Jeanine Pirro, who pushed the same white nationalist theory as the El Paso gunman, is speaking at the NRA’s “Women’s Leadership Forum”

Special Programs Guns & Public Safety

Written by Cydney Hargis

Published

The National Rifle Association recently announced that Fox News host Jeanine Pirro -- who has repeatedly pushed multiple conspiracy theories, including the same “great replacement” theory touted by the racist El Paso mass shooter -- will be speaking at its “Women’s Leadership Forum Luncheon” during the pro-gun group’s annual meeting in April. 

The NRA’s annual meeting is a multiday event beginning this year on April 16 in Nashville, Tennessee, and featuring floor exhibits of tactical gear, auctions, and hours of conservative, pro-gun speakers.The NRA has now announced Pirro as the special guest speaker for the meeting’s “Women’s Leadership Forum Luncheon & Auction” on April 17.   

The NRA’s choice to spotlight the Fox News host and Trump shill is also a decision to ignore -- or embrace -- Pirro’s alarmingly white nationalist statements. 

During an August 27 segment on Fox Business’ Varney & Co., Pirro told host Stuart Varney that Democrats have “gotten to the point where their remaking America is opening the border, which is allowing 90% of the heroin to come into this country.” She went on to say, “The sanctuary cities are allowing illegals — and I’m not talking about the chambermaid, I'm not talking about the guy who's mowing your lawn — illegals who are criminals to be in a city where American citizens are at risk.”

From the August 27 edition of Fox Business' Varney & Co.

JEANINE PIRRO: They've gotten to the point where their remaking America is opening the border, which is allowing 90% of the heroin to come into this country. The sanctuary cities are allowing illegals — and I’m not talking about the chambermaid, I'm not talking about the guy who’s mowing your lawn — illegals who are criminals to be in a city where American citizens are at risk.

They are now talking about someone giving birth to a child. What about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? No. If I’m a mother, I give birth to a full-term baby, Stuart, and that baby is born and born alive, she can give the thumbs-up or the thumbs-down like an emperor in the Roman Colosseum as to whether or not that baby lives. And that’s what Ralph Northam, that bozo from North Carolina who admitted he was in blackface, the governor, and then said it really wasn’t him. And he’s still in the governor’s mansion.

STUART VARNEY (HOST): He’s from Virginia. Virginia. Virginia.

PIRRO: Virginia. Virginia. I’m sorry.

VARNEY: Virginia. Careful how you use those words, judge.

PIRRO: Which words?

VARNEY: I'm not going to repeat it —

PIRRO: (Laughs)

VARNEY: But you know, soften it down a bit. You know what I mean?

PIRRO: Here's the bottom line: They are remaking this country. Millennials are learning things differently. They think socialism is good and capitalism is bad.

VARNEY: That's true.

Two days later, on August 29, Pirro told Fox Nation host Todd Starnes that Democrats’ “plot to remake America is to bring in the illegals, change the way the voting occurs in this country, give them licenses.” Pirro summed up that the plot is ultimately to “replace American citizens with illegals that will vote for the Democrats.”



The theory that immigrants are going to “replace” American citizens is a popular white nationalist trope that was explicitly cited by the shooter who killed 22 people in El Paso, Texas, less than a month before Pirro made her comments. In a document posted to the fringe website 8chan, the gunman wrote that his plan was to take revenge against “the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” to stop what he referred to as a “cultural and ethnic replacement,” and to “reclaim my country from destruction.” 

Pirro also gave oxygen to another baseless conspiracy theory: that the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, which resulted in 58 people killed and hundreds more injured, was “too vast for one guy,” saying, “I don’t buy it.”



Previous esteemed speakers at the NRA annual meeting’s Women’s Leadership Forum have included Fox News host and professional sexist Tucker Carlson, Fox News host and Trump shill Sean Hannity, and rampant misogynist and NRA board member Ted Nugent.