-Prominent Republicans, including Donald Trump,
gathered for the annual Conservative Political Action
Conference over the weekend,
where speakers like Don Jr., Mike Lindell and Nikki Haley
were greeted by the embarrassing spectacle of half empty rooms
while they ranted about the usual
conspiracy theories and culture war nonsense.
But there was one major Republican politician
who wasn't in attendance.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
There is, of course, one name looming over
all of Republican politics right now,
and that's Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor
who's expected to launch his 2024 bid soon.
Now, DeSantis' main focus as governor
has been using the power of the government
to fight so-called wokeism,
which as far as I can tell, he can't even define.
It just seems to mean anything that's bothering conservatives
and wealthy old comedians.
It's basically just a collection of petty grievances
about meaningless culture war issues
like gender neutral Potato Head dolls
or M&Ms not wearing sexy clothes anymore,
a thing they on purpose say out loud all the time.
If you accidentally said you thought
the green M&M was hot in fourth grade,
you'd be teased about it until you graduated high school.
"Oh, don't open those around Ronnie,
or else he's going to melt in his pants."
[ Laughter ]
If Republicans win at all in 2024,
I'm sure their first act right out of the gate
will be a law requiring the green M&M to wear full
BDSM gear.
[ Laughter ]
[Bleep]
It kind of worked on me.
[ Laughter ]
DeSantis chose to skip the Conservative Political Action
Conference and give a speech at the Ronald Reagan Library
over the weekend where he once again
complained about Wokeism.
-I think these liberal states have gotten it wrong.
And why are they getting it wrong?
I think it all goes back to ideology.
I think it goes back to this woke mind virus
that's infected the left and all these other institutions.
-What the hell is the woke mind virus?
They should add a Ron DeSantis character to "The Last of Us,"
who's always focused on the wrong thing.
"That goddamn virus turned my whole family
into mushroom monsters."
"It could be worse.
They could have turned into drag queens."
"Hey. Hey, Ron.
Could you shut the [bleep] up?"
[ Cheers and applause ]
Also, you think the left -- you think the left has a mind virus?
Let me ask. Let me ask you.
Which of these sounds more like a mind virus to you?
The side that wants to teach accurate history,
provide gender affirming care to children,
protect people from gun violence
and safeguard reproductive rights,
or the side that winds about not wanting to bang M&Ms anymore,
bans books for middle school libraries and watches Fox News
all day getting angry about gas stoves and LEGO sets?
-LEGO is going woke.
The company unveiling a range of new characters
in the effort to be more inclusive.
LEGO says the new characters will promote diversity
and understanding.
-Dear God, a children's toy
promoting diversity and understanding
What's next? Dogs that work as a team to rescue people.
Also, the only problem anyone should ever have with LEGO
is how mad they get when you say the plural of LEGO is LEGOs,
a mistake I have made multiple times.
Let me tell you, those people are maniacs.
They get so mad.
Last time I said it wrong,
I woke up to find a LEGO
horse head in my bed.
[ Laughter ]
That wasn't the bad bar.
Then it fell on the floor, and I [bleep] stepped on it.
[ Laughter ]
The point is DeSantis knows that the modern GOP
doesn't actually care about using government to help people.
It only cares about the culture wars,
so he's weaponizing government
to use it as a tool in those culture wars.
He's been engaged in a spree of censorship laws
that banned content conservatives don't like
all the way from elementary school to college.
And now Republicans in the Florida State Legislature
have introduced a bill that would require bloggers
who write about Governor Ron DeSantis,
his cabinet or state legislatures
to register with the state.
So now they're going after bloggers. Why?
Did DeSantis get mad when fashion bloggers
made fun of the photo of him in his fancy white boots?
[ Laughter ]
That's a real picture.
For some reason,
DeSantis decided to try out some '60s go-go boots.
Looks like an "Austin Powers" fembot.
By the way, bloggers sound like what those boots are called.
"I'm going to put on my bloggers
and see if I can spear a few swamp clams."
Maybe it's not the boots.
Maybe the Santos is just mad
because bloggers are writing
about all the different nicknames Donald Trump
has been workshopping for him.
Right now, Trump seems to be sticking
with Ron DeSanctimonious, which hasn't exactly
lit the world on fire,
but his allies have said in private
that he's been tinkering with some alternatives.
You may have already heard that sometimes
Trump reportedly refers to him in private as Meatball Ron,
which personally, I think is the best option so far.
I mean, why keep digging when you strike gold?
I can't believe I'm saying this to Donald Trump,
of all people, but don't overthink it.
Meatball Ron sounds like a villain on "VeggieTales"
or a Carnegie Deli sandwich named after Ron Perlman.
But Trump is still tinkering.
Apparently, he's mulling some other options.
Some of the new ideas that former president entertained --
Ron DisHonest, Ron DeEstablishment,
or even Tiny D.
Well, Ron DisHonest and Ron DeEstablishment,
thanks for playing, but I think we have our [bleep] winner.
Tiny -- Tiny D.
The first time Trump calls him that to his face,
DeSantis is going to spontaneously combust
and leave nothing behind but a pair of empty white boots.
Tiny, Tiny D.
I bet when Trump finally comes up
with the right nickname for someone,
white smoke comes out of the Mar-a-Lago chimney,
like when they elect a new pope.
[ Italian accent ] "He's a done it.
Donald he's come up with a nickname
Let's celebrate by eating a meatball Ron."
[ Normal voice ] How can you argue with Tiny D?
It sounds like something DeSantis
should have on a gold chain around his neck
like a failed -- failed --
He can call his debut album, "Woke Mind Virus."
Now, as we mentioned earlier, DeSantis is the name
looming over conservative politics right now,
which is why it was notable that he skipped
the Conservative Political Action Conference.
In return, Trump took a thinly veiled shot at DeSantis
on his fake Twitter site, writing that...
Now a charitable interpretation for expand the room and space
is Trump means they might need a bigger room
or a second room for overfill.
But again, this is a man who tried to buy Greenland,
so he might very well think
they were literally considering construction
to make the room bigger somehow?
"Just push the walls out."
"Yeah, we can't do that, sir, because the -- there are rooms
on the other side of the walls."
"Won't matter, just keep pushing."
"If we -- if we do that, the other rooms will be
too small to fit anything."
"I know something that can fit in a little room.
Tiny D.
Oh, is someone -- is someone cooking meatballs?"
[ Laughter ]
Maybe Trump's crowd was bigger,
but sadly you couldn't say that for every CPAC speaker,
many of whom spoke to embarrassingly small audiences,
even including supposedly big GOP names like Nikki Haley,
Don Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle.
-I'm running for president to renew an America
that's strong and proud, not weak and woke.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-All of us in this room have one message to Joe Biden.
It is time to put America first.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Is it unreasonable for me to expect,
as a citizen of the United States of America,
to have a United States senator?
-Well, that looks less like an audience
and more like the tour group at a spoon museum
on a Tuesday morning.
I've seen middle school dance recitals with a bigger audience.
He looks like he's doing an off-Broadway one man
show called "The Real Cocaine Bear."
[ Laughter ]
"Hey, could somebody tell C-SPAN to stop cutting
to the [bleep] audience?"
[ Laughter ]
The point is, CPAC was a window into the unhinged nature
of the modern conservative worldview.
They're all in a little echo chamber,
screaming half empty conference rooms about made up [bleep]
most normal people don't care about.
In fact, to show you how disconnected they are
from the average American voter,
they actually invited the pillow guy, Mike Lindell,
to speak on stage about his repeatedly
debunked election lies.
-Thank you, everybody.
What do you think I'm going to talk about?
[ Laughter ]
We need to melt down the machines
and turn them into prison bars.
I got teams of people in every state.
In fact, I'm going to announce in a minute
this new thing I have.
It's called the Election Crime Bureau.
We don't want to use these machines.
We want paper ballots, hand counted.
I've talked to Germany and France and the UK
and Netherlands where they use hand-counted paper ballots.
-Germany, France, UK. Alright.
I think I know what happened here.
Some teenagers have been prank calling
Mike Lindell pretending to be different countries.
[ French accent ] "Hello, this is France.
[ Laughter ]
We are try find the owner of the pillow,
Mike Lindell."
"Thank you so much for reaching out!
I have a ton of questions!
First of all, how do you say election in French?!"
"Election." "Oh, good.
So French is the same as English!"
[ Laughter ]
And then, of course, there was Donald Trump
who did his usual shtick, rambling incoherently,
like when he talked about the hypothetical scenario
of Russia bombing NATO or something.
-NATO wouldn't even exist if I didn't get them to pay up,
but they paid up $449 billion or something.
And that's the money they use. They're rich as hell right now.
They spent an office building that cost $3 million.
It's like a skyscraper in Manhattan laid on its side.
It's one of the longest buildings I've ever seen.
And I said, you should have, instead of spending $3 billion,
you should have spent $500 million
building the greatest bunker you've ever seen
because Russia wouldn't even need an airplane attack.
One tank, one shot through that beautiful glass building
and it's gone.
Same architect I used in Chicago.
Great architects, but they didn't have war in mind.
But when things happen, that building would be gone
in about 15 minutes.
They should have spent a $500 million bunker.
Nice, thick ceiling, six inches, six feet of concrete.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[ Laughter ]
Sure, but it's the left that has a mind virus.
This -- this is like watching an HGTV home makeover show
where the host has a massive head wound.
"Okay, I like the subway tile you have here in the kitchen.
But I'm thinking instead of a breakfast nook,
what you could really use here
is a steel reinforced concrete bunker
in case Russia decides to nuke your house.
Also, barn doors are so 2009."
-As addled as Trump was when he was in office,
he's an even more scatterbrained now.
That's what you get when you move to a golf resort
in Florida, where the sun fries your brain
and you're surrounded by other old weirdos or waitstaff
who are required to tell you all your ideas are awesome.
"So that's why NATO should build a beautiful bunker
using the same architects I used in Chicago in case Russia
decides to bomb them with a tank.
What do you think?"
"That sounds great, Mr. Trump.
Now, would you like ketchup with your omelet?"
"You know I'm trying to cut down on my cholesterol,
so skip the omelet and just give me a big ol' plate of ketchup."
But at some point, Trump got to what I assume was supposed to be
the central premise of his 2024 campaign
with this startling line
about how he could finally complete the assault
on democracy he began in 2020.
-And if you put me back in the White House,
their reign is over there.
Their reign will be over, and they know it.
And America will be a free nation once again.
We're not a free nation right now.
We don't have free press. We don't have free anything.
In 2016, I declared I am your voice.
Today I add, I am your warrior, I am your justice.
And for those who have been wronged and betrayed,
I am your retribution.
-He was such a terrible president, and now
he's auditioning to be Batman.
But problem -- problem is
he would never respond to the bat signal
because there's no way he's ever just looking
pensively out the window.
You'd have to text it to him or just shine it on
Sean Hannity's forehead.
Oh, you know what you can do?
You can project it on a solar eclipse.
He looks at those.
Also, that line is so much less dramatic
when Trump says it in that soft singsong voice he uses.
Like, when Batman says stuff like that, at least he growls.
Trump sounds like he's humming a song he heard on the radio.
"♪ I am your warrior ♪
♪ I am -- I am your retribution ♪
♪ You can count on me ♪
♪ My name is Tiny D ♪
[ Laughter ]
Even though DeSantis wasn't at CPAC,
he made it clear that his
priorities are very much the same.
The modern conservative movement doesn't have answers
to the very real problems facing Americans today.
So instead, they want to use government to fix
all the petty little cultural grievances they have.
CPAC offered a revealing and embarrassing glimpse
into the unhinged modern GOP.
They have two terrible choices, a Big D that tanked the party
in three straight elections or a Tiny D
that's no bigger than...
-Six inches. [ Laughter ]
-That has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪