-With the midterms just
under five days away, Republicans have been hampered
by underperforming candidates in key races across the country and yet, still, several
of those candidates, including pro-Trump
election deniers who have outright declared that they will use their power
to steal future elections, are in very close races
and could easily win. For more on this,
it's time for "A Closer Look." ♪♪
[ Cheering and applause ] Historically, midterms just tend
to go very badly for the party in power
and the polls currently suggest that may, yet again,
be the case this year. The main thing holding
Republicans back, it seems, is that they've nominated some spectacularly [bleep]
candidates, like Mehmet Oz, who's running for Senate
in Pennsylvania, but doesn't seem to know
exactly where Pennsylvania is. -Listen, this is important. We do not have
a Republican senator north of North Carolina
on the Atlantic Coast, until you get the Maine,
if I don't hold this seat. -I'm no cartographer,
but I'm pretty sure Pennsylvania is not
on the Atlantic Coast. [ Laughter ]
You know how I know that? I have several staffers
who live in New Jersey and, whenever they come back
from summer hiatus, they always complain about all
the [bleep] Philly fans down at the shore. [ Laughter, cheering,
and applause ] I'm pretty sure Delaware
only exists to make it harder for Gritty
to get to the beach. [ Laughter ] You know how, also,
I know Pennsylvania isn't on the Atlantic Coast? There aren't any beaches
in Philadelphia. When they signed
the Declaration of Independence, they didn't celebrate
afterwards with a clambake. [ Laughter ]
Dr. Oz probably thinks
the Liberty Bell is there to warn people when they spot
a shark in the water. [ Laughter ] Then there's Georgia Senate
candidate Herschel Walker. The other day, President Obama
traveled to Georgia to campaign
for Walker's opponent, Democratic
Senator Raphael Warnock and this was Walker's response
to Obama's visit on Fox News. -I've created businesses. I sit on a publicly
traded board, so those are things I've done
outside of football. But my résumé
against his résumé, I put it up any time of the day. -You do? That's like me saying,
[ Laughter ] "Einstein?
I'm way smarter than him. [ Laughter ]
That dope could never do a 'Day Drinking'
with Post Malone." [ Laughter ] Look, you don't have
Obama's résumé. You know how I know?
Obama never had to flash a fake sheriff's badge
in a debate like he was cosplaying
as Deputy Dog. [ Laughter ]
Dude was president
of the Harvard Law Review, a senator, president,
he's won a Grammy and Emmy, he was Time's
Person of the Year, he went kitesurfing
with Richard Branson, and now, he's got a Netflix deal
where he produces movies and he still manages
to maintain that laidback style he's got going on
post-presidency. He could climb
to the top of Everest and, somehow,
he'd still have shades on and at least two shirt
buttons undone. [ Laughter ] [ As Obama ]
Uh...decided to climb Everest because it's, uh, here. [ Laughter ]
Also, it's, uh, the only place I can smoke without, uh,
Michelle finding out. [ Laughter ] So, we're in a weird place. On the one hand, these midterms
are, in some ways, very normal, very predictable,
and yet, on the other hand, these midterms are,
in many ways, very abnormal and, potentially, catastrophic
for our democracy because, as we've explained, it's very
typical for the party in power to lose seats
in a midterm election. That's just how it always goes. Political scientists call it thermostatic public opinion. People just like to go back
and forth to keep things even. In this analogy,
the government is a thermostat and the electorate is your dad, when you go home
for the holidays. If you put it up to 70°,
he's immediately going to come and put it back to 68°. If you put it down to 66°, he's going to immediately come
back and set it to 68°. And, if you bring home
a college girlfriend for the holidays, who's a vegan
and doesn't shave her legs, he'll turn it up to 85°,
in an effort to sweat her out and make her leave early. [ Laughter ]
And it worked, Dad! Congratulations! You chased Sparrow
out of my life and not a day goes by
that I don't hate you for it! [ Laughter ]
And I'm sorry, everybody, I'm just between therapists
right now. [ Laughter ] I had a great therapist,
but she kept her thermostat at 74°, like a psycho. [ Laughter ] Anyway, the point is, on the one hand,
it would be totally normal and, in many ways,
completely unremarkable for Democrats to lose seats
in next week's midterms. However, it's now
incredibly abnormal and, potentially, very dangerous because one of our two
major political parties is fundamentally opposed
to democracy. They simply don't accept the outcomes
of elections they don't win, they wage coups when they lose, and they openly announced
their intention to rig future elections,
if they take power. For example, the GOP candidate
for governor in Wisconsin is a guy named Tim Michels,
a pro-Trump election denier who believes,
without any evidence, that the 2020 election
was stolen and he just said it out loud
in the open the other day. He just declared that,
if he wins, he will use his power
to make sure Democrats never win another election,
ever again. Here's what he said
at a recent campaign stop. [ Applause and whistling ]
-Yeah! Yay!
-Whoo! -My favorite part of that clip
is someone off-camera at the very end going, "Yay! [ Laughter ]
Yay!" Like they're at their five-year-old's
first T-ball game. Yay, Timmy! You did it, fascism, yay! [ Laughter ] Does this guy know he's
in public, on-camera, with like reporters
and people around? Because he just admitted
to something incredibly nefarious. It's like if a Bond villain livestreamed their plan
to kill Bond on Instagram. [ Changes accent ]
Hello, what's up, Instagram? It's your boy Blofeld. [ Laughter ] Just wanted to go live
to let you know about my plan to kill James! [ Laughter ] I'm going to lure him
into my underground lair by capturing
his romantic interest and then slowly lower him
into a tank full of sharks. If you like this plan, feel free
to let me know in the comments. Oh, I see a lot of hearts
and emojis! [ Laughter ]
A lot of fire emojis. Oh, too bad, James.
They like it. [ Laughter ] So, they're not even
hiding it anymore. They're just
out in the open about it. If Republicans take power,
they will make sure that only Republicans win
future elections. It's that simple
and there are a few states where that threat
is especially acute. In Arizona, for example,
Republicans have nominated a former local television
personality named Kari Lake, a hardline,
pro-Trump election denier. Has said she will also
use her power in Arizona, if she wins,
to undermine elections. She's even gone so far
to insist, without evidence, that there's no way
Joe Biden got the number of votes
he definitely got. -They actually made a joke
of our elections and I'm really... pissed off about it. [ Applause ] And I'm going to do
something about. So, it is literally
unconstitutional, what they did. The truth is that Joe Biden did
not win with 81 million votes. [ Crowd murmuring ] And, if you believe he did, then you are
the conspiracy theorist. -Jesus!
That lady is creepier than one of those
Boston Dynamics robots. [ Laughter ] Got the vibe of a Realtor
who insists on putting her face on all of her for sale signs. [ Laughter ] But the thing about Lake is
she's much slicker than most of the other weirdos the Republicans
have nominated this year, even if her beliefs
are just as loony. She's a longtime
local television personality in the Phoenix area,
so a lot of people know her. She even knows how
to light herself when she does interviews
from her home, as you can tell,
every time she's on TV, and she apparently
has her ring light turned all the way up to 11. [ Laughter ] My real takeaway here
isn't how good she looks. It's how [bleep] up every other
politician looks from home. I mean, is there anything
more depressing than when members of Congress
try to grill major tech titans
during a hearing and they show up with only
the top half of their head in the frame,
looking into the wrong camera? Our politicians
should look better than our cue card guy,
Wally, did during a mandatory respect
in the workplace Zoom meeting. [ Laughter and applause ] A real non-Photoshopped
picture... [ Laughter and applause ] ...that I took on my phone, and so did every other [bleep]
person who works here. [ Laughter ] You should've
seen the text chain. "Have you seen Wa--" I've seen Wally. [ Laughter ] By contrast,
Lake looks so polished, she might be CGI. If she weren't running
for governor in Arizona, I'd think she was the character from one of those '90s
video games who gives you your mission. [ As Lake ]
This is Admiral Lake. If you collect...
[ Laughter and applause ] That's how you know
someone's a little too slick. Like I've been on TV
for 20 years and, when I started doing
at-home shows for the first time,
I was so pale, I looked like
Jared Kushner's ghost. [ Laughter ]
I didn't even know what a ring light was. When they finally sent me one, I thought it was
a light-up toilet seat. [ Laughter ]
I was like, "Oh, this is cool. Good news, kids! You can [bleep] in the dark now. [ Laughter ] Don't wake up Daddy anymore. Oh, you're going to love it. It's like peeing
into Yankee Stadium from a hot air balloon." [ Laughter and applause ] But Lake is a slick
TV personality, which is why she's got so much
sway with Trump's MAGA base, and President Obama
made note of that during a trip to Arizona
on Wednesday to campaign for the Democratic
nominee for governor, Katie Hobbs.
Obama pointed out something we should know
from recent experience -- just because you know someone
from TV doesn't mean they'd be
a good elected official. -Here in Arizona. there's no question that
Katie Hobbs' opponent, she's good in front
of the camera because she's been doing it
for a long time. Listen, if we hadn't
just elected somebody whose main qualification
was being on TV... [ Laughter ] ...you could see maybe
giving it a shot. What's the worst
that could happen? Well, now, we know! [ Cheering and applause ]
It doesn't just work out just because somebody's been
on TV. -[ Laughs ]
Obama -- At what point
do we learn our lesson? We can just keep cycling
through TV idiots, until we end up
with a government that's just filled with the cast
of "FBOY Island." [ Laughter ] Maybe, from now on,
instead of holding elections, we should just make
our candidates run through a reality TV
obstacle course and whoever makes it to the end
becomes president. I mean, I'd love to see Trump
try to make it through the course
from "American Ninja Warrior." [ Laughter ]
He'd try to jump
over those floating tiles and immediately end up
in the water. [ Electronic music ] [ Warbling, splash ] [ Reverberating powerdown ] [ Laughter ]
That's from that Kari Lake
video game. [ Laughter ] Ten guys worked all week. [ Laughter ] Obama even got specific about Lake's deranged
election claims, pointing out that even
some fellow Republicans have debunked them,
and he also, in that same clip, knocked her again
for her TV experience. -The other day, your own
current attorney general, who's a Republican...
-Yeah! -...called the election
fraud claims made by Katie Hobbs' opponent
horse crap. [ Cheering and applause ]
I'm paraphrasing. He didn't say it exactly
that way. He said her whole act about how the election was
stolen is a giant grift. Why would you vote for somebody
who you know is not telling the truth
about something? [ Laughter and applause ] I mean,
on something that important. I don't care how nicely
they say it. I don't care
how poised they are or how well-lit they are. [ Laughter ] -I love that Obama made fun
of how well-lit she is. It's such a specific dig, but it also proves that he is
in the TV business now, too. [ As Obama ]
And how good is her sound? I mean, what's she using,
a Sennheiser G4 with an omnidirectional
polar pattern? She's not popping her bass. [ Laughter ] But he's right
about the core point -- this is all deranged and it's all very much a part
of a coordinated strategy. Trump handpicked a lot
of these people specifically because he wanted to put them in positions of power
in Congress and in key swing states
around the country, so they could help him succeed with the attempted coup
he failed that in 2020. Trump wants people like Lake
and Michels in positions of power
in states he lost last time, so they can help him cheat
next time, because Trump has never
stopped obsessing over his 2020 election loss. He's been stewing about it
ever since. That's why he always looks like
he just stepped in some... -Horse crap. -This has been "A Closer Look." ♪♪ The midterm elections
are coming up, so, to make sure that you're good
to vote in this election, visit our good friends
at headcount.org to check your voter registration
status or to register to vote.
