Before Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene came right out this week and slandered Israel by saying the Jewish nation was committing genocide in Gaza, Greene strongly insinuated it ten days earlier when attempting to undermine America’s strongest ally to defend itself.
Thankfully, a special wisdom was displayed in the House of Representatives on July 17, 2025, when the members voted against Marjorie Taylor Greene’s amendment to reduce funding for Israel in the Department of Defense appropriations package for 2026.
When introducing her amendment, Greene repeatedly referred to Israel as “nuclear-armed Israel” and said, “That's a pretty big deterrent for any of their enemies. Any nation that has a nuclear bomb has the greatest threat against their enemies.”
Greene emphatically added that her amendment to strike $500 million in foreign aid would “ensure an ‘America First’ Department of Defense.”
Ironically, Greene’s action was contrary to President Donald Trump’s new kind of an "America First" policy. Neither an isolationist nor neutral, Trump does not forsake allies. Despite referring to himself as a non-interventionist during his campaign rallies, Trump sensibly supports foreign actions that align with America’s security and strategic goals, such as backing Israel in its conflict with Iran.
During the short debate before the vote was taken, Marjorie Taylor Greene went even further and invoked an image of an out-of-control and even genocidal Israel: “I also want to point out that Israel bombed a Catholic church in Gaza,” she said, knowing that this was unintentional, “and an entire population is being wiped out as they continue their aggressive war in Gaza,” ignoring Israel's unmatched civilian-soldier casualty statistics despite Hamas' use of civilian shields.
Only five Representatives voted with Greene: Republican Thomas Massie, Democrat Al Green, and three Democrat “squad” members, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Summer Lee--all on record agreeing with Marjorie Taylor Greene’s insinuation that Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinian Arabs (an allegation initiated by the Gaza Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas).
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s denial of aid to an ally and defaming that ally with propaganda generated by brutal killers—and then claiming it was necessary to further a policy of "America First"—parallels one of the worst misjudgments in American history.
A misjudgment made by one of America’s greatest heroes.
In 1936, the famed aviator Charles Lindbergh visited Germany and was deeply impressed by Germany’s air force and how Adolf Hitler had restored his nation to its former eminence after its defeat in WWI. “Hitler must have far more character and vision,” he wrote, than what the leaders in America and Britain were saying about him.
Three years later, Hitler began WWII with a rapid and fierce invasion of Poland. Lindbergh felt certain Germany’s formidable military forces would overpower Poland’s allies, France and Britain. With America unprepared for war, Lindbergh called for strict neutrality and even argued against supporting England because it would only prolong the conflict and put America on the wrong side when Hitler conquered all of Europe.
Lindbergh became the spokesman for the then America First Committee, a loosely knit organization with close to a million members that advocated strict American neutrality and isolationism.
“If we concentrate on our own defenses and build the strength that this nation should maintain," declared Lindbergh, "no foreign army will ever attempt to land on American shores.”
A majority of Americans agreed with him and wanted to remain neutral, but they were soon taken aback by a dark side of Charles Lindbergh, an antisemitism that kept cropping up in his speeches.
In September 1941, three months before Japan’s airplanes darkened the sky above Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh still believed in America First and neutrality. “The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration,” he stated. And of the Jews, he said, “their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.”
Americans were already aware of the terrors being afflicted upon the helpless Jews of Europe, and the newspapers took Lindbergh to task. There was no secret, powerful group of Jews orchestrating world affairs. No “Jewish cabal.” Jews were but scapegoats for other people’s insecurities.
On December 7, 1941, two years after the dictators of Germany, Italy, and Japan began the savage conquest of their neighbors, Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor sunk many of America's best ships and killed over two thousand sailors. Finally, neutral America was in the war.
By then, Germany brutally reigned over most of continental Europe, from the western coast of France to the outskirts of Moscow. Hitler’s lust for power was fixated on the still undefeated Britain, which President Roosevelt--despite Lindbergh’s harangues and the America First Committee--had been wisely and generously helping all along with war supplies.
The America First Committee disbanded and a disgraced Lindbergh worked hard throughout the war to redeem himself by volunteering to advise army air force units, helping to develop the B-24 bomber, and even going on some combat missions in the Pacific.
It is not clear if Lindbergh’s antisemitic views changed after he saw the concentration camps after the war. He made no public apologies. His widow, though, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, said he “regretted being perceived as antisemitic.” Some scholars believe his underlying white supremacist ideology, evident in his pre-war writings, likely persisted, even if they were no longer so overtly expressed.
Marjorie Taylor Greene has not yet learned a lesson from this. But the vast majority of her colleagues understand the vital distinction between Donald Trump's "America First" and the original America First Committee that was rooted in strict isolationism and often laced with antisemitic rhetoric. America’s strong alliance with the Jewish nation of Israel, and Donald Trump’s willingness to preemptively strike their common enemies, emphasizes how "America First" is not America Only.
Robert Scott Kellner is a U.S. Navy veteran and retired English professor. Kellner taught at the University of Massachusetts and Texas A&M University. The grandson of German justice inspector and diarist Friedrich Kellner, he published his grandfather's anti-Nazi diary in its original language in Germany in 2011 and is the editor and translator of the English edition, My Opposition: The Diary of Friedrich Kellner--A German against the Third Reich, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom, 2020