Francis Wilkinson, Columnist

Donald Trump Belongs to the Ages

Senator Joseph McCarthy is a forebear. So is the president on the $20 bill.

November 30, 2015 at 11:03 PM UTC

Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US politics and policy. Previously, he was executive editor for the Week and a writer for Rolling Stone.

Unique, yes. But he has forebears.
Photographer: Ty Wright/Getty Images

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Donald Trump is unique. But he's not without antecedents, and it's not hard to locate his performance in some well-worn grooves of American politics.

Substitute the word "segregation" for "immigration" in Trump's rhetoric, for instance, and it recalls the bitter bite of Alabama's George Wallace, whose presidential campaigns in the 1960s leveraged white backlash more viciously than even Trump dares.