May CNN's ears hear the words of its mouth.
CNN This Morning's panel discussion of an ICE agent's fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis began with CNN senior White House reporter Betsy Klein calling on President Trump to "tone down his rhetoric."
That was promptly followed by CNN commentator and former Biden comms person Meghan Hays claiming, "what happened here was murder." Because nothing tones down the rhetoric like accusing someone of murder in the earliest moments of an investigation.
Later, host Audie Cornish brought on CNN commentator Garrett Graff, and teed him up to comment on ICE's recruitment ads. She suggestively said that "the tone and tenor of the ads and memes themselves, I think, are kind of revealing."
Graff proceeded to turn the rhetoric dial up to 11:
"We've seen some very strong white supremacist imagery, akin to what you saw in Nazi Germany in recruitment ads from that era."
They put some ads on screen and nothing looked racist, but apparently old Uncle Sam images are "embarrassing for the country." When Cornish invited Graff to explain his statement, he continued:
"This sort of 'defend the homeland' slogan that they've used with depicting sort of an idealized white suburban lifestyle that somehow is being overrun by brown and black hordes of criminal migrants."
But Googling "ICE recruitment ads" yields images that, far from echoing Nazi Germany, are, as you see, very similar to US Army recruitment ads during WWII.
And if ICE's message focuses on America being overrun by "brown and black hordes," how does Graff explain that DHS internal statistics show minorities make up about 48 percent of its employees. The Los Angeles Times reported 2016 data showed more than half of the Border Patrol labor force was Latino.
Graff's latest Nazi analogy is unsurprising. He's the same guy we recently caught analogizing ICE to the Gestapo.
Note: Meghan Hays' rash accusation of "murder" brings to mind Joe Scarborough having called George Zimmerman a "murderer" in the shooting of Trayvon Martin before Zimmerman had even been arrested. When a jury ultimately found Zimmerman not guilty on all charges, finding he acted in self-defense, Scarborough refused to apologize on the risible ground that he was not a politician.
Here's the transcript.
CNN This Morning
1/8/26
6:15 am ETBETSY KLEIN: In these sort of sensitive moments, people look to their leadership for that message. They want their leaders to take down the temperature. President Trump is not doing that. He immediately politicized this. He called her radical left, a professional agitator, as you saw. But he is also standing squarely behind ICE, behind Secretary of Homeland Security Kristine Noem.
And the why of why they are there, they are enacting President Trump's mass deportation agenda. So there is some hope that the president and is going to tone down his rhetoric, even inside the White House. He has no public events on his schedule today. We'll have to see if that holds.
AUDIE CORNISH: It's interesting, because we heard that clip from Governor Walz, from the mayor, very blunt at this point. Does it help or hurt, Meghan?
MEGHAN HAYS: I don't think it hurts. I think that they need to take control of their city. And what happened here was murder. They are not trained to shoot as a moving vehicle. That is not in their training.
. . .
CORNISH: Can you talk about the recruitment drive? We've been seeing all kinds of posters for this at events. ICE has mapped out a basically $100 million wartime recruitment. And that's even involved geo-targeted ads to specific places. But the tone and tenor of the ads and memes themselves, I think are kind of revealing. What do you see?
GARRETT GRAFF: Yeah, we've seen some very strong white supremacist imagery, you know, akin to what you saw in Nazi Germany in recruitment ads from that era.
CORNISH: What do you mean by that?
GRAFF: Well, we've seen this sort of defend the homeland slogan that they've used with depicting sort of an idealized white suburban lifestyle that somehow is being overrun by brown and black hordes of criminal migrants.
