As mass deportation intensifies, right-wing media expand their aim to include American citizens
MAGA volk: Right-wing media personalities are expanding their hostility toward undocumented immigrants and now are targeting naturalized and native-born citizens in an assault on American identity
Written by Jason Campbell
Research contributions from John Whitehouse
Published 08/25/25 11:50 AM EDT
Since its inception, the MAGA movement has focused energy on trying to purge the United States of people who do not have legal status in the country. The Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts accelerated this summer after passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, alongside the opening of new migrant detention centers. Now, MAGA media are extending that hostility toward immigrants to take aim at naturalized and native-born citizens in an assault on American identity itself.
This weekend, MAGA personality Jack Posobiec shared a meme asking Americans what kind of “stock” they are, and suggested that new citizens are somehow less “American” than others. Lest anyone doubt his intent, on Monday morning, he shared it again. (“Foundation stock” is a term used for animal breeding, for what it’s worth.)
The notion of certain Americans being less “American” has escalated in right-wing media in recent months.
In July, The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh launched an attack on Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) for proposing legislation, The Dignity Act, to allow certain undocumented immigrants to apply for legal status. During his tirade, Walsh said Salazar is “not American” and should “go back to Cuba” — a startling claim given that Salazar is an American citizen who was born in the United States.
In a follow-up rant, Walsh doubled down on his attacks and argued that citizenship does not give a person equal claim to American identity “as someone who's lived in the country their entire life, who speaks the language, respects the culture, has ancestral ties to the country and its history."
Salazar is not the first U.S. citizen to have their national identity come under assault in recent months. After winning the Democratic mayoral primary in New York City, Zohran Mamdani was attacked across the right-wing media ecosystem. Many of these smears focused on his Islamic faith or his political views, but some targeted his status as a naturalized citizen. Right-wing pundit Jack Posobiec said Mamdani is “not an American,” and the Article III Project’s Will Chamberlain wrote: “Denaturalize and deport Zohran Mamdani."
Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh has received similar attacks. Posobiec also claimed Fateh is “not an American,” while Walsh acknowledged that Fateh “was born in America, but he’s not actually an American."
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has long been a target of right-wing media. In April, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said Omar has not “assimilated to America” and is instead trying “to infect the United States of America with her radical, anti-American Mohammadism, amongst her extreme leftist beliefs."
On Newsmax, Mercedes Schlapp attacked another common target for right-wing media, saying “I’m thinking that maybe they should deport Rashida Tlaib."
To put a fine point on the issue, there is a demographic thread that unites Salazar, Mamdani, Fateh, Omar, and Tlaib — they are all non-white citizens. As Kirk’s executive producer and co-host, Andrew Kolvet, declared last month: “Just by stats, by history, yeah, [being] white probably helps be an American.” He then called for an “immigration moratorium” in the United States.
While hostility to undocumented immigrants also characterized President Donald Trump’s first administration, the current racially focused rhetoric on the right has been building for years.
In 2022, an 18-year-old gunman killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York. He left behind a 180-page racist manifesto filled with hateful rants about the “great replacement” conspiracy theory — once relegated to the fringe of online discourse — which argues that white people in the U.S. are being intentionally replaced with non-white foreigners. Three years after the Buffalo attack, claiming “the great replacement is real” is no longer a fringe idea; it’s a bedrock talking point in right-wing media.
This mentality is linked with growing suggestions that the United States is not “a nation of immigrants,” as Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy argued in July, but “a nation of settlers.” Some personalities are even attacking the Statue of Liberty; Walsh claimed the famous poem at its base, which offered haven to “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” “in no way represents any kind of core American value."
MAGA attacks on Americans’ identities also extend to religion. Kirk said that Islam is “not compatible with Western civilization” and “fundamentally is at odds with the fiber and the DNA of our existence, of our birthright” under the U.S. Constitution, which “cannot coexist with Islam.” Muslims are dangerous, according to Kirk, plotting to “conquer” the United States “whether by sword” or “having a lot of babies.” And this view seemingly extends into the Trump administration, where Christian nationalist figures fill Trump’s religious liberty commission.
In the MAGA consciousness, America is not a melting pot but a homogenous identity, a MAGA “Volk,” and anyone else’s protections of legal immigration status or even citizenship can be removed at any point. This is why we see growing calls from the right for curtailing dual citizenship and demands to end all immigration into the United States. Kirk recently said that “America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that."
It’s not only immigrants and Muslim Americans who right-wing media are seeking to target. For MAGA, Democrats and the left are also incompatible with American identity. Kirk claimed that Democrats “don’t love the United States of America. They are at war with the American republic. There is no appealing to their higher angels. … There’s only the lower demons of the Democrat Party.” Fox’s Jesse Watters accused Democrats of “straight-up treason” over immigration policy. Laura Ingraham suggested Democrats opposing the Trump administration are trying to start an “armed rebellion,” and Newsmax’s Chris Plante asked, “At what point are they to be declared a terrorist organization?"
Manufacturing the friend-enemy distinction through political rhetoric and then enforcing that divide throughout society is an integral aspect of fascism: Those loyal to the regime are considered friends while those opposed are cast into the outer darkness, treated as enemies of the state, traitors, or parasites on the body politic. By calling into question the citizenship of immigrants, Muslims, and anyone who opposes the MAGA ideology, the right’s assault on American identity under the Trump administration is shaping a chilling new reality for our country.
And the MAGA assault on American identity is not just rhetorical — the angry rants on podcasts and social media platforms today could become White House policy tomorrow. Trump has mused about deporting U.S. citizens found guilty of a crime. Right-wing media have likewise campaigned to denaturalize and deport citizens.
“Not everyone in this country is an American,” said Walsh, “even the ones with legal status."
We’re seeing the end result of that mentality now: MAGA media want the Trump administration to target those with legal status next. Charlie Kirk made that clear, connecting all of these threads when he said, “If you're not an American, that's fine. Go back to your place of origin. … Just go back. Hasta la vista. But we have a culture to protect. We have a country to love. No man can serve two masters. Christ our Lord said that. We have a heritage to preserve." ChristopherBlackwell
Sunday night I witnessed another ICE detainment, in a Walmart.
I stopped after league for breakfast groceries. n the store were numerous heavily vested people walking around. I pushed my cart through a group blocking an aisle, and one remarked about what I was buying. Real professional.
After checkout, the normal exit I used was closed and blocked off. In between the double doors were two more heavily vested people. I was ordered to use the other exit; this one was closed.
I had to walk all the way across the store to the only exit available. Outside in front was a white van, a white truck, and white sedan all with emergency lights flashing. Somebody had just been put in the van. When I reached my car, the van and truck left. I watched. Soon the sedan left.
Afterward, I described what I saw to a friend who said it was prolly a shoplifter.
If it was a shoplifter, why didn't they call the city police like usual? What were all the heavily vested people doing in the store? Why were the emergency vehicles parked out front unmarked and uniform style and color? Why were all the exits closed except for the one way down in the garden section? There was a vested person there, and another at the fence exit.
I believe we can depend on this worsening every day somewhere in America.
If the felon's administration is sure to lose in court, they don't seem to care. They proved they will act faster than courts can respond, and the contempt Courts have remains a warning unacted upon.
Like climate change, the alarm is more in the speed with which this is happening, than weight of consequences when fully developed.
H told me his trumpy friend in North Carolina says the felon is the greatest president of all time. He is stronger in his conviction now than ever. If that's MAGA, and I believe it is, reports on MAGA anger at the felon may be an incorrect picture of MAGA at this time. You can look away from a painting, but you can't listen away from a symphony
The Trumpreich
Posted by greenman on August 29, 2025, 3:05 pm, in reply to ""It" has begun" Valued Poster
It will have to be fought.-greenman
About the projected 1000 new prisons, for 500,000 prisoners
Posted by Christopher Blackwell on August 29, 2025, 3:01 pm, in reply to ""It" has begun"
Each built for five thousand prisoners, total 500,000. These are private prisons. In contracts with states, the states are required to convict enough people to keep the prisons 85% full, or the prison company can sue the state.
I wonder what the new prison contracts will be. /also after the alleged illegal aliens, who will those prisons be used for? Remember, profits are sacred.
on August 29, 2025, 1:53 pm
