-Welcome back to "Late Night," everybody.
It's been two months since we
first left the studio
and we have heard some of your criticisms
about our attic shows.
I want you to know that we are taking it to heart.
So, as of today, there will be no more reference to the copy
of "The Thorn Birds" that is on my side table.
Just gonna be there, but I'm not gonna talk about it.
And the number of books is certainly
not gonna change throughout the segment.
Also, I will no longer be mentioning
the wasps in my attic, but that's only because
we caught the last two wasps this morning
and we have trapped them in that door behind me.
Now, those are two real wasps
and not my sons dressed in homemade wasp costumes,
who are gonna bust out when this segment is over,
so, if you're stickin' around
for that kind of adorable content,
you're wasting your time because it is not gonna happen.
Two real wasps, not -- I repeat, not --
my two boys in wasp costumes
that I basically spent the entire weekend makin'
because I have lost my mind.
Speaking of lost minds, segue, the president is
reeling off fantasies about the coronavirus just going away
after two West Wing aides tested positive
and unemployment soared to its highest level
since the Great Depression. But don't worry --
he's also trying to distract from the pandemic
by obsessing over the Russia investigation.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Suspenseful theme plays ]
It's rarely the case that someone
as erratic as Donald Trump is able to boil
all the venality, corruption, and sociopathic incompetence
of his presidency down into a single tweet,
and, yet, over the weekend, he came pretty close,
although, in fairness, he had lots of chances,
given that, on Sunday, alone,
he posted 126 tweets and retweets,
including over 50 messages before 8:30 am.
Sounds like it was a great Mother's Day.
What did he have for breakfast,
pancakes covered in Adderall and 10,000 Diet Cokes?
[ As Trump ] Just like Mom used to make.
The president should not have enough time to tweet that much,
even on a normal day, let alone during a crisis
as nightmarish as this one.
It's not reassuring. It's like
scrolling through your phone on a flight
that's going through turbulence
and seeing your pilot dancing on TikTok.
On Sunday, alone, Trump lashed out
at everyone from the media to celebrities, to Democrats;
retweeted random conspiracy theorists;
and tried to fabricate
a totally made-up scandal called Obamagate.
Even for Trump, this was an especially
demented weekend on Twitter, and that's saying a lot,
for a guy whose tweets, generally speaking,
would make more sense written backwards
on the door of a hotel room, "Shining"-style.
And, as the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus climbed
to nearly 80,000,
with unemployment at its worst since the Great Depression,
Trump chose to take time out of his day
to tweet about his own golf club
and use it as an excuse to both advertise his personal business
and parrot his message that the economy is ready to reopen.
Trump's golf course in L.A. announced
that they were reopening with a tweet that said,
"Game on!
We are thrilled to announce the reopening
of @trumpgolfla beginning Saturday May 9th!
We look forward to welcoming you back
Book your tee time now!"
And then, Trump retweeted it and wrote,
So great to see our Country starting to open up again!"
Cool. I'm sure the 20 million Americans
who lost their job in April are stoked to hit the links.
"Honey, good news -- the unemployment check came.
Now, I can afford to play
three and a half holes at Trump's golf course."
So, Trump actually found a way to use a pandemic
to advertise his luxury golf resort.
Reminds me of that time during the Great Depression
when FDR advertised his bindle-making business.
[ as FDR ] Are you a hobo looking for a sack
to carry your can of beans
as you ride the rails in search of work?
Well, come on down to FDR's House of Bindles.
The only thing we have to fear is
these crazy-low prices.
No research went into figuring out if he sounds like that.
Anywhere between 1,000 and 2,000 Americans
are dying every day from the coronavirus
and, yet, rather than confront that reality,
Trump is doing the only thing he knows,
and that's lying his way through it.
He's trying to dead-eye mind-trick Americans
into thinking coronavirus will simply go away.
On Friday, he told reporters that the coronavirus
would soon disappear, even without a vaccine.
-This is gonna go away without a vaccine.
It's gonna go away and it's -- we're not gonna see it again,
hopefully, after a period of time.
You may have some -- some flare-ups and,
I guess, you know, I would expect that.
Sometime in the fall, you'll have flare-ups, maybe.
Maybe not, but, according to what a lotta people say,
you probably will.
We'll be able to put them out.
You may have some flare-ups next year,
but, eventually, it's gonna be gone.
It's gonna be gone. You know, there are
some viruses and flus that came and they went for a vaccine.
They never found the vaccine and they disappeared.
They've never shown up again,
They die, too, like everything else.
They die, too.
-Holy [bleep]
Your strategy for dealing with coronavirus is,
"Eventually, everything dies"?
Are you responding to a pandemic
or narrating a Werner Herzog movie?
[ as Herzog ] Time is nature's
cruelest weapon.
Ze clock is an assassin
silently stalking us to ze grave
with his sinister laugh --
tick-tock, tick-tock.
I guarantee you Werner is crushing stay-at-home.
No one thinks coronavirus will just go away,
let alone without a vaccine.
You already tried this bull[bleep]
before this pandemic started
and it didn't work back then, either.
-The virus.
They're working hard.
Looks like, by April, you know, in theory,
when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.
[ Chuckling ] I hope that's true.
Now, the virus
that we're talkin' about having to do,
you know, a lotta people think that goes away in April
with the heat, as the heat comes in.
Typically, that will go away in April.
-Nailed it again, Dr. Science!
Not only is the virus still here,
it didn't even get warm yet.
On that note, [bleep] off, April.
What was that?!
This year of all years.
Who told you coronavirus goes away in April?
Are you confusing it with March Madness?
[ As Trump ] The madness spreads to basketball courts
and college campuses across the country,
but don't worry. It goes away in April,
when either Duke or Villanova beats it.
Trump is selling yet another unhinged fantasy
to try to coax people out of their homes
and back into the economy
after two West Wing aides tested for coronavirus
and The Washington Post reported
that all White House staffers received a memo
from the White House Management Office on Friday
which encouraged employees to practice maximum telework
and to work remotely, if at all possible.
Well, that's easy for Trump,
since he's already spent the last three years teleworking
from his home office
on the 18th green at Mar-a-Lago.
Every time you see him in the Oval Office,
that's just his Zoom background.
Think about that -- the president is telling people
to get back into the workforce,
while his own White House tells employees to stay home.
One day, he's gonna call a press conference
to reassure us that murder hornets are fake news,
while a dozen of them carry him back to their nest.
[ Buzzing ] "You live with us now, Donald."
And don't let mention of the murder hornets
get you to thinkin' that my kids are in that door back there,
dressed like wasps, 'cause they're not,
and they're not gonna just barge out at the end
of this "Closer" -- I'll prove it.
I'll prove they're not there. Who wants ice cream?
They're not there, guys. They're not there.
And, by the way, you'll never guess
how Trump reacted to the news
that one of his staffers had tested positive
for the virus he failed to contain.
After learning that one of his valets was infected,
Trump became lava-level mad at his staff
and said he doesn't feel it's doing all it can to protect him.
First of all, look at 'im. He's always
lava-level something.
If he's not lava-level mad, he's lava-level happy,
or, more often than not, lava-level indifferent.
Second, Trump is actually upset
that the people who are supposed to protect him
are doing a good job.
Oh, the irony.
If we were living in a story or a fable,
this would be the moment where the mean old miser
finally has a change of heart and throws money at some kid
to go buy a goose [ Laughing ] for the festival or something.
But this is Donald Trump.
There's no change of heart.
There's no learning curve.
If this was a Choose Your Own Adventure story,
the bottom of every page would say,
"Unh, just -- just go to the next page."
The president is just profoundly incapable
of thinking about anyone other than himself.
That much has been clear from day one of this crisis
and it was on full display when he called in
for his latest teletherapy session
with the Fox & Friends on Friday.
This was the day the government announced
truly catastrophic unemployment numbers
and the coronavirus death toll climbed toward 80,000
and, yet, the president rambled for 20 minutes
about God knows what before he even talked about coronavirus,
and that was only because
the Fox & Friends finally asked him about it.
-Mr. President, good morning to ya.
-Good morning. -Hi, Steve.
They know it was just a total hoax.
It was a made-up story, a disgrace to our nation.
These are dirty politicians and -- and dirty cops.
So, Schiff is a crooked politician, crooked as can be,
probably one of the worst I've ever seen.
I've seen some beauties.
It was like they just sat there.
They sat in an office.
"Hello. Goodbye."
That would be a meeting.
"Hello. Goodbye."
You look at Mueller, that was purely corrupt.
And can you imagine, with all the corruption
having to do with Mueller,
you don't have Clapper; and Brennan, who's sleaze;
and a guy like Comey,
who's a sick man. -Right.
I mean, Comey's a sick man.
He's just a stupid guy. -Well --
-He's dumb as a rock and he's a sick guy.
There's something wrong with him.
We've rebuilt our military.
This is not what they love to hear.
Jeff Sessions was a disaster.
Well, Kislyak had dinner with Nancy Pelosi and Schumer,
all these guys, they all,
everybody in Washington knew Kislyak.
But I learned a lot from Richard Nixon --
Don't fire people.
I learned a lot. I study history.
If you did a poll there,
[ Laughing ] I'd do very well in the FBI.
But the top was crooked.
They were dirty cops.
-Someone get grandpa off the phone.
Every time Trump calls in for one of these,
we can only see the "Fox & Friends"
sittin' there, blinkin', like a family
who accidentally bought tickets to the wrong movie.
[ Whispering ] "Does this whole thing have subtitles?
Is this a subtitled movie?
'Cause I don't -- Where's Vin Diesel?
I thought -- I thought this was Vin Diesel."
They're like a family of tourists at Art Basel,
staring at a banana duct taped to the wall.
"Is it supposed to represent life?"
"No, I think the message is that bananas..."
-Die, too, like everything else.
-Trump is just deeply, clinically, incapable
of summoning even the bare minimum amount
of empathy required for the job.
For example, in that same interview,
he was also asked if he had a message
for America's mothers on Mother's Day.
Now, this was an especially
difficult Mother's Day for so many,
with Americans are separated from loved ones
and struggling amid a historic unemployment crisis
and public health emergency, and, yet, the president
reeled off an answer so deranged,
it's actually hard to fully appreciate just by listening.
So, instead of playing his answer,
we're gonna read the full transcript.
First, here's the question.
-Mr. President, this Sunday is Mother's Day.
What are your plans? What are you gonna do
for Melania and do you have a message
for all the moms that are watching this morning?
-Easy, right? It should be a gimme.
Answering that question is like getting 200 points
for writing your name on the SATs.
For an impeached, historically unpopular president
in the midst of a catastrophic public health crisis
and soaring unemployment,
getting a softball lobbed at you like that
is like goin' 10,000 points in the red on "Jeopardy!"
and gettin' the category Food That Comes in Buckets.
[ As Trump ] Oh, finally, something --
This is my wheelhouse.
Alright. This is a question
any president, or any mammal,
should be able to knock out of the park.
Even a dolphin
could whistle and click their way through this one.
Instead, our drooling potato-brained Caligula
had this to say,
in response to a question about Mother's Day.
And, just for some ambiance, let's throw a frame
around the screen while I read this.
Here it is. Ahem!
[ Piano plays tender tune ] "Well, we'll be together.
I'm going to a Camp David meeting,
a big meeting, with the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and Camp David is this very special place
that nobody ever gets to see,
but it's a great work environment
and we're gonna have meetings on different things.
And our military has never looked better.
It's never been better.
We never had the kind of equipment we have now.
And, you know, we had planes
that were 50 years old and more, fighter jets.
Now, we have the best in the world,
the F-35 and the F-18.
And, you know, what we have is incredible.
The equipment and the people we have are great.
But, you know, they have to have equipment.
And we've spent $1.5 trillion -- really, more than that --
and we've totally rebuilt our military,
which you have to do.
You know, I'm a very budget-conscious person.
It's what you have to do.
The nice thing -- it was all built in the U.S.A.
and plenty of equipment coming.
A lot of this equipment is coming.
So it's very important that we have the best military
and we have the -- our military has never been
in condition like it is now, and soon will be."
Wow!
I'm pretty sure even a F-35 pilot
can write his mom a card without mentioning the F-35.
Seriously, that answer was more revealing than a CAT scan.
Based on that answer, alone,
a doctor could diagnose like five different strokes.
Sometimes I like to imagine what would happen
if Trump were, let's say,
one of the 100 people interviewed
for an episode of "Family Feud."
Like if the category was
Things You Do for Your Wife on Mother's Day.
Both team would strike out and then the host would say,
"Top 5 answers were -- brunch!
A card!
Flowers!
Chocolate!
Fighter jets, fighter jets, the jets are coming,
Joint Chiefs, the military,
the greatest military you've ever seen,
equipment, equipment, we have so much equipment,
the equipment is coming, military, military,
the best military, the military, I love the military!"
We're currently in the middle of a deadly pandemic
that has been made worse by the sociopathic incompetence
of an impeached president who is fundamentally incapable
of grasping the responsibilities of his office and, now,
he's trying to distract from that
by trying to undo the Russia investigation.
Last week, his attorney general
and Mafia-themed Bobblehead William Barr announced that,
in an unprecedented move, the Justice Department
would withdraw charges against Michael Flynn,
Trump's first national security advisor,
who twice pled guilty in court to lying about his contacts
with Russia's ambassador to the U.S.
-Attorney General William Barr's DOJ
is dropping the charges against the president's
former national security advisor Michael Flynn.
This comes after Flynn pleaded guilty
to lying to the FBI about conversations he had
with the Russian ambassador
and cooperating with investigators
and it comes on the same day
that one of the lead DOJ prosecutors trying Flynn
took his name off the case.
And we've seen this before. It's something we saw happen
in the case of another Trump ally,
who also got favorable treatment from the department --
Roger Stone.
That time, the DOJ stepped in
and reduced his sentencing recommendations
against the recommendations of their own line prosecutors.
-The Department of Justice
is basically just an arm of the Trump campaign now.
The Trump campaign store is gonna start selling pardons,
commutations, and sentence reductions
alongside these very real items --
MAGA pet leash, MAGA dog collar,
and USA camo dog bandanna.
By the way, if you see a dog in MAGA pet leash,
call the ASPCA.
Sarah McLaughlin will come get the dog
and it will be taken away and the...
♪ Hands of an angel ♪
Just the best.
Like this part of the acoustics just makes, I think,
my voice come alive, in a way you don't get in the studio.
Trump always wanted a loyal attorney general
and, now, he's got one in Bill Barr.
The president is rage-tweeting about exacting revenge
against his political enemies,
as a pandemic craters the economy
and touches his own White House
and, on top of everything else, he's incapable of summoning
even the bare minimum level of empathy
for the people affected by the crisis.
We don't need a test to tell us he's a...
-Sick guy.
There's something wrong with him.
-This has been "A Closer" -- Oh, no.
Oh, the wasps are out!
Oh! The thing we wanted to happen least, happened!
These are real wasps.
These are not children in wasp costumes. Oh, no!
-[ Laughing ] -Oh, no, he's stinging me.
Oh, God. This is a nightmare!
Oh, everything has gone from bad to worse!
[ Laughter ] Oh, no! Oh, no!
Who are you?!
Are you a wasp?!
-I fly --
I can fly -- Whish!
-This has been "A Closer Look."
Can you say, "This has been 'A Closer Look'"?
-[ Speaks quietly ]
-What?
-[ Speaks quietly ]
-[ Laughs ]
♪♪
-City Harvest needs your help, now, more than ever.
New Yorkers who have never imagined asking for help
are now turning to them to keep food on their tables.
If you're watching this online, you can hit the Donate button.
Stay safe. Wash your hands.
We love you.