Trump Supporter Pat Buchanan Laments The State Of White America

Buchanan: A White America Is “Like The Country I Grew Up In, Which Was A Pretty Good Country”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

Donald Trump supporter Pat Buchanan expressed fear about the coming time when white Americans will be a minority on NPR’s Morning Edition. Buchanan was fired from MSNBC in 2012 for his racist and bigoted 2011 book Suicide of a Superpower, which followed his long history of racist remarks. During his book tour, Buchanan appeared on a white nationalist radio program – the same radio program the Trump campaign gave press credentials to during the GOP primary election. Trump has received enthusiastic support from white nationalist media and current and former Ku Klux Klan leaders during his presidential candidacy, and has declined to disavow that support.

Buchanan was on NPR to talk about his support of GOP presumptive nominee Trump’s foreign policy. From the May 5 edition of NPR’s Morning Edition: 

RACHEL MARTIN (HOST): A decade ago, you wrote in your book, State of Emergency, on the issue of immigration, speaking of the world changing and America changing, you wrote that “if we do not get control of our borders, by 2050, Americans of European descent will be a minority in the nation their ancestors created and built.” Do you still stand by that statement? And do you think ideas like that resonate?

PAT BUCHANAN: I would amend it. That period will be reached in 2042, now, or 2041. So we're about 25 years away from the fact where Americans of European descent will be a minority in the United States. 

MARTIN: Why do you see that as a problem?

BUCHANAN: Well, because I look at Europe and I look all over the world, and I see peoples everywhere at each others' throats over issues of ethnicity and identity. Again, the United States of America -- we had an enormous success, we had high immigration from 1890 to 1920. Then we had a timeout where all those folks from eastern and southern Europe were assimilated and Americanized. They learned English. I went to school with the sons and daughters of these folks, and we created a really united country where 97 percent of us spoke English in 1960. Now, in half the homes in California, people speak a language other than English in their own homes. Anybody that believes that a country can be maintained that has no ethnic core to it or no linguistic core to it, I believe is naive in the extreme. 

MARTIN: But you understand how that language feels very incendiary to many people?

BUCHANAN: I don't care how that language sits with people. My job is not to make people happy, it's to tell the truth as I see it. 

MARTIN: Explain to me what having a diverse cultural identity and a diversity of languages, how that undermines the American identity. I think it's important to try to understand why you think that this is such a threat. 

BUCHANAN: Well first, it seems that the American people tend to agree with us, does it not?

MARTIN: But, what you are laying out is an America that is white, or if not exclusively white. 

BUCHANAN: It's an America like the country I -- It's an America like the country I grew up in, which was a pretty good country. 

MARTIN: So how do you make that case in 2016?

BUCHANAN: Well, first off, the voters, apparently, in the Republican Party, have voted pretty conclusively for Donald Trump. And we're going to find out in the fall whether he has won it with the nation. Because, I think Hillary Clinton will raise the issue that she disagrees with him sharply on this.