What has happened to Dan Abrams? The once-responsible MSNBC executive uses Media Matters to lie about John Gibson.

How embarrassed is Dan Abrams over the racist comments of Don Imus? Enough that he resorts to using the tu quoque fallacy and turns the argument into an attack on Fox News, specifically John Gibson. According to Abrams sitting in tonight for Joe Scarborough, nobody on Fox should criticize Imus because it's part of their "strategy" to attack MSNBC. (Never mind that just Keith Olbermann's attacks on Bill O'Reilly alone number over 175.) So Fox doesn't have "clean hands".

But that bit of sophistry wasn't enough, so Abrams turned to slander. Referring to John Gibson he claimed:

Last year one of its hosts clearly encouraged more white people to have babies after reporting about the increase of minority children in this country.

He then brought on Paul Waldman from Media Matters to corroborate his lie:

John Gibson, on Fox News, said, implored white people to make more babies to prevent this country from becoming majority Latino.

If this sounds familiar, that's because it was just used by the moveon crowd, only they twisted it around to claim Gibson wanted to prevent the country from being majority black. We decimated this falsehood at the time, and you can read our detailed exposition. But here, in a nutshell, is what Abrams and Media Matters don't want you to know--the truth:

GIBSON: First, a story Wednesday that half the kids under 5 years old in this country are minorities. By far, the greatest number are Hispanic.... Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic. Why is that? Hispanics are having more kids and others, notably the ones Hispanics call gabachos--white people--are having fewer. Now in this country, European ancestry people--white people--are having kids at a rate that sustains the population, even grows it a bit.
That compares to Europe where the birthrate is in the negative zone. They're not having enough babies to sustain the population. Consequently, they are inviting in more and more immigrants every year to take care of things, and those immigrants are having way more babies that the native population.

GIBSON: Vladimir Putin is so concerned about the declining--no imploding--population of Russia he is paying couples to have babies.... This is not a good trend for Russia, and it won't be here either if it should happen.
To put it bluntly: We need more babies. Forget that zero population growth stuff of my poor, misled generation. Why is this important? Because civilizations need populations to survive.
So far we're doing our part here in America, but Hispanics can't carry the whole load. The rest of you: Get busy. Make babies.
Or put another way, a slogan for our times: Procreation not recreation.

John Gibson did not "implore white people" to make more babies. He was not trying to "prevent" a Latino majority. He was praising the Latinos for procreating, and asking everyone else--not just "white people"--to do the same. It was not about ethnicity. It was about population.

Dan Abrams and Media Matters are liars.