Last Week Tonight with John Oliver talks border patrol, Stephen Miller
Take, for example, how Trump reacted to the Boy Scouts of America and some of what they supposedly told him about his speaking engagement. Or, think for a minute about his comments in golf.com referring to the White House as a “dump,” or finally how he is considering Stephen Miller for the post of Communications Director. There were two things in particular that were incredibly funny about this: His frequent comparisons of Miller to a Minion, and then also him repeatedly referencing parenthesis, something that Trump used in one of his tweets responding to the golf.com report. (For the record, the reporter of the story about the White House stood by his original story.)
Then, we ended up getting to the main story about the U.S. – Mexico border, which was far superior than his piece on Alex Jones last week. While there were many funny moments in the Jones segment, simultaneously most of his claims were things that we’d heard about in the past. The best episodes of Last Week Tonight are the ones that feature something educational, and show you a human side to an issue you may not care about. (There is no human side, seemingly, to Alex Jones.)
What we learned about the border patrol tonight was fascinating, mostly because Oliver focused heavily on just how little the border patrol sometimes has to do. There is a great deal of boredom with the job. Also, there is a history of serious drug problems involving many of the agents, and during the hiring surge under former President George W. Bush, there were a number of people who would not have met the polygraph qualifications in other government agencies.
In the end, Oliver’s point here seemed to be that hiring surges are not necessarily a great thing, whether you are talking about the border patrol or any other government agencies. If there is one part of his segment that is rather flimsy, it is the argument that hiring more agents is necessarily bad because of what happened in the past. It’s always possible in theory that this could change in the future with different plans in place. The border patrol is claiming that they do have better plans already.
With that being said, though, we’re not exactly endorsing any initiative that feels this rushed, and we think Oliver did a tremendous job of illuminating some of the issues that are going on with the border patrol that we don’t often think about at all. Also, it doesn’t feel like we really need any more border patrol agents.
What did you think about this week’s edition of Last Week Tonight? Be sure to share some of your thoughts in the comments below!
Meanwhile, head over to the link here in the event you want some further news when it comes to the show. (Photo: HBO.)