Trump’s ‘America First’ echoes old isolationist rallying cry
WASHINGTON — Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump boils down his foreign policy agenda to two words: “America First.”
For students of U.S. history, that slogan harkens back to the tumultuous presidential election of 1940, when hundreds of thousands of Americans joined the antiwar America First Committee.
The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights organization, sent Trump a letter two months ago urging him to refrain from using “America First.”
During his first major foreign policy speech in April, Trump said “America First will be the major and overriding theme of my administration.”
“Building a wall is about the illusion that there can be a physical safeguard to prevent intrusion from alien forces,” said Bruce Miroff, a professor of American politics at the State University of New York at Albany.