Wu defends Boston on ‘The Daily Show’

Local News

Mayor Michelle Wu rebuffed jokes about Boston’s reputation for racism and insisted that the city’s immigration policies are working.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu made a notable national TV appearance Tuesday night as she gears up to formally announce her bid for reelection.

Wu spoke with comedian Ronny Chieng on “The Daily Show,” the long-running Comedy Central late night show known for its left-leaning commentary on American politics. 

Wu’s national profile is growing in the wake of her testimony to Congress earlier this month on immigration policies. There, she earned praise for forcefully standing up to GOP lawmakers who tried to paint Boston’s so-called sanctuary policies as reckless and illegal. The mayor followed that testimony up with a State of the City address in which she leaned into Boston’s history of “facing down bullies” and continued to take a defiant stance in confronting the Trump administration. 

The same topics came up during Wu’s 15-minute interview with Chieng. 

“All of the buzz around whether these kinds of cities that are more welcoming for immigrants are more dangerous, it’s about a false narrative that immigrants are somehow more likely to commit crimes or cause harm, and that is just simply not true,” Wu said. 

In Boston, an existing law limits the ways in which local police can cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Wu frequently says that this makes the city safer, because immigrants can go to authorities to report crimes or other incidents without fear of deportation. It’s an argument she made before Congress and again on “The Daily Show.”

That position has landed Wu in hot water with federal officials. President Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan has attacked Wu multiple times, and earlier this week boasted about the success of an “enhanced operation” that led to the arrests of 370 people in and around Boston. 

Homan said Tuesday that many of those arrests were “collaterals,” or people without any criminal history. He blamed “sanctuary” policies for this, and said that “collateral arrests will increase because we’re going to run into illegal aliens while we’re in the course of looking for those targets.”

Wu made history as the first woman and first person of color elected mayor in Boston’s history. Chieng frequently brought up her ethnicity and the city’s reputation as one of the more racist places in the country. 

“There is a stereotype of the city,” Chieng said. “I still don’t understand how you got elected.”

Chieng, who was born in Malaysia and spent some of his childhood in New Hampshire, made clear that he has “lot of love for Boston.” Still, his attempts to jokingly rib Wu about the city’s reputation fell flat with some local observers. 

“You might be surprised by Boston. Next time you come, we’ll have to take you around a little more,” Wu said in response at one point. 

Wu is not the only prominent Massachusetts politician to court national audiences through a late night show appearance this month. Gov. Maura Healey took to “Late Night with Seth Meyers” a few weeks ago to criticize Trump and extoll the positives Massachusetts has to offer.

Wu is expected to officially announce her reelection campaign in early April. But Wu has made it clear for months that she wants another term, and is already fending off attacks from her most prominent opponent, Josh Kraft. 

Watch Wu’s full interview with Chieng below: