Jon Stewart on Ice raids in LA: ‘Terrifyingly militarized sweeps’

A picture


Late-night hosts reacted to the Trump administration’s brutal Ice raids in Los Angeles and the extraordinary mobilization of national guard troops in response to anti-Ice protests in the city.After protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids in Los Angeles over the weekend, in which at least one car burned, Jon Stewart had a question for Angelenos: “Is your city ever not on fire?“Whether you win a basketball championship, a World Series championship, whether you have an exploding piñata gender reveal gone wrong, congratulations, it’s a boy and an evacuation,” the Daily Show host joked on Monday evening.“Or you’re just protesting the Trump administration’s expanded deportation raids.LA continues to be our most flammable city.”The unrest was, as Stewart said: “the very predictable result of a liberal city reliant on an immigrant population colliding with a heavy-handed Maga migrant-trawling operation looking to hit its quota of brown Poke-men”.

Stewart played a clip of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric started during his campaign: “We’re going to get the criminals, the murderers, the drug dealers,” He then contrasted it with the reality of Ice raids at a Home Depot parking lot in LA,“A Home Depot? From ‘the worst of the worst’ to a fucking Home Depot?” he fumed,“Jeez, Ice, if you need assistance in arresting people, those guys are looking for work,“It’s an explosive situation, on the cusp of federalism v states’ rights,” he continued.

“Border control v due process.Terrifyingly militarized sweeps v hard-working people in local communities.The United States marines v the Postmates guy who brought you an egg sandwich.”The raids reportedly came after Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, screamed at Ice officials to arrest more undocumented immigrants.“Yeah, that sounds like him,” said Stewart.

“Although I’m pretty sure Stephen Miller wasn’t screaming.I think it’s just his default tone is banshee.It’s what happens when oxygen molecules are desperate to exit his unholy lungs.“Predictably, these non-targeted, much broader deportation efforts in cities that feel very connected to the immigrant population” are “a tinderbox”, Stewart concluded, “and Trump happily lights the fuse”.On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert recapped Trump’s shocking deployment of more than 2,000 national guard troops to LA for relatively small anti-Ice protests.

“Oh Lord, really? Is it too much to ask to have one weekend where I don’t have to Google ‘when count as martial law?’” Colbert said.Speaking on the White House lawn, Trump claimed that “the people that are causing the problem are professional agitators” and “insurrectionists” who should “be in jail”.Colbert broke out his Trump impression: “Yes, all the insurrectionists should be in jail, and I’ll tell you folks, we have plenty of room, because I just pardoned 1,500 of them.”“Trump’s actions are shocking because this troop deployment is in defiance of the California government,” he added.The state is supposed to be in charge of the national guard, and state and local officials in Los Angeles had not sought their help dealing with the protests.

“Nobody asked for this, and it’s only going to make things worse,” he said.“And in Los Angeles, there’s a word for that – Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.”The last time a president bypassed a state government to send in the national guard was in 1965, when Lyndon B Johnson used troops to protect civil rights demonstrators in Alabama.“So we’ve come full circle,” said Colbert.“Troops were deployed to protect protesters by Lyndon B Johnson, and now they’re being used to threaten protesters by Donald B Dick.

”And on Late Night, Seth Meyers relished the spectacular falling out between Elon Musk and Trump before turning to events in LA.“The Trump-Musk feud was yet another spectacle brought to us by a presidency that is entirely about spectacle rather than substance,” he said.“You need no further proof of that than what happened in LA this weekend, where the Trump administration sought to create a made-for-TV spectacle around their barbaric immigration raids.”One of the raids included the former daytime talkshow host Dr Phil, indicating to Meyers that it was all for show.“That’s what the Trump administration wants: a spectacle for rightwing media.

A climate of fear and chaos,” he said.“And no one is better suited to achieve a climate of fear than Trump’s creepiest aide.”That would be Stephen Miller, who “wants terrifying mass immigration raids everywhere”, Meyers explained.“Regardless of whether the targets are people with criminal records or four-year-olds, he’s a rabid authoritarian who wants to create the feeling nowhere is safe, from courthouses to 7/11.”That is exactly what Ice created this weekend with sweeping raids in LA, which ignited the protests.

“If you only watch rightwing media, they would have you believe that the entirety of Los Angeles is currently under siege,” said Meyers.Trump himself posted on Truth Social that LA was “invaded and occupied” by “illegal aliens and criminals”.“Trump is so detached from reality he sounds like he’s writing a sci-fi screenplay,” Meyers noted.
cultureSee all
A picture

How to Train Your Dragon to Neil Young: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

How to Train Your DragonOut now This live-action remake was shot by Bill Pope, the cinematographer behind films as diverse as Clueless, The Matrix and Spider-Man 3, with puppets used on set to give the actors something to work with before painting in the CGI. Starring Mason Thames, Gerard Butler and Nick Frost.Film on Film WeekendBFI Southbank, London, 14 & 15 JuneA whole weekend of films screening exclusively from actual physical prints? Sign us up. Physical film in a digital world is a use-it-or-lose-it kind of treasure, so to see the likes of Star Wars screened from prints, vote with your wallet and get down to the BFI.LollipopOut now Daisy-May Hudson based this portrait of a woman trying to regain custody of her kids on her own experiences of the social care system, with Posy Sterling giving a barnstorming performance as a woman who can’t get a bigger flat because she doesn’t have her children with her, and can’t get her kids back because her flat is too small

A picture

British Library to reinstate Oscar Wilde’s reader card 130 years after it was revoked

The British Library is to symbolically reinstate Oscar Wilde’s reader pass, 130 years after its trustees cancelled it following his conviction for gross indecency.A contemporary pass bearing the name of the Irish author and playwright will be officially presented to his grandson, Merlin Holland, at an event in October, it will be announced on Sunday.Rupert Everett, who wrote, directed and starred as Wilde in The Happy Prince – the acclaimed 2018 film about the writer’s tragic final years in exile – will play a part in the ceremony.Holland is an expert on Wilde whose publications include The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. Asked how his grandfather might have reacted to the pass being reinstated, he said: “He’d probably say ‘about time too’

A picture

The Guide #195: How Reddit made nerds of us all

It only ended a few years ago, but Westworld already feels a bit of a TV footnote. A pricey mid-2010s remake of a 70s Yul Brynner movie few people remembered, HBO’s robot cowboy drama lumbered on for four lukewarm seasons before getting cancelled – with few people really noticing.Still, when it premiered, Westworld was big news. Here was a show well-placed to do a Game of Thrones, only for sci-fi. Its high production values were married to an eye-catching cast (Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Harris, Thandiwe Newton, Jeffrey Wright) and it was run by the crack team of Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, who promised they had a playbook for how the whole show would shake out

A picture

Seth Meyers on Trump’s falling approval rating: ‘Worth remembering that people don’t like this’

Late-night hosts spoke about how Donald Trump’s presidency is proving unpopular with Americans, looking at the cruelty of his deportation strategy and the response to protests in Los Angeles.On Late Night, Seth Meyers spoke about Trump’s approval rating going down this past week and in particular he looked at how people are against his extreme immigration strategy.“People don’t even approve of Trump on immigration and that’s what people wanted him for,” he said.Meyers called his tactics “needlessly cruel” before speaking about his appearance at the Kennedy Center this week where he went to see a performance of Les Misérables.Trump was booed by many and Meyers said it was “like Darth Vader getting booed on the Death Star”

A picture

‘Difficult love’: Spanish publisher reprints groundbreaking book of Lorca’s homoerotic sonnets

In the autumn of 1983, dozens of carefully chosen readers received an envelope containing a slim, red booklet of sonnets that had been locked away since they were written almost 50 years earlier by the most famous Spanish poet of the 20th century.While those behind the initiative gave no clue as to their identities, their purpose was made abundantly clear in the dedication on the booklet’s final page: “This first edition of the Sonnets of Dark Love is being published to remember the passion of the man who wrote them.”Here at last, lovingly pirated and printed in blood-red ink, were the deeply homoerotic and anguished verses that Federico García Lorca had completed not long before he was murdered in the early days of the Spanish civil war.To commemorate the anonymous effort, to revisit a peculiar episode in Spain’s literary history, and to bring the poems to a new audience, a Galician publisher has now brought out a perfect facsimile edition of that groundbreaking 42-year-old booklet.Although long known to Lorca scholars – not least because they had been published in French two years earlier – Los Sonetos del Amor Oscuro had been hidden away by the poet’s family, who believed their tortured and sensual lines would taint his legacy and stir up old hatreds

A picture

Seth Meyers on Trump’s deployment of troops to LA: ‘About spectacle and power and nothing else’

Late-night hosts blasted Donald Trump’s deployment of troops to Los Angeles, his extremely partisan speech to the army and his upcoming military parade.On Wednesday’s Late Night, Seth Meyers mocked Donald Trump for saying he would arrest the California governor, Gavin Newsom, for the crime of “running for governor, because he’s done such a bad job”.“If you could arrest someone for being bad at their job, the jails would be filled with former head coaches of the New York Jets,” Meyers joked.“I gotta say, Trump’s really lost his step. He can’t even come up with a phony reason to arrest Newsom?” Meyers continued