-Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the attic crawl space.
On Monday, we answered a question
many viewers had been wondering about --
what's behind that tiny, little door back there
when my kids escaped at the end of "Closer Look."
Now, a lot of people online have said they were adorable
and too cute for words, and I assure you,
they are...
in nine-second chunks.
Also, some of you might be looking at me right now,
wondering, does Seth know he's already worn that shirt?
And yeah, I know.
I promise you, I know.
And I do wish I had a deeper roster of shirts,
but in my defense, no one warned me
multiple times about the possibility of a pandemic
because I'm not the president.
That's a segue.
And now, even after ignoring those warnings,
the president is pushing to prematurely reopen the economy,
threatening to repeat the mistakes he made
at the start of this crisis.
For more of this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
♪♪
When Donald Trump was elected in 2016,
this was exactly the kind of nightmare scenario
everyone was afraid of --
What would happen in a global crisis
if the most powerful man in the world
was a racist game show host
who failed at virtually everything in his life,
except for pretending to be a successful businessman on TV?
and he is not even good at pretending.
Look at him pretending to be president.
He just stares directly into the camera,
and he can't even be bothered
to, at least, put some fake documents on his desk.
You can almost hear the dial tone
blasting out of the phone.
He looks like a tourist taking a photo on the set
of "Deep Impact."
[ As Donald Trump ] "Wow.
Is this the phone Morgan Freeman used?
You know, everyone freaked out
about the asteroid in that movie,
but it ended up being no worse
than the common everyday flu."
[ Normal voice ] The point is,
this is the crisis everyone feared.
In fact, before Trump took office,
President Obama's outgoing team
tried to prepare Trump's incoming team
for this exact scenario.
a scenario experts had warned about for years.
-Days before Donald Trump took office,
some of President Obama's advisors
walked the incoming president's team
through a hypothetical scenario
remarkably like the one we are living through now.
It was a briefing on what would
happen
if a quick spreading virus
were to race through London and Seoul,
and in that scenario, they presented governments
imposing travel bans.
There were shortages at hospitals across the country,
and today,
roughly two-thirds of those Trump administration officials
who participated in that simulation
are no longer in government.
-That's right.
Most of the Trump officials
who worked for him back then aren't even there anymore.
They're either in jail, on Fox News,
or in the bargain bin at a Barnes & Noble.
"Hi, excuse me.
This Sean Spicer book
only has blank pages."
"Huh, look at that.
I guess you're the first person to ever open one."
This White House has more staff turnover
than a Six Flags over summer break.
They made the Six Flags mascot
commerce secretary.
What Obama's team should have done is
run a simulation for what would happen
when a sociopath President dismisses repeated warnings
from intelligence officials and public health experts
that a pandemic is coming.
and fires anyone who's done any planning for it.
Okay. So, the first thing you do in that case is,
you call up Netflix,
and you get them to release
an emergency bonus episode of "Tiger King" ASAP.
You know, think of it as a --
I don't know -- a where-are-they-now situation.
You know, maybe, someone got new teeth.
And, again, you know, obviously,
let's pray it never comes to this.
In fact, as we've now learned, one former Trump official,
homeland security adviser Tom Bossert was a part
of a group of people trying to warn the government
in a series of exchanges called the "Red Dawn" e-mails.
The e-mails were nicknamed
after the 1984 Patrick Swayze movie,
but, if you're going to pick a Swayze movie,
I feel like "Ghost" would have been a better choice,
since the government's response is clearly being lead by one.
I mean, yikes.
[ Chuckles ] Look at him.
Jared Kushner looks like he just appeared out of nowhere
after someone read an Edgar Allen Poe story
into a cracked mirror...
and then demanded you pay for the mirror.
It's weird that the public health response
is being led by a guy
who looks like he would sneak into your hospital room
and pinch your IV line closed
until you told him where the microfilm was.
"It's a simple question."
So, in those "Red Dawn" e-mails,
we found out that Bossert and others
had expressed concerns
about Trump's slow and incoherent response,
like for example, when trump announced
a hasty and confusing European travel ban
that led to jam-packed airports in cities like Chicago
after there were already documented cases
of community spreading here in the U.S.,
Bossert wrote, "Can anyone justify
the European travel restrictions,
scientifically?
Seriously, is there any benefit?
I don't see it,
but I'm hoping there's something I don't know."
That's how we all feel, but it's never the case.
With Trump, things are always exactly as they seem.
For example, we see him using every muscle in his face
to squint at the teleprompter
like he is staring at a "Magic Eye" poster
and say, "I think the president can't see,
but I'm hoping there's something I don't know."
And then, you tune in to his unhinged
Rose Garden press conference Tuesday night,
in which he announced,
in the middle of a global pandemic,
that he was pulling funding from World Health Organization,
and you see this.
-I instructed my team to use
the Defense Protection Act.
and the Defense Production Act
was used very powerfully.
All the aid that we send will be...discussed...
at very, very powerful letl--
letters.
We see light.
We're starting to see it more than ever before.
We've held our...
rate, the numbers,
everything we've done.
We've been very, very...
strong on it and very powerful on it.
-He sounds like a guy on a date
getting lines through an earpiece
and the feed just cut out.
[ As Donald Trump ] The light in your eyes is so...
It's so...
Well, it is lighty.
I mean, they're your eyes. You know.
[ Normal voice ] Also, I like when his brain melts,
his go to-words are strong and powerful.
it's like I'm listening to a focus group
on advertising for pickup trucks.
"Okay, folks.
What are some words that might make you want
to buy a Ford F-150?"
[ As Donald Trump ] "Strong!
Uh, powerful!
Ve-- very powerful!
That would be another word for me.
If you want to put that down for me."
[ Normal voice ] And by the way, that's the guy news networks
have decided to air unfiltered during a national emergency,
the guy who he can't even read his own script.
If that's the content you want, cable networks,
just take a live feed of my grandpa at his next eye exam.
And by the way, it doesn't make it better
when you give it a negative chyron,
like CNN did on Monday, with,
"Angry Trump turns briefing into propaganda session."
You know what else turned that into a propaganda session?
Pointing your camera at it.
Before you showed up, it was just,
"Crazy lawn man does his thing."
You can't air a propaganda session
and criticize it.
It's like if MTV had aired "Jersey Shore"
with the disclaimer, "Change the channel.
This show sucks."
And that is what it was, a propaganda session.
In fact, the White House edited
together a campaign-style video highlighting
Trump's various statements about the crisis,
and Trump actually had people inside your government,
paid with your tax dollars,
make that video.
-I've never seen a video like that played in this room.
It looks a bit like a campaign ad.
Who produced that video for you?
-That was done by a group in the office.
-Yeah, this was done by Dan and a group of people.
-Oh! Oh, it was done by Dan and a group of people.
First of all, it's funny
that it was only Dan who got named,
and everyone else who was complicit in this bull[bleep]
got lumped in to a group of people.
Trump knows how to accidently shame someone
by giving them credit for something terrible.
[ As Donald Trump ] "Dan?
Dan, you want to come over here
and talk about the propaganda video
you made with taxpayer dollars?
You shaking your head no, Dan?
Dan?
Dan, do you want to come up here?
Dan, show everyone your face
and take credit for this thing you did.
Dan? No? Fauci? How about you, Fauci?
You want to say a few words about Dan?
Made you touch your face again, Fauci.
This guy.
Love you, Fauc."
[ Normal voice ] Particularly, Trump keeps touting his ban
on travel from China.
but, according to experts,
the ban only served to buy the White House time
to ramp up testing and hospital capacity
and start community mitigation efforts,
time they wasted,
and when he was asked to explain what he did
with all that time in February,
Trump decided to get in to a fight with the reporter,
Paula Reid of CBS, who asked the question.
-Thousands of lives by --
-The argument is that you bought yourself some time.
You didn't use it to prepare hospitals.
You didn't use it to ramp up testing.
-You're so -- You're so -- You're so disgraceful.
It is so disgraceful the way you say that.
Let me just -- Listen.
I just went over it.
Nobody thought we should do it,
and when I did it --
But what did you do with the time that you bought?
-You know what we did? -The month of February?
That was a gap. -You know what we did?
What do you do -- -The entire month of February.
-What do you do when you have no case
in the whole United States -- -You had cases in February.
-Excuse me, you reported it.
Zero cases, zero deaths on January 17th.
-In January. February, the entire --
-Janua-- I said in January. -Your video has a complete gap.
-On January 3rd.
-What did the administration do in February with the time
that your travel ban bought you?
-A lot. -What?
-A lot, and in fact, we'll give you a list.
-[ As Donald Trump ] "Dan?
Dan, can you get us that list you made
of everything we did in February?
You're shaking your head no, Dan,
but I know you have a list of everything done in February
that this lady is asking me about.
The February list, Dan!
It will be between the January list
and then the March list.
Dan?
Don't make me tell everyone your last name, Dan.
It's Scavino."
[ Normal voice ] Also, thank you for reminding Trump to his face
that there are real-world consequences here.
for the thousands who have died and their loved ones,
the nearly 20 million who have lost their jobs,
the millions who have lost health insurance,
the courageous health care professionals
putting themselves in danger on the front line.
and all of the essential workers delivering mail and packages
and working grocery stores and on public transit
and doing the hard, dangerous work
while the rest of us surf to the bottom of Netflix,
looking for another trashy reality show to watch.
"Honey, have we watched
'[Bleep] Island' yet?"
Oh, right. Yeah, we did.
Oh, wait! Honey, there's a new bonus episode.
Aw, they got divorced, honey.
Yeah.
Yeah, I guess once the couples got back from the main land,
they realized the connections they made on [bleep] island
weren't as enduring as they've been led to believe.
I guess romance is dead, honey."
And now Trump is once again rushing
to prematurely reopen the economy,
even though public health experts
have nearly unanimously warned that such move could lead
to a second wave of the outbreak.
Dr. Fauci warned about this on Sunday.
Bill Gates said, we won't go back to normal
until there's a vaccine.
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel said concerts, conferences,
and sporting events likely won't return until fall 2021
at the earliest.
and a Harvard study said yesterday,
some social distancing measures may be needed until 2022.
So, yeah, I'm gonna have to rewatch
every episode of "[Bleep] Island"
with the director's commentary on it.
"You know, we were originally going to do it on Isthmus,
but, we thought,
[bleep] isthmus was too hard to say,
so we went with an island."
And yet, our split- personality President
has, in a matter of days, gone back and forth
between claiming he has unquestioned authority
to unilaterally force states to reopen economies,
to suggesting he will simply work with states
to allow them to implement their own plans.
-What authority do you have?
-Well, I have the ultimate authority.
The president of the United States
has the authority to do
what the president has the authority to do,
which is very powerful.
The president of the United States
calls the shots.
I have the absolute right to do if I want to.
When somebody's the president of the United States,
the authority is total,
and that's the way it's got to be.
-Your authority is total?
-Total. It's total.
-Again, I think part of the problem here is,
Trump only knows like three words,
which include absolute, powerful, and total.
He used the word total
the way teenagers use the word "random."
"My authority is like so total."
The president and his allies
ignored repeated warnings that pandemic was coming,
and now in the face of the evidence,
he's pushing to prematurely reopen the economy
and repeat all the same mistakes over again.
When the time for an accounting comes,
we must remember that this was not inevitable,
and that a long sequence of failures led to this moment.
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