After a failed attempt at a Swedish accent, Marshall leads our discussion of the America First movement as it related to the 1928 election, the onset of the Great Depression, the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, the Dust Bowl, FDR and the New Deal, the end of Prohibition, and the 1930's decline of the Ku Klux Klan.

Marshall, Blake, and Mike discuss how "America First" supporters influenced – and were influenced by – the Russian Revolution, the 1920 Wall Street bombing, anarchists and the Palmer Raids, the aftermath of World War I, The Great Gatsby, the elections of 1920 and 1924, Prohibition, the growth of cities, restrictions on immigration, and the Ku Klux Klan’s rise to national prominence in the 1920s. Charles Lindbergh enters the story – as does Fred Trump!

Episode 101: In our premiere episode, Marshall, Blake, and Mike begin a series on the America First movement. Marshall takes us through the movement’s development from the earliest use of the term “America First” in the 1880s, when it advocated the protection of economic and business interests, to a growing emphasis on deeper issues of American identity, notions of American cultural and ethnic purity and a yearning for a return to an earlier, more rural time in the face of increasing immigration, the rise of organized labor, entanglements in European affairs, The Birth of a Nation, the rise of the “second” Ku Klux Klan, the 1916 election, and America’s entry into World War I.