An entire chapter of bestselling author Ann Coulter’s latest book is dedicated to her claim that the New York Times has softened on U.S. immigration policy ever since the paper received the much-needed financial backing of a Mexican billionaire.
“Absolutely,” said the conservative agitator, whose latest book Adios, America! is an attempt to push Republicans to the right on immigration. “True, the New York Times is always anti-American but, no, look back at their coverage of illegal immigration in the ’90s and the difference [today] is astonishing,” she told the Washington Examiner media desk.
Coulter said the Times’ editorial board was once a proponent of tighter border controls, and the paper had covered the dramatic influx of illegal immigrants into the United States. But she said the Times has changed its tone ever since 2008, when Mexican telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim purchased more than 6 percent of the paper’s stock.
The deal came when rumors swirled that the Times was in danger of having to file for bankruptcy as a multi-million dollar loan repayment deadline approached.
Since then, Slim has purchased even more stock and is now the Times’ largest shareholder.
In her book, Coulter cites a 1997 Times editorial, wherein the paper said, “Fighting illegal immigration is a difficult and important job” but that “Congress should do it in a way that will deter illegal entry at the border.” She also cites a separate news article from 2004 that said “the nation’s southern border is under siege.”
A 2014 editorial, however, praised an executive action by President Obama that “starts with giving millions of [illegal] immigrants permission to stay, to work and to live without fear.”
(Another editorial in May of this year said the U.S. southern border “is as secure as it’s ever going to get.”)
“What a difference one thieving Mexican billionaire makes,” Coulter writes.
Slim is listed as the second richest person in the world by Forbes. He is the owner of a sprawling telecommunications company, which critics say functions as a monopoly, gouging customers in Mexico, especially if they’re receiving calls from friends and relatives in the United States. Mexican customers are charged a connection premium for those calls.
Coulter posits that because Slim benefits from telecommunication between the U.S. and Mexico, the Times is actively rooting for an increase in Mexicans coming to America.
“There’s no question but that the Times has become exceptionally shrill on immigration since Slim saved the company from bankruptcy,” Coulter writes.
But she confesses that’s merely a guess based on loose evidence.
“I’ll admit that this was looking at the tea leaves, how this helps the Times’ sugar daddy,” she told the Examiner. “If this were any other circumstance, if any rich person with a political interest buys a media outlet, it’s like, ‘Oh, we can’t trust this.’ Can you imagine what the reaction would be if the [conservative activist] Koch Brothers bought MSNBC?”
A spokeswoman for the Times did not return a request for comment.
The rest of Coulter’s book is an indictment of current U.S. immigration policy, which she says is turning the country “into a third world hellhole” by inviting in undereducated, non-Westernized foreigners.
Coulter will continue to promote her book in Washington, D.C., next week, but only with the few outlets who will interview her about it. She said she’s been “100 percent blacklisted” by mainstream media venues.
“None of the mainstream media will acknowledge I exist, even for the joy of calling me a racist,” she said, alluding to a conspiracy theory she has about the news industry. “They do not want Americans thinking about immigration and as long as they don’t write about it, they can keep americans from thinking about it.”
In Washington, Coulter will do more news interviews, attend a book launch party hosted by the right-leaning Breitbart News website, and deliver a speech next Wednesday at the National Press Club.
