The piece, originally released in 1963 by singer-songwriter and activist Oscar Brown, is based on an Aesop's fable called "The Farmer and the Viper" and is meant to teach how kindness can be exploited by malicious people.
Brown's daughters told CNN in 2017 that they had sent cease-and-desist orders to the Trump campaign urging the president to stop using the lyrics, claiming that he was misconstruing the song's meaning.
"Oscar Brown Jr.'s words are being stolen to promote his hate message and intolerance," Africa Brown told CNN's Don Lemon.
“When I see him doing it, I know that he is stealing. He’s twisting Oscar’s meaning to serve his own campaign and climate of intolerance and hate, which is the opposite of what the original author, Oscar Brown Jr., intended,” added her sister, Maggie, on MSNBC.
“He’s perversely using ‘The Snake’ to demonize immigrants,” said Africa during that same MSNBC interview. “My father never had anything against immigrants.”