-The political world, including
a stunned and flailing Fox News, is still reeling from
yesterday's shocking testimony before the January 6th
Committee, in which former
Trump White House official Cassidy Hutchinson
testified under oath that, among other things, President Trump
wanted his supporters to be allowed into
his rally armed so they could then march to
the Capitol with their weapons, where he planned to meet them
and join the mob in its effort
to overturn the election. For more on this,
it's time for "A Closer Look." [ Cheers and applause ] It's been a day and a half,
and honestly, I'm still struggling
with words to fully capture the gravity and insanity
of what we all heard yesterday. In the first draft
of this script, the intro for "A Closer Look" was just a word
you can't say on TV. Wally, show them the card. [ Laughter ] I think the moment
that best captures just how stunned
everyone was yesterday was this clip from
Fox News daytime anchors shortly after the hearing ended. The anchors tried to summarize
what had just happened, and then when they were done, they just sort of sat there
in awkward silence, figuring out
whose turn it was to talk. -This testimony
was very compelling from beginning to end. She obviously had access
to all of the players. What was so compelling,
I think, is how it was laid out. We always point out that there's
not a pushback, and it would have been
great to hear Jim Jordan or some congressman
say some other angle to this. But the testimony in
and of itself is really, really powerful. [ Laughter ]
-Sandra, can you still hear? -Indeed, yes, I am here.
-Oof! That's like when you get
in the car with your parents after they took you to a movie that had way more nudity
than they were expecting. "Well, uh... when I heard it was [clears
throat] called 'Showgirls,' I did expect it
would be a musical." [ Laughter ] I also like how they all
act like the question was for the other person. "John, why don't you go ahead?" "I'm sorry, are you talking to
me John or the cameraman John?" "Sandra?
Do you want to take this one?" "Oh, sorry, I couldn't hear you.
Why don't you go ahead, Bret?" "No, no, no, no, no, no.
Ladies first." The hearing was so powerful and
the revelations were so searing that even
the opinion people on Fox seemed knocked off their game. They couldn't settle
on a coherent narrative the way they usually do. They just cycled through
a bunch of different lines, from screaming about media bias to claiming everyone knows
Trump gets angry to dismissing Hutchinson
as a low-level staffer who supposedly
had ulterior motives. -I spoke with some former
White House staffers, three or four of them,
in the afternoon, and they knew her well. And not one person had anything good to say
about her performance today. -I would take their word over
any word of this junior staffer who is completely,
I believe, lying to the January 6th Committee
for her own self gain. -She wanted to work for Donald
Trump outside the White House when he wasn't president
at Mar-A-Lago. -I'm not sure that any of this
is wholly out of character with the Donald Trump
and the President Trump that people came
to know over the years. -This committee
has come up with nothing despite the fact
it's all one way. -She's an extremely junior,
low-level aide. I don't think I ever had
a conversation with her. -No, avoiding conversations
with Stephen Miller is not proof
that you're a low-level aide. It's proof that
you're a human being afraid of being eaten
Hannibal Lecter style. No, of course. I don't
believe he's actually human. I think he's an enchanted doll
from a horror movie that came to life
when a witch cast a spell during a lightning storm. Speaking of that, has anyone seen my little
Stephen Miller doll? [ Laughter ] I swore I left him
on that chair. [ Footsteps ] Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
What are those footsteps? Oh, God, no. Little Stephen, no! [ Thunder crashes ] [ Witch cackling ] [ Laughter, applause ] -I mean, can you even imagine
trying to have a normal conversation
with Stephen Miller? I've had nightmares where
I bump into him in the hallway and have to
make small talk with him. "Hey, Steve,
how about those Yankees?" "They seem weak, vulnerable,
almost deliciously so." "Cool. Cool, Steve. I will catch you later." Fox also tried
to discredit Hutchinson by claiming she was just
testifying to get a TV gig. -Well, it's like she was
auditioning for a seat at "The View"
or "The Real Staffers of Pennsylvania Avenue"
or something. It just seemed
like an audition tape. -You voted for a literal
reality show host for president. Did you [bleep] just memory hole the fact that before
he was president, Trump spent most of his time
in a fake boardroom yelling at Gene Simmons
and Lisa Rinna over their
flailing hot dog business? It was his last job
before president. The Fox News spin
was so unconvincing because the hearing itself
was so damning. In many ways, the broad themes were the same
as previous hearings. They all knew, Trump on down,
exactly what was happening. They all knew it was illegal. They all knew
it could end in violence, and they did it anyway. It was not a whim or impulse. It was an orchestrated scheme
to overturn the election. And then when that failed, incite a violent insurrection
to coerce Mike Pence and Congress
into crowning Trump as an unelected autocrat. For example,
Trump's direction of the mob to march down to the Capitol
during his speech was not
some spur-of-the-moment thing. It was planned well in advance, as Rudy Giuliani explained
to Hutchinson in the conversation at
the White House on January 2nd, four days before the riot, where Rudy told her
that Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was involved in the plan,
as well. -As Mr. Giuliani and I were
walking to his vehicles that evening, he looked at me
and said something to the effect of, "Cass,
are you excited for the 6th? It's going to be a great day." I remember looking at him
and saying, "Rudy, could you explain
what's happening on the 6th?" And he had responded something
to the effect of, "We're going to the Capitol.
It's going to be great. The president's
going to be there. He's going to look powerful. He's going to be
with the members. He's going to be with
the senators. Talk to the chief about it.
Talk to the chief about it. He knows about it." -I like that Rudy talked
about a planned insurrection to overthrow democracy
with the same naive enthusiasm of a 6-year-old
who's going to the zoo. "Did you hear? Mom's taking us to the reptile
exhibit on Thursday! She says there's an animal there
who looks just like me." [ Laughter ] And, yeah, I know we use that
picture a lot, but so does he. We got it off his passport. [ Laughter ] Of course, with Rudy, it's
hard to take anything he says at face value, given that
he could easily be confused. He seems like the kind of guy
who could be telling you a crazy story
and then halfway through stop and say,
"Wait, no, I dreamed that. That's right. I can't fly." [ Laughter ] So the plan all along was to
have Trump join the mob down at the Capitol,
which, suffice it to say, would have been horrifying
and impossible to contain, and Trump's cronies,
including Mark Meadows, knew that things could get ugly,
to say the least, and Meadows in particular
didn't really seem to care. -After Mr. Giuliani had
left the campus that evening, I went back up to our office and I found Mr. Meadows
in his office on the couch. He was scrolling
through his phone. I remember leaning against
the doorway and saying, "I just had an interesting
conversation with Rudy, Mark. Sounds like we're going to
go to the Capitol." He didn't look up from his phone and said something
to the effect of, "There's a lot going on, Cass,
but I don't know. Things might get real,
real bad on January 6th." -He reacted to plans
for a violent coup like an exhausted dad
who was just told his kids are playing with a
bobcat they found in the woods. "They're fine.
There's three of them. I'm sure they can handle a cat. Kids, you okay out there?" [ Bobcat snarling,
clattering ] Sounds like
they're having fun. So on the one hand,
as an unprecedented Constitutional crisis
was unfolding, there were people
like Hutchinson who were at least paying
attention and asking questions. And then, on the other hand, there were guys
like Mark Meadows who were just
totally [bleep] zonked and pretending
nothing was happening. Dude was just scrolling
on his phone, ignoring pleas for help like a lifeguard
at a swimming pool who's got one guess left
in Wordle. "Stop your splashing.
I'm one letter away. Oh, sweet. Oh, no." [ Laughter ] So Trump's plan was to go
to the Capitol and lead the mob, and Trump also knew
his supporters had weapons. In fact, when Trump found out
his supporters were being denied access to his rally because they had weapons they couldn't bring
through the metal detectors known as magnetometers or mags, as you hear him say
in this clip, Trump said security should
let them keep the weapons so they could then march to
the Capitol with those weapons after his speech was over. -I was in the vicinity of a
conversation where I overheard the president say something
to the effect of, "You know, I don't effing care
that they have weapons. They're not here to hurt me.
Take the effing mags away. Let my people in. They can march
to the Capitol from here." -And just to be clear, so he was told again
in that conversation or was he told again
in that conversation that people couldn't
come through the mags because they had weapons?
-Correct. -And that people -- and his response was to say
they can march to the Capitol from the ellipse. -Something to the effect of
"take the," I think, "mags away. They're not here to hurt me.
Let them in. Let my people in. They can march the Capitol
after the rally's over. They can march from --
they can march from the ellipse. Take the effing mags away. Then they can march
to the Capitol." -I mean, holy [bleep]. It's been a day and a half
since I heard that, and I still can't
wrap my head around it. The president was told his
supporters were armed and said, "Let them in anyway." They can march to the Capitol
with their weapons, where their goal will be to overturn
the presidential election and install him
as an unelected autocrat. You know what? Can we -- Let's
get that card back up, Wally. [ Laughter ] You know, it occurs to me that that card will be blurred
out for the viewers at home. So just so they know,
it says [bleep]. I really don't know what to do with all the information
we learned yesterday other than to just sit with it, which brings us to a new segment
called "Seth Just Has to Sit With It
for A Sec." [ Light laughter ] [ Laughter ] I mean, God damn. [ Laughter ] [ Chuckles ] [ Laughter ] I mean... [ Laughter ] [ Laughs ] [ Laughter ] I mean... [ Laughter ] This has been "Seth Just Has to
Sit With It for A Sec." ♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ] And Trump was apparently furious when he found out
he couldn't go to the Capitol. In fact, Hutchinson testified that he actually tried to
commandeer his own vehicle. Now, since her testimony
yesterday, two of the people involved,
Trump allies Bobby Engel and Tony Ornato, whose names
you'll hear often in the clip, have contested aspects
of the story through anonymous intermediaries
in the press, although I'm personally
skeptical of their denials, since for one thing, they weren't the ones
under oath, she was. And also, according to a
"Washington Post" reporter who has covered the secret
service extensively, Engel and Ornato were apparently
known as "enablers and 'yes men' to the president...
and very much people who wanted to do what he wanted
and see him pleased. So, both of those individuals
lose a little credibility because of
how closely they've been seen as aligned to Donald Trump." Obviously,
we'll need more information, but the core of the story,
that Trump wanted to go to the Capitol and lead the mob and was irate when he couldn't,
is uncontested. Here's how Hutchinson
relayed it under oath yesterday. -Tony described him
as being irate. The president said something
to the effect of, "I'm the effing president.
Take me up to the Capitol now." To which Bobby responded, "Sir, we have to go back
to the West wing." The president reached up towards the front of the vehicle
to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, said, "Sir, you need to take your hand
off the steering wheel. We're going back
to the West wing. We're not going to the Capitol." Mr. Trump then used
his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel, and when Mr. Ornato
had recounted this story to me, he had motioned
towards his clavicles. -My favorite part of this story is imagining
what would have happened if Trump had actually succeeded and gotten his hands
on the wheel. I mean, can you imagine him
driving a car? I mean, we've seen him
drive a golf cart, but could he handle a, you know,
a steering wheel that doesn't come
with a tiny pencil holder? I mean, remember the one time he sat in
the driver's seat of a truck and handled the wheel like
a fifth-grader in a bumper car? Let's say he really did
get his hands on the wheel and drove the car. What would that look like? "Alright, hands at 10:00
and 2:00, adjust your mirrors,
check your blind spots, turn signal on,
and we crashed into a tree. Guys, you got to tell the cops a cat ran out
and I swerved to save the cat. I can't get another ticket or they're going to
take my license away. And Mel already told me she
won't drive me anywhere. You got to get my back, guys." We've said this a lot over the entirety
of Trump's political career, but this hearing
really was shocking. I genuinely do not think I had the capacity
to be shocked anymore. Even Fox News seemed dazed
and paralyzed by how devastating it was. The president and his team
orchestrated a violent coup, and at every step of the way, they were aware of what they
were doing, that it was illegal, and that it could lead
to violence. Trump wanted
to lead an armed mob to overturn the election. At this point,
we don't need any more evidence. We need the Justice Department
to act on it. In the meantime, we're all
just waiting around like this. [ Laughter ] This has been "A Closer Look." ♪♪ God's Love We Deliver cooks and brings
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