Pat Buchanan, White Supremacist, To Co-Star On PBS’s Relaunched McLaughlin Group
Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.
Pat Buchanan is a white supremacist who has complained that the United States is “committing suicide” because “Asian, African, and Latin American children” are replacing whites; said that undocumented immigrants are conducting a “third world invasion” of the country; defended Adolf Hitler as “an individual of great courage” who didn’t want to go to war; and argued that homosexuality should be “contained, segregated, controlled, and stigmatized.”
Maryland Public Television (MPT) will feature him in a public affairs program starting next month.
The public television station announced on August 12 that it will relaunch The McLaughlin Group in the Maryland and Washington, D.C., area in September. MPT also plans to expand the program nationally in January 2020 “through an agreement with American Public Television.” The program was briefly relaunched last year on WJLA, Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s D.C. station. The weekly program will feature host Tom Rogan and panelists Buchanan, Eleanor Clift, and Clarence Page, as well as guest panelists. Clift, Page, and Buchanan were panelists on the original McLaughlin Group, which was hosted by the late John McLaughlin.
Buchanan is a former aide to President Richard Nixon and a longtime media personality who worked for MSNBC and CNN. He also ran for president as a Republican and third party candidate.
In 2000, he won the Reform Party’s nomination. At the time, Donald Trump said of Buchanan: “He’s a Hitler lover. I guess he’s an anti-Semite. He doesn’t like the blacks. He doesn’t like the gays. It’s just incredible that anybody could embrace this guy.” In 2016, Buchanan said that “Trump has raised the very issues I raised in the early nineties.” Trump has flip-flopped on Buchanan, praising him for being “way ahead of your time!” and quoting him on immigration.
Media Matters asked MPT about Buchanan’s history of white supremacist and anti-LGBTQ comments. A spokesperson for the station responded with the following statement: “Public media provides a big tent for the expression of many points of view. The McLaughlin Group has been a long-time staple on public TV. It’s a program series viewers appreciate for its wide range of views and perspectives, as well as the lively debate on issues that takes place among its panelists.”
Buchanan is a white supremacist who has pushed virulently racist rhetoric.
Buchanan said that the United States is “committing suicide” by “not reproducing itself” while “Asian, African, and Latin American children come to inherit the estate.”
Buchanan has repeatedly referred to undocumented immigrants as invaders. His 2006 book is titled State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. He said on Fox News: “You’ve got a wholesale invasion, the greatest invasion in human history, coming across your southern border, changing the composition and character of your country.”
Buchanan declined to disavow the idea that people of color have inferior genes compared to white people when pressed by a radio host. And as a Nixon aide, The Boston Globe reported, Buchanan “suggested in a memo to President Nixon that efforts to integrate the U.S. might only result in ‘perpetual friction’ because blacks and the poor may be genetically inferior to middle-class whites.”
Buchanan has repeatedly defended Adolf Hitler, including claiming that he was “an individual of great courage” and that he didn’t want war. He also complained that the Supreme Court had too many Jewish justices after Eleana Kagan was nominated to the court.
Buchanan defended Bob Jones University’s ban on interracial dating (the prohibition was removed in 2000).
Buchanan was asked if he had a problem with California becoming “majority Hispanic, majority Latino.” He replied: “Yes, I do. Yes, I do. If their — because of the Mexican situation, Mexico has a claim on this country.” He also complained that immigration would turn the country into “a polyglot boarding house for the world, a tangle of minosquabbling rities.” He additionally warned against the country becoming “multiracial, multicultural, multiethnic,” explaining: “I prefer the kind — I grew up in a different country.”
Buchanan said that “in a way, both sides were right” during the Civil War.
Buchanan falsely claimed that “this has been a country built, basically, by white folks” and that only “white males” died at the battles at Gettysburg and Normandy.
Buchanan said that “America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. … We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?”
Buchanan also hates LGBTQ people. He has claimed that gay people are “sodomites” and said they are “literally hell-bent on satanism and suicide.” He falsely claimed that homosexuality is a “disorder” that can be handled with therapy (attempting to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity — also known as conversion therapy — is a discredited and harmful practice). And he said that in “a healthy society, [homosexuality] will be contained, segregated, controlled, and stigmatized.”
More on Pat Buchanan’s history, and what Maryland Public Television is bringing to television sets across the country, can be found here.
Update (8/15/19): McLaughlin Group host and conservative writer Tom Rogan responded to this post by tweeting: “Media Matters being insane as usual.”
