ICE Pepper Sprayed ‘The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper While He Covered Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize Campaign

In all fairness to President Donald Trump, he wouldn’t have such a reputation for brutality if all those pesky journalists weren’t able to see.

Despite the fact that Trump and his followers are currently attempting to drum up support for a full-on invasion of Venezuela using the exact same tactics that the Bush administration used in the lead-up to the Iraq War, the President still insists that he is a peaceful figure, claiming to have personally ended an ever-changing number of international conflicts. As such, Trump thought it was his right to receive the prestigious humanitarian honor awarded by the Nobel Committee every year, and The Daily Show found that to be so funny that they’re dedicating an entire special to Trump’s awards campaign.

Jordan Klepper, The Daily Show correspondent and the preeminent man-on-the-street comedian for such political catastrophes as the January 6th storming of the Capitol, was in Portland covering a naked bike ride protest against Trump and ICE for the recently released “The Daily Show Presents: Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse: Give The Man a Prize” when he says ICE agents attacked the protest, providing a moment of supreme, post-modern irony to rival the time the Nobel Committee gave the peace prize to Henry Kissinger.

During a tense moment in the special, The Daily Show's camera crews capture multiple ICE agents wrestling a clarinet-playing woman to the ground while protesters argue with officers, claiming that ICE began the confrontation leading to the arrest. Klepper notes in the voiceover that ICE then transported the woman out of state and detained her for multiple days.

But one concerning event from the Portland protest that didn't make it into the cut found its way into Klepper's tear ducts, as he explained in a recent interview with Variety.

“Because Donald Trump had crafted this idea that Antifa are the only people protesting, the people in Portland decided to shed all of their clothes as an image of non-violence in front of these agents,” Klepper explained of the demonstration. “As we were doing talking to people, we watched ICE agents consistently shooting these pepper bullets into the crowd. We watched them shove a musical band dressed in banana suits, knock a clarinetist to the ground, shove her face into the ground — where she was then taken across state lines for two days."

Said Klepper of the sudden eruption of violence, "It was terrifying. Mere seconds after a joyous, comedic protest coming down the street to try to stop some of the cruelty taking place inside. It was really something to behold that I’ve never experienced anything like.”

“The violence I saw was so performative, was so reckless, and there was such an intention to provoke,” Klepper alleged,. “It was peaceful protesters, who simply were there to provide a counterpoint to the images and the things that we heard about happening inside. But it was gross. It makes you disgusted to see American servicemen being used to literally attack people in banana costumes playing classical music."

“Our cameraman has disturbing footage, as he was right up there,” Klepper added, “I was on the outskirts of it, and we all had to leave because we were choking on pepper spray.”

As deeply disturbing as it is to see a peaceful and downright playful expression of the First Amendment allegedly shut down with state-sanctioned violence, Klepper hasn't seen anything yet – just wait until The Daily Show sends him to Oslo to cover Trump's military extraction of the Nobel Peace Prize.