-An upcoming book reveals
shocking new details about the Trump administration's
criminally negligent COVID response
and Republicans blocked a voting rights bill
as part of their ongoing attempt to dismantle our democracy.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
♪♪
As eager as we all are to get back to normal,
we can't lose sight of the fact that the COVID pandemic
is still very much with us.
Vaccination rates in parts of the country are lagging;
case numbers, in some states, are rising;
a dangerous new variant is driving up infections in the UK;
and models predict a possible surge of cases in the fall.
And, even as things get better, overall,
there are still constant reminders
of how much our world has changed in the last 16 months.
Every time I reach across the counter at my local coffee shop
to grab my iced oat latte from the barista,
only to accidentally punch the Plexiglas partition
that's still there to stop the spread of contagious droplets
from a deadly disease, I think to myself,
"Oh, right, COVID."
Not that, I should note, the glass does anything.
I'm pretty sure aerosols
can find their way around a glass partition.
It's like trying to keep ants out of your house with a sign.
We're also constantly reminded,
even five months after he left office,
that Trump's response to the pandemic
was, somehow, much worse and much crazier
than we even knew at the time.
Every day, we keep hearing new details
about his time in office, thanks to what seems like
a never-ending parade of tell-all books
scheduled for publication,
each filled with more damning new details
about just how much of a sociopath he was.
There are so many Trump books on the shelves
that he's bleeding into other books.
The other day, my son found him
next to Waldo. [ Laughter ]
[ As Trump ] He's right here, kid.
He's right here.
And they all have titles that make them sound
like straight-to-DVD Steven Seagal movies --
"Nightmare Scenario,"
"Inflection Point," "Tipping Point,"
"Hoax," "Rage," "Fear," "Fire," "Fury,"
"Fire and Fury"...
I mean, do these people actually read these?
We all lived with a knot in our belly for four years.
Who wants to read an 800-page deep dive about that?
It'd be like reading a book called...
Maybe they're all just those cut-out books
you can use to hide your weed from your dog walker.
Besides, don't we all just get the craziest tidbits
cherry-picked for us on Twitter or cable news
or from late night talk shows? Oh, and speaking of which,
here's a cable news clip with a tidbit
from a new Trump tell-all.
-Stunning revelations this morning
about the Trump administration's response
during the early days of the pandemic.
In a new book, entitled "Nightmare Scenario,"
Washington Post journalists
Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta report
how President Trump suggested
sending Americans with COVID-19 to Guantánamo Bay.
-The book draws on early conversations,
as told by staffers and government leaders,
like this one, when White House officials debated
whether to bring infected Americans home...
-Only Trump would refer to Guantánamo Bay
as "an island that we own."
It's such a reminder that he will always,
first and foremost,
be a real estate guy.
Also, Guantánamo Bay is not an island, you dolt.
It's right there in the name.
It's a naval base and detention camp on the island of Cuba.
An island we do not own because --
and I'm not a history buff, but I think this is right --
JFK couldn't pass the co-op board.
I will say, it would've been hilarious,
watching Trump try to rebrand Guantánamo
as a fun place for people to spend a week.
[ As Trump ] Welcome to Guantána-Lago Spa & Resort.
Make sure you check out the bay.
I heard it is full of pigs.
[ Laughter ] Also, was there like
a fantasy football draft,
but for the stories each staffer got to tell for their books?
"I can't decide between the time
he wanted to send cruise ship passengers to Gitmo
or the time he asked if he could legally send SEAL Team Six
to rough up Lorne Michaels."
[ As Michaels ] So, I'm up late,
[ Laughter ] reading a first edition Evelyn Waugh,
and I see that little red dot on the wall
that they have on sniper rifles
and, from that moment, I knew --
it's SEAL Team Six. [ Laughter ]
The Trump era was a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions
and, yet, Republicans are hell-bent
on repeating it, if they get a chance,
that's why they're passing a barrage
of voter suppression bills that would allow them
to overturn future election results
and why they blocked
the For the People voting rights bill yesterday.
And, yet, even with that brewing crisis on the horizon,
there's a small group of Democratic senators
who are still super concerned with preserving the filibuster
and giving Republicans a veto over their agenda,
like Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema,
who made some truly ludicrous arguments
in favor of the filibuster, in an op-ed earlier this week.
-Kyrsten Sinema wrote for The Washington Post.
She said...
-Well, that's just how democracy works.
You pass laws and then, if your opponents take power,
they can change those laws,
unless you rally public opinion to your side,
which is your job as a politician.
Didn't any of you people watch "Schoolhouse Rock" as a kid?
Although I'm guessing, in Sinema's case,
she watched more,
I don't know, music videos by ska bands?
She looks like she's going
to a Mighty Mighty Bosstones concert in 1992.
At least, that's the impression that I get.
[ Knock-knock, chuckle ]
Your job is to make progress
and then fight to protect that progress
by galvanizing popular support.
You can't just resign yourself to doing nothing
because Republicans might eventually
undo whatever bill you pass.
For one thing, that's not a given.
Republicans couldn't get rid of Obamacare,
even with a simple majority,
because it was super popular and people were outraged.
Also, Republicans don't seem to care
if they get support from Democrats.
In fact, they're doing the opposite.
Across the country, they're passing
voter suppression bills on party line votes.
-I followed all of these debates.
They were party line, simple majority debates
in Georgia, in Arizona...
-Yes, sir. -...in Florida, in all of these states,
making it harder to vote.
And Republicans didn't say, "Oh,
what will the Democrats say about us?
We need bipartisanship." -[ Laughs ]
-The entire point of voter suppression is
to make it harder for your opponents to be able to vote.
And so there's just two standards here.
There's the game being played by Republicans in the states,
where they do whatever they can to undermine democracy.
Then, there's the game being played
by Democrats in Washington,
where they fail to protect American democracy
because of these arcane rules
that nobody actually cares about.
In 100 years, nobody's going to care about the filibuster,
if the right to vote is undermined for decades.
-He's right. No one gives a [bleep] about the filibuster.
Most people don't even know where it came from,
why it exists, why it's called a filibuster,
or where that word even came from.
True story -- it's a Dutch word, vribuyter,
which translates to "freebooter,"
and was used to mean "pirate."
So, by respecting the filibuster,
we're loosely supporting pirates,
which makes sense, because, basically,
Mitch McConnell's entire career has been him
boarding the SS Democracy and saying --
[ As McConnell ] Uh, I'm the captain now.
[ Laughter ] Too long a walk to get
to the McConnell impression?
Just long enough? I hope it was worth it
because it's a real strain on my vocal cords.
Not the part just now, the hours of vocal warm-ups.
[ As McConnell ] Red leather, yellow leather.
Red leather, yellow leather.
The jolly collie swallowed a lollipop.
[ Laughter ]
Anyway, no one cares about the filibuster,
and Democrats, like Sinema and Joe Manchin,
need to stop playing
by different self-imposed rules than Republicans.
When Trump supporters were scaling the walls of the Capitol
to overthrow the government, they weren't like,
"Aw, man, I hope the Democrats are cool with this.
Should we have invited some of them?
You know, just for optics?"
The difference with Republicans
is so infuriating.
Democrats are worried that,
if they lose the next election,
their legislation could get overturned,
while Republicans are still trying
to overturn the last election.
In Arizona, the sham election audit has gotten so insane,
they're hunting for bamboo ballots and secret watermarks
and sending copies of voting data
to a mysterious laboratory in a remote location in Montana.
-On this piece of property,
in a remote part of Montana,
people may, at this very minute,
be analyzing voting data from the state of Arizona,
as part of the so-called Arizona audit.
So, as you might expect, we're left wondering where,
in the state of Montana,
are the copies of this voting data being analyzed?
Where is the "secure, powerful lab"?
So could the information be here?
We could tell you, as we walk up here,
the first thing you see on this big piece of land is the sign --
"Private property.
Trespassing for any purpose is strictly forbidden.
Violators will be prosecuted."
We can't cross this area.
We can show you, though, from this area,
what looks like a cabin on this property.
Is this the "secure, powerful laboratory"?
Is Arizona voting data inside that cabin?
We just don't know.
But it could be.
-Dude, be careful on the side of the highway,
or people are going to think you're a hitchhiker.
"Anderson, I'm currently in a windowless white van
with a man named Rex, who says
I can crash with him for the night
and have all the ice cream I want,
as long as I make a sacrifice of fresh deer meat
to the wood spirit Galfgamar.
Back to you, Anderson."
That's how insane things are right now.
CNN reporters are hunting for voting data
on the side of a highway three states away
because Republicans shifted to a secret location
in the middle of nowhere, with no outside observers,
in the name of election integrity.
This is all starting to sound like a storyline
from the next season of "Ozark,"
which, thanks to his Netflix deal,
stars Barack Obama.
[ As Obama ] Uh....Laura.
We got to find the ballots,
or the cartel will, uh,
come after us.
"Uh, sir, her character's name is Wendy."
Well, let's dub it in later.
ADR it!
I'm in a groove. [ Laughter ]
Every day, we find out more about just how much
of a nightmare the Trump era was
and, every day, Republicans do whatever they can
to force that nightmare on us again.
They're passing bills across the country,
making it easier to overturn the next election,
and sending voting data to mysterious locations
to overturn the last election.
The guessing game about where Arizona Republicans sent
all that voting data is getting so crazy,
eventually, we're going to have to ask...
-"What about Guantánamo?"
-This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪
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