-In one of the most chilling moments
of his presidency --
and there have been a few --
Donald Trump refused to commit
to a peaceful transition of power
as Republicans formulated a plan
to steal the election through the courts.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Suspenseful theme plays ]
We're as close as we've ever been to losing our democracy
and watching our government transform
into a autocratic regime.
It's happening right in front of our eyes, right now.
You don't need to wait for Trump to roll down Pennsylvania Avenue
on a tank and green fatigues with a long chin beard,
especially since, if he did try to grow one,
he'd probably just look like a very sick Chihuahua.
"I think my dog is dying."
Is he drinking water?
"No, just like Diet Coke,
like ten, ten a day."
The president's falsely claiming the election is rigged.
The GOP chair in Pennsylvania told The Atlantic --
on the record -- that they're considering a plan
to steal the state's electoral votes, if they lose,
and Republicans are basically announcing their intention
to use the courts to overturn the election results.
And, on top of all that, the president, last night,
refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power,
effectively threatening violence,
unless ballots are thrown out
and he's allowed to stay in office.
-Well, we're gonna have to see what happens.
You know that I've been complaining very strongly
about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster.
Alright. I know.
No, we wanna have --
We wanna have -- Get rid of the ballots
and you'll have a very transf--
We'll have a very peaceful --
There won't be a transfer, frankly.
There'll be a continuation.
-Alright, I'll take it back.
He probably will grow that dictator beard.
[ As Trump ] Do you like it? I comb it with a fork.
It's a little pasta twirl.
So, Trump is threatening violence,
unless we "get rid of the ballots."
He's threatening a coup d'état, even though I'm sure he has
no idea what the phrase coup d'état means.
He probably thinks it's a lyric from "Moulin Rouge!"
[ As Trump ] ♪ Voulez vous coucher ♪
♪ Coup d'état ♪
♪ Ce soir? ♪
[ Laughing ] We're in a --
a truly treacherous moment,
yet, we can still enjoy a "Moulin Rouge!" joke.
Our democracy hasn't been healthy in a long time,
but, now, it's in a death spiral.
The president is threatening violence, if he loses.
Armed right-wing militias are roaming the streets
in Louisville, intimidating protesters.
The president is glorifying
state violence against journalists.
Just a few months ago, he called for
overwhelming force to suppress protests,
labeled democratic cities "anarchist jurisdictions,"
and his campaign called for an army of supporters
to join an election security squad.
If this were happening in any other country,
you'd expect to see pro-regime militants
driving through the streets in pickup trucks,
attacking people and waving flags and --
Ah, goddamn it!
The only thing missing from that clip
is a foreign correspondent for the BBC in a flak jacket.
[ English accent ] The scene here is tense
as pro-regime forces clash with dissidents.
And I am sorry. I'm just getting word
the regime has sent its armada of Jet Skis and party boats
to blockade the port, leaving nothing in their wake
but empty aluminium cans of Natural Light
or, as it's called in the local vernacular,
Natty Light.
Yes, we did go well out of our way to say aluminium.
But don't worry. Don't worry, guys.
The White House press corps is ready to step in
to its role as the guardian of democracy
in this perilous moment for the republic.
-Prince Harry and Meghan Markle chimed in on the US election
and essentially encouraged people
to vote for Joe Biden.
I wanted to get your reaction to that.
-Mm, I don't have my glasses on.
Was that Woodward or Bernstein?
Does US Weekly have a White House correspondent?
Although, I bet even US Weekly would drop
its Harry and Meghan coverage for this...
Seriously, if the president threatens
to destroy American democracy
by seizing power through violence,
maybe scrap your preplanned question about Harry and Meghan.
You need to be able to, you know, pivot on the fly.
What if, at his next press conference,
Trump takes out the red button and threatens to nuke Seattle,
unless they give him $1 billion?
"Sir, I'd love to hear more of your thoughts
about nuking Seattle, but,
"Keeping Up with the Kardashians" is ending.
Do you have a comment on that?" And I gotta ask,
why aren't more elected Democrats
acting like this is the emergency it is?
They're about as effective
as the receptionist on "Law & Order" who says,
"Hey, you can't go in there!" while they're going in there.
Democrats should be grinding the gears of government
to a halt until the Republican Party
vows to respect the election outcome
and commit to a peaceful transition of power.
They should be holding public televised hearings about this.
The only person I've heard talk about it is Bernie Sanders.
-What do we do if Trump loses
and he won't leave office?
-What we have got to do is work
in a number of ways
and one of the ways is --
I'm working on this right now --
is to demand that both the House and the Senate
hold hearings, right now!
To educate the American people
about what might happen
and to develop antidotes to that.
So we've got to educate the American people
about what is in front of us
and rally the American people to tell Donald Trump
that too many people in this country
have fought and died to defend American democracy
and, if and when you lose,
you're getting out of office.
-The best part of any Bernie interview during the pandemic
are his Zoom backgrounds.
It's like when you use
the computer at your grandparents' house
and their desktop still has the default background from Windows.
His background always look like the cover of a nature sounds CD.
[ As Sanders ] Birds singing, crickets chirping,
the sound of a babbling brook
as you gently drift off to sleep.
Now, go to sleep! CD over! I got work to do.
But he's absolutely right -- Democrats should be holding
highly publicized hearings about this.
They should be slowing down Senate business,
doing everything possible to force Republicans
to commit to honor the results of the election
because Trump clearly will not.
He said as much repeatedly over the last few weeks
and, yet, we all just kind of sigh and move on with our lives.
Whenever he screams
something about mail-in ballots or a rigged election,
we're all like tourists
rolling up our car windows in Times Square.
"Honey, uh, quick.
Quick, Buzz Lightyear's coming this way
and, for some reason, he has a giant sword?"
But Trump has made it very clear, for months now,
that he will not consider the election legitimate
if he loses, based on his made-up claims
of mail-in voting fraud.
-Universal is going to be a disaster
the likes of which our country has never seen.
It'll end up being a rigged election
or they will never come out with an outcome.
They'll have to do it again.
And nobody wants that and I don't want that.
You won't know the election result
for weeks, months, maybe years after.
Maybe you'll never know the election result,
and that's what I'm concerned with.
It'll be fixed. It'll be rigged.
People oughta get smart.
It'll be the greatest rigged election in history.
It'll be the greatest fraud ever perpetrated.
The only way
we're gonna lose this election
is if the election is rigged.
Remember that. It's the only way
we're gonna lose this election.
-You think "the only way"
you could possibly lose is if it's rigged?
You haven't cracked 50% in the polling average all year.
That's like K.Fed saying the only reason
his album didn't go platinum was because
the Billboard charts were rigged against "PopoZao."
[ As Federline ] We love "PopoZao," don't we, folks?
You're hearing it more and more.
You haven't a been ahead of Biden in the polling average once.
You lost the popular vote by three million
and your approval numbers have been underwater
since you launched your campaign.
You're not even at 100% among Trumps.
You're even lagging among old people in Florida.
That's your key constituency.
You are an old person in Florida.
That's like Hoda and Jenna finding out
they're losing the key demo
of stay-at-home wine enthusiasts.
And, yet, Trump keeps insisting that states are sending
unsolicited mail ballots to everyone,
that could easily be filled out fraudulently,
despite the fact that this basically never happens
and would be very easy to detect.
-When you see them cheating with those ballots,
all of those unsolicited ballots,
those millions of ballots, you see 'em,
anytime you do report 'em to the authorities.
The authorities are waiting and watching.
-First of all, they're not unsolicited.
They're ballots. They send them to registered voters.
They're not AOL trial CDs.
[ As Federline ] Yo, AOL bless.
Mind if I slip a "PopoZao" in there?
I'm having some [ Laughing ] distribution issues.
We thought it was very, very important
to do a lot of comedy today about 2006's "PopoZao."
Which is -- I looked at it -- it's a lyric.
In Portuguese, it means,
"Bring your ass on the floor
and move it real fast."
Guy was trying to do like a nice Rosetta Stone to music.
Here I am, [ Laughing ] giving him a hard time.
I'm assuming that it meant the dance floor
and not the Senate floor.
[ As McConnell ] We oughta --
as soon as we got that nominee from Donald Trump,
we oughta PopoZao.
[ Laughter ]
[ As Graham ] I love -- I would love to --
[ As McConnell ] Not you, Lindsay.
[ Laughter ]
Second, Donald Trump --
[ Laughing ] that's who we were talking about --
[ Laughter ]
[ As McConnell ] We oughta PopoZao posthaste.
Please, don't tell your supporters
to report anything to the authorities.
The last thing we need is crazed Trump supporters
sifting through our mail, looking for fraudulent ballots.
"This has foreign writing on it!
This is a fraudulent ballot!"
Sir, that is an Italian takeout menu.
"Yeah, but who are they takin' out?
Answer me that!"
And, now, Trump is telegraphing that, if he gets his way
and installs a new Supreme Court justice before the election,
the conservative 6-3 super majority
will invalidate all those ballots
and declare him the winner, even if he loses.
-I think having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation.
Now, we're counting on the federal court system
to make it so that we can actually have an evening
where we know who wins, okay?
Not where the votes are gonna be counted
a week later or two weeks later.
We need nine justices.
You need that.
With the unsolicited millions
of ballots that they're sending,
it's a scam. It's a hoax.
Everybody knows that
and the Democrats know it better than anybody else.
So you're gonna need nine justices up there.
I think it's gonna be very important
because what they're doing is trying
to sow confusion and everything else.
Because paper ballots are very simple,
whether they counterfeit 'em, forge 'em, do whatever you want.
-What are you talking about?!
What you're describing makes no sense.
How would it even work?
They send one ballot per voter
and most states use barcodes to track ballots.
They're election ballots, not pages from the Burn Book.
♪♪
Who's doing this supposed forging of these paper ballots?
You think so-called anarchists
are going door-to-door, collecting ballots,
so they can write in the name of their favorite candidate,
Joe Biden, because anarchists notoriously love
the 77-year-old centrist from Delaware?
Biden loves trains. That's how you know he's not an anarchist.
Trains are the opposite of anarchy.
They're literally on the rails.
Try hopping on the
Acela Express from D.C. to Boston
and taking a call on the quiet car.
Ten Ivy League JDs will descend on you in a fury
and stuff you in the overhead rack.
Second, Democrats?!
Democrats are sowing confusion?
You sow confusion just by opening your mouth.
No one can even follow what you're saying.
Here's a collection of real things
Donald Trump has said, recently,
that I guess are supposed to be human English.
-First lady, how'd you like the crowd?
"Sir, I didn't see it."
Take away your guns,
destroy your Second Amendment,
no religion, no anything,
hurt the Bible, hurt God.
That was called action,
not with the mouth, but in actual fact.
They go out and buy tuna fish
and soup. You know that, right?
Tuna fish, they could really rip it, right?
And that hits you. [ Laughter ]
No, it's true.
Bumblebee brand tuna. [ Laughter ]
And you can throw that sucker, you can put a curve on it.
You can do whatever the hell you want.
-Jesus. It's like the end
of "2001: A Space Odyssey,"
when they disconnect HAL.
[ As HAL ] Tuna fish.
Not with the mouth. First Lady.
Sir, sir, sir.
Why do you hurt God? Tuna fish.
You can really rip it.
God, tuna God, God, hurt the tuna.
Tuna, tuna, God,
PopoZao.
That's it. Hat trick.
[ Laughing ] Seriously, someone give this man a CAT scan.
If only we could look inside his head,
I'm pretty sure we'd see his brain is mostly...
-Tuna fish and soup.
-And the people around Trump,
the leaders of the institutional Republican Party,
have also been explicit about their goal
to have a conservative
Supreme Court super majority in place
to decide a so-called contested election,
which, again, is only a consideration, right now,
because they're the ones falsely claiming
there'll be rampant mail ballot fraud.
-I think it is critical
that the Senate takes up
and confirms that successor
before Election Day.
We cannot have election day come and go
with a 4-4 court.
A 4-4 court that is equally divided
cannot decide anything
and I think we risk a constitutional crisis
if we do not have
[ Chime ] a nine-justice Supreme Court,
particularly when there is such a risk
of a contested litigation
and a contested election.
-You're the ones threatening to contest the election.
Ted Cruz is like an arsonist saying...
[ As Cruz ] We need to hire more firefighters,
as I have no intention to stop
setting off bottle rockets in the woods.
Also, you're suddenly concerned
about a constitutional crisis now?!
We've had four years
of constant constitutional crisis
with a president who obstructs justice,
profits from his office, asks foreign governments
to help him cheat in the election,
and unilaterally declares a state of emergency
to build a dumbass wall on the southern border
without congressional approval.
Just last night, he threatened violence,
if he loses, and you were silent.
Senate Republicans work less than that rich friend
who's always posting pics on Instagram
from exotic locations.
"Hang gliding at Angkor Wat.
#soblessed"
Why do you have money again?
"I started a streaming service for skateboard fails."
These guys are threatening a totally made up crisis,
then saying we need a conservative super majority
on the Supreme Court to resolve that made up crisis.
Like Vice President Mike Pence,
who basically said that we need to rush
to confirm a Supreme Court nominee to throw out
all those pesky ballots from voters who don't like Trump.
-With all of the talk about universal
unsolicited mail-in balloting
where we see states around the country
that are now extending the deadline.
There is a possibility that election issues
may come before the Supreme Court
in the days following the election,
and all the more reason why we should have nine justices
on the Supreme Court to to be able to resolve any issues
that may arise then or on any other matter.
-They're just coming out and saying it.
Their plan is to steal the election
through another Bush v. Gore.
And Mike Pence's talent is that he can make a plan
to steal an election sound like an instructional DVD
for your new dishwasher.
[ As Pence ] First, you need to ensure that your water source
is turned all the way to the off position.
[ Normal voice ] They're not hiding it
because we all know what the game is.
It's like if M. Night Shyamalan
released a movie titled "Twist Ending."
Oh, I see. So Rudy was actually dead the whole time?
In fact, Republicans have been so open about the fact
that they're rushing to lock in a right-wing super majority
on the court before the election,
they're even claiming they already have the votes
to confirm a nominee without even knowing
who that nominee is.
We've got the votes to confirm
Justice Ginsburg replacement before the election.
We're gonna move forward in the committee.
We're gonna report the nomination out of the committee
to the floor of the United States Senate
so we can vote before the election.
We're gonna have a process that you will be proud of.
The nominee is gonna be supported
by every Republican in the Judiciary Committee.
And we've got the votes to confirm the judge,
the justice on the floor of the Senate before the election.
And that's what's coming.
-Are you trying to convince us or hypnotize us?
[ As Graham ] You're getting very sleepy, mister.
Go ahead and close them.
[ Normal voice ] How can you already have the votes?
You don't even have a nominee. In fact, I'm pretty sure
Trump's gonna find out who his nominee is
at the same time you guys are.
Mitch McConnell and the Federalist Society
are gonna pick a name off a list,
and then Trump's gonna find out
when he shows up to the press conference
like an episode of "Love is Blind."
Then in that case, sure.
I mean, I hope he nominates Jessica
just because I would love to see her confirmation hearings.
[ As Jessica ] This whole thing is a lot right now.
And I do want to be a Supreme Court justice,
but I'm also overwhelmed by all of these questions.
[ Normal voice ] Ah, "Love is Blind,"
you'll always be my first quarantine show.
It's not really that crazy, though.
For all you know, Trump could nominate one of his buddies,
like the demon sperm doctor or the My Pillow guy.
[ As Trump ] He knows all about cases.
He makes some of the best pillowcases
[ Chuckling ] in the world.
I want to thank my friend Sal Gentile
who wrote me that joke.
You know, he usually comes at me pretty hard,
but every now and then, he writes me a zinger.
Thank you, Sal. I know you're not gonna vote for me.
[ Chuckles ]
[ Normal voice ] In fact, on Monday,
Trump called in for his weekly
teletherapy session with the "Fox & Friends"
and joked that he would put one of them on the court.
-Well, I know you said you're gonna nominate a woman.
That's very important to women
who are voting in November for women's rights.
You said you -- -How about you, Ainsley?
I could nominate you, you know.
You don't have to be a lawyer. You don't have to be a judge.
-Do you want to make some news? Go ahead and make some news
right now, Mr. President. Who's it gonna be?
-She would sail through like nothing.
That would be probably a good idea.
That way, at least we know for sure she'll be approved.
-Ugh. Sounds like a creep at the yacht club hitting on
a woman in front of her husband. But sure, why not?
"Fox and Friends" is already the president.
Why not make them the Supreme Court, too?
Hell, just nominate a TV that plays Fox News 24/7.
Also, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence
when the president says in order to be a Supreme Court justice,
you don't have to be a lawyer, you don't have to be a judge.
[ As Trump ] In fact, you don't even have to be 18,
which is why I'm strongly considering "Young Sheldon."
We have a lot of Sheldons to choose from,
which is why it's a great country --
multiple, multiple Sheldons.
[ Normal voice ] This is the moment when
elected Democrats need to do everything possible
to preserve our democracy, hold hearings,
slow down Senate business, pour salt on Ted Cruz --
whatever you have to do to get Republicans
to commit to honor the results of the election,
because right now, they're openly advertising
their plan to steal it while the president refuses
to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.
There's as much chance of Trump admitting
he lost an election night as there is of him saying...
-♪ PopoZao, PopoZao ♪
[ Light laughter ]
-I fully didn't know that was coming.
This has been "A Closer Look." [ Laughs ]
♪♪
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