When Left-wing CBS’ Dan Rather Warned of Americans Being “Replaced by Foreigners”

Dropping the mask, some leftists are admitting they want to replace many of their countrymen with ideologically compliant “immigrants.” We just heard this stated unabashedly by a Spanish politician last month.

There actually was a time, though, when left-wingers might at least mouth the belief that “replacement” is a bad thing. And the Media Research Center (MRC), a conservative watchdog group, has uncovered just such a media clip.

From 1995, it features famous newsman Dan Rather hosting a one-hour CBS 48 Hours episode titled, “Slamming the Door.” In fairness, Rather was talking only about American workers being replaced, as opposed to the larger demographic-warfare component.

Yet there’s more. The episode’s second part, “Importing Crime,” makes Americans’ safety its central focus. This lies in stark contrast to CBS’ behavior today, where the declining network has downplayed illegal-alien criminality.

But here’s what even conservative outlets generally don’t say about this story. It’s not just 30 years that have made the difference, but also partisanship. In 1995, Democratic president Bill Clinton was in power paying lip service to the perils of illegal migration.

Today, Republican president Donald Trump is in power actually doing something about it. It’s much like what pundit Ann Coulter said years ago about why the media are apoplectic when the GOP talks about God, but don’t mind it when the Democrats do.

It’s because, she said, they know the Democrats don’t mean it.

Sounding Rather Sane

The MRC is working on a report about the Rather clip. And NewsBusters (an MRC division) senior research analyst Bill D’Agostino released extensive X threads outlining his findings. As Fox News reported Saturday:

In a clip he shared of a preview for the special, Rather narrated over clips of people voicing their concerns about mass legal and illegal immigration, and summarized, “Tonight on ’48 Hours,’ anger over immigration, Americans fired and replaced by foreigners, schools and hospitals strained to the limit, criminal aliens on our streets. Should America slam the door?”

In the 48 Hours episode, Rather addressed the problems posed by both illegal and legal immigration. As to this, D’Agostino provides perspective. Per Fox again:

“When’s the last time you heard Dan Rather talk like this?” D’Agostino asked. The former CBS anchor is an outspoken progressive and was often accused of exhibiting liberal bias during his CBS tenure.

The clip also comes after a resurfaced 2010 clip of then-President Barack Obama defending deportations. The same year as the 1995 CBS broadcast, then-President Bill Clinton decried “the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country” during his State of the Union [SOTU] address.

It’s important realizing, however, that neither Clinton nor Obama truly had their heart in eliminating illegal migration. (I’ll address the true modern history of the Democrats and immigration later.)

Fox then continued:

After referring to America as a “melting pot,” Rather warned in the 1995 broadcast, “the melting pot may be boiling over.”

“In the next 48 hours, an estimated 6,000 immigrants — both legal and illegal — will arrive in this country, straining our ability to handle this flood of newcomers,” Rather said. “And now, this nation of immigrants faces a painful question: should immigration be slowed, or even stopped?”

The news host went on to say, “It’s a question more Americans are asking, as they view these new arrivals with concern, and even in some quarters, outrage.”

Below is a video, albeit with poor clarity, that includes the above.

As to the second segment, D’Agostino posted several “Importing Crime” clips (below) in a Monday X thread.

For those interested, the entire Monday X thread is here.

Revisionist History

Now, many conservatives will love pointing to Rather’s report, along with ’90s Democrats’ statements and Obama deporter-in-chief claims. It’s all part of a narrative purporting to illustrate how radical modern Democrats are (and they are radical). “Just 15 years ago,” the idea is, “many Democrats were on-board with Trump-like immigration policies.” Many conservatives espousing this today sincerely believe it, too.

Apropos to this, Bill Clinton did very convincingly speak against illegal migration in the aforementioned 1995 SOTU speech. And just last week, commentator Bill O’Reilly interviewed Obama administration secretary of homeland security Jeh Johnson. Obama’s “high deportation numbers” gave Johnson credibility, and O’Reilly wanted his expertise (video below). But there’s something Johnson didn’t tell good ol’ Bill.

So let’s set the record straight with some real history.

What Actually Happened

Beginning in the early-1980s at the latest, the Democrats discovered something. Not only did 85-90 percent of our immigrants come from the Third World and Asia, but 70-90 percent of this group would vote Democratic upon naturalization. This is when the Democrats realized that impeding any kind of (im)migration frustrated their voter-importation efforts. They thenceforth would sometimes preach enforcement of immigration law, but never would willingly practice it.

Evidence for this was the reality of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. It granted amnesty to three million illegals, and conservative President Ronald Reagan signed it — in exchange for congressional promises of immigration enforcement.

Those promises were never kept, thanks to immigrationist Democrats (and GOP Republicans). And the illegal-alien population only grew.

Fast-forward to ’95 and Clinton’s anti-illegal-migration rhetoric. Principle it was not. Rather, the GOP had captured both houses of Congress just months before for the first time in 40 years. Dubbed the “Republican Revolution,” it was a major political realignment involving a 54-seat swing in the House toward the GOP. Moreover, a chastened Clinton was facing re-election the very next year.

Thus did Clinton’s team devise a policy they’d call “triangulation,” where they’d position themselves between the Right and Left. The idea was to seem moderate and reasonable, but it was pretense.

Evidence for this was while Clinton got re-elected, the border didn’t get secured. Our illegal-alien population continued growing in the ’90s — by approximately 820 a day.

This continued into the 2000s, and this brings us to Obama and the big tamale.

That is, that he was the “deporter-in-chief.”

Beam Me Up, Scotty

If there’s anything that has made me feel I’m being gaslighted, it’s hearing this Obama myth from both sides. The reality?

The Obama administration classified “returns” (illegals intercepted at the border) as “removals” (i.e., “deportations”) more than any other previous administration. In fact, interior enforcement — deportations of illegals already in the U.S. — declined significantly under Obama.

In fairness, the Obama administration claimed it embraced the removal classification, a more formal procedure, so that the transgressors could be better deterred. This is a plausible explanation, too. Whatever the case, though, Obama is less the deporter-in-chief and more the distorter-in-chief.

(In fact, a 2015 allegation held that there was a secret Obama administration plan to use illegals as “seedlings.” The supposed goal: Develop a “country within a country” and gradually reshape U.S. demographics.)

The bottom line is that year after year, decade after decade, we’d hear politicians promising border security and immigration enforcement.

It never happened.

In fact, the problem so metastasized that a 2018 MIT study estimated our illegal-alien population at 22.1 million. And that was before the Joe Biden administration blew the border wide open.

That is, that’s the way it was until Trump 2.0, anyway. Now we have negative net migration for the first time in 50 years.

And that’s the difference, my friend, between talk and action.