-Hello, everyone, and welcome back
to the Captain's quarters,
A little bit of housekeeping before we start.
It has now been 136 days since my last haircut.
While I managed to tame it pretty well for the show.
I can't stress to you how long it's getting.
I mean, you can probably tell when I turn my head
to the side like that because the back is somewhere
between a mullet and a duck tail.
-♪ Duck Tales, whoo-ooh ♪
-But, of course, growing at long is part of my summer project
to get James Spader's look
from the 1986 film "Pretty in Pink."
You know, The Steff.
It's basically a three-step process.
One, grow your hair; two, buy a linen suit;
and three, drink two Tabs a day.
All this is laid out in the 1987
VHS instructional video
"The Right Steff."
Yeah, two cassettes.
And, while I would love to show you
how long my hair is right now,
I don't want you to look at it and think like I'm going crazy.
-Seth, you're not crazy.
-Thank you, Talking Sea Captain Painting.
Speaking of cognitive decline...
-[ Singsong ] Segue!
-...as his poll numbers dip to new lows,
the president is sending more federal officers to cities
and trying to convince people
he's taking the coronavirus pandemic seriously.
Oh, and also, he's desperately trying
to prove to people his brain works.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Suspenseful theme plays ]
There are lots of things you'd like
for the president of the United States
to be obsessed with in a moment like this.
It'd be great, for example, if the president was obsessed
with suppressing the coronavirus
and setting up a rigorous system
of testing, tracing, and isolation.
Or if the president was obsessed
with ending systemic racism and police brutality,
or ending poverty, or ensuring
that the tens of millions of out-of-work Americans
and the many more who face eviction
or loss of health insurance had the help they need to survive.
Instead, we have a president who's obsessed
with proving to everyone that his brain works.
Last night, during an interview on Fox News,
he yet again brought up the cognitive test he took
that he supposedly aced.
You know, the one they give ya
to see if you have dementia.
-So, the last time I was at the hospital,
probably a year ago, a little less than a year ago,
I asked the doctor, I said, "Is there some kind
of a cognitive test that I could take?"
Because I've been hearing about it
because I wanna shut these people up.
I said to the doctor, who was Dr. Ronny Jackson,
I said, "Is there some kind of a test, an acuity test?"
And he said, "There actually is,"
and he named it, whatever it might be.
And it was 30 or 35 questions.
The first questions are very easy.
The last questions are much more difficult,
like a memory question.
It's like you'll go person,
woman, man,
camera,
TV.
So they say, "Could you repeat that?"
So, I said, "Yeah.
So it's person, woman,
man, camera, TV."
"Okay. That's very good."
-Oh, my God! He can name five objects
in his field of vision. How does he do it?!
Send this man his MacArthur Genius Grant.
Get Mensa on the phone. They're gonna wanna see this.
It's like if the minds of Einstein, Hawking, Kasparov,
and Jobs were all rolled into one
and then stuffed inside the body of an alcoholic walrus.
Seriously, dude, it's not a test to see how smart you are.
It's a test to see if you're okay.
When the referee asks a boxer what city he's in,
it's not [ Laughing ] a geography test.
This is a test they give grandpas
to see if they can keep living in their house
because God forbid you miss a payment
on your reverse mortgage.
This dude gonna come and take it away.
Oh, I know. I know he says it's not a trick
to take your house, but are you really gonna trust
a 75-year-old man with a brown mustache?
Even the interviewer had the face of someone
who had wandered away from a White House tour
and just wanted to find his family.
"Mark met the president on our trip to D.C."
"Oh, how was that?!"
"It was bad!"
I'm pretty sure the five things on the test
are harder than person, woman, man, camera, TV.
Even the Sea Captain could remember that.
-Person, woman, man, camera, TV.
Person, woman, man, camera, TV.
-I'm gonna test you later.
Seriously, you know who else can look around the room
and name objects they see?
A two-year-old. Are you sure
you didn't accidentally see a pediatrician?
When you went in for the appointment,
did the doctor also measure your head size
and give you a measles shot?
[ As Trump ] I'm not saying I aced the test,
but I did -- I did get two lollipops,
which never happens.
This is how they test people during brain surgery
to make sure the drill doesn't go too deep.
[ As Trump ] Person, man, woman,
camel, camel, camel.
Okay! Okay. Let's -- Let's pull it back a little.
Also, can we go back to this part?
-I said, "Is there some kind of a test, an acuity test?"
And he said, "There actually is,"
and he named it, whatever it might be.
-"He told me the name of the mental acuity test,
but I can't remember it."
[ As Trump ] If memory serves, it was the
person, woman, man, camera, TV test.
Honestly, it's not that crazy to forget the name of the test,
unless it's a memory test
and you were planning to go on TV and brag about acing it.
He's like a eighth grader
who tells his buddy he has a girlfriend
and, when they ask what a name is, he says, "I forgot."
You gotta be ready for follow-up questions, dawg.
Don't go out of your way to bring up a test
you claim proves your mental acuity,
if you can't even remember the name of it.
It's like telling someone, "Well, I guess I'm going
to Harvard because I scored a 1600 on my SOTs.
By the way, how you doin' back there, Captain?
-Person, wombat, van, sonata, E.T.
Person, wombat, van, sonata, E.T.
-[ Chuckling ] Oh,
oh, Sea Captain.
But Trump, Trump just kept on talking.
-Okay, now, he's asking you other questions,
other questions.
And then, 10 minutes, 15, 20 minutes later, they say,
"Remember the first question?
Not the first, but the tenth question?
Give us that again.
Can you do that again?" And you go,
person, woman, man, camera, TV.
If you get it in order,
you get extra points.
They said, "Nobody gets it in order.
It's actually not that easy," but, for me, it was easy.
-Person, woman, man, camera, TV.
Aren't those the words of a Talking Heads song?
♪ Person, woman, man, camera, TV, hey! ♪
Those sound like the words you can't say
on the Taboo card for "ultrasound."
You sound like Tarzan reviewing
the season premiere of "The Morning Show."
[ As Tarzan ] Person,
woman, man,
camera, TV.
Tarzan give five stars.
The timing of this psychotic episode
couldn't be any bleaker
because the media just spent a full news cycle
fallin' for the same ruse they've consistently been
suckered into for the last five years --
the idea that Donald Trump has changed his tone
on the coronavirus pandemic.
And I'm using the word ruse very charitably, here.
Normally, a ruse would be like
an international terrorist mastermind
constructing an elaborate plot to lure James Bond
into his volcano lair while he prepares to attack
the world's oil reserves with a giant laser.
In Trump's case, his team just gets him
to read a prepared statement
by slippin' a Valium into his Big Mac,
the way you'd hide your dog's arthritis pills in his kibble.
Meanwhile, secret police are abducting
and attacking peaceful protesters in Portland
and the president says he's sending more federal officers
into cities across the country, like Chicago.
So let's compare his approach on the two issues
of protesters and the coronavirus.
Here's Trump yesterday, announcing his plan
to send federal law enforcement agencies
into cities that don't want them, don't need them,
and are actively trying to stop them.
-Today, I'm announcing a surge of federal law enforcement
into American communities plagued by violent crime.
The FBI, ATF, DEA,
U.S. Marshals Service, and Homeland Security
will together be sending hundreds of skilled
law enforcement officers to Chicago
to help drive down violent crime.
There'll be a time when they're gonna want us
to go in full-blast.
We are ready, willing, and able
to go in there with great force.
-"Go in full-blast"?
He's talkin' about American cities like he's invading them.
"Full-blast" sounds like a [bleep] action movie
an aspiring screenwriter would be typin' up
in a Starbucks.
"Interior White House.
President Badass looks at the sexy lady doctor
and says five words she'll never forget --
person, woman, man,
camera, TV.
Her top falls off.
She asks him to stay, but he can't,
because it's time for full-blast!"
That's also not how you type.
It's chilling to think of Trump
expanding the abusive and unconstitutional tactics
we've seen in Portland to other cities.
Trump's secret paramilitary force
has been abducting peaceful protesters off the streets
and stuffing them in unmarked vans
without identifying themselves or telling people
where they're going or why they've been arrested.
They've shot peaceful protesters in the head,
broken the hand of a Navy vet
who asked them to remember their oaths,
and used tear gas and batons
to attack a peaceful protest group
called the Wall of Moms.
-Federal agents are marching through the streets
using war tactics --
including tear gas -- on protesters.
Last night, a group of moms, known as the Wall of Moms,
these women in yellow shirts, wearing helmets and goggles,
along with a group of fathers, arrived to cheers
and then they linked to arms to protect the protesters.
-I feel that they deploy that
so that the cameras can't see what's really happening
and then they unlawfully arrest moms.
Four of my moms were arrested.
-Is there anything more badass than a wall of moms?
What bully wouldn't back down from that?
"Where's your lunch money, punk?"
Oh, it's right over there, behind
the Wall of Moms.
"[ Huffing ] Huh, okay.
Well, I actually had a big breakfast today, so, uh,
why don't you keep your money?"
I didn't think it was possible
to be more cartoonishly evil,
but then Trump decided to make himself the anti-mom president.
What's next? Is he gonna firebomb
an apple pie at a baseball game?
This is the clearest sign yet that Trump has mom issues
since every other sign.
So, Trump announced a plan to dispatch virtually
every federal law enforcement agency at his disposal
to crack down on peaceful protests
and invade cities that don't even want them, full-blast!
Now, let's hear his plan to address the raging pandemic
he's neglected for six months
at the cost of more than 140,000 American lives.
-We are in the process of developing a strategy
that's going to be very, very powerful.
We've developed them as we go along.
-You're developing a strategy now?!
What's the rush, my man? It's only been six months.
What have you been doin' this whole time,
studying up for that cognitive test?
[ As Trump ] Alright, show me the flash cards.
I got person, woman,
man, camera, TV.
Alright, I'm good to go. Let's take the test.
Sea Captain, by the way, do you still remember all five things?
-KFBR392.
KFBR392.
-You're welcome. Six people?
-Six?!
-In fact, so far, the only plan Trump seems to have is,
once again, lying and claiming
we're close to a cure for coronavirus,
as he has repeatedly for months.
-We're doing tremendously well on therapeutic research
and tremendously well on the vaccines.
And, frankly, therapeutically,
or maybe a word even beyond that word is cure,
would be the best of all, and we'll see what happens.
But that would be great,
if we could go into the hospital and just cure people,
and we're at a position we're actually able to,
to a certain extent, with what we have right now
and we think, in a very short period of time,
we'll be able to do that.
-Oh, yeah? You come up with another one
of your ingenious cures again?
[ As Trump ] Okay, Fauci, forget about the bleach.
The bleach was a bad idea. Pence's idea.
I took the blame, but Pence was --
Pence was pushin' the bleach.
Alright, how about this? You fill a kiddie swimming pool
with Robitussin you just roll around in it naked
and then, when you're done, you
shine a flashlight up your butt. Would that work?
Would that work, Fauci?
Also, yeah, we all agree it would be great
if we could go into the hospital and just cure people.
Thank you for that searing insight.
Trump's like your super high friend watchin' "Star Trek."
[ subdued ] Man, that would be great, if we could just like
teleport like from one place to another place.
Yeah, Dave, that would be great, but, in lieu of that,
can I order you an Uber so you can go home?
Just step back and consider the cruel contrast
between Trump's plan to send secret police to cities
to crack down on peaceful protests
and his lack of a plan for a raging pandemic
that's killed 140,000 Americans
and left tens of millions out of work
and many more suffering.
There's a deeper problem here.
Trump is just the most grotesque and urgent manifestation
of that problem in our history.
Too often, our system uses
violence and incarceration to respond to problems,
instead of just meeting the actual needs of human beings.
That's why our police departments have tanks,
but nearly 30 million people don't have health insurance.
It's why we have a Department of Homeland Security,
but 23 million Americans face eviction.
It's why the Pentagon gets $740 billion a year,
but there are long lines at food banks
and an extra $600 a week
for unemployed Americans is about to expire.
And it's why we have secret police
who feel perfectly free to beat up any
person, woman, and man
in front of cameras
on TV. I did it!
I get to stay in my house! Suck it, brown 'stache!
Anyone should be able to see how [bleep] this is,
whether you can identify an elephant
on a piece of paper or not.
The president is a wannabe dictator
using paramilitary forces as his own personal secret police.
Meanwhile, he couldn't care less
about the tens of millions of Americans suffering
from an out-of-control pandemic he's ignored for months.
That much should be obvious to every...
-Person, woman, man,
camera, TV.
-Sea Captain, you're up!
-Person, woman, man, camera, TV!
-We're not crazy!
This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪
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