-The MAGA Supreme Court swooped in to rescue
Donald Trump from criminal prosecution
for his January 6th coup attempt
when they announced on Wednesday
that they would hear oral arguments over his ridiculous
and completely made-up claim to absolute immunity,
which could delay the trial until after the election.
For more on this, it’s time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
Trump’s legal problems keep getting worse every day,
and I didn’t think that was possible anymore.
Like, at some point, I just assumed there’s a ceiling
to the amount of legal trouble one person could be in.
But somehow Trump keeps finding ways to make it worse.
Got 91 criminal charges,
he was found liable for sexual abuse,
and he’s facing multiple civil judgments
amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.
He’s probably even broken all those weird laws
we used to read about in Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Like how it’s illegal in Indiana to throw a rock at a bird
unless it’s in self-defense.
[As Trump] He had a -- He had a gun, Your Honor.
Little bird, little bird, gun in his wing feathers.
And -- And you’re seeing it,
you’re seeing it more and more, you’re seeing it.
[Normal voice] What’s next?
Is Trump gonna get a parking ticket
for leaving his private plane in a loading zone on Fifth Avenue?
I bet if you open the glove compartment of his golf cart,
that thing is just stuffed full of subpoenas.
[As Trump] I use them as scorecards.
That’s why I crossed out "insurrection"
and wrote "hole in one."
[Normal voice] And I know
golf carts don’t have glove compartments,
but our "Closer Look" writer Sal made the mistake on purpose
so no one would think he’s a secret plutocrat.
And if you’ve ever seen the way Sal dresses,
you would know he’s worried for nothing.
There’s more dirt on Sal’s Mets cap
than there is on the mound at Citi Field.
Anyway, on top of everything else,
Trump owes nearly half a billion dollars
in his New York fraud trial,
and now it seems like he doesn’t actually have the money.
-An appeals court denying Donald Trump’s request to pause
that $454 million penalty against him and his business
while he appeals his civil fraud trial.
Trump’s lawyers had offered to put up a $100 million bond
against the $454 million.
-Trump’s lawyers admitted he does not have the cash
for the full bond,
and would likely have to sell off properties
to raise the nearly $500 million required.
-You know, a lot of bad [bleep] has happened
and will happen in this election,
so I think it’s okay for us to just take a second
and enjoy the sentence "Trump doesn’t have the money."
He’ll have to give up his expensive suits.
[ Cheers and applause ]
He’ll have to give up his expensive suits.
He’s gonna have to borrow Sal’s Mets cap.
But the best part is that Trump might have to sell
some of his properties to pay the money he owes.
I guess that means we should look forward
to seeing his private jet
joining the Spirit Airlines fleet.
If you upgrade to comfort plus,
you get exclusive access to the gold toilet.
But just a heads-up, it’s not real gold,
and if you sit on it, your butt will turn green,
and there’s no easy way to say this --
you might lose the butt.
Or maybe we’ll see Mar-a-Lago listed on Zillow,
although it’ll probably have to be listed
under a more accurate name --
"Haunted Florida Goldfish Castle --
comes with classified documents."
Look at that [bleep]hole.
It looks like a Medieval Times ripoff
called Serf’s Up.
You should put that thing on Airdnd.
[ Laughter ]
[ Laughter continues ]
So, Trump is in a good deal of legal trouble,
which is why he’s hoping the conservative Supreme Court
that he helped stack will bail him out.
And that’s not a guess.
His lawyer Alina Habba has essentially said on Fox News
that the Supreme Court owes him one.
-I think it should be a slam dunk
in the Supreme Court. I have faith in them.
You know, people like Kavanaugh,
who the president fought for,
who the president went through hell to get into place.
He’ll step up. Those people will step up.
-Step up? You sound like De Niro in "Goodfellas."
Oh, what’s that?
To celebrate the 10th anniversary,
you’d like to hear my De Niro impression?
[Southern accent] Now, what’s all this I’m hearing about oil?
[Normal voice] Sorry.
I only do "Killers of the Flower Moon" De Niro now.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Come on, Trump’s broke. Let’s have some fun.
So, they’re just saying it out loud.
The Supreme Court is a partisan institution
that is there to protect Trump
and do his bidding, which of course,
undercuts the Supreme Court’s self-styled image
as an independent arbiter of the law.
The justices have long sought to appear
as though they’re above the fray of party politics.
They pretend they’re just judges, not politicians,
which we all know is ridiculous. And look, I get it.
We all have stuff we lie about at our jobs.
For example, I have to act like
I’ve enjoyed everything my guests are here to promote,
even when I get called out on it on my own show.
-I love watching you interview people so much
just to see -- I can see it.
It’s such a suppressed glint
in your eye of, "Well... congratulations!"
[ Laughter ]
-How dare you? Don’t give up the game!
-"Shazam! 2" looks great. -No, no.
-Coming to a theater near you.
-It does look great.
-It does look good. It does look good.
-How dare you? How dare you use a recent and specific example?
[ Laughter ]
You know, that John Oliver just can’t help himself.
He has to speak truth to power everywhere he goes!
Now I know what it feels like to be Clarence Thomas.
The point is, the Supreme Court likes to pretend
that they’re just impartial jurists
who apply the law without any bias,
and they go to great lengths to stress
that they have no partisan loyalty whatsoever.
-Judges are not politicians who can promise
to do certain things in exchange for votes.
I have no agenda, and I will remember
that it’s my job to call balls and strikes
and not to pitch or bat.
-It’s such a ridiculous argument.
We all know you’re a Republican. You’re telling me George W. Bush
appointed you to the Supreme Court
without any idea what your political beliefs are?
We can tell just from your haircut.
They call that the Lego businessman.
[ Laughter ]
So, the justices want to be seen as apolitical,
but there can be no doubt now
that they’re very explicitly doing Trump’s bidding
after siding with him in his attempt to get
his January 6th trial delayed until after the election.
The court agreed to hear Trump’s claim that he has
the absolute immunity to do whatever he wants.
-Donald Trump’s strategy to delay those trials
until after the November election
just got a big assist from the Supreme Court,
the justices announcing they will hear
the former president’s claims of absolute immunity.
That’s going to happen in late April.
A ruling not expected until the end of June,
and only then can special counsel
Jack Smith’s federal election subversion case move forward,
assuming that the court rules against Trump.
-Now, the good news is, we can all be happy
that things have been moving so quickly --
it’s only February; this is a trial about January 6th --
until you remember it was January 6th
three [bleep] years ago, when you start going,
"Why the [bleep] did it take you so [bleep] long
to start this [bleep] case, when we all saw
the [bleep] insurrection on [bleep] TV
with our [bleep] eyes? But then again,
I’m not a lawyer, so [bleeeeep] me!
In fact, the Supreme Court
could have taken this immunity case last year
when it was first brought to them,
but they kicked it back to the lower court.
The whole gambit here is to waste time
so Trump can delay the trial until after the election.
And they gave him exactly what he wanted.
The conservatives on the court will happily do Trump’s bidding.
All he has to do is say the magic word, something like...
-Shazam!
-Keep in mind... [ Laughter ]
...this isn’t like some sort of thorny,
hotly contested constitutional issue
that’s been vexing scholars for decades
and where the lower courts are at loggerheads,
thus forcing the high court to step in
to reconcile contradictory rulings.
Basically, everyone agrees this is ridiculous.
Trump is saying, "I’m allowed to commit any crime I want,
and nobody can do anything about it."
And the Supreme Court is like,
"Ah, yeah, maybe! We'll take a look at that."
During the appeals court oral arguments,
the judges expressed shock when Trump’s lawyer argued
that he could theoretically order Seal Team Six
to murder a political opponent and get away with it.
Just think about what Trump’s lawyer is saying there.
He’s saying the only way Trump could be criminally tried
for murdering a political opponent
is if two-thirds of the Senate convicted him
in an impeachment trial and removed him from office.
I think we all know that would never happen.
Republicans wouldn’t even vote to convict Trump
after he tried to kill his own vice president,
Mike Pence, a guy they’re all friends with.
If Trump wins a second term,
he’ll probably celebrate at his inauguration
by lowering Pence into a tank on the Capitol steps
filled with bloodthirsty sharks.
[As Pence] Sir, it is an honor to be here with you today.
Oh, dear God, they’re eating my legs.
Which I richly deserve because I didn’t have the courage
to overturn the election. Oh, good.
Now the sound of my voice is putting the sharks to sleep.
[ Laughter ]
Praise God.
[Normal voice] The right-wing Supreme Court is nothing more
than a Republican political operation
doing the partisan bidding of Donald Trump.
We as voters deserve to see the outcome of a trial
where the evidence against Trump is presented before we vote.
But the Supreme Court has now made that all but impossible
because Donald Trump asked them to.
The MAGA justices on the court will happily do his bidding.
Trump’s got them by the...
-Balls.
[ Laughter ]
-This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
Hey, everybody. Thanks for watching "A Closer Look."
And as a reminder, my brother Josh and I have started a --
[Beep] [Voiceover] Have an established!
...podcast called "Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers."
We hope you listen, we hope you like it,
and see you soon.