President Trump reads ‘The Snake,’ repurposed as anti-immigrant poem
CNN reports that President Donald Trump yesterday at the 2018 Conservative Political Action conference read the lyrics of an anti-immigrant song titled “The Snake,” reverting to a campaign staple that he has used to criticize U.S. immigration policy. The song, written by the late singer-songwriter Oscar Brown Jr., tells the story of a woman who takes in a frozen snake she finds on her way to work. After the snake is nursed back to health, it bites the women and kills her. Trump uses the song as an allegory, suggesting that immigrants who come to the United States in search of a better life and help may end up hurting the country in the end.
The story was regularly read at events in the 2016 campaign to raucous applause as Trump ran on a hardline immigration platform. Use of the song by Trump has morphed over time. Initially, Trump read the story as an attack against accepting Syrian refugees, who he claimed included terrorists. Trump later began using the story to attack all immigrants.
KJ