“The future does not belong to globalists.

The future belongs to patriots.” #UNGA pic.twitter.com/5qoiasN6wo

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 24, 2019

No single line delivered by Barack Obama at the UN General Assembly is as infamous as his remark, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

It was outrageous. An endorsement of Islamist blasphemy laws and an expression of contempt for free speech.

President Trump did not directly address that, but one line from his current UNGA speech uses a very similar formulation. “The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots.”

The entire, “the future belongs to X” construct is commonly used by leftist and totalitarian movements anticipating global hegemony. Trump reverses the whole ‘arc of history’ business nicely by declaring that the future doesn’t bend toward centralized globalization, but individual freedom and national sovereignty. 

Obama’s line was part of a globalist argument about the composition of the world order. Trump’s rejects the idea of a world order.