Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: Hey, Daily Show Ears Edition listeners. This is Sebastian Isher,
Speaker 2: segment director for The Daily Show.
Speaker 1: Today.
Speaker 2: I'm joined by Daily Show correspondent Michael Costa.
Speaker 1: Welcome, Hello, Hey everybody.
Speaker 2: So we just aired a piece that brought us both
Speaker 2: to Eagle Past, Texas to explore the issue with the
Speaker 2: migrant crisis at the border. Give us a quick summary
Speaker 2: of the piece.
Speaker 1: The summary of the piece is that we go the
Speaker 1: Daily Show goes to Eagle Pass, Texas to hear from
Speaker 1: the locals about the invasion, the disruption of their life,
Speaker 1: and the little twist. The little hook is that the
Speaker 1: invasion is not from Central Americans trying to cross into
Speaker 1: the United States. From the Republican governors, the National Guard,
Speaker 1: the news media, everyone who's come down to this specific
Speaker 1: place and caused and created a chaotic environment. But how
Speaker 1: are the locals coping with this? Relentless onslaught. They've come
Speaker 1: and taken over the town.
Speaker 3: It's our land, and there's just people coming.
Speaker 1: In causing h you know, havoc and craziness.
Speaker 2: There's chaos.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't you be welcoming? Don't you have any empathy for
Speaker 1: the journey they've.
Speaker 4: Taken to get here.
Speaker 3: They're not welcomed the hell out of our place.
Speaker 1: You can't move around seeing them.
Speaker 2: You can't get a meal in a restaurant, can't get
Speaker 2: a hotel room unless you're willing to pay four hundred dollars. Wa.
Speaker 1: Wait, who are you talking about right now?
Speaker 2: The state guard from Florida, Tennessee, Arkansas, Idaho.
Speaker 1: And you directed it. So is that an accurate assessment?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's totally what the piece is. Maybe we should
Speaker 2: explain what Eagle Pass is. It's like your little border town.
Speaker 1: On the Rio Grande River. Right, Egle passes a Texas
Speaker 1: across from the river is Mexico, and there's one crossing
Speaker 1: legal crossing. There's like a little bridge.
Speaker 2: Right there's a llegal crossing, which is like one of
Speaker 2: the biggest border crossings to Mexico in terms of like
Speaker 2: goods and egally people going across. And then there's an
Speaker 2: illegal crossing right next to it, where I guess that
Speaker 2: a couple of months ago, a low a lot of
Speaker 2: migrants were coming over through the river and that led
Speaker 2: to the shutdown of that area.
Speaker 1: For anyone who's listening, used usually when they show Southern
Speaker 1: border stuff, it's Eagle Pass. It just became a really
Speaker 1: popular crossing and there was thousands of people crossing illegally.
Speaker 1: And by the way, we should mention this, this is
Speaker 1: something I learned. They cross illegally, but they do it
Speaker 1: in a often not everybody, often in an organized fashion
Speaker 1: because then they want to talk to border patrol and
Speaker 1: claim asylum. I think sometimes people envision people crossing like
Speaker 1: sprinting through the river, climbing a tree, and then like
Speaker 1: getting on a bus and they're out of there, like
Speaker 1: Jason Bourd. They're actually like lined up a lot of
Speaker 1: them to cross, meet a border patrol agent and claim asylum.
Speaker 1: So it's done in a often a cordial way. Now
Speaker 1: there are of course people that don't do that, but
Speaker 1: what I learned in the piece, and we'll get into
Speaker 1: all this, but really it seems like the American system
Speaker 1: of asylum seekers needs some revision. Yeah, but that's maybe
Speaker 1: getting too far ahead, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: But I think that point of them coming across and
Speaker 2: basically giving themselves up to greater patrol. These are not
Speaker 2: people that are trying to sneak in or disappear, you know.
Speaker 1: And there's a funny part in the piece where I
Speaker 1: truly was confused because when we were talking in front
Speaker 1: of the church with the with the older gentlemen, and
Speaker 1: he was saying how they had guns, and I thought
Speaker 1: he was talking about the migrants, and I was like surprised.
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm surprised that, like they got their
Speaker 1: families and plastic bags of clothes and they also have guns.
Speaker 1: And then he corrected me. He said, no, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the people out of state who came down to
Speaker 1: protect the Americans, who came down to protect the border.
Speaker 1: And I was like, holy shit, you're talking to people
Speaker 1: who have guns. Are the American citizens who've entered Texas
Speaker 1: to quote unquote protect the border. That was a funny moment.
Speaker 2: Who are like Maga militants?
Speaker 1: Basically? Yeah, essentially, Yeah, what.
Speaker 2: You'd need to be afraid of is some of these
Speaker 2: convoys of people.
Speaker 1: They're talking about Central American caravans.
Speaker 4: Oh, no, we're talking about the people that are invading
Speaker 4: the country here, not the Mexicos.
Speaker 3: The invasion here is from Governor Abbot and the Trumpers
Speaker 3: and the Maga people.
Speaker 5: Yes, Eagle Pass has been overrun since Governor Greg Abbott
Speaker 5: declared a crisis at the border and sent in the
Speaker 5: Texas National Guard, attracting a flood of Republican governors, congressional delegations,
Speaker 5: and even billionaire weirdos.
Speaker 2: You know, we made a lot of jokes about how
Speaker 2: this town was being invaded by Governor Abbott and stuff,
Speaker 2: but they actually did take over this park called Shelby
Speaker 2: Park and shut it down so that local people could
Speaker 2: not use the park. They can't enter it anymore. They
Speaker 2: still can't, and they put barbed wire all the way
Speaker 2: around it, and that's where all the photo ops are happening,
Speaker 2: Like whenever you see Trump down there or anybody, they're
Speaker 2: in that park in front of the river doing press conferences.
Speaker 1: And they actually have a festival at Shelby Park called
Speaker 1: the Abrazo Festival.
Speaker 2: Which means Hug Hugs, festival of hugs.
Speaker 1: So they literally have a festival of hugs that is
Speaker 1: now surrounded by Florida National Guard, Florida Fish and Game
Speaker 1: because they lent quote unquote their services to Texas for
Speaker 1: some reason. Barbed wire storage contained right like train like
Speaker 1: they they've they've lined the park. It's a sad sight
Speaker 1: to see. It's like, is this where we're at in humanity?
Speaker 1: In America that this is what we turned to park
Speaker 1: into right now. But that's the that's that's what the
Speaker 1: piece is about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Also a really key takeaway for me
Speaker 2: was the fact that they militarized this crossing with the
Speaker 2: border patrol and all of these barbed wire and stuff,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't actually work.
Speaker 1: It doesn't.
Speaker 2: It's not keeping anybody out really because people can just
Speaker 2: go around it. Yeah, and they do and they go
Speaker 2: to you know, other crossings, So really it is just
Speaker 2: a it's like a stage for them. They set up
Speaker 2: like an expensive backdrop.
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of the people we talked to said, hey,
Speaker 1: the barbed wire does work, but when you really dig
Speaker 1: into it, what works, or at least what has worked
Speaker 1: now is that the Mexican National Guard on the other side,
Speaker 1: and we saw them in the Peace stops the influx earlier. Now,
Speaker 1: me and you talked about this. What does that mean
Speaker 1: they go in Mexico. I don't know, but really it
Speaker 1: appears the reason that this influx has stopped at this
Speaker 1: particular border is that Mexico is policing it more on
Speaker 1: their side. But what happens with those people that get
Speaker 1: policed there, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean what people were telling us is that it
Speaker 2: comes down to money, Like the US basically pays Mexico
Speaker 2: to enforce the border on that side so that people
Speaker 2: don't get over to threear grand.
Speaker 1: And to talk about like how the barbed wire doesn't deter.
Speaker 1: So we went to this bcan farmer's land that has
Speaker 1: a lot of barbed wire and fencing up, which she
Speaker 1: didn't ask for, but it is her land. But the
Speaker 1: government supposedly, I don't know if they paid her to
Speaker 1: put it there, I don't know, but she said, I
Speaker 1: don't want it. Used to be a pretty site. I
Speaker 1: don't want this here, but now it's here. What you
Speaker 1: see when you get there is you see clothes on
Speaker 1: the barbed wire. You see where people have crossed the river,
Speaker 1: even though there's buoy fences that sadly migrants have lost
Speaker 1: their lives being trapped in and then they throw their
Speaker 1: clothes over the barbed wire and they climb over the
Speaker 1: barbed wire to get to and into the United States.
Speaker 1: So it slows them down probably, but they're still doing it.
Speaker 1: You see a lot of clothes on the barbed wire.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like you immediately know what it is.
Speaker 2: And I think these are the people who are probably
Speaker 2: the most desperate and the least savvy about what's going
Speaker 2: on that are trying to cross there. Yeah, because the
Speaker 2: people who know what's up know where to go across
Speaker 2: to the other side. You know, there's spots miles up
Speaker 2: and down from that area.
Speaker 1: It feels, it feels desperate, it feels flailing, it feels emergency.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's it's you're getting people who are hungry, cold, tired.
Speaker 1: You see kids shoes, I mean there was kids shoes.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like, now, before you get all sad, it probably
Speaker 1: means they made it if we're seeing the clothes right,
Speaker 1: because they leave them there because they're wet and they
Speaker 1: keep moving. But it's a fucking mess. And anybody who
Speaker 1: lives in the United States, and I say this as
Speaker 1: a Michigander, we don't really understand up here. You gotta
Speaker 1: really pay attention and really think about what it's like
Speaker 1: down in our American border. It's because you just don't
Speaker 1: have this growing up in Michigan. I can't. I couldn't
Speaker 1: ever relate to what this was, right.
Speaker 2: So I guess one other thing we should try to
Speaker 2: mention because it's in the story, but you know, we
Speaker 2: didn't have time to get into all the detail. But
Speaker 2: a big part of this standoff is that the governor
Speaker 2: of Texas has sent in the National Guard and kind
Speaker 2: of taken over border enforcement as opposed to the border
Speaker 2: patrol that's federal that was usually doing this. And in
Speaker 2: the you know, Democrat controlled states like Arizona and California,
Speaker 2: the border patrol is still doing the same job. And
Speaker 2: in Texas now it's become a thing that the state,
Speaker 2: you know, is basically doing that, and they're using the
Speaker 2: barbed wire and are way more aggressive, I guess about it,
Speaker 2: and I think that's the.
Speaker 1: Governor Abbot's basically doing, is violating the federal law and
Speaker 1: taking over.
Speaker 4: The only people that are going into the water are
Speaker 4: individuals from the press that want to see how ugly
Speaker 4: it is out there.
Speaker 1: The governor of Texas is here disrupting your job, and
Speaker 1: you want them to port them.
Speaker 2: Get them out, because I mean, I'm expected to follow
Speaker 2: federal law, local law, state law.
Speaker 1: I would expect the.
Speaker 2: Same thing from our leader of our state. And I
Speaker 2: feel like that's part of you know, what is kind
Speaker 2: of disturbing about this is that you are basically saying,
Speaker 2: we don't care if these people get chopped up in
Speaker 2: the razor wire. We don't care if they drown necessarily,
Speaker 2: as long as it helps us keep them out right,
Speaker 2: and knowing that some people are going to come over anyway,
Speaker 2: that seems like a very kind of a harsh and
Speaker 2: brutal way to treat humans, right.
Speaker 1: You know. The Republicans, sided people that we spoke to
Speaker 1: in the piece, were very proud of the barbed wire
Speaker 1: and they said it was working, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: this reminds me of John Stewart's Peace on This Monday Night.
Speaker 1: But it was like the ideology of the Democrats isn't
Speaker 1: matching up to the reality of the situation. But the
Speaker 1: Republicans are more excited to push fear than actually solve
Speaker 1: the problem. And it does seem that it seems like
Speaker 1: a bipartisan border reform bill is the would be the
Speaker 1: best way forward where both parties can give and take
Speaker 1: a little bit. And we even had that and it
Speaker 1: got killed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the people that were there, they told us
Speaker 2: they really would want this bill to pass, and they
Speaker 2: were like, we need money, that's the main thing we
Speaker 2: need to deal with this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Trump called his cronies they killed the bill,
Speaker 1: and then you see what he's I mean, he's doing
Speaker 1: the playbook. He's up there right now campaigning on fear
Speaker 1: and migrant can migrant crime, and fentanyl fentanyl, and it
Speaker 1: is a messy problem. But come on, as Joe Biden
Speaker 1: I think, said, like, come on, we can solve We've
Speaker 1: solved greater problems. We can solve this. We can at
Speaker 1: least get closer to a solution.
Speaker 2: But we don't want to solve it.
Speaker 1: We don't want to.
Speaker 2: We shouldn't solve it because it's useful, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: how do you balance the seriousness of a topic like
Speaker 2: this with trying to be funny and make jokes about it.
Speaker 1: I feel like you're thinking that I wrote that question
Speaker 1: because the first thing I said to everybody who brought this,
Speaker 1: because this is my third or fourth border southern border piece.
Speaker 1: I did a piece with dual say when Trump with
Speaker 1: the Tijuana San Diego border. I did a piece where
Speaker 1: I dressed as a part of Trump's wall, called Brickey
Speaker 1: the border Wall, and went to a Trump rally. I
Speaker 1: did a border piece with you where Americans were crossing
Speaker 1: daily into Mexico and Yuma, Arizona to get dental.
Speaker 2: Care, and you had dental surgery that piece, dental surge.
Speaker 1: In that piece. And then I did this piece and
Speaker 1: my initial reaction when when someone says, hey, it's a
Speaker 1: Southern border piece San Costa, I go, it is really
Speaker 1: hard to be funny. It's really hard to be funny
Speaker 1: with this topic. There's baby shoes next to the Rio
Speaker 1: Grande River. As all daily show pieces, I think we
Speaker 1: did get some funny moments, but it's hard because it's real.
Speaker 1: It's this isn't like, uh, it's not a light subject.
Speaker 1: But the hypocrisy of claiming it's a problem and then
Speaker 1: refusing to solve it is is a good deal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's good room there for comedy.
Speaker 2: And I think in this case, we had the whole
Speaker 2: all of the hype and the propaganda around the invasion
Speaker 2: and the Fox News angle and the politicians saying the
Speaker 2: same thing again and again, and we could sort of
Speaker 2: play off of that, so we weren't actually really talking
Speaker 2: about the actual sad, tragic reality. We were talking about
Speaker 2: the fake, bullshit reality.
Speaker 1: And it's good that we had that conversation many times
Speaker 1: before the piece, because we had a clear hook to
Speaker 1: hang our hat on. I mean, ladies and gentlemen, the
Speaker 1: fucking like North Dakota governor is down there. Governors that
Speaker 1: believe the border is a campaign strategy for them go
Speaker 1: down there, even though their state is three thousand miles away.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just like one hundred percent. They use
Speaker 1: this little park that had to cancel its Abroso festival
Speaker 1: to get reelection in Louisiana.
Speaker 2: It's it's insane, right, It's almost like you have to
Speaker 2: go if you're a Republican governor, right and you have
Speaker 2: to send fish and game or whatever random office you
Speaker 2: have left.
Speaker 1: It was I think what did for me because I
Speaker 1: was a little bit hesitant about the piece in the beginning,
Speaker 1: like not going. You know, before we went, was that
Speaker 1: thirteen or fourteen Republican governors showing up. It's just it's
Speaker 1: such a photo op, right, It's not they don't give
Speaker 1: a shit. They're not trying to solve the problem. They're
Speaker 1: there to show their most extreme base. I'm a hard ass.
Speaker 1: I support putting barbed wire down. So I thought Biden
Speaker 1: might have had something when he had gotten this bipartisan bill,
Speaker 1: at least part of it moving forward. I was excited
Speaker 1: about that, but then obviously it got killed, so then
Speaker 1: I'm back to my back to being a little pessimistic
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's true that the hotel was wildly overpriced.
Speaker 2: It was full of National guardsmen who were like hanging out,
Speaker 2: playing on their laptop. Yeah, going for runs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the hotel. What you're saying there is the
Speaker 1: whole tael jacked the prices up because of all this
Speaker 1: influx of National Guard news media. Our hotel was like
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty bucks a night. It was that
Speaker 1: same hotel anywhere in the United States is one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty nine dollars a night. They had waffles the
Speaker 1: first morning, and then they took the waffles away. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna charge me three sixty, were my fucking waffles,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they should be consistent about the waffles at least.
Speaker 1: And it's Texas, So you know what the waffles are
Speaker 1: shaped like? Right? Do you remember that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, weirdly Ohio. And it was like then, make any sense.
Speaker 1: It was shaped like Texas. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the roofs looked out on the parking the
Speaker 2: parking lot yeah, Yeah. One thing I want to jump
Speaker 2: back to is you talked about how hard it is
Speaker 2: to be funny in this piece. Is in these pieces,
Speaker 2: and I think it is it is a bit trickier
Speaker 2: because it's it's kind of a risk you want to
Speaker 2: seem glib or come off like an asshole by making
Speaker 2: jokes around them, something that is very painful and you know, sad.
Speaker 2: But I think there are some very funny moments in
Speaker 2: the piece about them. I think that some of the
Speaker 2: organic conversations with the people we talked to, like the
Speaker 2: Democratic chairwoman who was calling the politicians pendejos, and then
Speaker 2: the back and forth between what is a pendejo.
Speaker 3: Is a political stunt? The Republican been there of course,
Speaker 3: who don't get a bad.
Speaker 4: I might have been Spanish, but I forgot pen day
Speaker 4: for I wasn't in politician.
Speaker 3: Well, it's kind of a heavier word than.
Speaker 2: Idiots, not as heavy.
Speaker 3: Not as heavy as but heavier than idiots.
Speaker 1: Stupid, somewhere between mother an idiot.
Speaker 2: I would say, So, you know, that is a funny,
Speaker 2: absurd thing that you're not going to see in any
Speaker 2: other new story about the border crisis. And it kind
Speaker 2: of says something about how people see the politics.
Speaker 1: You know well, and you know, look, I've made my
Speaker 1: own bed. I've told Jen Flans, the executive producer, many
Speaker 1: many times, I want the hard pieces. I want this
Speaker 1: show to rely on me to be able to pull
Speaker 1: off these things right, because I though my favorite comics
Speaker 1: can do that. But when you're boarding the flight here
Speaker 1: you go past, you go why did I say that? So?
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. It's also funny when that Republican woman is
Speaker 1: working at the mall and we had to she had
Speaker 1: to take a fifteen minute break and go talk to
Speaker 1: us in the parking lot and then just real casually
Speaker 1: just throws around like a really old racist term that
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard since I was like ten years old,
Speaker 1: and she it just rolled right off her tongue.
Speaker 2: And I think you did a follow up question with
Speaker 2: her and you almost kind of gave her an option
Speaker 2: to walk it back, right like we were like, are
Speaker 2: you sure you want to be saying this, and she
Speaker 2: was just totally yeah. It was like, no, that's what
Speaker 2: they are. I'm talking about the illegal wetbex And I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: what was what did you call them?
Speaker 1: Wet wet bacs?
Speaker 2: Man?
Speaker 1: I haven't heard that word in a long time.
Speaker 5: Okay, now that you've gotten that out of her system,
Speaker 5: I was ready for a more nuanced conversation.
Speaker 2: We just want them to come legally through the front door.
Speaker 4: Calling them wet backs to me is not a we
Speaker 4: welcome you here.
Speaker 1: I want them to come legally. That's what I want.
Speaker 3: So they aren't wet bags, so they don't have to
Speaker 3: swim the river.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't be wet bax if they didn't. I mean,
Speaker 1: just the word invasion alone is an incredibly racist word
Speaker 1: that you hear all the time. About this. About six
Speaker 1: months ago, when I was guest hosting and they kind
Speaker 1: of asked, what do you want to talk about? The
Speaker 1: southern border was on the list because I said, we're
Speaker 1: not covering this, like this is a real thing that's happening,
Speaker 1: it's problem, and we're so untouched by this in New York.
Speaker 1: And then migrants started to show up here right Martha's vineyard,
Speaker 1: and it has changed the conversation. I don't want to
Speaker 1: say it's an effective strategy by Abbott, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: got more people and more places aware of what's happening.
Speaker 2: They hired the bus companies and they put people on
Speaker 2: the buses, they give them water to drink, and they
Speaker 2: basically send them to these locations. And a big part
Speaker 2: of the problem is that there's no infrastructure for them
Speaker 2: when they get there. Yeah, and then the mayors of
Speaker 2: New York City and Denver and other places where these
Speaker 2: migrants are showing up or asking the Feds for money,
Speaker 2: but the Feds can't do anything because they haven't passed
Speaker 2: the bill with the funding. So it's the standoff that
Speaker 2: is just creating. Then there's like more homeless people in
Speaker 2: New York who don't have anywhere to go.
Speaker 1: And whenever I do a field piece, I walk away
Speaker 1: with a very simple solution to a very complex problem
Speaker 1: that I've just educated myself on for two days. Everyone,
Speaker 1: And my solution for the southern border is, if you
Speaker 1: seek asylum, why can't we get you an asylum hearing
Speaker 1: in twenty four hours forty eight hours? I mean, wouldn't
Speaker 1: that solve a lot of the problems because right now
Speaker 1: they seek asylum and they know that they'll be waiting years.
Speaker 1: I mean from the New York Times article, it was
Speaker 1: like maybe ten years some people or something. So then
Speaker 1: they're setting up a life here while they're waiting for
Speaker 1: our government to get their shit figured out. Why can't
Speaker 1: we do this faster?
Speaker 2: I think it's they need money. They need more judges,
Speaker 2: they need more infrastructure, and nobody wants to pay for it,
Speaker 2: and they don't want to pass any bills because nobody
Speaker 2: wants to compromise on what they want. And I mean
Speaker 2: another thing, we're talking about things that I did not
Speaker 2: expect or even had an understanding of before we went
Speaker 2: down there.
Speaker 1: I expected the hotel at three hundred and sixty bucks
Speaker 1: to have lotion, right, and I sent a pa out
Speaker 1: to go get lotion. Okay, yeah, And I want this
Speaker 1: in the podcast.
Speaker 2: It's in this. It's in the piece twice. Actually, I
Speaker 2: think this has been your it's kind of your passion
Speaker 2: point for this story.
Speaker 1: I'm not even a big lotion guy, but if you're
Speaker 1: gonna spend three sixty now, my expectations are higher.
Speaker 2: And it is dry down there. It's dry.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other thing that we know is the reason that
Speaker 2: so many people are coming is there are jobs for them.
Speaker 2: There's a very tight job market, and if there were
Speaker 2: no jobs, people would not be coming up here. So economically,
Speaker 2: they are contributing a lot, and people are saying that
Speaker 2: that's a big part of why the recession after COVID
Speaker 2: in the US has been much less bad than in
Speaker 2: a lot of European countries is because we have all
Speaker 2: these immigrants coming in and we have a strong workforce,
Speaker 2: and then these people spend money and they contribute and
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff. I guess the hypocrisy of
Speaker 2: getting these people in here, giving them jobs, exploiting their labor,
Speaker 2: and then pretending that their rapists and murderers coming over,
Speaker 2: you know. I think that's the part of it that
Speaker 2: is kind of makes me kind of angry and also
Speaker 2: is a good reason why we do these type of pieces.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the questions we talked about yesterday for this
Speaker 2: is how you conduct interviews with people when you're kind
Speaker 2: of in the field like this, And is it different
Speaker 2: from how you're doing an interview at the desk, you think,
Speaker 2: or what's the strategy?
Speaker 1: Like, Yeah, I mean it's much different that the desk
Speaker 1: gets like the glitz and glamor of showbiz and you've
Speaker 1: got six or seven questions, you got to count down clock.
Speaker 1: They're there to promote something you better get. That's the
Speaker 1: whole reason they're there is because they got to promote
Speaker 1: their book or these are as you know in the field.
Speaker 1: These are in particular the pieces, the interviews in these pieces,
Speaker 1: which were not done at their offices and a chair
Speaker 1: with nice lighting. I mean, this is as close to
Speaker 1: truly just talking to someone. The only difference is that
Speaker 1: probably them and me thought about what we were going
Speaker 1: to wear the night before, right because you know, they
Speaker 1: look everyone at least got a nice shirt on. But
Speaker 1: I mean, you're as close to a real conversation as
Speaker 1: you're going to get. I think for me, the keys
Speaker 1: are listen, Listen, Michael, shut the fuck up for a second,
Speaker 1: and just listen to what they're saying. But I say
Speaker 1: that jokingly but also so seriously. It's like, because we
Speaker 1: have these lists of things to ask, and we have
Speaker 1: these things that we are kind of not trying to
Speaker 1: get but hoping we can maybe get, and it's like,
Speaker 1: just listen to them, dude. So many of them are
Speaker 1: so happy you're there to talk to them, so just
Speaker 1: listen to what they have to say.
Speaker 2: And I feel like the funniest things in these interviews
Speaker 2: are not stuff that was written or planned in advance,
Speaker 2: but was just an organic response to what they were saying.
Speaker 2: Like the Maga guy that you talked to, who was
Speaker 2: there supporting Governor Abbott by basically sitting outside the border. Yeah,
Speaker 2: for a week, he had driven down and he was
Speaker 2: sleeping in his car and just sitting outside the border.
Speaker 1: And he smelled like it.
Speaker 2: He was ranting at people and basically doing news interviews
Speaker 2: all day long.
Speaker 1: What was the funny part?
Speaker 2: You were disagreed. You were disagreed with him about, you know,
Speaker 2: the how efficient or how effective all this stuff was
Speaker 2: in terms of the barbed wire and the army and
Speaker 2: all that stuff. And he basically said, well, you're you're
Speaker 2: you sold your soul to the devil. You're like Aday,
Speaker 2: the New York media guy.
Speaker 1: I'm from Texas.
Speaker 4: I'm glad to support those people who are fighting for
Speaker 4: me Ma La my land.
Speaker 2: Do we have guts enough to defend ourselves?
Speaker 1: Do we? Now? You are?
Speaker 3: You're shutting your head.
Speaker 1: You don't really, I'm not tactical. You're wet. You've been
Speaker 1: successful in the New York media. You know what, you
Speaker 1: sold your soul to the devil.
Speaker 4: If I sold my soul to the devil to be
Speaker 4: successful in news media, I would be more successful. I
Speaker 4: wouldn't be sitting here in an Eagle Past, Texas. I
Speaker 4: want to stay at a Marriotte town plaza with no
Speaker 4: body lotion.
Speaker 1: That sounds like something the devil would side. The super
Speaker 1: religious they always have that back in their back pocket.
Speaker 1: They can always just say that's what the devil would say.
Speaker 1: Right then they win. How can you fucking how be
Speaker 1: beat that?
Speaker 2: But you know, besides the fact that he was crazy
Speaker 2: and he said some very horrible things about the migrants,
Speaker 2: he was also a pretty friendly guy who was, you know,
Speaker 2: happy to talk to us. And I feel like that's
Speaker 2: also another interesting thing is that you get to go
Speaker 2: to these places and talk to so called real Americans
Speaker 2: out there who in some cases have very negative ideas
Speaker 2: about what we're doing, you know, or what you're representing
Speaker 2: when you're there in the suit and stuff, but they
Speaker 2: still have like a basic kind of friendly American outlook.
Speaker 1: A lot of the time, I think what it does
Speaker 1: when you talk is it just it. It removes all
Speaker 1: the signage and tribalism and you just get a human.
Speaker 1: So I saw a scared man, I saw fearful man,
Speaker 1: and I probably still hold my judgment to him to
Speaker 1: be accurate, but maybe a little bit less. And isn't
Speaker 1: that the whole point of a conversation.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I think also, you know, he's
Speaker 2: probably consuming a lot of media, yeah, and seeing a
Speaker 2: lot of those same politicians that are down there grand
Speaker 2: standing in front of the border talking about the invasion
Speaker 2: and all of that stuff that and you see what
Speaker 2: it you know, how it materializes in the psyche of
Speaker 2: a normal person who is just consuming that stuff.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great point. I think it's easy
Speaker 1: to see the rhetoric and you don't necessarily see the
Speaker 1: result of it. You see it go into this machine,
Speaker 1: but you don't see when you crank the machine. You
Speaker 1: don't see what it spits out. And it's a guy
Speaker 1: like Dan, and it's problematic. The sound bites that they
Speaker 1: look at create a psyche that's problematic. You know.
Speaker 2: We did a lot of interviews for this piece, and
Speaker 2: some of them were just random people we grabbed on
Speaker 2: the street. Some of them we planned in advance. And
Speaker 2: one guy who we talked to who was actually a
Speaker 2: great interview was the chairman of the Republican Party in
Speaker 2: San Antonio. This guy named Jeff, who was a good interview,
Speaker 2: and you sparred with him very you know, enthusiastically. He
Speaker 2: debated you on a lot of topics.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: And then we ended up not using him because we
Speaker 2: just couldn't fit him in for time. Although maybe, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe there was a sequel at some point and we
Speaker 2: can get Jeff in there.
Speaker 1: And you know what, Americans, we had a nice spar
Speaker 1: We had fun. Yeah, we listened to each other. We
Speaker 1: both stopped talking when the other person had something to say,
Speaker 1: and we disagree with each other. And a nice guy.
Speaker 2: You didn't call him any names, you know, you didn't curse.
Speaker 1: The sign on the door, signed the door that said
Speaker 1: I think twice somebody in here is armed.
Speaker 2: It said your life is not worth anything that you
Speaker 2: can take in this office, and there is a picture
Speaker 2: of a gun, so Texas. I think the thing that
Speaker 2: was inking about him is that he was another one
Speaker 2: of these guys who was very friendly, very open to
Speaker 2: talking to us, and also very sure of all of
Speaker 2: his talking points and completely convinced that he was not
Speaker 2: wrong and that there was no other way to look
Speaker 2: at it. And I think that that's sort of why
Speaker 2: the issue is so effective for politicians, because in a
Speaker 2: way unless you go down there and actually deal with
Speaker 2: the people that are coming through. It's just kind of
Speaker 2: an abstract canvas that a lot of people project a
Speaker 2: lot of ideas onto. And it's kind of useful because
Speaker 2: you can use it to be scary, or you can
Speaker 2: use it to be a humanitarian or you know, and
Speaker 2: it's sort of disconnected from the reality of it.
Speaker 1: The southern border can be a tool for any politician
Speaker 1: because you can use it as a tool to say,
Speaker 1: this is America, statue of liberty, bring it. And it
Speaker 1: can also be a tool of get these people out,
Speaker 1: this is my country, strong borders, law and order, and
Speaker 1: and the answer is something in between. He talked about
Speaker 1: his immigrant parents, and I kind of repeated what he said,
Speaker 1: and then he said something real quick that deflected it.
Speaker 1: But I was trying to make the point, dude, we
Speaker 1: all came from somewhere.
Speaker 2: Right, and people used to get on a boat and
Speaker 2: get to hellisone and then they would get the stamp there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that was the right way to get in. But like, yeah,
Speaker 2: what's the difference, really?
Speaker 4: I know?
Speaker 1: And I also love when the other side, the right
Speaker 1: Republican side, says, well, my parents did it the right way.
Speaker 1: I mean, I bet you have the people that say
Speaker 1: that are wrong. I mean, of course your parents. I
Speaker 1: have kids. I lie to them every day. I tell
Speaker 1: them that that all types of things that make me
Speaker 1: sound better. You don't. We don't know who did it
Speaker 1: the right way, who did the wrong way?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: And and does it matter if you came here and
Speaker 2: you built a life in you have a family and
Speaker 2: kids that went to school here and all that stuff
Speaker 2: at some point and you.
Speaker 1: Want to be the most capitalistic about it. They came
Speaker 1: here and paid taxes and contributed to the economy. That
Speaker 1: if that's like really how we're defining contribution, they could
Speaker 1: they contributed, right, So I am not disappointed we didn't
Speaker 1: use him, But can you tell me why he didn't
Speaker 1: make it in?
Speaker 2: You know? I think what it was is that the
Speaker 2: conversation we had about the Bipartisan Border Bill, which was
Speaker 2: a really important part of the story in the sense
Speaker 2: that there was a solution that they were working towards,
Speaker 2: and that was, you know, being supported by the border patrol.
Speaker 1: And it was introduced by a Republican.
Speaker 2: By a Republican who was pretty conservative, and then basically
Speaker 2: was killed by a tweet from Trump that said, we
Speaker 2: don't want to give Biden a win on this issue,
Speaker 2: and then Republicans in the House said we're not going
Speaker 2: to bring this up for a vote, so it was killed.
Speaker 2: And he was saying, well, the bill was not good,
Speaker 2: and it was also not really bipartisan because the more
Speaker 2: extreme side of the Republicans did not want to vote
Speaker 2: for this bill anyway. So you made the joke that
Speaker 2: it should have been a tripartisan bill, right the Democrats,
Speaker 2: Republicans and crazy Republicans. But the problem with that side
Speaker 2: of the argument is that it's complicated to talk about
Speaker 2: the bill. It's complicated to talk about what was in it,
Speaker 2: why didn't pass, why did Biden not set it up
Speaker 2: before this? You know, all of those things just take
Speaker 2: time to explain, and it's almost like we should do
Speaker 2: an entire piece on that thing in itself. And once
Speaker 2: we started going to the border and talking to all
Speaker 2: the people there, and it was just too much real estate, basically.
Speaker 2: And I feel like that happens a lot with the
Speaker 2: pieces that we are too ambitious, we try to do
Speaker 2: too much, and then in the end we have to
Speaker 2: pare it down to what is the cleanest clearest point
Speaker 2: we can make with this, and then have to hope
Speaker 2: that people are going to you know, look into it more,
Speaker 2: or that the show will cover things you know that
Speaker 2: we can't get to. And that is really the biggest
Speaker 2: fight in these pieces is how to get it down
Speaker 2: to a six minute cut yep, that fits on the show.
Speaker 2: So we lose tons of great stuff every time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know what I want to do actually is I
Speaker 2: want to pitch another border story for you.
Speaker 1: Oh you down?
Speaker 2: I love that you hate all these stories and every
Speaker 2: time I bring one up, you're like, oh no, and
Speaker 2: then at then you're like, oh, you know what, we
Speaker 2: did learn something? Well.
Speaker 1: I feel that way about every Field piece, right, I'm
Speaker 1: reluctant and then I'm thankful at the end. But they're hard.
Speaker 2: They are hard.
Speaker 1: They're hard, and you have butterflies and you talk to
Speaker 1: people you wouldn't normally talk to and it's all good
Speaker 1: for you. It builds character, But sometimes you don't want
Speaker 1: to build character. You know, I got kids at home, dude,
Speaker 1: My character's being tested already.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate that you're stretching out of your comfort
Speaker 2: zone to do these pieces, because I think it's great
Speaker 2: for the show.
Speaker 1: It's good for the show, and it's good for America. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good for America. Thank you your fun to work
Speaker 1: with even though you don't call action or cut. And
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed the piece. Everybody.
Speaker 6: Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by
Speaker 6: searching The Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts. Watch
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Speaker 6: Central and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus.
Speaker 1: This has been a Comedy Central podcast