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