Actor John Leguizamo failed to sway a group of undecided, Trump-leaning Latinos into voting for Kamala Harris.
The lack of success came this past week on The Daily Show, during a segment that saw Leguizamo go undercover as a long-in-the-tooth interviewer.
Seated opposite six ‘Trump-curious’ Latinos, the progressive Chef star proceeded to ask a series of questions while wearing an elaborate disguise.
The questions sought to discern the reason for the candidate’s ‘surprising support in the Latino community’, as showrunners put it – as Trump’s popularity with the demographic has come into question.
At one point, Leguizamo asked if any celeb endorsements could sway their votes – leading the group to shake their heads ‘no’. When asked what they liked about Trump, one man simply said, ‘He’s not evasive’ – leading to scenes difficult to forget.
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‘It’s pretty clear, I mean, this is someone that’s been at the forefront for a very long time speaking his mind,’ the man behind the ‘evasive’ assertion went on to explain.
A female voter at this point observed, ‘When [Trump] was in the government, the economy was better than we have it right now.
‘That’s the only part that I like.’
Leguizamo, meanwhile, listened in – wearing a wrinkled off-color hoodie and a false beard.
The 64-year-old Colombian-born actor also donned a series of prosthetics, as he went on to produce a series of stills showing other Latino stars voting Harris.
Photos of Eva Longoria, Bad Bunny, and Pitbull all failed to sway the crowd – leading the man behind the curtain to almost reveal his identity.
‘John Legweeze-me-o?’ he at one point asked – purposely mispronouncing his own name as he kept his cover from being blown
One of the panlists proceeded to offer a correction, but no one else said otherwise – leading to an incredulous voiceover from the frustrated actor framed as a joke.
‘Well f**k you too, then!’ it said.
A series of recordings from Trump rallies and interviews ensued, clearly curated to hone in on some of Trump’s more disparaging comments.
Centered mostly around immigrants, they included one where the former president flat-out said he’d ‘begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.’
Asked what they thought, one interviewee said the plan seemed like an ‘excellent way to fix a very, very severe problem’ – as another said, ‘If he’s saying immigration is a problem, it’s like you have a leak in your house; You’ve gotta turn it off, the water supply.’
‘Only after you fix it,’ the person explained, can you ‘then turn it on.
‘Maybe that’s what he’s trying to do,’ they posited. ‘Like, let’s close down the border for a while.’
This paved the way for another joke from Leguizamo, whom appeared to be languishing by this point.
‘But who would you call to fix your leak if all the Latinos are gone?’ he quipped.
Several go on to laugh, including the man who just used the plumbing analogy.
‘Mass deportation didn’t seem to turn them off,’ he said, still serious. ‘Let’s try something else.’
In another aired snippet, Trump is seen painting many of the migrants crossing in the the US at the Southern Border as ‘terrorists’ from ‘mental institutions’ who are ‘poisoning the blood of our country.’
In another, the aspiring two-term president proclaimed the proclivity to murder is “in their genes.’
Of this, one voter, apparently still unswayed, conceded, ‘I think maybe there’s better words that can be used. We all misspeak sometimes.’
A sarcastic Leguizamo quipped, ‘He misspeaks from the heart.’
Some, meanwhile, seemed more troubled by the parade of carefully chosen clips, saying, ‘This is stereotyping Latinos, it’s stereotyping immigrants, and the more that you demonize people, it doesn’t bring us together.’
In response, Leguizamo, again using humor to handle the situation, telling the attendee, ‘You, sir, you definitely don’t have the murder gene.’
Another panelist proceeded to point out the apparent agenda behind the sequence of clips and pointed questions.
He said, “With your questions and the questions that I’m listening to are about ‘As you see this, what do you think?” I’d rather not see that,’ gesturing to the TV playing the snippets.
‘So it’s better if we don’t show these clips of him because they make you not wanna vote for him?’ Leguizamo went on to respond.
‘That’s exactly why many who will tell you that they don’t like them – is because of what he says,’ the same voter asserted, suggesting there are more important issues at play.
Leguizamo, however, used this as a way out – ending the segment by saying he was ‘making some progress’ for Harris’ cause.
He went on to shed some of his disguise, to the surprise of the panelists.
He then asked, ‘Now that I’ve shown you all these awful things about Trump, does that change your vote?’
All of the panelists responded by again shaking their heads – their minds all still made-up.
The result appeared to be not what showrunners had expected, with the segment ending there.
