-Yet another former Trump adviser is out
with a self-serving book about their time in the White House.
Meanwhile, the committee investigating the attempted coup
on January 6th interviewed
Trump's former attorney for more than nine hours.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
There have been a flood of books
from former Trump advisers since he left office.
And while most of them have been dishonest and self-serving,
there's one coming out soon that I think has the potential
to be refreshingly candid and revealing.
And -- oh, wait, never mind. It's Kellyanne Conway.
-Kellyanne Conway is the author of a brand-new book,
"Here's the Deal," and she joins us now.
-Sorry, but the person who famously coined the phrase
"alternative facts" does not get to cash in on a book,
given that there's not a single word of it we should believe.
I bet even the cover is a lie.
By Kellyanne Conway?
That probably means her real name
is something like Connie Anne Kellyway.
This book is also called "Here's the Deal,"
which should be an automatic red flag,
because usually when someone says those words,
they've been caught in a lie.
"Gary, are you sexting with your co-worker?"
"What? No. Why?" "Because in your phone,
there's a notification that says you have a new sext."
"Okay, here's the deal." [ Laughter ]
"I thought it was the new iPhone update, and I had no choice."
Also isn't "Here's the Deal" a Joe Biden thing?
Is she trying to troll us all by naming her book after a thing
Joe Biden famously says?
-Here's the deal. Here's the deal.
Here's the deal. Here's the deal.
-What's she gonna call her next book?
"Look, Jack, Get Your Facts Straight,
C'mon Man: My Time as Barack Obama's Vice President"?
If you ask me, there's really only one thing Kellyanne Conway
should be remembered for -- her snide response
to a question about COVID
being contained in March of 2020.
-You talked about how the administration
initially had this contained, but during that time,
why didn't the administration send out more tests
and work to get hospitals prepared?
I mean, even today, the state of Florida is saying
they can't test everyone per the administration's guidelines
because they don't have enough tests.
-So you're asking a couple different things there.
I'll try to just give some facts.
The HHS secretary said this morning that we're ramping up.
We're ramping up with the commercial labs --
-Why now? Why didn't they do it while it was contained?
Get ahead of it?
-It is being contained.
And do you not think it's being contained?
-Congrats, Kellyanne. You were right.
It was contained in March 2020. COVID quickly fizzled out.
Hydroxychloroquine and horse paste worked,
and we never heard of it again.
Toilet paper was free and plentiful.
No one was locked in their homes for a year.
And I kept doing my show in a suit and tie with a haircut
and a full, unmasked audience.
That's me from yesterday's show. It was so good.
We did "A Closer Look" about the first year
of Trump's second term and how he has a 98% approval
rating after successfully containing COVID,
winning the snowboarding gold medal at the Olympics,
and wrapping with Dre and Snoop Dogg
at the Super Bowl halftime show.
♪ My name is Trump, and I'm here to say ♪
♪ I made COVID go away ♪
Wait, wait, wait. No, I got that all wrong.
None of that happened, right? COVID is still raging,
Trump lost the election, and I spent a year in lockdown,
swatting away wasps and growing out my hair like old Loki.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Oh, wait. Oh, God. Oh, God.
You know what that means? This has been...
[ Thunder crashes ]
[ Eerie music plays ]
Wait. Is this the timeline where Wally has luscious golden locks?
-You know it, baby!
[ Laughter and applause ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
Anyway, I'm not gonna quote from the book
because there's no reason to believe anything in it.
Conway was such a prolific and shameless liar
that we shouldn't take a single thing she says at face value.
In fact, that's how we should treat anyone in the GOP
who backed Trump's big lie about non-existent fraud
in the 2020 election. Like for some reason,
news outlets keep inviting on Republican politicians
to repeat the brazen and unhinged lie
that the 2020 election was somehow tainted.
Yesterday on CBS, Florida Senator Rick Scott,
who objected to the certification
of Pennsylvania's electoral votes on January 6th,
even after the violent mob stormed the Capitol,
implied that there was fraud in the election
with very little pushback.
-There is clearly people that are still concerned
about what happened in 2020,
and they would like the facts to come out.
And they want to know what happened...
-What do you mean by that? -...why it happened.
Well, they want to know --
They want to know that exactly what happened --
If, you know, were there problems,
exactly what happened.
They'd like to know that.
But also, you know, they also want to make sure we win in '22.
So, you know, they they want to make sure that,
you know, we're going to make sure their votes' not diluted.
So I think you have to -- you have to talk about, you know,
making sure people understand what happened in 2020,
but also make sure, you know,
they know that you're going to focus on making sure
that 2022 is a -- you know, is a fair election.
-What do you mean, "They want to know what happened"?
You know how many audits and recounts we've had?
Does everyone need to get a turn going through all the ballots
with a microscope so they can personally confirm
that the 2020 election was legit?
"Honey, what's all this?"
"Oh, they're ballots from Georgia.
I guess it's my turn to verify the results."
"But, honey, you don't know anything about elections."
"That's what I tried to tell them,
but they said it was my turn!" [ Laughter ]
We know what happened.
Georgia reaffirmed Biden's victory three times,
and even a Republican-sponsored audit in Arizona,
conducted by a group called the Cyber Ninjas,
confirmed Biden's win there.
And if you can't trust a group called the Cyber Ninjas,
who can you trust? [ Laughter ]
Cyber Ninjas sounds like the name of an NFT
that originally sold for $10,000
and now is going for 5 bucks on eBay.
Meanwhile, cyber ninja with an eyepatch
is now worth like $1,200,000.
And look, I'm not saying I own the one without an eyepatch.
I'm just saying, is the eyepatch one
really so much better? [ Laughter ]
In fact, the Republican search for voter fraud
was such a bust that Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick
offered a reward for proof of voter fraud.
And one of the very few cases that surfaced
was a Republican in Pennsylvania
who used his dead mother's ballot to vote for Trump.
So Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor, John Fetterman,
who just won the Democratic primary for Senate
in Pennsylvania last week,
said at the time that he would accept Patrick's reward
in the form of a gift certificate
to regional convenience store Sheetz.
-The fraud that we know that has occurred
in Pennsylvania in this cycle
is a registered Republican in Luzerne County
trying to vote for Trump with his dead mother's ballot.
Other than that, no, we have not witnessed
any voter fraud here in Pennsylvania.
I want my reward. You know, he wanted voter fraud,
and from one fellow lieutenant governor to another,
it's like, you know, he can pay me in a Sheetz gift card.
That would be fine. And the bottom line is,
like, you know, my dude wants voter fraud?
I delivered it in Pennsylvania
because that is the one lone case of voter fraud
documented right now, as of this airing.
By the way, if you don't know about Sheetz,
outside of New York, it's the only place you can go
to buy mouthwash, fuzzy dice, a 12-inch sub, and a six pack
of Keystone Light at the same time.
[ Laughter ] And, yeah, if you want
to quietly slip an adult magazine in there,
go for it. It's not porn!
Sheetz don't sell porn.
It's something tasteful that you can enjoy with your sub.
And by the way, I realize I'm stepping into the middle
of an extremely fraught rivalry here between Sheetz and Wawa.
I have an allegiance to Pittsburgh,
but my staff is packed with people from Jersey,
Philly, and, worst of all, Delaware.
They all -- [ Laughter ]
They all insist Wawa is better than Sheetz,
but I'm the host, so I get to decide.
And to fans of Wawa, I simply say...
[ Wah, wah! ]
[ Laughter ]
Anyway, back to Fetterman. My favorite part of his demand
that Patrick pay him the reward money
was a tweet he sent to Patrick
that ended with, "P.S. The Cowboys blow."
[ Laughter ]
And even if you're a Cowboys fan,
you have to admit he's a man of his convictions,
because when he asked about that tweet on CNN,
he did not back down.
-Well, let's first establish the Cowboys do, in fact, blow.
[ Laughter ]
-At the end of the day, this man is a unifier.
He may have driven a wedge with this Sheetz endorsement,
but the whole state can come together to agree
that the Cowboys [bleep] blow.
Also, I appreciate Fetterman's willingness
to use football analogies,
like when he said that demanding an audit of the election
was the equivalent of demanding to be
added to the roster of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
-I just want your viewers to understand that --
that the people that are involved
in these kinds of audits in Pennsylvania
are not the sharpest knives in the GOP drawer.
No one's taking this seriously.
I could issue a letter on my office's letterhead
to the Pittsburgh Steelers, saying, "I demand I be installed
as the starting left tackle for the upcoming season,"
and that could generate some new stories,
but it's not gonna go anywhere, and neither is this.
-And this is coming from a guy who, of all politicians,
has the best chance of actually becoming
the starting left tackle for the Steelers.
Dude is 6'9".
But he's certainly right about one thing.
The people involved in these scam audits
are not the sharpest knives in the drawer,
which brings us, of course, to a straight-up spoon,
Rudy Giuliani, who -- [ Laughter ]
who always looks like he's surprised
to find out he's Rudy Giuliani.
[ Laughter ]
"Oh, no, not that one, I hope!"
Rudy looks like he just challenged Fetterman
to a bar fight, and then realized
how tall Fetterman was when he stood up.
"Oh, never mind! You can keep talking to my wife, big guy.
Besides, she's my cousin. It's unnatural."
[ Laughter ]
Anyway, Rudy was, of course, integral to the failed attempt
to overturn the results in various swing states,
including specifically in Pennsylvania.
And as a result, the committee investigating the coup conducted
a virtual interview with him last week that lasted for hours.
-Some big news from the January 6th committee.
Tonight, in the past hour, we have learned
that President Trump's personal lawyer,
former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani,
testified today before the 1/6 committee.
NBC News confirms that Giuliani
testified virtually for approximately 9 hours.
-9 hours? I mean, I guess it makes sense.
The dude was involved in almost every aspect of the coup,
so there's a lot to discuss.
Either that or he kept having technical difficulties.
"Excuse me, Mr. Giuliani, you have your thumb
over the camera." "No, that's just my face.
It looks like a thumb with eyes drawn on it."
[ Laughter ]
Let's not forget Rudy once butt-dialed a reporter,
left a voicemail for the wrong senator,
and has repeatedly shown off evidence implicating himself
in Trump's crimes on his various devices during TV interviews.
-It's all here. Right here.
The first call from the State Department.
Here's Kurt saying, "Great.
I will tell Yermak, and he'll visit with you there.
Thanks."
"Mr. Mayor, how was your meeting with Andriy?
Do you have time for a call? Best Kurt."
They're all over me, you know, asking me to do it.
I was happy to do it.
-The feds didn't need to knock down his door.
They just had to watch Fox News.
"Hey, can we get one of our forensic guys to zoom in?
Yeah, no, there it is."
[ Laughter ]
Honestly, I'm just shocked Rudy
was able to make it to an Apple Store
without confusing it for a fruit stand.
"Oh, I'll take that yellow phone right there.
Boss, I got big news."
[ Laughter ]
"We won on appeal.
Also, boss, I got something to tell you.
They definitely put my head on someone else's body."
[ Laughter ]
"Boss, can we go to the full-frame again?
I think that this is definitely a case where my head
has been put on a different person's body."
[ Laughter ]
"Sometimes it's seamless, and you can't tell,
but this is clearly not my body, boss."
[ Laughter ]
"We had to find a picture of a body
that was holding the phone that looked like a banana."
[ Laughter ]
The point is, Republicans are very much
still engaged to this day
and preparing for the next coup, which is why they're still
so invested in lying about or covering up the last one.
The GOP nominee for governor in Pennsylvania
is a full-on pro-insurrectionist
who wanted to overturn the state's electors in 2020.
We can't allow Republicans who supported the big lie
back into the political mainstream
because whatever they pretend to be in the streets,
Republicans are still opposed to democracy in the...
Sheetz.
[ Laughter ]
-Um, guys, that was not the easiest "Closer Look"
for me to get through.
Not only is what we're talking about very serious,
but Wally's had the wig on the whole time.
[ Laughter ] And, uh...
you know, if you think back,
the wig was really early. [ Laughter ]
The wig was really early, in "Closer Look," and, uh...
[ Applause ]
[ Laughter ]
And so, like, while I'm talking about --
You know, again, I'm talking about things
that are really gonna affect us, also, in the back of my head
that whole time, I'm like, "Why didn't you take the wig off?
[ Laughter ]
I'm gonna ask him during the commercial break.
I'll let you know if it was a good answer.
We'll be right back with Billy Crystal.
♪♪
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