A former Trump White House staffer turned CNN pundit set off a wave of mockery Monday after comparing the U.S. economy to an overweight person — and pitching mass deportation as its weight-loss drug.
Caroline Sunshine, a frequent panelist on CNN's NewsNight with Abby Phillip, floored her fellow guests with the analogy during a segment on the economy, according toMediaite.
"Here's what I'm going to paint the picture for you," Sunshine began. "The economy right now is like a fat person. If you see somebody fat, you go, they're not very healthy."
She went on to argue that the economy structurally is doing better than voters realize, but that high gas and grocery prices are masking the improvement. Sunshine capped the metaphor by declaring that the "best Ozempic" for the economy was deporting undocumented immigrants.
A clip of the segment posted by progressive video curator Acyn Torabi ricocheted across social media within hours. Torabi, profiled this year by The Washington Post as the most influential progressive account on social media, pushes clips to hundreds of thousands of followers across X and Bluesky.
Economists have repeatedly warned that removing millions of workers from the labor force is hitting construction, agriculture and food service hard. A CNN Business analysis cited Congressional Budget Office projections that sustained immigration would add 0.2 percentage points to annual real GDP growth over the next decade, gains that would erode under mass deportations.
Sunshine is no stranger to viral cable-news blowups. In June, CNN commentator Keith Boykin called her rhetoric on Haitian immigrants "abhorrent" and "disgusting" during a heated NewsNight exchange, Raw Story reported at the time.
A former Disney Channel actress on "Shake It Up," Sunshine joined the first Trump White House as a press assistant in 2018 and later served as deputy communications director for Trump's 2024 campaign, according toHuffPost.