A woke foreign CNN personality sparked controversy when she compared traveling to the United States to going to North Korea on her podcast, going on to say, “I was afraid” when recounting what it was like to visit the U.S. to speak at Harvard University’s 2025 commencement.
For context, CNN’s Christianne Amanpour, who lives in London, drew ire from conservatives on June 4, 2025, when she compared traveling to the U.S. to going to North Korea in an interview with her ex-husband, Jamie Rubin, a former State Department official. Amanpour said that when she went to Harvard Kennedy School to give a commencement speech, she was extremely fearful based on her TDS-fueled perception of America.
In the interview, Amanpour told her ex-husband that she “was afraid” while traveling to the United States, saying, “I’m a foreigner. I don’t have a green card. I’m fairly prominent, and I literally prepared to go to America as if I was going to North Korea.” She added, “I took a burner phone, Jamie, imagine that. I didn’t take a single…not my mobile phone, not my iPad, nothing, and I had nothing on the burner phone except a few numbers.”
In addition, Amanpour mentioned that she had consulted CNN’s security team before her trip, saying that she was afraid that she would be detained by ICE. She told Rubin, “I even talked to the CNN security person because I’ve heard that many, including British citizens, are being stopped at the border and questioned for hours and hours and hours.”
However, despite her concerns and fears, Amanpour acknowledged that her experience in the U.S. had ended up being completely uneventful, saying, “Luckily, the immigration officer I encountered at Boston could not have been nicer.” She added, So, huge sigh of relief I breathed, but wow, can you imagine if I’m afraid, what do others think?”
In response to his ex-wife’s comments, Jamie Rubin fiercely criticized the president, saying, “With Donald Trump’s basically weaponization of the immigration and naturalization service to scrutinize people, to imagine that every single non-American is a threat to the United States, is a war on what our country has been since its founding.”
Moreover, the New York Post reported that Amanpour’s dramatic comments made her the butt of the joke online, with one person quoted as writing on X, “Don’t visit. We will survive.” Another X user quipped, “CNN’s Christiane Amanpour is free to remain wherever she feels safe. Feel afraid to travel to America, then don’t come here. Simple.”
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Amanpour’s controversial comments were aired online just days after she delivered the commencement speech for Harvard’s Kennedy School graduates, whom she told, “Moral courage can often be harder even than physical bravery. And believe me, sometime, somewhere, each and every one of you will be called upon to speak up, to not follow the herd, to break with the tribe, to be brave.”
Watch Amanpour’s comments:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video