What Is An American?

As a general rule, it’s worth paying attention whenever the big Soros-backed mouthpieces for the Democrat Party go out of their way to defend Republicans. It doesn’t happen very often. And it never happens by accident. If nothing else, Democrats are extremely precise and coordinated with their messaging. 

So I couldn’t help but notice when, earlier this week, the Left-wing outfit Media Matters (which is somehow still operational) decided to go all-in on defending Florida Republican congresswoman Maria Salazar. In case you missed it, earlier this week, we discussed Salazar’s new plan to award amnesty to tens of millions of illegal aliens living in the United States. Salazar doesn’t call the bill “amnesty,” but that’s exactly what it is. The point is to grant legal status to foreigners who have no right to be in this country, all of whom are criminals. And by her own admission, Salazar intends the legislation to enable a future “path to citizenship” for these foreign nationals and their families. 

Foreigners from places like Cuba, where Salazar’s parents were born, are understandably thrilled by this legislation. But Americans understand that, like so many other similar amnesty proposals from Washington in the past few decades, this is yet another attempt to undermine American sovereignty and facilitate the invasion of our country. When Maria Salazar stands up at the podium, speaking a foreign language as she lectures Americans about how “shameful” we are, the appropriate response is exactly what I said the other day: Maria Salazar should leave this country. She doesn’t believe the United States has borders, which means she doesn’t believe we’re a real country. She has open contempt for American citizens, as she works overtime on behalf of foreigners. So the most logical outcome would be for Maria Salazar to book a one-way ticket to Cuba, and leave the rest of us alone.

When I made this argument, the Soros lap dogs at Media Matters immediately leapt into action. Yes, they defended a Republican, because their allegiance is to the open-borders agenda, not to any particular political party. 

Here’s what they said: “Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh says Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar is ‘not American’ and should ‘go back to Cuba.’ She was born in Miami. … Rep. Salazar’s website notes that she ‘was born in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, the daughter of Cuban exiles.’ Therefore, Rep. Salazar is an American.”

It’s always the most unassuming, matter-of-fact statements from the Left that end up being the most revealing. Just this one paragraph from Media Matters is a remarkable window into how they see the world. “Salazar’s website says she was born in Miami; therefore, she is an American.” That’s how they think. It doesn’t matter whether Salazar is loyal to America. It doesn’t even matter if she sees herself as an American. All that matters is where she was born. Simply by virtue of her birth, we’re told, she’s an American.

WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show

But that’s not true. You can certainly make the case that Salazar is a legal citizen of America, under the Constitution of the United States, if you subscribe to the idea of birthright citizenship. That’s a legal classification, and it’s fairly well-defined at this point. But I wasn’t talking about citizenship, so it’s a moot point. I didn’t say that Salazar isn’t a citizen. I said she’s not an American. And that’s not a question that’s settled simply by legal documentation. If it was then you could — as Salazar ultimately wishes to do — wave your magic wand and grant legal citizenship to millions of non-English speaking foreigners, many of whom just got here about 10 seconds ago, and magically turn them all not just into legal citizens but also into Americans who are just as American as you or me. But you can’t do that.

The suggestion is that a guy from Guatemala who hopped off the boat last Tuesday, can’t speak a lick of English, doesn’t care about this country, doesn’t know anything about it, isn’t loyal to it, but is handed citizenship anyway, is somehow still as American as apple pie. And that is absurd. It’s just wrong. And we all know it.

In 1782, the French diplomat Jean de Crèvecoeur published his “Letters from an American Farmer.”

Wikipedia.com.

There were twelve letters in all. He wrote them as he sought to understand the meaning of the new American identity, after he married an American woman and settled down on a farm in New York. In fact, he explicitly asked the question, “What then is the American, this new man?” In the letters, he described Americans as, “descendants of Europeans” who could prosper if they were “honest, sober and industrious.” He wrote that Americans were a people characterized by their rejection of European hierarchies, and a strong belief in individual advancement.

What he didn’t write — because it would’ve been absurd — is that an American was merely nothing more than someone who managed to get a piece of paper announcing that he’s a citizen of the United States. Even less did he say that an American is anyone who happens to be living within the borders of the United States. Which is the definition that Salazar and her anti-American compatriots in congress seem to be going with.

More than a century later, after he served as president, Teddy Roosevelt declared that so-called “hyphenated Americans” — meaning Americans with dual loyalties — were not actual Americans at all. Here’s the New York Times’ article documenting Roosevelt’s remarks at the time:

Here’s the headline:

ROOSEVELT BARS THE HYPHENATED

No Room in This Country for Dual Nationality, He Tells Knights of Columbus.

TREASON TO VOTE AS SUCH

https://imgur.com/a/w324ylS

The article begins, “Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, speaking at the Columbus Day celebration at Carnegie Hall last night … gave full vent to his feelings about hyphenated Americanism and preparedness for war. … The colonel told of his convictions, scored as traitors those who were not whole-heartedly for their country first, last and all the time, and offered his suggestions for the American-ization of those who come to the United States as immigrants.”

“The foreign population, he said, must be an American population, and ‘Americanism’ was a matter of the spirit and of the soul. … ‘There is no place here for the hyphenated American, he said, ‘and the sooner he returns to the country of his allegiance, the better.'”

Roosevelt went on to state that it was important to secure “three elemental things: one, a common language; two, the increase in our social loyalty — citizenship absolutely undivided, a citizenship which acknowledges no flag except the flag of the United States, and which emphatically repudiates all duality of intention or national loyalty; and third, an intelligent and resolute effort for the removal of industrial and social unrest, an effort which shall aim equally at securing every man his rights and to make every man understand that unless he in good faith performs his duties, he is not entitled to any rights at all.”

It’s worth revisiting all of this language — from the founding of this country, and again from Teddy Roosevelt more than a century later — because it underscores a very fundamental and longstanding point: The “American” identity is not simply about a piece of paper, or what geographic place you were born in, or happen to be standing on at this moment. It’s about your loyalty to this country, your ability to speak our language and relate to us and our way of life, and your compatibility with our culture and our history and our society and our founding principles. If you lack compatibility, and if you’re disloyal, then you’re not an American at all. That’s why we had the “House Un-American Activities Committee.” If you’re not on our side, then you’re a traitor, and in the words of Roosevelt, you deserve no rights at all — and you certainly don’t deserve the courtesy of being called an American.

This isn’t really a controversial point, as much as Media Matters would like to pretend otherwise. Ironically, Salazar herself made this argument for me.

Watch this clip carefully:

Credit: YouTube.com/Office of Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar

Did you catch that? She said, “Our economy needs a reliable working force in areas where other Americans don’t participate!” In other words, according to Maria Salazar, illegal aliens are “other Americans.” They aren’t citizens, as she admits. But they still count as “Americans.” Therefore, by Maria Salazar’s own logic, the concept of “being an American” is indeed distinguishable from being a legal citizen. They’re not the same thing.

So what exactly does it mean to be an “American”? Maria Salazar has never answered that question. And you can see why. By any reasonable definition, very few of the foreign nationals that Salazar represents would qualify as American. Think of it this way. Imagine a scenario where someone comes here from an African country and joins an African conclave where they speak an African language and maintain their African culture while fighting for African interests. In this scenario, are they “American”? Would you really say, with a straight face, that a hypothetical “refugee” named Omar Mohammed Abdullah, who can’t speak a word of English, and who steals hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by scamming federal programs with his father’s fraudulent shell company, and who sends most of his money back to family members in Somalia, and who celebrates Somali independence day instead of July 4th, is really an “American”, just like you or me? It just doesn’t work. Intuitively, we know it’s a fraud.

Of course, this isn’t really a hypothetical. You can just take a look at Minnesota, as we’ve done a few times this week. Well over 100,000 Somalis live in Minnesota. They have not enriched the state in any way. They haven’t brought newfound prosperity, or major technological innovations, or anything like that. Instead, they have innovated in only one area, which is finding new ways to defraud the U.S. taxpayer.

In fact, it’s not just the Somalis in Minnesota who are doing this. It’s a nationwide problem. The other day, I received an email from someone identifying himself as a police officer near Columbus, Ohio. Here’s what he wrote.

Somalis have taken over most of the gangs in this area. It’s very hard to track them because they all have the same names and date of births. Mohamed Mohamed birthday 01/01/1995 or whatever year. I know of one case where a 4 yr old girl was shot in a drive by shooting into a house and their Somali parents said it was Allah’s will. And refuse to cooperate with police. It’s absolutely insane. Yes. They need to be deported. It needs to end.

Meanwhile in Maine — yes, Maine — a legislator named “Deqa Dhalac” just gave a televised interview in which she declared that her goal was to help “our country of Somalia,” before she quickly corrected herself. Watch:

Maine Representative Deqa Dhalac (D) says her goal is to help "our country of Somalia" pic.twitter.com/dpGS5QpNne

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 23, 2025

Credit: @EndWokeness

As Auron Macintyre pointed out, it feels almost intentionally degrading. These foreign scam artists can barely even speak our language, to the point that they accidentally admit they’re working on behalf of foreign interests. It’s all very overt. And by the way, this is typically how scam artists work. They very often brag about their heists, right out in the open, because they’re not very smart and they can’t believe they’re getting away with it. And more importantly, they know no one’s going to investigate them.

Here’s another apparent scam that Somalis are running. This is from a recent post from a Somali in Minnesota, reportedly. Watch:

Somali claims that the statistics out of Minnesota showing a high number of Somali single mothers are misleading — alleging that many of these women are actually married but falsely claim to be single in order to receive government benefits. pic.twitter.com/7xx1h4Zfuz

— I Meme Therefore I Am ???????? (@ImMeme0) July 22, 2025

Credit: @ImMeme0

Several residents in Minnesota have replied to this video to confirm that, indeed, this kind of thing is happening all the time. Thousands of Somalis are claiming to be single mothers, so that they can fraudulently obtain government benefits. And it’s not just limited to Somalis.

Here’s one representative post, for example.

This is ALL foreigners. I use to work at a hospital. Arabic women would come in, claim to be single. Get free Healthcare and anything else they could get because they put single on the paperwork. Then we would watch them walk out to their expensive cars because their husbands owned 3 corner stores and a gas station. These same stores are stocked using food stamps. They go into stores that are having deals like 1, 2 liter Pepsi for $1.50. They bring 10 family members to buy as much product as possible because stores have limits per person. They pay with food stamps then take the items to their stores and sell it.

Here’s another reply. This one’s from Jason Robertson, the Co-Founder of The American Tribune.

I’m from Minnesota and can confirm The system is set up so that single moms get more money than married families, so they stay single. In some cases they even do a religious ceremony without filing the paperwork to make themselves legally married. To be fair, this isn’t only the Somali community.

Democrats understand that importing all of these foreign scam artists is destroying the United States. But they’re fine with it, because all foreign nationals living in this country — even the illegal ones — count for redistricting. Meaning, they give Democrats more seats in Congress. One New York lawmaker, a very dumb woman named Yvette Clarke, was careless enough to admit this, publicly, the other day. Watch:

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY): "I need more migrants in my district, for redistricting purposes"

This is how you hijack democracy pic.twitter.com/hhQNioQoTO

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 22, 2025

Credit: @EndWokeness

Talk about saying the quiet part out loud. If there’s any redeeming quality these people have, it’s that they’re so stupid, they can’t help themselves. They’re compelled to admit everything they’re planning. When Leftists like Yvette Clarke and Maria Salazar tell you that illegal aliens are really “Americans,” this clip tells you why they’re saying that. They want to build a coalition of voters that will benefit them politically. They understand very well that none of them are really Americans — just like I wouldn’t be Japanese if I somehow parachuted into Tokyo tomorrow, filled out some documentation and gained legal status. That would be a grave error on behalf of Tokyo’s government — one which would never actually happen in real life. But it also wouldn’t make me as Japanese as someone who’s lived in the country his entire life, and who speaks the language and respects the culture, and has ancestral ties to the country and its history.

For most of this country’s history, that wouldn’t be a controversial point. But suddenly, we’re expected to believe that only a bigot — only a far-Right white supremacist — would dare to say that being an “American” actually means something. Only the most racist person imaginable would believe that Americans have a shared culture, a shared language, and a shared loyalty. That’s the message they’re trying to send. But at the risk of angering all of these very low-IQ and emotionally incontinent subversives, I’m not going to go along with it. No one should. “What is a woman” was once the big question of the day.

It’s a question that always had an obvious answer, even if the Left pretended otherwise. So perhaps we have a new question — one that’s also pretty simple, even if the Left claims to be totally vexed by it. And that question is simple: What is an American? Really — what is it? What does it mean to be an American? Ask your local representative that question. Think about it yourself. In the next few years, that question — as it was when Teddy Roosevelt delivered that speech to the Knights of Columbus — will prove to be very important. It will be the question that defines this country, and whether it survives. We should all be able to answer it — and to banish anyone who can’t answer it, as far away from this country as we possibly can.