-Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another
attic show without tacos.
And I say without tacos.
Because that's an anagram for addict shows.
And personally, I think coming up with anagrams
is a fun way to pass time during a pandemic --
denim cap, which is a good one
because maybe the only thing worse than wearing
a denim cap is going through a pandemic. See?
Aren't anagrams more fun than baking a loaf of sour dough
or noon day rye, which is an anagram for Andy Rooney,
who I realize I'm starting to sound like.
Have you ever noticed how anagrams are just
the same letters in a different order?
But look, I'm not here to talk about Portland mud.
I'm here to talk about Donald Trump.
Because the president and his political allies are,
once again, trying to subvert the 2020 election,
sue it the 2020 convertible by using the levers of power
to target political opponents and disrupt
the voting process, itself.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look.
♪♪
Donald Trump is a deranged man.
We have been over this. You guys know the deal.
If this show were a book, that would be the subtitle.
His brain is likely the gelatinous texture
and consistency of pumpkin pie filling,
and there is no way to treat a brain ailment
like that, though, I guess we're going to find out
if hydroxychloroquine helps.
Trump is a deeply paranoid guy who sees enemies
and shadowy plots everywhere he looks.
And he encourages others to see those same conspiracies.
On Tuesday, for example, he met with farmers
and told the potato farmer from Virginia
that the state government was somehow trying
to take away the Second Amendment.
-We're going after Virginia with your crazy governor.
We're going after Virginia.
They want to take your Second Amendment away,
you know that right?
You will have nobody guarding your potatoes.
-I have been in quarantine for two months with two kids
and I still haven't said anything that crazy.
You know that farmer was like, "Oh, damn.
am I supposed to be guarding my potatoes right now?"
You know what's guarding your potatoes,
the fact that they cost about 12 cents a pound
and grow underground.
Of course, Trump probably thinks potatoes grow in bags
on supermarket shelves. I'm just kidding.
He's never been to a supermarket.
But that's how Trump's mind works.
He sees deranged conspiracies everywhere.
Take voting.
We like to think of it as perhaps
the single most sacred principle underpinning our democracy.
Voting is a universal right, not a privilege.
Even the Republican Party, which has for decades committed
itself to suppressing the votes of marginalized people
through voter I.D. laws and gerrymandering,
knows enough to at least pay lip service to that idea.
But on Wednesday, as is his want,
Trump just blurted out the truth during an incoherent rant
on mail-in voting.
He sees voting as an honor, not a right.
-I think just common sense would tell you
that it's massive manipulation can take place.
Massive.
And you do, you have cases of fraudulent ballots
where they actually print them
and they give them to people to sign.
Maybe the same person signs them
with different writing, different pens.
I don't know. A lot of things can happen.
Now, if you can, you should go and vote.
Voting is an honor.
It shouldn't be something where they send you
a pile of stuff and you send it back.
-They send you a pile of stuff and you send it back.
That's mail. That's how the mail works.
Now you go to a restaurant and send chicken to a stranger
you've never met, and the next thing you know
they bring it to you on a plate.
It makes no sense.
You know, voter fraud is virtually
non-existent in this country.
The most famous recent example with a voter fraud scheme
concocted by Republicans to cheat in an
Congressional election in North Carolina in 2018,
which invalidated the election and resulted in a redo.
Now, you might be wondering if Democratic voter fraud
is so supposedly widespread as Republicans claim,
why do we only know about voter fraud cases
involving Republicans?
MSNBC asked the then executive director
of the North Carolina GOP that question,
and he did not have a particularly good answer.
-We constantly are hearing Republicans say
that Democrats are engaged in voter fraud.
There is almost never any evidence of that,
and right here you're holding a board that has at least
22 cases of voter fraud in the state of North Carolina
and executed by Republicans in one district.
-In one Congressional district on one election.
-So, 22 cases of voter fraud by a Republican.
Where are the Democratic cases of voter fraud?
-Well -- well, I-I-I'm not keeping score of that.
-Well -- well -- well, it looks like you caught me
with my britches down, but as you have insulted
my honor, I have no recourse but to challenge
you a dual tomorrow morning in the potato field.
And yet yesterday, Trump threatened on Twitter
to unilaterally withhold funding from the states of Michigan
and Nevada simply for mailing out applications
for absentee ballots, which is perfectly legal
in which states with Democratic
and Republican governors have done for years.
Just five months, after he got impeached for threatening
to withhold funding from Ukraine
unless they interfere in the election.
In two months after he said governors who want help
from the federal government have to treat him well,
he keeps using the same move over and over.
It's only a matter of time before he threatens to withhold
funding from the post office, unless they promise to look at
every ballot and dump the ones marked for Biden in the shredder
he uses for his tax returns.
It comes with an extra large bin.
And the Republican party is fully
in lock step behind Trump.
In the middle of a pandemic that has killed more
than 90,000 Americans and created the economy,
they're transforming the Senate into an arm
of the Presidents' campaign.
The Senate Judiciary Committee,
led by Lindsey Graham is moving forward
with an investigation of the origins
of the Russia probe in an effort to target Obama administration
officials in the Senate Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs Committee led by Ron Johnson
who voted to subpoena documents
as part of an investigation of Hunter Biden.
The same investigation Trump got impeached for,
and Republicans are fine with all of it.
You might get a little grumble, you know, from Mitt Romney
and Susan Collins might form a committee
to look into the possibility of furrowing her brow.
But otherwise the GOP is done with all of it.
They're like bank robbers who get caught planning a heist
and then say, "Should we do it anyway?"
Republicans are just as paranoid and conspiratorial as Trump.
He didn't come out of nowhere. He fits perfectly in the GOP.
They've concocted an insane fantasy
in which Obama spied on Trump by secretly monitoring
suspicious calls by Michael Flynn
and not telling Trump about it,
as Johnson claimed Tuesday on Fox News.
-So if that were the case, that they were genuinely
concerned that there was some compromise or something
going on, it was nefarious on those phone calls,
why would they have not told the incoming
President of the United States?
-Because it's a corrupt transition process.
You know, it's exactly what they should have done.
-They did. This isn't secret.
Obama warned then President-elect Trump
about Flynn during a meeting in the oval office
two days after the election.
I mean, do you remember?
That incredibly bizarre meeting where Trump sat stone-faced
next to Obama like a terrified seventh grader
who just got called into the principal's office?
These guys have concocted a bunch
of insane conspiracy theories.
Now they're using the levers of the government
to suppress votes and drum up politically
motivated investigation,
and they're doing that because they're losing.
Polls show Americans broadly dissatisfied with Trump's
handling of the pandemic and Biden
consistently ahead of Trump.
And when a Democrat is ahead of Trump in the polls,
it's all over, baby.
Oh.
Right.
The President has badly mishandled the massive
cataclysm that has left nearly 100,000 Americans dead
and the economy in tatters.
Yet, on Wednesday he insisted he had actually handled
the situation perfectly.
-Mr. President, with four percent of the world population
and 30 percent of the outbreak,
what would you have done differently
facing this crisis?
-Well, nothing. -Are you sure?
You don't want to think about it for maybe another second?
You don't think you would have changed anything
like, you know, maybe you shouldn't have said
coronavirus would disappear like a miracle,
that it was like the flu or that you could cure it
but chopping Tide GO Stiks
and shining a heat lamp up your ass?
Okay.
In reality, of course, there are lots of things
we could have been doing and should be doing now
to suppress the outbreak.
New data reported by the the "New York Times"
last night suggested that lockdown delays
cost at least 36,000 lives.
Instead Trump has been obsessed with pushing hydroxychloroquine
as an unproven miracle cure despite the fact
that his own FDA warns against taking it.
Now after claming out of nowhere
that he was taking hydroxychloroquine,
Trump announced on Wednesday that he was about to stop.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
-I think the regimen finishes in a day or two.
I think it's a two days.
-So Trump took an unproven drug for no reason
and decided arbitrarily the regimen finishes
in a day or two.
Yeah, I only have two days left, because last I check
there were just the two pills left in the dispenser.
You better not be holding out on me, Micky.
The President's pushing dangerous miracle cures
when there are actually lots of things, like testing,
contact tracing and isolation we could doing to save lives.
In fact, this week we have provided a fairly stark contrast
between things that do work and things that don't work
in combating the coronavirus pandemic
and which of those Trump has chose on the embrace.
For example, there was a polling this week that experiments
by a team in Hong Kong found that the coronavirus
transmission rate via respiratory droplets
or airborne particles dropped by as much as 75 percent
when surgical masks were used.
Now, that's potentially huge news.
However, there is one big caveat to this story.
The study used hamsters in two cages.
One group of hamsters infected with Covid-19
and the other healthy.
Now, if you're wondering how one group of hamsters
got infected, they were the hamsters
who violated stay-at-home orders to get haircuts.
You guys want to know something fun?
You see whatever that picture is?
I haven't seen it yet. You are seeing it before I do.
We just write hamster with super-styled haircut,
and then a member of our incredible graphics team
working from their department makes it.
Then I pretend to look at it like this.
I'm like...
I'm just -- I'm just staring at
the ceiling in my attic.
I miss being at work, guys.
I'm over this reacquainting funk.
Also, the study just used mask barriers in the cages.
They didn't actually make the hamsters wear masks,
but I really wish they had because that would mean,
you know, actually it's someone's
job to make tiny hamster-sized face masks.
And then from that, we could extrapolate they also make
hamster-sized accessories like gloves, you know,
briefcases, tank tops, baseball helmets.
And, of course, tiny cages for the pet hamsters
tiny pet hamsters.
Again, I have no idea
what any of those graphics are gonna look like,
but I assume they're fun. I hope you enjoy them.
So, this finding is obviously preliminary
and has some caveats, but it's consistent
with what we know about countries
that have adopted widespread masks wearing along
with other techniques like contact tracing.
By and large they have a lot more success containing
the pandemic than we have.
Widespread masks wearing along with testing,
contact tracing and isolation is one of a few
simple measures that could very possibly help us
get back to some semblance of normalcy.
And yet conservatives have decided to turn it
into yet another dumb culture war issue.
Some have even theorized that it's a media conspiracy
to keep people permanently afraid.
-Rush Limbaugh made a great point, as he always does,
on the radio the other day.
And he said the virus itself, as it weakens
and states start reopening, the media that have been
selling this panic, panic, panic, for weeks and weeks
and weeks, they have fewer images to sell
their hysteria to justify continued lockdowns.
But the masks, well, they're kind of a constant reminder.
You see the mask and you think you're not safe,
you are not back to normal.
Not even close. -Okay.
First of all, any time someone says Rush Limbaugh
made a great point the other day,
that's your cue to exit the conversation.
That's usually the point on Thanksgiving
where you excuse yourself, go to the bathroom
and take a hit off your vape pen, or alternatively,
look for your vape pen, realize you forgot it
and frantically search the medicine cabinet
for something that will get you high.
Oh, amoxicillin.
I had a potato with it.
Second, you think people need to see masks
to be reminded that things are bad?
I assure you, no one needs to be reminded.
We can't go to the gym.
Our mail is soaked in so much Lysol
we can barely read the return address,
and we've been locked in our houses
with our kids for three months.
I'm so desperate to keep my children
entertained, I spent all month making wasp T-shirts
and then we did not one, not two, but three takes.
Now they want to know when their next gig is.
My younger one keeps telling me he has an agent now,
and given how crazy [bleep] is, I honestly can't tell
if he is joking or not.
The point is mass wearing
isn't some liberal media conspiracy.
There is evidence to suggest it works.
Lots of other countries do it.
The vast majority of Americans agree with it.
A new poll out on Wednesday found that 62 percent
of Americans say deciding to wear a face mask
is more a matter of public health
than a matter of personal choice.
About two-thirds say they always or mostly wear a face mask
or other covering when they're in public
and near other people, and 69 percent say that it's
a sign of respectfulness to wear a face mask
when in public and near other people.
And they're right. It's just common decency.
If you know that coughing or breathing on someone
can get them sick, you cover your mouth,
unless are you Trump, in which case you force everyone
to cluster together next to you
in a tiny briefing room and repeatedly grab
the microphone like the emcee at an open mic night.
Is anyone here --
Is anyone here from out of town? [ Coughs ]
You, sir, In the front room, front row right there.
Yeah, where are you from? I know it's you, Fauci.
I know it's you. Okay.
Can you tell me where you're from,
so I can burn you a couple times, Fauci?
Hey, we only -- we only roast the ones we love,
and I love you, Fauci. You're my best friend.
And despite the fact that the CDC recommends it
and most Americans agree with it,
Trump again to refuse to wear a mask today while touring
a Ford plant in Michigan after Ford
had initially said they would require one.
Trump and Vice President Mike Pence repeatedly refused
to wear masks in settings where they were required
or where everyone around them was wearing one.
But aside the fact that Trump and Pence
are ignoring their own government's guidelines
on mask wearing or the stupid
conservative culture war over masks,
why do you guys have to be such dicks about everything?
Just be polite.
If you go over to someone's house
and they ask you to take your shoes off,
you take your shoes off.
Then you quietly make a mental note
that you're not going to any more of Sharon's game nights.
You don't make a big show of leaving them on
and tracking mud everywhere,
or in Trump's case, toilet paper.
There's simple straight forward things
we could have done and could be doing now
to suppress the outbreak and safely get back
to some semblance of normalcy.
Instead, the President and his allies are spending
their time trying to subvert the 2020 elections.
They're concocting wild fantasies about Obama spying
or Democrats committing voter fraud.
None of that has any basis in reality.
Soon Trump is going to start telling people
if he doesn't get re-elected...
You'll have nobody guarding your potatoes.
-This has been a looser lock.
-Anagram!
♪♪
-During the Covid crisis, City Harvest
has been stepping up to rescue and deliver
more food to meet the increased need in New York City.
If you're watching this online, you can hit the donate button.
Stay safe, wash your hands. We love you.