Ana Kasparian Credits Greg Abbott’s Busing Program For ‘Waking Her Up’ To Migrant Crisis

Ana Kasparian, a staunch progressive and co-host of The Young Turks, made headlines this weekend with a candid admission during an interview with conservative pundit Glenn Beck. In a surprising moment of self-reflection, Kasparian acknowledged that she had been misled by the mainstream media about the scale of the United States’ immigration crisis and credited Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott for her “awakening” on the issue.

Kasparian openly admitted to falling for the narrative perpetuated by many in the media that the immigration crisis was overstated or even fabricated. She explained that it wasn’t until Abbott’s controversial decision to send migrants to Democratic sanctuary cities that she fully realized the magnitude of the crisis.

Kasparian began by acknowledging her past misconceptions, saying, “I can definitely be honest about my own flaws and my own mistakes because I bought the mainstream media narrative that there wasn’t a migrant crisis.” Reflecting on her earlier stance, she admitted that her belief in the media’s narrative stemmed from a combination of trust and naivety.

“I believed it. I believed because, look, I was an idiot because, I mean, Who do you trust in today’s media landscape?” Kasparian continued, lamenting the lack of independent reporting and objectivity in recent years.

She then went on to criticize the mainstream media for what she perceives as an increasing bias in favor of the Democratic Party. “There’s a lot of liars out there. When it comes to mainstream media, the fact of the matter is they do play defense more and more for the Democratic Party,” Kasparian argued. She suggested that media outlets are now more interested in defending Democratic positions than providing the impartial reporting that she had once trusted.

For Kasparian, it wasn’t until Governor Abbott’s busing of migrants to major Democratic cities like Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., that she began to question the narrative she had accepted. Abbott’s decision to send buses full of migrants to these cities was designed to highlight the strain that unchecked immigration was putting on border states and to force a national conversation about immigration policy, as well as force left-wing cities to put the moral superiority they espoused to the test.

Kasparian’s awakening on immigration deepened as she witnessed the fallout from Abbott’s busing initiative firsthand. She cited scenes of migrants sleeping on floors in police departments in Chicago, unable to find adequate shelter. This stark image, coupled with local city council meetings, led her to reassess her previous stance on the issue.

The reality of overcrowded shelters and overwhelmed local governments pushed Kasparian to recognize the scale of the problem that had long been underreported in the mainstream media, once largely confined to border states like Texas and Arizona.

Describing how she had been aware of the political shifts in the country well before Election Day, Kasparian told Beck, “I knew what was coming. I totally knew it was coming. I knew that Cook County was going to swing. I think it’s about eight percentage points toward Republicans.” She went on to describe how the political dynamics in Los Angeles and other traditionally liberal areas were shifting, citing Trump’s success in flipping counties in California from blue to red.

While she remains a committed progressive, her willingness to question the dominant media narrative and admit her previous misconceptions about immigration underscores the growing frustration that many Americans — even those on the left — feel about the state of the nation’s borders and immigration policy.