Michelle Malkin was born October 20, 1970,[1] inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, toPhilippine citizens Rafaela (née Perez), a teacher, and Apolo DeCastro Maglalang, who was then a physician-in-training.[1] Several months prior to Malkin's birth, her parents immigrated to the United States on an employer-sponsored visa.[1][7] After her father finished his medical training, the family moved toAbsecon, New Jersey.[1] She has described her parents asRonald ReaganRepublicans who were "not incredibly politically active".[1]
Malkin, aRoman Catholic,[1] attendedHoly Spirit High School, where she edited the school newspaper and aspired to become a concertpianist.[1] Following her graduation in 1988, she enrolled atOberlin College.[1] Malkin had planned to pursue abachelor's degree in music, but changed her major to English.[1] During her college years, she worked as a press inserter, tax preparation aide, and network news librarian.[8] At Oberlin, she wrote for a conservative student newspaper started by Jesse Malkin, who later became her husband.[1][9] Her first article for the paper heavily criticized Oberlin'saffirmative action program, and she said it received a "huge[ly] negative response" from other students on campus.[1] She graduated in 1992 and later described her alma mater as "radically left-wing".[10][11]
Since 1999, Malkin has written asyndicated column forCreators Syndicate.[13] Her column is published by outlets includingTownhall. Some publications which previously carried her column, such asThe Daily Wire andNational Review, stopped doing so around 2019 when she began to espouse more extreme views.[3][14] The white supremacist publicationAmerican Renaissance began publishing her column in 2020.[15]
On April 24, 2006, Malkin launched the conservative blogHot Air, where she remained CEO until she sold the website in 2010.[16][17] The site's staff at launch includedAllahpundit and Bryan Preston; Preston was later replaced byEd Morrissey on February 25, 2008.[16][18] In February 2010,Salem Communications boughtHot Air from Malkin.[17] In March 2012, Malkin founded the websiteTwitchy, aTwittercontent curation site. She sold Twitchy, also to Salem Communications, the following year.[19]
For years, Malkin was a frequent commentator forFox News and a regular guest host ofThe O'Reilly Factor.[3][20][21] In 2007, she announced that she would not return toThe O'Reilly Factor, alleging that Fox News had mishandled a dispute over derogatory statements made about her byGeraldo Rivera in aBoston Globe interview.[22][23] Malkin joinedConservative Review's online television network, CRTV, when it launched in 2016, to host the documentary-style showMichelle Malkin Investigates.[24][21] Malkin left CRTV under unclear circumstances when it merged withTheBlaze in December 2018.[25][26][27] Malkin later joined competitorNewsmax TV in May 2020, where she began to host the showSovereign Nation.[20][28]
In June 2004, Malkin launched a political blog, MichelleMalkin.com. A 2007 memo from theNational Republican Senatorial Committee described Malkin as one of the five "best-read national conservative bloggers".[48] In December 2008, Malkin's blog was the largest conservative blog,[49] and in 2011, the people search companyPeekYou reported that Malkin had the largest digital footprint of any political blogger.[50] In April 2020, Malkin moved her blog and its archives toThe Unz Review, afar-right website run by former publisher ofThe American Conservative,Ron Unz.[51][52] According to theAnti-Defamation League,The Unz Review is "a site that features numerouswhite supremacists andantisemites and is run by Ron Unz, who has written a number of antisemitic tracts."[4]
Malkin has also been a contributor to the far-right anti-immigration websiteVDARE, writing a weekly column since 2002.[53]
Jamil Hussein
In late 2006 and early 2007, Malkin was a leading voice among several right-wing bloggers who questioned both the credibility and the existence of Iraqi police captain Jamil Hussein, who had been used as a source by theAssociated Press in over 60 stories about the Iraq war.[54][55][56] The controversy began in November 2006 when the AP reported that six Iraqis had been burned alive as they left a mosque and that four mosques had been destroyed, citing Hussein as one of its sources. TheIraqi Ministry of the Interior and the United States military initially denied Hussein existed, leading Malkin and others to dispute the AP's reporting.
In January 2007 the AP reported that the Ministry had acknowledged Hussein's existence, and that authorities were seeking his arrest for having spoken to the press.[55][56][57] Malkin reported the Iraqi government's confirmation. According toThe Washington Post, Malkin also "expressed regret", though media scholar Arthur S. Hayes wrote in his 2008 bookPress Critics are the Fifth Estate that her post "contains no apology or words of regret from her".[58][56]
Malkin has spoken at theConservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). She was a featured speaker in 2019, and her anti-immigration speech, in which she condemned the "ghost" ofJohn McCain, drew controversy.[60] In 2020, Malkin spoke at theAmerica First Political Action Conference (AFPAC), an event organized by Nick Fuentes that was described byRolling Stone as the "right-wing extremist answer to CPAC".[3][61] She also received press credentials to attend CPAC 2020, but did not speak at the conference.[62] She spoke again at AFPAC 2021.[63]
Malkin has written aboutDaniel Holtzclaw, a former Oklahoma City Police Department patrol officer who was convicted in December 2015 of multiple counts of rape, sexual battery, forcible oral sodomy, and other sexual charges.[72] She has repeatedly argued that she believes Holtzclaw is innocent, saying that the forensic evidence backs his version of events, not the accusers' versions, and also that the investigators chose not to perform several tests she characterized as routine.[73][74] Malkin debuted her first and second episodes of CRTV.com'sDaniel in the Den on December 12, 2016, inEnid.[75] Malkin released her film about the case, entitledRailroaded: Surviving Wrongful Convictions in 2017.[76]
Immigration
Malkin supports stricter immigration laws in the United States. She was a featured speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2019, where she said levels of immigration into the United States amount to an "invasion" and "endanger our general welfare and the blessings of liberty".[66] She also condemned politicians, including the "ghost" of recently deceased SenatorJohn McCain, for failing to enact stricter immigration regulation.[77][78]
In a 2002 appearance onHannity & Colmes, Malkin called for militarization of the Canadian border, comparing Canada to conflict zones where United States troops were deployed and saying, "Canada bears a lot of responsibility for making us as vulnerable as we are to terrorism".[79]
In 2017, Malkin endorsed alt-right candidatePaul Nehlen in his ultimately unsuccessful primary challenge againstPaul Ryan forWisconsin's 1st congressional district, citing Nehlen's opposition to "elites" who support open borders as the reason for her endorsement.[14][70]
Muslims
Malkin has advocated for interning Muslims on national security grounds.[33]
Amanda Carpenter wrote in March 2020 that Malkin had begun to "link arms with the most vocal elements of thewhite nationalist movement".[3] In August 2020, the Anti-Defamation League wrote, "in the past year ... she has publicly and explicitly allied herself with white supremacists" and that she herself was "echoing" white supremacist views.[4] TheSouthern Poverty Law Center described her in January 2021 as a "former conservative-pundit-gone-white-nationalist-apologist".[80]
YAF dismissed Malkin in November 2019 after she gave a YAF-sponsored speech at UCLA titled "America First: the Torch Is Being Passed". In her speech, she praisedNick Fuentes as "one of theNew Right leaders", and also spoke supportively of theProud Boys,Laura Loomer, andSteve King.[3] In 2020, Malkin faced criticism for speaking at the America First Political Action Conference, which is hosted by white nationalist Nick Fuentes and also featured Patrick Casey, the founder of the neo-Nazi group Identity Evropa.[3][5] She has described herself as the "mommy" of theGroypers, a loose collection of white nationalists who follow Nick Fuentes.[81][82]
In 2020, Malkin appeared onRed Ice, awhite supremacist radio program, and cautioned listeners about changing demographics and "multicultural rot".[15]
In November 2021, Malkin delivered a speech at the annualAmerican Renaissance Conference, hosted by the white nationalistNew Century Foundation.[83][84] Malkin and her family were subsequently banned from usingAirbnb in reaction to her having appeared at the event.[85][86]
Accusations of antisemitism
According toBridge Initiative, aGeorgetown University research project onIslamophobia,[87] In 2019, Malkin joined far-right commentatorGavin McInnes for aFacebook Live event to promote her book, and agreed with him when he claimed that Soros was "not a Holocaust survivor" but a "Holocaust facilitator": Malkin has denied accusations of anti-semitism, saying that she is "the proud wife of a grandson of Ukrainian Jews who came to this country to escape pogroms [and is] a proud supporter of Israel, but more importantly, a proud supporter of American sovereignty."[88] At the 2020 America First Political Action Conference, Malkin said it was "not anti-semitic" to question "whatever the precise number of people is who perished in World War II."[6]
While in college at Oberlin, she began dating Jesse Malkin.[21] They married in 1993 and have two children.[13] Jesse Malkin worked as a healthcare consultant forRAND Corporation.[1] Jesse is a retired health economist, who now works on his wife's speaking engagements and helps her run her business.[21]
^Malkin, Michelle (January 3, 2010)."Michelle Malkin".In Depth (Interview). Interviewed by Peter Slen.C-SPAN.Archived from the original on April 14, 2019. RetrievedAugust 4, 2020.
^Joyner, James (February 25, 2008)."Captain's Quarters Closing".Outside the Beltway.Archived from the original on June 7, 2017. RetrievedMarch 7, 2021.
^"Trump retweets right-wing activist associated with Holocaust denier".Haaretz.Archived from the original on May 27, 2020. RetrievedMay 28, 2020.Malkin has been ostracized by mainstream conservatism after supporting a Holocaust denier earlier this year. She recently dubbed herself the "mommy" of the so-called groyper army – a movement of white nationalists vying to replace the alt-right.
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Booknotes interview with Malkin onInvasion, December 8, 2002,C-SPAN.jpg)
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