-And after three weeks of humiliating chaos,
Republicans finally elected a speaker of the House
who isn't just a far-right election denier,
but was actually one of the architects of the effort
to overturn the 2020 election results.
The House GOP's decision comes as Trump himself faces
damning new legal developments
in three separate cases across the country,
from Michael Cohen's testimony in New York
to Mark Meadows testimony in DC
to one of his former attorneys pleading guilty in Georgia.
For more on this, it's time for A Closer Look.
[ Cheers and applause ]
One thing I've never been able to understand about Trump World
is how all these guys handle the pressure of being
in so much legal trouble all the time.
They all have one foot in prison.
They drink scotch like water and eat nothing but steaks,
and somehow they're all doing fine.
It's a real tribute to the advances of modern cardiology.
If I let my vehicle registration lapse for a day,
I get palpitations, I can't feel my legs.
One time I rear ended another car in a Costco parking lot,
got out, saw there was no damage and just took off.
And I still have nightmares about it.
[ Laughter ]
I just know I'm going to be sitting on a beach
in Spain when I'm 85 years old,
and a Chicago cop is going to walk up behind me
and I'll say, "What took you so long?"
[ Laughter ]
The only thing keeping my location a secret for now
is my show airs at 12:37 in the morning and also on Peacock.
[ Laughter ]
Take Trump, for example.
I don't know why he said, for example.
He's "the" example.
He's got four different criminal cases,
four examples and a civil fraud trial.
Well, this week there have been three major developments
in three separate Trump cases.
His former fixer testified against him in New York.
Another one of his lawyers flipped on him in Georgia,
and we found out his former chief of staff
testified to the special counsel in DC.
-Breaking news tonight, the former Trump
White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows,
reportedly offering damning testimony
against the former president to special counsel Jack Smith.
-Breaking news out of New York.
Former President Donald Trump came face to face
with his former personal attorney
and longtime fixer, Michael Cohen,
for the first time in five years
inside a courtroom in New York today,
Cohen is testifying as part of the civil fraud case
against Trump and his company.
-Breaking news out of Georgia, where just this morning,
former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis
pleaded guilty in the state's 2020 election interference case.
Ellis is now the fourth defendant
to accept a plea deal with prosecutors.
-When it comes to Trump's legal troubles,
they're going to have to break into breaking news stories,
with more breaking news.
-Breaking news tonight the former
Trump White House Chief of Staff...
-Breaking news out of New York.
Former President Donald Trump came face to...
-Breaking news out of Georgia, where just this morning,
former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis pleaded guilt...
Breaking news out of Sheboygan,
where Donald Trump has just been caught shoplifting,
an Us Weekly out of a Piggly Wiggly.
[ As Donald Trump ] If I'm guilty of anything,
it's wanting to catch up
on the latest with Taylor and Travis,
team...
Team both of them. So wholesome, so sweet.
She's there with the mother, and he supports her career.
It's just a beautiful thing. And if there's if there's
one thing everyone knows about Trump,
it's that I love love.
Also, I stole a bunch of Kit-Kats
because I also love candy.
[ Normal voice ] So let's take these one at a time.
First, there's Michael Cohen, who testified yesterday
and again today in a Manhattan courtroom
where Trump is at risk of losing his business empire
in a fraud suit
brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Trump was actually in the courtroom face
to face with Cohen,
as Cohen detailed the various ways
in which Trump told him to commit fraud
by lying about the value of his company's assets.
-Former President Donald Trump watched
as his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen,
testified against him in New York's lawsuit
over Trump's businesses.
-NBC News reporting this,
Cohen said, "Trump would come up
with his own net worth estimations."
"My responsibility, along with Allen Weisselberg,
predominantly, was to reverse engineer
the various different asset classes
and increase those assets in order to achieve a number
that Trump asked us for," he said.
Asked what that number would be,
Cohen said, quote, "Whatever number he told us."
-So Trump would literally just invent a number
for the value of his assets
or his net worth out of thin air.
Then tell his minions to fudge the math
in order to make that number work.
That would explain why his net worth
was always some very round clean number, like $10 billion.
No one has a net worth. That's exactly $10 billion.
Usually there's at least one decimal point.
It's like getting a fake ID
that says your 21st birthday
is "today."
[ Laughter ]
[ High-pitched voice ] That's right, my birthday is today.
And that's why I need these key-lime flavored wine coolers.
Mr. proprietor. Ah! My fake mustache fell.
I mean, my real mustache.
[ Normal voice ] Also, how do you get minions that loyal.
They committed crimes for this dude.
The closest thing I have to a minion is Wally,
and I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm his minion.
-You're doing great, kid.
[ Laughter ]
-Also, it really helps that Cohen has more credibility
than most of Trump's usual goons.
Like, if Rudy Giuliani or Mike Lindell
or Sidney Powell testify against Trump,
it probably wouldn't even hurt him that much,
because a jury would think even Trump couldn't have thought
these lunatics knew anything about voting machine technology.
Michael Cohen.
Michael Cohen looks exactly like a dude
you would hire for help cooking the books.
If he had a billboard, it would say...
[ Laughter ]
And then there was the breaking news
about Trump's former Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows.
Meadows was there in the White House
with Trump on January 6th,
and has reportedly testified multiple times
in the investigation of the coup attempt
by special counsel Jack Smith.
-Meadows is seen as a critical witness.
He was the White House Chief of Staff,
and he can offer keen insights into Trump's actions
and state of mind following the election.
Now, he also allegedly told investigators
that he has never seen any evidence of fraud
that would keep now President Joe Biden from the White House,
and that he agrees
this was the most secure election in US history.
-Meadows also told federal investigators
Trump was being, "dishonest" with the public
when he first claims to have won the election.
Hours after polls closed on November 3, 2020,
before the final results were in, "Obviously, we didn't win."
A source quoted Meadows
as telling Jack Smith's team in hindsight.
-You don't get to admit that you didn't win
now and three years later,
when you and most of your cronies are facing jail time.
Where were you on election night,
when Trump was scheming with a whiskey-soaked
Rudy Giuliani to go out and claim victory
before all the votes were in?
Or how Sidney Powell was holding
her bat [bleep] crazy press conference,
wearing the pelt of a leopard
she claimed had rigged the election,
along with China and the ghost of Hugo Chavez.
[ As Sidney Powell ] I personally killed
this leopard myself when I found him
trying to vote for Joe Biden in Pennsylvania.
Sorry, leopard, but you're not 18,
and now you're never going to be.
[ Normal voice ] I hope the special counsel
got a lot more information from Meadows,
because Meadows definitely knows a lot more.
For example, you might remember
that Meadows' aide Cassidy Hutchinson
testified before the January 6th Committee.
Hutchinson revealed that as the mob
was rampaging through the Capitol,
chanting hang Mike Pence,
Meadows confirmed that Trump agreed with the mob.
-We have some remarkable new accounts
of just how explicitly Donald Trump encouraged violence
on that day and in its wake.
One of those accounts comes from a new book
written by the former aide to Trump Chief of Staff
Mark Meadows, that's Cassidy Hutchinson.
In this excerpt highlighted by my colleague Rachel Maddow
ahead of her interview with Cassie Hutchinson last night,
Hutchinson describes a scene
from the afternoon of January 6th,
after news has broken that the rioters
have breached the Capitol.
-I can't wait to hear Trump's excuse
for yelling the word "hang" as the mob
was on TV ransacking the Capitol,
literally chanting they wanted to hang Mike Pence.
[ As Donald Trump ] I wasn't saying hang Mike Pence,
I was saying "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper,"
My favorite...
My favorite '90s TV. Where are my '90s kids at?
We all -- We all love Mr. Cooper, don't we folks?
That was part of the TGIF block on ABC.
T-GIF, as I called it,
along with "Boy Meets World" and "Full House."
You know, I once met Dave Coulier once.
He came up to me, big guy, funny guy,
tears pouring down his face
and onto his tacky brightly colored shirt.
And he said to me, he said, "Sir, those radical,
those radical woke Democrats need to cut it out."
[ Laughter ]
They do.
[ Cheers and applause ]
He was very -- He was very unkind to Alanis.
You need to know that about him? You oughta know.
[ Laughter ]
[ Normal voice ] But at the very least,
we have the president's chief of staff
now reportedly confirming that he knew the entire time
the election fraud stuff was all [bleep].
And, yet, the election deniers nonetheless
remain the core of the current Republican Party.
That's who controls the party,
as evidenced by their selection today of a new speaker,
a far-right conservative who almost no one
has heard of named Mike Johnson.
I think they're hoping to bore
everyone into forgetting how extreme he is.
Mike Johnson is the fake name
they give you when you call tech support.
So it sounds like you're talking to someone in Kansas
when you're definitely talking to someone in Albania.
[ Albanian accent ] Yes, I am Mike Johnson.
Did you try unplug and plug in again?
[ Normal voice ] Even his fellow Republicans
didn't know much about him.
Senator Susan Collins, and this is true,
said she'd have to look him up.
A reporter from CNN wrote today...
[ Laughter ]
Well, when you Google him, you're going to need
to put in more information than just the name Mike Johnson.
Mike Johnson is such a common name.
Most of us went to school with one.
My Mike Johnson played baseball.
This Mike Johnson played a key role
in the effort to overturn the 2020 election results
and was, according to The New York Times...
...on January 6th.
But Republicans desperately
do not want to talk about that,
as evidenced by this press conference last night
where a reporter tried to ask Mike Fake Name
about his effort to overturn the election,
and the group of Republicans assembled
literally booed the reporter.
-[ Booing ]
-Next question.
-Oh, grow up!
[ Laughter ]
You're booing like a bunch of kids
at a production of "PAW Patrol" on ice
when Mayor Humdinger comes out.
[ As Mayor Humdinger ] Oh, wait until I get my hands
on those pesky pups.
[ Imitates children booing ]
[ Laughter ]
[ Normal voice ] Went and saw "PAW Patrol" two this weekend.
Woof!
[ Laughter ]
In retrospect, I should have -- I should have taken my kids.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
They wanted to see "Killers of the Flower Moon."
[ Laughter ]
and I'm like, "That's too long.
I'm going to go see 'PAW Patrol.'"
But then that backfires
because this is, like, 90 minutes.
I got to sit in the [bleep] lobby.
[ Laughter ]
I mean, can you imagine having the gall
to boo someone for asking a simple question
after you paralyze the government for three weeks
of spectacle and humiliating incompetence,
where you screamed and yelled at each other
like a bunch of street pigeons
fighting over a French fry.
You booed the reporter.
That's like going to a football stadium
and getting booed by the Giants.
[ Laughter ]
Do I boo you when you vape
and get too handsy at "Beetlejuice" the musical?
No, I get an usher like an adult.
[ Laughter ]
Also, can we zoom in on this kindly older woman
up front to hear what she had to say?
-Shut up!
Shut up.
That's North Carolina Congress monster
and election denier, Virginia Fox.
And maybe steer clear of her house on Halloween, kids,
because I'm pretty sure it's going to be raisins.
[ Laughter ]
And yet, even after they spent three weeks
humiliating themselves and breaking the government,
Republicans actually celebrated when they finally managed
to do the single basic aspect of their jobs,
like they had just landed a rover on Mars.
Maybe instead of patting themselves
on the backs and yelling at reporters,
you guys should at least have the decency to...
-Shut up.
[ Laughter ]
-This has been A Closer Look.
[ Cheers and applause ]