Hysterical Bloomberg Columnist: Trump's 'America First' Speech Reminiscent of 'Nazi Era'

Trump's New Slogan Has Old Baggage From Nazi Era

Donald Trump has given up on winning historically literate voters. Consider the theme of his major foreign policy speech Wednesday: "America first."

This slogan is most associated with aviator Charles Lindbergh, who spent a great deal of time in the late 1930s gushing at how wonderful the Third Reich was. Before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh helped form "America First" committees that campaigned to keep the U.S. from fighting the Axis Powers. Lindbergh rose to become a demagogue and accused President Franklin Roosevelt of colluding with a Jewish lobby and Britain to drag America into World War II.

For years this phrase was toxic. Pat Buchanan has used it from time to time, but "America first" and the idea it represented -- American neutrality towards the Nazis -- has been largely banished from respectable discourse.

Now Trump is bringing the phrase back to the mainstream. He deploys it at his campaign rallies. And in his major foreign policy speech Wednesday, there it was right at the top. The real-estate magnate promised to "always put the interests of the American people first." He said: "That will be the foundation of every single decision I will make. 'America first' will be the major and overriding theme of our administration."

In fairness to Trump, the world is very different than it was when Nazis ruled Berlin. Historian Ron Radosh told me that Trump was channeling the memory of the isolationists of that era, but he also allowed that Trump "differentiates himself because clearly unlike Lindbergh, he is not an enemy of Jews or the Jewish state." (Though on the substance, Radosh added that he did not think it was "good for Israel to have a president who is so isolationist.")

Nonetheless, Trump's Lindbergh-like instincts were apparent in his speech Wednesday. He said he intended to hold NATO allies more accountable to pay a fair share for their defense. If they don't, he said, "the U.S. must be prepared to let them defend themselves."

But the front-runner ought to be careful. If his political opponents were to attack him in kind, they might point to Trump's long history of business dealings with Moscow -- as my colleague Josh Rogin has reported. Perhaps they would ask whether Trump's soft stand on Russia was influenced by his new campaign adviser, Paul Manafort, who also sought real-estate deals with a Moscow-connected billionaire in Ukraine.

When you put it like that, America doesn't seem to be first for Trump's foreign policy at all.