-The Biden administration moved to oust several Trump holdovers,
including Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway,
from military academy boards,
while the former president himself
issued a statement claiming
that -- let me see if I have this right --
Confederate General Robert E. Lee
would have won the war in Afghanistan.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Theme music plays ]
There's a simple truth about our history
which has somehow been muddied through decades
of self-serving revisionism by racists and apologists
for white supremacy, and that is that the Confederacy
was a movement of anti-American traders and slavers
who tried to destroy this country.
I can't believe that even has to be said,
but, apparently, it does. There are people out there
who don't even know what the Civil War was about,
like, for example, the former president of the United States.
-People don't realize, you know, the Civil War, um...
-Yeah. -...you think about it, why?
People don't ask that question,
but why was there the Civil War?
Why could that one not have been worked out?
-Yeah, people don't ask the question
"Why was there the Civil War?" just like we don't ask,
"How many sides does a triangle have?"
or, "Is a snake a reptile?"
Because we learned all that [Bleep] in grade school.
At least, those of us who weren't following our dad
to construction sites to watch him yell at immigrants.
What do you mean "don't ask that question"?
It was a white-supremacist rebellion
against the government, not a fight between
my wife and her sister. "What are they mad about?"
"Don't ask."
I know Donald Trump doesn't live in our reality,
but it's still interesting to find out stuff
about his reality. Like, I guess, in his reality,
the local libraries only have one book on the Civil War,
called, "What the Heck Was All This Nonsense About?"
Also, I like that he wants to know
why could that not have been worked out?
Yeah, why couldn't you get the top Union generals
and the to Confederate generals in a room,
stick Andy Cohen in the middle,
and talk it down over some skinny margs?
I mean, seriously, you don't have to be
the chair of a college history department
to know that the Confederacy and its leaders were evil.
Hell, you just had to have a substitute teacher
in high school who forgot the lesson plan
and played "Glory" on laser disc
while he put his head down on the desk and took a nap.
Yeah, sure, sure, all the other kids
secretly passed notes and played games,
but me, I was watching. Total "Glory" stand.
You might say that for one magical year,
I was deep in the "Glory" hole.
I'd prefer if you didn't! [ Laughter ]
Come on, Freeman, Washington, Braugher, yes, please.
Plus, I like to pretend that Matthew Broderick's character
was just like Ferris Bueller, and before every battle,
the general would say, "Colonel Shaw?
Colonel Shaw?"
Unfortunately, part of the reason we have to keep stating
that obvious fact about the evil of the Confederacy
and the reality of the Civil War is
that shortly after the end of the war,
in Reconstruction, a racist revisionist
lost-cause movement rose up
to cast the leaders of the Confederacy
as a noble gentleman, instead of the defeated traders
and white supremacists that they were.
Nowadays, lots of us don't even learn about Reconstruction
and the post-Civil War period in history class.
I mean, I can't believe people are worried
about critical race theory
when my history textbook
jumped from the Civil War to the Great Depression,
and in between, there was one page about William Howard Taft
getting stuck in a bathtub.
Now, I know that story is apocryphal,
and that it didn't even start to spread until decades later,
but it's also super funny to me
that someone went out of their way
to make it up and spread it around about a dead guy.
I mean, Taft was the only person in American history
to ever serve as president and chief justice,
and yet all anyone knows about him
is a fake story that sounds like a plot line from "Family Guy."
"Oh, Lois, it happened again. Get the jaws of life."
[ Laughter ]
"Raymond?" "No!"
[ Laughter ]
"Peter!" [ Laughter ]
And that's why there was a giant statue of Robert E. Lee
on a horse looming over the old capital
of the Confederacy in Richmond for 130 years
because white supremacists and Confederacy apologists
tried to recast him as some sort of noble hero,
even though it was known at the time
by actual Civil War heroes that Lee was a traitor
who disgraced himself. Ulysses S. Grant said
the cause Lee fought for "was, I believe,
one of the worst for which a people ever fought,
and one for which there was the least excuse."
And Grant's the guy who beat Lee.
How the hell did Lee end up with a giant statue, and not Grant?
If anything, there should have been a giant statue in Richmond
of Grant kicking Lee in the balls.
Even better, it could be a clock that tolls on the hour.
[ Bell tolls ]
[ Laughter ]
Not sure if 1:00 was the funniest of our options.
[ Laughter ]
Well, yesterday, finally, after 130 years,
that wretched monument to an evil cause
was finally taken down, with a crowd gathering
to celebrate as Lee was hauled away.
-The nation's largest Confederate monument
just came down.
The giant Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, Virginia,
which is 6 stories tall and weighs 12 tons,
well, it was just removed.
Shaq, what is the community saying about this?
What was it like to watch this?
-I'll tell you, there were celebrations,
there were cheers, there were chants.
-♪ Na-na-na na, na-na-na na ♪
♪ Hey, hey, goodbye ♪
-First of all, as a baseball fan,
I love the crowd taunting him like he's a Yankees reliever
in Fenway who just got pulled after coughing up six runs
in the bottom of the eighth.
There should have been an angry Sox fan there
pouring beer on his head.
Also, as someone who grew up going to Fenway,
I can attest that Red Sox fans are unruly, drunk, and
yet surprisingly knowledgeable about history.
"Hit the showers, Bobby,
and then go take your medicine at Appomattox!"
Yeah, that's right, the Yankees are the new Mets
in "Closer Look" punch lines, gut don't worry,
the Mets blew it in extra innings last night,
so they're still the Mets.
I don't follow the Mets scores. I just know what happened
because as I was leaving last night,
the entire crew was sitting in a circle,
sobbing and hugging each other, and saying,
"We don't deserve this," which just between us,
some of them do. [ Laughter ]
Second, there's nothing more humiliating
than being carried away on a horse, in the air.
When you're sitting astride a horse on the ground,
you look like a noble hero,
but when you're sitting on one in the sky,
getting lifted up by a crane, you look like
a Porta-Potty getting hauled away after Burning Man
or a guy who glued himself to his horse
and now can't get out the front door.
"Oh, it happened again." "Raymond?"
[ Laughter ]
Anyone who loves America should be watching this scene
and celebrating along with the crowd.
A monument to a traitor who fought for an evil cause --
the cause of slavery -- white supremacy,
and who tried to destroy the United States
finally has been taken down, but you'll never guess
who had a slightly different take on things.
-Former President Donald Trump issued a statement
calling the removal a, quote, "complete desecration"
and lamenting that Lee was not available
to lead the United States in Afghanistan.
-Trump said in a statement, quote, "If only we had
Robert E. Lee to command our troops
in Afghanistan, that disaster would have ended
in a complete and total victory many years ago.
What an embarrassment we are suffering
because we don't have the genius of a Robert E. Lee!"
-First of all, dingus, you're from Queens.
It's pretty hard to remake yourself as a good old boy
when you sound like a super in Astoria.
"You know what this [Bleep] apartment needs?
Some freakin' magnolias. Oh!"
[ Laughter ]
Seriously, what do you mean it would have ended in victory
if Lee was in charge? He lost.
He's famous for losing. But, ah, yes,
if only Robert E. Lee had been in charge in Afghanistan,
then surely he would have said something inspirational,
like, "Is that a missile?!
All I have is a bayonet, and I'm glued to my horse!
Get me out of here!" Trump also called it
"a beautiful piece of bronze sculpture."
And if Trump ever calls anything beautiful,
you know it's the opposite. Look at his apartment.
It looks like the set of an '80s game show called "Gold Rush."
Of course, I wouldn't recommend taking history lessons
from a guy who, among other things,
praised Nazis, sowed an insurrection
where rioters carried the Confederate flag,
thought Frederick Douglass was still alive,
didn't know why the Civil War happened in the first place,
and thought there were airports during the Revolutionary War.
-The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge,
found glory across the waters of the Delaware,
and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown.
Our Army manned the airports -- rammed the ramparts,
it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do.
[ Laughter ]
-That's right. Who can forget
the infamous Battle of LaGuardia,
where Patrick Henry famously said,
"Give me priority boarding or give me death"?
"He's why the peanuts are free now.
Used to have to pay for the peanuts."
To this day, schoolchildren still take trips
to the Buffalo Wild Wings in Terminal D,
where Washington's army camped out during the winter.
And we all remember the words
of British general Charles Cornwallis,
who upon surrendering, said, "We just want to leave LaGuardia.
Where is ground transportation? The signs are very confusing."
This is the guy the Republican Party has made its leader --
the guy they've lined up behind, a guy who sowed an insurrection
to overthrow democracy, oversaw the preventable death
of hundreds of thousands of people,
and praised traitors and racists.
That's why he and his loyalists need to be thoroughly banished
from our institutions and shunned from our politics.
And yesterday the Biden administration
took another small step toward accomplishing that goal.
-Months into Joe Biden's presidency,
his administration is still cleaning house
as it relates to former Trump officials,
with the director of the White House's
presidential personnel office sending letters to 18 people
on three different government advisory boards,
asking them to resign.
-Familiar names include White House counselor
Kellyanne Conway to the Air Force Academy,
and former press secretary Sean Spicer
to the Naval Academy.
-Why were there still any Trump holdovers anyway?
That's like moving into a rent-controlled apartment
the last guy died in, and keeping
all the expired whitefish in the refrigerator.
And why was Kellyanne Conway on an Air Force advisory board?
If she ever flew an F-16 or what she probably calls an F-17,
guessing it would end up in a ravine,
with her standing on the tarmac in a parachute,
claiming it was a successful landing.
"The plane is on the ground.
Do you not think the plane is on the ground?"
But my favorite part of this little episode was
the reaction from former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer,
a commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve
who apparently has his own show on Newsmax now.
Spicer was outraged by the explanation for his removal
given know by current White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
First, let's see Psaki's answer.
-Well, I will let others evaluate
whether they think Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer
and others were qualified or not political
to serve on these boards,
but the president's qualification requirements
are not your party registration.
They are whether you're qualified to serve
and whether you're aligned
with the values of this administration.
-Okay, you can agree or disagree,
but seems perfectly calm, perfectly reasonable.
Now let's check in on how Spicer's doing.
-I'm announcing tonight, for the first time,
that I will not be submitting my resignation,
and I will be joining a lawsuit to fight this.
Maybe it's because they want to inject liberal ideology,
like critical race theory into the curriculum
and they want to ensure there's no pushback
and zero oversight.
Each of us chooses how we're going to serve this country.
I won't ever question how anyone chooses to do that.
I won't question how you choose to do that, Jen,
but don't you dare ever minimize or question
my service to this nation. You got it?
-"And if you're wondering why it's so echoey,
I shoot this show in a cave!"
[ Laughter ]
Oh, so, you're filing a lawsuit?
Who are you gonna get to represent you?
"Sean, I'm gonna be late for the hearing.
I was trimming my nose hair at the Cinnabon at LaGuardia.
Yeah. At the Paul Revere ride."
[ Laughter ]
Yeah, it happened a few weeks ago.
Who cares? It's Rudy.
There's no statute of limitations
on crazy Rudy, especially because Rudy doesn't even know
when a statute of limitations is.
"A statute of limitations? I thought they took that down."
A monument to a traitor who fought for slavery
and white supremacy was finally torn down,
should have never been there in the first place,
and yet there's a political movement
in this country that, to this day,
still reveres and apologizes for traitors
who fought for an evil Confederacy.
We need to make sure
these people never get near power ever again, period.
-You got it? -This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Theme music plays ]
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