Unpacking Trump’s Jacksonian foreign policy

Have you noticed recently that Donald Trump has both issued threats to our existential enemies abroad and that he’s called for peace as well?

In other words, he’s told Hamas: “You better let the hostages go by the time that I’m president or else.”

And yet he’s also said, at the same time, we don’t want these 2,000 Americans in Syria. It’s a mess. The country’s destroyed. Get them out before they get killed.

This brings up kind of a dichotomy that’s been discussed: Is the [Make America Great Again] agenda and Donald Trump in particular isolationist? That’s what the accusation is, that under no circumstances will we slay dragons abroad, looking for them. Or is he a neoconservative, and he wants to intervene everywhere. And I think the answer, of course, is neither.