On Wednesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave a speech to State Department employees in which he referenced and elaborated on Donald Trump’s “America first” policy and how it applied to the department. Tillerson’s use of a “Trumpism” apparently annoyed the globalist-favoring Leftmedia as they quickly sought to paint his remarks as out of touch nationalistic sentiments. The Atlantic’s headline read, “Rex Tillerson Doesn’t Understand America” and the Associated Press tweeted this faux-controversial and puzzling statement, “Tillerson says U.S. no more will condition foreign relationships on countries adopting U.S. values such as human rights.”

So what doesn’t Tillerson understand about America? Here’s what he said, “In some circumstances, if you condition our national security efforts on someone adopting our values, we probably can’t achieve our national security goals. It really creates obstacles to our ability to advance our national security interests, our economic interests.” Tillerson continued, “It doesn’t mean that we leave those values on the sidelines. It doesn’t mean that we don’t advocate for and aspire to freedom, human dignity and the treatment of people the world over.”

Shocking we know. Anyone who has ever had to negotiate a deal of any kind recognizes the concept and reality of compromise, or more simply the laws of give and take. While ideally the U.S. would only make national security deals with those countries which share our core values, it is profoundly naive and dangerous to limit agreements to only those nations. Put simply, this is all that Tillerson is expressing. “America first” means the concerns of the security and economic prosperity of this nation are primary.

The Leftmedia is attempting to gin up controversy over longstanding U.S. policy, and to undermine Donald Trump while they’re at it. Balancing national security interests with America’s core values is quite frankly what foreign policy is all about. The Left has become so committed to its own ideal of globalism, that it views statements which promote protecting national security and economic interests as controversial and un-American. Well, maybe a better question would be, what doesn’t the Left understand about the nuances of American foreign policy?