-Former Vice President Mike Pence
was heckled and called a traitor
at a conservative conference last week
by a group of antifa socialists.
Wait, sorry, I read that wrong.
By his own party.
Meanwhile, the GOP's sham election audit in Arizona
has taken yet another bizarre turn,
with copies of voting data being driven
to a mysterious location in Montana.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
♪♪
We're five months into Joe Biden's presidency
and, yet, Republicans are still obsessed
with trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election
and rewrite the history of what happened
during the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol.
This weekend, for example, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson
and Fox host Maria Bartiromo once again repeated the lie
that none of the insurrectionists were armed.
-Armed insurrection is what Nancy Pelosi
keeps calling January 6th, Senator.
How many guns were actually taken up on that day,
since she says it was armed?
-By the way, they always talk
about thousands of armed insurrectionists.
I asked the FBI witness.
Not one.
Not one gun was recovered, either in the Capitol
or on the Capitol grounds, according to that FBI witness,
so that's just one of the latest big lies.
-And, as we all know, guns are the only types of weapons.
That's why you're allowed to get on an airplane with nunchucks
and giant medieval battle-axes.
And, yet, every time I go through security
with my nunchucks and battle-ax, security's always like,
"Um, excuse me, sir.
You can't take that with you."
And then I have to remind them
that, under Article 47 of the U.S. Constitution,
part 9, subsection 23(B),
nunchucks and battle-axes are allowed on airplanes.
And they say, "No, I meant the shampoo.
That's clearly a four-ounce bottle."
And then, to ease the tension, I say something like,
"Hey, you can't have this battle-ax,
but you can have this one over there,"
[ Laughing ] and then, I gesture to my wife
and we all have a good laugh.
[ Laughter ] Well, not all of us.
Someone takes it very personally
and then, it's a thing the whole vacation.
[ Laughter ] Also,
more importantly, none of that is true.
Last week, prosecutors charged a fourth Capital riot defendant
with a firearms violation.
And, aside from guns, according to CNN...
If a dude broke your window
and busted into your house with a hockey stick at 3:00 am
and said, "Don't worry. I'm not armed,"
you wouldn't say like, "Oh, alright, well,
you want to crack a beer
and watch the highlights from the Islanders game?
Did you see that save by Ryan Pulock?!
Hey, where are you going with my vase?"
[ Laughter ] And then, at the end of the interview, Bartiromo,
one of the most unhinged conspiracy theorists on Fox,
applauded herself for telling the truth.
-We have been telling every story.
We've been on the right side of it for seven years going.
I've been trashed every day along the way.
Keep trashing me!
I'll keep telling the truth!
-That sounds like a catchphrase from the opening credits of...
[ Laughter ] [ As Bartiromo ] Keep trashing me!
I'll keep telling the truth!
Andy!
Andy, stop hitting your brother with the pool skimmer!
Andy!
Put that down right now!
I'm going to call your father!
What's that? Oh, you're unarmed
because it's just a pool skimmer?
Now, he's getting cute with me.
Andy Michael Piazza DeAngelo,
put it down right now, or I will end you!
[ Laughter ]
These people have been desperately cycling
through one deranged conspiracy theory after another,
in an attempt to lie about what really happened on January 6th.
Some tried to claim it was largely a peaceful protest,
no worse than a "normal tourist visit,"
while others suggested that it was actually the FBI
and the deep state that secretly orchestrated the whole thing,
as a false flag operation.
And then, there were those who blamed
so-called fake Trump supporters or antifa,
despite the pro-Trump rioters themselves going online
and contradicting that lie.
-The people who stormed the Capitol
had to convince their own brethren on social media
they weren't antifa,
like Brian Nichols, a Marine veteran charged in the attack,
who wrote on Facebook, "Hey..."
-You know it's bad when even the insurrectionists
are fact-checking Republicans.
Soon, anti-vaxxers are going to start tweeting stuff like...
They can't even get the people they're lying about
to go along with the lie.
It would be like if OJ got up in court and said,
"Those gloves fit just fine.
I was making my hands big on purpose,"
and then, Judge Ito looks at the camera and says, "Juice!"
I feel like that's what he'd do.
[ Laughter ] I was younger then.
In reality, of course, the insurrection was
an attempt to stop the lawful counting of electoral votes
and overturn the results to keep Trump in power.
In fact, a large faction of GOP officials and voters
are still very much committed to the big lie
that fueled the riot, in the first place.
A new poll out today finds that...
...and last week, former Vice President Mike Pence
was heckled and called a traitor
at the conservative Faith & Freedom Coalition
because he didn't singlehandedly
overturn the results of the election,
which he didn't have the power to do, anyway.
-Pence is the one seen on surveillance video
being rushed to safety by the Secret Service on January 6th.
Remember, rioters could be heard chanting, "Hang Mike Pence."
Trump had accused him of being disloyal
for following the Constitution
and refusing to overturn the election results.
Well, today, Pence spoke to religious conservatives
at the Faith & Freedom Coalition Conference
and, as he tried to speak,
boos and cries of "traitor" rained down from the crowd.
-It is great to be back with so many patriots.
And I want to thank my friend Ralph Reed
for those overly generous words.
I'm deeply humbled by them.
And Ralph Reed knows me well enough to know
the introduction I prefer is a little bit shorter.
I'm a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican,
in that order.
-Man, that's like getting booed throwing out a first pitch
at a baseball game in your home state,
which also happened to Mike Pence.
-[ Booing and whistling ]
[ Applause ] -[Bleep] you!
-You suck!
[ Laughter ] -Booing is one thing,
but they're calling Pence a traitor
and he tries to just keep giving his speech
and act like it's not happening.
Pence could really use a Smithers right about now.
[ As Smithers ] They're not saying traitor. They're saying,
"Tra-yay!-tor."
[ Laughter ] Also, it's a gathering
of religious conservatives,
called the Faith & Freedom Coalition.
Pence should be able to walk into that place
like Norm walking into Cheers.
"Mike!
What's shaking, Mr. Pence?"
[ As Pence ] The knees of the faithless, Woody.
[ Laughter ] If Pence should be popular anywhere, it's there,
and, yet, he's still getting booed.
That's like the Kardashians getting booed on E!
-Did you get Kendall a present?
-I did. -What'd you get?
-Something for her lake house.
-[ Booing ] -Oh, nice.
-You suck!
-And, yeah, I'm aware
the Kardashians have been moved from E! to Hulu.
Just because most of my references are
from the '70s and '80s
doesn't mean I don't know anything about the Kardashians.
I know pop culture better
than Radar O'Reilly knows the sound of a helicopter.
[ Laughter ] As Mike Pence has now discovered,
the core organizing principle of the GOP right now is
its fundamental hostility to democracy
and the movement's central belief is
the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
More than half a Republicans said, in a recent poll,
that they still believe election reviews will change the outcome,
like the sham audit in Arizona,
where Republicans have been hunting for, among other things,
bamboo fibers, to prove that ballots
were smuggled in from China;
and secret watermarks, left by Trump,
that separate the real ballots from the fake ones.
They think Trump watermarked ballots when, in reality,
the only thing he's ever watermarked is a desk.
I guarantee Trump has never used a coaster in his life,
even though "Coaster" was probably
his nickname in high school.
"Hey Coaster, is it true you had someone else take your SATs?"
[ As Trump ] All that matters is I got into "Peen."
"Do you mean Penn?"
[ As Trump ] Cicada, "sih-kah-duh."
[ Laughter ] In fact,
the Arizona audit has gotten so far off the rails
that copies of voting data have been taken
to a mysterious location somewhere in rural Montana,
all in the name of election integrity.
CNN even tried to find the location
and sent a reporter to the woods to look for it.
-On this piece of property in a remote part of Montana,
people may, at this very minute,
be analyzing voting data from the state of Arizona,
as part of the so-called Arizona audit,
run by the Cyber Ninjas,
a company whose CEO had previously espoused
Trump-style election conspiracy theories.
What does Montana have to do with all this?
Ken Bennett is a spokesman for the audit.
-Everything that Cyber Ninjas is doing,
they're either doing with their own expertise
or the expertise of the people that are hired.
[ Laughter ] -Cool. Well, thanks
to Republican conspiracy theories,
we have CNN reporters running around in the woods
like they're auditioning for "Finding Bigfoot."
Also, you trust a company that calls itself Cyber Ninjas
to hire people with expertise?
It sounds like a game for Super Nintendo
you'd find at the bottom of the bargain bin
at GameStop in 1994,
or a [bleep] Steven Seagal ripoff of "Robocop."
"You're too late, copper.
We already got the jewels from the safe."
[ As Seagal ] I'm not a cop.
I'm a cyber ninja.
Digital nunchucks, activate.
Wh-What do you mean, I can't get on the plane?
Am I supposed to walk to my dojo?
[ Laughter ] But the story keeps getting weirder.
Even the spokesman for the Arizona audit
apparently has no idea
where the Cyber Ninjas have taken the voting data.
-And the contractor it hired is called Cipher, LLC.
Bennett says Cipher was permitted
to take copies of Arizona voting system data on a truck
and have it driven to Montana,
where it's being "forensically evaluated,"
in what he described
as a "secure, powerful laboratory."
But nobody is publicly saying what that actually means
and Bennett tells us he doesn't know where the so-called lab is.
It is apparently a secret.
-Wait, so we're supposed to believe
there's a secret, powerful laboratory in rural Montana
where experts are doing forensic analysis on ballots?
Also, why do I keep saying "rural Montana"?
"Montana" is fine.
There's no urban Montana.
"You'll never make it on the mean streets of Billings, kid."
[ Laughter ] And, look, I love Montana,
but I'm having trouble believing
there's some secret, powerful laboratory
where they're doing forensic analysis
hidden in the middle of nowhere,
unless it was built by Tony Stark.
[ Gasp ]
And, if that were true,
then the only person who'd be able to find it
would be Loki. [ Gasp ]
But, wait! It's just like Loki to use a sham audit
as an excuse to alter the sacred timeline.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God!
Is this -- Is this a nexus event?
Have the Timekeepers lost control of the variant?
Oh, God!
Does this mean there won't be a "Wedding Crashers" sequel?
[ Laughter ] [ As Wilson ] Jeez, man, relax!
It's just a TV show.
You're losing the plot, man.
[ Laughter ] The Biden presidency can feel
deceptively calm, compared to the Trump era,
but there's a brewing crisis on the horizon.
One of our two major political parties
is controlled by an authoritarian faction
that is radicalized against democracy.
They're still trying to overturn the results
of the last election,
all while making it easier to overturn the next election.
Republicans believe they're the only ones
who can legitimately win elections,
no matter how many times voters tell them...
-You suck!
[ Laughter ] -This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪
God's Love We Deliver cooks and brings
over two million meals a year
to men, women, and children living with HIV/AIDS,
cancer, and other serious illnesses
and they need your help, now, more than ever.
If you're watching this online, you can hit the Donate button.
Stay safe. Get vaccinated. We love you.