Although the Democratic Party under President Barack Obama continued the Bush-era foreign policy by perpetuating the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq while expanding it to Syria, Libya, and elsewhere through covert operations, the Republican Party's unwillingness to disavow itself from an overt neoconservative foreign policy aimed at nation-building the world over served as its Achilles heel, which led to Obama being elected to consecutive terms in the Oval Office in 2008 and 2012. 

The renaissance of the Republican Party under Trump was made possible by disavowing that neoconservative ideology, an ideological shift that catapulted him to the presidency in 2016 and again in 2024. However, since returning as head of state for a second term, Trump's embrace of the neoconservative foreign policy that he once stood against is poised to mark the undoing of the movement he led, which reshaped conservative politics in the United States.

Deposing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro marks the apotheosis of Trump's transformation from a political iconoclast into another rank-and-file member of the neoconservative establishment. Operation Absolute Resolve, which captured Maduro under a contrived justification little more than an iteration of the lies that drew the US into Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, is a watershed moment in US history for reasons far beyond its impact in reshaping the geopolitical landscape of the Americas. It marks the moment in which Trump signaled his irrevocable assimilation into the neoconservative Republican establishment he once sought to defy. By waging a regime change war of his own, Trump hasn't just jeopardized his political legacy: he has penned the death letter for the future of American conservative populism.

Authorship of that obituary cannot be attributed to Trump alone. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State whose nomination served as the preface foreshadowing the downfall of the political movement that Trump cultivated with the promise of prioritizing the interests of the American people above its political elite, can rightfully be credited as its co-writer. The leadership of Rubio as Secretary of State has accelerated Trump's departure from the America First ideology past a point of no return.

During Trump's first presidential campaign, Rubio was not just a candidate competing against him for the Republican nomination but one who Trump highlighted as an adversary representing everything wrong with the Republican Party. Rubio's track record of being a politician cast from a neoconservative mold was one of the defining juxtapositions that accentuated the breath of fresh air Trump brought to the American political landscape so crucial to his rapid political ascent. Though Rubio would move past that animosity and align himself with Trump following his election as the 45th US President in 2016, he remained a steadfast proponent of neoconservatism in the US Senate. In that role, Rubio incessantly urged the Trump administration to pursue a more interventionist foreign policy. That background made the decision by Trump to nominate Rubio as the Secretary of State for his second administration a glaring red flag, immediately beckoning questions about the president's commitment to his core campaign promises before he was even inaugurated for a second time. In less than one year since returning to the White House, the foreign policy of the second Trump administration, shaped by Rubio, stands as the greatest betrayal of everything the president once stood for.