Maitra: Trump, 'foreign policy realists' stunned Beltway when noninterventionism brought cheers on the right

On the latest episode of Fox Nation's “Tucker Carlson Today”, host Tucker Carlson spoke with Center for the National Interest fellow Dr. Sumantra Maitra about the rise of noninterventionism and aversion to “nation-building” on the right-wing of the Republican Party and how President Donald Trump became the catalyst that stunned the establishment in that way.

Maitra said through his experience, the postulate in Western governance is that the public elects someone and that person then works within the system to bring change in a particular manner consequential to how the votes tallied.

"The elections in the US for the last three times when Clinton came to power, it was ‘it’s the economy stupid' – when Bush came to power before 9/11, it was about ‘we need to retrench, we need to focus on China’. When Obama came to power, he was like, ‘we need to cut down on the wars’. When Trump came to power, it was the same thing." 

Maitra said Trump's "rise" was unique in that the establishment believed his early rally orations would instantly make him an outcast in the primary and that the Republican Party would choose someone more in the historic mainstream – which at the time was said to be former Florida Gov. John "Jeb" Bush.