'The Snake': How Trump appropriated a radical black singer's lyrics for immigration fear mongering

By Eli Rosenberg February 24 at 10:24 AM

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For someone who is not known as a man of letters, this is one of Trump’s only literary touchstones. It is a crowd-pleaser, part xenophobic fearmongering, part tale told by Grandpa — “story time with Trump,” as one college supporter said that day in Iowa. But the lyrics have a far more complex origin than Trump’s use might imply. The poem originated in the 1960s from a soul singer and social activist in Chicago, Oscar Brown Jr. Its appropriation as a tool to drum up fear about immigrants has turned heads; some of Brown’s family are asking Trump to stop using it. And now, people are reading deeper into the president’s fixation with the parable.

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A song written by a black former communist

It is not entirely clear how the song found its way into Trump’s hands. Corey Lewandowski, who served as Trump’s campaign manager for much of the primary season, told The Washington Post in 2016 that “somebody probably sent it in.”

“We get a lot of mail,” Lewandowski said, “but it does go to the larger narrative of what used to be the way, conceptually, our country was to where it is today.”

Trump might be surprised to learn the origin of the song. Long before he used it as an anti-immigrant poem, “The Snake” was just a simple song, a parable open to interpretation.

The lyrics were written in the 1960s by Brown, an outspoken black singer, songwriter, social activist and former Communist Party member from Chicago.