When you can’t win the debate you can still win the day — by ending the debate. This apparently is the goal of those targeting Fox News host Tucker Carlson with destruction, for having the temerity to honestly discuss illegal migration.
As American Thinker reports, “Carlson has been peerless in his coverage of the issues raised by the caravan of Central Americans that announced its plan to storm the border and demand amnesty from within our territory, gaining automatic freedom to be released for a hearing sometime in the future, thanks to current law.”
But this intrepid reporting has made enemies. Carlson’s show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, is now being targeted with a boycott. “As of Tuesday evening,” writes HuffPo, “at least 15 advertisers have announced that they’ve broken ties with or are in the process of breaking ties with Carlson, or have indicated they currently have no plans to advertise on his show.” (Note: Huffpo includes a list of the advertisers, so you can know what companies are tacitly endorsing illegal migration.)
Of course, entities such as HuffPo are encouraging this via propaganda. Just consider the following HuffPo line: “On ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ last week, the host suggested that immigrants are making the United States ‘dirtier.’”
Carlson wasn’t talking about “immigrants,” however, but illegal migrants — and he’s correct.
The truth is, “unregulated mass immigration has badly hurt this country’s natural landscape,” as Carlson put it Monday night. “Take a trip to our southwestern deserts, if you don’t believe it. Thanks to illegal immigration, huge swaths of the region are covered with garbage and waste that degrade the soil and kill wildlife.”
The Left used to claim to care about such things, mind you — and maybe still does when it’s American citizens wreaking the havoc.
Carlson continued, “The Arizona Department of Environment Quality estimates that each illegal border crosser leaves six to eight pounds of trash during the journey into our country. If you’re interested in more detail, look at the website they’ve created; it’s called Arizona Border Trash. It’s dedicated to highlighting and cleaning up the thousands of tons of garbage strewn across Arizona by immigrants every year.”
“Illegal immigration comes at a huge cost to our environment. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) put it this way: ‘Illegal border activity on federal lands not only threatens people, but endangered species and the land itself,’” Carlson added. “Illegal aliens and smugglers have destroyed cactus and other sensitive vegetation that can take decades to recover, including habitat for endangered species. One land management official described another federal property on Arizona’s border as so unsafe and with resources so destroyed that it is now primarily used for illegal activities and no longer visited by the general public” (video below).
Of course, such consequences were predictable. Allowing continual illegal migration — an invasion, essentially — across wilderness guarantees the area’s degradation. This is yet another reason to build a border wall, which, contrary to immigrationist rhetoric, would be effective. Just consider the Israelis’ experience: Prior to the construction of their southern border wall, 55,000 illegals entered their country over a two-year period. Yet the barrier reduced that number to, by some accounts, zero within two years.
Yet there’s another factor as well, one no wall can remedy because it relates to immigration generally. The United States has had a below-replacement-level fertility rate for a while now, yet our population continues increasing — because of immigration.
In fact, while the number of Americans currently stands at approximately 326 million, it’s projected to rise to 438 million by 2050 — all because of immigration.
Of course, end immigration, end this population explosion. But forget that proposal, because any discussion at all of the immigration population-growth phenomenon is forbidden. Yet the obvious question in a world with teeming Third World millions desiring to immigrate to the United States is:
When will enough be enough?
When our population is a half billion? One billion? Equal to China’s population, 1.4 billion? Because unless we’re relying on natural forces to halt immigration (e.g., severe economic collapse), at that point it would have to be ended.
Yet what’s actually ended, again, is debate. Just consider the experience of radio host Michael Savage, who, among his many credentials, boasts a Ph.D. in epidemiology and authorship of almost 20 books on health and nutrition. Years ago he penned a book on the link between illegal aliens and disease titled Immigrants and Epidemics, but despite his qualifications could not get a publisher. The reason? Political correctness.
The good news is that, regarding the Carlson boycott, Fox News isn’t backing down. As the station wrote in a December 18 statement:
We cannot and will not allow voices like Tucker Carlson to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts from the likes of Moveon.org, Media Matters and Sleeping Giants.
Attempts were made last month to bully and terrorize Tucker and his family at their home. He is now once again being threatened via Twitter by far left activist groups with deeply political motives.
While we do not advocate boycotts, these same groups never target other broadcasters and operate under a grossly hypocritical double standard given their intolerance to all opposing points of view.
Ironically, the same people opposing a barrier protecting our nation aim to erect a barrier to debate protecting their flawed policies. Just as they’re against the border wall precisely because they know it would work, they try to stifle warnings about illegal migration’s perils because they are “so obviously true” that voicing them “is a threat,” as Carlson put it.
The good news for Carlson is that he will most likely survive. The question is: Can our nation survive immigrationists trampling her culture underfoot in the name of political power?
Below is a full transcript of the Monday Tucker Carlson Tonight video embedded above, courtesy of Fox News:
We’ve talked a lot on this show about the threat to free speech. It turns out it’s very real.
Here’s one example: Last week, we interviewed a man named Genaro Lopez. Lopez is an elected official in Tijuana, Mexico. He’s exactly the kind of person you’d think a lot of American journalists would want to talk to. For months, the media have demanded that the migrant caravan from Honduras must be admitted into the United States. Once it gets here, they’ve told us, our country will be greatly improved by its presence. That’s how immigration works.
OK. It turns out we can test that hypothesis. That very same caravan, the one they’ve been telling you about, is now encamped in Tijuana. It’s been there for weeks. Simple question: Has the caravan made Tijuana better? Genaro Lopez would know the answer. His job is to represent the citizens of that city. We’ve invited Lopez on twice to ask about the caravan. Here’s some of what he told us.
I asked him, “Behind you it seems that somebody’s cleaning up garbage. Is there a lot of trash there?”
Lopez responded: “There’s a lot of trash because, what I was trying to tell you, the 360 [people we had here] grew to 6,200. And that’s why it got out of hand. So, we got another facility. It’s a big concert hall where you can have like 10,000 people under a roof.”
That was on December 3. Ten days later, we invited Genaro Lopez back on to the show to see how Tijuana was doing.
Nobody else in the media seemed interested in what had happened to the caravan. As long as the migrants remained in Mexico, they couldn’t really be used to attack Donald Trump. So the press moved on to the next dumb, shiny thing. But we were interested. Here’s what Lopez told us:
“Things aren’t getting better. They’re probably getting worse,” he said. “Last weekend, we issued an ultimatum to all the Hondurans and Guatemalans that are camping out here on the street. They’re blocking the street. And they’re bringing all their necessities, trashing the street…. Problems are still going on. There’s been like 280 arrests. Before, it was solely for drug possession and being drunk in the streets. Now, it’s for breaking and entering into homes.”
Trashing the street. Doing drugs in public. Blocking traffic. Breaking into homes. That’s not at all what CNN promised us.
Was Genaro Lopez one of those white nationalists the New York Times is always warning us about? Did he make the whole thing up, pictures and all, for his own sick, bigoted reasons?
Possibly. Or maybe, and this was our conclusion, there could be a lesson here for the United States. Here’s what we said that night on the show:
“Our country’s economy is becoming more automated and tech-centered by the day. It’s obvious that we need more scientists and skilled engineers. But that’s not what we’re getting. Instead, we’re getting waves of people with high school educations or less. Nice people, no one doubts that but as an economic matter, this is insane. It’s indefensible, so nobody even tries to defend it. Instead, our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this. We have a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided.”
In a fast-evolving economy, it could be preferable to import more engineers, and fewer people with low skills, no matter how nice or well-meaning those people might be. And we always assume they are.
That’s what we said. That was our claim. And it’s hard to argue with that. In fact, nobody on the left did argue with it. They ignored it. Instead, they zeroed in on the last line: “The left says we have a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor, even if it makes our own country more like Tijuana is now, which is to say poorer and dirtier and more divided.”
That’s what we said. It’s true. Ask Genaro Lopez. Thanks to the efforts of the American left, he and his city are living with the consequences. But precisely because it is so obviously true, saying it out loud is a threat. Our immigration policy exists for the profit and the comfort of a relatively tiny number of people. Everybody else gets shafted, including Genaro Lopez and an awful a lot of people just like him. Meanwhile, the people profiting from the policy don’t want the rest of us to think about it too much. They want us just to mouth the empty platitudes and move on. Nothing to see here. Shut up and go away.
Those who won’t shut up get silenced. You’ve seen it a million times. It happens all the time. The enforcers scream “racist!” on Twitter until everyone gets intimidated, and changes the subject to the Russia investigation or some other distraction.
It’s a tactic. A well-worn one. Nobody thinks it’s real. And it won’t work with this show. We’re not intimidated. We plan to try to say what’s true until the last day. And the truth is, unregulated mass immigration has badly hurt this country’s natural landscape.
Take a trip to our southwestern deserts, if you don’t believe it. Thanks to illegal immigration, huge swaths of the region are covered with garbage and waste that degrade the soil and kill wildlife.
The Arizona Department of Environment Quality estimates that each illegal border crosser leaves six to eight pounds of trash during the journey into our country. If you’re interested in more detail, look at the website they’ve created, it’s called Arizona Border Trash. It’s dedicated to highlighting and cleaning up the thousands of tons of garbage strewn across Arizona by immigrants every year.
Illegal immigration comes at a huge cost to our environment. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) put it this way: “Illegal border activity on federal lands not only threatens people, but endangered species and the land itself. Illegal aliens and smugglers have destroyed cactus and other sensitive vegetation that can take decades to recover, including habitat for endangered species. One land-management official described another federal property on Arizona’s border as so unsafe and with resources so destroyed that it is now primarily used for illegal activities and no longer visited by the general public.”
Keep in mind this is not a press release from Donald Trump’s campaign team. That’s a federal study from 2002. That was back when people could do science without getting fired for it.
The Left used to care about the environment — the land, the water, the animals. They understood that America is beautiful because it is open and uncrowded.
Not so long ago, environmentalists opposed mass immigration. They knew what the costs were. They still know. But they don’t care.
We do care. And we’re going to continue telling you about it. We think you have a right to know. No matter what they say.
(Hat tip: the Daily Wire)
Image: screenshot from YouTube video of Tucker Carlson program
