-The house voted today
to strip Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene
of her committee assignments, even as most Republicans
stood by her, despite a history
of truly deranged, bigoted statements.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
♪♪
Right now, as we speak, we're in the middle
of several urgent calamities
that show no signs of slowing anytime soon.
Poverty and child hunger are rising.
Millions have lost their health insurance
amid a deadly pandemic.
COVID variants are spreading.
Vaccinations are not keeping pace with the spread.
And on top of all of that, pilots are saying
they're making in-flight mistakes
because they're so out of practice.
-CNN is learning that some commercial airline pilots,
the planes that fly all of us, are telling federal authorities
the long layoffs and downtime during the pandemic
has left them, in their words, "rusty,"
causing them to even make some in-flight mistakes.
-Pilots self-reported being "rusty"
in at least 26 separate cases since the start of the pandemic.
-You never want to hear the words "rusty"
and "commercial airline pilot" in the same sentence
unless "rusty" is the name of a commercial airline pilot.
I mean, I would trust a Captain Rusty with my life.
Oh, sure, sure, there are some mornings
when he's had a rough night and has to blow out the cobwebs
before he takes her up.
But when you lose an engine and things go sideways,
there's no one I'd rather have at the helm
than Captain John Rustenberger.
And the fact that you suits at the FAA
have the nerve to question him
when your idea of turbulence is a Lexus going over a pothole,
well, it makes me sick to my stomach!
Anyway, where was I? Oh, right.
Pilot is one of those jobs, along with doctor
and crane operator where you never want to be
"out of practice."
"Okay, folks, if you are seated
on the right side of the aircraft,
you can look out your window and you'll see you are looking
straight down at the ocean." [ Laughter ]
"Also, if anyone knows what that alarm means,
go ahead and pop on by the, uh, pilot house?
No, that's not it. What is it?
Oh, the cockpit. Knew it was something crazy.
Why is it called that?
If you guys have Gogo Internet Wi-Fi,
could you google why we call it the cockpit?"
[ Laughter ]
"Also, do you guys pay for Gogo all year?
I'm asking for a talk-show host."
[ Laughter ]
We need a functional, healthy political system
that can respond to these crises
because they're causing misery and suffering
for millions of Americans.
And with Democrats taking control of Congress
and the White House, there have been some real glimmers of hope.
They're not waiting for permission from Republicans
to do big, bold things on everything from COVID relief
to immigration, to the environment.
And on top of all of that,
thanks to a new organizing resolution
finally passed after weeks of GOP obstruction,
the Senate Budget Committee has a new chairman
who has made clear he has no interest
in yielding to Republican stonewalling.
-This formalizes the reality that the Democrats
are now the majority party in the United States Senate.
Because we're in a 50/50 split, we need to have an agreement
over things like how committees would be run.
You heard from Leader Schumer there, the deal is done.
It'll be voted on today.
That means, you know, Bernie Sanders
is your new budget chairman.
-That's right, Bernie's in charge of the budget now.
Get ready for direct checks, expanded unemployment benefits,
a $15 minimum wage, and for the Senate thermostat
to be set to 64, no matter how cold it is outside.
"You're wasting heat. Everyone gets a coat
and pair of mittens, and if you're still cold,
try thinking warm thoughts.
I like to picture a kitten sharing her yarn
with other kittens because no kitten
should lack access to yarn."
As we've said many times on this show,
there are massive systemic, deeply engrained flaws
in our system that preceded Donald Trump
and will outlast him.
He exposed them and made them worse,
but he did not create them.
And they won't just magically go away now that he's gone.
In fact, he's not even really gone.
He's still exerting influence over the Republican Party.
Just last week, he met with house GOP leader Kevin McCarthy
at Mar-A-Lago and posted this photo where the two of them
look like they're about to ask
if you have a structured settlement and need cash now.
They look less like personal injury lawyers
and more like lawyers with personal injuries.
"Did you slip and fall and land on your head?
Us too!
Do you need a lawyer? So do we.
Call 1-800-1-Wait, what's the number?
I forgot. Hold on, start over.
Who am I?"
Also where are they?
That looks like a Miami drug lord's pool house.
There should be a weird kid
lighting fire crackers behind them.
Even after he's left office, Republicans are competing
to prove their loyalty to Trump.
Take, for example, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz,
one of the seditionists who spread lies
about election fraud and tried to overthrow the results
and who looks like someone tried to make Tom Cruise
out of Legos, but then didn't have any Legos
so had to use Duplo bricks.
He went on Steve Bannon's podcast,
which I assume he records at the bottom of the sea.
Gaetz said he was so dedicated to defending Trump
during the upcoming impeachment trial
that he'd be willing to give up his Congressional seat
and even his house to join the former president's defense team.
-Would you resign in order to defend the President
on the way that you want to defend him?
-I love my district. I love representing them.
But I view this cancellation of the Trump presidency
and the Trump movement as one of the major risks to my people,
both in my district and all throughout this great country.
Absolutely, if the President called me
and wanted me to go defend him on the floor of the Senate,
that would be the top priority in my life.
I would leave my House seat. I would leave my home.
I would do anything I had to do.
-"My House seat, I would leave my home.
I would burn all my clothes and give away all my money
because that's how much I love this man.
This man who has never returned even an ounce
of the same loyalty to anyone ever.
I would do anything for him. I would live in the woods.
I would subsist on a diet of squirrels and roughage.
I'd roam through the forest naked
looking for fraudulent ballots like some sort of
half man, half goblin, scaring hikers
and feasting upon the garbage left behind at campsites
because that's how much this man means to me,
this man who is incapable of human emotions
like love and compassion who, and this is true,
once got my name wrong.
I would do anything for him."
I mean, it's just so hard to fully articulate
how pathetic it is to be that servile toward any politician.
I mean, do I like Joe Biden?
Sure, I mean, I guess so.
Would I quit my job and leave my house
to go defend him if he got impeached for --
I don't know what he'd get impeached for.
Like, getting in a fistfight at a bar over a jukebox?
"Hey, who turned off 'Free Fallin'?
Time for you to meet Tom Petty and the Face-Breakers."
But there's no doubt that this is the wing of the party
that's ascendant, the Matt Gaetz,
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump wing of the party.
It doesn't matter if GOP elder statesmen
want to pretend they're part of a nobler tradition
of so-called conservatism.
Utah Senator Mitt Romney said this week of the GOP,
"Our big tent is not large enough
to both accommodate conservatives and kooks."
Oh, buddy, you sound like a middle school teacher who says,
"Listen, we can't have a pop quiz and a pizza party.
So what's it gonna be, kids?
Okay, I'm not hearing a lot of 'pop quiz.'"
Actually, your tent is big enough for both.
Yesterday, House Republicans voted to retain Liz Cheney
in her leadership position and gave Greene a standing ovation.
Your tent is big enough for conservatives and kooks
because it's a circus tent
or one of those large outdoor wedding tents
where you get speeches from kindly grandpas
telling cute stories about the bride
and drunk aunts who steal the mic
and refuse to give it up.
"When I first saw these two together,
I knew there was a spark, kind of like the spark
caused by the Jewish space laser that started the wildfire.
No! No, Pamela, I will not sit down!
This is my time! I'm being canceled!"
I'd tell Liz Cheney to just leave the GOP,
but being a Cheney, I doubt she has an exit strategy.
Iraq War joke. [ Laughter ]
God, it's nice now that Trump is gone
and I can get back to doing my Cheney material.
It's a real shot in the face.
[ Laughter ]
Now, it's worth stepping back and remembering
that these people are massively unpopular with normal people.
Trump was, according to polling,
the most disliked president in modern history.
He never cracked 50%, lost the popular vote twice,
got impeached twice,
lost the House by a record margin in 2018
then lost the Senate, not to mention he oversaw
the worst public-health crisis and economic crash in 100 years.
Meanwhile, every single executive order Joe Biden
has issued so far that's been the subject of polling
has either majority or plurality support,
and even a majority of Republicans
support the $1,400 checks.
If we had an actual democracy with a level playing field,
Republicans would wield power
as often as the Jets make the playoffs.
They'd tank every year but then win just enough games
to lose out on the top draft pick
and get stuck with some second-tier quarterback
from one of those super specific part of the state schools
you've never been to, like Southwest Idaho Tech
or Northeastern Montana A&M, a guy with an unforgettable name
like Matt Jones or Jake Smith or just Steve.
"I don't like this Steve guy!"
In a normal democracy, the Republican Party
would be forced to dump all these deeply unpopular goblins
because they would have to appeal to a majority of voters.
But we don't have a normal democracy.
We have a system where the GOP has won the popular vote
one time in the last 32 years
and where the 50 Senate Republicans represent
40 million fewer Americans than the 50 Senate Democrats.
So Republicans have no incentive to appeal to most Americans,
only to their base, and their base is increasingly unhinged.
New polls show that Republican voters favor Greene and McCarthy
over Cheney and McConnell, despite the fact that Greene
has said, among other things, that school shootings were faked
and that Nancy Pelosi should be executed for treason,
questioned whether a plane crashed into the Pentagon
on 9/11, and suggested that a Jewish space laser
caused wildfires.
I know we keep mentioning the space laser,
and it does sound insane out of context.
But it's worth actually reading what she said.
This is what Greene wrote in a 2018 Facebook post,
when, to be fair, she was only in her early 40s.
Anytime someone says there are too many coincidences to ignore
and their name isn't Fox Mulder,
that's your cue to exit the conversation.
It's like wandering over to someone and hearing,
"Look, I'm not saying dolphins definitely are secret agents
trained by the CIA to spy on us.
I'm just asking why are they always jumping out of the water?
What's so interesting up here
that they just have to look at it?
Why are they always smiling like someone just told them a secret?
Also, the way they click, that's Jewish Morse code.
Oh, got to go. Time for my wedding toast.
Don't side-eye me, Pamela!"
And yet despite her history of expressing support
for political violence as well as anti-Muslim
and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,
yesterday, McCarthy basically stood by Greene
and claimed she'd apologized.
-I denounced all of those comments that were brought up.
Everybody -- And she came to the --
She came inside our conference and denounced them, as well.
She said she was wrong.
She has reached out in other ways and forms.
She has expressed that she has put it out
from news agencies and others, I think it would be helpful
if you could hear exactly what she told all of us.
Denouncing Q-on. I don't know if I say it right.
I don't even know what it is.
Any from the shootings, she said she knew nothing
about lasers or all of the different things
that have been brought up about her.
-Okay. First of all, you don't know how to pronounce QAnon?
Isn't that exactly what a Deep State
Satanic cult member would say?
Sorry. There are just too many coincidences to ignore.
Second, you should probably learn
since a lot of your voters are super into it.
That's like Kid Rock saying, "I'm sorry.
How do you pronounce this? Ba wit daba?"
Second, if you want us to hear her say it,
then why doesn't she just say it?
If she's so sincere about her apology,
then why doesn't she make it public?
Is it a secret? Is this like when you forget
to buy your wife an anniversary gift
and you tell her you have one but you can't show it to her yet
because it's too good and she needs
to mentally prepare for it, and then you spend
the rest of the night typing "things my wife likes"
into Amazon until Amazon types back, "I'm not her husband!"?
She obviously is not sincere.
She's been raising money off it.
And then, today she spoke on the House floor,
where instead of apologizing unequivocally
and denouncing her previous comments,
the best she could do was this.
-I also want to tell you 9/11 absolutely happened.
-Oh, my God, thank you.
It is so big of you to admit that.
What else would you like to clarify?
"I would also like to make clear
that 'Inception' is just a movie,
RoboCop is not real, and the giant glowing orb in the sky
is in fact the Moon and not a secret sky bank
where Bill Gates keeps all his gold bars."
Then she went back to saying more heinous stuff
like equating the media with QAnon.
-Will we allow the media, that is just as guilty as QAnon,
of presenting truth and lies to divide us?
-Are you insane? Wait. I'm sorry.
Why am I asking this as a question?
You are insane. "The media and QAnon
are both guilty of dividing Americans
by claiming a secret cabal of baby-eating Satan worshippers
is running the government. Wolf Blitzer,
I accept your apology, if that is your real name.
I see you under that beard, space laser."
Nicely done on the graphic there.
I had no idea what it was gonna look like.
Kind of a fun little payoff.
The Republican Party is radicalizing
against democracy and away from the political mainstream
because it has no incentive to appeal
to a majority of Americans.
That's why we need far-reaching structural reforms
to our democracy to level the playing field.
A system where one party can yield power
despite representing 40 million fewer Americans
in the Senate and winning the presidential popular vote
once in 32 years is not tenable.
Because right now, we have one party
that's based in reality and another that believes in --
-Lasers.
-This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪
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