Even after he won the 2016 election, Trump sounded some of these same notes, decrying the past policies of "intervention and chaos” in a speech promising more military spending in the name of "peace through strength.”

But just as he did in the case of his grandiose promises on infrastructure, Trump has casually walked away from all of that rhetoric. This was driven home during an interview he did with the Associated Press on Tuesday:

AP: Turning to foreign policy, you ran the campaign on bringing American troops home and the America First policy.

Trump: Yes.

AP: But today there are more American troops serving in Afghanistan and in Syria and Iraq, in Africa, in harm’s way than when you took office. How do you explain to people at home?

Trump: The main thing I have to see is, I have to see safety at home and—not a vast difference, by the way—but a little bit more. But it’s not a lot more, it’s a little bit more. I have to see safety at home. And if I think people are likely to do some very bad things in faraway places to our homeland, I’m going to have troops there for a period of time. But we’ve done an excellent job. We’ve defeated ISIS. ISIS is defeated in all of the areas that we fought ISIS, and that would have never happened under President Obama. In fact, it is going the other way. And I think we fought extremely effectively on everything I’ve wanted to do. Now there will be a certain point where that takes place.

AP: [National Security Adviser] John Bolton, though, told us, told my colleague Jon a couple of weeks ago that troops aren’t going to come out, aren’t going to leave Syria, until Iran is fully out of Syria.

Trump: We’re going to see what happens. We’re going to see what happens. I want, No. 1, the safety of our country. And if that means knocking the hell out of them, of terrorists, long before they can ever get here, that’s OK with me.

Trump's insistence that he has "to see safety at home" before pulling troops back sounds like the standard-issue justification for the war on terror. By this logic, America has to hunt and kill almost every conceivable enemy to stay safe, even though acts of terrorism on US soil are exceedingly rare—and even though targeting perceived threats abroad has arguably helped fuel more anti-American animosity and authoritarianism.

What's striking here is that Trump, who is unlike Obama in nearly every way, seems to be having some of the same difficulties his predecessor did. Obama, too, seemed somewhat skeptical of American power abroad, but couldn't figure out a way to end the war in Afghanistan; in a new book, his national security aide Ben Rhodes recounts the difficulties the two men had in pushing back on the foreign policy establishment Rhodes dubbed "the Blob."

Obama was more thoughtful and better spoken than Trump is—you can't imagine him saying, "I want, number-one, the safety of our country. And if that means knocking the hell out of them, of terrorists, long before they can ever get here, that’s OK with me." But that's just a crude version of the defense Obama once offered for using drone strikes to kill people his administration identified as terrorists in far-flung countries like Afghanistan: "I think right now we’re doing the best that we can in a dangerous world with terrorists who would gladly blow up a school bus full of American kids if they could."

Whether a president engages with criticism—as Obama at least attempted to do on some occasions—or bats it away with a bunch of macho bluster a la Trump, the United States has continued its policy of engaging in open-ended conflicts in the world's most troubled regions. As a candidate, Trump seemed willing to question the wisdom of involving the US in so many wars. As a president, not so much.

Chalk it up to another victory for the Blob.

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