-As wildfires and an out-of-control pandemic
continue to rage, the president and his party
are descending deeper into lawless authoritarianism.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Suspenseful theme plays ]
Donald Trump and his allies desperately want you to believe
that, for the last four years,
Joe Biden has been the president.
For example, last week, the Trump campaign
released an ad with the text...
I mean, he does live here, but that's about it.
By the same token, this is Ben Affleck's America
or Cue Card Wally's America.
-Seth, I would love to tell you
about my healthcare plan. -No, no, Wally.
And, on "Meet the Press" yesterday,
GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel had this to say
when asked about Trump's coronavirus failures.
-You compare us to the rest of the Western world,
and we have failed.
Is there any way to look at this and compare to the Western world
and say that we've done better than other countries?
-I will just tell you right now, if Democrats were in charge,
if Joe Biden had his way --
Go look at his statements in January,
when he said the president was being xenophobic
-He's not the president. -and hysterical
for closing the borders to China.
-He's not the president. -No, no no.
He was running for president
and he had the same data and the same information.
So I think it's disgusting to take a crisis in our country
and try and lay it at the feet of the president.
-First of all, I'm not sure Biden did have the same data
and information as the sitting president.
With that said, Trump probably never looked at that data,
so, maybe that's what she means?
"Joe Biden has access to cable news and Twitter,
just like the president."
And I'm not sure it is disgusting
to take a crisis in our country and lay it at the feet
of the guy who's in charge of our country.
What other options do we have?
Should we just leave a negative review
on Chipotle's Yelp page?
That hardly seems fair.
Seriously, you guys are the party
of personal responsibility,
except when the person is Donald Trump.
On Friday, we recorded 1,200 new deaths in one day.
Canada recorded zero.
Yet, when she was asked about Trump's failures,
McDaniel blamed the death toll, nonsensically,
on increased testing.
-How do you account for the fact that it's
the United States of America that accounts
for 25% of the world's deaths?
-Well, we do have more testing.
-Wait, what?!
Do you think the tests are killing people?
How deep are they pushing those swabs?
We test people to see if they're sick,
not to see if they're dead.
You know that, right?
Have you ever watched an episode of "Law & Order"?
When the M.E. shows up, it's to determine
cause of death, not, "Are they going to be okay?"
Trump has catastrophically mishandled the worst crisis
in this country in over 100 years
and he's lied to the American people about it,
as we learned last week from the bombshell Woodward tapes.
But it's not just that he's an incompetent liar.
He's also actively making it worse.
Last night, he held his first indoor rally in months
in Nevada, In violation of the state's COVID restrictions.
There were lots of chanting
and very little social distancing
and many refused to wear masks at all.
If you were actively trying to get people sick,
this is how you would do it.
The only way he could spread the virus more efficiently is
to hold a rally at a meatpacking plant
and charge one French kiss for admission.
At his next rally, there's gonna be one
Make America Great Again Kleenex that everyone has to share.
[ As Trump ] Just blow your nose and pass it around.
[ Singsong ] Trump fever!
We know these events can seed outbreaks
because it's already happened.
After Trump's Tulsa rally in June,
the local health director said it was likely
the source of a surge in cases there.
Even the current director of the National Institutes of Health,
Francis Collins, who's normally very mild-mannered,
had harsh words for how irresponsible these events are.
-What do you think when you see these images
of an event like this?
-It just deeply puzzles me, Sanjay.
How did we get here?
Imagine you were an alien who landed on planet Earth
and you saw that our planet
was afflicted by an infectious disease
and that masks were an effective way to prevent the spread.
And, yet, when you went around,
you saw some people not wearing them
and some people wearing them and you tried to figure out why
and it turned out it was their political party.
And you would scratch your head and think
this is just not a planet that has
[ Laughing ] much promise for the future.
-Well, I mean, at this point, I'm guessing
most intergalactic ports have travel advisories
warning aliens not to come to Earth.
And what a terrible time for an alien to land here,
if they were lookin' for any kind of attention.
[ Robotically ] I am Bylor from Grammax Seven.
What?! Okay, good for you.
Just put on a [bleep] mask while you're here, okay?
If an alien landed on planet Earth right now,
they'd take one look around, shift into reverse,
and hightail it outta here like a family of tourists
who took a wrong turn on vacation.
"There's a deadly virus and the sky is orange?
You know what, kids? Get back in the sponsorship.
I don't care!
You can pee when we get to Venus!"
As controversial as this may sound to Republicans,
the fact is Donald Trump is currently the president
And he's overseen an era of crisis
unprecedented in our lifetimes.
It's hard to watch
what's happening in our country right now
and avoid the conclusion that everything is broken --
rich ghouls are dismantling the post office,
kids can't go to school,
there are massive lines at food banks,
we're nearing 200,000 COVID deaths;
and, in the West, millions of acres have burned,
the air itself is a health hazard
and the sky is literally orange.
I mean, holy [bleep]
This looks like a scene from "Total Recall."
No wonder Kuato's been all over the TV lately.
I'm sorry, America's Kuato.
When Trump flies in to tour the damage,
he should have the guitar guy from "Mad Max: Fury Road"
strapped to the front of Air Force One.
You know, the apocalyptic nature of the Trump era
has really been on the nose, in many ways,
but even I never thought we'd have to lock ourselves inside
and wear face masks while the sky turns blood-red.
I feel like I'm in a YA novel.
The only thing we're missing is Forest Whitaker in a mech suit,
tellin' us we have to find time crystals
to restore balance to the universe.
[ As Whitaker ] Schools are closed, the sky is orange,
and Tom Brady is on the Buccaneers.
We must reset the timeline.
The only upside of 2020 is there's a good chance
the film adaptation will star
Jennifer Lawrence and Timothee Chalamet
and we can all use just a little --
just a little bit more Chalamet.
Also, imagine finally reemerging from six months of quarantine,
only to be told you have to go back inside
for a different thing.
"Oh, is it COVID surging again?"
Um, no. It's not that.
It's -- Ooh! How do we put this?
The sky is on fire.
More than 3 million acres have burned in California, alone.
In Oregon, 40,000 people have been evacuated
and half a million are in potential danger zones.
And there is no doubt that the frequency
and intensity of these extreme weather events
have been supercharged by climate change.
New research shows that the Earth hasn't warmed this fast
in tens of millions of years.
L.A. County just set a new record temperature of 121°.
That's insane.
Scientists and experts have been clear
that what we're seeing right now
is the direct result of climate change.
-We just had two unprecedented heat waves back-to-back,
some of the hottest temperatures ever experienced
in the Southwest and in California,
both of them basically unprecedented,
made worse by climate change.
And that really dries out the foliage.
It dries out the brush. It dries out the trees.
What that does is it adds energy and heat to the atmosphere.
That dries out the brush.
It dries out the atmosphere.
It causes a moisture gap,
or moisture deficit, in the atmosphere
and research shows that that moisture deficit
can explain almost all of the increase
in burned area since the 1970s.
-That's right, climate change has produced
a moisture gap that's making wildfires worse.
Of course, a moisture gap is also what you call the distance
between Trump's lips and a bottle of water.
[ As Trump ] Damn you, water. C'mere.
Stop -- Stop playing co coy, water.
You guys, we gotta get someone to close the moisture gap.
Can we put Fauci on it, to work on a solution?
Why? What's he working on?
COVID, still?
Alright.
Six of the top 20 largest wildfires
in California's history have all happened just this year
and, if we don't take mass collective action
to address climate change now, things are only gonna get worse.
-Unfortunately, climate change is happening
right now in California
and we've been lengthening the fire season
quite considerably as we warm up the planet.
We know, because of research from scientists,
that we have 500% more risk for wildfires
during this climate-changed world than we would have before
and that's because it's really hot and dry
because we have had droughts.
And, of course, that drought,
which is caused by climate change,
has led to a lot of vegetation dying,
meaning there's a lot of brush lying around
that can easily light up.
The fact is, climate change is the real culprit
behind what we're seeing right now.
-Should we expect that trend to continue?
-Unfortunately, we should.
What scientists are telling us
is that we are entering a period of mega fires.
-I love when scientists say the hell with it
and give something a simple-to-understand,
yet terrifying, name,
just so we might pay a little bit of attention to it.
Most of the time, scientists use jargon,
like "anthropogenic climate change"
or "atmospheric aerosols," but, when they discover
something really bad, they just give it a name
that makes you [bleep] your pants.
"So, as you can see here, rising heat combines
with wind turbulence to form eddes of air
that create a vortex of combustible gases
and hexapod invertebrates,
or what we in the science community call...
We all laughed when Syfy came out with "Sharknado,"
but, if they make another one,
I'm gonna be watching it with a notepad.
Sharks can penetrate cinder block.
Okay. Good to know. Good to know.
So while a deadly pandemic continued to grow
in at least 11 states,
with the nation's top infectious disease expert
calling the situation disturbing,
and historic wildfires scorched
millions of acres across the West,
turning the sky orange and making the air
a health hazard for millions of Americans,
what was the president of the United States doing?
He was watchin' hours and hours of Fox News.
-I watch some of the...shows.
I watched Liz McDonald.
She's fantastic.
I watched Fox Business.
I watched Lou Dobbs last night, Sean Hannity last night,
Tucker last night, Laura.
I watched "Fox & Friends" in the morning.
You watch these shows,
you don't have to go too far into the details.
They cover things that are --
It's really an amazing thing.
-My God, man, you just named
like six different Fox News shows!
Were you stuck overnight in an airport?
No one should watch that much Fox News in one sitting.
That's like telling your doctor you smoke once a day,
but you cram 50 cigarettes in your mouth at once.
Also, can we go back to this comment?
-You watch these shows,
you don't have to go too far into the details.
-[ Laughing ] Yeah. Heaven forbid we get caught up
in the details on our news shows.
[ As Trump ] You know what I like about Hannity?
Never uses words that are longer than one syllable.
Very easy to follow.
That's the president of the United States,
bragging that, as several states were on fire
and the death toll from an out-of-control pandemic
neared 200,000, he was sitting
in front of his TV, watching Fox News,
like a grandpa whose Rascal scooter ran out of batteries.
[ Gravelly voice ] Someone push me into the other room.
And, when he's not watching Fox,
he's on Fox, like on Saturday, when he sat down
for an interview with Jeanine Pirro,
where he threatened to send federal forces
to put down protests after the election,
falsely claimed shadowy figures were behind civil unrest,
and celebrated extrajudicial killings by state forces.
-Let's say there are threats.
They say that they're gonna threaten riots,
if they lose on election night.
Assuming we get a winner on election night.
What are you gonna do? -We'll put 'em down
very quickly, if we do that. -How are you gonna do that?
-We have the right to do that.
We have the power to do that, if we want.
Look, it's called insurrection.
The suburbs is gonna be next. -Yeah!
-Look, the suburbs, the people, these same protesters --
but they're not protesters.
They're anarchists, they're agitators,
-Who are they? -and they're rioters.
-Who are they? -They're people that,
in many cases, are paid.
Now, we sent in the U.S. Marshals
for the killer
and, in a short period of time, they ended in a gunfight.
This guy was a violent criminal -A lotta them out there.
-and the U.S. Marshals killed him.
And I will tell you something.
That's the way it has to be.
There has to be retribution when you have crime like this.
-I mean, just listen to the words he's using --
retribution, agitators, insurrection.
It's like fascist magnetic poetry.
And also, no one is destroying the suburbs.
What are you talkin' about? The only thing
destroying the suburbs is the proliferation
of Spencer's gifts in our nation's malls,
poisoning our children's minds
with their sexy calendars!
As a general rule, I wouldn't trust Jeanine Pirro
as a source of information on anything,
since I'm pretty sure her blood alcohol level
is like 99% white wine spritzer.
Her show on mute is still louder than an F-15 taking off.
It's hard to watch this and avoid the conclusion
that these ghouls want a straight-up fascist state
where the government can put down protests with violence
and seek extrajudicial retribution against suspects.
Meanwhile, they don't care if the country crumbles.
Large parts of the West are on fire,
a deadly virus is on the rise in 11 states,
and Americans are lining up for hours at food banks.
And, if you're wondering which of those crises
the president is currently keeping an eye on,
don't worry, he's closely monitoring...
-The...shows.
-This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪
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