On Thursday's CNN This Morning, host Audie Cornish gave a platform to left-wing actor and gay rights activist George Takei to promote his new "graphic memoir" It Rhymes With Takei [spoiler alert: gay]. The publisher calls it a "jaw-dropping new testament."
Cornish teed up Takei to equate Trump's deportation of illegal immigrants with FDR's internment of Japanese Americans during World War II (he and his family were interned). Takei said both were based on "lies" and "hysteria" and are "completely anti-American."
Of course, there is a vast difference that Cornish and Takei chose to ignore.
FDR interned Japanese AMERICAN CITIZENS. People who were either born here or were properly naturalized.
Trump is deporting people who are not only not citizens, but who violated American law by entering the country illegally. Many of the illegals being deported committed violent crimes. Does Takei want the rapists and murderers to stay? Cornish didn't ask.
Like a good Democrat, Takei also tried to let FDR off the hook for his internment decision. "Even great presidents can get swept up in the hysteria of the times."
In addition to honoring Takei as a "LEGEND" on screen, substitute co-host Erica Hill glorified Takei in introducing him, saying that just as his Sulu character in Star Trek embodied courage, resilience, and loyalty, "offscreen, he's lived those same values, from fighting for civil rights in the 60s to becoming an LGBTQ activist." In his book, Hill announced, "he shares the experiences that made him, and what they reveal about democracy today."
If Hill were introducing the parents who battled all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to opt their children out of classes promoting LGBTQ+-inclusive storybooks in public schools, do you think she would have praised their "courage and resilience?"
Would Hill imagine that leftist school officials refusing to let parents opt their grade-school children out of "lessons" from LGBTQ-pushing books "reveals" the state of democracy today?
Come to think of it, one of the books that blue counties might want to subject their students to could well be . . . It Rhymes With Takei!
Here's the transcript.
CNN This Morning
7/3/25
6:25 am EDTGEORGE TAKEI [in Star Trek clip] There's a sense of loyalty to the men and women you serve with. A sense of family.
ERICA HILL: Star Trek legend George Takei continuing to captivate audiences, of course, with his iconic role as Sulu, a character who embodies courage, resilience, and loyalty. Offscreen, he's lived those same values, from fighting for civil rights in the 60s to becoming an LGBTQ activist.
In his new book, "It Rhymes with Takei," he shares the experiences that made him, and what they reveal about democracy today. He is Audie's guest on The Assignment this week, reflecting on hope, the importance of taking a stand, and how his family's incarceration in a Japanese internment camp shaped his life.
TAKEI: We had very protective parents, and they were exemplars for me. And after the war, too, they, my father explained to me that the American Constitution is a great form of government. He used to quote to me Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: 'Ours is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.' He said those are noble words. That's what makes American democracy great.
But the weakness of American democracy is also in those words, because people are fallible human beings and they make mistakes. Even great presidents can get swept up in the hysteria of the times, because to Roosevelt, the West Coast of the United States was just like Pearl Harbor. It was open, unprotected, and vulnerable.
And here were these people that look exactly like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor. And so he panicked out of ignorance. And this is where teachers and librarians are the pillars of democracy. They can teach them this truth: that people, even great presidents, can be stampeded by hysteria. And that's what we're going through right now.
AUDIE CORNISH: You have a president who is now saying he's carrying out mass deportations because it's popular, or saying that he has popular support for going after undocumented migrants.
And it made me think, as I was reading your book, about the fact that a majority of Americans at the time, in the 40s, supported the removal of Japanese Americans. And so how does your experience of that inform your thinking of the way the president is saying now? That there's somehow, there are at there are at times popular support for these kinds of actions.
TAKEI: The important thing, and my father taught me this when I was a teenager. I had many, many after-dinner conversations. People, Americans need to speak out. We were a small minority and cowed really under the force, the huge tidal wave force against us. And the Japanese Americans, when you have rifles with bayonets pointed at you. And I, as a five-year-old, I saw a bayonet pointed at my father right at our front door. I was terrified. I'll never forget that.
But politicians lie, and people believe that lie because there's hysteria rampant at that time and in our time today, right now. And it's a situation that is completely anti-American. People must speak out.
