Max Boot: Under Fox And Trump, The GOP Has Transformed Into ‘A White Nationalist Party’
Over the past week, President Donald Trump and conservative commentators have made the caravan of Honduran migrants traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border a key issue ahead of the midterms, stoking fear and anger over illegal immigration while calling Democrats the party of “open borders.”
Discussing the pro-Trump media coverage of the caravan during an appearance on Reliable Sources, CNN analyst and ex-conservative Max Boot told host Brian Stelter that the GOP had taken a hard turn towards white nationalism while conservatism has been pushed out.
“It is demagoguery,” Boot noted when asked to describe the right-wing media coverage. “Also I believe racism and nativism pandering to the fears of Trump supporters and Fox News viewers that tend to be older white males who are alarmed about this supposed invasion of dark-skinned newcomers who are coming to America.”
Boot went on to note that the “threat is bogus” because border crossings have dropped dramatically and that these aren’t illegal immigrants but rather refugees seeking asylum.
“This is something I wrote in my book The Corrosion of Conservatism,” Boot noted. “It was a conservative party with a white nationalist fringe. And under the impact of Fox News and Donald Trump, it has transformed into, essentially, a white nationalist party with a conservative fringe!”
He pointed out that he worked in conservative media for decades and that the Republican Party used to have a pro-immigration stance before reiterating that Fox News and Trump came long and began pushing a “xenophobic agenda to mobilize their base for crass political purposes.”
Watch the clip above, via CNN.
