Jon Stewart on GOP fearmongering at the border: ‘It’s all about branding’
Late-night hosts discuss rhetoric around the “border crisis”, the supreme court ruling to keep Trump on the ballot in Colorado and Trump’s weird recent campaign appearances.
The Daily Show
Jon Stewart returned for his weekly election-themed Daily Show gig with a focus on the border crisis – or, more accurately, fearmongering by Republicans that rapists, murderers and other criminals are pouring through the southern border. “It’s clear hyperbole, but there does seem to be bipartisan agreement now that the border is a problem,” Stewart noted. “There were 300,000 crossings in December alone. That’s an all-time high, and that is not sustainable.
“But Republicans turned down the chance to pass a strong border bill, supported by the border patrol union, because of how confident they are that fearmongering will be an effective election year strategy,” he added. “It’s all about branding.”
Case in point: Trump has launched the “Biden migrant crime” narrative on the campaign trial. Or, as Trump abbreviated it: “Bigrant crime”.
“I’m not completely sold on ‘bigrant’ – really just sounds like a migrant who’s open to crossing either border,” Stewart joked.
“Look, there are some undocumented migrants who are committing crimes, some of them horrific, but isn’t that true for every demographic including natives?” he said. “I feel pretty confident there’s still a lot of opportunity out there for our American homegrown criminals.”
The debate around the border has grown so heated that both Trump and Joe Biden visited the southern border in Texas on the same day last week. “It was Bitch-ass Cassidy versus the Sundown Kid,” Stewart quipped.
While Biden urged Trump to work with him on a solution, Trump referred to Biden as “Crooked Joe”, recycling his nickname for Hillary Clinton. “Do you have to say everything that happens in your head out loud?” Stewart wondered. “It’s been eight years – you fucking won! The woman’s been through enough, now you’re going to take away her nickname?”
Stewart also criticized the New York mayor, Eric Adams, who echoed other
Democrats in welcoming migrants to the US yet said New York City had “no more room” after two busloads of migrants sent from Texas arrived in the city.
“So this is the terrible cycle America is caught in: Democrats whose highminded values and principles did not survive a contact high with reality, and Republicans whose desire to solve the problem isn’t nearly as strong as their desire to exploit it,” Stewart concluded. “And no one wins.”
Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert recapped the supreme court’s unanimous ruling to keep Trump on all state ballots. The justices said that since different states have different standards for insurrection, conflicting state outcomes would lead to chaos. “Yes, you can’t just let states decide who goes on the ballots? States are too busy deciding that life begins in the freezer section!” Colbert joked.
The court’s basic rationale, he summarized, was that disqualifying a candidate for insurrection can only occur when Congress passes legislation.
“Quick question: if Congress does decide to pass that legislation to disqualify a candidate for insurrection, what if he sends his mob to storm Congress to stop them from passing that legislation?” Colbert wondered. “Does that count as insurrection? Or do they have to pass more legislation about that before the next mob shows up? I’m just asking because clearly you guys haven’t put any thought into any of this stuff!”
Colbert also touched on some weird campaign appearances by Trump in which he appeared to speak gibberish, or as Colbert put it: “Apparently, he can’t even say the word Russia without climaxing.”
Seth Meyers
“Trump is unrepentant about January 6,” said Seth Meyers on Late Night. “In fact, he’s worse than unrepentant. He’s turned January 6 into a rallying cry at his campaign events.”
Meyers played footage from a campaign stop in Virginia this weekend, in which Trump walked on stage to a recording of the national anthem by the “J6 prison choir” of incarcerated insurrectionists.
“Man, these Trump rallies are fucking weird,” said Meyers. “They’re like half mega-church and half Comic-Con but with way worse merch. I mean, put aside the fact that Trump is glorifying a violent insurrection, there’s nothing I’d rather listen to less than a choir of adult men singing a parody version of the national anthem.”
Meyers also addressed the supreme court decision: “The court didn’t actually touch the question of whether Trump actually engaged in insurrection,” he said. “Of course he did – any rational human who isn’t currently a Republican office holder or a member of an insurrection-themed choir can see with their own eyes or with a pair of googly eyes that it was obviously an insurrection.
“The court stayed away from that question the same way you react when your wife asks if you think her sister is hot,” he added.