John Leguizamo Explains What the SAVE Act Really Means | Behind the Show

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Hello and welcome to the Daily Show Ears edition. This is Kat Radley. I am a writer for the Daily Show, and we are back with the amazing John Leguizamo.

Thank you, Kat, Thank you for having me. I loved being here last time. It's been a while, missed you.

I know. I was like, Oh, John's back, Sure, I'll do the podcast again.

Yeah, lucky me.

You're about to do your piece for the show. In my opinion, so we're going to talk quickly about the process behind that.

Is that what they're calling now?

Yeah, in my opinion, And what was.

It called before segment?

Really? Yeah, it was just like a random segment. Yeah, but now you're back, and surprise, surprise, Trump's up to some great fear mongering again. So this piece we wanted to focus on the SAVE Act and all that Trump and the republic plans are doing in fear mongering around immigration and illegal voting that isn't actually happening.

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility or SAVE Act, would require registered voters to provide proof of citizenship and force states to remove non citizens from their lists of eligible voters.

We want US citizens to vote, but we don't want illegal votes.

Block illegal aliens from voting and our elections.

Just so everyone's up to speed.

What this bill does is require everyone to register with a documentation proving citizenship, like a passport or a birth certificate. And maybe you're thinking, well, you know, if there's a big problem of non citizens voting illegally, why not try to stop it? Well, because there isn't a big problem. There isn't even a small problem. There isn't a problem at all. Do you need to hear it in Spanish? Nor i problem? Mote data shows that non citizen immigrants

Do you want to talk a little bit just about the peace and you know what means you want to talk about this time?

Yeah, I mean it's crazy. It's like, why can't they Republicans try to win, like just fairly. Why can't you just try to win? Why do you have to like rig the game and then talk about rigging the game when you're the one rigging the game, but you're just projecting. Yeah, it's so crazy. I mean this new act, which is trying to make sure that naturalized citizens, young people and people of color just feel more afraid to go because who has their birth certificate? Who even has a Social Security Card?

I mean who?

I mean passports? I mean these things are so crazy because it's gonna fuck up Republicans voting too, because I bet you more Tinos have their passports the old white Republicans.

That is something we talked about, like the fact that this act would require people to provide documentation to show citizenship, and yes, that does disproportionately hurt, you know, people of color and young people. But that's like where a lot of the jokes came from, is who the fuck knows where these documents are?

Certificate that's given to you at your birth, to your mom and dad, and then who passes it on.

You have to know where it is forever.

Like fifty years after the fact, yea, and who has any of that documentation?

I just had my first I had twins last year and.

Oh Congrash, thank you, thank you, and Bishop forms always you know me.

But that was one thing they give you, like the Social Security card certificate, and I remember thinking, like I need to know where these are forever. The rest of their lives. That's so much pressure. And yeah, it would, it would hinder a lot of people from voting.

Absolutely, it's what it's meant to do that, but it's going to disproportionately hit people of color. But it will also hurt Republicans, which I'm glad because every time they try to scare us about mailing ballads and stuff, and then they hurt themselves in Florida because most older people in Florida mail their ballots.

Yeah you know, yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that.

Like they're telling you don't don't vote because it's not worthwhile, and all of a sudden they're making themselves not vote.

But it just sounds like you were saying that they would rather put all this effort into suppressing vote rather than just earning the votes.

Right of it convinces that we should vote for you, give us reasons to vote for you instead of fear mongering, hate mongering, being divisive, you know, name calling. It endangering people because when they start saying that immigrants, which they mean Latinos, let's call it what it is. It's not even an euphemism because is supposed to make things sound great.

And to bring up that point, like last time you were here, we were talking about how Trump and Biden were appealing or trying to appeal to Latino voters. And now who would have thought the next time you came there'd be a whole new Democratic candidate. And so I'm curious as to what your thoughts on art for Kamala being the new Democratic candidate in terms of her appeal

Yeah, yeah, I think so. But you know, it's interesting because we talked about this last time also about how Biden would have to be might have to be tough on the border just to get the vote, just to because it's they made it such a huge issue that it has become an issue when it really should be a non issue, but so that Biden and so Kamala is coming in tough with immigration as well, you know, yeah, so she's coming in for immigrants.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I mean, I think she killed it in the debate and she got the Latinos. I think she's talking to Latino consultants, which she should do in Latino experts, because she said the things that we care about, and that's jobs and homes and housing. So for her to say that, you know, she's going to help first startup businesses, I mean that's huge for us. Latinos are all about startup businesses. So that's incredible because she knew she was targeting that's.

All we really care about.

You know, we were not monolithic, and you know we are. Some of us are incredibly religious, so you're not going to get them because abortion and LGTBQ plus is not for them, you know, so forget.

Those the economy.

So the economy gets most of us the appeals.

That's interesting. The peels She was making two voters, all voters about the middle class, the working class, how she's going to help them. That is really what you think is like the Latinos responding.

To Yeah, I mean That's that's all we care about. I mean, when I talk to everybody, that's what they care about the most is jobs, uh, job security, uh, start of businesses, small businesses, and housing.

So you think Kamala did great in the debate. Now Trump, we know that he was really harping on immigration. Yeah. One thing we say in the piece is how he was talking about immigration even when he wasn't being asked about immigration. Why do you think he was. I mean that it came out his obsession with immigration, that it was kind of something he came back to over and over again.

Well, first of all, let's let's let's track it back.

One of Trump's biggest peeves is he hates Puerto Ricans because you know, he had that low income housing uh so uh, you know he he hates like Latinos, So that's one of his problems.

And and secondly because he thinks racism, Yeah, but.

No specific he's got he's gotta he's got a fetish. And then and then secondly because he's made it an issue and he thinks it's his driving issue, and it's you know, the maga hate others and feel like others are coming to take their jobs and they're not. I mean, no immigrant is coming to take anybody's job that they have. You know, the only people who are worried about immigrants taking the job or are the immigrants, because nobody wants to do Nobody wants to pick grapes, pick strawberries.

That's the wildest thing. Even the whole crazy story about immigrants eating cats and dogs in Ohio. The immigrants community they're talking about even they were like specifically recruited to be there to do the jobs that were vacant.

Right right, So it's like, but they do that. They do that all the time.

They sucker us to come to North Carolina, South Carolina, Raleigh, and then they once we do the job, they kick us out. Katrina, we were Latino, especially hont Durans, came in droves to rebuild Katrina in Louisiana, New Orleans, to rebuild it. They came here by the droves. Then after they did all the work, they wouldn't pay them. They called ice on them and that was the thanks they got for it. And they you know, it's just a

That's something we talked about when we were writing the piece, this voter suppression going on. We were saying how it was reministion of like targeting back to the Jim Crow era, and you said, it's not really interesting about how that among the Latino community. You guys referred to it as Wan.

It was called Juan Crow. In the South and the Southwest and the West, we were you know, we were segregated. The first case against segregation was US in fourteen in Colorado, and then the second most important one was Sylvia Menez that paved the way for Brown versus Bard to bed, you know, with one Crow laws.

You know, Black people were.

Worse treated than us, but we're the second worst treated people after I guess Indigenous people were fun competition, who is has the most horrible life? Oh yeah, I mean, okay, we're second to third, because I guess Indigenous had the worst, and then black.

People in US, but like eighth or ninth.

Well, you're in all.

Those groups, so it's yeah, you can't help but be a big number there. But you know, six thousand of us were lynched, burned, alive, and shot in America from eighteen thirty to nineteen thirty. Black people of course much worse.

So it was all that we were all over that place, you know.

And Yeah, I love talking to you because you are just this like walking history book that most Americans are never taught or even exposed to. And I'd love to talk about the PBS series coming up.

What a great segue.

Yeah, do you want to talk about the PBS series coming up?

Yes, I'm so excited by this. This is my passion project. I think is the most important thing I've done in my life. I think it's a cultural corrective for US Latinos in America because John Hopkins University did a study and found that eighty seven percent of our Latino contributions to the making of the US are not in history textbooks. So I'm putting those eighty seven percent in my show starting September twenty seventh on PBS. It's a three part series.

I would I think I told you this briefly last year. I used to be a high school teacher before I was the writer of The Daily Show, and it was amazing, like everything was like whitewashed, like our history and our literature, like there would be like two Latino authors that we would like have to choose from in the textbook, and I would have loved to have access to something like this to I mean, teachers should be showing this in the classroom.

Because it's American history. You know, Latino history is American history. Black history is American history. It's important to know. We want to know about what everybody contributed to. It doesn't change your DNA, it doesn't it doesn't make you other. It helps you understand how this country was built, how

Yeah, just I mean the amount of just basic empathy. I think it would give everybody absol respect.

I mean the thing that I want more than empathy's respect.

Yea.

And I think it would give Latinos the respect that we do because we helped build this country alongside white people and black people. You know, after our Asian brothers and sisters were kicked out in the eighteen hundreds, we finished all the railroads all the way to the west, and we did all the infrastructure in the West and Southwest.

Yeah.

So it's like, you know, we just when you get colonized and conquested, you don't get credit.

You don't get credit for nothing.

John Wayne gets the credit.

John Wayne, he's not.

They're going to take away some of his credit now he's either he might take away his name off the airport in California.

And I'm so glad because it was a mad race.

Yeah yeah, and he's the ones that's like propped up in like the cowboy culture is like, oh my god, yeah.

It took our culture. Like okay, book or root. I'm going to tell you that I hate old people and they should you know, only you know, he.

Was really terrible.

I realize how terrible he was most like old white men from history. You realize later. Oh no, they were terrible, terrible people.

Yeah, you try to give them some slack and go, oh they didn't know better, but they knew better.

Come on, come on, I mean, I don't know.

I don't blame anybody today. I mean I don't have a whole grudges to nobody today. It's just back then I hold grudges.

Yeah, today you should be you have access to the information. You should be like educating yourself to.

You meet somebody. I meet so many allies, white, Black, Asian, l g TBq plus that it and it warms my heart.

Man.

It makes you feel so great that you feel you feel like you said, empathy, you feel seen, you feel respected, and and and and we understand that we're all in this together, like Kamalas said, we're better together. And it's we just a more beautiful country, a more prosperous country, because you know, I mean countries that block their immigration fail. Japan like this immigration for thirty years, They've had a stagnant economy and now they realize it. Now they're welcoming.

Yeah, it's a long plane ride.

It is. But I'll go, you know, go anywhere anywhere people want me.

I want to do one quick fun thing.

Sure, this wasn't fun, you know, that's well.

Something that's you know, not going to be totally depressing, but hopefully I like depressing shit. I really loved.

Nothing makes me have more fun than depressing shit.

Well.

One fun thing about our writing process, so we, you know, write this piece together, Yes, we do. One thing that I love about this job being a comedian is the really serious conversations you have about like wording and what works for jokes. And today one of the big things we had to discuss was using dick versus penis versus cock for a joke. And I think we ended up going with dick.

Yeah, because we were going to be censored, right cock, well, because we were using the Spanish version, and uh so we we we outed ourselves and so they spotted it, so we had to changed the dick and then we got past them. No, there is something funny about these Republican Cavarona is trying to write anti voting signs in Spanish, because I doubt they have any.

Spanish speaking friends.

They're just going to that clean ladies like, hey, Consuello, como s a d sai you cannot vote, and you know Gonzello will come.

Back like, uh oh, I got you, Poppy. It's thing better better gotta.

We liked better because it was funnier than Penny Penny's penis. Sometimes penis is just not funny.

John, It's always a pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much for taking some time to talk with us. American Historia, The Untold History of Latino's premieres on PBS on September twenty seventh. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

Much love.

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