A 'Fox and Friends' host said it's 'a fact' that America is experiencing a Hispanic invasion, directly echoing the El Paso shooter's manifesto
- "Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade said Tuesday morning that "it's a fact" that there is an "invasion" of immigrants coming across the US' southern border.
- Kilmeade directly echoed the rhetoric of a suspected shooter who killed 22 people and injured dozens of others in El Paso, Texas and warned of a "Hispanic invasion" of Texas in a manifesto posted online before the shooting.
- "If you use the term an invasion, that is not anti-Hispanic. It's a fact," Kilmeade said, adding, "if the Russians were coming through Alaska, through Canada, the president would be using the same language."
The Trump campaign has either directly invoked or legitimized similar anti-immigrant rhetoric on multiple occasions, including warning of "an invasion" across the Southern border in over 2,000 Facebook ads.
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"Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade said Tuesday morning that "it's a fact" that there is an "invasion" of immigrants coming across the US-Mexico border, directly echoing the rhetoric of a suspected shooter who killed 22 people and injured dozens of others in El Paso, Texas.
The suspected gunman is believed to have traveled from Dallas to El Paso specifically to target Latinx people in a mass shooting that the FBI is investigating as a hate crime and an act of domestic terrorism.
Shortly before the shooting, the shooter published a 2,300-word manifesto on the website 8chan in which he explained his motivation for committing the shooting as stopping a "Hispanic invasion" of Texas, which he feared would turn the state into a "Democratic stronghold."
He further wrote that he was "simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion," adding that "it makes no sense to keep on letting millions of illegal or legal immigrants flood into the United States."
In the segment, Kilmeade and co-hosts Steve Doocy and Ainsley Earhardt denounced commentators who had said President Donald Trump's years of perpetuating that same kind of xenophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric are partly responsible for the shooting.
"What the president has during his two and a half years is a major problem at the border, which was not his doing. Unless you want to blame President Obama for the unaccompanied minors," Kilmeade said, referencing unaccompanied minors who try to enter the United States.
"When you have over 110,000 people coming a month, over a million last year, and then over a million this year, if you use the term an invasion, that is not anti-Hispanic. It's a fact," Kilmeade continued, adding, "if the Russians were coming through Alaska, through Canada, the president would be using the same language. But it's the fact it's happening at the border."
The Trump campaign has either directly invoked or legitimized similar anti-immigrant rhetoric on multiple occasions, including warning of "an invasion" across the Southern border in over 2,000 Facebook ads.
And when a member of the crowd at a Trump campaign rally in Panama City, Florida this past May yelled "shoot them!" when Trump wondered how to stop people from coming across, the president laughed and said, "only in the Panhandle can you get away with that stuff."
In remarks at the White House on Monday, Trump denounced white supremacy saying, "in one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America."
Despite Trump's condemnations, experts say that Trump's long history of anti-immigrant rhetoric helps normalize and legitimate such views.
Heidi Beirich, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, told INSIDER's Kat Tenbarge on Saturday that Trump's rhetoric "legitimizes fears of Latinos," adding, "the guys' manifesto in some ways embodied the same language we've heard on Trump's Twitter feed."
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