-President Trump's
attempted coup keeps getting dumber
and more desperate. Today his lawyer,
Rudy Giuliani, had a meltdown
live on television as Trump tried to overturn the
will of the voters in Michigan. For more on this, it's time
for "A Closer Look." ♪♪ Let's start with some good news,
because God knows we need it. For the last few weeks,
I've been popping Ativan like they're Altoids.
Although in fairness, they shouldn't sell them
in similar-looking tins. Early data suggests we may have
not one but two highly effective
coronavirus vaccines, and in particular,
Pfizer says they're ready to ask the FDA for emergency use
authorization within days. Meanwhile tonight,
Oxford and AstraZeneca reported their vaccine
has generated a strong immune response
in older adults. Honestly, I'm so ready
for this vaccine, I've been showing up to
my local CVS in a tank top waiting for a shot in my arm.
My pharmacist told me, "You look like 'Late Night'
writer Mike Scollins." Yeah, this burn also is going to
have multiple waves, Scollins. Anyway, doctors and public
health officials who have been extremely cautious throughout
this entire pandemic are starting to tell us there
really are glimmers of hope. We just have to pull together
and get through what will undoubtedly be a brutal winner. -The end is actually in sight with these two promising
vaccines. We just have to get through
this winter. We can do it. We can put off celebrating
Thanksgiving in person. Let's have Thanksgiving
in July. -Great, I love that idea. Thanksgiving sucks
where it is now. It's too close to Christmas. We don't need back-to-back
holidays where we go home and sleep on a twin bed
after mainlining gravy. Move it to July
and we can stuff a bird full of bottle rockets and
launch it straight into the sky, aka, Fire Turks. The writer of this piece,
Sal Gentile, wanted me to stress that Fire Turks was not
in his original draft and that I added
it a after the fact. And I don't care.
I'll own it. However, Sal did write
that Scollins burn and he wasn't even
in the original Zoom meeting when Scollins wore
the tank top. That's how ridiculous
you look, Mike. He heard it secondhand
and he's burning you. Anyway, we can combine
the traditions of both holidays
into one. Gravy on our hot dogs,
cranberries on our hamburgers, and instead of football,
we can fall asleep on the couch watching the Detroit Lions
lose at Wimbledon. I'm sorry, why is it the Lions
every year? Because tradition. We just need to get through
this bleak winter, but we also need a plan
for rolling out a potential vaccine. We're supposed to be
in the middle of a presidential
transition right now, which means we need the incoming
and outgoing administrations to cooperate on developing a
plan to distribute the vaccine, which Biden has called for. -Getting the vaccine
and a vaccination, though, are two different things. Everyone on our call today,
in our Zoom today, agreed that the sooner
we have access to the administration's
distribution plan, the sooner this transition
would be smoothly move forward. -Ah, Joe Biden. It's like the human
"Sounds of the Rain Forest" CD. Just hearing a president-elect
speak in direct, coherent terms about his plans for, you know,
solving things is reassuring. Although Joe Biden could think
vaccine is the name of that lady from the Hallmark cards
and I'd still just be glad that I don't have to listen to
President Trump ever again. Huh. That's a funny one. "How about instead of a shot
in the arm, I gave you a shot in the ass." Maxine! Max, when will it stop,
Maxine? And yet Donald Trump is still
moping around the White House pretending he has a path
to victory by, for example, overturning the results
in Michigan. Trump tried to steal Michigan
in part by undermining the routine process of
certifying election results in Wayne County, Michigan,
which he lost, and not coincidentally
includes Detroit. In fact, we learned today
he even went so far as to personally call two local
Republican canvassers in Wayne County, who then tried
to rescind their votes to certify the results. -Two members of the
Wayne County Board of Canvassers suddenly changed course. -Yes, a pair of Republicans
trying it reverse course after certifying the results
from the presidential election. -The very latest is that
the two Republican members of the Board of Canvassers there
now asking for their votes to be rescinded from
earlier in the week, and we are now learning
that President Donald Trump actually called both of them following that
controversial meeting. -So now Trump is trying
to interfere with local county election boards.
What's next? Is he going to start
individually tracking down the old ladies
at the polling stations who give you
the "I Voted" sticker? "I never got a sticker,
that's fraud. I win. Now gimme that quilt,
you old bag!" Also, this means someone at
the White House actually had to sift through Google or shuffle
through an old Rolodex to find the phone numbers of two
local election canvassers in Wayne County, Michigan. You know how much time
that probably took? Just to find this story about
Trump calling the canvassers, I had to Google "Trump Wayne,"
and it gave me a bunch of articles about
Lil Wayne supporting Trump, so then I typed in "Wayne Trump"
into Google again, and one of them suggested
searches was Wayne Trump, so I clicked on that
and found a Wikipedia article about a jazz musician named
Wayne Bergeron who plays the trumpet,
so I started reading it because I personally always
thought if I hadn't gone into comedy, I could
have become a jazz musician. And then I remembered what I was
supposed to be doing and Googled "Trump calls Wayne County
Board of Canvassers." The point is, this stupid coup
is taking a long [bleep] time. And then there's the fact that
Trump is attempting to overturn tens of thousands of ballots
in Georgia and Arizona and sending Rudy Giuliani
to Pennsylvania to embarrass himself
in federal court. It's funny, but when Rudy
shows up in court even via conference call,
everyone must immediately think it's
a hidden camera prank. When you think about it, in
every case but one this year, Rudy was the Borat. Rudy and the Trump team made
a series of court filings yesterday in which they asked,
and this is real, to disenfranchise up to
1.5 million voters. They told the court that,
"Ultimately, plaintiffs will seek the remedy of Trump
being declared the winner of the legal votes cast
in the Pennsylvania 2020 general election,
and, thus, the recipient of Pennsylvania's
electors." Okay, sure.
Then I'm filing a motion in court to seek the remedy that
Seth Meyers be named "People Magazine's
Sexiest Man Alive." And to my publicist, no,
I don't think "Smug Weekly's Mug of the Month"
is just as good. Anyway, Rudy and his legal team, which includes
a radio show host, are not just asking for millions
of voters to be disenfranchised, they're also asking,
and again, this is real, to be allowed to count
the ballots themselves. By the way, I'm using
"legal team" so loosely here. Anyway, Rudy's psycho plan
as far as I can tell is to count a sample
of the ballots and then if they can find enough supposed
fraud, which doesn't exist, they will then extrapolate that
to all of the ballots and declare Trump
the winner. According to the very real
and insane court filing, "Plaintiffs will examine these
envelopes to determine the percentage of mail ballots
which were illegally counted. Plaintiffs, through statistical
expert analysis, will then extrapolate this percent to
the 1.5 million mail ballots. This simple exercise will
determine whether plaintiffs can prove their case
that sufficient illegal ballots were counted that changed the result
of the election. If so, the court should
set aside the votes and declare Trump the winner." I love the part where they say
they'll extrapolate through statistical
expert analysis. I'm guessing what they mean
is Rudy's gonna be sitting in a room with an '80s
Casio printing calculator and a stack of ballots
trying to figure out how to do higher order math. "What? I didn't know
square had roots!" Also, I'm glad they took time to
say that part of their petition is to prove
the plaintiff's case, which without exception
has been the goal of the plaintiff in
every single lawsuit ever since like caveman court. You never heard a lawyer say, "Your Honor, we'd like to prove
the case one way or the other. You decide.
We have no skin in the game." Even Trump's closest allies like his former Chief of Staff
Mick Mulvaney have expressed concern about Rudy's embarrassing performances
in court. -I'm still a little concerned
about the use of Rudy Giuliani. They're not using the most
well-noted election lawyers. There are folks who use --
who do this all of the time. -Yeah, and none of them
want to be a part of this harebrained scheme. You don't end up with Rudy
when you have other options. The raft in "Cast Away" wasn't
Tom Hanks' first choice of boat. It was his only choice. Trump chose Rudy
the way you choose a dentist who's in your
insurance plan's network. "Well, this guy's only open
on Tuesday, but this other guy works out of
a barge on the East River. I knew I shouldn't have
gotten dental insurance from The General!
General!" Anyway, what we here
at "Late Night" have been calling
the Kooky Cuckoo Coup Crew is wasting everyone's time,
there's still, you know, a raging pandemic going on,
and the people calling up random election officials
in Wayne County to overturn legitimate election results
are the ones who are supposed to be protecting
Americans from a deadly disease. It's like every building
is on fire, and the fire department
won't put the fires out because they're in court
demanding, A, they never have to retire, and, B, from now on we call them
Da Party Boys. Yesterday there were over
1,900 deaths, the day before that
there were over 1,600 deaths. Joe Biden wants to cooperate
with the Trump task force to work on a plan to curb cases,
save lives, and get a vaccine out to as many people as
possible as quickly as possible. Instead, the President
is refusing to concede and trying to stage
an incompetent coup and he's become a full
J.D. Salinger level recluse, hiding out in the White House
and skipping task force meetings on a deadly plague spreading
rapidly throughout the country. -We have not heard from
the President on this. We haven't heard from him
at all. He hasn't taken our questions
in over two weeks. So we haven't seen the President
since on Friday, and the White House insists
he's still working, he's still
focused on coronavirus, but, Erin, we should note,
the President hasn't attended a task force meeting
in five months, even though they've had one held
just in the last week. So if that gives you any idea,
we're actually told by sources he's much more consumed by
the state of this election and contesting the results
than he is with the pandemic surging
across the country. -Of course he's more focused
on the election he lost than on the pandemic. I know it was hard to tell from
the hundreds of psychotic all-caps tweets, most of them
with warning labels on them, which is insane. At this point we have
to put a disclaimer on the President's tweets,
like a pack of cigarettes or an episode of "Jackass." Think about it, the pandemic
raging out of control, thousands of Americans
dying a day, and the President hasn't even
been to a meeting in five months. You realize how long that is? Five months ago I was trapped
in my in-laws' house talking to a painting
of a Sea Captain. Even then, I apparently
was doing more work than the President of
the United States because at least I was talking
to someone. Then today, after a string of
embarrassing court losses and bumbling performances
in front of exasperated judges, Rudy Giuliani, voted
"America's wettest lawyer" for three years running, held a marathon press
conference/performance art piece that was honestly at times
so incomprehensible I thought had to put on
the closed captioning, and even when I did,
the closed captioning said, "Your guess is as good as mine!" It would be impossible
and honestly pointless to wade through all
the unintelligible bull [bleep] because even if you were
somehow steeped in the Fox News
Cinematic Universe, following all the details
of a deranged conspiracy theory like this can be exhausting. It's like keeping track
of where every character is supposed to be be
during each Avengers movie. All I know is I'm pretty sure Joe Biden is
old Captain America. Here's a sampling
of just how psychotic this televised therapy
session was. -The only thing left
is the vote. That could have been
Mickey Mouse. That could have been
a dead person. Did you all watch
"My Cousin Vinny"? You know the movie?
It's one of my favorite law movies because he comes
from Brooklyn. And when the nice lady
who said she saw, and then he says to her,
"How many fingers do I -- How many fingers do I got up?" A lot of people were coming over
from Camden to vote. They do every year. Happens all the time in Philly. It's about as frequent
as getting beaten up at a Philadelphia Eagle
basketball -- football game. I assume if she's working --
if she's working for the -- I assume if she's working
for the city of Detroit that she's a Democrat. -We have witnesses who have
actually reported -- -Where are you, FBI? We more than double the number of votes needed to overturn
the election. There's nobody here that engages
in fantasies. -"How come nobody's
looking at my pencils? I got all the pencils!" [ Laughter ] I'm sorry, nobody here
engages in fantasies? You just did a lengthy
reenactment of "My Cousin Vinny" and called the Philadelphia
Eagles a basketball team. Also, why is Rudy always
wiping his entire face like he just got done
doing CrossFit while eating a meatball sub? It's not great when the lawyer looks like he's about
to admit to the crime. "My client is innocent,
Your Honor, because I'm the killer
and I'd do it again!" Also, he admitted they're trying
to overturn the election. He actually used those words. It's like walking into
a costume shop and saying, "Which mask is best
for robbing a bank?" And, by the way, that's exactly
what they're trying to do. And it's very real.
And as incompetent as it is, it's still an assault on
Constitutional democracy. The President just invited
Michigan lawmakers to come to the White House to pressure
them to overturn the results in their state. Can we just call this
an attempted coup now? Because that's what it is.
We're all arguing over terminology like whether it's
champagne or sparkling wine, but its a coup. Even if it doesn't succeed
because everybody involved is a moron, that doesn't make it
any less horrifying. Even if this fails, historians
will spend years studying this attempted coup,
and psychiatrists will spend years studying... -The use of Rudy Giuliani. -This has been
"A Closer Look." ♪♪ God's Love We Deliver
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