What.
Join us in the semantic vortex.
A place where language is fractured
and unmoored from meaning.
Where words mean their opposites--
Or mean nothing--
Or everything.
The Tower of Babel is fallen.
Babel.
Babel, Babel, babble, babble, baa, baa, baa, baa, baa.
[BLEATING]
Ba-ba-booey!
Hi, am I coming through?
Greetings!
I have come to talk to you about what happened to words.
CHORUS: Words!
They're the things guys tune out while they're
staring at your boobs.
CHORUS: Boobs!
But did you know words also have meaning--
or, at least, they used to.
Look, having nuclear-- my uncle was
a great professor and scientist and engineer,
Dr. John Trump at MIT.
Good genes, very good genes, OK?
Very smart.
The Wharton School of Finance--
very good, very smart.
You know, if you're a conservative Republican,
if I were a liberal--
if, like, OK.
I know words.
I have the best words.
He had the best words, and he took them and hid them.
The first one to go?
Lies.
We looked everywhere, but could not find the lost word.
Deliberate misstatement--
- Alternative facts-- - Unsupported--
Unsubstantiated--
Unverified--
Misstatements of a factual nature.
Unfounded and bogus--
Euphenism.
"Euphenism."
Sure.
For POTUS and his fifth rate entourage of lackeys
and lickspittles, the dictionary was fit only
for wiping one's ample ass.
Oh look, Trumps spell like real folks, how virtuous!
The one good thing about life in a fear-based regime
is getting to play Scrabble with your commander
and we were denied even that.
But while our president struggles with monolingualism
may have seemed excusable it completely mortifying,
his team's willful perversion of words and their meanings
was not--
like that time Comey had a chat with Trump,
then wrote it down so he'd remember it,
which is a thing I think we said we'd do
but never got around to because our phones kept giving us heart
attacks with constant news alerts
and-- anyway, next thing you know,
the irritatingly upright law man had a new nickname.
He's a leaker.
Not necessarily a bad thing.
Pee tape.
Remember when the crime of leaking had a legal meaning--
"to intentionally disclose secret information"?
Sharing recollections of an unclassified conversation
doesn't make you a criminal--
it makes you Gossip Girl.
Gossip Girl.
Remember when "classified" had a legal meaning?
If those memos were classified--
Stop!
They weren't.
Classified would be if Comey had said this.
Hey, Duterte-- want to know where our nuclear subs are?
Here, I'll drop a pen and text it to you.
Shinzo Abe, North Korea fired a missile.
Let's game this out at the buffet.
Oh, right, somebody did blurt those out.
Who?
- Trump, it was Trump. - Yeah, it was Trump.
- Trump. - Totally Trump.
I guess we'll never know.
When new things came into the world,
new words were born to talk about the things.
- Fake news. - Thank you, English!
That descriptive turn of phrase should really
help the intelligence committees do their job of investigating
the very thing it describes.
And we know that the Russians were
promulgating fake news through Facebook and other outlets.
I think the biggest piece of fake news in this election
was that Donald Trump couldn't win.
Oh fuck.
OK, those words are useless now.
One day, fake news meant a deliberate hoax-- the next,
it meant an erroneous prediction.
Now step aside, word sorceress--
the death blow belongs to the master.
CNN and MSNBC are fake news.
Nonsense accomplished!
Release the fake doctor on to the real news channel
to vomit it in their faces.
Well, unfortunately, what you've just spun
is classic fake news.
You-- you-- - What is fake--
- --create-- - --about what I said?
The part where you said it, Chris!
Shh, Chris, don't struggle.
It will only destroy your soul.
Ask Don Lemon!
Hi, this is fake news.
This is-- this is not--
this is not a news story.
Do you actually know what the definition of fake news is?
What we're doing right now.
This story that we're doing right now
is not to intentionally deceive anyone.
We are simply talking about the cost to keep a president safe.
There is nothing fake about that.
Please stop it with that stupid talking point
that it is a fake news story.
If you don't want to participate in the news
stories on this network, then don't come on and participate.
But don't call them fake because you don't agree with them.
Go on.
Don, this is a fake news story and my opinion--
Gahhh!
Resistance is futile.
Government is the deep state.
Expertise is dangerous elitism.
Language is dead.
If being complicit is wanting to be a force for good
and to make a positive impact, then I'm complicit.
That is not what complicit means!
Is it?
I don't fucking know!
I thought it meant "involved with others
in an illegal activity or wrongdoing,"
but I guess it has whatever bullshit new meaning
you decide to architect for it.
Architect is not a transitive verb.
Oh, but gaslight is.
No, but typically words matter when political leaders--
Oh, please, this "words matter" stuff.
I mean, this is ridiculous.
What does he mean when he says words?
Does he mean the words or does he mean something
sort of like the word?
And with their sanity shattered,
CNN's top talent turned to nihilism.
Wolf Blitzer's brain was so scrambled,
he could only find joy in a turtle.
Hello, turtle!
Hello, turtle.
Konichiwa, [JAPANESE].
Hello, you evolutionary island of permanence
in a maelstrom of semantic collapse.
Don't tell Wolf!
It's just turtles--
--all the way down.
Journalists now huddle in a tiny lifeboat
on a heaving ocean of pure gibberish,
arguing with their doppelgangers.
And now he's being investigated
by the Department of Justice.
And that's why, as I said, no investigation.
What-- you've now said that he is being investigated
after saying that you didn't-- - No.
You-- you just said, sir--
No, he's not being investigated.
--that he's-- you just said that he's being investigated.
No, Chris, I said that the invest-- anything--
let me be crystal clear.
CHRIS WALLACE: Sir, you just said--
Period.
CHRIS WALLACE: --two times that he's being investigated.
No.
I've been crystal clear that the president is not and has
not been under investigation.
I don't think I could be any clearer than that.
Well, you don't know that he's not
under investigation again, sir. I mean, you might--
I cannot read the mind-- you're right, Chris.
I can't read the mind of the special prosecutor.
Well then, good. OK, so we're in agreement.
Can't read the mind.
Cannot read the mind-- you know what?
Let me be crystal clear.
JAY SEKULOW (VOICEOVER): Let me be crystal clear.
Let me be clear. - No, no, no, no, no.
That is not what my words meant.
No, no, stop, no, no, please don't, no.
We will have been right back.
- Front. - All.
- Full. - Front.
- All. - Full.
- Front. - All.
Full