As the crowd at President Trump’s Wednesday rally chanted “Send her back!” after his torrent of accusations against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), it was clear that Trump had unleashed something malignant and dangerous across America.

The ugly rhetoric and calls for violence against immigrants and people of color on display Wednesday aren’t new. Yet they have become particularly potent in recent years because the president has not just encouraged them but also worked to transform white nationalism into actual policy.

So, perhaps it is appropriate to note that on the day Trump’s rally erupted into disturbing anti-immigrant chants, it was reported that John Tanton, the guiding force of the contemporary anti-immigration movement, had died. His legacy was clearly on display at Trump’s most recent rally, but it didn’t start there. Tanton helped Americans embrace nativist policies over the past 40 years by framing immigration as a threat to white America.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/07/18/john-tanton-has-died-how-he-made-america-less-open-immigrants-more-open-trump/?utm_term=.07ddb73e60cf