Why voters are done compromising with the ‘America Last’ elite

One of the main forces driving the populist revolt against Washington stems from a simple truth: The ruling class openly prioritizes foreign interests over the needs of American citizens.

When millions of Americans — spanning political and economic divides — called on their leaders to put America first, the response was rejection.

Blue-collar factory workers, once loyal to the economic left, and Tea Party conservatives, committed to limited government, found rare common ground. Together, they asked their government to put the interests of the United States and its people above globalist agendas. That request was denied.

The political class chose to outsource American manufacturing, ship jobs overseas, and flood the domestic labor market with cheap foreign replacements. When they couldn’t export your job, they imported someone to take it.

At the same time, both parties prioritized foreign wars and border security — for other nations. While American communities faced rising crime and chaos from a deliberately open southern border, lawmakers sent troops, dollars, and attention to foreign front lines.

Washington refused to secure the United States. It focused instead on securing everyone else.

I welcome the growing ‘America Only’ movement, even if it is more isolationist than I am.

To be fair, the two parties expressed their abandonment of American interests differently. The Democrats embraced a fervent anti-patriotism that made clear their hostility and disloyalty to the United States. Democrats swooned over Colin Kaepernick, whose public disdain for the U.S. symbolized their broader worldview. In other words, Democrats embraced “America Never.”

The Republican establishment, despite the party’s base being vocally America First, sought out a compromise position with the Democrats, settling on “America Last” as the middle ground.

America Last is an unacceptable compromise to those of us clamoring for America First. The only rational countermeasure is “America Only” — a position that aims to shift the Overton window back toward the rightful prioritization of American sovereignty, industry, and citizenship. While I don’t believe the United States can completely decouple from the global economy, nor do I consider myself America Only, I welcome the shift in that direction to move the compromise position from America Last to America First.

Too many people in Washington on both sides of the aisle are passionate about defending Ukraine’s border, but they consider it vulgar and racist for Americans to secure our own border. Elites weep over the deportation of violent criminal aliens, yet are silent about their crimes and the victims affected by them. To this day, open-border ideologues claim that the man who murdered Laken Riley is the real victim — and they’ll never forgive her for being killed by one of their prized illegal aliens.

The ‘America Only’ compromise

The genesis of the MAGA movement is often summarized this way: “The Tea Party was the polite request. Donald Trump is the less polite request. It doesn’t get any more polite from here.” That same sequence applies to the uniparty, having rejected America First, which was the polite request. America Only is the less polite follow-up request.

We demanded that our own border be secured before weapons and tax money were sent to defend Ukraine’s border. The establishment responded by draining our country’s stock of munitions and sending them to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, along with $175 billion. Congress’ bipartisan “compromise” was to keep the border wide open and effectively legalize the ongoing invasion. The government hired thousands of border agents, not to protect the border but to process those crossing it.

Moreover, we demanded fair, reciprocal trade, and in response, we got unilateral surrender to foreign mercantilism — our industrial exports widely blocked by tariffs and trade barriers from the same countries granted unlimited access to our markets.

These betrayals have pushed many conservatives who were once pro-trade, pro-legal immigration, and pro-Ukraine into an isolationist mindset that embraces protectionist tariffs, rejects all immigration, and doesn’t care any longer about Ukraine’s fate. This response is not only rational — it might be necessary to tell our government that prioritizing the United States and its citizens must henceforth be its top priority.

A wake-up call

For what it’s worth, I am not an isolationist. I stand solidly with Israel as a cultural and religious outpost that is a linchpin in Western civilization, and I support its current war effort — so long as U.S. troops are not involved. If Israel falls, it wouldn’t just reshape the map; it would embolden those who dream of a global caliphate, including in North America.

I can also be persuaded that a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear program is justifiable so long as the “we broke it, we bought it” policy is no longer operational. If we have to break it, we can break it and leave it until it needs breaking again.

At the same time, I also welcome the growing “America Only” movement, even if it is more isolationist than I am. A coalition of America Only and America First voters has the power to compel the Republican establishment and swing-district Democrats to understand that America First is the compromise position, and if they refuse, then they get nothing on their global wish list.