Flashback 2016:
The phrase “America First,” beloved by Trump, has a troublesome history that includes Lindbergh, nativist fervor, and anti-Semitism.
www.newyorker.com
America First, for Charles Lindbergh and Donald Trump
“… In 1940, Lindbergh, who had by then returned to the U.S., was recruited to speak on behalf of America First, an antiwar group founded by several Yale students (including Gerald Ford, the future President, and Potter Stewart, the future Supreme Court Justice) who saw the Second World War as an awful consequence of the First—and who were determined to avoid another disastrous war.
… On September 11, 1941, Lindbergh gave a speech to a huge crowd in Des Moines, in which he described the agitators for the U.S. to enter the war. There were three groups: the British, the government, and “the Jewish race.” “Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government,” he told the audience.
… Anti-Semitism was prevalent in Lindberg’s time; his attitudes were not fringe. He had not made a secret of his interest in eugenics, nor his racial attitudes, which today seem reprehensible. But with that 1941 speech he seemed to cross a line. He was strongly and swiftly condemned for his anti-Semitic and divisive words—not only by interventionists who were opposed to America First but by those who had lionized him. The Des Moines
Register called his speech “so intemperate, so unfair, so dangerous in its implications that it cannot but turn many spadefuls in the digging of the grave of his influence in this country.” The Hearst papers, which were generally sympathetic to the non-interventionists—and open about their hatred of Franklin Roosevelt—condemned Lindbergh, calling his speech “un-American.” His home town took his name off its water tower.
…
A few days ago, the
Times interviewed Trump
again, and Sanger returned to the phrase. “Think about its historical roots,” Sanger said.
“To me, America First is a brand-new modern term. I never related it to the past,” Trump said.
People had pointed out that it was, as Trump put it, “a historical term,” but he denied the resonance.
He might as well have said, as his campaign at first had about Melania Trump’s plagiarized speech, that “America First” used “common words.”
It may be that he really doesn’t care that some people hear disturbing echoes. He may not have thought a thing when the Anti-Defamation League asked him to stop using the phrase, in March, and redirected fifty-six thousand dollars in donations from the Trump family to anti-bullying and anti-bias causes. …”
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Point being, Trump has been made aware of the historical America First movement and Lindbergh’s involvement since at least 2016 (when he could have been feigning ignorance or genuinely ignorant, but was flatly told about the issue), so I don’t think it is reasonable to give him the benefit of the doubt about the implications, TBH.
