Donald Trump’s Plagiarized Anti-Semitic Slogan

This week, Donald Trump gave an interview to The New York Timesthat exposed, once again, his lack of knowledge about the world in which he may, next January, become the leading man. This was the interview in which he essentially handed the Baltics to Vladimir Putin. And as the Q&A wrapped up, the Republican nominee also revealed how little curiosity he has about the history of his own country. When the Times reporters pressed him to explain why he embraced the term “America First,” despite its link to a controversial group that opposed U.S. entry into World War II, Trump responded, “To me, ‘America First’ is a brand-new, modern term… I never related it to the past.”

If the orange-maned tycoon-turned-politician did take the time to learn something about his predecessors, he might find as much to admire about them (from his perspective) as to avoid. Founded in early September 1940, the America First Committee (AFC) was the largest anti-war organization in U.S. history, one of remarkable ideological and partisan diversity. It claimed over 800,000 members—no one was required to pay dues—who met in hundreds of autonomous chapters across the nation.

Although Republican millionaires like the chairman of Sears-Roebuck and the publisher of the Chicago Tribune funded most of its activities, the AFC included in its ranks both Norman Thomas, the leader of the Socialist Party, and several prominent Democratic senators. The left-wing novelist Sinclair Lewis, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and Walt Disney signed up too—as did Charles Lindbergh, the celebrated aviator whose renown rivaled that of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Joseph P. Kennedy declined to join but did tell the chairman of the AFC he would “do everything I possibly can to help you.”