-Texas Senator Ted Cruz refused to wear a mask
when talking to reporters,
and Joe Biden held his first press conference as President.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
♪♪
The modern conservative movement seems concerned above all else
with preserving their solemn right
to be dicks to everyone else around them.
They like to say facts don't care about your feelings
until you hurt their feelings
by politely asking them to wear a mask
or stop using racist slurs,
and then they melt down
like they're being hobbled by Kathy Bates.
Case in point, yesterday, a reporter
politely asked Ted Cruz to wear a mask
during a press conference inside the Capitol.
Now, remember that Cruz had the option to get vaccinated early
because he's technically a senator,
even though he looks like the guy
who has to work the stockroom at Auto Zone
because he's too creepy for the register.
"Need my help out there, boss?" "No, we're good."
But most people had to wait.
And while there's some early preliminary proof
that the vaccines help stop the spread of COVID,
we just still don't know for sure,
especially with the rise
of several more contagious variants.
So if you're a decent normal person
and someone politely asks you to wear a mask in their company,
you do it.
Ted Cruz, however, took it
as yet another opportunity to be a giant [bleep]
-Yeah, when I'm talking to the TV camera,
I'm not going to wear a mask.
And all of us have been immunized, so...
You're welcome to step away if you like.
-"When I'm talking to the TV camera?"
What a weird little window into what he thinks being on TV is.
"If I talk to the camera,
it will tell the TVs at home what I said.
I tell secrets to the phone, and the phone is a gossip.
And the person on the other end finds out."
I'm going to start using that myself. Hello, I'm Seth Meyers.
Welcome to "Late Night Camera Conversation."
Guess what happened to me today, lens?
Man, Ted Cruz is the Steph Curry of being a giant dick.
He never misses a shot.
He's the kind of guy who would come over to your house
for a dinner party
and when you politely ask him
to take his feet off the table would say,
"You're welcome to leave if you like."
Again, remember, in that situation,
Ted Cruz was the one who was vaccinated,
he's the one who was unlikely to get sick.
But apparently, he couldn't care less if anyone else in the room got sick.
I mean, God, no wonder his neighbors
ratted him out when he went to Cancun.
Do you know how unlikable you have to be
for your neighbors to go to the press?
If you invite someone to go on vacation and their reaction is,
"I'm telling
you might be a bad guy.
On "Law and Order," even when they're investigating a murder
and try to talk to neighbors,
everyone opens their door half an inch
and says, "I don't know nothing."
Meanwhile, Ted Cruz's neighbors all have lawn signs that say,
"Ask me about Ted's trip to Mexico."
And as a reminder, just because you personally get vaccinated
doesn't mean the pandemic is magically over.
The virus is still circulating,
there's still variants out there,
and until case numbers are much lower
and vaccination rates are much higher,
other people around you are still at risk.
And, by the way, Cruz was also wrong
about the official CDC guidance,
as CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta explained.
-The CDC guidance, I just pulled it up again
because the guidance does change, admittedly.
But it says even if you've been fully vaccinated,
you need to keep taking precautions in public places --
wearing a mask, staying six feet apart, avoiding crowds.
For him, he's pretty well-protected, admittedly,
against getting severely ill, requiring hospitalization.
He may not be as well-protected against moderate illness,
mild illness,
and the possibility that he could still
transmit the virus to somebody else.
So when he's not wearing a mask,
he's potentially putting other people in that room at risk.
-And that's not even taking into account
that any time you enter a room with Ted Cruz,
you're already at risk of being in a room with Ted Cruz.
Cruz, of course, doesn't care. If Cruz thought
he could score points with the base
by filling a squirt gun with salmonella
and spraying it at reporters, he'd do it.
Although I guess we shouldn't be surprised Cruz doesn't listen to doctors.
Can you imagine being his doctor?
That's got to be a rough gig. "I'll cough,
but I'm not turning my head."
Republicans have made their opposition to masks
a culture-war issue from day one,
and their antagonism has only intensified
during the Biden presidency.
Last week, for example, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul
went after Dr. Anthony Fauci at a hearing
for telling people to wear masks even after they get vaccinated,
which riled up Fauci.
-What studies do you have
that people who have had the vaccine
or have had the infection are spreading the infection?
If we're not spreading the infection,
isn't it just theater? -No, it's not --
-You've had the vaccine and you're wearing two masks.
Isn't that theater? -No, it's not --
Here we go again with the theater.
-Oh, you know you've gone too far
when you get the Brooklyn version of Fauci.
Rand Paul's such a dick, Fauci's going to show up
to the next hearing in a leather jacket,
jet-black hair, and a switchblade.
"Where you going, Tony?"
"There's a fellow from Kentucky who's about to be unlucky."
"What are you saying?"
"He's about to get a Fauci ouchie!"
Seriously, guys, we're just asking you politely,
please, just wear a mask.
Why can't you just be courteous to the people around you
instead of melting down like children?
They're the people who show up to Long John Silver's
without shoes and, when they get turned away say,
"Oh, I guess we're living in Nazi Germany now.
I guess the secret police are just gonna come take me away
for the crime of not wanting my feet to sweat
while I eat my breaded shrimp."
This is the kind of culture-war BS
the right has been obsessed with for the first two months
of Biden's presidency.
And that's because his response
to the coronavirus pandemic
has been overwhelmingly popular so far,
as has his $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill.
So Republicans have had trouble coming up with an attack on him.
For example, they've been obsessing over the fact
that, until today, Biden hadn't held a formal press conference.
And look, I'm all for press conferences,
but it all depends on who's giving them.
Press conferences under the last guy
didn't exactly contain a lot of newsworthy information.
You could get the same value from watching open testimony
at a New York City council hearing
on public access television.
"Yeah, good evening, council members.
My name's Mickey. I'm from Kew Gardens.
And my proposal is we replace the Statue of Liberty
with a statue of Roscoe the Bed Bug Dog."
Also, can I just say,
hearing there's a presidential press conference
is about as exciting as in Monopoly
when you win second place in the beauty contest.
It's like, "Okay, I guess it's money.
But how'd the old man win?
Who else was in that beauty contest, a foot?"
And because Fox couldn't find anything else to jump on,
they decided to spend weeks
obsessing over the whole press conference thing.
-President Biden has now been in office 43 days
and has not held a single solo press conference?
-No-show Joe Biden has been in office 43 days,
still has not held a single press conference
since becoming President.
-Biden has yet to hold a solo press conference
since he took office now 46 days ago.
-He has not had a press conference in 48 days.
-48 days and counting.
-We are halfway into the first 100 days,
and President Biden still has not held a solo news conference.
-Why hasn't he had a solo press conference?
That's the big question.
Is it like the campaign where he was hiding in the basement?
-That was his strategy all the way along,
hide in the basement, don't talk to the American people.
Now get to the White House, hide in another figurative basement,
his Oval Office.
-Wait, so is the Oval Office,
the most famous room in the world,
now a figurative basement?
Once these people come up with a line they like,
they never let go of it no matter how dumb it is.
They're more desperate to use the "basement" line
than George Costanza was to use his "jerk store" line.
Hannity's going to start doing all his monologues
with a giant bowl of shrimp.
Also, at least Biden goes to the Oval Office.
Trump spent less time there than a White House tour group.
Catching Trump in the Oval Office
was like catching a station agent at a subway stop.
"Excuse me, the machines are down, and I need to buy a card."
"Sorry, shift's over. I'll be back next leap year."
They've made such a big deal out of this press conference
that yesterday Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocey
said he had tons of questions prepared.
-Do you have a good question ready?
-I have a binder full of questions.
-Is it a Lisa Frank trapper-keeper?
"Mr. President, I have a two-part question.
Will you sign my yearbook, and will you have a great summer?
Thank you, and keep in touch."
Fox has also been full of absurd and baseless speculation
about what would happen at this press conference.
At one point earlier this month, Fox host Stuart Varney
predicted that all of Biden's answers
would be pre-written on a teleprompter.
-What kind of press conference will it be?
Will he have a teleprompter?
Will he know the questions in advance?
Will he call on friends and reporters only?
I do believe there'll be a teleprompter there
which you can just turn on when you need the set response.
That would not surprise me at all.
And I wouldn't be surprised, as you say, a staffer saying,
"You ask this question, you ask that question."
I can see that coming a mile off.
-Maybe Fox News just can't believe
that a President would be able to give a coherent answer
to a question without a teleprompter.
"He must have had a script.
He didn't suggest chugging bleach once."
Also, at least Biden can read off a teleprompter
without wincing like Rocky
in the 15th round with Apollo Creed.
Whenever Trump read off a teleprompter,
he had the pained look of a high school sophomore
being forced to watch a video on how babies are born.
And Biden did start off his press conference
by making an announcement,
that he would be doubling his original goal
of 100 million shots
in the first 100 days of his presidency.
-On December 8th, I indicated that I hoped
to get 100 million shots in people's arms
in my first 100 days.
We met that goal last week by day 58,
42 days ahead of schedule.
Now today, I'm setting a second goal,
and that is, we will, by my 100th day in office,
have administered 200 million shots in people's arms.
That's right, 200 million shots in 100 days.
I know it's ambitious, twice our original goal.
But no other country in the world has even come close,
not even close, to what we're doing.
I believe we can do it.
-So he set a goal, met it,
then said set a second, more ambitious goal,
which has credibility because he met his first goal.
That's a novel strategy.
It's certainly different from the Trump strategy
of overpromising and under-delivering.
If Trump had won a second term,
he'd promise 200 million shots by May 1st
and end up giving out 200 million NFTs of shots
by May 1st.
"Every American will receive a non-fungible token,
which is a high-resolution image of a vaccine shot.
It will be available for the low, low cost of $69 million,
or for an even $70 million, we'll throw in a gif
of a sparkly cat playing with some yarn."
That kind of announcement is Biden at his best,
when he's got the vibe of an old-timer football coach
giving his young squad an inspirational halftime speech.
"We can do it, folks.
We can score 42 points in the second half.
And look, I know most of you have broken bones
because I forgot to teach you how to tackle,
but that's how we learn."
That's when Biden's at his best.
On the other hand, he gets a little off track
when he trails off,
like he did at the end of an answer on immigration.
-We're building back up the capacity
that should have been maintained and built upon
that Trump dismantled.
It's going to take time.
And the other thing we're doing, I might add --
Am I giving you too long an answer?
Because if you don't want the detail --
No, no, but, I mean, I don't know
how much detail you want about immigration.
Maybe I'll stop there.
-Yeah, we all know the press famously hates the details.
That's like a witness in a courtroom telling the judge,
"I mean, I know where the bodies are buried,
but you guys probably all have dinner plans."
And look, it's absolutely frustrating
that the mainstream media has essentially
laundered GOP talking points by making it sound like
there's a political crisis
or national security crisis on the border
or that Biden created it out of thin air
or ludicrously asking him if he moved too quickly
in undoing Trump's cruel and inhumane
and dysfunctional border policies.
But on the other hand, there is a very real
humanitarian situation on the border
with unaccompanied minors
who are fleeing poverty and violence
and exercising their legal right to asylum.
They deserve safety and aid
and to be treated compassionately and humanely.
And to his credit, Biden did say they should be treated humanely.
We're capable of having all of those thoughts at the same time.
And I know that's a change from the Trump era,
when our brains were so fried, we were incapable
of having even one thought at a time.
For most of the Trump era, my brain was so overloaded,
I forgot my kids' names. I just called them Guy and Dude
or Lev and Igor.
The moment Trump left office, I suddenly remembered
my ATM pin and my wedding anniversary,
which is why her present was $200 in $20s.
And there were some other weird moments, too,
like when Biden was asked about the tidal wave
of GOP voter suppression laws Republicans have unleashed,
the most ferocious nationwide assault on voting rights
since Jim Crow,
with more than 250 anti-voting bills across 43 states.
Biden correctly pointed that out
but then went for an odd line that I'm not sure made sense.
-What I'm worried about is how un-American
this whole initiative is.
It's sick. It's sick.
And so, I'm convinced that we'll be able to stop this,
because it is the most pernicious thing --
This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.
-Jim Eagle?
You talking about the Muppet?
Jim Eagle sounds like a desperate guess on "Jeopardy!"
for the question, "He was the lead singer of the Eagles."
"Well, I know Jim Floyd was the lead singer of Pink Floyd."
Also, you know there's a dude out there
whose name is actually Jim Eagle watching this saying,
"What the [bleep] Now I gotta change my name."
I'm just kidding. If there is a real man
named Jim Eagle,
he's not watching TV in the afternoon.
Based on his name, he's probably building a concrete dam
with his bare hands.
"Hey, Jim, the President just said your name!"
"Jim Eagle doesn't have time for such foolishness."
[ Laughter ]
But whatever you thought of Biden's press conference,
it was certainly refreshing to see a President
directly answer reporters' questions
without attacking anyone or melting down.
And, hey, Republicans, if you didn't like his answers...
-You're welcome to step away if you like.
-This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪
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