John Oliver takes aim at Donald Trump’s new border patrol

via HBO
via HBO /
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While the proposed border wall Donald Trump wants to build gets most of the coverage, John Oliver is showing how his border patrol is just as ‘dangerous’.

Those against Donald Trump already know how asinine his idea of the border wall between the United States and Mexico is. But what’s perhaps just as dangerous, but not getting nearly the same level of attention, is his strategy for the actual border patrol.

John Oliver chose to shine the spotlight on the “border patrol” on last night’s Last Week Tonight. Noting how there are already 20,000 of these guys patrolling the borders, Trump just announced his plans to add 5,000 more. “Let’s stop the drugs and the crime from pouring into our country,” Trump is shown saying at a rally to his followers.

To argue against the misconception Trump is spreading, Oliver talks about what the border is really like. Oliver speaks on how hard it must be for border patrol agents to have to deal with both harmless families seeking a better life and drug dealers smuggling in illegal substances on the same day. It’s got to be taxing, and as Oliver suggests, not everyone can do it. Oliver argues that hiring so many agents so quickly can actually leave us less safe, and have dire consequences.

The Last Week Tonight host says that we should take a moment to learn from the last time something like this happened, because it wasn’t even that long ago. In the late 2000s, under George W. Bush, the border patrol had been lifted from 10,000 agents to 20,000.

This meant that the government had tons of positions to fill, and went all out trying to advertise for it. They had even spent millions of dollars to sponsor a racecar with the border patrol logo brandished on the side. The ultra-cheesy TV recruitment ads were even more embarrassing. But no matter how exciting they tried to make it appear, the reality is that there’s hardly ever any action one sees as a border patrol agent. What the people aren’t prepared for is the “boredom” that comes with the job that would last for the majority of the entire career.

Oliver goes in to how the whole debacle became a complete disaster, and things don’t seem to be any more promising this time around. You can watch the full segment in the YouTube video below.

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New episodes of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver air Sunday nights on HBO.