-After the House committee
investigating Donald Trump's coup attempt
found a seven-hour gap in his call logs
on the day of the insurrection,
Trump denied ever using burner phones
and then a bunch of people immediately came out and said,
"Yeah, no, he definitely used burner phones."
[ Laughter ] Oh, and also, House Republicans have been getting asked
if they're into cocaine and orgies.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
♪♪ [ Cheering and applause ]
You know what? I'm not sure
I want to take a closer look at a story
about House Republicans having orgies,
[ Laughter ] so, for more on this, it's time for a new segment --
"A Distant Look."
♪♪ [ Laughter ]
♪♪ [ Cheering and applause ]
[ Laughter and applause ]
This is, suffice it to say,
one of the weirdest political scandals
in recent memory, which is saying a lot.
Let's remember -- the president drew on an official weather map
with a Sharpie and tried to pass it off as real,
like a kid turning an "F" on a test into an "A."
[ Laughter ] And yet, what I'm about to tell you tops that.
As we mentioned yesterday, a Republican member of Congress,
Madison Cawthorn, casually accused his colleagues
of inviting him to orgies and doing cocaine.
-The sexual perversion that goes on in Washington.
I mean, being kind of a young guy in Washington,
where the average age is probably 60 or 70,
[ Laughter ] I look at all these people, a lot of them that I,
you know, I've looked up to through my life,
I always paid attention to politics,
guys that, you know.
Then, all of a sudden, you get invited to like,
"Oh, hey, we're going to have kind of
a sexual get-together at one of our homes.
[ Laughter ] You should come." And I'm like,
"What did you just ask me to come do?"
-Yeah. -And then you realize they're
asking you to come to an orgy. -Yeah.
[ Laughter ] -Or the fact that, you know,
some of the people that are leading on the movement
to try and remove, you know, addiction in our country
and then you watch them do, you know,
a key bump of cocaine right in front of you
[ Laughter and applause ] and it's like, wow, this is wild.
-One thing is for sure, it Cawthorn is the first dude
with a backwards baseball cap
who calls it a sexual get-together.
[ Laughter ]
Did you accidentally time travel to a 1970s swinger party?
And by the way, can you imagine anything worse
than a 1970s swinger party?
Some weird couple in mustard-colored turtlenecks
collecting keys in a bowl,
dudes with big gold medallions nestled in their chest hair,
a tray of deviled eggs just sweating on the coffee table
[ Laughter ] while a Dave Brubeck record plays in mono.
[ Laughter ] Gross!
Almost as gross as the term sexual get-together.
Just say orgy. That's gross, too,
but at least, when you say it, it gets over faster.
[ Laughter ] Sexual get-together sounds less
like you're describing a wild, drug fueled-orgy in a D.C. hotel
and more like you're describing the plot of "The Ice Storm."
[ Laughter ] Great movie, by the way.
Weaver, Kline, Joan Allen,
Christina Ricci;
Tobey Maguire, a future Spider-Man.
In fact, true story --
"The Ice Storm," directed by Ang Lee,
who also directed the Eric Bana "Hulk,"
has retroactively been absorbed
in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
That moment at the end, when Kevin Kline breaks down,
sobbing in the car -- you guys remember,
I can tell by your reaction --
[ Laughter ] breaks down, sobbing in the car
and Tobey watches helplessly?
That's the moment he became Spider-Man.
[ Laughter ] Anyway.
Anyway, anyway, that has been today's Tangent for Film Buffs.
[ "Hooray for Hollywood" plays ] [ Laughter ]
I'm sorry about that. The thing is,
I just did some cocaine this morning with House Republicans.
[ Laughter ] I had to. I had to. I had to. I was exhausted.
I was exhausted from the orgy.
If I didn't do the cocaine, I would've passed out
in the middle of "A Closer Look," okay?
[ Laughter ] That's what I did. I did a little cocaine.
If you want to blame me, that's fine, just blame me,
[ Laughter ] but that's why it happened, okay?
That's why we're talking about "The Ice Storm," okay?
I did a little cocaine and now, I want to talk about one
[ Laughter ] of my favorite movies. And you guys haven't seen it,
but that's the problem. You should go out and see it.
And I don't know why I have to beg you to do a thing
[ Laughter ] that you're going to enjoy.
Just do the thing you're going to enjoy
and then later you can come and thank me,
but right now, I don't want to talk about it anymore.
I've done talked about it. I've talked about it enough
and the problem is you're not talking enough.
And I understand I'm not leaving any gaps for you to talk,
but trust me, when the time comes, you're going to say,
"I really enjoyed 'The Ice Storm.'"
[ Laughter ]
That was obviously a very bizarre and shocking allegation
and it pissed off Cawthorn's GOP colleagues
because he seemed to be accusing his fellow Republicans
of being the sex-crazed drug addicts.
And, by the way, let me just state for the record,
I don't care. Have your orgies.
You're consenting adults. If you want to roll out a tarp
in a Holiday Inn conference room and go to town on each other,
[ Laughter ] be my guest.
But the funny thing to me is --
[ Laughter ]
Okay, don't use a tarp.
[ Laughter ]
Call me in the morning and say, "I see now."
[ Laughter ]
The funny thing to me is Republicans seem to care a lot.
They don't care. They don't care
about all the other insane and horrible [bleep]
people like Cawthorn say and do because they're accustomed
to a certain level of awfulness from fellow Republicans.
But they care about this because they don't all want
to be painted as sex-crazed drug addicts.
Which is why House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy
called Cawthorn in to his office yesterday to reprimand him.
-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy
has rebuked Congressman Madison Cawthorn
over his eye-popping claims
about sex and drugs on Capitol Hill.
The story has prompted McCarthy to call a meeting
with the North Carolina representative.
A source with knowledge of the meeting told NBC News
that Cawthorn had no evidence backing up his allegations.
-I just told him he's lost my trust.
He's going to have to earn it back.
And I laid out everything that I find is unbecoming...
-Dude, when you're trying to tamp down orgy rumors,
don't say members. Just
[ Laughter ] say people.
We know who you mean.
Yeah, I'm sure they're upset.
I can only imagine how upset my staff would be
if I said they were having orgies.
-[ Laughs ]
Yeah, we'd be very upset
because we totally don't have them.
[ Laughter ]
-What?
-Uh, can you imagine
if we were having orgies,
everyone but you?
That's crazy.
[ Laughter ]
-Okay.
-[ Nervous laugh ]
[ Laughter ]
-But the funniest part of this whole thing is
the uproar it's caused within the GOP caucus
among Republican members of Congress
who are now getting questions about it,
including questions from their own spouses.
-The 26-year-old claimed, on a podcast,
that people in Washington have invited him to sex parties
and used cocaine in front of him.
Several Republicans say that they are getting questions
from their spouses about his allegations.
-Yeah, I bet they are!
[ Laughter ] If you went on a trip to Vegas
just to play the slots with some of your buddies
and one of them posted on Facebook...
[ Laughter ]
...you'd get some spousal
follow-up questions, too.
And Republicans aren't just getting questions
about the orgy accusations from spouses.
They're also hearing about it from their constituents as well.
-McCarthy spoke out so forcefully
because his caucus is demanding it.
According to Politico, members of the far-right
House Freedom Caucus have reportedly considered
kicking Cawthorn out of the group.
And Republican Congressman Steve Womack of Arkansas,
who is 65 years old, complained he is now
fielding questions from constituents about orgies.
-This is exactly what they deserve
because it's not like Republican members of Congress
can just say that's a crazy conspiracy theory
when so many of them ran on crazy conspiracy theories.
What's Marjorie Taylor Greene going to say?
[ As Greene ] Use your head!
[ Laughter ] There are no cocaine orgies.
Now, moving on, we have some good news
on the Jewish space lasers.
[ Laughter ]
We don't think they work on Saturdays,
so that's exciting.
[ Laughter and awws ] And it's so telling
that this is the scandal that has Republicans up in arms.
Not, for example, the bombshell revelation
that there's a suspicious seven-hour gap
in Donald Trump's official White House call logs
on the day of the insurrection he fomented at the Capitol.
You know, that thing that happened
where a mob tried to overthrow the American government,
basically an orgy where the only thing getting [bleep]
was democracy, a federal judge [ Laughter ]
and a House committee have both said
there is evidence Trump's coup was a crime.
He's under investigation
for trying to steal votes in Georgia
and now, it turns out, a lot of evidence
of what happened on January 6th has just conveniently vanished.
-Stunning new reporting in The Washington Post
about the January 6th Committee's investigation
into a 7-hour, 37-minute gap in the call log,
those records of calls Donald Trump made that day.
The committee is looking at the possibility of Donald Trump,
president of the United States on the day of the insurrection,
using burner phones.
Trump said this --
He has "no idea" what a burner phone even is.
[ Laughter ] "To the best of my knowledge,
I have never even heard the term."
-First of all, I'm not willing to put any faith
in the best of your knowledge.
[ Laughter ] The best of your knowledge doesn't even include
the name of the CEO of Apple.
-We appreciate it very much, Tim Apple.
[ Laughter and applause ] -Remember that?
Couldn't even remember the name of the guy sitting next to him,
so he just rolled the dice
and hoped it was the same as the name of his company.
If he can't remember that,
how can he remember if he's ever used a burner phone?
Also, I love that he claims not just that he's never used one,
but he's never heard the term.
Dude, you worked in New York real estate for decades.
I'm betting every phone Trump used was a burner phone.
[ As Trump ] Sounds like we've got ourselves a deal
and, to make it official, I'm going to chuck this
in the East River with all my other phones.
[ Laughter ]
And, of course, it probably won't shock you
to learn that, after he made that claim,
at least one of Trump's former associates
immediately came out of the woodwork and said,
"Oh, yeah, absolutely, he knows what a burner phone is."
-Former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton says this --
"Donald Trump, unequivocally, without a smidge of a doubt,
knows exactly what a burner phone is."
He recalls Trump using the term burner phones
in several discussions
and that Trump was aware of its meaning
Bolton also said he and Trump have spoken
about how people have used burner phones
to avoid having their calls scrutinized.
-I heard him use the term burner phone a number of times.
-He said, "Burner phones" in conversation?
[ Laughter ] -He did, yes.
It was a term
he actually kind of liked.
He'd say, "You know, they have these burner phones."
-Trump always makes it so easy to contradict him
by going overboard with his defense.
Like if he had just said, "I've never used a burner phone,"
that would be harder to disprove.
But when he says, "I've never even heard of the term,"
a bunch of people are immediately like,
"Yeah, no, he has."
[ Laughter ] It's like, if your parents said
they found weed in your sock drawer
and your response was, "What the hell's a sock?!
[ Laughter ]
And you keep them in drawers, you say?
This is all news to me.
I'm an innocent man, I tell you!"
[ Laughter ] These two episodes
are deeply revealing, for many reasons.
For one thing, they show how the Republican Party
has been consumed by its own conspiracy theories.
It's also very telling what they're outraged about.
They're furious that a fellow Republican accused them
of being into cocaine and orgies,
but they don't care that a former president tried
to overthrow democracy and is apparently
concealing the evidence about what he did on that day.
We're missing seven hours
of Trump's call logs, during an insurrection.
Who knows what he was doing during those seven hours?
He could've been orchestrating the coup
or calling his various accomplices
or maybe he was at...
-A sexual get-together.
[ Laughter ] -We don't know.
[ Laughter ]
This has been "A Distant Look."
♪♪
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