-Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the attic.
Now, as some of you know, I have been dealing
with a wasp infestation up here while I've been taping the show.
There was even a flyby last week.
It got so bad that I said to myself,
"If there's a pest worse than wasps,
I'd love to know what it is. And lo and behold,
I opened
to read "'Murder Hornets' in the U.S."
Murder. Hornets.
Thank you for giving us the uplifting non-COVID-related news
we've all been looking for,
Anyway, story gave me a whole new appreciation
for my nonlethal wasps who I'm almost certain
aren't murder hornets in disguise,
although one of them keeps telling me I'm pretty
and bringing me trinkets. And based on every
true crime doc I've watched on Netflix,
that is a red flag.
But to thank them for not being murder hornets,
I have added a few of the wasps to the writing staff,
which we think will help give the show some good buzz.
I told you that joke was a dud, Charlie.
Put your stinger away, Charlie.
Not today. It's Monday. What?
Oh, Mondays aren't considered bad by wasps?
Why's that? Oh, yeah...
You don't classically have jobs.
Anyway, speaking of duds... Segue!
...President Trump gave a town hall on Fox News last night
as a damning new report details how he's wasting time
he could've been using to develop a strategy
for safely reopening the economy.
For more on this, it's time for A Closer Look.
President Trump beamed into America's living rooms
last night during a Fox News town hall
from the Lincoln Memorial, where it kind of looked like
Lincoln had been asked to join but was keeping his distance.
Now, obviously the interviewers were practicing
social distancing there, but it's more fun if you imagine
they all started out sitting close together
and then just scooted their chairs back a little
every time Trump said something insane.
"Uh-huh. Oh, interesting.
So just...any...household disinfectant will work.
That is... [straining] great to hear."
And sure enough, Trump made it awkward at one point
by pointing to the memorial and complaining,
as he has before,
that he -- he has been treated worse than Lincoln.
-I am greeted with a hostile press,
the likes of which no president has ever seen.
The closest would be that gentleman right up there.
They always said, "Lincoln -- nobody got treated
worse than Lincoln."
I believe I am treated worse.
-You have two unfiltered hours on national television
to say whatever you want to millions of people
without fact checking or follow-ups.
Lincoln couldn't even get through a play
without being interrupted.
I'm shocked the memorial didn't pull a Fauci.
And of course, as is his wont,
Trump rambled incoherently about God-knows-what
for basically the entire two hours
with virtually no attempt at fact checking
or rigorous cross-examination from the moderators.
I guess Lincoln wasn't the only statue there last night.
As usual, the Fox moderators let him lie freely
about a bunch of verifiably untrue things
and in some cases, they didn't even make him
answer the question he was asked.
They were less like reporters and more like the audience
in an improv show.
"[ As Trump ] Okay to get started?
I just need a one-word suggestion."
"Oh, uh, ventilators!" "That's good.
I think ventilators will be good."
Watch him totally lose his train of thought
and wander away from a question that was supposed to be
about the coronavirus.
-Do you think the election will come down to a referendum
on how you handled this crisis? -No, but it's gonna be a factor.
-Do you think it'll be bigger than that?
-No. I think the election's gonna come down to --
I hope it does because we've done a great job.
We had no ventilators. We had no testing.
We had nothing. I had -- I inherited empty --
empty -- no ammunition.
Our military was bad.
We've rebuilt our military.
$1.5 trillion.
We have the best military by far in the world.
It's rebuilt. It's either all new
or the equipment's coming in, which is great.
-What are you talking about? Is someone shining
a laser pointer on the floor that's distracting you?
You were asked a question about the coronavirus,
and you said you inherited no ammunition,
which is both not relevant and also a ridiculous lie.
You expect everyone to believe that when you took office,
soldiers were patrolling war zones without bullets?
[ As Trump ] We had no ammunition.
Whenever a soldier shot a gun,
a little flag popped out that said, "Thanks, Obama."
[ Normal voice ] And then, of course, there were
the typical nonsensical Trumpisms
where he tries to make himself sound like a tactical genius
but reaches for the dumbest metaphor possible,
like when he was asked if he would impose new tariffs
on China and said this --
-We're all playing a very complicated game
of chess or poker.
Name whatever you want to name,
but it's not checkers, that I can tell you.
-Oh, it's chess
You should probably find out which game it is.
[ As Trump ] I see you've taken my rook, but perhaps
these three Jacks will have something to say about that.
And that something is Uno.
[ Normal voice ] So Trump spent his Sunday night
embarrassing the Lincoln memorial on Fox News,
which makes sense because he's constantly
in a state of either watching Fox or appearing on Fox
or watching himself appearing on Fox.
Eventually, Fox is just gonna turn into a 24/7 feed
of Trump watching himself on Fox like an infinity mirror.
Trump also surrounds himself with people he sees on Fox
from informal advisers to White House aides,
like his newest press secretary Kayleigh McEnany,
who held her first briefing on Friday.
and McEnany's hiring very much illustrates the feedback loop
of disinformation and propaganda
that exists between the Trump White House and Fox News.
For example, in late February and early March,
more than a month after the first confirmed case
Of coronavirus in the U.S.,
McEnany went on Fox channels as a spokesperson
for the Trump campaign and told outlandish lies
about Trump's response to the coronavirus outbreak.
-This president will always put America first.
He will always protect American citizens.
We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here.
-Let's turn it to your rallies, the President's rallies.
Are you a little bit worried
about holding those kind of rallies?
-I'm not, because we have the added advantage here
at the Trump campaign that our candidate happens to be
the President of the United States.
-The President goes ahead with holding his rallies,
his top doctor -- top medical guy -- says,
"Don't go with big crowds."
I mean, you're immediately gonna be hit with this.
-Look, the President is the best authority on this issue.
-I think what's going on here is she's playing checkers
and the interviewer is playing chess.
Or poker.
Not only is Trump not the best authority on this,
whenever he's around actual authorities,
they have to keep correcting him.
My favorite examples of this are when Trump pitches
insane coronavirus cures, and the medical experts around him
have to politely tell him, no, that's not a thing.
-Deborah, have you ever heard of the heat and the light
relative to certain viruses, yes, but relative to this virus?
-Not as a treatment.
-You take a solid flu vaccine,
you don't think that would have an impact
or much of an impact on corona? -No.
-Even the real housewives know there's stuff
you talk about when the cameras aren't rolling.
I mean, they have briefings
before they have the press conferences,
and I bet they've begged Trump
to get his dumb questions out then.
"Hey, before we go out in front of the American people
and all those cameras, are there any, you know, miracle cures
you want to ask us about now?"
"[ As Trump ] No, no, I had two out there.
I got some good ones today."
Here's a hint -- hair spray and Altoids.
Who knows?
Who knows until you say it out loud in front of the cameras?"
[ Normal voice ] In fact, Trump's fixation
on miracle cure-alls and shortcuts
is also reflected in a damning new report
in
of desperation and dysfunction
in which he ignored and then abandoned
the goal of actually beating back the virus and instead
focused on prematurely reopening the economy
without a plan to do so safely.
For example,
by political allies like Rudy Giuliani and Fox News hosts
to embrace the drug hydroxychloroquine
as a treatment for coronavirus
even though it was unproven and potentially dangerous.
That's right, hydroxychloroquine.
Remember when everyone cared about that for a second,
the Tamagotchi of COVID cures?
Well, according to
in late March and early April,
he kept hearing about the controversial antimalarial drug
on his favorite Fox News channel programs
where television doctors and commentators
touted its efficacy.
Yeah, the TV President who played a TV businessman
is listening to TV doctors like Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil,
seen here getting an X-ray in real time, I guess.
Oof, looks like he took
the President's advice on heat and light.
Seriously, what's up with the aggressive blue?
Looks like a spaceship had its lights on in the parking lot.
This is what the TSA agent sees on the monitor
when a normal person goes through
the airport body scanner.
But there's apparently one Fox host in particular
that has Trump's ear on coronavirus issues
and has actually advised him at the White House.
On April 3rd, Fox host Laura Ingraham
paid Trump a visit in the Oval Office
to talk up hydroxychloroquine.
She brought with her two regular on-air guests
and what she dubs her medicine cabinet.
On April 14, Ingraham returned to the Oval Office
to meet with the President.
The Fox host reiterated her belief
that the country needed to open and argued for limits
on contact tracing.
So a Fox host with no medical expertise
is directly advising the President on a deadly pandemic
while that same President hires pundits he sees on TV
and fires or punishes actual experts and inspector generals
who criticize him. This is what you get
when you make a TV star President
because when you're on TV, no one ever tells you you're wrong.
For example, no one ever thought to tell me
that I should maybe buy a shirt in a shade that isn't blue.
But that's what happens when you're on TV.
90% of your agent's job is to text you after every show
and tell you you're crushing it.
I mean, It's different for me because, you know,
90% of the time I'm -- you know, I'm crushing it.
But I meant for other people on TV, it gives you
a false sense of yourself, and in Trump's case,
I'm assuming he had an entire team of producers on-set
to tell him his bronzer looked realistic
and then air brush whatever the hell this is
so he doesn't go on TV looking like he went to the beach
wearing a football helmet. And Ingraham's criticism
of the age-old public health practice
of contact tracing is especially worrisome
because it's one of the main tools experts agree
we're gonna need to contain this mess
and safely reopen things.
We have to test people on a massive scale,
isolate cases, and trace their contacts
to see where the outbreaks are.
Lots of other major countries and several states
like New York are beginning to do this.
And contact tracing is a thing we've already done successfully
for decades for things like tuberculosis, measles,
and sexually transmitted infections.
And yet, during a segment that Trump probably saw,
Ingraham and Trump's toothless Dracula, Rudy Giuliani,
actually laughed at New York's plan
to implement contact tracing for coronavirus.
-Michael Bloomberg is gonna handle the tracing --
army of tracers -- in New York, we learned today.
-That's totally ridiculous. -Yeah.
An army of tracers.
-Then we should trace everybody for cancer.
-Yeah. Army of tracers.
-We should trace everybody for cancer and heart disease
and obesity. I mean, a lot of things kill you
more than -- more than COVID-19.
So we should be traced for all those things.
-Oh, my God, it's for transmissible diseases,
you second-tier Jeff Dunham puppet.
You can't catch heart disease on the subway --
you know, unless you accidentally step onto
an empty car and nearly have a heart attack.
Oh, my God, what's that smell?
These are the people whispering in Trump's ear
about a deadly pandemic.
And in cases like McEnany's,
they're the people he's hiring.
Trump apparently decided to reward McEnany
for her blind loyalty by making her White House press secretary,
And on Friday, she seamlessly transitioned
from Fox News liar to White House liar
by holding her first press briefing
and making this absurd comment.
-Will you pledge never to lie to us from that podium?
-I will never lie to you. You have my word on that.
-Wow, she managed to break her promise
before she finished making her promise.
That's impressive. It's like a Mobius strip
of bull-[bleep]. And then, sure enough,
McEnany completed the Fox News feedback loop
by taking time out of her first official press briefing
to advertise Trump's Fox News town hall
and brag about his TV ratings.
-Everyone should watch the Fox News town hall
with the President from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
It'll be a can't-miss television
much like the highly-rated President Trump
coronavirus task force briefings have been.
-Oh, cool, so in the middle of a deadly pandemic,
the White House press secretary is like a glorified
TV Guide channel.
Looking for willful ignorance from a soulless sociopath?
Check out the Fox News town hall at 7:00.
Also, can we assume you're watching
the TV Guide channel again because you've finished
every show on every streaming service?
In that case, welcome back.
The President spent precious time rambling for hours
on state TV even as
detailed the lost month of dithering and disarray.
More than 65,000 Americans have died,
and at least 30 million are out of work.
What we're seeing yet again when it matters most
is that Trump has the intellect and emotional maturity
of a child flipping over the table after losing...
-...a very complicated game of chess or poker.
-This has been "A Closer Look."
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