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Trump’s “America First” Policy May Make “America Last”

Trump’s “America First” Policy May Make “America Last”

Last updated on: February 21, 2025 at 1:01 pm by Kermit Zarley

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Trump’s “America First” Policy May Make “America Last” 2025-02-21T13:01:19-07:00 Kermit Zarley

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Trump’s Seventy Executive Orders the First Week

President Donald Trump accomplished his “America First” agenda during his first week in office by signing, thus issuing, some seventy executive orders. And that’s just in one week. During Trump’s previous four years as president, he issued 210 executive orders. These current ones include forcing Columbia to accept returned immigrants. And he has threatened to slap 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, to be imposed on April 1. He even said Canada should become “the 51st state” of the U.S. Trump further claimed he will cause the U.S. to purchase Greenland, apparently whether it wants to or not. And he is threatening to ignore a treaty by taking over the Panama Canal. Plus, he said he wants to “clean out” all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and for them to be taken in by Jordan and Egypt. Yet those nations for decades have adamantly refused this because then the Palestinians would never get their own nation.

And internally, on Trump’s first day in office he pardoned all 1,500 of those arrested, and some imprisoned, who had rioted against the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Many of them had beaten police officers, five of whom had died because of it. This pardoning was part of Trump’s plan of ignoring U.S. laws or even trying to do away with some of them. This can only make the U.S. a more lawless nation. America’s jurisprudence has been the envy of the world, making it first in being a law-abiding nation. Trump is on his way to tearing America down, not Make America Great Again in this regard, thus on its way to being last rather than first.

Some Nations Are Pushing Back

But some nations that who would be affected by Trump’s threats are pushing back. Canada’s foreign minister said last week, “don’t underestimate Canada.” Canada—the U.S.’s biggest trade partner—is preparing for an all-out trade war. The nation says if Trump goes ahead with his tariff threat, Canada will retaliate with tariffs targeting goods produced in Republican states, such as Florida orange juice, Tennessee whiskey, and Kentucky peanut butter.

Evangelicals Helped Put Trump in White House

Trump has become president twice largely because of a huge voting bloc of evangelical Christians. I’ve been an evangelical all of the my adult life. But Donald Trump has both hijacked the Republican Party and evangelicalism. Because of it, I’m not calling myself an evangelical anymore. PEW research claimed from its excellent polls of both Trump’s presidential election wins, in 2016 and 2024, that 81% of white evangelicals who voted, cast their ballot for Donald Trump as president.

Yet Donald Trump is about the opposite of moral ethics and lifestyle that evangelical Christians have always advocated. Trump is mostly about money and wealth. And the segment of evangelicalism that has latched onto him as president way more than any other segment has been Pentecostals who advocate the so-called “health and prosperity doctrine.” For instance, Trump’s “spiritual advisor” in his first presidency was Paula White of the Charismatic movement of Pentecostalism. She is a big proponent of the prosperity message.

For many evangelicals, it has been a transactional arrangement with Donald Trump as president because he knew how to push the buttons they wanted, such as pro-life. But the result has been that the non-Christian world has severely faulted Christianity.

“The first shall be last and the last shall be first”

In the many sayings of Jesus in the New Testament, one he seems to have repeated often in his speeches to the public was this: “the first shall be last and the last shall be first.” For example, a young man with “many possessions” asked Jesus, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” Matthew 19.16; Mark 10.17 NRSV). Jesus answered him by saying keep the commandments of God. The man replied, “Which ones?” Jesus then quoted some and added, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The fellow replied, “I have kept all these; what do I lack?” Jesus then exposed that he had not kept the last one by saying to him, “go, sell your possessions, and give the money to poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come follow me.” Then we read, “When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”

Jesus’ disciples were perplexed about this, and he later said to them privately, “Truly I tell you, it will hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19.23). Jesus’s disciples were dumbfounded.

The apostle Peter then said to Jesus concerning himself and his comrades, “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” (Matthew 19.27). Jesus answered that in the world-to-come, his twelve apostles will judge the twelve tribes of Israel. He added that those who have left houses and families to follow him “will received a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first” (v. 29). He seemed to mean that many who are first in this life with money and possessions will last in the future.

Does what Jesus said—the first shall be last and the last first—apply only to individuals or also to nations. I think both. What do you think?

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