Liberal comedian Stephen Colbert jokingly parodied a famous poem about immigration to criticize President Biden’s new effort to secure the border.
The White House on Tuesday announced executive actions to stop illegal immigrants at the southern border claiming asylum if crossings reach a certain level, a move that has angered many progressives, including apparently Colbert.
"Yesterday, Biden signed a controversial executive order that allows the president to suspend granting immigrants asylum if the number of asylum seekers averages more than 2,500 a day," Colbert said Wednesday night on "The Late Show." "In response, they changed the poem on the Statue of Liberty to read: ‘Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses up to 2,500 people a day, while supplies last, only valid at participating Dairy Queens.’"
Colbert also noted that Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., had blasted the move, sharing a clip where Kennedy suggested "President Biden is in trouble politically. He’s polling right up there with fungal infections."
BIDEN CRITICIZED BY HIS OWN PARTY FOR 'USING THE SAME TOOLS' AS TRUMP TO CONTROL THE BORDER
"Sir, show some respect," Colbert replied. "He’s polling right up there with ‘Former President Fungal Infections.’"
This is the second night in a row the talk show host mocked Biden's policy shift toward the border. On Tuesday night, Colbert jokingly recommended that Biden pitch border security to Democrats by saying, "the wall is going to be gluten-free, and the barbed wire will be pro-choice. It’s not a border wall. It’s a bord-Her wall,'"
The Statue of Liberty poem Colbert was parodying was "The New Colossus," by 19th century poet and activist Emma Lazarus. The poem, which was famously inscribed onto the Statue of Liberty, is often quoted by immigration advocates.
The text has been a source of debate in recent years, such as when CNN reporter Jim Acosta cited it to then-Trump advisor Stephen Miller while criticizing the Trump administration's immigration stance. "The poem that you’re referring to was added later (and) is not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty," Miller replied in 2017.
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Other far-left entities such as the "Jewish Voice for Peace" have publicly quoted Lazarus, who was a Zionist herself, to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. It wrote last year as it "took over" the Statue of Liberty, "The famous words of our Sephardi Jewish ancestor Emma Lazarus etched into this monument compel us to take action to support Palestinians yearning to breathe free."
