Seizing on that energy, former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke on Friday announced a bid for the Senate. The Louisiana Republican likened his policies on trade and immigration to Trump's in an announcement video.
"I'm overjoyed to see Donald Trump and most Americans embrace most of the issues that I've championed for years," Duke said. "My slogan remains 'America First.'"
"America First" was first used in 1940 by the America First Committee, a short-lived isolationist faction that formed to pressure the U.S. government not to join the Allies' war against Germany.
Trump referred to "America First" repeatedly in his convention speech Thursday night, highlighting people murdered by immigrants in the country illegally and warning of rising inner-city crime. Earlier in the week, a convention screen displayed a tweet with the hashtag "#TrumpIsWithYou" from a self-described member of the alt-right, one of the thousands of tweets promoted over the course of the week.
"Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens," Trump charged in his speech.
Such a message, combined with the Trump campaign's repeated brushes with white supremacist material on social media, has drawn criticism from Republican leaders. House Speaker Paul Ryan was among those who spoke out against a recent Trump tweet that showed an image shaped like the Star of David over Hillary Clinton's likeness and a pile of money.
Trump has repeatedly re-tweeted messages from Twitter users with questionable profiles, including an individual with the handle "@WhiteGenocideTM."
And late last year, he re-tweeted inaccurate and racially charged crime statistics that vastly overstated the percentage of whites killed by blacks. His team — accidentally, it said — selected as a delegate a white nationalist leader who paid for pro-Trump robo-calls during the GOP primary. He was removed.
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