-Hello, everyone, and welcome back
to the Captain's quarters.
As we told you yesterday,
Giant Lobster Nemesis won our Twitter poll
for which Sea Captain B-plot we should further explore
and I want to assure you,
we're workin' on writin' that up.
Now, there was a fourth option on the poll, called Other,
and some of you have asked what would've happened,
had that won.
Well, I'll show you right now
because you guys really dodged a bullet.
We were gonna introduce a duck.
He was gonna be kinda like a nebbishy,
neurotic Brooklyn-type duck,
who lives in the Prospect Park duck pond
and is always trying to talk to you about his problems.
-Being a duck is hard. It's just like, you know,
people are always throwing breadcrumbs at me
and it's like, you know, I'm actually trying
to lose weight, okay?
Quack.
-So just be grateful Giant Lobster won
because, while many of you hate the Sea Captain,
all of you would've despised the duck.
-How do ya like me now?!
-And, hey, speaking of the opposite of winning...
-Reverse segue!
-...as our urgent national health crisis
continues to deepen with no end in sight,
the president has been calling into friendly TV shows
to promise it will magically go away
and Senate Republicans have been holding hearings
on a made-up conspiracy theory about the Russia investigation.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Suspenseful theme plays ]
Earlier this week, we found out that our criminal president,
who, let's remember,
already benefited from two criminal conspiracies
to interfere in the 2016 election,
got impeached for trying
to orchestrate another one in the 2020 election,
and is currently trying to disrupt the election
by lying about mail-in ballots and gutting the post office,
is also under investigation for fraud.
I know. Try not to be too shocked.
This guy collects fraud charges like parking tickets.
One day, he's gonna open up the glove compartment
of his golf cart and there's just gonna be
a bunch of warrants for his arrest in there.
Pretty sure half of the papers
he brought to his Axios interview were summons.
[ As Trump ] You know, if we're not doing better
than any other country with testing,
then why am I
"hereby summoned to appear"?
And, look, as not shocking as a fraud investigation is,
it's still a huge deal.
And then, yesterday, we found out
that Trump's bank was subpoenaed by those same prosecutors,
suggesting the investigation of his business practices
is more wide-ranging than we knew.
Honestly, I'm just shocked his business has any records at all.
I bet if you open a file cabinet at Trump Tower,
it's just a family of hissing raccoons.
[ As Trump ] Do you want my tax returns as much as you want rabies?
In any other world,
this would be the biggest news story of the year,
but there's just barely any room for it.
Hey, remember how the news used to end
with a cute story about a cat who learned how to play piano
or some kid who found a Mickey Mantle rookie card
in his grandma's attic?
Now, every newscast basically ends --
We close tonight with a story to make ya smile.
The president has been selling artifacts from the Smithsonian
to Kazakhstani warlords
and replacing them with forgeries.
Isn't that something, Deborah?
[ Laughing ] "It sure is, Ken."
We'll see ya tomorrow.
Because even stories of fraud and bank subpoenas
got swamped by the president deciding to venture
out of his right-wing media bubble earlier this week
to sit down for the aforementioned
disastrous interview with Axios that could've also doubled
as a intake exam at a psych ward.
Jonathan Swan, the interviewer,
shoulda just held up some inkblot tests.
"And what do you see here?"
-It is what it is.
-Okay. That's very interesting.
So, to regain some self-esteem,
Trump rushed back to the friendly confines of Fox News,
calling in for long, rambling phone interviews
with Lou Dobbs and the Fox & Friends,
where they'll let them get away
with any lie, no matter how outrageous.
And, when the topic of the coronavirus pandemic came up --
you know, the deadly plague that's currently killing
over 1,000 Americans per day --
Trump repeated one of his most sociopathic lies.
-My view is the schools should open.
This thing's going away.
It will go away like things go away
and my view is that schools should be open.
-Is he talking about a pandemic or a summer romance?
[ As Trump ] Oh, you know, we'll both go back to school
and it'll go away, like things go away.
But then, I'll find out you didn't go back to Australia,
but I'll play cool in front of the T-Birds.
You'll get mad.
Anyway, open the schools.
And, seriously, just stop saying stuff like that.
You've been saying it for six months
and it's been both wrong and dangerous.
Of course, you know,
if you're a New York City real estate crook, like Trump,
things really do just go away because you probably have
a bunch of criminal goons around you to make 'em go away.
Trump probably just never realized
that was what was happening.
[ New York accent ] Mr. Trump, you know
that pesky detective who's been sniffin' around?
Let's just say he went away.
[ As Trump ] Oh, that's great. He took a vacation?
[ New York accent ] No, I mean he sleeps with the fishes.
[ As Trump ] Oh! He has sex with fish?
-Hey, uh, Seth, what has one thumb, a hook,
and has sex with fishes?
-I don't know.
-This guy! [ Laugh ]
-You're awful.
-Well, at least I didn't just kneel behind a painting
and take a picture of my own thumb.
-Fourth wall, anyone?
Seriously, you can tell how much easier
the Fox interview was than the Axios interview,
just from their faces.
The Fox & Friends look like
vacant spouses in a loveless marriage
who stopped feeling anything years ago.
I mean, look at 'em.
They look like they just caught a glimpse
of their reflection in a window,
holding a bunch of shopping bags from Saks Fifth Avenue,
and they're thinking, "All the Fendi bags in Manhattan
won't fill the hole inside of me."
Meanwhile, Swan looks like
his dog just got up on his hind legs
and asked him for some money.
[ As Trump ] I can't tell you what it's for, Jonathan,
but I need it like yesterday!
At another point in the Fox interview,
Trump claimed the country was doing great,
as long as you ignore the parts that are really bad,
which is, you know, most of the country.
-You look at a map and white means good.
Most of the -- most of the map is in the white color.
The red color is the corona or potential
and it's a very relatively small portion.
-Yeah, just ignore the red parts and we're fine.
Kinda how a plane crash is actually a successful landing,
if you ignore everything besides the black box.
-Ah, what's the deal with the black box?
They should make the whole plane out of it!
[ "Seinfeld" theme sting plays ]
-As of today, only eight more shows
with the Sea Captain, I swear.
-That's what you say!
You don't bring me with you, there's gonna be a [bleep] riot.
-Second, it's just not true
that the red parts are a small part.
Look at The New York Times case map.
There are a ton of densely populated areas in the Sunbelt,
you know, places where lots of people live.
That's why the corona map
looks like this map,
of where people live.
We have a fourth of the world's deaths
and we're still recording 50,000 cases a day,
while other major countries are recording a few hundred.
You can't just take a random part of the map
as a success story, if no one lives there.
[ As Trump ] The Mojave Desert has never been safer,
but the fake news never mentions that.
And yet, as shocking as this blatant denial of reality is,
it's by no means unique to Trump.
It's endemic to the entirety of the conservative movement
and the Republican Party, and has been for a long time.
For example, while Trump was, once again, promising
that the pandemic would magically disappear,
what were Senate Republicans doing?
Were they rushing to extend
the expired $600 unemployment benefit
or the eviction moratorium
or the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses?
Were they holding hearings
on the preventable deaths of 160,000 Americans?
Nope! They were pestering
former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates
on their insane conspiracy theory
that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign
to frame him in the Russia investigation
and, not surprisingly, most of their questions backfired.
-You don't like Donald Trump, do you?
-I don't like -- I don't respect the manner
in which he has carried out the presidency,
-Okay. You despise Donald Trump, don't you?
-No, I don't despise anyone, Senator.
-Miss Yates,
when did you first become aware that the Obama administration
was surveilling the Donald Trump campaign?
-The Obama administration
was not surveilling the Donald Trump campaign.
-These guys are so easy to checkmate.
[ As Kennedy ] You despise Donald Trump, don't you?
What, you don't? Well, well, now, what am I
supposed to do with the rest of my five minutes?
That was my ace in the hole.
And, Ted, you weren't prepared with a follow-up?
You didn't think she'd just
shut down your [bleep] question in one sentence?
"All right, Ted, it's all on you today."
[ As Cruz ] Don't worry, guys. I got this.
"I see you only have one index card there, Ted."
[ As Cruz ] Yep. That's all I need.
"You sure?" [ As Cruz ] It's a lock.
"What if it doesn't work?" [ As Cruz ] Oh, it'll work,
or my name isn't Ted Cruz.
"Isn't your name Rafael?"
[ As Cruz ] Dammit!
Well, then, I'll just hide
behind my facial hair.
Trump is not unique and he's not an anomaly.
He's the culmination of decades of conservative politics.
His lawlessness, racism, sociopathic incompetence
are endemic to the entirety of the modern Republican Party,
which is why it's not enough to beat him.
We have to fundamentally change the system that produced him.
We can't just pretend that,
as long as Trump loses in November,
the conditions that created him will just...
-Go away, like things go away.
-Did you enjoy your first "Closer Look"?
-Yeah, it was fine, but I gotta get outta here.
I have a doctor's appointment
I've been trying to schedule forever.
[ Chuckle ] The webbing in one of my feet is all messed up.
-This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪
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