One of President Trump’s earliest documented uses of “The Snake” came in January 2016, on the eve of the primary season that he would go on to storm.
Speaking to a crowd in Cedar Falls, Iowa, with the state’s all-important caucus just days away, the candidate put on reading glasses and read the story from a piece of paper: A talking snake fatally bites a woman after she takes it in to give it care.
“I read this the other day, and I said, ‘Wow, that’s really amazing,’ ” Trump told the crowd.
Trump used the poem repeatedly on the campaign trail to illustrate the threats posed by refugees from Syria and other countries. The United States is the woman who naively gives others refuge; immigrants are the snakes who deliver the fatal strike.
“The Snake” was back this week after a hiatus, when Trump did another rendition during a freewheeling speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday.
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.