Jeopardy!'s latest super-champ gives "strong by Jeopardy! standards" ICE rebuke

The 33-year-old Ding spent most of the interview reflecting on his run and its end, noting that there was something oddly fitting about being taken down in a “runaway” game. “It almost makes me feel better about the thing because there wasn’t really one clue or whatever that everything hinged on,” he noted. (Ding lost in part because Shahade managed to get his hands on all three of the game’s Daily Doubles, which allow aggressive contestants to create commanding leads over their opponents.) Ding was honest about the bittersweet nature of losing, saying, “Part of me is not OK and thinks that it would’ve been nice to go for more games. But on the other hand, it could have ended much earlier than it did,” noting that he had several games where he went into Final Jeopardy trailing his opponent, only to pull out an unlikely win.

Ding is also not ignorant of the reaction he’s elicited from the public during his run: “I kept hearing how it was bringing people together, and I love that very much. I’ve heard people say, ‘It’s nice to have something positive on TV!'” Which brings things back around to the politics of it all, as Ding—whose parents were born in China, and who is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Australia—noted to People that he was pleased that, “as an immigrant and a person of color, I was able to become part of the history of an American institution. Jeopardy! really is an institution, and America’s turning 250 years old and the federal government is going after immigrants in a way unlike anything that we’ve seen in the recent past. So I hope that immigrants can be seen in a positive light too.”

Which is, of course, extremely mild language on any normal scale of human political discussion, but practically inflammatory in terms of the very deliberately anodyne Jeopardy!. Ding has also been using his newfound celebrity in other political arenas: He appeared with New Jersey governor Mikie Sherill earlier this week, promoting a new affordable housing initiative in his home state, which is one nice way to keep busy until this year’s Tournament Of Champions comes around.