-The president and his allies have decided
on a closing message for the final days of the campaign.
Whine about social media and pretend the pandemic is over.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
♪♪
There's a lot you can say about Donald Trump's
inner circle and the leadership of the modern Republican Party,
but when you boil it down, it's basically just a collection
of gigantic weirdos.
They're the people who collect ceramic pigs
and sit by their windows, writing down
license plate numbers for no reason.
Take, for example, house minority leader Kevin McCarthy,
who showed up to one of Trump's rallies yesterday and claimed
Republicans are going to take back the House.
McCarthy then belched up this, I think,
English sentence about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
-I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel.
[ Cheers and applause ]
And I promise you this, I won't bang her with it,
but I'll bang the end to the socialism and, yes, to America.
-What now?
"I'll bang the end to the socialism and yes to America"?
That sounds like a poorly translated leaflet
dropped on Moscow during the Cold War.
Why do all these guys talk like
rip-off dollar store action figures made in Eastern Europe
that your grandma would get you for Christmas?
Oh, wow, it's a Fuzz Goodyear?
Let me pull the string.
-Infinity is where I'm going
and maybe even a little bit further!
-The leaders of the modern GOP are basically just
a bunch of goofy old puds. Yeah, I said it, puds.
The type of guy who's still working at
your hometown bowling alley 30 years after high school
because he gets free disco fries.
"Plus I get all the shoe spray I can huff, and that is a lot."
For example, Republicans held a hearing on big tech companies
yesterday just to complain about supposed social media bias
against conservatives, which it's not a thing.
Now, there are progressives, like Elizabeth Warren
and tonight's guest, Bernie sanders,
who really do want to break up big tech monopolies
that have consolidated too much power.
But Republicans just want to whine
about mean tweets they don't like.
The best example of that
came from Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson,
when he complained about an obviously satirical tweet.
-Mr. Dorsey, you talked about your policies
toward misinformation and that you will block misinformation
if it's against civic integrity,
election interference or voter suppression.
Let me give you a tweet that was put up on Twitter.
It says, "Senator Ron Johnson is my neighbor
and strangled our dog, Buttons, right in front of
my 4-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter.
The police refuse to investigate.
This is a complete lie, but important to retweet
and note that there are more of my lies to come."
How could that not be a violation of voter suppression?
Obviously, if people think I'm strangling my neighbor's dog,
they may not show up at the polls.
That would be voter suppression.
-"And another thing, Mr. Dorsey, last night, my door bell rang
late at night. So I went to answer it,
and when went to answer it, there was a flaming bag of poo
on my front step so I tried to stamp out the fire,
but I got poo all over my shoes.
This is clearly an act of voter suppression
by the neighborhood teens. Because if I have poo-poo
on my shoes, I'll be too embarrassed to go vote!"
The bigger problem here is Ron Johnson thinks his constituents
might actually believe that he strangled his neighbor's dog
and, yeah, okay. I can kind of see it.
With that said, Jack Dorsey looks like a dog serial killer.
Like straight up a guy who took out multiple dogs.
In Ron Johnson's corn chowder brain,
a joke tweet about a senator is voter suppression,
but invalidating mail-in ballots
and making people wait hours to vote isn't.
He's like a guy who parks his BMW in a fire lane,
then loses his [bleep] when his car gets towed.
"This is voter suppression!
How am I supposed to get to the polling place now?"
And then there was Tennessee Senator Marsha blackburn,
who asked the CEO of Google if the company was still employing
someone who criticized her.
-Is Blake Lemoine, one of your engineers,
still working with you?
-Uh, Senator, I'm familiar with his name as a name.
I'm not sure that he's currently an employee.
-Okay.
Well, he has had very unkind things to say about me,
and I was just wondering if you all
had still kept him working there.
-Man, Fox News was right.
Cancel culture is out of control.
She sounds like she's asking to speak the manager
about a sales assistant at Costco.
"Is Madison still working here?
She had very unkind things to say about me when I tried to
sample the pizza rolls in the frozen aisle.
Very hurtful things
about how I'm not supposed to open the box."
This is the fundament reality of the modern GOP.
They're all Donald Trump. He complains about social media,
so they complain about social media, even though most of them
don't have the tech savvy to handle
the laundry room bulletin board.
"Coffee table for sale. What the hell does OBO mean?
This is unfair!"
This is what the GOP is now.
They've failed at everything else, so they're reduced to
whining about mean tweets and trying to get people fired.
And in their warped minds, they think this is more important
than the deadly pandemic that's killed 227,000 Americans.
Eric Trump actually claimed supposed social media bias
against conservatives was the biggest issue in the election.
-You better believe they also have their fingers on the dial.
I mean, if I put something out that they disagree with,
the numbers are down.
I mean, I can just see it based on engagements and likes.
You can, too, on yours. They are censoring us.
They don't do it to the other side.
It's gross but Americans are seeing through it.
Believe me, Americans see through it.
I'm telling you, people aren't happy about it.
I think it's actually become probably the number one issue
in politics in the last couple weeks.
-Yeah, man, it's definitely the number one issue
in politics right now. In polls, it's right above
Hunter Biden's laptop,
Lesley Stahl was very nasty to Mr. Trump,
and why did Ron Johnson kill that dog?
He was looking at me funny!
Buttons had to go.
Of course, none of this is working with voters, which is
why Trump is way down in the polls.
Now, a lot can still happen before the election, and polls
can be wrong, as we've learned before.
But right now, the story seems to be pretty consistent.
Joe Biden has a large national lead.
Much easier path to 270 than Trump.
Two national polls yesterday showed Biden up by 12
and 11 points each.
Which, somehow, gives me even more anxiety
than if the race was closer.
It's like when your wife says she wants you
to go on that guys trip to Vegas for the weekend.
You're like, "Okay, so what are you gonna do?"
"Oh, nothing." "You won't be like lonely?"
"Oh, no, I'll be fine."
"Well then I'm not going!"
And we have to remember not to read too much
into any single poll.
Just yesterday, one poll had Biden up 17 points in Wisconsin,
while another had him up only five points in Minnesota.
It's the kind of maddening poll result designed to keep you up
all night mainlining Xanax and digging through cross tabs.
"Alright, let's see here. Biden is overperforming with
liberal suburban women under 35 who drink Tazo tea
and play tennis, but underperforming with
centrist NASCAR dads over 50
who refer to the bathroom as their 'office.'"
Again, anything can happen,
which is why you should take nothing for granted.
But the fact is, everyone's
looking at the same polling data.
The Trump campaign knows they can't campaign
against Joe Biden. So, they've decided instead
to campaign against reality.
Specifically, the reality of a deadly pandemic
that is once again spreading rapidly out of control.
New cases are at record numbers,
and hospitals are filling up.
Over 1,000 Americans died just yesterday alone.
Unless we do something different, the bleak reality
is only going to get bleaker,
as Dr. Anthony Fauci explained on Wednesday.
-This is going to get worse
because we're going more into a colder season
as we get through the fall and into the winter.
With the holiday season going,
we've got to do something different.
We just can't let this happen.
We're going to have many more hospitalizations and that will
inevitably lead to more deaths.
So this is an untenable situation.
-It's only an untenable situation
if you're a sane person capable of empathy and compassion
and not, you know, a sociopath who dances at his rallies
during a deadly pandemic like a hungover little league umpire
calling strike three. "Strike three!"
"But Mr. Trump, that was only strike one."
"You're out of here!
You're out of here, kid!"
Trump and the GOP just don't care about the pandemic.
They don't care that hospital ICUs are filling up,
that hundreds of Americans are dying every day.
Trump keeps showing a flagrant disregard for human life
by holding giant superspreader rallies in hot spots
and by pretending that the pandemic is over,
and that the virus just isn't that deadly.
-With the fake news, everything is COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID.
I had it. Here I am, right?
People are getting better.
And, you know, you're immune.
That's why I could jump right there, see those men?
I'll kiss the men. I'm not into that, but I will
kiss every man there, and kiss every woman there,
if you don't mind also.
They won't catch anything.
-I love how he throws in "I'm not into that," after saying
he'll kiss the men, like he's giving the gay community
the sad news.
I'm sure they all had their hopes up.
"What did he say? Oh, never mind.
False alarm, guys."
Also, if you went out in the crowd and started kissing
people, I'm pretty sure they'd catch something.
I wouldn't be surprised if Trump's blood is full of those
bacteria they usually only find in Arctic ice core samples.
And, plus, the Trump White House, remember, is a hot spot.
It's probably filthier than a bus stop bench in midtown.
Forget COVID.
Has anyone fumigated that place for bed bugs?
You just know Trump leaves Diet Coke rings everywhere,
and uses the curtains as napkins like Oscar Madison.
I bet if you shined a blue light on that place,
it would look like the Hayden Planetarium.
If Biden wins, they should just tear it down and build a new one
across the street like they did for the Mets.
Because if it worked for the Mets -- what?
Oh, it didn't? It didn't work for the Mets?
How bad is it? Oh, it's bad?
Well, at least you still have the Jets.
What?
Trump has also decided to use his rallies to once again
discredit one of the most powerful tools we have in
fighting the virus, universal mask wearing.
In fact, he seems to have some very weird ideas about
how you're supposed to eat with a mask on.
As he explained yesterday, Trump thinks instead of just
taking it off, you have to get the food through the mask.
-In California, you have a special mask.
You cannot, under any circumstances, take it off.
You have to eat through the mask.
Right? Right, Charlie?
It's a very complex mechanism.
And they don't realize those germs,
they go through it like nothing.
They look at you with that contraption
and they say that's an easy one.
I'll go right through with the food.
How about California where you're supposed to eat
with the mask? Can't take it off.
-Is it possible you're confusing a mask with a bib?
"You have to tie the mask around your neck
and put it over your face before you eat.
You can't see the food on the plate.
That's why they put a picture of what you're eating on the bib."
Also why is he narrating the thought process of a germ?
He sounds like a doctor giving a Ted Talk
after a massive head wound.
"The germs look at you and say, 'I'm going right in
with the food,' and then they hitch a ride on the Big Mac,
or Whopper, either one, and slide down your throat
into your stomach, where they pretend to be normal cells
to blend in, and then when no one's looking,
they sneak down, down to your butt,
and that's where the farts come from.
We love the farts, don't we?
Oh, they make us laugh with their silly sounds.
Silly sounds. Not crooked Joe.
Doesn't love the farts."
There are less than five days left in the campaign,
and the ruling party has decided to ignore the raging pandemic.
Instead they're spending their time whining about social media
and plotting ways to steal the election through the courts.
It's a deeply dangerous, sociopathic movement
that's incapable of governing.
And if we soundly repudiate them next week,
then we celebrate by saying --
-Yes to America!
-This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪
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