Ex-KKK Leader David Duke Endorsed Laura Ingraham’s ‘Truthful’ Anti-Immigration Monologue
Former Grand Wizard also deleted the tweet
Jon Levine | August 9, 2018 @ 10:49 AM
Last Updated: August 9, 2018 @ 10:56 AM
NBC/Getty Images
Former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke took to Twitter Wednesday evening to offer a ringing endorsement of Laura Ingraham and her much-discussed warning about how both legal and illegal immigration was creating “demographic changes” that “most of us don’t like.”
“One of the most important (truthful) monologues in the history of [mainstream media],” he said in a quote tweet along with a link to a video of the segment from Ingraham’s Fox News show.
He later deleted his remarks, though a screen shot of the moment was captured by the Daily Beast, which first reported the story.
“In some parts of the country, it does seem like the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don’t like,” said Ingraham.
“From Virginia to California, we see stark examples of how radically, in some ways, the country’s changed,” she added. “Much of this is related to both illegal and — in some cases — legal immigration that, of course, progressives love.”
Later in the monologue, Ingraham said she was not talking about any specific “race or ethnicity.”
Duke, a former Louisiana state representative and two-time presidential candidate, has long been one of the most polarizing figures in American politics.
He was present as the deadly white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Va., last year and also offered effusive praise to President Donald Trump, who as a candidate struggled to condemn him back in 2016.
Duke also appears as a character in Spike Lee’s new fact-based movie “BlacKkKlansman,” portrayed by Topher Grace. The movie follows a real-life case from the 1970s when an African American undercover detective infiltrated the Klan and duped both its members and the visiting Grand Wizard himself.
Fox News' Jesse Watters: His 10 Most Offensive Moments (Videos)
Shortly after O'Reilly was ousted from Fox News, Watters took his own vacation from the network after coming under fire for making a comment about First Daughter Ivanka Trump, which some interpreted as inappropriate sexual innuendo.
Watters' recurring segment on "The O'Reilly Factor" involved sending the host out to various events and locations across the country for man-on-the-street style interviews that mock various cultural subgroups in their own communities. In a 2016 segment, Watters went after Italian Americans at the Feast of San Gennaro festival.
One of Watters' most controversial segments came in the form of a 2016 venture into New York's Chinatown. In the heavily criticized piece, Watters turned his signature schtick on Chinese Americans, resulting in a blatantly racist segment that played on Asian stereotypes and openly mocked its subjects.
Watters' October 2016 venture to the Amish community in Pennsylvania was turned into one recurring punchline -- over the fact that the Amish don't vote or pay much attention to presidential politics. "Lucky you," he tells several people.
In 2007, O'Reilly sent Watters to ambush Bill Moyers in the street after the PBS host released a documentary criticizing the Bush administration for the Iraq War. Bill O'Reilly would later go on to call that segment a contributing factor in Moyers' decision to retire.
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
In 2015, Watters went to Penn Station to criticize the "rise of homelessness" in New York City, pointedly asking those sleeping at the station about their drug habits and what they did to make money on the streets.
On the anniversary of 9/11, Watters went to a convention for Muslim Americans to ask them about terrorism and Islamic radicals. When a woman criticized the media for linking terrorism to the Islamic religion, Watters and O'Reilly both balked at the suggestion that "Christian terrorism" could even exist.
In 2009, Amanda Terkel, then the managing editor of Think Progress, wrote a column in which she said she was "followed, harassed, and ambushed" by Watters while on vacation after she ran a column criticizing Bill O'Reilly for his comments toward rape survivors.
Watters was caught on video getting into a fight at the 2016 White House Correspondents' Dinner afterparty with The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim. It was later reported that Grim approached Watters with a camera asking him to apologize to Terkel for his behavior in 2009.
O'Reilly sent Watters to Philadelphia for a tone-deaf segment about racism in which he mocked the Black Lives Matter movement, criticized political correctness and generally failed to elevate the conversation surrounding race relations in America.
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Shortly after O'Reilly was ousted from Fox News, Watters took his own vacation from the network after coming under fire for making a comment about First Daughter Ivanka Trump, which some interpreted as inappropriate sexual innuendo.