-Fox News and the conservative movement
are still reeling from the stunning revelations
contained in the most recent court filing
from the $1.6 billion Dominion lawsuit
which showed that in private, Fox personalities
pushing the big lie about the 2020 election
knew it was a lie, and in some cases,
they even admitted that they were disgusted by Trump
and that the entirety of his presidency was a disaster.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
♪♪
It feels like Republicans in Washington
and on Fox News can't go a day without embarrassing themselves.
They almost seem to enjoy it,
like when they blew their chance to win back the Senate,
thanks in part to
vampire/werewolf enthusiast Herschel Walker,
when they made Kevin McCarthy sit through
a [bleep] "Groundhog Day" reboot to become speaker,
or when Marjorie Taylor Greene
lost her mind at the State of the Union
in a white fur collar, like a lady
screaming at a Little League game
despite the fact that none of the kids are hers.
"You got to catch that, Timmy!"
"That kid's name isn't Timmy. Who is that lady?"
"I can hear you whispering about me!
I don't need to have a kid on the team to be here, Timmy!"
"Does she think my name is Timmy?
What is...?"
Yesterday, for example,
Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin,
a multi-millionaire who owns a plumbing business
as well as two first names,
got into a tense exchange
with the president of the Teamsters Union
during a committee hearing chaired by Bernie Sanders.
The hearing was about the growing influence of unions
and the importance of allowing workers to organize
without any illicit corporate union busting.
And as you can see from this clip,
I think it's safe to say unions are done
taking crap from wealthy CEOs and their patrons in Washington.
-You talk about CEOs that are making all this money.
And what do you make, Mr. O'Brien?
What do you bring for that salary?
-What do I bring? -Yeah.
What job have you committed or have you started?
What job have you created? One job.
Other than sucking the paycheck out of somebody else
that you want to say that you're trying to provide
because you're forcing them to pay dues?
-No, we don't force anybody --
-Senator, you've asked the question.
-You're out of line.
-No, don't tell me I'm -- -You are out of line.
-Don't tell me I'm out of line.
-You frame the statement like a tough guy.
-You need to shut your mouth. -Yeah?
-Because you don't know what you're talking about.
-You're going to tell me to shut my mouth?
-Yes, I did. -Hold it, hold it.
-Tough guy, I'm not afraid of physical --
-Hold it!
-Don't sit there and tell me I'm out of line.
-As far as my salary goes, my salary,
if you follow me around, I walk --
I actually look at this building.
I bet you I work more hours than you do.
Twice as many hours. -That's impossible.
-No, that is -- that's true.
We hold greedy CEOs like yourself accountable.
-You're calling me a greedy C.E.O.?
-Oh, yeah. You are.
-You want to attack my salary? I'll attack yours.
-Go ahead! -What did you make?
What did you make when you owned your company?
-When I made my company?
I kept my salary down at about $50,000 a year,
because I invested every penny into it.
-Okay. Alright. You mean you hid money?
-No, I didn't hide -- Oh, hold on a second.
He said that's out of line.
-We're even. We're even.
-We're not even close to being even.
-Oh. -You think it's smart?
You think you're funny?
-No. -You're not.
-You think you're funny.
-Listen...
Mark, Marky-Mark, Markwayne. Mark Wayne Gacy.
I can't remember. It's obvious...
It's obvious from your accent, you're from out of town.
So as a New Englander myself, let me give you some advice.
Don't ever say, "Do you think you're funny?"
to a bald teamster with a Boston accent.
That's usually when the needle drops on a Dropkick Murphys song
and the montage starts, if you get what I mean.
And based on the face he's making,
I believe he does think he's funny.
I also think he's funny, because I don't want trouble either.
Now, CEOs in the millionaire class
are clearly terrified of the possibility
that workers might have more power
if they can organize without interference,
and you can see the terror on Mullin's face.
In fact, the best part to me
is when the multi-millionaire senator,
whose net worth is reportedly between $31 and $75 million,
says he took a $50,000 salary
and then is immediately told he's hiding it.
It catches Mullin so off-guard,
he has to hear it twice before he's offended.
-You mean you hid money? -No, I didn't hide --
Oh, hold on a second.
[ Laughter ]
-It's like watching Moe Szyslak
realize there's no one at the bar named "Mike Rotch."
"Hey!"
Also, I love Bernie getting in the middle
of that whole thing to restore --
There's something very funny about referee Bernie.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I'm gonna say the same thing about this fight
that I say about the big banks.
Break it up!"
That clip once again exposes the right's BS about standing up
for the working class is all just a lie,
just like the lies they told over and over and over again
about the 2020 election, which they knew were lies,
as we've discovered from the nonstop avalanche
of embarrassing revelations in the Dominion lawsuit
against Fox News.
Take Fox host Tucker Carlson,
who we learned this week said in private
not just that the stolen election lies were insane
and that he hated Trump passionately,
but that the entire Trump presidency was a failure.
-Thanks to the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit
filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox,
we now know what Tucker Carlson really thinks about Donald Trump
and about Donald Trump's presidency.
Tucker Carlson said this about the Trump presidency --
-And look, I know he was never going to say that on camera,
but it would have been so fun to see Tucker
after the election being honest on TV
like a shellshocked basketball coach
giving a post-game press conference
after losing by 50 points.
"Hey, what was the biggest issue out there today, Coach?"
"Ohhh."
Uh, I guess I'd say
the biggest issue is we, uh...
[bleep] suck at basketball?"
[ Laughter ]
So Tucker admitted in private there was no upside to Trump.
Now you tell me.
I was still waiting for Infrastructure Week.
What about all his promises, like great jobs
or great health care or a great big wall?
What about the free hats?
Oh, God, were the hats not really free?
It's such a stunning admission that undercuts the entire
premise of the Trump presidency and the devil's bargain
the conservative movement has made with him.
It exposes their entire project as a sham and a fraud.
They debase themselves for a guy they were
personally disgusted by, and at the end of it,
they admitted they had nothing to show for it.
It was all a lie and they all knew it,
and now it's all coming out in public,
they were shilling for Trump, but in private,
they were saying -- -You're out of line.
-The latest example
of a GOP election denier caught lying is
former Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis.
You might remember her from that infamous press conference
where she stood next to Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani
while he leaked hair dye live on television.
And look, I'm not saying it's the worst thing
Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell did that day,
but how come neither of them stepped in
when their friend started to melt?
At least grab a fan or a bucket or something.
If that press conference had gone on any longer,
Rudy would have ended in a puddle on the floor.
"Quick, someone pour me in a soda can and take me
to my next press conference.
Just not a Diet Coke!
I don't want the boss to drink me."
[ Laughter ]
In fact, Ellis followed Rudy around on his tour
of swing states where he claimed the election was stolen,
including that time Trump called in on speakerphone
and she held up that phone to the mic so Trump
could ramble incoherently.
-I'm in the Oval Office right now
and it's very interesting to see what's going on.
And this was an election that we won easily.
We won it by a lot.
Anybody watching television the night of the election
was saying, "Wow."
I was called by the biggest political people,
"Congratulations, sir, on a big win."
And all of a sudden, ballots were dumped
all over the place and a lot of horrible things happened.
Very weird things happened.
But they're not weird to professionals
and they're not weird to Dominion
and other people that operate machines,
and they're not weird to the people
that handle the ballots where they were flooding the market.
People were getting two and three
and four ballots in their home.
People that were dead were signing up for ballots.
Not only were they coming in and putting in a ballot,
but dead people were requesting ballots.
-Trump always talked like he was trying to distract bank security
while Danny Ocean broke into the vault.
-"And now, if I wanted to open a checking account,
would the fees be higher than with the savings account?
Come on. Come on, Danny. We're running out of time."
As you heard there, one of Trump's deranged claims
was that dead people were requesting ballots
and the hosts on Fox were all watching
and taking their cues again, even though they were
privately complaining about how insane it was.
For example, according to "The New York Times,"
about a week after the election,
Tucker Carlson reportedly asked his producers,
"Do we have enough dead people for tonight?"
I will say, Tucker often has the expression of a man
who has just been told by a child, "I see dead people."
Watch.
-I see dead people.
[ Laughter ]
-I like that.
It was the first time I saw it and I liked it.
The only time the question,
"Do we have enough dead people?" is legitimate
is when you're casting extras for "The Last of Us."
"Do we have enough dead people for the shoot tonight?"
"Regular dead or mushroom dead?"
"Do you think you're being funny?"
"Alright, alright! Relax."
According to the "Times," that night,
he trumpeted the evidence borrowed
from a Trump campaign news release --
four allegedly dead Georgians had cast a ballot.
Within days, though, the campaign's spoon fed examples
began to fall apart.
Three of the dead Georgians were actually alive.
In fact, Tucker had to admit that he was wrong
in a humiliating correction.
In a statement, he said, "As we reported last week,
dead Americans voted in this election.
We shared a few examples.
But on Friday, we began to learn
some of the specific dead voters reported to us
as deceased are in fact alive."
Man, no one's ever seemed so bummed to learn
that someone they thought was dead
is actually alive.
He sounds like a guy
who poisoned his wife for insurance money
and then ran into her at the country club.
"Oh, Deborah!
You're here.
Didn't Jeeves make you your martini last night?
Damn it, Jeeves!
You lost your nerve, man!"
They all knew this was a ridiculous lie,
but they fed it to their viewers anyway
because they were terrified of losing their audience.
Sean Hannity wrote in one text, "You don't piss off the base."
And then another, a Fox producer wrote to host Maria Bartiromo,
"To be honest, our audience doesn't want to hear
about a peaceful transition."
That's the key right there. That explains it all.
Fox's audience doesn't want to hear the truth,
so Fox chose not to tell them.
Fox News doesn't deliver the news.
They take requests and do their best to fulfill them.
They're basically overpaid wedding DJs.
"What?
What do you want? Crooked voting machines?
Alright, I'll try to get it in after 'The Electric Slide.'"
Bartiromo was one of the key proponents of the Big Lie.
In fact, she repeatedly hosted Ellis on her show
to say stuff like this --
-We have affidavits from witnesses.
We have voter intimidation.
We have the ballots that were manipulated.
We have all kinds of statistics that show that
this was a coordinated effort
in all of these states to transfer votes
either from Trump to Biden to manipulate the ballots,
to count them in secret.
President Trump is right
that there was widespread fraud in this election.
We have at least six states that were corrupted,
if not more, through the voting systems.
We know that President Trump won in a landslide.
The outcome of this election is actually fraudulent.
It's wrong, and we understand
that when we subtract all of the illegal ballots,
you can see that President Trump actually won in a landslide.
-When you subtract all the illegal ballots, you can see
that President Trump actually won in a landslide.
Just ask my colleague, Sody Giuliani.
[ Laughter ]
Well, not shocking to learn that just like everyone else
at Fox, Ellis is also lying.
Ellis admitted in a sworn statement released on Wednesday
that she had knowingly misrepresented the facts
in several of her public claims that widespread voting fraud
led to Trump's defeat, and specifically,
the filing lists all of the Ellis quotes
we just showed you from Fox News.
How does this keep happening?
We keep getting new court filings
where everyone from Trump's legal team
to his closest allies on Fox News
all admit they were full of [bleep].
It's only a matter of time before we see
a leaked text from Trump himself that says --
[ Laughter ]
"I look and sound like a lunatic."
[ Laughter ]
It's one thing to know that Trump, his legal team,
and his allies on Fox were lying, which we've always known.
But now we know that they knew they were lying at the time
thanks to this nonstop avalanche
of leaked text messages and court filings.
It's honestly impossible to keep up with all of it.
It feels like the truth is finally being --
-Dumped all over the place.
-This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪