Mike Johnson just parroted 'great replacement theory' on Fox News: analyst

House Speaker Mike Johnson's comments to Fox News this week resemble a racist conspiracy theory that certain groups of people — particularly white people in Europe and North America — are being intentionally replaced by immigrants and people of different ethnic backgrounds.

That's according to Philip Bump, an analyst at The Washington Post who dived into the Louisiana Republican's response to Fox News on Wednesday night about his reaction to President Joe Biden's new executive order on immigration.

“This half-measure executive order he just did actually exacerbates the problem,” he told host Neil Cavuto. "He's allowing thousands of people over the border every day, before they just begin to enforce existing federal immigration law. It makes no sense. And everyone wants to know around the country, why would they do that? Because they want to turn these people into voters. That’s the only thing, the only rational explanation for what they have done.”

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Bump rebuked Johnson's comments and said they were "just short of 'great replacement theory.'"

"The unfounded theory holds that there’s a secret plot to reshape American society by intentionally encouraging immigrants to enter the country," Bump wrote.

Johnson’s contention, Bump said, "mirrors his embrace of legislation aimed at curtailing already illegal, rare occurrences of voting by noncitizens," and means the House speaker endorses a "historical aberrant view of immigration, one that’s at a remarkable distance from the once-common idea that immigration is beneficial and a mark of U.S. exceptionalism."

Hostility toward social and cultural change is a "hallmark" of the GOP, Bump said, particularly among Trump supporters.

The Republican Party and their supporters are no strangers to the theory, which began on the fringes but has gradually become more mainstream in recent years, being repeated by prominent politicians and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who faced swift criticism after suggesting in 2021 the Democratic Party had a long-term goal to expand its voter base to consist of "more obedient voters from the Third World" in an effort to advance its agenda.

That same year, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania repeated the claim at a House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting, saying “native-born” Americans were purposely being replaced by immigrants to change the country's culture. Perry, who was named this week to the House Intelligence Committee, repeated the conspiracy theory earlier this year.

"When [Jamie] Raskin, when my colleague from Maryland talks about 'White Replacement Theory' — 'Replacement Theory' is real," Perry said.

"They added 'white' to it to stop everybody from talking about it," Perry said, without elaborating on who he was referring to.

“For many Americans, what seems to be happening or what they believe right now is happening is what appears to them is we’re replacing national-born American — native-born Americans to permanently transform the landscape of this very nation,” said Perry in reference to the number of people trying to enter the country at the United States’ southern border.

And in 2022, GOP congressional candidate Neil Robinson Kumar of Arkansas said he ran to combat "the Great Replacement," which he called the "most pressing issue" facing his constituents and the nation.

"Millions of illegal aliens are pouring across our wide-open Southern Border, with hundreds of thousands of new arrivals every month," he said.

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