Republicans defended Congressman Paul Gosar
after he was formally censured by the House
for tweeting a violent video targeting a colleague.
Meanwhile, former President Trump sat down
for a truly insane interview with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell,
where they continued to spread their election lies.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
Watching our two political parties right now
is very much like watching two completely alternate realities
or like watching two teams on the same field
play completely different sports,
like if the Jets showed up to a game
against the Patriots in soccer gear
and loudly complained every time they were tackled.
"I'm sorry when you said football,
you meant American football?"
We wrote that last night and then, you know,
then Jets show up in vaccine news as well.
We have no bad -- no idea how badly they're going to take it.
For example, on the one hand,
you had President Biden signing into law
a wildly popular bipartisan infrastructure bill
that will invest over a trillion dollars
in everything from roads and bridges
to broadband to electric vehicles.
And the best part was he didn't do that dumb thing
Trump used to do where he'd hold up the bill for the cameras.
Like a judge at the Olympics,
holding up a 10 after a floor routine.
That's a joke from our new segment,
Remember That?
When the president used
to show off the bill for the cameras,
like he was a waiter at a restaurant
that had the specials written on a chalkboard?
Was he signing a bill or doing story time
at a local library.
With that said, can you imagine Donald Trump
reading a book to kids?
That's a joke from our new segment.
Imagine That?
Can you imagine that?
Donald Trump reading to kids
what would most certainly be one of his books.
So the three key deals,
the three keys to any successful deal,
one, think big, two, maximize your options,
and three, know a guy who knows a guy
who knows a guy with mob ties.
This has been Imagine That within Remember That?
I will say one quick thing about the Biden bill signing.
And this is independent of Biden.
Why do they always give the most powerful man
in the world a tiny little schoolboy desk?
Just because that was the right size desk
for what counted as tall in 1776
doesn't mean we can't upgrade.
You guys couldn't find something
a little more suited to the presidency?
Where is he going to do the next bill signing?
Crammed into a middle seat in coach?
Point is that's what Democrats are up to.
Republicans, meanwhile, spent their Wednesday
defending one of their most unhinged members,
Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, who was censured by the House
for tweeting out a violent video that targeted a colleague.
A dramatic and historic day
at the US Capitol as the House voted to censure
Congressman Paul Gosar
over a violent video he posted on social media.
The Arizona Republican becomes the first member of Congress
to be simultaneously censured
and stripped of his committee post.
The Photoshopped video shows Gosar appearing to kill
Democratic colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
and then heading for President Biden
while wielding two swords.
No matter how much the left tries to quiet me,
I will continue to speak out.
If I must join Alexander Hamilton
the first person attempted to be censored by this House,
so be it, it is done.
Well, this probably doesn't need to be said,
but you're not Alexander Hamilton.
For one thing, I would be terrified to hear you rap.
♪ My name is Paul, and I'm here to say ♪
♪ I forgot what I was here to say ♪
Second, I love when these idiots
try to sound smart and adopt a defiant tone
by using dramatic language like, "so be it, it is done."
Like you don't sound like a founding father,
and you sound like cousin Greg.
If it is to be said, so it be -- so it is.
Guys, we have been watching a lot of "Succession"
and let me just say I still haven't seen Sunday's episode
and I've been trying to make it all week
without any spoilers.
You know how hard that is?
It's like trying to make it through "Wipeout"
without getting knocked into the water
by a giant piece of foam,
an obstacle course that ironically looks like something
Logan Roy would make his children do as a punishment.
Do the obstacle course!
Duck, Tom, Duck.
So Gosar compared himself to Hamilton
for tweeting out a violent video
targeting a colleague, and by the way,
to Republicans complaining that this is a waste of time,
this whole thing would have been much easier
and taken up much less time
if you've just been willing to step forward
and say it was a deeply stupid tweet.
But to be fair, he is a deeply stupid man.
Instead, we all had to be subjected
to the theater of the aggrieved
from the dumbest people in politics.
Take, for example, what I like to call
the "Erts," Louie Gohmert and Lauren Boebert,
whose last names both sound like insults.
Boebert sounds like something a New Yorker would yell
at a out of towner who stands at the top of the escalator.
"Hey, get out of the way, you Boebert.
People got jobs in this city!"
We've said this before, but her name sounds
like a Dilbert character who refuses to get vaccinated.
The joke would be something dumb
like the vaccines have chips in them.
And then Dilbert would say what flavor are they?
Ranch or sour cream?
Which is why I'm team Peanuts all the way.
Lucy would never have stood for this [bleep].
If she had to deal with the modern GOP,
she'd reopen her psychiatry booth
and jack the fee up to 15 cents.
You know what? I think we maybe landed that tangent.
Could we get a score from the judges?
A three?!
Sure, but you're biased.
The point, once again, is that while Democrats were focused
on signing a wildly popular infrastructure bill into law,
these lunatics were defending the insane behavior
of one of their most unhinged and reckless members.
Gohmert offered perhaps the dumbest defense,
claiming he tried to freeze the video
to see the violence but couldn't find it.
I looked at the video enemy
and was trying to figure out -- I-I couldn't see.
I'm told if you stop it frame by frame,
you can see what Democrat friends are talking about.
I couldn't see it.
I tried to freeze frame,
but I didn't see the violence being talked about.
These are our elected representatives
and they sound like grandpas
who accidentally Facetime you while they're on the toilet.
My friend sent me a funny cat video,
but I couldn't see the cat fall off the sofa.
Then I tried to freeze frame. I took a picture of my thumb.
And then there was Matt Gaetz who tried to dismiss the video
in question as just a cartoon while neglecting to mention
that it was specifically doctored
to make AOC the target of violence.
I am no expert on Japanese anime,
but I am told and I do believe that it is not real.
Anime is fiction to the point of the absurd.
It's not really my thing, and it does glorify violence,
but often to symbolize conflict,
not realistic harm to another person.
Next week, we might be indicting the Wile E. Coyote for --
for an explosive ordinance against the Roadrunner.
All right, first of all, he's either the coyote
or Wile E. Coyote.
He's not the Wile E. Coyote.
There aren't other Wile E. Coyotes
walking around.
Thank God, that would be a living hell for them.
Wile E. Coyote, eh, you catch that Roadrunner yet?
I'm not that one. I'm a different one.
Look, am I going to get this bank loan or not?
But here's the more important point.
Don't tell anyone I wrote that part.
Shut up! Shut up!
But here, oh, I'm -- I'll be there,
give me one more second.
Here is the most important point.
No one is objecting to the existence of cartoons
in general. You...[bleep]
I forgot this one was coming. I forgot this was coming.
Wait, I want to give this a fair shot.
Let me reboot.
Pretend I've made a really good point.
We're all serious.
But here's the more important point,
no one is objecting to the existence of cartoons
in general, you blockhead.
Peanuts callback!
Peanuts, incidentally,
what we're going to pay the writer who wrote that.
There's more?
We all get what anime is,
we understand that it's fiction.
That's not the issue.
Gosar tweeted a video with his face on a character
who killed another character with AOC's face on it.
If you did that at any other job,
you'd get fired immediately.
Hey, Seth, is this a bad time to tell you
that I posted a cartoon in the break room
where you get crushed by a rock like Wile E. Coyote?
Wally, why did you do that?
Well, I was mad I didn't get any lines
in "A Closer Look" this week.
Well, are you happy now?
Meep, meep.
Oh, I'm sorry, is Paul Gosar the only one
who's allowed to be Looney Tunes?
And that's a landed tangent. Judges?
Our political system can't function like this,
where one party, for all its many flaws,
tries to govern responsibly
and the other wants to burn everything down,
and there's a through line here because the same people
defending Gosar are the ones
who tried to overturn the election on January 6th.
Gosar himself as one of the most prominent
leaders of that movement,
repeatedly claiming that secret sources within the government
had told him that the election was stolen,
although he clearly sounded
like he had no idea what he was talking about.
If it's what I've been told and I had people
come to me early hours of the day after
from the Security Exchange fraud department
to the CIA fraud department,
that between 450 and 700,000 ballots
were altered in the state of Arizona.
The day after the election, I was contacted
by two individuals.
One had expected security and fraud
jobs with the banking world.
The other one goes from fraud from the Department of Defense.
I'm sorry, you couldn't remember the word jobs?
When you stumble that badly on a word
that simple it's pretty obvious,
you're just making this [bleep] up as you go.
I tried that once in sixth grade when I forgot
to do my math homework and it didn't go well.
Mr. Myers, where's your calculus homework?
Well, it was eaten by my, uh, hairy pet thing?
What's it called? Uh, four legs,
uh, always going grr, you know.
Also sixth grade seems young for calculus.
Also, I like how the details in his story keep changing.
From the Security Exchange fraud department
to the CIA fraud department.
The other one goes from fraud from the Department of Defense.
Which is it? The CIA fraud department
or someone who does fraud for the Department of Defense?
Also, it doesn't matter since neither of them exist.
I think your bank must have just called you
about some weird charges and you got confused.
Hello, Mr. Gosar, I'm from the Chase Fraud Department.
We wanted to let you know about a suspicious $10,000 charge
from something called Anime Photoshop Services.
No, that's a good charge. I paid them. They do good work.
Sadly, this is not a fringe movement.
These people are the core of the modern GOP.
A majority of House Republicans voted to stand with Gosar,
and a majority voted to overturn the 2020 election.
In fact, the supposed leader of their party,
former President Trump,
actually sat down for an interview at Mar a Lago
with one of the most unhinged conspiracy theories out there,
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell,
where they squeezed into tiny chairs
that I'm guessing were designed for Cabbage Patch dolls
and bandied about the same B.S. about the election.
Although shockingly, from what I can tell,
Lindell did most of the talking.
A year ago, we watched the biggest crime in history
unfold right before our eyes.
You've compared it to a robbing of a diamond store
and they were -- they were caught
and we had enough evidence,
I believe, to pass it out
to three hundred and some million people.
Here, you take a piece, you take a piece.
No judges, including the Supreme Court, looked at the evidence.
They just kicked the can down the road and said,
We're at no standing, no standing.
And do you think that all that could have happened
without the corrupt media?
I mean, that was the big cover up.
In closing, I want to say there's,
you know, back to the election of 2020.
I want to thank you and everyone does for standing firm on that.
And we're going to it to get it gone.
I've said going to melt down the machines
and use them in the prison bars.
It's very interesting. I mean, that's a very good idea.
Oh, is it? You think that's a good idea?
Melting down the voting machines and using them as prison bars?
It sounds like an idea Magneto would reject
for being too crazy.
I don't understand, Pillow Master.
Say your idea again.
We're going to melt down all the voting machines
and use them in prison to make da bars.
Also, that's the most I've ever seen
Donald Trump let someone else talk in an interview,
even he's like, this guy's out of his [bleep] mind.
Does make it extra funny that he's in a tuxedo.
Trump looks like a guy whose limo broke down
on the way home from the opera and nodding politely as a guy
on the subway explains to him how pizza rat
was actually a government mind control operation.
You see, the CIA trained the rats to eat the pizza,
so we'd all be distracted
while they hack the voting machines to make
Joe Biden president for life.
That's very interesting.
This is what the modern Republican Party is.
There's no behavior to grotesque for them
to defend as five years of Donald Trump proved.
And yet, as Paul Gosar proved again,
it's a movement fueled by conspiracy theories
and fantasies of persecution focused
primarily by trying to overturn elections
instead of just doing their, um, doing their,
what do you call them?
Jobs? -Thank you.
This has been "A Closer Look."
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