I voted for Trump's 'America First' promise. His war, ICE raids, and tariffs put Americans last

I'm going to say something that might lose me a few readers, and honestly, I've gone back and forth about whether to write this at all.

I voted for Donald Trump in 2024. I did it because I believed the pitch. Lower grocery bills. Secure borders. No more endless wars. America first. It sounded like exactly what this country needed after years of feeling like Washington had forgotten about regular people.

Sitting on my balcony in Venice Beach last week, scrolling through headlines about a new war in Iran, ICE agents killing American citizens in Minneapolis, and tariffs quietly bleeding my grocery budget dry, I realized I couldn't stay quiet anymore.

Because "America First" was supposed to mean putting American lives, American wallets, and American safety above everything else. And from where I'm standing, that promise has been broken in just about every way imaginable.

1) We were told "no more wars," and now we're at war with Iran

This is the one that keeps me up at night.

During the campaign, Trump said Kamala Harris would drag us into a conflict with Iran that could lead to World War III. He said he was the peace candidate. The guy who would keep American troops out of harm's way.

On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes across Iran, killing Supreme Leader Khamenei and kicking off what the Pentagon is calling "Operation Epic Fury." Within days, six American soldiers were dead. A drone hit their operations center in Kuwait. One of them was a 20-year-old college student from Iowa. Another was a mother of two from Minnesota. Another was from Sacramento, the city where I grew up.

These were Army reservists. Regular people who signed up to serve, not to be sent into a war that most Americans didn't ask for and only about a quarter of the public supports, according to a Reuters survey.

And the justification? It keeps changing. First it was an "imminent threat." Then it was about nuclear weapons. Then Secretary of State Rubio said we attacked because we knew Israel was going to attack and Iran would retaliate against us. Then Trump contradicted Rubio entirely the next day. As one former Pentagon adviser put it, the contradictory messaging reveals how little thought went into this before they pulled the trigger.

I've mentioned this before but I think the psychology of decision-making matters enormously. And what I'm seeing here isn't strategy. It's improvisation with human lives.

2) ICE is killing American citizens on American soil

I want to be clear about something. I voted for stricter border enforcement. I think most Americans, regardless of party, want a secure border and a functioning immigration system.

What I did not vote for was federal agents fatally shooting two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis during immigration raids.

Renée Nicole Macklin Good was a 37-year-old mother of three. She was shot and killed by an ICE agent on January 7, 2026, during a raid. She was an American citizen. Alex Pretti was a 37-year-old ICU nurse who was filming a protest when he was pepper-sprayed and then shot ten times by federal agents. Also an American citizen.

A federal judge in Minnesota found that ICE had violated at least 96 court orders in a single month. The "overwhelming majority" of cases brought before another judge involved people who were lawfully present in the United States. Native Americans from the Oglala Sioux tribe were detained. An ICE agent threatened a pregnant immigration attorney with pepper spray for asking him to leave her private parking lot.

Here in Los Angeles, I watched it unfold closer to home last summer when ICE arrests sparked protests that turned into street confrontations, and the National Guard was deployed to my city. Walking through Venice Beach used to mean dodging skateboarders. Now there's a different kind of tension in the air.

This isn't border security. This is something else entirely.

3) The corruption is staggering, and nobody seems to care

Here's a question worth sitting with: if you ran for president on a promise to fight for the forgotten American, would your first move be to pocket billions through cryptocurrency deals with foreign governments?

Because that's essentially what's happened. According to the House Oversight Committee's analysis, Trump's pay-to-play schemes have contributed to an estimated $2.25 billion in realized profits from foreign payments, corrupt oligarchs, and other sources. That number balloons to nearly $9.7 billion when digital asset values are included.

He accepted a luxury 747 from Qatar, then signed a security guarantee promising to defend them. He pardoned the founder of Binance after Binance invested $2 billion in his crypto company. He suspended an SEC investigation into a crypto billionaire weeks after that billionaire invested $75 million into his World Liberty Financial venture.

Meanwhile, he paused enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the very law designed to prevent exactly this kind of thing.

I think about my grandmother a lot when I read these stories. She raised four kids on a teacher's salary and still volunteers at her local food bank every Saturday. She represents everything "America First" was supposed to protect. Instead, the phrase has become a cover for the most brazen self-enrichment scheme in presidential history.

4) Tariffs are quietly draining American wallets

Remember the promise to lower grocery prices? To make life more affordable for working families?

The nonpartisan Tax Foundation found that Trump's tariffs amounted to an average tax increase of $1,000 per household in 2025, projected to climb to $1,300 or more in 2026. And a study from the Kiel Institute found that American importers and consumers bear 96 percent of the tariff burden. The claim that foreign countries are paying these taxes is, to put it plainly, not true.

Since December 2024, coffee prices have jumped by over 33 percent. Ground beef is up nearly 20 percent. Health insurance premiums on the ACA marketplace are projected to cost over four times more in 2026 for lower-income Americans, partly because enhanced tax credits were allowed to expire.

I spend a lot of time at my local farmers market in Venice, and even the vendors there are feeling it. The cost of doing business has gone up, and those costs get passed straight to us.

Nearly 70 percent of Americans predicted that 2026 would be a year of economic difficulty. They were right.

5) American approval of its own president has cratered

Pew Research found that Trump's approval rating has slipped to 37 percent, with only 21 percent of Americans expressing confidence that he acts ethically in office. Among young voters, the decline has been dramatic, with approval among 18-to-34-year-olds dropping 16 points in a single year.

And here's the number that should concern everyone: only 27 percent of Americans say they support all or most of Trump's policies, down from 35 percent when he took office. That change has come entirely from within his own party.

I'm part of that shift. And I don't think I'm alone.

When I travel, people ask me what's happening in America. I used to have an answer. Now I just shake my head.

6) "America First" has become "Americans last"

Here's what I keep coming back to. The phrase "America First" implied a simple social contract. We elect you, you look out for us. You protect our kids from foreign wars. You make life more affordable. You play it straight.

Instead, we got a war most of the country doesn't support that has already killed six American soldiers. We got federal agents killing American citizens in American cities. We got billions flowing into presidential crypto ventures while families struggle with grocery bills. We got the largest tax increase as a percentage of GDP since 1993, disguised as trade policy.

I've spent a lot of time reading about behavioral science and the psychology of persuasion. One of the most powerful tools in any persuader's toolkit is the appeal to identity. "America First" wasn't a policy. It was an identity. And it worked because it made people like me feel seen.

But identity without accountability is just branding. And branding without substance is just a con.

Where this leaves someone like me

I don't write this to score political points. Honestly, I find the tribalism of modern politics exhausting, and I'd rather be talking about literally anything else.

But silence feels like complicity at this point.

Six families are grieving soldiers who didn't need to die this week. American citizens were shot by their own government. Grocery prices keep climbing while billions in foreign money flow into presidential business ventures. And the man who promised to put America first seems to be putting himself first, every single time.

I'm not telling anyone how to vote. That's not my place. But I am saying that it's okay to look at the evidence, hold it up against the promises, and say: this is not what I signed up for.

Because it isn't.