Comedian and actor Steve-O—best known for MTV's early 2000s stunt/prank show Jackass and the subsequent film franchise of the same name as well as the spinoff Wildboyz—has drawn backlash over comments he made on his podcast Steve-O's Wild Ride!
Speaking on the February 3 episode with Canadian comedian Harland Williams, Steve-O asked:
"Why is it that so many [undocumented immigrants] who don't have this respect that you have are murderers?"
After Williams asked him to clarify his question, Steve-O responded:
"So many of these people who are illegally in America, right, it's like the majority of them are murderers."
Taken aback, Williams replied:
"No, that’s a fallacy, that’s a huge fallacy."
"To say there’s 30 million illegals, to say that most of them are murderers. That’s improbable. The reality is probably 0.01% of them are murderers."
"Now, [the 0.01% are] bad people, they’re murderers, they shouldn’t be here, but most of them are not."
Steve-O responded:
"Well okay, fair point, but a great many of them are trafficking fentanyl."
Williams replied:
"Look, when you’re here illegally, and you might not have the means to go through legal channels to work or find a way to feed your family or whatever, there might be a propensity for you to have to do illegal activity to feed yourself and keep your lifeline going."
"That’s more probable, but murder doesn’t make sense."
You can see the now viral exchange here:
Now Steve-O is claiming his comments were misunderstood.
In an apology posted on Instagram, the 51-year-old claimed he was being sarcastic to mock the anti-immigrant rhetoric being employed by the administration of MAGA Republican President Donald Trump to justify the constitutional and human rights violations being perpetrated by Kristi Noem's Department of Homeland Security via Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Paired with a photo of him sitting on a stool holding a bag of ice with a red line through the word, Steve-O wrote:
"I have been just as horrified and saddened by the atrocities committed by ICE as everyone else, so it’s come as a complete shock to me that anyone thought I was serious when I made an absurd, sarcastic comment about 'most immigrants being murderers.'"
"Factually, less than 0.1% of the human population will ever commit homicide, so of course I don’t believe that. If there’s a group of people more likely to murder anyone, it would be ICE agents, not immigrants."
The comedian concluded:
"To all of the people sending me angry messages: apologies for the false alarm. I promise you, I wasn’t being serious at all. Man, what a bummer to be misunderstood around that one…"
Not all of his fans were happy about his clarification and apology, particularly his more conservative fans.
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But they were soundly mocked in the comments.
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Others let Steve-O know they appreciated his stance.
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But not everyone was buying the explanation or the apology, especially on Reddit where the clip first went viral.
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Misunderstood comedy or sincere bigotry, only Steve-O knows what was really behind his comments.
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