still acting harshly against migrants. He’s also pursuing that trade war, which not everyone expected but many presumed might erupt. After all, Trump has a business approach. It seems he hasn’t really departed from his original theme: he continues to talk about peace and is trying to make peace agreements. But now it appears that Pete Hegseth’s statement reflects not so much Trump’s own policy as much as a general global trend of sliding into a Third World War. After all, Hegseth emphasized: our main competitors are actively developing armaments, we need to do the same. So, it turns out they are trying to catch up with us after the demonstrations of “Poseidon” and “Burevestnik.” And Trump’s policy seemingly hasn’t undergone radical changes: as before, it aims to make America great again and is persisting in that direction.

Alexander Dugin: Not at all. If we attentively examine how Trump intended to make America great again, one of the main goals was to concentrate on domestic problems and stop intervening in world affairs. In other words: let the rest burn in their own way — we are great, and others can live as they wish. That applied to Europe, the Middle East, Russia: do whatever you want. If you don’t directly threaten our national interests, carry on. That was the main principle by which America intended to become great again, and it excluded interventionism, escalation, an arms race, and so forth.

But now everything is shifting toward nuclear tests, which Trump is talking about, toward rising tensions, the continued financing and arming of the Ukrainian terrorist regime. And already through Hegseth’s words and Trump’s own, essentially after renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War — what is that? — we see an aggressive foreign policy that has nothing to do with MAGA, i.e., the original plan.

If we’re talking about a Third World War or a global conflict, it’s obvious: America is preparing to fight us, specifically us, not China — with whom they’ve struck a deal over rare-earth metals and so on. China is a pragmatic power, very strong and important for the world balance, but the idea of war with China isn’t on the table. A war with Russia is already underway: we demonstrate strength, and America plans to respond to us specifically. Hence the parallels with 1939 — the tense time before the Second World War — and 1981 are obvious: in this Third World War, America will fight us — a war between nuclear powers, hence nuclear escalation.

It seems to me like we’re acting very delicately. On the one hand, we are demonstrating our capabilities: “Poseidon,” “Burevestnik.” Whether we conduct nuclear tests will be decided by the supreme commander-in-chief: are tests needed, or is demonstration of carriers of nuclear weapons convincing enough? Whether we respond to the Americans with our own nuclear tests is important, but that’s not the essential point. We are heading toward increased escalation.

Trump is unpredictable, but not too unpredictable. Having deviated from his fundamental promises to focus on America, he is trying to do anything — but, frankly, nothing is working. He promised to jail those who conspired against him, all those from the Epstein list — nothing has been done. At most: losses in local elections, which were a total failure, and that after the killing of Kirk. And with great difficulty, nine months later, he fired the head of the BBC who participated in falsifying his January 6th speech. This microscopic victory cannot be called real success. A president who promised a revolution, to expel migrants, to jail the corrupt, but who utterly lost to the Democrats after demonstrations of power and only fired the BBC head — replacing him with basically the same type — is a failure.

This failure in Trump’s politics might, out of inertia of confrontation, lead him to turn that into a war with us. Interventions in Nigeria, Colombia, Venezuela — these are not what his voters signed up for. And they say: “Trump, you idiot, get out” — his supporters, who didn’t show up to vote after the political murder of one of the closest people to Trump, Charlie Kirk, shocked America: the Democrats killed an opponent and thereby won the election. But for that to happen, Trump’s base, MAGA, had to put a cross him out — and that was a year before the midterms, when most elections are regional. That was the first signal that Trump failed his promises and betrayed his electorate. All this posturing, rattling of weapons, and threats toward Russia, financing the Kiev regime — they show that Trump is betraying his line. This is not the MAGA, the “Make America Great Again,” his voters signed up for.

This is visible among his brightest supporters: the wave of Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Steve Bannon still holds, but with difficulty; these are the main figures who supported Trump, plus Alex Jones; Nick Fuentes hasn’t been mentioned yet. These are the main influencers, political analysts, and intellectuals who built the system that supported Trump — he won thanks to them. And thanks to Musk with his 200 million followers on X. And now these people who sustained MAGA, and on whose shoulders Trump came to the White House, have recoiled from him. This is political suicide. Trump appears as if he’s suffered an internal collapse or a stroke: a worn-out old man, unable to act independently. He has failed in everything. And now he’s in the hands of people like the terrorist Lindsey Graham and the neoconservatives.

The GOP — the Republican Party, which crashed spectacularly — cannot offer voters anything except, as is tradition for neoconservatives, to pin the problems on external enemies — and that’s where we’re headed. We are at the nadir — the darkest point — of Trump and MAGA.

But we are behaving impeccably by supporting his conservative initiative and extending a hand of rapprochement. Russia, Putin, and possibly China under Xi Jinping — these are the only real potential allies for Trump. And how does he treat us? Who is he betting on? On his enemies, on those in the “Never Trump” movement. Who supports him? Those who hate him. And those who loved him, who were in solidarity and helped him, are now in opposition. Trump failed everything. Is there still a chance? I don’t know, but the disappointment is terrible.

When matters are still indifferent, one can weigh a good step or a bad one and decide whether to support it. But when people believed, were inspired, and proclaimed that now there would be change, the end of domination, the end of the deep-state hegemony destroying the country — everyone invested their souls in this — and on the very first day Trump enacted wonderful laws, staffed everything good in the programs of the first week in the White House; he dismantled USAID…

But now: complete failure. He got everything ready in the first week and then slid downward. And he keeps sliding. Anchorage seemed to herald an epiphany: you have conservative Russia, a multipolar world, find a worthy place in it, even the first place, nobody will contest it. But no: now we have the rattling of weapons, nuclear escalation, threats to real allies. This is suicidal policy. And, alas, it is not only suicidal, but murderous for humanity. Very bad trends are unfolding in the US.

Host: Regarding Venezuela, Colombia, and Nigeria — those are resource-rich countries. We understand why the United States, including Donald Trump, has turned towards them. You say he does it out of resentment. So, if nothing worked out for him domestically, his relations with Russia and China didn’t pan out, he could very well take this step and attack one of those countries, maybe several, maybe all three. What do you think, is that likely?

Alexander Dugin: You know, Trump already violated his promise to stop interventions in other regions — he violated it after the bombings of Iran. When the US struck Iran’s nuclear facilities, it became clear: Trump is not only capable of saying something repulsive, something opposite to his own promises, but also of carrying it out. And his Middle East policy in supporting Netanyahu confirms this.

In fact we see that Trump not only utters detestable things, but also performs them — he is capable of doing this. Therefore, could he attack one of those countries — Nigeria, Venezuela, Colombia (maybe all of them, maybe none — maybe it’s bluff) — since he has already shown he doesn’t adhere to any logic of real non-intervention, and if something seems expedient to him, he will breach his principles? We cannot count on this being mere bluster. If he has already done it once and it was not bluster, then it might happen a second or third time. The Nobel Peace Prize that should have gone to Trump was given to some Venezuelan swine, a Soros-style woman calling for the overthrow of her own state and handing it over to America. It turned out that among the contestants for the peace prize, Trump wasn’t the first — maybe second or third. He has failed everything: both peace-making and flirting with the globalists. Of course, now he might do anything. The US fleet is concentrated off the coast of Venezuela, and it could strike at any moment, or it might not. He lives in an illusory world where he still imagines himself a peacemaker. For whom? He’s a toy in the hands of the most terrible warmongers. He’s merely a toy, a tool.

But it’s especially bitter for those who sincerely believed in MAGA. Imagine the despair of his supporters, whom I follow closely: people who did the impossible to elect him, who feel deceived and betrayed, and they can swing from enthusiasm to the other camp, which is also harmful, because Trump’s enemies are even worse. That’s the essence: a choice between the bad and the worse. There’s nothing good, although Trump promised good. But again, the choice is only between faces of evil. This disheartens and exhausts the internal energy of Western people. Now it’s an unpleasant spectacle with half-sane shadows and sleeping wrecks of once-great businessmen — a pitiful sight.

The twilight of the West, the end predicted by Spengler: this is what we are observing embodied in Trump’s collapse. He wanted to return America to the greatness of civilization — principles, traditions, Christian families — but he failed and sank into a disgusting scenario. This is not simply frightening — it’s bitter. There were all the chances, people voted, a renaissance was ahead. They believed in him and supported him with great hope, and he managed to defile everything — so ugly and so dirty. Now he’s like a zombie: not drowsy like Biden, but aggressive with fits — once again, the neoconservatives, aggressive policy, threat to peace. The same dying American hegemony as before, with the same deep state and tools. And the emboldened Democrats will begin to squeeze Trump ideologically with woke, minority rights, and so on. This is an extremely grave situation. And Trump is taking it out on all of humanity.

Host: I’d like to continue our conversation about Donald Trump and ask: when exactly was the moment Trump lost his way, folded, or truly departed from MAGA? Not long ago, we noted he did many useful things, tried to move toward peace with Russia, pressured Zelensky at certain points. It didn’t work. Eventually he left the path; now he barely makes statements, only that they need to keep fighting for now. It’s as if he’s stalling, doing his own things, seeing opportunities to seize resources — in Venezuela, in Nigeria — labeling some as drug traffickers, others as killers of Christians, and deciding to get involved while taking those countries’ resources. So when was the moment when Trump was on the right track, and then turned?

Alexander Dugin: You know, we usually look at this from our perspective, and that’s natural: we are interested in our country, our victory, our sovereignty, our interests. And that’s right.

But I am deeply observing the situation also through the eyes of Trump’s own supporters — I constantly participate in discussions on various platforms where my texts are translated and theirs are translated; that is, I know both perspectives: ours is more or less clear, and theirs much less so.

So, when I try to pinpoint the moment when Trump departed from his mainline MAGA trajectory, it’s, oddly enough, tied to the Israel factor. Everything started with that, and it’s on that issue that the expectations of Trump’s supporters collapsed. In his first week, he at least moved somewhat consistently: yes, he supported Netanyahu as a conservative leader, everything was within bounds; but then, contrary to his promises, he got actively involved in aggressive support for Israeli policy in Gaza, essentially supporting the genocide of the local population, which he fully endorsed. From his supporters’ point of view, he should have remained above the fray, supporting both sides to an extent but not becoming part of the conflict, not encouraging an Israeli attack on Lebanon or Hezbollah, much less dragging the US into a direct war with Iran or bombing Iran’s peaceful nuclear facilities. That was a violation of all norms, all promises. His supporters say: so, it turns out that it’s not America First, but Israel First — Israel is more important than America in our politics.

And then a huge wave of resistance arose: a very powerful Israeli lobby surfaced in America — the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) and AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), a right-wing and Netanyahu-oriented group. This lobby, which had been operating more or less legally, suddenly moved against Trump’s supporters, who dared, in their view, to call that lobby into question. The question became: “America First or Israel First?”

A deep collapse occurred: millions — tens, maybe hundreds of millions — suddenly said “we must choose” and confronted Trump with this issue. Trump effectively avoided answering, and his supporters split between America First and Israel First. Of course, the Israel First supporters were a minority among the broad masses, but they were the minority that controlled financial flows, like Adelson, and the streams of political news. It was really this lobby, which was originally a cultural phenomenon — why not support Israel? Very many people who now take hard anti-Zionist stances were used to be supporters of Netanyahu and Israel. For them, this became a question of principle.

There is now a movement called the Groypers — conservative MAGA youth. They number in the hundreds of thousands. They support Fuentes and Charlie Kirk. They go to any public event of Trumpists or Republicans and ask the same question — at every meeting. There are many of them, and they cannot be kept away from the microphone; their numbers are huge, they are impossible to screen out, since they are just young Americans — and they ask: “Answer one question: are you Israel First or America First?”

And so Ted Cruz, Glenn Beck, and the establishment figures break down: if they say “America First” and not “Israel First,” they risk losing funding and being ostracized by the omnipotent Israeli lobby, which now looks like an usurper of political, financial, ideological, and informational power in America; if they say “Israel First,” they lose grassroots electoral support. They break down, get hysterical. Some fight back, the most consistent say: let’s ban them, let’s destroy them. Then The New York Times runs a cover cartoon: Tucker Carlson sits with Nick Fuentes, a Groyper leader, and a KKK member, ostensibly portraying the normalization of extreme nationalism, racism, fascism, etc. Meanwhile, articles claim that 70% of Democrats consider Trump a fascist. So who’s the fascist is almost impossible to tell now. But the question about Israel is very concrete: America First or Israel First.

The second fundamental moment was when Trump refused to release the Epstein lists. Epstein and his assistant Ghislaine Maxwell — who is still imprisoned for trafficking people — were involved in the horrific trafficking of children for elite orgies; Epstein allegedly hung himself in prison (but now many insist he was murdered) and he was linked to the Mossad. Ghislaine Maxwell is the daughter of a Mossad resident in the US. Again, Israel, again Israel First. Trump, instead of publishing those lists as he promised, suddenly said: “No no, I have nothing to do with this; there are no lists,” and anyone demanding the lists is his enemy. That was the second fundamental deception and deviation from initial positions — and here it is again: Israel.

Netanyahu has even declared that a critical wave of antisemitism is rising in America and suggested buying TikTok for pro-Israel forces and starting pro-Israel propaganda there. Israel is reacting, understanding that this phenomenon is serious — would Netanyahu bother with it otherwise? So, America is split on this issue. Interestingly, among the left and Democrats, it’s the same. Mamdani, who was elected mayor of New York, a Democrat, is a hard opponent of Israel and Netanyahu. He says Netanyahu would be arrested if he set foot in New York. It turns out that the Soros networks operate on a different principle: not justice and democracy, but hatred for a sovereign line; they are also against such an extreme, indeed racist and murderous, sovereign line like Netanyahu’s.

So, it turns out that American society is split over the Jewish question, over the Israeli factor, on both wings of the political spectrum: Republicans are divided, Democrats are divided, and the standoff between Democrats and Republicans continues. But all of this is connected solely to the fact that Trump has deviated from his promises to his base, betraying them on two fundamental issues: non-intervention and America First. In fact, he acts as if Israel is primary and America is secondary. His supporters say: this is the Deep State in control, these are the forces that drove and facilitated the Ukrainian-Russian conflict. These are precisely the same Zionist, far-right neoconservative circles like Victoria Nuland and the neoconservatives around her who created this war, and Trump is not stopping it; he is not stopping anything he promised, and is creating new precedents, new fronts, new targets for aggression. And for all of this, I think, soon half of the American population, if you take half the Republicans and half the Democrats, if not more, will only blame Israel and its lobby for everything.

And now, in defense of Israel’s interests, this lobby has really come into play. Many people thought it was a conspiracy theory, that nothing of the sort existed. But there are people, certain ethnic groups, who register in Congress, even become foreign agents, and somehow operate legally, advance interests, establish meetings, contacts, lobby — there you have it, it’s all there. But now, it’s something completely different: it turns out that power in America doesn’t actually belong to Americans. And this has been discovered by those Americans who, until recently, were supporters of Israel, believing it to be a friendly state for America, one that sides with the West. American conservatives have a rather negative attitude toward Muslims, and Netanyahu does too.

So, here’s what’s important: this anti-Israel tsunami that has risen in America isn’t connected to fringe anti-Semitic circles. They existed in America, but they probably numbered hundreds, maybe thousands. It was a marginal phenomenon that had no impact on anyone. Well, this way and that, they thought that America was tolerant. But now it involves millions of people, including major influencers. The Candace Owens Show, which curses Israel from morning until night and sees that country and the Israeli lobby as the main threats to the United States, is essentially a matter of loss of sovereignty to this small, aggressive, wild country, with its own ideological preconditions, its society. And now, the Candace Owens Show is number one among all possible shows in the Anglosphere, which is something unprecedented. That is, she had a popular program, and she certainly gained a lot by exposing Brigitte Macron’s true gender, convincing everyone she was a man — well, those are journalistic ploys, of course, but her position on Israel. And there’s Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, and even Steve Bannon, who was generally loyal to Netanyahu up until a certain point, says we need a three-state solution in Palestine, not a two-state one. What does that mean? It means that it’s not enough to recognize a Jewish state, an Islamic state, and a Palestinian state; we must also recognize a third, Christian state — these are our holy places, Bannon says. And accordingly, he denies the Israeli lobby the right to govern the US.

Israel’s supporters, Trump’s former supporters, have now, with rare exception, simply turned against him — precisely on this fundamental issue. And from this moment on, Trump hasn’t responded. He’s only one step away from finally damning his supporters: he yells at them, intimidates them, he abandons them, and thereby is increasingly losing support among broad sections of the population. But the issue of stances on Israel is moving from being completely secondary to becoming primary. It’s probably simply impossible to discuss politics in America right now without touching on this topic. Russia, in this case, seems secondary — in a sense, it’s a matter of an attempt to shift the issue from a sick mind to a healthy one, and to distract from the wild growth of anti-Israel sentiment in the United States. Perhaps the picture of war with Russia and some new interventions is being exploited. That’s the fundamental question. And that’s the question: is this true or not?

But if America doesn’t have sovereignty, something which Trump was against, and if it is now clear to the majority of his supporters — millions of Republicans and millions of conservatives who have discovered that all of this is the Israeli lobby, which has its own addresses, its own people, its own spokesmen, and all of this has become so aggravated and exposed — then these are the prerequisites for a very serious internal rift. This is being used by the Democrats, who are also split over this question. Bernie Sanders, for example, or Mamdani — left Democrats — are categorically against Israel, against support for Israel. It’s as if the right-wing MAGA Republican supporters and the far-left Democrat supporters are converging, and this isn’t based on any abstract ideological principles — that’s not typical of American society. But here we have a concrete case, a precedent, a completely Anglo-Saxon model of thinking: there’s an attempt at usurpation, an attempt to hijack American sovereignty by a certain geopolitical, religious, and eschatological sect, which has extended its influence, including to Christians, the so-called Christian Zionists, by explaining to American Christians, already rather feeble-minded, that the Christian’s task is now the salvation of Israel and Judaism. There is a complete rejection of Christianity. And yet, despite this, the idea is being imposed on narrow-minded American Christians that the main task is to be for Judaism, the main goal of a Christian is to be, basically, a Jew, or something like that. This is Christian Zionism. This is all working for someone. And some are saying: listen, this has nothing to do with Christianity at all.

And now the Israeli factor has become the center of attention in America. It is now perhaps the only country where the issue of relations not only with Israel, but also with Jews, has reached such a point that Tucker Carlson and more radical circles are compelled to point out that his wife is Jewish. This is no longer a fringe phenomenon — it’s a genuine, mass, multi-million-strong anti-Semitism, anti-Judaism, and Judeophobia.

Therefore, precisely this factor could become the stumbling block for Trump, the one that could have tripped him up and ruined his political career. No one expected this. In his first term, the Israeli issue was secondary, and, until recently, Americans generally knew that there was an influential Israeli lobby, many Jews in politics, and a talented people in the economy. This was viewed calmly, even favorably.

But what’s happening now has never happened in US history. It’s a huge social wave, a tsunami: every day, a new fact of Israeli influence, a new conspiracy, is revealed. And Israel itself, in my view, is acting completely irrationally — abruptly, thoughtlessly, trying to cancel anyone who dares object. And in response, they hear: so you created cancel culture; you, the Israeli lobby, are its main architects. Thus, we get a convergence: criticism and apologetics work in unison, only deepening the split in American culture and undermining Trump’s policies. This is the essence of the matter.

Host: I’d like to ask: given all the mistakes that Trump has made and which led him away from MAGA, what does he need to do now to get back on track? I don’t know — call Vladimir Vladimirovich tomorrow? Arrange a meeting in Budapest? Stop supporting Netanyahu? Anything else? What concrete steps should he take so that we could begin talking about Trump in a different vein?

Alexander Dugin: You’re right: symbolic steps toward recognizing a multipolar world would be meaningful. That means effectively improving relations with us, not just saying so, and actively helping end the Ukrainian conflict — but on our terms. Otherwise nothing will happen: Ukraine’s defeat can be survived, but with Russia’s defeat, humanity might disappear. We’ve already sufficiently demonstrated our capabilities with Poseidons, Burevestniks, and everything else.

So yes, he should pursue a completely different policy toward Netanyahu and the Middle East and, of course, renounce interventions. Those would be serious signs of a turnaround and a return to MAGA. He should also reconsider the Epstein list — publish it and punish those who participated in pedophile orgies and violence against minors. This must be addressed, otherwise the moral authority of American power and his personal credibility will fall below a critical threshold. He should distance himself from neoconservatives — from terrorists like Lindsey Graham or Mark Levin and others who push for new adventures. I also think he needs to change his mask and invite all his MAGA opponents to a meeting — the pragmatic Trump, the deal-oriented Trump, is quite capable of doing so; it’s part of his psychology.

That would at least be a relief and a hope, but it must be systematic, because MAGA was a system. He has retreated from that system. He should not just please some segments of his supporters; he must return to the MAGA project as a whole. Can he do it? Theoretically yes — he has shown he can change course 180 degrees. But now he would need almost a 180-degree reversal — which would be surprising. It’s within the realm of possibility, but I honestly see no signs he’s planning to do so.

But it must be done systematically: you can’t befriend us while continuing to back Netanyahu, intervening in Venezuela, and cultivating your Zionist lobby. That’s impossible. Everything must be done at once — return to the MAGA project.

Can Trump do this? Yes.

Is it likely? I think not really.

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