Micah Loewinger: This is On The Media. I'm Micah Loewinger. Immigration consistently polls as one of the most important topics for voters. Well, some voters, according to a recent Gallup poll, immigration is the most polarizing issue of the last 25 years with 48% of Republicans saying it's the most important issue compared to just 8% of Democrats.

This probably has something to do with the coverage of immigration in conservative media, and recently right-wing pundits have begun to focus on one of the most dangerous parts of a migrant's journey north from South America. Here's Tucker Carlson.

Tucker Carlson: Last year, at least 520,000 migrants crossed it to come here. How did that happen? What is it? What is going on in the Darién Gap? In March, New York Times reporter Ken Bensinger reported a story from the Darién Gap in Panama, which was once thought to be too perilous to cross, but which now sees thousands of migrants make their way through every month.

A podcast we listen to regularly here at OTM is the daily news show What Next, hosted by our former WNYC colleague, Mary Harris, who now works at Slate. On a recent episode, Mary spoke to Ken Bensinger, about this new right-wing media obsession with the Darién Gap. Here's Mary.

Mary Harris: Ken says there is one man in particular who has made it his mission to get eyes on who is coming through this newly popular route on their way to the US.

Ken Bensinger: I really do point a lot of this to this one person named Michael Yon, who I talked to extensively. He in 2021 is at the January 6, event in Washington. His artwork became this insurrection this raid in the Capitol, but he's not going into the Capitol, though he is on the grounds that he's there documenting it. Then he told me he later was at Joe Biden's inauguration in protest. He told me that soon after the inauguration, he realized that immigration was going to be the big theme.

He had spent time at Eagle Pass in Texas and in El Paso and met some people there who were from Panama who said, "You got to come down to Panama and check this out." He, as early as February 2021, starts going down there to look around, and within a few months, he's decided that he needs more people to come and see it. More people who have a bigger cultural and media reach than he does to get out the message that the immigration invasion is now focused there. That's the focal point of the world.

Mary Harris: How many people at this point has he led through this region?

Ken Bensinger: He's a fascinating character to talk to, has tons of energy, and claims that he doesn't keep track of such things because people who keep track of the number of times they went to a place or the number of people they brought to a place are newbies and aren't legit. That legit people and people who've really been down in the trenches don't keep track of such minor details. I finally got him after multiple tries to say that it's been at least 60 people he estimates that he's brought down there.

Among them are congressmen, candidates for elected office, podcasters, photographers, lots of social media influencers, people who work for conservative newspapers, a lot of people who work for internet-based web shows on the same platform as Steve Bannon's show called Real America's Voice. He's brought a ton down there and it's gotten to the point where people in that world are covetous of an invitation from Michael Yon to get down there and check out the scene.

Mary Harris: You went down to watch what happened when a conservative influencer named Laura Loomer went down for her tour. She's only 30 years old. She's a right-wing provocateur. She's run for Congress in Florida. She's described herself as a "proud Islamophobe," though I believe she's distanced herself from that label recently but she's been out there before. What was she doing in Panama? Why did she want to go? Did this just become something you have to do if you are in this world?

Ken Bensinger: That's exactly what I wanted to find out. My primary beat is looking at media figures on the right, and the right-wing media environment. She's one of the people I look at and follow on social media and see what they're up to. She's been very close to the campaign of Donald Trump and went to the primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, essentially to boost Trump and more than anything to go after his opponents. To go after Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley in particular.

Laura Loomer: Hey, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Loomer Unleashed. I'm your host, Laura Loomer. On today's episode, we're going to talk about how Ron DeSantis is an enemy to the January 6, political prisoners.

Ken Bensinger: She's got a very unique style. She likes to ambush people. She calls it Loomering.

Mary Harris: She calls it Loomering?

Laura Loomer: Are you going to be endorsing President Trump when you drop out the night of the Iowa caucus, or hopefully, shortly after an absentee governor who changed the law in Florida so that you could run for president? Answer a question, Ron. I thought you would never back down. Never back down, Ron. Whatever--

Ken Bensinger: Yes. You get loomered when she jumps out from behind a pillar and fix a camera in your face. She told me she got a trademark or something with a government for the term Loomered. I just thought, well, I want to go see her in action. I wasn't able to go to Iowa, New Hampshire. I'm going to go to South Carolina where the next big primary is and watch her there.

I was gearing up to do that and then I was looking at her social media feed and she announces early in February that she decided not to go to the primary in South Carolina. That instead, she decided to accept an invitation from Michael Yon to go to Panama to see the Darién Gap.

Laura Loomer: I think that exposing this immigration issue will further help people understand why we need President Trump back in office as well, because this is just, they see the border, they see politicians going, and you see people swimming across the Rio Grande. I don't think a lot of people are aware of these Chinese communist encampments in the jungle in Panama, and these Hamas and Hezbollah outposts and all the narco traffic here--

Mary Harris: Laura Loomer was shooting video the whole time you were with her? You were watching her do that. Is that right?

Ken Bensinger: I'm sure there are moments down there where the camera wasn't rolling, but there were not many. Every time I saw her, someone was filming. In fact, when I was talking to her, we were sometimes walking around between places where there weren't necessarily migrants around, and the cameras were pointed right at us. I was on camera next to Laura the whole time, sometimes two cameras at once filming me talking to Laura.

Mary Harris: I want to talk about one video in particular because it really seemed to catch fire online. This is this video that Loomer took with a 20-year-old migrant named Ayub Ibrahim from Somalia. He had traveled to Turkey and Brazil and then to the Darién Gap on foot. What did Loomer want to know from him?

Ken Bensinger: The scene was, they're walking around this camp and there's a lot of Venezuelans. There are some Colombians, there are some Ecuadorians, and here and there are people from the rest of the world and sitting against a trailer and one person leaning up against a truck or a bunch of people who obviously look like they're not from South America. Turns out there are Somalian. There's a couple of Somalian women wearing, I think they're wearing hijabs. The whole crew, not just Laura Loomer, but the whole crew more or less fast walked over there and asked if anyone would talk.

Mary Harris: They were clearly casting for what they wanted to see, which is someone Muslim.

Ken Bensinger: That's right. This guy, Ayub, I think was trying to be very polite. I think he speaks pretty good English. There was maybe a bit of a pride in the fact that he speaks good English to be able to show it off, agreed to do this and all the cameras pointed him. The questions very quickly go towards American politics.

Laura Loomer: Ayub, you guys like Ilhan Omar?

Ayub Ibrahim: Yes.

Laura Loomer: Why?

Ayub: Because she's one of us. She's from Somalia.

Laura Loomer: She's one of you.

Ayub: Yes. She went there by immigration, by like refugee. Then she became a Congresswoman. I want to be like her. Going there as Arabic.

Laura Loomer: You want to be in politics? You want to go work and politics in America?

Ayub: Yes, or anything. For now, I don't have any choice.

Ken Bensinger: They're asking specific questions about Joe Biden and about Donald Trump and about immigration, and he's saying he doesn't follow American politics very well. That even during the Trump presidency, he was too young to even really pay attention, didn't know what was going on. They're pushing him and asking him over and over again, "Do you support Biden or Trump? Who's better for immigrants?"

Ayub: President Trump, by the time he was president, I was young. I didn't follow the politics.

Laura Loomer: Who do you think is better for illegal immigrants, Trump or Biden?

Ayub: Biden, of course. That's one of them.

Laura Loomer: You came because Joe Biden said our borders are open?

Ayub: Yes.

Ken Bensinger: That's the sort of got you thing they wanted him to say. You see this over and over. I saw it over and over with them, is trying to get migrants to the point of saying they like Biden better than Trump, but they think Biden is good for migrants.

Mary Harris: You were there when this interview was done, when it eventually was edited and uploaded, what was sent around seemed accurate to the conversation to you?

Ken Bensinger: Well, it was real footage, and it so happened that I recorded the conversation as well. There's three or four or five questions that Laura Loomer and others were asking at the tail end that don't end up on the version that's posted online. These are questions, for example, they're trying to get him to admit that the United Nations or the US government has secretly sent him money to help him pay for his voyage to the US. He denies that and says he didn't get any help from anybody. Then Laura Loomer asked him a bunch of questions about Islam.

I think trying to get him to admit that Islam thinks of women as second-class citizens or thinks of homosexuals as second-class citizens. He doesn't take the bait. He keeps denying that he thinks that. He believes that people can do what they want, and he doesn't believe that religion should dictate people's lives. Those answers didn't seem to be what this group is looking for because they're on the cutting room floor. You won't find them on the internet, at least not the internet that Laura Loomer is posting to.

Mary Harris: Yes. I think you said later after this interview was posted, Laura Loomer went on Infowars and talked about how people like Mr. Ibrahim were jihadists or people with jihadist tendencies. My understanding is that's not what you actually saw from him.

Ken Bensinger: That was not at all what I saw from him. If anything, he's telling the story of trying to get out of a country with a problem with violent religious fundamentalism. The story he told me, and even to some degree, what he told Laura Loomer was that that's why he left, was to get away from that. He took a huge personal and financial risk to do so. I made giant sacrifices to get there. The last thing he wanted to do was project that story.

I kept in touch with Ayub as he made his way further north. This is a person who was excited about the idea of starting a new life in America and not living a life of risk and fear. Certainly wasn't a religious fundamentalist on any level. He felt in conversations with me, very upset about the way the interview went. He felt that he was steered into places that he hadn't intended to go.

I remember he asked me, he sent me a message saying, "Did anyone post video from that interview?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Will you share it with me?" I did. He saw the video and he wrote me back and he says, "Oh my God, you know the truth. Can you please post the truth? Can you tell the world what that conversation was really about?" He seemed really upset.

Mary Harris: We'll be back after a quick break. You've talked about a few different characteristics that right-wing influencers seem to be looking for when they go on these trips to the Darién Gap. You've talked about how they're looking for men in particular, not women and children. You've talked about how they're looking for people who aren't necessarily coming from South American countries.

They're coming from China, Africa, Haiti, other places. You've talked about how it's important to them to talk politics, to talk about like, what do you want to do in the United States, and also who do you want to vote for, even though that's not really going to be something they can do for a while, if ever. Why are those three or four things so important for them to capture? How do you think focusing on those traits helps shape a narrative for these folks?

Ken Bensinger: I think the clearest answer to that is to look at what the goal probably is. I think the goal is to foment fear about immigration, about migration, about demographic change in the country, and to also tie that to the current political administration of the country. To tie that to the Biden administration and to the Democratic party, and to say that the current administration is responsible for something that you should all be scared of. To handcuff those two ideas together.

Mary Harris: Were people like Laura Loomer and Michael Yon transparent about that? When you asked like, "What's your goal here?" Were they like, "Oh, yes, to make people scared?"

Ken Bensinger: No, but they are. Laura, for example, is very transparent about the fact that she wants Donald Trump to win. She calls herself a journalist but totally has no problems whatsoever with also saying that she's an advocate for one particular candidate or a party. In this case, it's Donald Trump. More than anyone else I saw down there, she wore that on her sleeve. In every conversation, she tried to introduce the concept that Trump would be the answer.

Michael Yon didn't do that, but Michael Yon is also very openly against border policies. Michael Yon's more plugged into the global conspiracy-minded aspect of it. His take on this and that of several other people in his entourage is kind of like, well, the US government is only part of a big system that's pushing worldwide demographic change.

Michael Yon: The Chinese, what are they doing? Many are coming for this reason or that reason. I don't know what all they're coming for. They're clearly mostly military-aged males.

Male Speaker 1: When you say military-aged male, that makes me think that you believe they're coming here to invade in a fight. Is that what you're saying?

Michael Yon: I think it's pretty obvious, and I think if you come --

Ken Bensinger: Their targets are broader than just the Biden administration. Their targets are which I think they would characterize almost as like just a small piece of it or a tool of greater powers. The greater powers are things like the United Nations. He frequently talks about the World Economic Forum, which is the group that hosts the annual shindig in Davos where all the rich and powerful go. Then the Chinese government.

Mary Harris: Yes. Michael Yon is a bit of a puzzle to me, and I'm wondering what you thought of him after spending a good deal of time with him. Because it's clear he's made all these connections in the Panamanian government, you even talk about how people who are with him could go places in Panama that you, yourself as a Times journalist couldn't necessarily go because he just had the pull with the local officials to get his people in. To me, that just raises these questions of, if he's the main way that journalists "people" can see what's happening in this region, that just seems like a huge problem because he so clearly has an agenda.

Ken Bensinger: Right. He's a person who has an agenda. He's had an agenda for a long time. He's inserted himself into political hotspots for at least a decade, maybe longer, maybe 20 years, where this has become what he does in life. He's an ideologue and true believer and his true beliefs are often pretty far out there. He is very obsessed, I would say, with China and believes that China is doing many, many nefarious things all the time.

More recently, he's been active in the Netherlands where he's on the side of farmers who are protesting environmental regulations. He said that really what's going on is that China is creating an immigrant drive towards Europe to wipe out the population in Netherlands and to replace Netherlands voting population with Syrians and other people from war-torn parts of the world. He's got a consistent message to explain why all these things are happening.

Mary Harris: My listeners might know it as the great replacement theory, and it sounds like he has the great replacement theory about everywhere, Europe, United States, just the immigrants are coming and they're there to take your vote, your money, whatever.

Ken Bensinger: Yes. The global south is taking over the global north, and having him as the organizer of on the ground, getting people into this movement is going to tell you a lot about what the movement's going to say.

Mary Harris: I'm pretty clear after reading your reporting what people like Michael Yon and Laura Loomer are advocating against. Because they use really strong language to articulate that they're against a "invasion of migrants." What are these people advocating for?

Ken Bensinger: If there's a solution they can think of I think it boils down to a couple of things. One, they think that all the nonprofits that are humanitarian nonprofits like the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders. Also, all the UN international organizations should basically just close up shop in Central America and should get out of there completely and offer no services whatsoever to migrants.

Mary Harris: That seems like a disaster.

Ken Bensinger: Well, they argue that they are incentivizing migration, and Panama, you could argue, has responded. Panama might say it isn't a response, but Panama basically booted Doctors Without Borders out of Panama. Out of the Darién Gap region saying that they hadn't complied with their requirements for staying there. Now that group, which was the primary place to offer much-needed medical aid for migrants is no longer operating in Panama.

Mary Harris: I wonder if you left your trip feeling despairing about what you're up against as a journalist. There's only one story by you about these internet videos. You said Michael Yon's taken 60 people into the jungle to get his point of view out there. Do you worry the balance is really off here?

Ken Bensinger: Yes, I have to be careful, of course. My job is not to advocate for one side of the other, the immigration debate, and I'm not an immigration reporter. I do think my job is to try to get as close to the truth as possible and also to try to debunk or at least show different truths when things are not being presented in a way that's in good faith. It is frustrating because there's a lot of firepower out there pushing towards this narrative that I don't think reflects reality. Michael Yon tells me he's going to keep making trips. People like Laura Loomer say they may go back. They find it an important place to be, an important thing to be capturing on film, to show back to America. Loomer recently announced that she's going to make a documentary. She's trying to raise $100,000 to make a documentary based primarily on footage from her 10 days in Panama.

Mary Harris: She's going to call it The Great Replacement.

Ken Bensinger: Yes, that's right, the Great Replacement. It's basically underscoring the entire idea, this clearly false conspiracy theory that there's a plan to basically permanently install the Democratic Party in the US by bringing in immigrants from other countries who will illegally vote and vote for Democrats. The idea that these people are coming to the US to vote is absurd.

They're coming to the US to work and keep their fingers crossed that they can stay in a legal way and contribute to society and do the immigrant story. To do the immigrant dance that this country been doing for, well, forever, but certainly for the last several 100 years. This isn't to say that I don't think there isn't a serious problem out there. My colleagues at the New York Times have spent way more time than me in the Darién Gap and have documented the crisis that's going on there.

Have watched the human suffering, but also all the other toll it's taking on the region and the hemisphere, and how there is a real crisis there. The point is not to say that this isn't a problem. The point is to say that labeling every immigrant as some kind of tactical weapon pointed at the US is not helping at all. It makes the situation even worse.

Mary Harris: Ken, I'm grateful for your time. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Ken Bensinger: Oh, thanks for having me, Mary, and letting me go on about this. It's, to me, a really, really interesting and important topic.

Mary Harris: Ken Bensinger is a New York Times political reporter. He covers right-wing media and national campaigns.

Micah Loewinger: Thanks for listening to the midweek podcast. We have a really fun show for you this weekend. In the fallout of the completely bizarre ChatGPT, Scarlett Johansson scandal, I'm going to be diving into the world of tech reporting, and asking how should we be covering AI. How can we do it better? I'm excited about this one. See you Friday. I'm Micah Loewinger.

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