America First?

When I first heard Donald Trump use the slogan "America First," I wondered if anyone working on his campaign was aware of the history of the "America First Committee" and what a discredited slogan that became after Pearl Harbor.

Last week, Rachel Maddow on MSNBC explained the sordid history of "America First" so that anyone should be able to understand not to use it: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-invokes-infamous-america-first-slogan-675190851964.

Apparently Donald Trump doesn't get it.

For those unfamiliar with the history, here is Wikipedia's brief account: "The AFC was established on September 4, 1940, by Yale Law School student R. Douglas Stuart, Jr. (son of R. Douglas Stuart, co-founder of Quaker Oats), along with other students, including future President Gerald Ford, future Peace Corps director Sargent Shriver, and future U.S. Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart. Future President John F. Kennedy contributed $100, along with a note saying "What you all are doing is vital." At its peak, America First claimed 800,000 dues-paying members in 450 chapters, located mostly in a 300-mile radius of Chicago.<sup>" The
 
 Not content with using a discredited slogan, last week Trump gave what was presented as a major foreign policy address. Slate's Fred Kaplan commented that the speech, read from a teleprompter, "—was even more incoherent than his impromptu ramblings of the past several months. In fact, it may stand as the most senseless, self-contradicting foreign policy speech by any major party’s presidential nominee in modern history."

I take exception to Kaplan/s remark, but only because Trump is not yet a "major party's  presidential nominee. It may seem like splitting hairs, but Trump is not the nominee until the Republican convention declares him the nominee.

That being said, if Trump is nominated, he will easily qualify as the most ignorant presidential candidate since I started noticing such things around 1940. 

How do I know? National security policy and international relations have been my profession for more than sixty years. And I was paying attention long before that.

Believe me!</sup>