Anti-Trump conservative calls on J.D. Vance to clear up ‘America First’ stance

A conservative columnist took Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) to task Monday for his ‘America First’ stance, arguing that voters should know whether Donald Trump’s running mate thinks past policy choices by the nation's leaders in the run-up to World War II are mistakes.

Calling it “the most important question” that debate moderators should ask during Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Daniel Krauthammer wondered out loud in his piece in The Dispatch: “If Vance is so vociferous in arguing that America First today means refusing to aid Ukraine in today’s conflict, does he think America First was right back in the 1930s and ‘40s as well?”

Vance, a first-term senator and author of “Hillbilly Elegy” has made himself an outspoken proponent for Donald Trump’s “often amorphous ‘America First’ foreign policy project,” Krauthammer wrote. He argued that Vance’s foreign policy views clearly differ from Trump’s first running mate, Mike Pence, who is a strong supporter of Ukraine, and voters deserve to know what he means when he advocates “America First.”

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“Voters deserve to know whether Vance views the policy choices made by America’s leaders in the run-up to World War II—supporting the alliance against the fascist powers by supplying military aid to Britain, China, and the Soviet Union—as mistakes,” Krauthammer wrote.

The syndicated columnist concluded by reminding Vance that the world we live in is “defined and maintained by the treaties, trade arrangements, alliances and American military deployments and security guarantees (above all with NATO and our Pacific allies) that were established in the years following its end.”

“They were consciously designed by America’s leaders to prevent a replay of the 1930s: to stop aggressive dictators early on before their wars of expansion could spiral into a third world war.”