Monday, May 14, 2018

Tomi Lahren Got Owned with a History Lesson About Her Immigrant Ancestors

Tomi Lahren has built her career, in no small part, by saying terrible shit about immigrants, from coining the term "rapeugees" to generalizing undocumented Americans as murderers. So perhaps it was inevitable that a genealogist would troll the conservative commentator with a look at her own origin—unearthing historical records suggesting Lahren's ancestors weren't exactly Mayflower demigods, as the Hill reported.

Over the weekend, the noted hip-hop villain popped up on Fox News to back up John Kelly's controversial claim that most undocumented immigrants coming into the US "don't integrate well" and "don't have skills."

"You don’t just come into this country with low skills, low education, not understanding the language, and come into our country because someone says it makes them feel nice," Lahren told Watters’ World host Jesse Watters on Saturday. "These people need to understand that it’s a privilege to be an American and it’s a privilege that you work toward—it’s not a right."

After hearing Lahren's tirade, writer and genealogist Jennifer Mendelsohn decided to do a little digging into Lahren's family tree. Turns out Lahren's great-great-grandfather didn't "work toward" the "privilege" of becoming a citizen quite the way she might have hoped. In fact, according to Mendelsohn's research, he was indicted (albeit ultimately acquitted) for forging his immigration papers in order to get US citizenship.

Lahren's complaint about immigrants "not understanding the language" came back to bite her, too. According to Mendelsohn's research, after 41 years in America, Lahren's great-grandmother still spoke German. After ten years here, her great-great-grandmother still spoke no English.

"This is not about playing gotcha," Mendelsohn wrote in a separate tweet. "But as long as people like Lahren continue to push a specious agenda that suggests today's immigrants are somehow wholly different from previous ones, I'll keep showing just how alike they really are."

Lahren did not immediately respond to Mendelsohn, but all blatant hypocrisy aside, she should just be happy she scored some genealogy results, free of charge—Ancestry.com costs a goddamn fortune.

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