The Daily Showdown
Trevor Noah and Jordan Klepper go point-counterpoint on Trump's child-parent separation policy
The Trump administration has been slowly shutting immigration down since Day One, Trevor Noah said on Monday's Daily Show, "but after enacting their latest policy of taking children away from their parents at the border, they seem to have hit a wall." There is growing bipartisan condemnation of taking kids from their parents and holding them in cages, he noted. "There's no way that you can defend this, unless you work at Fox & Friends."
President Trump's defenders point to the amenities at the detention centers, "but that's not really the point," Noah said. "The point is, the federal government is effectively stealing kids away from their parents. Like, if some guy in an unmarked van took your kids from the park, the last thing you'd be worried about as a parent is how nice the van was or whether they had the good candy." And Noah called BS on Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Trump blaming everyone but themselves for their own policy.
The policy of snatching children from parents "sounds harsh, but that's also the policy of witches in candy houses," Jordan Klepper responded at The Opposition. And sure, "if you think about it for a second — literally only a second — it sounds really, really bad — movie villain bad. We're the guys who phone up and say 'We have your daughter. I hope you don't have a special set of skills, or else you'll find us.' But guys, don't let them shame you. ... This is who we are. We're the side that supports separating kids from their parents. We're the deplorables." And if Trump officials feel a little twitch in that "fist-sized spot between your lungs," he said, that's just "growing pains — sorry, shrinking pains" — as they work though the "stages of self-acceptance." Watch below as Klepper walks through the Trump team's denial, blame, appealing to a higher power, and for one man, acceptance. Peter Weber