Trump deployed this idea against Barack Obama when he questioned the former president’s political legitimacy and demanded that he prove his citizenship with the public release of his “long-form” birth certificate. He wielded it during his first campaign for the White House, dismissing critics and opponents as un-American and illegitimate on the basis of their race, nationality and partisan identity. Recall his condemnation of Judge Gonzalo Curiel who, Trump insisted, could not be impartial because he was “Mexican.” And this vision of the supposedly true American public was a rhetorical mainstay of his first term in office. “The Democrats,” Trump said in a typical formulation during a 2018 rally for Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, “have launched an assault on the sovereignty of our country.”