This week, the Soros-backed Center for American Progress (CAP) held a symposium on how House Democrats are reacting to President Donald Trump's national security strategy. There, star speaker Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), ranking member of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, led the collective coping-and-seething session.
"This is illegal, dumb foreign policy," Smith said in a statement ahead of the event. "It makes America less safe, less prosperous, and it will literally kill people."
At the left-wing think tank's roundtable Wednesday, the congressman claimed that Trump is "trying to revive a 19th-century world where might makes right and the powers-that-be grab what they can grab."
"That is not in our best interest," Smith said of Trump's "peace through strength" foreign policy plan. "What happens when you take that approach to the world is inevitably a clash comes up. Inevitably two powerful countries want the same thing, and they go at each other. That's what led to World War I and World War II."
If the U.S. takes over Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada, then Russia and China "will think they can take what they want," Smith continued. Eventually, this will lead to global conflict, he further claimed.
Smith described Trump's approach to international relations as "punching" foreign adversaries in the face. "He's picking fights and creating problems," Smith said. "He is creating enemies that did not exist."
"We need to be willing to engage with adversaries and use diplomacy," Smith said, adding that such diplomatic concessions should be destigmatized. "It's [seen as] a sign of weakness. We get uncomfortable. I think we need to get rid of that."
Smith recalled the advice of a business friend of his, who said that whenever he is negotiating a deal, if he has obtained "absolutely everything he wants" at the end of negotiations, "he knows he has screwed up."
"It has got to be more balanced in the world," Smith elucidated. "Things are going to come back around."
Smith sees Trump's strategy as repeatedly socking world leaders until they acquiesce and continuing to do so in order to ensure that they don't renege. "That is not a helpful approach. We'll see how it plays out in Mexico and Canada."
As for dealing with China, Smith said, "We better figure out some way to peacefully coexist. Right now we are focused on how we can win." He noted, "China is not going anywhere and we are not going anywhere."
Panel moderator and CAP fellow Patrick Gaspard, formerly a U.S. ambassador under Barack Obama, mentioned Trump bringing about a potential 30-day ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine. "Why is it destabilizing if he's managed to do that?" Gaspard questioned.
"What I'm worried about is the JD Vance and what Liz Cheney lovingly referred to as the 'Putin wing' of the Republican Party," Smith retorted. "They have a different agenda. That agenda is they are sympathetic to Putin. They see him as a fellow white, Christian nationalist. It's the most ugly way to put it. That's not all of them, but there are certainly some who see, 'Putin's against woke!' Right?"
Smith then claimed that Trump has shown "so much weakness toward Putin" that the latter will take advantage of and not abide by a legitimate peace agreement. "He is just basically waving Putin in across much of Eastern Europe."
"What you can see from Trump's tariffs and his budget, he is just a typical Republican. Frankly, I think that's the dirtiest thing we can say about him," Smith said.
Pivoting, Smith lamented Trump "smashing" the federal bureaucracy and rooting out fraud, wasteful spending, and abuse of American tax dollars. "Efficiency and effectiveness have nothing to do with it," Smith said. "It's that 'We have to burn the village in order to save it.' He is just tearing it down. Musk is doing it because he's libertarian and Trump is doing it because he sees the federal government as a threat."
"We have to remake the case that liberal government can be an effective force in people's lives," Smith urged.
Smith suggested that federal workers currently aren't afforded the bandwidth to do their jobs well and instead are "strangled day-in and day-out so that they can't." The government isn't inefficient because of too many ineffective employees on the payroll, Smith said; it's due to "drowning them in the process."
Smith compared Trump to "a real-life horror movie" version of tax reformist Grover Norquist, whose stated goal is to get government down to size, small enough "where we can drown it in the bathtub."
On the topic of Trump freezing foreign aid spending, Smith said the Trump administration simply pointed out some of the more "problematic" programming that received funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). "There was some drag show in the Czech Republic," Smith said, acknowledging he may have mixed up the details. (According to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee's findings, $20,600 in taxpayer funds went toward a drag show in Ecuador through the U.S. State Department.)
"They pointed out a few different things that seemed left-wing ideologically driven as opposed to useful to U.S. interests. Those have been just a couple," Smith said. "And they are minuscule," Gaspard agreed.
Smith downplayed the impact of this $20,600 Ecuadorian drag show contract in comparison to the billions in USAID funds doled out across the world purportedly for "food and healthcare."
"I am profoundly concerned about Trump executing an autocratic takeover of the United States," remarked Smith. "I don't think we should shy away from calling it what it is, even if there is some portion of the country that will accuse us of Trump Derangement Syndrome if we should say that. I think we should say that because that is what is going on."
During the Q&A portion, Smith praised Rep. Al Green (D-TX) for disrupting Trump's speech to a joint session of Congress. "Good on Al Green. The president of the United States was sitting up there, lying his ass off repeatedly to the American people, standing in a place where he had led an insurrection to overthrow the basic principles of this country," Smith said. "That's about the level of respect that he deserved."
Every single day, here at Townhall, we will stand up and FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT against the radical left and deliver the conservative reporting our readers deserve.
Help us continue to the truth about the Trump administration and its major wins. Join Townhall VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member