For decades, American families have gathered together to watch It's a Wonderful Life. on Christmas Eve.
Frank Capra's 1946 film about a man who, on one of the worst days of his life, discovers how he has positively impacted his hometown of Bedford Falls is loved for its celebration of selflessness, community and the little guy fighting predatory capitalists. Take these values, add powerful acting and the promise of light in the darkest hours, and this is the only movie that makes me cry.
No less an indicator of goodwill than Pope Leo XIV, who last month declared that this is one of his favorite films. But like everything sacred in this country, President Trump and his followers are trying to steal a holiday classic.
Over the weekend, the Department of Homeland Security released two videos addressing his mass deportation campaign. One of them, called “It's a Wonderful Flight”, recreates the scene where George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart, in one of his best performances) contemplates committing suicide by jumping from a snowy bridge. But the main character is a Latino, crying over the film's desperate soundtrack that he would “do anything” to return to his wife and children and “live again.”
Cut to the same man now mugging on camera while flying on a plane from the United States. The scene ends with a splash screen for an app that allows undocumented immigrants to take advantage of an offer from the Department of Homeland Security. free self-deportation flight and a $1,000 bonus – $3,000 if they travel one way during the holidays.
Another DHS clip is a montage of Christmas cheer—Santa, elves, stockings, dancing—over a sped-up electro-trash remake of Mariah Carey's “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” In one split-second shot, the residents of Bedford Falls sing “Auld Lang Syne” just after saving George Bailey from financial ruin and an arrest warrant.
“This Christmas,” the caption reads, “our hearts grow as our illegal population dwindles.”
It's a Wonderful Life has long served as a political Rorschach test. Conservatives once considered Capra's masterpiece so anti-American for its vilification of big bankers that they accused it of pro-Communist propaganda. In fact, the director was a Republican who put his career on hold during World War II to make short documentaries for the War Department. Progressives tend to hate the film's patriotism, its edginess, its relegation of black people to the background, and its depiction of city life as downright demonic.
Then came Trump's rise to power. His resemblance to the film's villain, Mr. Potter—a rich, nasty slumlord who names everything he takes control of after himself—was easier to point out than the spots on a cheetah. Left-wing essayists were quick to make facile comparisons, and a 2018 “Saturday Night Live” skit depicting a country without Trump as president angered him so much that he threatened to sue.
But in recent years, Trumpworld has claimed that the film is actually a parable about their dear leader.
Trump is a modern-day George Bailey, it is argued, a secular saint who has renounced guaranteed wealth to try to save the “rabble” that Mr. Potter—who in their minds somehow represents the liberal elite—is mocking. A speaker at the 2020 Republican National Convention explicitly made this comparison, and recent Department of Homeland Security videos misrepresenting the phrase “It's a Wonderful Life” imply this too—except that it is now uncontrolled immigration that threatens Bedford Falls.
The Trump administration's view of It's a Wonderful Life is that it reflects a simpler, better, whiter time. But this is a deliberate misinterpretation of this very American film, whose foundation is strengthened by the dreams of immigrants.
Directed by Frank Capra, circa 1940.
(John Kobal Foundation via Getty Images)
In his 1971 autobiography In “Name Over Title,” Capra revealed that his “dirty, devastated immigrant family” left Sicily for Los Angeles in the 1900s to reunite with an older brother who had “jumped ship” to come to the U.S. several years earlier. Young Frank grew up in the “scruffy Sicilian ghetto” of Lincoln Heights, finding kinship at the Manual Arts High School with the “dregs” of immigrants and working-class white kids “dropped from other schools,” and only becoming a U.S. citizen after serving in World War I. Hard times did not stop Capra and his colleagues from achieving success.
The director captured this feeling in It's a Wonderful Life through the character of Giuseppe Martini, an Italian immigrant who runs a bar. His heavily accented English is heard early in the film when one of the many residents of Bedford Falls prays for Bailey. In a flashback, Martini leaves his shabby Potter-owned apartment with a goat and a gaggle of children and heads to the suburban house that Bailey built and sold to him.
Trumpworld will be casting Martini today. like dark invaders destroying the American way of life. In It's a Wonderful Life, they are America itself.
When an angry husband hits Bailey at the Martini Bar for insulting his wife, the immigrant kicks the man out for attacking his “best friend.” And when Bedford Falls comes together at the end of the film to raise funds to save Bailey, Martini arrives with the night's profits from his business, as well as wine for everyone to celebrate.
Immigrants are so important to a good life in this country, the film argues, that in an alternate reality, if George Bailey had never lived, Martini would be nowhere to be found.
Capra had long stated that It's a Wonderful Life was his favorite of his own films, adding in his memoirs that it was a love letter to “Magdalenes stoned by hypocrites and Lazarus suffering, with only dogs licking their sores.”
Every Christmas Eve I tried to catch at least the finale to warm my spirits, no matter how bad things were. But after Capra's message was intercepted by the Department of Homeland Security, I took the time to watch the entire movie, which I've seen at least 10 times before it usually airs on NBC.
I shook my head, feeling déjà vu as Bailey's father sighed, “There's no place for any man in this town unless he can crawl to Potter.”
I was glad when Bailey told Potter many years later: “You think the whole world revolves around you and your money. But it doesn't.” I wondered why more people didn't say this to Trump.
When Potter derided Bailey as someone “trapped, wasting his life playing nanny to a lot of garlic lovers,” it reminded me of the right-wingers who portray the likes of us as who opposes Trump's cruelty how stupid and even treacherous.
And when the famous conclusion came, I thought only about immigrants.
People giving Bailey everything they could remind me of how ordinary people did a much better job oppose the deportation of Trump Leviathan than the rich and powerful did.
When the movie ended, as Bailey and his family looked in awe at how many people came to my aid, I remembered: my own immigrant elderswho also gave up their dreams and careers so that their children could achieve theirs – the only reward for a lifetime of silent sacrifice.
Tears flowed as always, this time caused by a new conclusion that was always nearby – “Only people save people.” or “Only we can save ourselves,” a phrase adopted this year by pro-immigrant activists in Southern California as a mantra of comfort and resistance.
This is the essence of the slogan “It's a Wonderful Life” and the opposite of Trump's desire to make us all dependent on his mercy. There is nothing he and his fellow Potters can do to change this truth.
