“Top Chef” host Padma Lakshmi used her own immigration story to call out President Donald Trump on Tuesday’s broadcast of “The Daily Show.”
“I’m an immigrant,” the award-winning India-born cookbook author told host Trevor Noah as they discussed her advocacy for immigrants as an ambassador for the American Civil Liberties Union and the United Nations.
Lakshmi continued:
I really came here with my mother, much like these people at the border with hardly anything. What you have to understand is that, if a parent takes a child on a dangerous journey, puts them on their back, is willing to walk across deserts, that’s because the place they’re leaving is worse and more dangerous, and I just think we have plenty to share. And if you look at all the contributions that immigrants have made, you’re basically looking at what America is today, in whole, full stop.
The audience cheered.
Lakshmi then jabbed Trump, who last month controversially declared a national emergency to obtain funds for his proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border:
There’s no crisis. There’s no crisis. The only crisis is that we have a lunatic with a lot of power. That is the only crisis.
Check out the full interview here: