'Gone astray': Republican dismayed as Trump turns back on 'America First' pledge
President Donald Trump's strike on Iran was a complete betrayal of what his supporters were voting for, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) argued to MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Monday night.
Massie, a libertarian who frequently frustrates House GOP leadership with his votes against major party priorities, appeared on "All In" alongside Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA). The two have introduced a War Powers Resolution to prohibit further action in Iran.
"Let me ask you that, Congressman Massie," said Hayes. "I mean, in some ways, there's sort of an interesting ideological question here, which is like, is there some sort of coherent set of ideological principles here that are around limiting U.S. involvement in foreign wars and approaches to immigration and trade that make up something that's like identifiably a political tendency? Or is it just what Donald Trump says, like if he announces like a big new era of free trade tomorrow, like, I guess that's MAGA then too, right?"
"Well, listen, I'm more of an ideologue than a populist, I'll admit that," said Massie. "But at least if you're an ideologue, you know what your ideas are. And with populism, you can blow in the wind."
"The thing is, you know, there's this coalition among libertarian-leaning Republicans and independents and even a few Democrats joined with Trump to get him elected — but part of the deal was no new wars that drag on forever," Massie continued. "And we're going to put America first. We're going to worry about our infrastructure. We're going to worry about our immigration. We're going to worry about America first, you know, taking care of seniors and veterans before we go overseas looking for dragons to slay."
"I'm worried that in the first six months here, we've already sort of gone astray of what was one of the basic principles of putting America first," he added.
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