I expect Muslims to put Muslims first. I expect Bhai to put Bhai first. I expect Japanese to put Japanese first. I expect Jews to put Jews first. Why shouldn’t Americans put America first? If Americans don’t put America first, what should they put first? Israel?
Those American Jews who get nervous about the phrase “America First” are probably Americans who don’t want to put America first.
JTA: Donald Trump is doubling down on “America First.”
After Trump used the term “America First” in late April to describe his policies, the Anti-Defamation League sent him a letter urging him to drop the historically tainted slogan — speaking for Jews and others who remember it as the name of the isolationist movement championed by a notorious anti-Semite to keep the United States out of World War II.
But in a speech Tuesday night following his victories in the last six state primaries, the presumptive Republican nominee for president made clear he’s not about to take the ADL’s advice and abandon the slogan.
“America First,” Trump said, reading from a teleprompter, means protecting American jobs from “unfair foreign competition,” tapping America’s energy resources (including coal), instituting protectionist tax and regulatory policies, loosening regulation, reducing taxes for middle-class Americans and businesses and protecting American workers from immigrants.
“It’s important to understand what ‘America first’ means,” Trump said in his speech, as if directly addressing critics of his use of the term.
At its core, Trump’s policy shares some elements with the isolationism promoted 75 years ago by leaders of the America First Committee.
Created in 1940 after Hitler already had invaded Poland, the America First Committee argued that the U.S. should take a neutral approach toward Nazi Germany, and even do business with it, because the Nazi regime did not threaten America directly. Among its most noteworthy leaders was aviator Charles Lindbergh, who publicly espoused anti-Semitic viewpoints. Lindbergh warned that Jews posed a threat to the U.S. because of their influence over the media, movies and government.
The echoes of the America First Committee in Trump’s own America First policy include but are not limited to foreign policy. Lindbergh argued in 1941 that America shouldn’t help Britain because Britain was destined to lose the war and the effort would deplete America’s defenses. Trump says he would not have intervened in Libya to topple Libyan strongman Muammar Gadhafi (though video from 2011 recently surfaced showing Trump endorsing U.S. intervention in Libya) and he opposed the war in Iraq.
As Lily Rothman has noted in Time, Lindbergh, like Trump, said he had the backing of a silent majority of Americans who weren’t being given voice by a hostile media. Back in 1941, Lindbergh fingered the Jews as the culprits, saying they were pushing the U.S. toward war through their control of the media. In this year’s campaign, Trump believes the media is against him, too – not because they’re Jews but, he says, because they’re liars.
