Mediaite has apparently decided that talking about demographic change in America is now a form of racism.
That should tell you everything you need to know about the state of political media.
The outlet — owned by Dan Abrams, ABC News chief legal analyst and host of “On Patrol: LIVE” — has always had something of an identity crisis.
At times, its homepage can appear reasonably balanced.
Other times, it looks like a clip factory designed to generate outrage from the right.
Lately, it has gone completely off the rails. Consider its latest effort:
Mediaite published a Friday story about a conversation between Newsmax host Rob Finnerty and GOP Rep. James Comer of Kentucky regarding immigration, birth tourism, and allegations of fraud involving Somali immigrants in Minnesota.
And Mediaite’s Kathianne Boniello condemned the conversation with leftist clichés while presenting the story as news.
The opening sentence declared, “Newsmax anchor Rob Finnerty invoked a racist conspiracy theory during a Thursday interview with Rep. James Comer (R-KY)…”
The supposed “racist conspiracy theory” was the Great Replacement Theory.
What did Comer say?
According to Mediaite’s own report, Comer argued that Democrats “want more people to flood into the United States, become registered voters, and support the Democrat machine.”
He went on to say Democrats were losing working-class Americans, and were therefore replacing them politically with people who enter the country illegally.
Finnerty then put a name to the argument.
“Well, it’s the Great Replacement Theory in action,” he said. “The left doesn’t want to talk about it. I don’t care what you call it, but that’s what’s happening.”
Rather than simply report the exchange and allow readers to decide whether Finnerty’s characterization was accurate, Mediaite decided to tell readers that he had promoted a “racist conspiracy theory.”
But here’s the problem.
There is an enormous difference between arguing that someone is wrong about immigration policy and declaring that the very discussion of demographic change is racist.
The demographic change is real — it isn’t a theory, it isn’t a conspiracy, it is measurable.
According to Pew Research Center’s analysis of Census Bureau data, foreign-born Americans accounted for just 4.7 percent of the U.S. population in 1970.
By 2023, that figure had risen to 14.8 percent.
In other words, the foreign-born share of America’s population more than tripled over roughly five decades.
Nobody has to like that trend. Nobody has to dislike it.
But nobody gets to pretend it didn’t happen. America’s population has changed dramatically.
Pew’s data also showed the share of Americans identifying as non-Hispanic white fell from 83.5 percent in 1970 to 56.3 percent in 2023, while the Hispanic share rose from 4.4 percent to 20 percent.
Again: Those are statistics. And if we’re going to have an honest conversation about immigration, we should be able to discuss what those statistics mean.
One obvious consequence is that immigrants who become citizens can vote. So can their American-born children, once they reach voting age.
That isn’t controversial. It is simply how citizenship and elections work.
The question, then, is whether sustained immigration can affect the composition of the American electorate.
Of course it can. The more interesting question is whether that effect is intentional — that’s where the political argument begins.
Finnerty and Comer believe Democrats benefit electorally from immigration.
Mediaite apparently believes that even discussing the possibility is evidence of a racist conspiracy theory.
But here’s something that should make Mediaite’s certainty considerably less certain.
Democratic leaders themselves have openly discussed immigration in terms of America’s demographic future.
In 2022, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer argued that America has a population that “is not reproducing on its own with the same level that it used to.”
Schumer said the way to have “a great future in America” was to “welcome and embrace immigrants.”
He also advocated a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.
Those comments don’t prove some secret Democratic plot to replace American voters.
They don’t prove that Democrats are deliberately importing people for electoral purposes.
But they do prove something far more modest and far more important: Immigration’s effect on America’s future population is a subject that politicians themselves openly discuss.
So why is Mediaite treating the discussion as forbidden territory?
Why is Boniello, rather than the reader, being assigned the authority to determine that the argument is a “racist conspiracy theory”?
That’s the trick.
Once a media outlet slaps a sufficiently ugly label on an argument, it doesn’t actually have to debate it.
It doesn’t have to address the statistics.
It doesn’t have to discuss naturalization.
It doesn’t have to discuss birthright citizenship.
It doesn’t have to discuss America’s changing electorate.
It simply has to call the person making the argument racist.
Conversation over.
That’s not journalism — that’s a rhetorical shortcut. And it is particularly dishonest when the underlying demographic facts are beyond dispute.
America has experienced enormous immigration-driven population growth. The foreign-born share of the population has more than tripled since 1970. The country is more diverse than it was.
The electorate changes as citizens age, naturalize, and have children. These are basic demographic realities. And Americans have every right to ask what they mean for the future of the country.
That shouldn’t require permission from Mediaite.
It certainly shouldn’t require passing a political purity test administered by a website whose own coverage frequently reads like partisan commentary dressed up as straight news.
If Comer is wrong, explain why.
If Finnerty’s description is wrong, explain why.
If immigration doesn’t affect the electorate, demonstrate it.
If Democratic politicians don’t benefit electorally from immigration and naturalization, make that case.
That’s what debate is supposed to look like.
But simply declaring an argument to be a “racist conspiracy theory” isn’t an argument; it’s an attempt to end one.
And that may be the most revealing part of this entire episode.
The people who insist that Americans shouldn’t talk about demographic replacement are inadvertently drawing more attention to the very subject they want people to ignore.
Americans can look at the numbers for themselves. They can listen to what politicians have said. They can decide what they believe.
They don’t need Kathianne Boniello or Mediaite to do the thinking for them.
The numbers are real. The demographic transformation is real. The political implications are real.
The debate over what it all means is also real. Calling that debate racist doesn’t make it disappear.
It simply tells Americans that certain media outlets would rather police the conversation than participate in it.
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