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The Lincoln Project

Trump Has NEVER Been "America First"

The Lincoln Project

The Lincoln Project

Society & Culture, News Commentary, Government, Daily News, News, Politics

4.78.4K Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Trump’s newest fiction comes with a price tag: $40 billion to Argentina. It’s not aid, it’s a favor — a payoff to Wall Street insiders and political loyalists who bankrolled his second term. While American farmers drown under tariffs and export bans, Trump’s cronies are cashing foreign checks. And right on cue, he approves a Qatari airbase in Idaho, conveniently following his Doha golf course deal. Rick Wilson calls it what it is: a presidential pay-to-play scheme on a global scale.

But Trump’s authoritarian impulses don’t stop at the border. At home, armed agents act as his private militia, silencing dissent and intimidating journalists under vague “national security” orders. This isn’t leadership — it’s monarchy cosplay with taxpayer funding. Rick reminds listeners that this country was founded in rebellion against one man’s unchecked power. Two hundred and fifty years later, the warning still stands: We are a nation of No Kings.




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Transcript

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0:00.0

Your task will not be an easy one.

0:02.5

Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battlehardt.

0:06.2

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America.

0:09.9

There is the United States of America.

0:14.5

Good night and good luck.

0:16.8

Hey folks, it's Rick Wilson.

0:18.2

Welcome back to Lincoln Square.

0:19.6

And today's episode of The Elephant in the Room,

0:22.6

is America first? Or is it?

0:30.4

One of the most beloved tropes of the Trump era is that they're for America first,

0:38.9

and that Democrats and liberals and moderates and rhino Republicans

0:42.7

are for the globalists first and the,

0:45.4

and anybody about American working men and women.

0:49.3

Well, you know, the American First Movement,

0:51.7

which Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller,

0:55.6

the rest of the sort of intellectual apparatus, if you want to call it intellectual, around Trump and Trumpism, have long promoted,

1:03.7

doesn't seem to be going that well for most Americans, does it? You ask yourself, is it really America first to give $40 billion to

1:18.5

Argentina only to bail out? Not for a foreign policy purpose, by the way. Argentina is like

1:23.7

a fart in a hurricane foreign policy wise. It doesn't matter., under Millay, had a little bump, then it crashed.

1:32.0

Argentina has economic problems that are way beyond what we can solve on this podcast.

1:36.8

But an American investor, who's a close personal friend and associate of Scott Besson, our Treasury Secretary, was exposed for $20 billion.

1:47.0

Mysteriously, we decided we would cover his bet and give Argentina $20 billion

...

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