CNN Analyst on Deportations: Just You Republicans Wait Until Women Can’t Get Smoothies!

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I wonder if Democrat strategist Jenna Arnold would even dare define “woman” on air at CNN. Would it be “those who must exploit the poor to get cheap smoothies at Jamba Juice”? Because after this exchange with Scott Jennings and Bill Stepien on immigration enforcement, that certainly appears to be how Arnold applies the term.

Our friend Mary Katharine Ham picked it up this morning, and David included it at the end of an earlier post, but it’s worth a closer look. It’s just as clueless and elitist as it sounds, and more importantly, it’s typical of arguments on this issue from the Left.  It’s also ignorant, as Stepien tries to explain that much of the labor goes elsewhere:

Call me crazy, but I don’t think “whaaat will I doo without my exploited underclaaahhhsss to pick my smooothie berriiieees,” with maximal vocal fry, is the enlightened argument she imagines it is. pic.twitter.com/ds8mUHKKeq

— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) January 29, 2025

JENNINGS: I think there’s two different categories of business owners. I think some people are legitimately not knowing who they’re — I mean, maybe they’re thinking they’re hiring someone who’s here legally and there’s maybe some fraud going on. I don’t think we should punish people who were legitimately trying to do the right thing and got taken advantage of. But I do agree with Bill that if you are trying to actively hire illegal immigrants, if you think that’s best, if you are trying to game the system, if you were trying to help someone break U.S. federal immigration law, I think if we’re going to have a true crackdown on illegal immigration in this country. It has to involve everybody who’s participating in it, and I think you’ve raised a good point with this topic. And so, employers and anyone else who’s part of this pipeline, I think they ought to be put on notice. You got to play by the rule. Everybody has to play by the rules.

STEPIEN: I don’t want to hear that they’re doing work that no one else will do. Talk to guys in the building trades, plumbers, contractors.

ARNOLD: Farm, picking strawberries. I mean, like, I can’t wait —

STEPIEN: These building trades guys are being hurt by labor that shouldn’t be here.

ARNOLD: I can’t wait until American women can’t get blueberries for their smoothies. I cannot wait until there is a full crackdown on all small businesses as if that’s going to be the solution to the immigration problem. It is just going to put immigration related issues further into the darker corners. We’re not going to see them. It’s just going to become even harder to solve the problem. It doesn’t make sense to punish individuals and people when there is a broken system.

MK hammered the point home, so to speak, in a follow-up tweet:

Liberal white woman: Supports unlimited illegal immigration to keep her smoothie prices down. Supports DEI programs so she can get a $200K job that absolves her and gives her professional license to call everyone else racist. It’s quite a racket the lib white ladies have devised.

— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) January 29, 2025

Perhaps I missed the Great Blueberry Shortage in the years 2017-2020, but I don’t recall the solons of SoHo et al lacking access to the latest frappé at Starbucks in that period. Trump managed to secure the border and growers still managed to get product to the grocery stores. In fact, the prices were a lot lower in that period than they are now after four years of Democrats’ open-borders disaster.

Now we have millions more illegal aliens in the country, and the Trump administration is deporting the worst of them first. How many Tren de Aragua gang members does Arnold imagine working out in the fields for her Strawberry Surf Rider smoothies at the local Jamba Juice, anyway? How many of those fields are in the city of Boston? Chicago? Los Angeles? That’s where the round-ups have focused so far — on arresting and deporting criminals in the cities, not workers in the fields. And it will take a very long time before ICE can focus on the latter after four years of Joe Biden letting in thousands of the former. 

There is a good debate to be had on migrant labor, but the time to have that debate is after we fix the border and eject those who entered illegally. Should we look at another bracero program to fill any actual labor shortages that might exist? Maybe, but that would require a secure border and a tracking system to ensure that workers are identified and comply with the law, too. We don’t even have the basic prerequisites for such a program, and until we do, any debate over it is pointless. 

As is most of the debate on CNN these days. If that’s what a “Democrat strategist” is telling Democrats about messaging, it’s no wonder they’re in the wilderness for the next two years.