As a fellow New Yorker, I had paid attention to Donald Trump for years, long before he got involved in politics.  

When he ventured a comment about foreign policy, people scoffed at him. What did Trump know! National security was the exclusive domain of the experts, not real estate developers or reality TV stars. 

But looking back, Trump was right about all the major foreign policy issues. It was the credentialed elites who got things wrong! 

Here are Trump’s top six:

China

For decades, the consensus opinion was if the U.S. assisted China’s economic growth, it would become a friendly trading partner, and play by the rules – just like Japan, South Korea and the European nations. Trump disagreed. Experts laughed when he claimed China had ripped us off for decades. ‘China raided our factories, offshored our jobs, gutted our industries, stole our intellectual property, and violated their commitments under the World Trade Agreement.’ 

As recently as 2019, Joe Biden scoffed at the idea that China could overtake the U.S. as a world leader, telling a crowd in Iowa City, ‘China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man.’ The experts were wrong, Trump was right.

American Energy Dominance 

Well before he ran for president in 2015, Trump realized recent advances in oil and gas production would be a strategic game changer for the U.S. and the world. When President Barack Obama left office, oil was at $120/barrel and experts warned the world was running out of oil.  

Trump’s embrace of the U.S. energy industry increased American production and pushed oil down to $40/barrel. Not only did it spur extraordinary American economic growth, it also devastated the economies of Russia and Iran, because they needed oil prices above $90/barrel to fund their governments. When their energy export revenues fell by nearly two-thirds in the Trump years, Russia and Iran were forced to tighten their belts; they couldn’t afford costly wars. 

Biden reversed Trump’s energy policies, and oil prices predictably rose back up to $100 per barrel. Iran used these windfall profits to fund its nuclear program and arm its proxies to attack Israel. Russia used its new-found wealth to attack Ukraine. There is a reason Russia invaded Ukraine during the Obama and Biden presidencies, but not during Trump’s. In the Trump years, they didn’t have the money to pay for expensive wars. 

Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

Democrats and Republicans supported the Afghan and Iraq wars for 20 years. Trump disagreed. As early as 2003, he called the Iraq war ‘a mess.’ Turns out he was right. We shed American blood and spent trillions on two unwinnable, forever wars. 

Iran

Trump pulled out of Obama’s flawed Iran nuclear deal, because it made Iran rich and didn’t stop its nuclear weapons program. He ordered the assassination of Gen. Qassam Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Forces. Instead of fruitless endless negotiations, Trump set out to bankrupt Iran with his energy policy and oil sanctions. 

By the time Trump left office Iran was nearly bankrupt, and its proxy armies weakened.  But President Biden threw Iran a lifeline. He reversed course on American energy production, paid Iran billions and refused to enforce sanctions. Iran used this $100 billion windfall to fund Hamas and Hezbollah in renewed proxy wars against Israel. 

Abraham Accords

For decades, American leaders said we had to settle the Palestinian problem as the first step to a wider Arab-Israel peace. But time and again, the Palestinians refused to negotiate seriously, so peace proved elusive. 

Trump took the opposite approach, and focused on Arab-Israeli peace as the first step. His energy policies lowered global oil prices. Arab leaders realized they could no longer count on oil export revenues alone to fund their government. They needed to diversify their economies, which required peace with Israel. 

Trump also recognized that the younger generation of Arab leaders, schooled in the West and comfortable with more open societies, would be amenable to dramatic social change and to developing economic ties with Israel. The Abraham Accords were the first peace agreements between Israel and the Sunni Gulf states – ever. Trump succeeded where all the experts had failed for decades. 

NATO

American presidents going back to John F. Kennedy complained that our NATO allies were not paying their fair share for our common defense. Obama called them ‘freeloaders.’ Our allies always made excuses, claiming they couldn’t afford to pay the 2% of GNP they had promised, and relied on America to foot the bill for their defense.

Trump hectored, scolded and threatened them until our NATO allies finally increased their defense spending. Turns out they DID have the money after all.  

For years, Washington bureaucrats, politicians and experts have been wrong about the major foreign policy problems confronting the nation. It took an outsider who saw things from a different perspective. Instead of endless rounds of fruitless diplomacy and an open checkbook, Trump used a combination of trade, economics and common sense to reestablish American security. And his second term will be even better.

Even before he takes the oath of office next week, Donald Trump has already accomplished the most incredible comeback in American political history.

In the space of four years, he’s gone from being universally banned by Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Spotify, Snapchat, Instagram, Shopify, Reddit, Twitch, TikTok and Pinterest to most of these companies donating to his inaugural celebration and their CEOs clamoring for invites to dinner at Mar-a-Lago with him.

Trump’s 2024 election, I predict, will still be written about as an epochal event in American history long after everyone reading this today is long gone.
But that’s for future historians to decide.

For the present, Trump’s done something even more remarkable than engineer a 312 electoral vote landslide comeback that will be talked about for generations. His monumental 2024 presidential win has done something Trump’s most ardent critics never believed was possible – he’s produced the least racially polarized presidential win since before the Civil Rights Movement.

Let me repeat that because it’s such a staggering and monumental achievement – Trump’s 2024 presidential victory is the least racially polarized presidential election win since Lyndon Johnson’s in 1964.

That is, White, Black, Asian and Hispanic voters cast ballots that were less racially divisive than at any moment, nearly, in the lives of anyone reading this column today.

Yep, unless you were born in 1946 or before, you’ve never voted in a presidential election where the races were less divided, where Americans of all colors were more similar in their voting habits.

Not Ronald Reagan in 1984, not Barack Obama in 2008, Trump’s win in 2024 brought the races closer together than any election in 60 years.

Doesn’t it seem like this fact should be everywhere?

Yet, astoundingly, I bet many of you haven’t heard or read any discussion of this at all.

That’s because there is often far more money to be made tearing us apart than celebrating how similar we all are.

Indeed, Trump’s popular vote coalition may be the most remarkable achievement of his entire political career and it offers an incredible moment of optimism for those of us who have grown accustomed to constant rancor and division.

With a surge in Hispanic, Asian and Black support, Trump moved all 50 states red, won all seven battleground states, and drove a stake into the toxic cancer of identity politics, the root cause of so much hate and division in our country, hopefully once and for all.

How did this happen? How did the man most in the legacy media have spent nine years attacking as America’s own version of Adolf Hitler manage to bring so many different people from so many different racial backgrounds into his coalition?

I think the answer is simple: many people of all races came to see the lies they’d been told by the legacy media. Many of these voters weren’t just voting for Trump, they were specifically voting against the very people who gave us the Charlottesville hoax and the censorship of the truth during COVID. Trump’s win was a statement in support of free speech and the marketplace of ideas.

It was, of course, also an overwhelming rejection of President Biden’s economic policies, of our wide open border, and of a rise in violent crime and lenient treatment for those guilty of violent crime.

As I’ve been saying for some time, this was an EBC election, economy, border and crime.

Everybody, regardless of race, cares about pocketbook issues, the rule of law, and locking up violent criminals.

How else to explain the dramatic growth in Trump voting support? Remember, back in 2016 Trump won the election with 65.8 million votes. By 2024, he would receive 77.3 million votes. So during a nine-year period when the legacy media mercilessly attacked him and claimed he was HItler, Trump gained roughly 12 million votes.

Where did most of these votes come from?

The data tells us – minorities and young men.

Consider, in 2020 – according to the Wall Street Journal, citing AP votecast data – Joe Biden won Black voters by 83 points. By 2024, Kamala beat Trump by just 67 points among Black voters. That’s a net move of 16% of Black voters toward Trump, a seismic shift in a short period of time.

Hispanic voters moved in Trump’s direction in a massive way too.

In 2020, Joe Biden won Hispanic voters by 28 points. By 2024, Kamala’s margin was just 14, a net gain of 14 points for Trump.

Since 2020, Asian voters, similarly, according to Edison Research, have moved from voting for Biden by 27 points to voting for Kamala by 15 points in 2024, a net gain of 12 points for Trump. 

In an election where each side often fights for a point or two on the margins, a double-digit increase in Black, Hispanic and Asian voters for Trump is a political earthquake.

And where did many of these gains come from for Trump? With young men ages 18 to 29 who voted for him by a whopping 14 points. That’s a huge victory for Trump by any measure, but it gets even more staggering when you consider that Biden won men 18-29 by 15 points in 2020. So young men moved 29 points toward Trump in just four years.

Putting this into further context, the two most conservative voting groups in America by age in 2024 were men 65 and older and men 18-29 – both of those groups backed Trump by margins of more than 14.

What explains this sudden alignment between older and younger men? Especially since older men tend to be much less racially diverse than younger men?

It’s simple, young men of all races are overwhelmingly rejecting woke culture and voting in a similar direction across racial lines.

That is, the identity politics era, especially for young men, is over.
They recognize, better than most, the lies they’ve been fed.

Indeed, data suggests young men 14-17 years old, the next age cohort that will be eligible to vote in 2028 are even more conservative than their older brothers. Republicans, if they run a strong campaign in 2028 and deliver on economic promises, stand to increase margins among these voters.  

There’s been much discussion about how this surge in young male support came to happen – a focus on male-focused podcasts and sports, for instance, by the Trump campaign – but less discussion about what it means when it comes to the racial polarization of America, namely it’s all collapsing.

The race baiters who constantly seek to divide us based on the color of our skin are losing in the marketplace of ideas.

Americans of all races are rejecting their arguments and their divisive tactics.
At long last we are moving closer toward Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a free and equal society that isn’t defined by race.

I could write an entire book on this election’s seismic impact – and maybe, I should, but that’s for the future.

For now, as Trump prepares for his inauguration on Jan. 20, what I’d like for all Americans, regardless of race, to know is that at long last, it has been three generations since the racial divide was less pronounced in American presidential politics.

So as the inauguration nears, I’m incredibly optimistic about what Trump will accomplish for all of us, but even more astounded by what he’s already done – bringing the races closer together than we’ve been in three generations.

That doesn’t mean America’s perfect, but it certainly does suggest that we are continuing to form a more perfect union where all of us can be judged by the content of our character and not by the color of our skin.  

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY., will soon appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to seek confirmation for her role in President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. 

Several former diplomats who spoke to Fox News Digital say that an immediate concern for an incoming U.N. ambassador should be reigning in U.S. expenditures at the world body. Outflows to the organization grew from $11.6 billion in 2020 to $18.1 billion in 2022, when the U.S. covered one-third of the total U.N. budget.

A former senior U.S. diplomat told Fox News Digital on condition of anonymity that, with ‘many different tasks in front of her, [Stefanik] will need to be selective about what she really wants to pursue.’ The diplomat cited chief areas of concern as cronyism and corruption, and employing more Americans at the U.N.

He said the U.N. is ‘an organization that doesn’t align often with U.S. foreign policy,’ which makes it ‘kind of weird to be pouring in all this money,’ and then ‘seeing a lot of anti-American sentiment and support of causes that we take issue with.’

Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and president of Human Rights Voices, called for Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team, headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, ‘to halt funding for the U.N. that is totally antithetical to American interests. This immediate cost-saver of billions ought to be low-hanging fruit. At the General Assembly, the United States has but one vote of 193 member states and is routinely and overwhelmingly outvoted by an undemocratic, anti-American, and anti-Israel mob on key issues. But as soon as we lose, we turn around and pay for all the lawfare and antisemitic schemes those very same resolutions concoct.’

‘DOGE – for which the money is the matter – should have no such inhibitions when it comes to taxpayer dollars being used to fund dangerous and lethal U.N. output,’ Bayefsky said. ‘The days of the United Nations as a global money-launderer for terrorists and antisemites dressed up as human rights experts and refugees need to stop right now.’ 

A spokesperson for Rep. Stefanik, when asked about her plans for reforming the U.N. if confirmed, told Fox News Digital that ‘Elise Stefanik is deeply honored to earn President Trump’s nomination to serve as United States Ambassador to the United Nations. She looks forward to earning the support of her Senate colleagues and working through the confirmation process. Once confirmed, she stands ready to push for needed reform and advance President Trump’s America first, peace through strength national security agenda on the world stage on day one at the United Nations.’ 

To aid the reform effort, Hugh Dugan, former National Security Council adviser on international organizations and U.S. diplomat at the world body, created DOGE-U.N., which he says mimics the ‘methodology and purpose’ of DOGE. 

While Dugan said that DOGE-U.N. is ‘a standalone resource,’ he explained that he hopes it can be a tool for collaboration and ‘save [DOGE] some of the upfront analytical work’ about which outlays need to be examined more closely.

Dugan is working to ‘identify some practicable early wins’ that show ‘the potential for making the U.N. more efficient and cost-saving.’ This includes reviewing the U.N. procurement manual ‘to avoid corruption and malfeasance’ and ‘make sure that there’s a sense of consequences attached to all procurement matters on behalf of the American taxpayer.’ Dugan said that DOGE-U.N. will also look into ‘where and how the U.N. has been evolving into its own Deep State, and more or less ignoring and overlooking the member states’ desires and will and need for efficiency and accountable resource management.’ 

The U.S. ‘can’t be passive shareholders’ in the U.N., Dugan said. ‘We need to develop better competency in Washington, better guidance, more dedicated resources to these dry matters, because if the U.S. doesn’t show up with these questions and concerns and criticisms, no other country will.’

Though Dugan says that DOGE-U.N. is ‘trying to stick with attacking inefficiencies,’ he said there is the possibility of addressing funding to programs that are ‘impossible to support from a policy point of view.’ To that end, Dugan said that ‘strong accountability’ for the secretary-general’s use of U.S. resources is vital to ensure the U.N. does not ‘play a shell game with our contributions and continue to fund even those things we don’t like.’ 

While U.S. departments have independent inspectors general who search for waste and fraud, Dugan noted that the secretary-general directs the U.N.’s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), which means that the secretary-general can choose whether the findings of U.N. investigations should be ‘publicized or kept quiet.’

Peter Gallo, formerly an investigator with the OIOS, told Fox News Digital that the independent oversight function lacks independent oversight and said that the investigative function should be taken ‘out of the hands of the U.N.’ Gallo said that ‘in the immediate term,’ he would suggest making investigations ‘subject to independent oversight, and every dollar they spent subject to review.’ 

The extent to which employees of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) have been affiliated with terror organizations is especially concerning to Gallo, who says investigations into the issue have been neither transparent nor independent.

Dugan said he believes that stepping back from the organization would be counterintuitive, adding that China is ‘more than willing to swoop in and fill whatever leadership vacuum we don’t fill and they will use that opportunity to promote their own hegemonic ambitions.’

Dugan said he hopes that DOGE-U.N.’s findings will ‘serve the administration’ and ‘help them identify valuations that have been overlooked, and principally to help us create the resource that the world needs so that China cannot abscond with it.’

A recent topic of debate at the U.N. illustrates the divergence of the organization from U.S. interests. 

In January 2024, the U.S. ended contributions to UNRWA until March 2025 after evidence emerged that members of the agency participated in the attacks of Oct. 7, which killed 1,200, including 45 Americans.

In October, the Israeli Knesset banned UNRWA from operating within Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, given mounting evidence of Hamas infiltration in UNRWA.

In December, a resolution came before the Fifth Committee of the U.N. General Assembly, which is responsible for budgetary and financial matters. The resolution suggested that the International Court of Justice create an advisory opinion on Israel’s UNRWA ban, citing Israel’s ‘obligations…to ensure and facilitate the unhindered provision of urgently needed supplies’ and ‘of basic services and humanitarian development assistance.’

The U.S. voted against the resolution. However, on a related vote about funding the estimated $298,900 required to carry out the resolution, the U.S. simply abstained.

When asked about the discrepancy in its votes, a U.S. Department of State spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the U.S. ‘has consistently demonstrated opposition to this request for an advisory opinion, including voting against the relevant General Assembly resolution. The budget is a separate matter.  The role of the U.N. General Assembly’s Fifth Committee is not to second-guess mandates authorized by other U.N. bodies.’ 

Bayefsky told Fox News Digital that the State Department’s comment represents a ‘twisted, indefensible strategy’ by the Biden administration. ‘When it comes to spending our money via the U.N.’s budget committee, allegedly the U.S. role is not to ‘second-guess.”