Anyone who watches the news on a regular basis knows that America is in the midst of a border crisis, just as it was not surprising in 2020 when Donald Trump and Joe Biden faced off in the previous presidential election. “But there does seem to be bipartisan agreement now that the border’s a problem,” Jon Stewart stated on Monday’s episode of The Daily Show.
In December 2023, there were over 300,000 border crossings. “That’s an all-time high,” Stewart observed, “and that is not sustainable.”
However, rather than acting promptly to fix the problem, Republicans appear to be more interested in preserving the border issue as just that—an issue—until the 2024 election, “because of how confident they are that fearmongering will be an effective election year strategy,” according to Stewart.
For his part, Trump is working hard to establish a word association between the phrases “migrant crime” and “Joe Biden.” Over the weekend, during an event in Michigan, Trump described how he is now shortening “Biden migrant crime” to “bigrant crime,” which elicited tremendous cheers from Trump’s supporters—but two thumbs down from Stewart.
“It’s a portmanteau,” Stewart joked, adding, “I’m not completely sold on ‘bigrant.'” It truly sounds like a migrant who is willing to breach either border.
She admitted that “there are some documented migrants who are committing crimes—some of them horrific—but isn’t that true for every demographic, including natives?”
But Stewart wasn’t only targeting Trump and his associates. After discussing the Democrats and how they “hold to our country’s cherished ideals,” he performed a backflip similar to Eric Adams’. In 2022, the Mayor of New York City delivered a stirring pro-immigrant address in which he referred to his city as “where the Statue of Liberty sits in the harbor and says, ‘Bring us your tired, those who yearn for freedom.'” That is what these asylum seekers are doing.
“Bedrock,” replied Stewart. “American ideals include compassion and empathy. There’s nothing you can do to change that.
Except, perhaps, for sending a few busloads of immigrants to New York metropolis, which prompted Adams to cry, “We have no more room in this city.”
“What about the yearnings and the tiredness?” Asked Stewart. “And the tiredness of those who are doing the yearning?”
Stewart eventually concluded, “This is the horrible cycle America is engaged in. Democrats’ lofty beliefs and principles did not withstand a close encounter with reality, and Republicans’ desire to address the situation isn’t nearly as strong as their drive to exploit it.”
