-The president held his first rally in months on Saturday
in an attempt to project political strength
as his administration faces a series of crises.
Instead, it was a flop, and I should say
I get that he wanted to go out and see people.
I've been in an attic for three months.
I miss having guests.
Zoom is great. It's not face to face.
But I deal with it because there isn't a better option.
It's not like there's a magic door behind me
that'll send me a guest if I say their name three times.
Ethan Hawke! Ethan Hawke! Ethan Hawke!
Right? I mean, that would be stupid,
but also, I mean, I mean, how cool would that be?
With that said, you know,
I haven't totally hated the "me" time.
It's definitely allowed me to get in touch with myself
in a healthy way, and, you know, if a guest was here
they'd probably want to go on and on about
whatever project they had, and, you know,
I don't -- I don't need that.
Still, I don't think that would be the case with Ethan Hawke.
I mean, the Ethan Hawke.
Does go on a bit. Does go on a bit.
But he's Ethan Hawke! He's one of my all-time favorite actors.
Love me some Ethan Hawke.
Of course, knowing Ethan, he'd probably have some sort
of psychopath man-in-the-woods beard right now
and wouldn't be that camera-ready.
Yeah, all things -- all things considered,
it's good not having Ethan Hawke right now.
Anyway, I know it was a long time ago,
and I probably shouldn't even say this.
I thought in "Dead Poets" when he stood on the desk
and said, "O Captain! My Captain!"
it was just a little, I don't know, showoff-y?
-It was a character!
-Anyway, it's time for "A Closer Look."
♪♪
In this moment, protesters across the country
are demanding an end to institutional racism
and police brutality,
the coronavirus pandemic is spiking in more than 20 states,
our election infrastructure is falling apart,
and millions of Americans are camping out for hours
just to file for unemployment amid a historic economic crisis.
I mean, look at this. This is insane.
Normally, you only see people camped out on the sidewalk
like this when there's a new iPhone
or Harry Styles is hosting "SNL,"
an episode, by the way, that I couldn't get tickets to,
which is crazy because I had a bit of a run there.
This is truly, truly barbaric.
If you're a billion-dollar corporation,
you can just call up the government,
you get a loan you don't even need.
But if you lose your job thanks to a pandemic
the government failed to stop,
you have to line up in the heat for hours like you're waiting
for a porta-potty at Ozzfest.
And as Ozzy himself would say, our country is
♪ Going off the rails on a crazy train ♪
Yes.
Anyway, I just hope it's not too late
to learn how to love and forget how to hate.
That was for older brothers born between, what, '63 and '71?
The point is we're in a moment of acute national crisis,
thanks in large part to the maligned negligence
of this taxidermied business husk.
Wow! How'd the sales trip go, Willy Loman?
I hope Biff didn't wander in on you and a strange woman.
That would send him in a long tailspin.
What happened to you?
You look like you just coached the Knicks to a 50-point loss.
You should be standing next to Jack Lemmon
begging for the Glenn Gary leads.
We should never have to see the president
in such a pathetic state. It's embarrassing.
The president is supposed to project confidence and strength.
Trump, on the other hand, looks like a drunk wedding guest
shuffling back to the Marriott.
[ As Trump ] Or was it a Hyatt.
[ Normal voice ] This is like when you stay up
past your bedtime and catch a glimpse of your dad
coming home late from work totally plastered.
Somehow, this is the perfect imagine
to sum up the Trump presidency.
Now we just have to change the presidential seal
to a drunk eagle snoozing in a BarcaLounger
with a beer in one hand and remote control in the other.
And I know. I know eagle's hands are called claws.
I made a mistake. But it's tempting --
Or maybe they're called talons.
Well, I should have looked this up.
But as tempting as it may be to think that Trump
somehow created all the problems
our country is facing, he did not.
He certainly made them worse,
and in many cases, profited from them.
But the structural inequities and institutional failures
we're seeing right now long predated him.
They were created in part by guys like Johnny Bolton
over here, the ex-National Security Advisor
who refused to testify at Trump's impeachment
and is now hawking a book called "Mustache Rides Again."
Oh, wait, I think it's called "The Trash Behind the Stache."
No, wait, you know what, guys? I think it's called
"Boltin' Bolton's Butt Ton of Bull Dung."
Anyway, you can find it on Amazon
under the "Please Light Your Money on Fire Instead" section.
John Bolton is an unrepentant warmonger who has helped
usher in some of the worst calamities
of the last two decades and who epitomizes our era of venal,
self-serving sociopaths burning everything down
and then cashing in as they slink away.
But other than that, he a great guy.
Last night, Bolton was on ABC trying to sell his book
about his time in the Trump White House.
Trump, a man, let's not forget,
he voted for and then lobbied to get a job with.
-I don't think he's fit for office.
I don't think he has the competence to carry out the job.
-You supported Donald Trump during the 2016 election.
You watched his first 15 months in office.
What did you think of the job he was doing up to that point?
-I think I made a mistake. -No, I don't think he did.
I don't think he made a mistake.
I think you're a remora,
you know those little fish that swim alongside sharks
and eat whatever they miss?
That's what all these Trump White House
supporting cast members are.
And then, when their bellies are full,
they swim out of the White House and write a book called,
"Damn, That Shark Was Crazy!"
"I think a made a mistake" is not how you talk about
enthusiastically supporting and working for
a racist authoritarian who's trampling our democracy
for his own self-interest.
That's what you say when you get
the Domino's order and realize
it has peppers instead of pepperoni.
"Oh, damn it. I think I made a mistake.
I meant to get pizza, but instead I ordered Domino's."
Bolton didn't make a mistake.
He saw Trump in 2016
and throughout the first half of his presidency
promising to rip up the Iran deal
and to kill the families of terrorists
and banning of Muslims,
and he thought he could use Trump to get what he wanted.
It only backfired when he realized Trump's like
a tiger in a circus act.
He starts out friendly, but one wrong move,
and he will lunge for your face.
People like Bolton are a big part of the reason
we're in this mess in the first place, and on top of that,
the structural inequities in our sham democracy
ensure that a party with a disastrous 20-year record
of governance over the course of two historically
awful presidents can keep winning elections.
They don't need to be popular if voter suppression
and an antiquated electoral college system
can keep them in power.
And sure enough, the Trump team
is already sending signals that they plan to interfere
with the actual administration of the election.
This weekend, for example, the Attorney General Bill Barr
repeated a series of obvious lies about mail-in voting,
which many state officials, including Republicans,
have turned to as a safe alternative during the pandemic.
Barr claimed falsely that mail-in ballots
somehow open the floodgates to fraud.
-Well, there's a big discussion right now about mail-in voting.
Hillary Clinton said it's fine, it's fair.
-Well, it absolutely opens the floodgates to fraud.
Those things are delivered into mailboxes.
They can be taken out.
There's questions about whether or not it even denies
a secret ballot because a lot of the states have you signing
the outside of the envelope,
so the person who opens the envelope
will know how people voted.
There's no -- Right now, a foreign country could print up
tens of thousands of counterfeit ballots
and it'd be very hard for us to detect which was the right
and which was the wrong ballot. So I think it can --
it can upset and undercut the confidence
in the integrity of our elections.
-You know what upsets confidence
in the integrity of our elections?
People having to stand in line to vote like they're waiting
to take pictures with the mall Santa on December 23rd.
Of course, if Bill Barr was in charge,
they'd have to line up on August 8th.
Second, none of what you said is true.
You can't just print up fake mail ballots and send them in.
You know they still check to make sure
they're from registered voters, right?
It's not like you could just write on a piece of paper
"I vote for Joe Exotic" and send it to the Board of Elections,
although honestly, at this rate, I'm desperate enough to try it.
Hey! I think he's learned his lesson.
I saw some real growth from Joe.
And then this morning, Trump himself tweeted...
They're trying to cheat by disrupting
the actual administration of the election,
and that's because they're so worried that if voters
get to vote fairly, he won't win.
Donald Trump is now and has always been
a historically unpopular president.
He's just been able to mask his unpopularity
and soothe his ego with large crowds
at his mosh pit/group therapy sessions,
which is why his rally in Tulsa on Saturday,
his first in months, was planned as a big show
of political strength, nevermind the fact that Tulsa
is a coronavirus hotspot with spiking numbers
that have alarmed local health officials.
Trump disregarded that just to make himself feel better.
Beforehand, Trump base told CNN
that the rally wasn't just about politics.
It was...
You know what else is good for that? Prozac.
You just slip some into his hamburger,
you know, the way you give pills to a dog.
Or slap a label on the bottle that says, "Hydroxychloroquine."
[ As Trump ] This stuff cures neverything.
[ Normal voice ] Think about that --
The president held an indoor rally at a coronavirus hotspot,
putting people's lives at risk
just to make himself feel better.
Can't we just get that truck back to the White House lawn
and let him honk the horn a few times?
"Do you feel better, Mr. President?"
[ As Trump ] I am feeling a little bit better.
[ Normal voice ] At this rate, he should be doing his rallies
on a fainting couch while a doctor takes notes.
Still, there you go -- The president's aides
said Saturday's rally would put him in a much better mood,
and clearly, Trump was looking forward to it
because he spent all week bragging
about the number of people who had RSVP'd.
-They have a new, a pretty new, magnificent arena,
as you probably have heard.
And we're getting exact numbers out,
but we're either close to or over one million people
wanting to go.
We have a 22,000-seat arena,
but I think we're gonna also take the convention hall
next door, and that's gonna hold 40,000.
So we'll have 22,000, plus 40,000,
which would mean that we'd have over 900,000 people
that won't be able to go, but hopefully they'll be watching.
But it's an amazing -- Nobody's ever heard of numbers like this.
-You got to love how Trump thinks a success is a situation
in which 90% of his supporters get screwed.
[ As Trump ] Also, we have a baked potato bar,
all the fixings for everyone who doesn't get in.
Just the two potatoes, though, so show up early.
[ Normal voice ] Nobody's ever heard numbers like this?
You know what number of people have heard?
6,200, the actual number of people who showed up,
according to the fire marshall, and that fire marshall
was probably the only person in Tulsa who had a good night.
He was like, "Oh, this is great. If there's a fire,
we'll get everybody out of here in, like, 30 seconds."
Trump's team kept ramping up expectations.
His campaign manager Brad Parscale bragged
that a million people -- a million people had RSVP'd
and that they'd have a total of close to 100,000.
You guys sure you want to call your shot like that?
You're like a basketball player
giving a pre-game press conference
about how many points he scored.
"You know, I just want to thank God
and my teammates for supporting me.
It wasn't easy to score a 50 in a game, but I did it.
All right. I'm gonna go warm up. Achilles is pretty tight."
Although my favorite, favorite Trump prediction
has to be this one.
-And we expect to have -- you know,
it's like a record-setting crowd.
We've never had an empty seat.
And we certainly won't in Oklahoma.
-We certainly won't have an empty seat in Oklahoma.
It's too perfect.
This is like if Babe Ruth had pointed to center field
and then stepped into the box and fouled one off his ankle.
"Oh [bleep]!
Oh, no, I think I broke it! Oh [bleep]!
Can you edit out the part where I pointed?
We're live?! Oh [bleep]!"
So the president banked not only his political comeback
but his mood in a big show of force in Tulsa.
And then, you know, this happened.
-President Trump's first campaign rally
in more than 100 days drew controversy
and a smaller-than-expected crowd.
The upper decks of the arena there in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
were largely empty.
-There were plenty of empty seats
in the 19,000-capacity BOK Center.
-But in the end, the president was a bit of a bust in Tulsa.
Campaign quickly dismantling one venue.
That other venue, about one-third full.
Tulsa's fire department saying about 6,200 people
showed up in an arena that held 19,000 for the president.
Wow, I've seen less empty seats at an improv show.
And, let's be honest, Trump's rallies are basically
an improv show where he gives himself his own suggestion.
[ As Trump ] Can I have the name of a famous person?
I heard Hillary.
[ Normal voice ] The arena wasn't even one-third full.
Trump staked his political fortunes and his ego
on this rally, and it was such a flop,
they even had to cancel a planned second speech
to what they thought would be an overflow crowd outside.
Before Trump had landed, crews were literally
breaking down the stage because so few people were there.
Wow! He's the President of the United States,
and they're treating him like the least popular band
at Coachella.
"Sorry, bro, I guess everybody went over to see Beyoncé.
You can keep the lanyards if you want.
What kind of music do you guys do anyway? Rage rap?"
And Trump's performance was just as lackluster as the attendance.
You'd think at a moment like this, the president might
want to offer soothing words about the state of the nation
and the various crises we face.
Instead, Trump spent one of every eight minutes in Tulsa
complaining about coverage of his West Point speech.
Specifically, he complained about the coverage
of the way he tiptoed down a ramp
like a toddler on ice skates, and the way he drank water.
-So then my wife said,
"Well, it wasn't only the ramp.
Did you have water?"
So what happens is I said, "What does it have to do with water?"
They said, "You couldn't lift your hand up
to your mouth with water."
She said, "Well, I know what you did.
You had on a very good red tie."
And I don't want to get water on the tie.
And I don't want to drink much. So I lifted up the water.
I see we have a little glass of water.
Where the hell did this water come from?
[ Cheers and applause ] So I put it up to my lip,
and then I say, because I don't want it -- Just in case.
And they gave me another disease.
[ Laughter ] They gave me another disease.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Seriously, has a president's base ever set a lower bar?
"Whoo! That arm works! That arm works!"
The crowd cheered the president drinking water with one hand
the way NASA cheered when they landed a rover on Mars.
That's not supposed to be impressive.
"Good news, he's drinking water with one hand" is something
a doctor would say to you about a loved one who was recently
hit on the head by a falling can of paint.
"He's regained motor function in his right arm.
Unfortunately, he is, um...
he is still having trouble with the ramp."
Although the biggest lie in that story might be the idea
that he had a conversation with his wife.
And even if he did, what a horrible conversation.
Her first question to you was, "Did you have water?"
That's not a question you ask a president or a loved one.
That's a question you ask a sick cat.
The president staked his political fortunes
on a rally that turned out to be a dud
amid a series of mounting crises that have deflated
his already historically bad poll numbers.
It's a reminder that this president is deeply unpopular.
And his only hope of getting re-elected is by scaring people
and undermining the integrity of the election itself.
And when he and his campaign look back on their decision
to brag so much about this rally in advance,
I bet they'll say to themselves...
-I think I made a mistake.
This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪
As New York works hard to reopen under phase two,
remember that we're still a city in crisis.
And City Harvest has been stepping up
to meet the increased need.
If you're watching this online, you can hit the "donate" button.
Stay safe, wash your hands, we love you.