-The political world, including a stunned and flailing Fox News,
is still reeling from yesterday's shocking testimony
before the January 6th Committee,
in which former Trump White House official
Cassidy Hutchinson testified under oath
that, among other things,
President Trump wanted his supporters
to be allowed into his rally armed
so they could then march to the Capitol with their weapons,
where he planned to meet them and join the mob
in its effort to overturn the election.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
It's been a day and a half, and honestly,
I'm still struggling with words to fully capture
the gravity and insanity of what we all heard yesterday.
In the first draft of this script,
the intro for "A Closer Look"
was just a word you can't say on TV.
Wally, show them the card.
[ Laughter ]
I think the moment that best captures
just how stunned everyone was yesterday
was this clip from Fox News daytime anchors
shortly after the hearing ended.
The anchors tried to summarize what had just happened,
and then when they were done,
they just sort of sat there in awkward silence,
figuring out whose turn it was to talk.
-This testimony was very compelling
from beginning to end.
She obviously had access to all of the players.
What was so compelling, I think, is how it was laid out.
We always point out that there's not a pushback,
and it would have been great to hear Jim Jordan
or some congressman say some other angle to this.
But the testimony in and of itself
is really, really powerful.
[ Laughter ] -Sandra, can you still hear?
-Indeed, yes, I am here. -Oof!
That's like when you get in the car with your parents
after they took you to a movie
that had way more nudity than they were expecting.
"Well, uh...
when I heard it was [clears throat] called 'Showgirls,'
I did expect it would be a musical."
[ Laughter ]
I also like how they all act like the question
was for the other person.
"John, why don't you go ahead?"
"I'm sorry, are you talking to me John or the cameraman John?"
"Sandra? Do you want to take this one?"
"Oh, sorry, I couldn't hear you. Why don't you go ahead, Bret?"
"No, no, no, no, no, no. Ladies first."
The hearing was so powerful and the revelations were so searing
that even the opinion people on Fox
seemed knocked off their game.
They couldn't settle on a coherent narrative
the way they usually do.
They just cycled through a bunch of different lines,
from screaming about media bias
to claiming everyone knows Trump gets angry
to dismissing Hutchinson as a low-level staffer
who supposedly had ulterior motives.
-I spoke with some former White House staffers,
three or four of them, in the afternoon,
and they knew her well.
And not one person
had anything good to say about her performance today.
-I would take their word over any word of this junior staffer
who is completely, I believe, lying
to the January 6th Committee for her own self gain.
-She wanted to work for Donald Trump outside the White House
when he wasn't president at Mar-A-Lago.
-I'm not sure that any of this is wholly out of character
with the Donald Trump and the President Trump
that people came to know over the years.
-This committee has come up with nothing
despite the fact it's all one way.
-She's an extremely junior, low-level aide.
I don't think I ever had a conversation with her.
-No, avoiding conversations with Stephen Miller
is not proof that you're a low-level aide.
It's proof that you're a human being
afraid of being eaten Hannibal Lecter style.
No, of course. I don't believe he's actually human.
I think he's an enchanted doll from a horror movie
that came to life when a witch cast a spell
during a lightning storm.
Speaking of that,
has anyone seen my little Stephen Miller doll?
[ Laughter ]
I swore I left him on that chair.
[ Footsteps ]
Oh, no, no, no, no, no. What are those footsteps?
Oh, God, no.
Little Stephen, no!
[ Thunder crashes ]
[ Witch cackling ]
[ Laughter, applause ]
-I mean, can you even imagine trying to have a normal
conversation with Stephen Miller?
I've had nightmares where I bump into him in the hallway
and have to make small talk with him.
"Hey, Steve, how about those Yankees?"
"They seem weak, vulnerable, almost deliciously so."
"Cool. Cool, Steve.
I will catch you later."
Fox also tried to discredit Hutchinson
by claiming she was just testifying to get a TV gig.
-Well, it's like she was auditioning for a seat
at "The View" or "The Real Staffers
of Pennsylvania Avenue" or something.
It just seemed like an audition tape.
-You voted for a literal reality show host for president.
Did you [bleep] just memory hole
the fact that before he was president,
Trump spent most of his time in a fake boardroom
yelling at Gene Simmons and Lisa Rinna
over their flailing hot dog business?
It was his last job before president.
The Fox News spin was so unconvincing
because the hearing itself was so damning.
In many ways, the broad themes
were the same as previous hearings.
They all knew, Trump on down, exactly what was happening.
They all knew it was illegal.
They all knew it could end in violence,
and they did it anyway.
It was not a whim or impulse.
It was an orchestrated scheme to overturn the election.
And then when that failed,
incite a violent insurrection to coerce Mike Pence
and Congress into crowning Trump
as an unelected autocrat.
For example, Trump's direction of the mob
to march down to the Capitol during his speech
was not some spur-of-the-moment thing.
It was planned well in advance,
as Rudy Giuliani explained to Hutchinson
in the conversation at the White House on January 2nd,
four days before the riot,
where Rudy told her that Chief of Staff Mark Meadows
was involved in the plan, as well.
-As Mr. Giuliani and I were walking to his vehicles
that evening, he looked at me and said something
to the effect of, "Cass, are you excited for the 6th?
It's going to be a great day."
I remember looking at him and saying, "Rudy,
could you explain what's happening on the 6th?"
And he had responded something to the effect of,
"We're going to the Capitol. It's going to be great.
The president's going to be there.
He's going to look powerful.
He's going to be with the members.
He's going to be with the senators.
Talk to the chief about it. Talk to the chief about it.
He knows about it."
-I like that Rudy talked about a planned insurrection
to overthrow democracy with the same naive enthusiasm
of a 6-year-old who's going to the zoo.
"Did you hear?
Mom's taking us to the reptile exhibit on Thursday!
She says there's an animal there who looks just like me."
[ Laughter ]
And, yeah, I know we use that picture a lot, but so does he.
We got it off his passport.
[ Laughter ]
Of course, with Rudy, it's hard to take anything he says
at face value, given that he could easily be confused.
He seems like the kind of guy who could be telling you
a crazy story and then halfway through stop
and say, "Wait, no, I dreamed that.
That's right. I can't fly."
[ Laughter ]
So the plan all along was to have Trump join the mob
down at the Capitol, which, suffice it to say,
would have been horrifying and impossible to contain,
and Trump's cronies, including Mark Meadows,
knew that things could get ugly, to say the least,
and Meadows in particular didn't really seem to care.
-After Mr. Giuliani had left the campus that evening,
I went back up to our office
and I found Mr. Meadows in his office on the couch.
He was scrolling through his phone.
I remember leaning against the doorway and saying,
"I just had an interesting conversation with Rudy, Mark.
Sounds like we're going to go to the Capitol."
He didn't look up from his phone
and said something to the effect of,
"There's a lot going on, Cass, but I don't know.
Things might get real, real bad on January 6th."
-He reacted to plans for a violent coup
like an exhausted dad who was just told
his kids are playing with a bobcat they found in the woods.
"They're fine. There's three of them.
I'm sure they can handle a cat.
Kids, you okay out there?"
[ Bobcat snarling, clattering ]
Sounds like they're having fun.
So on the one hand, as an unprecedented
Constitutional crisis was unfolding,
there were people like Hutchinson
who were at least paying attention and asking questions.
And then, on the other hand,
there were guys like Mark Meadows
who were just totally [bleep] zonked
and pretending nothing was happening.
Dude was just scrolling on his phone,
ignoring pleas for help
like a lifeguard at a swimming pool
who's got one guess left in Wordle.
"Stop your splashing. I'm one letter away.
Oh, sweet.
Oh, no."
[ Laughter ]
So Trump's plan was to go to the Capitol and lead the mob,
and Trump also knew his supporters had weapons.
In fact, when Trump found out his supporters were being
denied access to his rally
because they had weapons
they couldn't bring through the metal detectors
known as magnetometers or mags,
as you hear him say in this clip,
Trump said security should let them keep the weapons
so they could then march to the Capitol with those weapons
after his speech was over.
-I was in the vicinity of a conversation where I overheard
the president say something to the effect of,
"You know, I don't effing care that they have weapons.
They're not here to hurt me. Take the effing mags away.
Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here."
-And just to be clear,
so he was told again in that conversation
or was he told again in that conversation
that people couldn't come through the mags
because they had weapons? -Correct.
-And that people --
and his response was to say they can march to the Capitol
from the ellipse.
-Something to the effect of "take the," I think, "mags away.
They're not here to hurt me. Let them in. Let my people in.
They can march the Capitol after the rally's over.
They can march from -- they can march from the ellipse.
Take the effing mags away.
Then they can march to the Capitol."
-I mean, holy [bleep].
It's been a day and a half since I heard that,
and I still can't wrap my head around it.
The president was told his supporters were armed
and said, "Let them in anyway."
They can march to the Capitol with their weapons,
where their goal will be
to overturn the presidential election
and install him as an unelected autocrat.
You know what? Can we -- Let's get that card back up, Wally.
[ Laughter ]
You know, it occurs to me
that that card will be blurred out for the viewers at home.
So just so they know, it says [bleep].
I really don't know what to do
with all the information we learned yesterday
other than to just sit with it,
which brings us to a new segment called
"Seth Just Has to Sit With It for A Sec."
[ Light laughter ]
[ Laughter ]
I mean, God damn.
[ Laughter ]
[ Chuckles ]
[ Laughter ]
I mean...
[ Laughter ]
[ Laughs ]
[ Laughter ]
I mean...
[ Laughter ]
This has been "Seth Just Has to Sit With It for A Sec."
♪♪
[ Cheers and applause ]
And Trump was apparently furious
when he found out he couldn't go to the Capitol.
In fact, Hutchinson testified
that he actually tried to commandeer his own vehicle.
Now, since her testimony yesterday,
two of the people involved, Trump allies Bobby Engel
and Tony Ornato, whose names you'll hear often in the clip,
have contested aspects of the story
through anonymous intermediaries in the press,
although I'm personally skeptical of their denials,
since for one thing,
they weren't the ones under oath, she was.
And also, according to a "Washington Post" reporter
who has covered the secret service extensively,
Engel and Ornato were apparently known as "enablers and 'yes men'
to the president... and very much people
who wanted to do what he wanted and see him pleased.
So, both of those individuals lose a little credibility
because of how closely they've been seen
as aligned to Donald Trump."
Obviously, we'll need more information,
but the core of the story, that Trump wanted to go
to the Capitol and lead the mob
and was irate when he couldn't, is uncontested.
Here's how Hutchinson relayed it under oath yesterday.
-Tony described him as being irate.
The president said something to the effect of,
"I'm the effing president. Take me up to the Capitol now."
To which Bobby responded,
"Sir, we have to go back to the West wing."
The president reached up
towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel.
Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, said,
"Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel.
We're going back to the West wing.
We're not going to the Capitol."
Mr. Trump then used his free hand
to lunge towards Bobby Engel,
and when Mr. Ornato had recounted this story to me,
he had motioned towards his clavicles.
-My favorite part of this story
is imagining what would have happened
if Trump had actually succeeded
and gotten his hands on the wheel.
I mean, can you imagine him driving a car?
I mean, we've seen him drive a golf cart,
but could he handle a, you know, a steering wheel
that doesn't come with a tiny pencil holder?
I mean, remember
the one time he sat in the driver's seat of a truck
and handled the wheel like a fifth-grader in a bumper car?
Let's say he really did get his hands on the wheel
and drove the car.
What would that look like?
"Alright, hands at 10:00 and 2:00,
adjust your mirrors, check your blind spots,
turn signal on, and we crashed into a tree.
Guys, you got to tell the cops
a cat ran out and I swerved to save the cat.
I can't get another ticket
or they're going to take my license away.
And Mel already told me she won't drive me anywhere.
You got to get my back, guys."
We've said this a lot
over the entirety of Trump's political career,
but this hearing really was shocking.
I genuinely do not think
I had the capacity to be shocked anymore.
Even Fox News seemed dazed and paralyzed
by how devastating it was.
The president and his team orchestrated a violent coup,
and at every step of the way,
they were aware of what they were doing, that it was illegal,
and that it could lead to violence.
Trump wanted to lead an armed mob
to overturn the election.
At this point, we don't need any more evidence.
We need the Justice Department to act on it.
In the meantime, we're all just waiting around like this.
[ Laughter ]
This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪
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