-With the midterms just under five days away,
Republicans have been hampered by underperforming candidates
in key races across the country
and yet, still, several of those candidates,
including pro-Trump election deniers
who have outright declared
that they will use their power to steal future elections,
are in very close races and could easily win.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
♪♪ [ Cheering and applause ]
Historically, midterms just tend to go very badly
for the party in power and the polls currently suggest
that may, yet again, be the case this year.
The main thing holding Republicans back, it seems,
is that they've nominated some
spectacularly [bleep] candidates, like Mehmet Oz,
who's running for Senate in Pennsylvania,
but doesn't seem to know exactly where Pennsylvania is.
-Listen, this is important.
We do not have a Republican senator
north of North Carolina on the Atlantic Coast,
until you get the Maine, if I don't hold this seat.
-I'm no cartographer, but I'm pretty sure
Pennsylvania is not on the Atlantic Coast.
[ Laughter ] You know how I know that?
I have several staffers who live in New Jersey
and, whenever they come back from summer hiatus,
they always complain about all the [bleep] Philly fans
down at the shore.
[ Laughter, cheering, and applause ]
I'm pretty sure Delaware only exists
to make it harder for Gritty to get to the beach.
[ Laughter ]
You know how, also, I know Pennsylvania isn't
on the Atlantic Coast?
There aren't any beaches in Philadelphia.
When they signed the Declaration of Independence,
they didn't celebrate afterwards with a clambake.
[ Laughter ] Dr. Oz probably thinks the Liberty Bell is there
to warn people when they spot a shark in the water.
[ Laughter ]
Then there's Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker.
The other day, President Obama traveled to Georgia
to campaign for Walker's opponent,
Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock
and this was Walker's response to Obama's visit on Fox News.
-I've created businesses.
I sit on a publicly traded board,
so those are things I've done outside of football.
But my résumé against his résumé,
I put it up any time of the day.
-You do? That's like me saying, [ Laughter ]
"Einstein? I'm way smarter than him.
[ Laughter ] That dope could never do
a 'Day Drinking' with Post Malone."
[ Laughter ]
Look, you don't have Obama's résumé.
You know how I know? Obama never had to flash
a fake sheriff's badge in a debate
like he was cosplaying as Deputy Dog.
[ Laughter ] Dude
was president of the Harvard Law Review,
a senator, president, he's won a Grammy and Emmy,
he was Time's Person of the Year,
he went kitesurfing with Richard Branson,
and now, he's got a Netflix deal where he produces movies
and he still manages to maintain that laidback style
he's got going on post-presidency.
He could climb to the top of Everest
and, somehow, he'd still have shades on
and at least two shirt buttons undone.
[ Laughter ]
[ As Obama ] Uh...decided to climb Everest
because it's, uh, here.
[ Laughter ] Also, it's, uh, the only place
I can smoke without, uh, Michelle finding out.
[ Laughter ]
So, we're in a weird place.
On the one hand, these midterms are, in some ways,
very normal, very predictable, and yet, on the other hand,
these midterms are, in many ways, very abnormal
and, potentially, catastrophic for our democracy because,
as we've explained, it's very typical for the party in power
to lose seats in a midterm election.
That's just how it always goes.
Political scientists call it
thermostatic public opinion.
People just like to go back and forth to keep things even.
In this analogy, the government is a thermostat
and the electorate is your dad,
when you go home for the holidays.
If you put it up to 70°, he's immediately going to come
and put it back to 68°.
If you put it down to 66°,
he's going to immediately come back and set it to 68°.
And, if you bring home a college girlfriend
for the holidays, who's a vegan and doesn't shave her legs,
he'll turn it up to 85°, in an effort to sweat her out
and make her leave early.
[ Laughter ] And it worked, Dad!
Congratulations!
You chased Sparrow out of my life
and not a day goes by that I don't hate you for it!
[ Laughter ] And I'm sorry, everybody,
I'm just between therapists right now.
[ Laughter ]
I had a great therapist, but she kept her thermostat
at 74°, like a psycho.
[ Laughter ]
Anyway, the point is,
on the one hand, it would be totally normal
and, in many ways, completely unremarkable
for Democrats to lose seats in next week's midterms.
However, it's now incredibly abnormal
and, potentially, very dangerous
because one of our two major political parties
is fundamentally opposed to democracy.
They simply don't accept
the outcomes of elections they don't win,
they wage coups when they lose,
and they openly announced their intention
to rig future elections, if they take power.
For example, the GOP candidate for governor in Wisconsin
is a guy named Tim Michels, a pro-Trump election denier
who believes, without any evidence,
that the 2020 election was stolen
and he just said it out loud in the open the other day.
He just declared that, if he wins,
he will use his power to make sure Democrats
never win another election, ever again.
Here's what he said at a recent campaign stop.
[ Applause and whistling ] -Yeah!
Yay! -Whoo!
-My favorite part of that clip is someone off-camera
at the very end going, "Yay!
[ Laughter ] Yay!" Like they're
at their five-year-old's first T-ball game.
Yay, Timmy!
You did it, fascism, yay!
[ Laughter ]
Does this guy know he's in public, on-camera,
with like reporters and people around?
Because he just admitted to something
incredibly nefarious.
It's like if a Bond villain
livestreamed their plan to kill Bond on Instagram.
[ Changes accent ] Hello, what's up, Instagram?
It's your boy Blofeld.
[ Laughter ]
Just wanted to go live to let you know
about my plan to kill James!
[ Laughter ]
I'm going to lure him into my underground lair
by capturing his romantic interest
and then slowly lower him into a tank full of sharks.
If you like this plan, feel free to let me know in the comments.
Oh, I see a lot of hearts and emojis!
[ Laughter ] A lot of fire emojis.
Oh, too bad, James. They like it.
[ Laughter ]
So, they're not even hiding it anymore.
They're just out in the open about it.
If Republicans take power, they will make sure
that only Republicans win future elections.
It's that simple and there are a few states
where that threat is especially acute.
In Arizona, for example, Republicans have nominated
a former local television personality named Kari Lake,
a hardline, pro-Trump election denier.
Has said she will also use her power in Arizona,
if she wins, to undermine elections.
She's even gone so far to insist, without evidence,
that there's no way Joe Biden got
the number of votes he definitely got.
-They actually made a joke of our elections
and I'm really...
pissed off about it.
[ Applause ]
And I'm going to do something about.
So, it is literally unconstitutional, what they did.
The truth is that Joe Biden did not win with 81 million votes.
[ Crowd murmuring ]
And, if you believe he did,
then you are the conspiracy theorist.
-Jesus! That lady is creepier
than one of those Boston Dynamics robots.
[ Laughter ]
Got the vibe of a Realtor who insists on putting her face
on all of her for sale signs.
[ Laughter ]
But the thing about Lake is she's much slicker
than most of the other weirdos
the Republicans have nominated this year,
even if her beliefs are just as loony.
She's a longtime local television personality
in the Phoenix area, so a lot of people know her.
She even knows how to light herself
when she does interviews from her home,
as you can tell, every time she's on TV,
and she apparently has her ring light
turned all the way up to 11.
[ Laughter ]
My real takeaway here isn't how good she looks.
It's how [bleep] up every other politician looks from home.
I mean, is there anything more depressing
than when members of Congress try to grill
major tech titans during a hearing
and they show up with only the top half of their head
in the frame, looking into the wrong camera?
Our politicians should look better
than our cue card guy, Wally, did
during a mandatory respect in the workplace Zoom meeting.
[ Laughter and applause ]
A real non-Photoshopped picture...
[ Laughter and applause ]
...that I took on my phone,
and so did every other [bleep] person who works here.
[ Laughter ]
You should've seen the text chain.
"Have you seen Wa--"
I've seen Wally.
[ Laughter ]
By contrast, Lake looks so polished,
she might be CGI.
If she weren't running for governor in Arizona,
I'd think she was the character
from one of those '90s video games
who gives you your mission.
[ As Lake ] This is Admiral Lake.
If you collect... [ Laughter and applause ]
That's how you know someone's a little too slick.
Like I've been on TV for 20 years
and, when I started doing at-home shows
for the first time, I was so pale,
I looked like Jared Kushner's ghost.
[ Laughter ] I didn't even know
what a ring light was.
When they finally sent me one,
I thought it was a light-up toilet seat.
[ Laughter ] I was like, "Oh, this is cool.
Good news, kids!
You can [bleep] in the dark now.
[ Laughter ]
Don't wake up Daddy anymore.
Oh, you're going to love it.
It's like peeing into Yankee Stadium
from a hot air balloon."
[ Laughter and applause ]
But Lake is a slick TV personality,
which is why she's got so much sway with Trump's MAGA base,
and President Obama made note of that
during a trip to Arizona on Wednesday
to campaign for the Democratic nominee for governor,
Katie Hobbs. Obama pointed out something
we should know from recent experience --
just because you know someone from TV
doesn't mean they'd be a good elected official.
-Here in Arizona.
there's no question that Katie Hobbs' opponent,
she's good in front of the camera
because she's been doing it for a long time.
Listen, if we hadn't just elected somebody
whose main qualification was being on TV...
[ Laughter ]
...you could see maybe giving it a shot.
What's the worst that could happen?
Well, now, we know!
[ Cheering and applause ] It doesn't just work out
just because somebody's been on TV.
-[ Laughs ] Obama --
At what point do we learn our lesson?
We can just keep cycling through TV idiots,
until we end up with a government
that's just filled with the cast of "FBOY Island."
[ Laughter ]
Maybe, from now on, instead of holding elections,
we should just make our candidates run
through a reality TV obstacle course
and whoever makes it to the end becomes president.
I mean, I'd love to see Trump try to make it
through the course from "American Ninja Warrior."
[ Laughter ] He'd try to jump over those floating tiles
and immediately end up in the water.
[ Electronic music ]
[ Warbling, splash ]
[ Reverberating powerdown ]
[ Laughter ] That's from that Kari Lake video game.
[ Laughter ]
Ten guys worked all week.
[ Laughter ]
Obama even got specific
about Lake's deranged election claims,
pointing out that even some fellow Republicans
have debunked them, and he also, in that same clip,
knocked her again for her TV experience.
-The other day, your own current attorney general,
who's a Republican... -Yeah!
-...called the election fraud claims made
by Katie Hobbs' opponent horse crap.
[ Cheering and applause ] I'm paraphrasing.
He didn't say it exactly that way.
He said her whole act
about how the election was stolen is a giant grift.
Why would you vote for somebody who you know
is not telling the truth about something?
[ Laughter and applause ]
I mean, on something that important.
I don't care how nicely they say it.
I don't care how poised they are
or how well-lit they are.
[ Laughter ]
-I love that Obama made fun of how well-lit she is.
It's such a specific dig,
but it also proves that he is in the TV business now, too.
[ As Obama ] And how good is her sound?
I mean, what's she using, a Sennheiser G4
with an omnidirectional polar pattern?
She's not popping her bass.
[ Laughter ]
But he's right about the core point --
this is all deranged
and it's all very much a part of a coordinated strategy.
Trump handpicked a lot of these people specifically
because he wanted to put them
in positions of power in Congress
and in key swing states around the country,
so they could help him succeed
with the attempted coup he failed that in 2020.
Trump wants people like Lake and Michels
in positions of power in states he lost last time,
so they can help him cheat next time,
because Trump has never stopped obsessing
over his 2020 election loss.
He's been stewing about it ever since.
That's why he always looks like he just stepped in some...
-Horse crap.
-This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪
The midterm elections are coming up, so,
to make sure that you're good to vote in this election,
visit our good friends at headcount.org
to check your voter registration status or to register to vote.