-Donald Trump stormed out of Manhattan courtroom
after he was called to the witness stand
and reprimanded by a judge for violating a gag order.
And yet, Trump's legal woes have not tempered
the Republican Party's ongoing devotion to him,
as evidenced by their latest choice for speaker Mike Johnson,
a right-wing hardliner who helped engineer
Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
♪♪
We are all used to the screaming,
blustery Trump we see at rallies,
constantly ranting about everything from
windmills killing birds and whales
to toilets that don't flush
to various celebrities who either are or are not
nasty to him.
That Trump is everywhere, and it gets dumber every day,
like on Monday at a rally in New Hampshire
when he claimed to have had an epiphany.
-I'm for us.
I'm for us.
You know how you spell "us," right?
You spell "us" U-S.
I just picked that up.
Has anyone ever thought of that before?
I just picked that up a couple of days --
I'm reading and it said "us," and I said, you know,
if you think about it, "us" equals U-S.
-Okay, so the bad news is,
the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 presidential nomination
is out here designing pillows for TJ Maxx.
The dude is dumb as dumb rocks.
But the good news is he would crush
a two-letter word spelling bee.
"Your word is 'me.'"
"Can you use it in a sentence, please?"
"You have got to be [bleep] kidding me."
If I had come home from school
as a seven-year-old and told my parents,
"Did you know 'us' is spelled U and S?"
my parents would have immediately called the school
and said, "I think we need to make the curriculum
a little more challenging."
Well, my dad would have.
My mom would have called me a genius
and baked me a cake.
But here's here's what's least believable about that clip.
-A couple of days, I'm reading and it said "us."
-No, you weren't reading. You don't read.
You know how I know you don't read?
If you did, you wouldn't have discovered at age 77
that "us" is spelled with a U and an S.
I mean, what have you have been reading anyway
that would have spurred such an epiphany?
"Chicka Chicka Boom Boom"?
"A told B and B told C,
I'll meet you at the top of the coconut tree.
But it's too late. I already chopped down the tree.
And I replaced it with a Trump resort!
There won't be any trees,
but there will be plenty of coconuts,
if you know what I mean.
That kid's shaking his head no. He doesn't know what I mean."
-So that's the blustery, unhinged, public Trump.
But then there's the Trump you don't get to see,
and that's the Trump who only exists when he's under oath.
And when he's under oath, he's under penalty of perjury.
He's suddenly much calmer.
He's more restrained. You could even say sheepish.
Here he is, for example, in a deposition from 2016
related to a restaurant that pulled out of his D.C. hotel.
-Good morning, Mr. Trump.
And again, thank you very much for being here.
-Thank you.
-Would you state your full name for the record, please?
-Donald John Trump.
-And I imagine you've had your deposition taken
a number of times? -I have, yes.
-So you know the drill. -I do.
-I won't waste anyone's time going through it.
-Good. Thank you.
-Do know that if you need to take a break,
I'm happy to let you. -Very good.
Thank you.
-My understanding is that you signed this lease.
And if you look at page -- -That's true.
He asked me, yeah. -Okay.
-Well, I did -- I believe I signed the lease,
but he came in and said, "We're signing the lease."
I'll change it, yes. -He said, "We're signing it"?
-Because I think I signed it.
Yeah. That's my signature. Yes.
-"Yes, that's -- that's my name.
And in fact, I'm just picking this up now --
D and O together spells do.'
So really, my name should be Do-nald.
If you think -- If you think about that."
That footage is amazing.
It's like watching the neighborhood Rottweiler
who's always terrorizing the mailman
suddenly mope around in a cone.
Like, in public he's a raving lunatic,
screaming [bleep] like, "Radical woke Democrats
are using windmills and secret satellites to kill Christmas."
And then, under oath, he's practically Emily Post.
"Thank you. No, thank you very much.
I would love to read some incriminating documents.
Thank you."
Because that's the only place Trump faces consequences.
That's the one way you can still punish Trump,
make him sit down in a courtroom
and answer questions under oath with his tail between his legs.
And that's what happened yesterday, when the judge
in his civil fraud trial hauled him up to the witness stand
to reprimand him for violating a gag order
that bars Trump from attacking court staff.
-Donald Trump, taking the stand today
in his civil fraud trial in New York
after being ordered by the judge to testify about comments
he made regarding a court clerk.
Trump claimed that he wasn't talking about
the person sitting next to the judge.
He was actually talking about Michael Cohen,
who at the time, was in the middle of
his second day of testimony,
not the clerk.
Judge Engoron was not buying it, not for a nanosecond,
and he swiftly fined Donald Trump $10,000
and rebuked Trump.
-So Trump was ordered to take the stand and explain himself,
and then the judge said, "I don't believe you,"
and reprimanded him.
I can only imagine what that looked like.
He was probably like a middle schooler
who refuses to look his parent in the eye
after cursing them out.
"What did you just say?"
"Nothing."
"Tell me what you said."
"I said F you."
"Look at me when you say it."
"I said F you, okay? It's not a curse word.
I was talking about my favorite band, the Foo Fighters.
I was reading and I just picked that up."
In fact, we don't have video or photos of this historic moment,
but we do have a courtroom sketch, and it's amazing.
Even in a courtroom sketch, Trump is making a face like
he just realized he's in trouble --
mouth slightly open, looking at the judge like, "Uhhh."
Also, whoever drew this did Trump some huge favors,
because this looks like a "New Yorker" cartoon,
where in reality he's much more of a "Cathy."
And then, like a pissy teenager,
Trump made things even more dramatic
by storming out of the courtroom less than an hour later.
-This was a dramatic turn of events, Lester.
Former President Trump stormed out of a Manhattan courtroom
after a tense day after the judge
refused his attorney's request to dismiss the case.
-Michael Cohen did resume testifying,
but Trump didn't stick around to hear him finish,
the disgraced ex-president, storming out of the courtroom
with Secret Service agents left to chase after him.
-Okay, "chase" seems like a strong word.
They chased him the way you chased your pet turtle
in the yard.
"He's going that way."
[ Laughter ]
I'm sure Secret Service didn't have to run too hard.
They probably saw him take off and said, "He's on the move.
Should we finish this game of Monopoly and then go catch up?"
"But we haven't even started."
"We'll be fine."
We're talking about a guy who moves slower than a zombie
after a giant bong rip.
-"You know what's a funny word?
Brains."
And then, just to give you an idea of how defeated
Trump was after all that, when he left the courtroom,
he gave the press a one-sentence answer then walked away.
-That wasn't even one of his good lies.
The witness, Michael Cohen, admitted Trump won the trial?
You know there are transcripts right?
That lady isn't writing in her diary.
Trump having to take the stand and actually talk to the judge
clearly spun him out.
-"The witness said we won,
and the judge agreed and apologized for the whole deal.
And I'm so [bleep], you guys. I'm so [bleep].
They made me sit next to the judge.
That can't be good, right?"
And yet, the Republican Party nonetheless remains in thrall
to a man who just got scolded by a judge
in a courtroom during a fraud trial,
as evidenced by the fact that they just elected a guy
named Mike Johnson from Louisiana as their new speaker.
Johnson isn't just an election denier.
He was, according to the "New York Times,"
"the most important architect of the Electoral College
objections on January 6th."
And he's not just a guy who thinks there was election fraud,
which would be wrong on its own,
he parroted the most bat[bleep] crazy conspiracy theories
you can imagine.
Remember Trump's ex-lawyer Sidney Powell,
who just flipped on him in Georgia?
Remember how she didn't just say the usual GOP stuff
like "mail voting isn't secure," but went way off the deep end
and claimed the Dominion voting software was rigged
by the dead Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez?
-The Dominion Voting systems,
the Smartmatic technology software,
and the software that goes in other computerized
voting systems here as well, not just Dominion,
were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez
to make sure he never lost an election.
-Now, we have played this clip a few times lately,
because Powell just pleaded guilty in Georgia,
and every time, it's impossible not to be distracted
by Rudy Giuliani behind her, sweating profusely
and trying to unscrew the cap from a tiny water bottle
like it has the antidote inside.
I think he's sweating because he can't open the water bottle,
like it's slowly dawning on him that
if he can't get the cap off a Fiji bottle,
he might not be a good lawyer.
"Oh boy, this is a bad sign.
But when it's my turn at the mic,
I'm going to blow them away or my name's not Ruby Gugliotta."
Anyway, that was the insane conspiracy theory that,
among other things, Fox News had to pay nearly $800 million for
in a defamation suit.
And yet Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House,
actually thought those claims had merit,
as he said in a radio interview at the time.
-"And I'll tell you another thing, I agree with Rudy.
Those water bottles are hard to open."
That's how nuts this guy is. He's just as crazy as Trump.
It's just a style difference.
Trump is Jigsaw and Johnson is Dexter.
He agreed with the lunatic
who just pleaded guilty to crimes in Georgia
and repeated talking points that caused Fox News
to pay out $800 million to settle a defamation case.
He just says stuff in a normal, mild-mannered, moderate voice
the Republicans think will make him easier to stomach.
He's the kind of guy who would curse you out,
but instead of saying the words "you [bleep],"
he'd say --
-U-S.
-Didn't see it coming.
Didn't see it coming.
This has been "A Closer Look."
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