Come to Trump's America...If You Dare

The Trump regime is pushing a paranoid new policy that will further discourage international travelers. The reputation of America's aggression is growing.

Welcome to America. (Photo by Joe Raedle via Getty Images)

In a sane world, where Donald Trump was actually a good businessman who cares about the economy and pursues sensible policy, he’d be alarmed by what’s happening with tourism. His reliable advisors would show him the facts—international visits are down 8.2 percent this year, costing the U.S. tourism industry $8.3 billion in lost revenue—and he’d make changes to encourage growth. After all, this is the guy who owns hotels and country clubs and golf courses. Of course he’d want to attract more tourists, not further fuel the image of America as a hostile place and an unwelcoming destination.

But we are not living in that world. In response to Trump’s hostility to free speech, his obsession with silencing dissent and his deranged notion that America is being inundated by foreign criminals, Trump’s henchmen at the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol have concocted a mad new plan certain to result in more dramatic declines by international visitors.

And we’re not just talking about the white supremacist plot to ban people of color from Muslim countries or developing nations. Their latest brilliant idea, which impacts visitors from every country that now can enter the U.S. without a visa: Require them to show their social media content for the last five years.

These visitors, filling out an online application, would be required to provide their “high value data,” including their residences and personal and business phone numbers for the last five years, their family members’ phone numbers for the last five years, as well as personal and business email addresses for the last ten years.

I don’t know about you, but if a country I wanted to visit was asking for all that information—while at the same time ramping up hostile mass surveillance and grabbing innocent people off the street without due process—I would think twice about visiting. I would only come out of necessity, even if I was excited to see the FIFA World Cup next year in various American cities or the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Imagine how many family vacations have been and will be canceled and rescheduled for somewhere safer and less stressful.

But that’s not how the Trump regime looks at it. This bunch has once again chosen to ignore facts and reason, exemplified by a White House spokesperson who was asked whether these policies would discourage tourism. “President Trump has done more for American tourism than anyone, including by making our cities safe and beautiful again for all to enjoy,” he told Newsweek. “His America First agenda has restored our country’s place as the leader of the free world once again—making it the best place to live or visit.”

Seriously? Just the kind of untethered response the Dear Leader expects. And how did he respond when asked if the latest proposal could lead to declines in tourism? “We’re doing so well,” Trump told the BBC.

This paranoid new plan won’t take immediate effect. Perhaps Trump and the regime will come to their senses during the policy’s 60-day notice period. But I wouldn’t count on it.

“I guess we’ll keep it”

Meanwhile, the seizure of an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast Wednesday only adds to Trump America’s burgeoning reputation for reckless international aggression, even if it was a tanker known to transport sanctioned oil. And more, it belies all the claims that the murder of over 80 people in the Caribbean Sea was about stemming the drug trade—that all along the real aim has been to force regime change in Venezuela and seize the embattled nation’s oil reserves.

When Trump was asked what he planned to do with the oil on board the seized vessel, he blithely answered, “I guess we’ll keep it.”

This follows the release last week of the “National Security Strategy,” which obliquely threatens more anti-democratic aggression by promising to “restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere,” including “to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.”

That strategy is consistent with Trump’s belief in his prerogative to tell our European allies how they should run their countries. Unsurprisingly, that means urging them to embrace right-wing extremist political parties and white nationalism if they want to avoid what he deceptively calls “civilizational erasure.” That same person is fine with the desire of Russia’s Vladimir Putin to erase Ukraine’s free society.

For all of us who believe in the fundamental value of democracy, territorial sovereignty and respect for freedom, these are painful days. In a sane world, we would be sleeping better at night with the knowledge that an American president was genuinely working to support our democratic allies, reject authoritarianism and its adherents, and make life better for regular people.

“Let us not waste our time…”

As I noted on Bluesky several days ago:

Elections have consequences. A man like this never belonged near the levers of power. Not the first time. And certainly not this second time when everything was knowable. We are trapped in a tragedy and must fight our way out.

This was penned during the intermission of a Broadway showing of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter (the duo who came to fame with Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure). I’m always touched by Beckett’s profound work about both the meaningless of life and the search for meaning.

I won’t dwell on the many ways the play’s two central characters, Gogo and Didi, confront their despair; how well the play speaks to the stressful absurdities in America now and on the world stage; and how many are struggling with a once-familiar world that appears to have fallen off its axis.

Rather, permit me to end with the hopeful urgency of Didi (played by Winter). “Let us not waste our time in idle discourse!” he begins, continuing:

Let us do something, while we have the chance...at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say?

I say we are trapped in a tragedy and we must fight our way out. What do you say?

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Programming Note: I will be hosting a Substack Live conversation with Ukraine-based journalist Tim Mak at noon ET today. Tim authors The Counteroffensive on Substack. We will be discussing the “National Security Strategy,” Russia, the state of the war in Ukraine and more. Join us!

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