-A Democratic congresswoman made a powerful speech
to her colleagues to take action now
to solve the cost-of-living crisis.
Also, we found out
that Donald Trump wanted to bomb Mexico
and thought we could pretend it wasn't us.
Two stories, one look. The classic two-hander.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
The Republican Party remains fully in thrall to Donald Trump,
even though he's an aspiring authoritarian
and a crazy person.
We've known that for a long time,
and yet somehow we keep learning more about
just how insane Trump is on an almost daily basis.
For example, we found out this week
that he asked his advisers if China had a hurricane gun
they were shooting at us to create severe weather events.
Now, I'm assuming Trump was thinking of a giant weapon
that could create actual Category 5 hurricanes.
But because his brain only works in cartoons,
there's also a chance he thought they had a tiny handheld gun
that shot out little rain clouds
that would follow him around wherever he went.
[As Trump] This is exactly what they did the Daffy Duck.
We love -- we love Daffy Duck, don't we?
We love -- You know, I once met Daffy
on the dance floor at Studio 54 back in 1982.
I met Daffy, and he said -- he came up to me
and he said something I'll never forget.
He said, "You...
You're despicable." And...
[ Laughter ]
And I said, "That's so true. Daffy, that's so true."
[ Laughter ]
[Normal voice] Yet somehow, that was not the most insane thing
we learned recently, because we also found out
from former Defense Secretary Mark Esper
that Trump wanted to bomb Mexico
and thought we could get away with it
because no one would know it was us.
-Former President Trump reportedly wanted
to launch missiles into Mexico
to destroy the drug labs and cartels.
The allegation comes from former Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
In a new book obtained by The New York Times,
Esper writes Trump asked him at least twice
about the possibility of the airstrikes
and said no one would know it was the U.S.
-The president pulls me aside on at least a couple occasions
and suggests that maybe we have the U.S. military
shoot missiles into Mexico.
-Shoot missiles into Mexico for what?
-He would say to -- to go after the cartels.
I had to explain to him, we can't do that.
It would violate international law.
-You politely pushed back on the idea.
Did President Trump really say no one would know it was us?
-Yes. Yes.
He -- He said that,
and I just thought it was fanciful, right?
Because of course it would be us.
I was reluctant to tell the story
because I think -- I thought people won't believe this.
-No, I mean, we believe it. Of course.
You know, we -- we believe it.
I mean, there's nothing you can tell us about Donald Trump
that Donald Trump hasn't already told us about Donald Trump.
The guy said with his own words from his own mouth,
in public, on purpose,
that windmills cause cancer and that we should inject
disinfectant into people's lungs to cure coronavirus.
If you told me Donald Trump asked his advisers
in an Oval Office meeting to form an alliance
with Godzilla to steal the hurricane gun
and find all the fraudulent ballots smuggled in from,
I don't know, Xanadu, I'd be like,
"Sure, yeah, whatever. I believe it."
[ Laughter ]
But still -- still, I kind of can't get over
the fact that Trump thought we could bomb Mexico
without anyone knowing it was us.
Imagine you're Mexico.
The U.S. just had an election
where they chose a visibly insane game show host
who said horrible things about Mexicans,
and suddenly missiles start raining down on you.
Would you be mystified?
"Who's shooting these Patriot missiles at us?
Did someone say something that upset Costa Rica?"
So obviously it's critical
that we as a nation do everything in our power
to prevent this obviously unhinged demagogue
and his allies in the Republican Party
from regaining power.
And that, unfortunately, is where the Democrats come in.
Oof!
It's like if you yelled, "Avengers assemble!"
and only Hawkeye showed up.
[ Laughter ]
"And, uh, ehh...
FYI -- I did forget my arrows, guys.
It's gonna be the classic Hawkeye punches."
If you've been paying any attention at all to politics,
you know that Democrats are in dire straits right now.
You don't need a poll to tell you that.
All you have to do is watch
any Joe Biden press conference with the sound off.
He's always doing that thing where he leans over the podium
like every question is causing him physical pain.
He looks like --
looks like one of Trump's advisers
after Trump asked about the hurricane gun again.
[ Laughter ]
"Yeah, they, uh...
They don't got one of those, boss."
[ Laughter ]
Anyway, things are bad for Democrats.
And that's not just me saying that.
Take congresswoman
and progressive rising star Katie Porter,
who's perhaps best known for using congressional hearings
to grill some of the nation's most powerful figures,
from bankers to pharma CEOs to oil executives,
using props like a whiteboard
where she calculates the cost of living for a typical bank teller
or a big sign called Financial Services Bingo.
Everyone in Congress is so old,
she had to use bingo to get their attention.
"Quiet! Quiet! She's calling out numbers!"
Porter once even participated in a hearing
with oil execs via Zoom from her house
where she used bags of rice in the trunk of her car
to help visualize how much public land
oil companies could use for drilling,
given that oil companies were all opposed to a pause
on new federal drilling leases on public lands.
-How many acres of public land are already leased
by fossil fuel companies and not even used yet?
-I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding
as to how this process works and the time and resources --
-Reclaiming my time. Reclaiming my time.
The answer is 13.9 million acres.
To visualize how much land that is,
if each grain of rice were one acre,
that would be 479 pounds of rice.
The American Petroleum Institute even opposed
pausing more leasing on our lands,
they even sued to stop it,
because apparently this acreage wasn't enough.
Ms. Watkins,
do you support a pause on new federal oil and gas leases?
-No, I do not, 'cause I think it's important --
-You already have 13.9 million acres.
This is equivalent to Maryland and New Jersey combined.
How much more do you need?
-First of all, I love the dramatic reveal
when the automatic door slowly opens.
I've never been so excited
to see what's in the trunk of a minivan.
Usually when someone's opening the trunk of a car like that,
it's a mobster showing you a dead body.
"Yeah, the minivan's great
'cause the back seats lift right out.
I can get, like, five snitches in here.
Used to have to take a bunch of trips."
[ Laughter ]
It was such an effective visual metaphor.
If she had a music budget,
she could have added the score from "2001: A Space Odyssey."
[ "Also Sprach Zarathustra" plays ]
♪♪
I also love when they cut back to her
and she's just standing there stone-faced,
pouring out a bag of rice
like it's some sort of grain-based interrogation.
The oil execs must have been [bleep] their pants.
"Tell me what I want to know,
or you can say goodbye
to your precious Rice-A-Roni."
"Please, God, not the San Francisco treat!"
So, that -- that's Katie Porter.
She's a rising star in the Democratic Party,
and deservedly so.
And now she is warning her fellow Democrats
about the peril they face in the midterms
unless they do something real to improve people's lives.
According to Politico, Porter issued a wake-up call
to her fellow congressional Democrats
when she gave an emotional speech
about how inflation has been hitting her family for months
during a private House Democratic Caucus
meeting last week.
She said it seemed like the first time the personal toll
of high consumer prices had sunk in
for some lawmakers in the room.
Porter told Politico, "I had a colleague mention to me,
'We're not seeing it in the polls.'"
That's because inflation is so bad,
it's just screwing up the poll results.
[ Laughter ]
And just to be clear, I'm not saying inflation
is somehow the Democrats' fault.
They just happen to be in charge now,
so it's on them to do something about it.
But obviously, there are lots of causes for rising costs,
including corporate greed, supply chain problems
caused by a pandemic Trump let spiral out of control
because he thought it was a hoax,
which is why it's so craven and disingenuous
when Republicans shamelessly tweet
about how low gas prices were under Trump.
Like when Congressman Jim Jordan tweeted...
Yeah, man. I also remember that no one was buying gas
because we were all trapped in our homes,
hiding from a deadly respiratory disease
your guy thought could be cured by chugging a bottle of Windex.
Fuel prices are based,
among other things, on supply and demand.
And since no one was traveling anywhere,
meaning there were fewer cars on the road and planes in the sky,
gas was cheap as [bleep].
It's the same reason flat-screen TVs are cheap now,
because you can watch "Avatar 2" on your [bleep] phone.
By the way, I'm told you gotta see it that way.
[ Laughter ]
That's the way to see "Avatar 2,"
just with a phone super close to your face.
And don't put in EarPods. Let everybody hear it.
So, Republicans are obviously lying when they pretend to care
about the cost of living, and they have no plan whatsoever
to improve the lives of working people.
In fact, we found out today that supposed pro-worker populist
Donald Trump colluded with meat processors
to keep their factories open
even as COVID was ravaging their workers.
So Republicans clearly don't care about the working class.
They're much more focused
on canceling Mickey Mouse for being too woke.
Democrats have given voters so many reasons
Republicans are insane, they're probably like...
-How much more do you need?
-But still...
Still, it is on Democrats
to do something to improve people's lives,
like extend the massively popular child tax credit
or invest directly in green infrastructure,
forgive student loan debt, or expand healthcare.
And look, I get it. Joe Manchin is a giant ass-ache.
The dude rakes in cash from fossil fuels,
drives a Maserati and lives on a yacht called Almost Heaven,
which sounds less like the name of a yacht
and more like the title of an early-2000s rom-com
starring Ryan Reynolds and Mandy Moore.
Not my favorite movie,
but I watched it on an airplane once and I cried so hard
an air marshal had to tell me to shut the [bleep] up.
[ Laughter ]
'Cause I guess feeling something is against the law!
[ Laughter ]
Manchin has been stringing Democrats along
for over a year now, so Democrats just have to
call his bluff and say,
"What will you accept? We will pass it."
Which is why it's frustrating to read stuff like this
in The Atlantic this week --
What? Why? Look, we all know Manchin sucks
and he's gonna drag his heels,
but Chuck Schumer, what are you waiting for?
What's the problem here?
Are your glasses too far down your nose to read?
Does he realize glasses only work
if they're in front of your eyes?
Would you -- would you like another pair of glasses
to help find your glasses?
[ Laughter ]
"Oh, look at that.
They were way down at the end of my nose.
No wonder I couldn't govern."
Just call --
call Manchin's bluff and ask him what he wants.
If Manchin's bull[bleep] and his answer is actually
that he's opposed to everything, which is very possible,
then at least we'll know and we can move on.
It's like when you're trying to find something on TV
to watch with your partner. How about "Ozark"? Too dark.
How about "Better Call Saul"? Too slow?
At some point you just got to hand over the remote and say,
"Okay, you pick something."
And look, you'll probably end up watching something called
"The Teakettle Murders on BritBox with the subtitles on
because everyone talks like this --
[ British accent ]
[ Laughter ]
But at least you're watching something.
And believe me, I know it sucks
that this dude gets to call the shots.
I'd much rather live in a world where the deciding vote
was Katie Porter instead of Joe Manchin.
But we do not live in that world.
We live in a world where two obstructionist centrists
are stopping the Democrats from delivering on their agenda
while an unhinged Republican Party
remains laser-focused on dismantling democracy
and installing an authoritarian demagogue in power.
Republicans are so full of it,
you'd think they just ate...
-479 pounds of rice.
[ Laughter ]
-This has been "A Closer Look."
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