Trump brings back xenophobic 'The Snake' reading to rally days before election

In appeal for voters to back him a second time, Donald Trump recites controversial poem

As election day 2020 approaches, Donald Trump took a page from his own campaign playbook, and read a poem with an anti-immigrant message.  

The Republican president, whose 2016 campaign rallies used to see him read a poem titled “The Snake”, returned to reciting the controversial lyrics on Sunday, as he sought to bolster turnout among supporters in Iowa.  

He told supporters in Hickory that he “was asked to do a thing that we used to do during the campaign”,  adding: “Has anyone heard of The Snake?”

The president then reached into an inner pocket, pulled out a piece of paper, and said “so this has to do with this subject [immigration], and it's been a long time since I’ve done this one but so many people are asking”.

While the lyrics by Al Wilson serve as a cautionary tale about a woman who embraces a dangerous snake, Mr Trump has in the past compared the predator in the poem to immigrants, saying in 2018 to “think of it in terms of immigration”.

In the poem, the woman, or the United States — as the president ha previously suggested — was naively providing refuge to a snake, who then delivered a fatal strike in return.

It follows a campaign in which Trump has repeatedly attacked refugees and warned without any basis that Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, would increase refugee flows into the US by “700 per cent”.

He has also been accused of dog whistling on race, having complained that Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar was “telling us how to run our country”.

Ms Omar, a US citizen who was born in Somalia, has in turn called Mr Trump a “racist”.

But, with negative opinion polls nationally, the president has at times returned to old campaign acts such as the Snake, as he attempts to stoke fears about immigration among white non-college educated voters, ahead of Tuesday.