-The Republicans are at each other's throats
after a small group of hardliners
ousted former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
And now, just to add some more kindling to the fire,
Donald Trump is reportedly considering
flying to the Capitol next week,
where he might even pitch himself
as a candidate for Speaker.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
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Donald Trump, the far and away frontrunner
for the Republican nomination for president in 2024,
has spent most of the week
in a Manhattan courthouse on trial for fraud.
In fact, he claimed he couldn't leave,
even though he was not required to be there.
-The corrupt attorney general sued me for fraud,
and then they found out they had no case,
and they have no case.
And today, if you read the New York Law Journal,
they basically say they have no case against Trump.
But I'm here, stuck here, and I can't campaign.
I'd rather be right now in Iowa.
I'd rather be in New Hampshire,
in South Carolina or Ohio or a lot of other places,
but I'm stuck here.
-He sounds like every single married couple during lockdown.
I'd rather be in Iowa, New Hampshire,
South Carolina or Ohio right here.
But I'm stuck here.
So let me just sit here and drink
this entire bottle of merlot
while I watch "Tiger King" for the third time.
Again, not even true. He was not stuck there.
He wasn't even required to be there.
And yesterday he left and flew back to Florida.
He chose to show up so he could say
ridiculous bull[bleep], like when he claimed
the judge in the case undervalued his
Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago.
-He's been given this information.
It's now been proven to be false,
such as Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida,
being worth $18 million when in fact
it's much closer to $1.5 billion.
-No one believes your chintzy Florida swamp hotel
is worth more than the global box office for "Barbie."
Your [bleep] Barbie nightmare house.
This place?
The hotel that looks like the [bleep] castle
you put in a goldfish bowl
so he has something to look at while he eats?
This thing looks like the first house you buy
when you get drafted by the Miami Heat.
Remember that photo from the federal indictment
on all those boxes of classified documents in his bathroom?
That doesn't look like $1 billion property.
That looks like something you'd see on "Hoarders."
"Oh, God. Oh, it stinks in here."
"Well, the toilet doesn't flush, so I've been using the boxes.
[ Laughter ]
Don't open them up. It's classified."
So the GOP -- [ Laughs ]
So the GOP's frontrunner for president
is facing four indictments and a fraud trial,
probably going to get kicked off Zillow.
And on top of that,
they currently don't even have a Speaker of the House.
They ousted Kevin McCarthy and then basically went on vacation.
The interim speaker, a guy named Patrick McHenry,
a McCarthy ally, gaveled the House into recess.
And as you can see, he was super pissed about it.
-The chair declares the house in recess,
subject to the call of the chair.
[Slams gavel]
[ Laughter ]
-You do not expect that energy from a bow tie guy?
[ Laughter ]
It's like a dad trying to get the last piece
of Ikea furniture to fit.
God damn it!
The clergue won't fit into the corset!
So they adjourn the House,
and the reason they did that apparently was
that tensions were so high over the vote to oust McCarthy,
they were genuinely afraid there would be physical fighting
if they didn't get the hell out of there.
-Do you agree with Congressman McHenry's decision?
He's the temporary speaker, The speaker pro temp,
to put a pause on the week to let tensions settle?
-Jake, I'll be really candid.
I think if we had stayed together
in the meeting last night,
I think that you would have seen fists thrown.
And I'm not being dramatic when I say that.
There is a lot of raw emotions right now.
I think it was best to let folks go back home,
decompress a little bit and then come back together.
-A week? Only a week?
If someone at work did this in the middle of a meeting,
I'd say I think we need to take five...months.
I'll see you guys in March.
Remember, this is the same GOP caucus that already had
a near fistfight on the floor of the House
the first time they had to pick a Speaker back in January.
You may recall that it took 15 votes last time
to elect McCarthy with the same group of hardliners
holding out and demanding concessions.
And as it dragged on, things got so bad,
members of Congress were lunging at each other,
including one that had to be held back by his face.
It's one thing to be held back by your arms or shoulders,
but your face?
That's not how you hold back a congressman.
That's how you grab a cat that's about to barf on a white rug.
[ Laughter ]
I really doubt a week is enough time for everyone to chill out
because they seem really mad.
The same guy you just saw there, Garret Graves,
was on the House floor Tuesday yelling about
the fact that his colleague, Matt Gaetz,
who instigated the push to bring down McCarthy,
was fundraising off the whole thing.
-I keep wondering what is going on?
Are we redefining what conservative is?
What's going on in this country today?
What's going on in this body?
And all of a sudden my phone keeps sending text messages.
Text messages saying, "Hey, give me money."
Oh, look at that. Oh, look, "Give me money.
I filed a motion to vacate."
Using official actions, official actions to raise money.
It's disgusting.
It's what's disgusting about Washington.
-Even worse, during his speech,
he got this text message.
[ Laughter ]
And Graves isn't the only one upset throwing a mini tantrum
over the GOP mega tantrum.
In fact, the GOP infighting
has gotten so intense and so personal
that Republicans are starting to make salacious allegations
about each other on television.
For example, here's a GOP senator named Markwayne Mullin
talking about Matt Gaetz's alleged gross behavior on CNN.
-You got to think about this guy.
This is a guy that didn't have --
the media didn't give a time of day to after
he was accused of sleeping with an underage girl.
And there's a reason why no one in the conference came
and defended him because we had all seen the videos
he was showing on the House floor
that all of us had walked away
of the girls that he had slept with.
He bragged about how he would crush ED medicine
and chase it with with an energy drink
so he could go all night.
-Not only does Matt Gaetz
definitely look like the spokesman
for an ED-medicine-infused energy drink,
his name even has a Z that you know is on the can.
[ Laughter ]
So he took ED meds and chased it with an energy drink.
That sounds like something
Rudy Giuliani would do by accident.
"Boss, these Tic-Tacs don't taste very minty.
Uh-oh.
Everyone give me three inches of space."
[ Laughter ]
But here's the especially infuriating thing.
When this small band of GOP hardliners voted
to oust McCarthy, McCarthy could have,
if he really wanted to keep his job,
reached out to Democrats to try to win their support.
You know, the same way he made concessions
to the hardliners in his own caucus to get the job
in the first place. He didn't do that.
He dissed Democrats. He told them to "F" off.
So Democrats voted against McCarthy
for extremely obvious reasons.
And yet Republicans have the gall to blame Democrats
for not voting for McCarthy and bailing them out.
-I think today
was a political decision by the Democrats.
-Democrats just removed the Republican Speaker.
-Democrats basically turned on Republicans
and ousted Kevin McCarthy.
-Every one of the Democrats voted against McCarthy.
-You had eight,
eight Republicans that came together
yesterday with 208 Democrats.
So effectively, this was a Democrat eviction
of Speaker McCarthy.
-Are you out of your [bleep] minds?
Democrats are in the minority.
You constantly on [bleep] them.
Most of you claim they stole the election,
but now you want them to bail you out
while you accuse each other downing Viagra like Pez
and threaten to beat the [bleep] out of each other?
Here's a thought exercise.
Let's imagine a world where
the shoe was on the other foot and eight Democrats
were threatening to oust Nancy Pelosi.
You think Republicans would come galloping in to vote for her
and keep her as Speaker for the good of the country?
In order to think that, you'd have to be high on ED meds
and Red Bull and ready to bang harder than this guy.
And as if the GOP conference
couldn't become any more of a cluster [bleep],
some Republicans are floating the possibility
of making Trump the Speaker,
since technically it doesn't have to be a member of Congress.
And when he was asked about it this week,
he just didn't dismiss it out of hand.
-Would you take the job? Would you take the job?
Would you take the job?
-Yes, tensions are high and Republicans are near fisticuffs.
So naturally, the person to help calm things
down is Donald Trump.
That's like trying to soothe a wild stallion with...
-ED medicine.
0The Republican Party is such a mess.
They're asking for help from a guy who's in court for fraud
because no one else is willing to help them out.
The GOP is like a guy who's so desperate
for a ride to the airport
he calls a friend who's under house arrest.
-:Yeah, sure, I can give you a ride,
but when my ankle bracelet goes off, you've got to run!"
And now it's being reported that Trump is planning
to fly to DC next week for the Speaker election
to help figure things out,
which I am sure will go smoothly.
-Now to some breaking news. We just got this.
Donald Trump may be about to wade
right into the middle of the fight
over the next Speaker of the House.
Let me tell you a little bit about what we know.
This is being considered by Trump.
He has not been back to the Capitol
since before January 6th,
but he's thinking about coming, apparently,
maybe he thinks that he can somehow help
unify the party at this time.
-Is it really a smart idea to go back to the Capitol
after what Trump did on January 6th?
I mean, I'm no legal expert, but he's been indicted.
I'm not sure you're supposed to go back
to the scene of the crime.
He's like a guy who gets busted on "To Catch a Predator"
then goes to the same house a second time.
"Whoa, Chris Hansen again?!
What are the odds, man?"
"What do you have in the bag?" "Same thing as last time."
Mike's hard lemonade and Twizzlers.
But apparently Trump might not just be going back to help.
He might be going to take the job himself.
Politico reported today that Trump is open
to pitching himself as a speaker candidate,
according to a Republican familiar
with internal discussions. You know what?
Good. Let Trump have a job
that sucks where half the people in the room
hate his guts and he can't do [bleep].
He'll be miserable by day two.
It's all boring procedure and filing legislation
and saying mind-numbing [bleep] like the gentleman
from South Carolina is recognized.
He would hate it so much he'll actually want to go to prison.
"Screw it. I'm pleading guilty.
I got to get the hell out of here.
I hate C-SPAN."
The GOP frontrunner for president
is facing four indictments in a fraud trial.
They don't have a speaker,
and they're threatening to physically fight each other.
Now Trump is thinking of flying in
to make things even more insane.
The only way I'm going to be able to keep up
with all this news is if I...
-Crush ED medicine and chase it
with -- with an energy drink.
-This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
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