“We should rethink everything we have done since 1965.”
—Michelle Malkin, Red Ice
hen I first thought about featuring Michelle Malkin in my Royalty series of powerful and important conservative woman, I almost didn’t do it.
Michelle is a powerhouse in her own right in the America First movement. How could I possibly add to her already very public persona in a way that would do her justice?
As I wavered, I made the first step of visiting her own website to scan the requisite bio. It wasn’t until I read that she knows how to drive a stick shift and survived the era of cars without air conditioning that I changed my mind.
Wasn’t this, after all, my purpose in featuring these patriotic women in Royal Diadem—to humanize them in a media world that maligns or ignores them?
My goal in featuring strong conservative women in this series is not just to focus on these women’s impressive resumes and accomplishments, but to give back to them what the established media and the cancel culture has taken from them, their agency as free Americans and their personhood.
It is my desire that they receive the status and celebration they deserve as role models, as women and mothers, as cultural icons and yes—as the conservative warrior patriots they are.
So back to that mental picture I had in my head of Michelle tooling around in a white Toyota Tercel with no air conditioning and changing gears as she chased a story. It was enough to make me smile.
This little dynamo of the America First movement started out just as we all do—with a dream.
But truth tell, it was really her no-holds-barred, scathing speech to the Republican gatekeepers at CPAC 2019 that put her on the short list of Royals I wanted to feature.
Michelle’s recent and very public decision to stand up for young conservatives who are questioning what has become known as Conservative Inc., or Con Inc., and pushing back against the hijacked America First grassroots movement that elected President Trump, solidified her bona fides in my book.
Many of you know of Michelle from her hard-hitting reporting and her many appearances on Fox News shows like “The Sean Hannity Show” and “Fox & Friends,” as well as her eight books and her career as an investigative reporter, television host, syndicated columnist and speaker.
I initially feared that her long involvement with the Republican Party establishment and mainstream media had clipped her wings, or more important, forked her tongue.
I have witnessed too many conservatives acquiesce to the established Republican Party and to be honest, I thought she might be too mainstream. I was happily proven wrong.
At her last address at CPAC in 2019, Michelle attacked Conservative Inc. as she wrapped up her speech by saying, “But my most vehement objection is to this stage being used to lend legitimacy to the George Soros-funded organization Color of Change, which dedicated itself to censoring and sabotaging right-leaning groups for championing the free market and opposing radical Islam and exposing open borders.”
She received a standing ovation.
“If we cannot communicate freely in defense of our nation, if we cannot publish vital information on the threats we face, who is funding them, how we stop them, if we cannot gather in public places without fear, we will no longer be a sovereign nation.”—Michelle Malkin, The Gazette
Michelle’s youthful good looks belies the fact that her journalism career spans several decades. She began, as she likes to say, as a journalist “cub,” cutting her teeth at the Los Angeles Daily News in 1992 before moving to the Seattle Times in 1996.
Today, Michelle is a syndicated columnist who also published her own widely read conservative blog until this April and is the founder of both hotAir.com and twitchy.com before selling them both to Salem Communications, which tells me she is also a very savvy and successful entrepreneur.
In 2016, she joined Conservative Review as a senior editor, and in May 2018, her series, “Michelle Malkin Investigates” was one of three winners of the Manhattan Film Festival‘s Film Heals Award.
Michelle parted ways with CRTV in 2018 after it merged with Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.
Michelle’s recent public break from Conservative Inc. is significant for many reasons, chief of them because she herself has been considered a mouthpiece for the conservative establishment for the better part of several decades.
For those of us who have been carefully watching the hijacking of the America First movement, it was a jaw-dropping surprise to see a journalist and personality of her stature to bravely name the enemy and call them out for their lies and duplicity. And impressive.
America is at crossroads when it comes to unchecked immigration, which is turning our nation into a country we no longer recognize and threatens our Republic, and Michelle has been our very own modern-day Sybil Ludington in warning the public.
Sybil Ludington is an American patriot who has been called the female Paul Revere. Ludington rode through the New England counties of Putnam and Dutchess in 1777 in the dark of night and through the surrounding woods to warn the militia that British troops were burning Danbury, Connecticut.
Sybil was the daughter of Colonel Henry Ludington, a commander in the 7th Regiment of the Dutchess County Militia. After arriving in Connecticut on April 25, British General Tryon and his forces set about selectively burning down homes and stores in Danbury.
As they were destroying properties, historical accounts tell us that the British discovered several hundred cases of wine and rum. After imbibing more spirits than they ought, the men went on a tear, igniting additional fires and destroying the town.
A messenger was sent to Colonel Ludington with the news of the attack. At the time the Colonel received word of the invasion, his militia men were disbursed for the planting season.
Accounts vary on whether Sybil was asked by her father or volunteered to rally Patriot soldiers, but she set out on what has become her famous ride to alert the disbanded militia of the attack.
Sixteen-year-old Sybil traveled throughout the night 40 miles from her home, steering clear of British soldiers and Loyalists before returning home the next day.
Michelle, too, has been bravely riding through the swamp in Washington, D.C. in order to warn us all of the irreversible harm to our Republic from rampant illegal and legal immigration in her reports and in her books.—that is until she made her escape to Colorado in 2008 with her husband and family.
But rather than celebrate her as a patriot, the established media has attacked her for having the tenacity and gauche idea to believe that America is worth saving, dubbing her the Asian pit bull of the conservative right, a white nationalist (she has Filipino parents), an anti-Semite (though she is married to a Jew) and countless other disparaging names and labels.
But it isn’t just the established media that is now attacking her. The established right-wing media has circled the wagons as well.
The Young America’s Foundation, the nearly 60-year-old group for young conservative activists that sponsors campus events around the country, dropped her from its speakers’ bureau after she defended Nick Fuentes, a young and irreverent political commentator and podcaster, who the media has labeled an anti-Semitic white nationalist.
In typical Michelle fashion, she fired back: “More recently, when I defended conservative nationalist students who confronted establishment GOP representatives at campus events held by Turning Point USA and the Young America’s Foundation with serious questions about the detrimental consequences of mass migration, the Keepers of the Gate called on me to be deplatformed and cast out of the conservative ‘mainstream.’
“After delivering two speeches at Lock Haven University and UCLA on the important battle between grassroots America First activists and Big Business Open Borders Republicans, YAF issued a statement this weekend, asserting: ‘There is no room in mainstream conservatism or at YAF for holocaust deniers, white nationalists, street brawlers, or racists.
“Yes, my friends, they were talking about me,” said Michelle.
Like Sybil Ludington, Michelle is a dyed-in-the-wool patriot who loves her country and she has been the de facto leader of the America First movement.
As the child of Filipino immigrant parents, Michelle was taught from a young age what a privilege it was to live in America and she values, above all, our right to free speech.
So it is no surprise that she has publicly decried the deplatforming of Gavin McGinnis, Laura Loomer and David Horowitz’s Freedom Center for Immigration Studies.
Michelle has never lived in the Philippines and considers herself like any other American whose parents or ancestors came to the United States, as she should. She was born in Philadelphia but spent most of her childhood in New Jersey where she first pursued a career as a pianist.
Perhaps her assimilation into Jersey is where she perfected those Rebel raiser tendencies she is so famous for. On her twitter page, Michelle self-identifies as, “Little brown woman. Big mouth. Wife. Mom. Entrepreneur. Geek.”
Her refusal to disavow others in the America First movement is a valuable lesson to us all in standing up for what we believe in regardless of the cost.
In response to YAF’s statement, she ended her rebuttal with this little fiery gem: “The only thing I disavow is the hypocritical disavowal mob on both sides of the aisle. I cancel you.”
Boom! And just like that, Michelle showed us she has what so many public leaders and speakers on the right today lack—integrity.
Michelle hasn’t just made the connective link with big tech, big government, the Republican Party and the cancel culture, she owned them. And she isn’t alone. In a podcast with Cotto Gottfried, she says many of her fellow travelers have also been cancelled by Con Inc.
But in typical Michellism, she didn’t just fire off empty rounds at YAF after the skirmish was over. She went to work organizing the inaugural alternative kickoff to CPAC—America First Political Action Conference, or AFPAC.
So how in the hell did we get here? How did someone like Michelle get here?
Anyone with the talent to read political tea leaves knew the storm was brewing. It could be seen in who was not invited back to speak at CPAC 2020 and what alternative and conservative news media outlets were outright banned from reporting inside the building both in 2019 and 2020.
It could also be seen in the increased whining by Republicans about “tightening” labor markets and their continued push for increased HB-1 work visas during a booming economy. It could be seen in the dark money flowing into organizations such as Turning Point USA from the Koch Foundation. It could be seen in the controlled opposition that has taken over the movement. And it could certainly be seen in the young groyper movement.
But when asked by Gavin McInnes during an interview what she was most proud of, Michelle didn’t mention her investigative reports, her speaking gigs with YAF or her numerous books. She told him she was most proud of her children and her marriage.
At her appearance at the first 2020 AFPAC, she told the mostly young attendees, “Thank you. Thank you. Mommy’s in the house. When I said that Mom was proud of the boys the first time, it led to the immediate disavowal of me by the slimy crapweasels of Young America’s Foundation.”
She later said, “My role as a mother has informed the choices that I have made. And at some point, there will be a passing of the torch.”
Michelle, who has been married for 26 years to her college sweetheart, is the mother of two children, aged 16 and 19.
In an interview with Lana Lokteff for media outlet Red Ice (a disavowed media outlet by Con Inc.), Michelle talked about the support she has received from husband Jesse over the years, who she says not only supports all of her views but is her business partner as well.
Having lived in the D.C. metro area for 10 years, Michelle knew she didn’t want to raise her children near the swamp. “They didn’t believe what I believed in. Over the past six months, that has become crystal clear to me. My message over the years hasn’t changed, but it has evolved. The backlash over the last six months has certainly been instructive to me.”
Which is the segue I wanted to personally explore with Michelle. I know that just being a writer and an avid follower of politics, culture and policy, it is easy to get discouraged when the attacks from the left and the mainstream media are so numerous and relentless.
The sheer power—not the number—elites hold over our systems of academia, media and public office is enough to make one despair that we will ever see a turning point.
I reached out to Michelle through her website to ask her how she kept that fire in her belly burning that fuels her stamina and determination to keep fighting for America First, but not surprisingly, I did not receive a response before publication.
Michelle is extremely busy and in high demand and not one to let other people cancel her or put her in a box. She posted on her own website in April that she was joining The Unz Review.
“After 16 years and nearly 15,000 posts on my solo blog at MichelleMalkin.com, I am happy to call The Unz Review my new home and am deeply grateful to Ron Unz for welcoming me into the fold.”
In an era where young conservative women are looking for their own path to success, it is important that they know who they are and what they believe in.
In my article How to be a Woman of Substance, I tell young women to be consciously aware of the hundreds of images, messages and social cues they receive every day and decide from the outset who they want to be and to know who they are. They must be smart enough to tune out the cultural brainwashing and forge their own path.
So although I know Michelle is busy and more than likely my email got lost in transition, I wanted to ask her what she would tell young conservative women today who are putting career above marriage.
Michelle has been married since 1993, an impossible length of time in today’s culture. But it is also clear after watching dozens of video interviews of her, she values her marriage and her family above her patriotic passions.
In order to build a life that has purpose and meaning, young women must know what they believe in and be realistic enough to calibrate their professional goals with their personal goals. Building a life should be done with purpose and requires long-term thinking.
One thing Michelle said in one of her numerous interviews was that she taught her own children to manage their expectations. I think this is probably the most sage advice I have heard in some time.
Rather than telling your children they can be or do anything they want, we need as parents and mentors to instill in them the mindset of life as a long game.
There will always be trade offs and disappointments. If we know who we are and where we are headed, roadblocks and deadend streets won’t crush us as individuals.
Yes, we should encourage young people to follow their dreams, but we must also instill in them the stark realities of life. Not everyone will like you and not everyone will agree with your world view, particularly in today’s cancel culture climate.
As a woman in the public eye, Michelle certainly knows this. She hasn’t just been scrutinized for her political beliefs, she has been shot with poison arrows on her looks, her heritage and her husband.
The key to a successful life is finding balance. We are not just what we “do” but also who and what we serve and what we are willing to fight for.
From the outside, It does appear that Michelle has mastered the art of a balanced life. She is an avid hiker and finds her stress release in nature. Her Facebook page is filled with photos of her hiking with her family in Colorado.
Although Michelle has spent much of her professional life sounding the warning like Sybil Ludington, perhaps she’s a little closer to another historic patriot named Nancy Hart, whose account I have shamefully lifted from the Journal of the American Revolution because it, too, reminds me of Michelle:
Nancy Hart was a woman known to have a hot temper, fearless spirit and no hesitation to deliver revenge if she felt herself or any member of her family had been harmed.
The most well-known account of Nancy’s life begins when six British soldiers stopped at her cabin in search of a Whig leader, demanding information if he had stopped at her farm. Although the man they were tracking had been there, she denied seeing anyone.
Convinced that she was lying, one of the Tories shot and killed Hart’s prized gobbler, ordering her to cook the bird. Entering the cabin, they stacked their weapons in a corner and demanded something to drink. Hart obliged them by serving up wine.
As the soldiers drank the wine, Hart sent her daughter to the spring for a bucket of water. She secretly instructed her daughter to blow a conch shell, kept in a nearby stump, to alert the neighbors that Tories were in the cabin.
As Hart served her unwelcome visitors and passed between them and their weapons, she began to pass the muskets through an opening in the cabin wall to her daughter, who had slipped outside to the rear of the house.
When the soldiers noticed what was going on, they rushed to try and retrieve what weapons were left. She gave them one warning that she would shoot the next man that moved. Ignoring her warning, one man made the deadly mistake of approaching her. She held the rest off until her husband, Benjamin, and others arrived.
Benjamin Hart wanted to shoot the remaining hostages, but she insisted on hanging them.
In 1912 workmen grading a railroad near the site of the old Hart cabin unearthed a neat row of six skeletons that lay under nearly three feet of earth and were estimated to have been buried for at least a century.
Although Michelle isn’t going to hang anyone, she exhibits the same fiery spirit as Nancy Hart. And Conservative Inc. would do well to remember that she has no plans to sit back silently as they destroy the America First movement and the country she loves.
Opposition to immigration, or at least a moratorium, means you will be excluded from official culture. You will be canceled. And it is a sad day when RINOs not only hijack a movement, but pretend to be one of us. Michelle isn’t having any of it and neither am I.
I can’t wait for what AFPAC and Michelle are going to do next and I wish her the best of luck in her new endeavor with UNZ Review. #Reignwell
Author Note: Michelle has responded to me via twitter and I look forward to speaking with her soon to update this article.
