Trump officials think US is 'in decline' — and they’re driving its downfall: GOP insider

According to the popular conservative radio host Erick Erickson, White House officials believe that the United States is “in decline” even as President Donald Trump and their own decision-making drive its downfall. What’s more, argues Erickson, they are pushing that decline intentionally.

As Erickson wrote on Tuesday, after Vice President JD Vance and other officials had emphatically denied details of the Iran peace deal that had leaked into the press — many points of which were widely decried as bad outcomes for the U.S. — “it turned out that all the stuff the Iranian regime said was in the deal was actually in the deal.” This included allowing Iran to sell billions worth of oil, the unfreezing of Iranian assets, and providing the country with hundreds of billions in outside funds.

What’s more, while Trump, Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and other officials have often made firm assertions about aspects of the deal that will benefit the U.S., these claims are just as often immediately contradicted. As Erickson writes, “The Vice President now says Iran will buy our agriculture products. Iran’s leaders say that this is not only not true, but Iran would rather starve than fund the Great Satan. The Vice President also says Iran agrees to allow in IAEA inspectors. Again, Iran says this is not true.”

Or there was the question of Iranian missiles. “When we started the war, the Secretary of State made the case that Iran was building a missile shield,” notes Erickson. “Once Iran had enough missiles, it would finish its nuclear ambitions. Iran was building so many missiles that it could overwhelm Israel and our Arab allies with so many missiles that no defensive systems could stop them. It was necessary then to stop Iran from building up its missiles. Now, President Trump says Iran can keep its ballistic missile program.”

“If you want this all to make sense, particularly in light of the President’s bold and aggressive western hemisphere policy, just consider this,” writes Erickson. “The Vice President and those around him believe the United States is in decline, though they will not say so publicly. They believe in an isolationist policy to mitigate that decline, with the United States getting the Western hemisphere, and China, Russia, and possibly Europe fighting over the rest of the world.”

To that end, many of their actions make sense. According to Erickson, “If you believe we need to scale back our place in the world, restrain our ambitions abroad, and focus on the Western Hemisphere, refusing to help Ukraine, even as Ukraine is standing more and more on its own two feet, scaling back our support for Israel, and putting Iran in a position where we cannot take them on without overwhelming collateral damage is exactly what you would do.”

Erickson had been a harsh critic of the previous nuclear deal, but now he writes, “Even Barack Obama’s JCPOA deal was not this bad, as it did not fund Iran the way the Trump administration has agreed to do, and it did not negotiate American troop levels in the Middle East with Iran.”

In the end, for Erickson, the failures of the isolationists in the White House come down to a willingness to promote their ideological agenda at any cost. As he concludes, “Most people are rational. The Vice President is rational. The Vice President is an isolationist who opposed the engagement in Iran. He is perfectly comfortable looking reporters in the eyes, telling them they are spreading Iranian propaganda that turns out to be true. And he is perfectly willing to look the American people in the eye to tell them he believes in robust American leadership, all while striking a deal to make it impossible for us to restrain Iran from its nuclear desires.”

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