You may remember that one day prior to the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, the city's Mayor Jacob Frey was on CNN's OutFront with Erin Burnett accusing ICE of being racist and "sowing chaos" on the streets of his city, with no push-back. Thursday night, CNN hosted Frey on The Source with Kaitlan Collins, and he was allowed to go off unchecked once again.
Collins began the sit-down by asking Frey about the announcement that Operation Metro Surge will be ending in Minnesota, and the Mayor responded in part, by trashing ICE. "This has been an operation that has been devastating, even catastrophic, to families, to our immigrant community, to small and local businesses throughout our city."
Of course Collins failed to mention what ICE has accomplished in Minnesota, with the arrests of more than 4,000 illegal immigrants, including murderers and rapists. Every illegal immigrant is celebrated as a "neighbor," as "family," as part of "our community." None of them should ever be deported. That's the message, both obvious and subliminal.
She even referenced one of his more disgraceful moments, where Frey commanded ICE to "get the F*** out of Minneapolis." It was "famous," Collins said. "I mean, you famously told ICE to get the 'F' out of your city." She also expressed her admiration for the protesters standing in the cold: "And they were protesting, I mean, in subzero temperatures, some days."
So it should come as no surprise that Collins did not follow-up with even one question challenging any of Frey's claims during the entire interview.
FREY: ..What I think everybody found so exceedingly objectionable is both the scope of what we saw in 3,000 to 4,000 ICE agents and Border Patrol, versus 600 police officers, and also the conduct that we were seeing on our streets, which was these roving gangs of agents, picking Somali people and Latino people off the street, not based, not on the basis of them having been a criminal, but on the basis of the way that they looked. That's not okay in Minneapolis. That is not okay in any city in America.
Collins then played a clip of Tom Homan, addressing what had been accomplished.
HOMAN: There were some issues here and we addressed those issues. But I'm not going to sit here and say anybody did anything wrong and that they were unprofessional. I'm going to say, there's some issues here. We fixed those issues. We've had great success with this operation, and we're leaving Minnesota safer.
The idea that Minnesota might be safer is banished from the mind. Time for the big fat softball.
COLLINS: When you hear that, and you think about Renee Good and Alex Pretti, I mean, do you view that as issues?FREY: Issues would be certainly the understatement of the century. These are people that should be alive today. Alex and Renee were standing up for their neighbors. They were practicing First Amendment, and Second Amendment, and 10th Amendment, and probably Fourth Amendment... Bottom line is constitutionally-protected activity was taking place...These were not domestic terrorists. These were part of our Minneapolis collective family. These were neighbors. They were family members. We loved them, and they deserved better.
Of course neither the Mayor nor Collins mentioned that days before his shooting, Pretti had spit on and damaged an ICE vehicle, in a confrontation with agents. More from Frey.
FREY: ..It was this practice of hunting down people that had done nothing wrong. It was the detention of United States citizens. It was the dragging of a pregnant woman through the street. It was having these massive and traumatic impacts on children...
Of course Collins failed to mention DHS's claim that the "dragged" woman had tried to damage a squad car and attempts to arrest her were abandoned after protesters throw ice and rocks at agents. Collins then brought up Governor Walz's demand for federal compensation for "what they broke" in Minnesota, again, tossing that softball.
COLLINS: ..He said, You don't get to break things and then just leave without doing something about it. Do you agree with that, that there should be federal compensation?
FREY: I do.
Shocking! Now if Collins had confronted Frey with some of the inflammatory things that both he and the Governor have said that many believe had fueled the chaos, that would have been shocking in the true sense of the word. A horrible interview.
