Trump’s Nativist Appeal Is an American Tradition

Jeff Greenfield: “Are there sound reasons for questioning comprehensive immigration reform? Of course… But those are not the arguments that Trump and his supporters are offering. They’re embracing the same arguments that were once aired at the Irish and German Catholics; at the Chinese; at the Italians and Poles and Jews: They’re going to undermine our culture; they’re disproportionately criminal or they’re carrying diseases; they threaten our way of life.”

“In this sense, Trump’s screeds on immigration fit perfectly with his birther arguments four years ago. There’s simply no way of knowing whether his GOP rivals will succeed in pushing Trump and his arguments to the margins, or whether the broader Republican primary electorate will reject the messenger, if not the message. What’s clear is that the rise to the presidency of Barack Obama—seen by many Republicans and conservatives as a source of patriotic pride—is still seen by others as proof that an ‘un-American’ occupies the highest office in the land.”