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Trump Said Something at the G7 That Liberals Shouldn’t Ignore, And I’m a JFK Democrat Saying That
Let me start with this: I’m a JFK Democrat. That used to mean something. It meant you believed in a strong America, a free press, civil liberties, fiscal sanity, and diplomacy backed by strength. It meant you could be proud of your country without being called a nationalist, and you could question international orthodoxy without being labeled a traitor. These days, it seems that kind of Democrat doesn’t have a home, not in a party that’s drifted so far left it’s forgotten the center exists.
So when I say I agreed with something President Trump said, don’t dismiss it as partisan noise. I don’t follow personalities. I follow principles. And at this year’s G7 summit, in a quiet moment standing beside Mark Carney, perhaps the most symbolic face of the globalist elite, Trump said something that deserves real attention.
He said that kicking Russia out of the G8 was a mistake. And he went further: if Russia had remained in the G8, the war in Ukraine might never have happened.
At first, I blinked. Then I nodded. Because he wasn’t wrong.
A Short History for the Headlines-Only Crowd
After World War II, the victorious Western powers, led by the United States and Britain, built a new international order. This wasn’t a conspiracy. It was a strategic response to two global catastrophes. Institutions like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, NATO, and later the European Union were designed to ensure peace through cooperation, trade, and shared security.
It worked mostly. But not perfectly. Because baked into that order was a fundamental flaw: it always needed an enemy.
Enter the “Boogeyman Strategy.”
For decades, that enemy was the Soviet Union. Then it was terrorism. Then it was Russia again. And now, increasingly, it’s China. The point is that this Western-centric framework, what I’d call a British-American globalist model, thrives on opposition. It justifies its existence, its budgets, its military alliances, and its control over global narratives by defining someone as the villain. That’s not a bug. It’s a feature.
Which brings us back to Trump.
The Comment That Shook Me
By saying that expelling Russia from the G8 was a mistake, Trump broke from that tradition. He was pointing to something most leaders won’t admit, that removing a powerful country from the diplomatic table doesn’t isolate them. It radicalizes them. It pushes them toward aggression, not away from it. You don’t get peace by shunning powers into paranoia. You get it by keeping them close enough to challenge, persuade, and de-escalate.
Does that mean Putin isn’t a bad actor? No. It means the world is complex. It means diplomacy is not a reward for good behavior. It’s a strategy for avoiding catastrophe.
And here’s the bigger point: Trump seems to be intentionally unraveling the post-WWII global framework not because he wants chaos, but because he sees it as outdated. He sees a model that thrives on division and aims to replace it with something more transactional, more interest-based, and maybe, just maybe, more peaceful.
If you include everyone at the table, you don’t need a boogeyman. You don’t need wars to justify the system. You just need deals.
Is That Naïve? Or Is That Exactly What We Need?
You can hate his tone. You can question his ethics. You can oppose his policies. But when Trump says something that challenges the assumptions that have kept the world locked in a cycle of war and retaliation for eighty years, it’s worth a pause.
Not because he’s always right. But because maybe, this time, he is.
And if peace means rethinking who gets a seat at the table, then we should stop screaming long enough to listen.
Because I’d rather see a world of partners than another century of enemies.
Join me on Substack @lynnscheid
