-A Republican congressman accused his colleagues
of doing cocaine and holding orgies...
[ Laughter and applause ]
...while Donald Trump decided,
in the middle of Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine,
he would ask Vladimir Putin to dig up dirt on the Bidens.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
♪♪ [ Cheering and applause ]
There's a lot you can say
about the modern Republican Party --
it's paranoid, authoritarian,
obsessed with conspiracy theories and culture wars.
But, in addition to that,
it's full of weird people constantly saying weird [bleep].
[ Laughter ] Like when Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene
called the president the...
[ Laughter ] ...rather than
commander-in-chief, which is the actual title.
Does she think the two jobs are separate?
[ As Greene ] Being president is super hard
because you're the commander and you're the chief.
[ Laughter and applause ]
When the Constitution was written in 1492
by Christopher Columbo,
[ Laughter ] they were originally
two separate jobs.
The commander was George Washington
and the chief was
Clancy Wiggum.
[ Laughter and applause ]
And then there's North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn,
who said something so bizarre the other day
that even a Republican senator from his home state said...
[ Laughter ] Cawthorn compared
the real-life Washington
to the Netflix show "House of Cards"
and, in the process made some pretty crazy allegations
about what goes on in D.C.
-The sexual perversion that goes on in Washington.
I mean, being kind of a young guy in Washington,
where the average age is probably 60 or 70,
[ Laughter ] I look at all these people, a lot of them that I,
you know, I've looked up to through my life,
I always paid attention to politics,
guys that, you know.
Then, all of a sudden, you get invited to like,
"Oh, hey, we're going to have kind of
a sexual get-together at one of our homes.
You should come." I'm like,
[ Laughter ] "What did you just ask me to come do?"
-Yeah. -And then you realize they're
asking you to come to an orgy.
-Yeah. -Or the fact that, you know, [ Laughter ]
some of the people that are leading on the movement
to try and remove, you know, addiction in our country
and then you watch them do, you know,
a key bump of cocaine right in front of you
and it's like, wow, this is wild.
-Come on, man, you really expect us to believe
that Congress could plan and execute an orgy?
[ Laughter and applause ]
At best, I could see them announcing
an exploratory committee that would begin to investigate
the feasibility of an orgy at a later date.
[ Laughter ] And then it would grind to a halt
because one faction would say they wouldn't go,
unless the orgy was carbon-neutral.
[ Laughter ] And then Joe Manchin would say
he's only going to vote for the orgy
if there was money for coal in it.
[ Laughter and applause ] And then someone would say,
"Why do you need coal at an orgy?"
And Joe Manchin would say, "I guess you've never been
to a West Virginia sex party."
[ Laughter ] It just wouldn't happen.
Although --
although, in Cawthorn's defense,
I will say Chuck Schumer positions his glasses
like a man watching an orgy.
[ Laughter ]
[ As Schumer ] Well, well, well.
What do we have here?
[ Laughter ]
Also, I got to say, if they were having orgies and doing cocaine,
I would actually find that impressive.
I mean, they're all 70 and 80 years old.
If you told me Chuck Grassley was snorting blow
and boning nonstop,
[ Laughter and applause ] I'd be like, "Damn!
Maybe he's more with it than I thought."
[ Laughter ]
Also, Chuck Grassley, just going to say it --
pretty good name for an adult film star.
[ Laughter ]
[ As Grassley ] Did somebody order a pizza?
[ Laughter and applause ]
Now, Cawthorn is presumably referring
to his fellow Republicans here, since those are the people
he caucuses and spends time with.
So, he seems to be accusing his own GOP colleagues
of being sex-crazed drug addicts,
which is why, understandably,
those same colleagues are pissed at him now.
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy
called Cawthorn in to his office today,
maybe hoping to score an invite or to tell him to stop narcing;
[ Laughter ] and Pennsylvania Republican Scott Perry, the chairman
of the ultra conservative House Freedom Caucus...
[ Laughter ]
Oh, please don't name names.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Because all those names go with faces we know.
[ Laughter ]
But this is truly an amazing turn
in the evolution of the Republican Party.
They whipped up their base into believing crazy [bleep]
That base then elected a bunch of crazy people
who believe that crazy [bleep]
and, now, those crazy people are accusing
their fellow Republicans of engaging
in wild, drug-fueled sex parties.
This whole group of pro-Trump toadies
is just so weird and loathsome,
like Texas Senator Ted Cruz, for example, who --
[ Laughter ] I'm going to go out on a limb here --
wasn't invited to the orgy.
[ Laughter and applause ]
[ As Cruz ] Well, it's just frustrating
because we're always getting our dates mixed up.
[ Laughter ]
Cruz claimed, the other day, that a mysterious cabal
is, somehow, controlling the Biden administration
because he personally has not spoken to Biden
during his presidency.
-I actually get asked that almost every day.
Somebody says, "Who's really running things?"
And let me tell you, the scary thing?
I have no idea. -Mm.
[ Laughter ] So Biden's been president,
what, 15 months?
In that entire time, I have not spoken with him once.
-Well, I guess that means he's at the orgies
that you're not at.
[ Laughter and applause ]
But I do wonder why a person
wouldn't want to speak to Ted Cruz.
It truly is a mystery.
It's one of those age old questions.
Why don't people like talking to Ted Cruz
or why don't people like getting hit in the nuts with a football?
[ Laughter ]
This is the modern Republican Party --
a collection of fringe weirdos who, by the way,
will very likely control Congress next year
and they could very well end up nominating
Donald Trump for president again.
He keeps holding his unhinged rallies
and keeps strongly hinting that he'll run again
and he remains, as of now,
the most influential Republican in the country,
which is terrifying for many reasons,
among which is the fact that he tried to stage a coup,
which a House committee and a federal judge
have said was very likely a crime.
He's hidden,
or possibly even destroyed, evidence of that crime.
And, on top of all that, keeps going out of his way
to praise a brutal autocrat currently waging a horrific war
on an innocent neighboring country.
And now, Trump is complaining that the media keeps getting mad
whenever he calls various dictators,
like Vladimir Putin, smart.
-You know, every time I say somebody's smart,
they always go, "Oh!
Trump said that President Xi of China is smart!"
Well, you know, he runs 1.5 billion people
with an iron fist.
Yeah, I think he's pretty smart.
[ Laughter ]
And they have a chain over there.
You know, if you're a dummy, you get left here.
It's like this. It's like a pyramid.
The smartest one gets to the top.
But they ask me, "Is Putin smart?"
Yes, Putin was smart
and I actually thought he was going to be negotiating.
I said, "That's a hell of a way to negotiate --
put 200,000 soldiers on the border."
It looked like a great negotiation.
That didn't work out too well for him.
-I like wounded Trump.
He's 75, but whines like a grounded teenager.
[ As Trump ] It's not fair. Everyone's mad at me
[ Laughter ] because I said Putin's smart.
I said he's smart for dumping Sarah
and taking the head cheerleader to prom.
And, sure, Sarah is perfect for Vlad. We all know that.
But the head cheerleader's hotter!
[ Laughter ]
Well, maybe, one day, Sarah will take off those glasses.
[ Laughter ]
Also, what do you mean, it was a great negotiation
that didn't work out too well for him?
How can both of those things be true?
[ Laughter ] I cannot believe this guy
was commander or chief.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Of course, as the world watches
the conflict in Ukraine with horror,
most decent, compassionate people are asking themselves
what they can do to help,
while responsible world leaders try
to come up with solutions to end the crisis.
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators have been meeting
to try to hash out a ceasefire, a peace deal.
And then there's Trump, who apparently thought now
would be a good time, in the middle of a monstrous war,
to pitch some ideas to Vladimir Putin
on how he could help Trump out and weaken Joe Biden.
-As long as Putin, now, is not exactly a fan of our country,
let him explain where did --
Because Chris Wallace wouldn't let me ask the question.
Why did the mayor of Moscow's wife
give the Bidens -- both of them --
$3.5 million?
That's a lot of money.
She gave them $3.5 million.
So, now, I would think Putin would know the answer to that.
I think he should release it.
I think we should know that answer.
I think Putin, now, would be willing
to probably give that answer.
I'm sure he knows.
-It's so shocking and gross,
I need a second to process it,
which brings us to a segment called
"Seth Needs a Smoke Break."
♪♪ [ Laughter ]
I mean, damn, man.
[ Laughter ]
I don't smoke. This is disgusting.
[ Laughter and applause ]
People do that?
[ Laughter ]
This has been "Seth Needs a Smoke Break."
♪♪ [ Laughter and applause ]
You can always --
You can always count on Trump to have both the worst
and most insane take on any topic.
I'd be terrified to hear what he thought of the Oscars.
[ As Trump ] If anything, I think we could've used
one or maybe two more slaps.
[ Laughter and applause ] And, you know -- And, you know,
it's never the slapper's fault.
It's the slapee because you have to be ready.
You have to be ready.
[ Laughter ] That's why I was always
practicing karate at my press conferences.
[ Laughter and applause ]
You have to scare off potential slappers.
[ Laughter ]
Second, you're accusing someone else
of taking money from Russia?
You repeatedly tried to do business deals in Moscow,
including while you were running for president,
when you signed a letter of intent
to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
CNN even obtained a copy of the official letter of intent
from October 2015 and it had your signature on it.
And we know it's your signature because it was in Sharpie
and it looks like the results of a cardiogram
from a patient in the middle of a heart attack.
[ Laughter and applause ] Look at that.
It looks like a New Yorker cartoon of a Klan rally.
[ Laughter and applause ]
If you looked at that signature without knowing who it was,
you'd think the name was
Ahhhhhhh!
[ Laughter ]
These two moments should give you a pretty good idea
of where the Republican Party is right now.
It's an unhinged movement of aspiring authoritarians
whose leader is openly praising a brutal tyrant
and asking him, once again, to intervene in U.S. politics,
while a congressman accuses his colleagues
of drug-fueled sex parties.
I have no idea what those orgies look like, but I'm guessing...
-It's like a pyramid.
[ Laughter and applause ]
-This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪
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