CNN This Morning is on a two-day streak of Dem guests saying dumb things.
Yesterday, we caught Chuck Rocha on CNN This Morning saying, "People in America are okay with somebody throwing a rock" at ICE agents. Not just dumb, but potentially putting people in harm's way by encouraging them to FAFO.
Perhaps we can cut Rocha—whose cowboy-hat-wearing shtick is that of Everyman on the Range—some slack. Chuck virtually bragged of his ignorance and rough-and-tumble upbringing:
"I may not be an expert on foreign policy or know what's going on with the White House every day, but I know about evading the police since I was a teenager."
But Joel Rubin? With his highfalutin' college degrees from Brandeis and Carnegie Mellon, and background as a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Rubin should know better
Yet, on today's CNN This Morning, Rubin said:
"Renee Good [was] interested in protecting her neighbors through civil disobedience, discourse, whatnot. That's legal."
Civil disobedience is legal? By definition, civil disobedience is the breaking of law, and the willingness to accept the consequences thereof, ostensibly for a higher moral purpose. Joel, Joel--what were you thinking?!
Host Audie Cornish also got into the act, playing a clip of Joe Rogan saying, "Are we really going to be the Gestapo? Where's your papers? Is that what we've come to?"
Cornish prefaced the clip by saying it was "not some radical left-wing thing." And after the clip played, Audie drove home that point, observing "not MSNBC" [sic, MS NOW.]
Great point, Audie! MS NOW might air outrageous ICE/Trump analogies to the Gestapo and the Nazis, but CNN is above lending itself to that kind of partisan fear-mongering.
Thus, on CNN, you're not going to hear some screwball saying, apropos Trump's plans to increase the number of ICE agents:
"America has never been a papers-please country before. We associate that with the Gestapo, or fascist Italy or the Soviet-era Iron Curtain. And there are a lot of people in America who are going to start feeling like they need to carry their passports and their birth certificates to go down to the grocery store."
And certainly, on CNN's rarefied air, you won't be subjected to the same agitprop artist, saying of ICE recruitment posters:
"We've seen some very strong white supremacist imagery, akin to what you saw in Nazi Germany in recruitment ads from that era."
Oh, wait. That was Trump-hater supreme Garrett Graff making those statements in two separate appearances on . . . CNN! And the host of the show where Garrett spewed his bilge was--let's see--one Audie Cornish!
Here's the transcript.
CNN This Morning
1/14/26
6:04 am ETAUDIE CORNISH: One of the things that's interesting to me is how this is perceived by the public that is either not MAGA or, you know, not some radical left thing, but they're just watching on social media and seeing how it's coming off.
One weather vane for that, Joe Rogan on his podcast on Tuesday. I want to play this for you guys.
JOE ROGAN: We've got to take those people that got in and send them back to where they came from or do something, because if we don't, They're going to keep doing it if they get in office again in 2028.
And then I can also see the point of view of the people who say, yeah, but you don't want militarized people in the streets, just roaming around, snatching people up, many of which turn out to actually be U.S. citizens. They just don't have their papers on them. Are we really going to be the Gestapo? Where's your papers? Is that what we've come to?
JOEL RUBIN: Yeah, well, look, Audie, we don't have papers. You know, Americans do not have a national ID card. I worked on the Hill, and I remember years ago, Republicans saying that would be against the ethics of what it means to be an American citizen.
So this idea that somehow Renee Good, by being interested in protecting her neighbors through civil disobedience, discourse, whatnot, that's legal. That's fine, that's American.
