Laura Ingraham issued a quasi-walkback at the top of her show Thursday night following a deluge of criticism—and praise from some very ugly suspects—for her monologue Wednesday lamenting how "massive demographic changes" are destroying "the America we know and love." The Fox News host said characterizations of her screed as “white nationalist” were “distortions,” though she admitted some of the people characterizing it as such were...white nationalists.

That includes David Duke, who praised the soliloquy on Twitter as “one of the most important (truthful) monologues in the history of the MSM,” referring to the mainstream media. Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, is likely the “racist freak” Ingraham disavowed here:

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Ingraham did condemn white nationalists. But the idea last night’s diatribe was about “secure borders” and “the rule of law,” and “had nothing to do with race or ethnicity,” is absurd. What “demographic changes” was she referring to? Is America getting too young? Too old? Never mind that the whole thing was accompanied by video of Latino farm workers and people climbing border fences.

Ingraham went on to say she wants “merit-based immigration,” and that her concern lies with “the families who have suffered the tragic results of illegal immigration”—presumably referring, as the president so often does, to the American citizens killed by undocumented immigrants. Those incidents are rare, and undocumented immigrants are statistically less likely to be convicted of homicide than native citizens—still clinging to propaganda tactics there. Ingraham also thought of “the children” put in dangerous situations at the border, which is better than when she said the child detention centers were “summer camps,” and of border patrol agents—who really do have a tough job.

All this is better than doubling down, which is the now-standard move in our politics. But the cat is out of the bag. As historian Kevin Kruse pointed out in a deep-diving Twitter thread, Wednesday’s rhetoric bore strong echoes of American demographic-panic screeds of the 1910s and 1920s. Those led to severe restrictions on Southern and Eastern European immigration, an outright ban on immigration from Asia, and the rise of the Second Ku Klux Klan. If you have to refuse praise from David Duke, maybe it’s time to take a long, hard look at what you’re saying.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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