-The January 6th Committee
revealed a series of depositions today
from former aides to President Trump,
who said he was watching TV as the insurrection unfolded.
Meanwhile, the Secret Service has mysteriously deleted
text messages from the day of the coup attempt,
despite requests from Congress to preserve all records
related to January 6th.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Theme music plays ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
The January 6th Committee was back in prime time tonight,
which means we don't know what happened,
because we taped this before the hearing.
Although, given how shocking the previous hearings have been,
I'm not taking anything off the table.
Maybe you're watching this right now thinking, "Oh, my God,
I can't believe Trump tried to commandeer Air Force One
so he could fly to the Capitol, but then got lost
and crashed in the Atlantic Ocean,
where he was adrift at sea for several weeks
and befriended a volley ball he named Mike Pence."
[ Laughter ]
In fairness, if you saw a volleyball,
you could definitely be forgiven for thinking it was Mike Pence.
[ Laughter ]
Or maybe you're sitting at home right now, thinking,
"I can't believe Rudy Giuliani..."
Actually, you know what? Never mind.
Shame on all of us if we're ever surprised again
by anything Rudy does from this point forward.
I mean, he already leaked hair dye
on national television and posted a video on Twitter
with his shorts down to his ankles,
swinging a golf club back and forth
like the world's [bleep] hypnotist.
[ Laughter ]
"You're getting very sleepy, and so am I.
Good thing I'm already wearing my pajama shorts."
[ Laughter ]
So, as we're taping this, we don't know
exactly what happened,
but the committee did release an early teaser today --
a series of depositions with former Trump aides
who all testified that as the seat of our government
was under attack by a violent mob,
Trump himself incited, as part of a carefully orchestrated plot
to overthrow American democracy,
Trump was doing one thing, and one thing only --
sitting in the White House dining room, watching TV.
-Was the President in that private dining room
the whole time that the attack on the Capitol was going on?
Or did he ever go -- again, only to your knowledge --
to the Oval Office,
to the White House Situation Room, anywhere else?
-To the best of my recollection,
he was always in the dining room.
-What did they say, Mr. Meadows or the President, at all,
during that brief encounter that you were in the dining room?
What do you recall? -I think they --
everyone was watching the TV.
-Do you know whether he was watching TV in the dining room
when you talked to him on January 6?
-It's my understanding he was watching television.
-When you were in the dining room
in these discussions, was the violence at the Capitol
visible on the screen? On the television?
-Yes. Right.
-You got to give it to Donald Trump.
He was somehow both the most dangerous
and also the laziest President in American history.
"Donald Trump in the dining room with the television"
is the answer to every mystery in a game of Trump Clue.
I mean, seriously, they're all talking
about the President of the United States
the way exhausted parents talk about a toddler
who needs some chill-out time.
"He's in the dining room, watching 'Bluey.'
I think we should just leave him alone."
"Bluey. We love 'Bluey,' don't we, folks?
We love -- We love 'Bluey.' We love Bluey's antics.
And let me tell you, if you love her,
you'll have to go to Australia
because they all talk like Bluey."
[ Laughter ]
But those depositions are all consistent
with what he already knew.
Trump was gleefully watching the violence unfold on TV
and enjoying it. He was cheering them on
like he was watching Sunday-night football.
I'm shocked we don't have a photo of him in the Oval Office
wearing a hat, a foam finger,
and a Jersey that says "Team Insurrection."
Now... [ Laughs ]
[ Laughter ]
Sometimes you can see the Photoshop.
I'm not gonna lie. [ Laughter ]
Sometimes -- Sometimes I feel like the audience at home
is like, "Whoa, did that really happen?"
And sometimes they're like, "Ah, well, that's a Photoshop."
[ Laughter ]
"Look, this stuff's all happening in real time.
Our graphics team doesn't have like 24 hours to get ready.
[ Laughter ]
Alright, I'm gonna try to see it with new eyes.
Can we put it up again real quick?
That's alright. Here we go.
[ Laughter ]
When he did that, though, Trump was like,
"You guys better not Photoshop anything on me later.
I know I'm doing a very friendly Photoshop pose.
I don't -- No putting any silly shirts on me."
[ Laughter ]
Now, that's the testimony that was released before the hearing.
Going into the hearing, we also had an idea
of who might testify in person
and specifically what they would testify about.
As we all know by now,
Trump sicced a mob of armed rioters on the Capitol --
rioters he knew were armed --
and he was essentially cheering them on
as they tried to find and kill Mike Pence.
In fact, he even tweeted angrily at Pence
as the mob was moving through the Capitol, looking for Pence,
providing further fuel to the insurrection.
And today we found out more about what was going on
behind the scenes as that happened.
-The witnesses are former
Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger
and Former Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Matthews,
both of whom resigned on January 6th.
Sources say Pottinger is expected to paint
a picture of chaos in the West Wing,
punctuated by the President's tweet attacking Pence.
-That's where I knew that I was leaving that day,
once I read that tweet.
-Matthews is expected to testify
how alarmed she was that Trump refused
to quickly call off the mob after the violence erupted.
-We thought that the President needed to tweet something,
and tweet something immediately.
-I'm always amazed by these people
who thought they were working for a normal President
right up until January 6th. [ Laughter ]
It must be super easy
to throw surprise parties for these people.
I mean, they could even help plan it,
and yet, when everybody yells "surprise,"
they would probably wet their pants.
But I do think it's worth taking a step back to appreciate
what those witnesses said in that clip.
Everyone around Trump, including, as we now know,
GOP members of Congress, Fox News hosts,
and even his own family were begging him to call off the mob
he instructed to march down to the Capitol --
a mob Trump knew was violent and armed,
and Trump refused. In fact, he did the opposite.
He sent out a tweet attacking Pence
as the mob was breaching the Capitol --
a tweet some of the mob took as a show of support
for what they were doing. And then when his aides told him
the mob was chanting "Hang Mike Pence,"
Trump said maybe he should be hanged.
What else do you need?
If this was an episode of "Law & Order,"
that would be the part where McCoy stepped back
from the witness and said, "I have nothing further,"
and then it would just fade to black.
And then there'd be that little final scene in the office
where they're going out for drinks,
and Schiff puts on his little weird hat.
"No, 'you' watch too much 'Law & Order'!"
So much crazy [Bleep] has happened
that it's easy to forget the details
of any specific Trump scandal, but I really hope
that particular sequence of events
is seared in history forever.
Normally, our history textbooks all have boring names
like "Modern America: 1950 to the Present."
But when they get around to writing a book about this,
they should just call it
"The Dude Tried to Get His Own Vice President Killed.
I Mean, What the [Bleep]."
So, that's the preview we got, going into today's hearing.
But there's also another aspect to this story
that we were hoping to hear more about,
and that's what the Secret Service was up to.
The Committee tried to get information
from the Secret Service, but mysteriously,
almost all the text messages from that day
seem to have vanished.
-The Secret Service says it cannot recover
the deleted text messages from January 5th and 6th
of last year.
The Washington Post is reporting the agency
has no new texts to provide to Congress
and that any other messages exchanged between agents
around the time of the attack were purged.
-I'm sorry. What? You just deleted all your texts
for one of the most pivotal days in American history?
I really don't want to read too much into this,
but it's hard not to.
I mean, it's suspicious when someone's browser history
is full of porn, but it's way more suspicious
when their browser history has just been cleared.
"No, I, uh -- I-I don't really use the Internet, I guess.
You know?" [ Laughter ]
How is it possible that we still have [Bleep] handwritten letters
Alexander Hamilton wrote by candlelight on parchment
250 years ago, but text messages sent
by one of the most technologically advanced
law-enforcement agencies in the world
from last year have magically disappeared?
Even if I delete a spam e-mail from my phone,
it still exists in like nine different places,
including my iCloud, for some reason,
even though I have repeatedly called Apple customer service
and asked them to please stop saving all those e-mails
offering me free boner pills? Because I've said it once,
I've said it a hundred times, the free ones don't work!
[ Laughter ]
Sorry, fellas, but them's the facts!
[ Laughter ]
You got to spend a little money if you want results.
[ Laughter ]
And there are lots of reasons why we'd want to know
what the Secret Service was talking about on that day.
For one, we already know that before January 6th,
Pence's chief of staff warned the Secret Service
that Trump was putting Pence in danger.
Then, as the attack was happening,
Pence's agents tried to rush him away from the Capitol,
and Pence told them, "I'm not getting in that car."
And then, of course, there's this insane story,
relayed by Cassidy Hutchinson, of Trump demanding
that his agents take him in his Presidential vehicle
to the Capitol to join the mob in overthrowing the election.
And when they refused, Hutchinson claims
Trump tried to grab the steering wheel himself
and then lunged at one of the agents.
Now, Trump loyalists have since disputed that story
through anonymous intermediaries.
But that's all the more reason why we need
to see the Secret Service text messages from that day.
Because even if that story is a little bit true,
I would love to see what those agents
were texting to each other about it.
"Agent Stevens, what happened in the car?"
"POTUS tried to grab the wheel."
"And then what happened?"
"I hit him with a tranquilizer dart."
"Did he fall asleep?"
"No, it only made him angrier." [ Laughter ]
"Did you try distracting him with a chicken nugget?
That usually works?"
"We activated the emergency nugget protocol,
but it had no effect. Backup nugget also failed."
"Did POTUS gain control of vehicle?"
"Yes." "Did he drive to Capitol?"
"No, he forgot what he was doing
and took us to Wendy's drive-thru.
Ordered a Frosty. Chugged it real fast,
then got super bad ice cream headache."
"Did that calm him down?" -"No. Tried to choke me again.
We told him Kim Kardashian was on the phone
and wanted to talk to him, and that seemed to distract him."
"Was it really her?" "No,
one of the ages pretended. He did her voice.
He was like, 'Hi, this is Kim, I'm such a huge fan.'
POTUS totally bought it.
On our way back to the White House.
Activate Third Nugget protocol."
This scandal is so bad,
the Department of Homeland Security
has now reportedly launched a criminal investigation
into the destruction of the text messages.
The Secret Service played a key role
in the events of that day, and they presumably witnessed
everything Trump was doing, from watching television
to watching television to... -Watching television.
This has been "A Closer Look."
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