My guest this week was Emma Ashford, an FP columnist and senior fellow at the Stimson Center. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box above, or follow FP Live wherever you get your podcasts. What follows here is a lightly edited transcript.

By now, you’ve probably read several takes on U.S. President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, including in this magazine . On the latest episode of FP Live, I thought it would be useful to spotlight a realist point of view. Realism, which can broadly be defined as the school of international relations in which countries prioritize their interests rather than values, has some areas of overlap with Trump’s “America First” instincts—in concept if not in implementation. What are they, and why do they matter?

By now, you’ve probably read several takes on U.S. President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, including in this magazine. On the latest episode of FP Live, I thought it would be useful to spotlight a realist point of view. Realism, which can broadly be defined as the school of international relations in which countries prioritize their interests rather than values, has some areas of overlap with Trump’s “America First” instincts—in concept if not in implementation. What are they, and why do they matter?

My guest this week was Emma Ashford, an FP columnist and senior fellow at the Stimson Center. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box above, or follow FP Live wherever you get your podcasts. What follows here is a lightly edited transcript.

Listen to the full podcast

Ravi Agrawal: What has stood out for you the most about the Trump administration’s foreign policy in the first 100 days?

Emma Ashford: Well, it has certainly been an active period. We’ve had new peace talks—many of them headed by Steve Witkoff, who appears to be Trump’s new negotiator—on Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, and, potentially, on North Korea. We’ve had the on-and-off-again tariffs. On the domestic side, we’ve had DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] impact foreign-policy bureaucracy and how the U.S. conducts foreign policy around the world. There have been meetings and interactions between the new administration and various U.S. allies. Some of those have been friendly, like when Vice President J.D. Vance visited India last week, but most were contentious, like with the Europeans in particular. So, if nothing else, they are hitting the ground running on foreign policy.

RA: We knew he was going to focus on things like illegal immigration, tariffs, and ending the war in Ukraine. What has surprised you?

EA: Even on the domestic side, DOGE’s bureaucracy-cutting approach was surprising. Like many folks in D.C., I woke up one day to discover that there was no longer a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). And that was shocking. In any other administration, the administration would have proposed a plan to fold USAID into [the State Department], gone on a messaging campaign highlighting its problems, and then moved toward closing it. Instead, they just did it.