This week, President Trump delivered his State of the Union to the nation. The speech was fact-checked by numerous outlets, and often fell short of the truth.

Trump focused the bulk of his address on domestic affairs like jobs, the economy, and immigration. And when Trump did speak about America's international presence, it was very much in keeping with his "America First" line, insisting that Congress must pass laws to make sure that "American foreign-assistance dollars always serve American interests, and only go to America's friends." Only about one percent of America's national budget is put towards foreign aid, yet a 2015 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that on average, a typical American respondent thought that the percentage was twenty-six. Previous presidents have threatened to cut foreign aid as well, but those cuts were most often to punish specific countries for human rights violations. Trump's goal in cutting aid seems to be in response to perceived slights against the United States.

This perception is already proving harmful to America's image abroad. "Everyone knows the money serves U.S. interests, which is also true of European money," stated Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister and foreign minister. "But this feels ugly. And this is in the State of the Union, so it has gone through a policy process, so it matters more. There's a difference between the Twitter and the Teleprompter version of Trump policy." Xenia Wickett, a former United States official who runs the Americas program at the foreign affairs research institution Chatham House, said, "What's changing is the view of American soft power...there is a view that America is no longer doing the right thing and no longer for the right reasons...so those who gave Americans the benefit of the doubt no longer do so, and it does damage." The United States has not helped this growing opinion abroad by pushing to make immigrating to the country more difficult, particularly for refugees from predominantly Muslim countries. This past Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that although it will continue to accept refugees from Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, those admitted will be subject to many unnamed additional security measures.

Almost before the dust could settle after Trump's State of the Union, a new media storm began over a memo released on Friday by House Republicans and declassified by President Trump over public objections from the FBI. The memo accuses the FBI and the Justice Department of abusing their powers of surveillance to spy on the Trump presidential campaign. The goal of releasing the memo is to discredit the two federal agencies and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Democrats and national security officials alike have condemned the document's release, claiming that Republicans are choosing to misrepresent sensitive government information in order to serve their own political agenda. The dispute has, oddly, placed the Democratic establishment and the FBI, often seen as antagonistic parties, on the same side of an ongoing political debate.