-Trumpism lost badly last night in California when Governor Gavin Newsom
easily beat back a GOP-led recall effort, but Trumpism is still very much
the core of the modern GOP, as evidenced
by how many Republicans still refuse to accept the
results of the 2020 election. For more on this,
it's time for "A Closer Look." ♪♪ If you weren't really following
the California recall election because it was too dumb
and confusing, you're not alone. In fact, there were
three options on the ballot, that said... Seriously, why is getting
into LAX like such a nightmare? Most airports, you have
to get there two hours before your flight, but at LAX, you have to get to the entrance
of the airport two hours before you need
to be inside the airport. You could drive to LAX,
or you could just drive back to New York
in the same amount of time. Once, I was stuck in traffic,
waiting to get to departures and I looked over
at the driver next to me and he was a skeleton. [ Laughter ]
Of course, in L.A., they don't call that a skeleton. They call that
a weight loss goal. [ Laughter ] And even then, even the fact
that it was a skeleton was less jarring to me
than the car he was driving. [ Laughter ] Can we see the skeleton car
one more time? That's a good -- [ Laughter ] Go full frame.
Let's look at it full frame one more time. Yeah. [ Laughter ] Speeding, going as fast
as they can. We said to the graphics team,
"Put a skeleton in a car." They go, "We know just the car!" [ Laughter ] You see, the key, the key, the key to bypassing
all the traffic at LAX is to get dropped off
at the arrivals and then just take the escalator
upstairs to departures. An Uber driver
once told me that, before he asked me
if I had any cocaine. [ Laughter ]
In the immortal words
of Randy Newman, "I love L.A.
I love it." Anyway, the recall effort
was defeated so easily and called so quickly that MSNBC correspondent
Steve Kornacki didn't have much
to get worked up over. -And there it is. You can see the news, Brian,
with the check mark. NBC News is
officially projecting that the recall attempt
against Gavin Newsom, the governor of California,
has failed. It's failing, as you can see
by the results here, decisively, at this point. We now have 60% of all the vote
counted here in California. The recall, right now,
is failing by a better than 2:1 margin. The difference there is
2.7 million votes. That's a 35-point margin. It's clear,
from what we have right now, it's clear to our decision desk. I think it's clear to everybody
who's been watching along with me here that this
number is going to come nowhere near 50%. This one is a landslide. The recall fails. Gavin Newsom is going to survive
as California's governor. -Just must've been
so frustrating for Kornacki. I mean, look at him. He might look like he's going
to teach you fractions, but the man is
an adrenaline junkie. The batches of votes
from outlier counties, the taste of disposable Bic ink, the swishing of his khakis
as he darts to his map. Well, after an early election
call like that last night, he probably had
to stop off at the OTB on the way home for a fix. It is just a waste
to see Kornacki's talent so underutilized
on a blowout election. It's like watching
a thoroughbred racehorse pull some tourists
through Central Park. [Hoarsely]
"I won the Triple Crown,
you know." [ Inhaling ]
[ Laughter ] They smoke through their
mouths, horses. [ Laughter ]
Now, in case you aren't aware, recalls in California are,
to use a political insider term, super [bleep] dumb. There are two questions
on the ballot -- one, asking if you want
to recall the governor; and another,
asking who should replace him, if the recall succeeds,
which means, a sitting governor
could get recalled if they get 49% of the vote and then, get replaced
by someone who got half that. It's insane. I mean, who came up
with this system, anyway? Like M.C. Escher?
It's more complicated than following
the latest developments in the Marvel
Cinematic Universe. We're at the point, now,
where this is true. This building 30 Rock,
the one we're in right now, is featured in the new
"Hawkeye" trailer, which means I'm technically
canon in the MCU, which I assume also means
I got blipped for five years
in "Infinity War" and -- oh, okay, so I guess
that's what that was. It would also explain why,
back in 2018, Wally disintegrated
in the middle of a show. [ Laughter ]
♪♪ [ Clapping ] I get it.
You worked on that all day and you were like,
"We need a car!" [ Laughter ] Of course, when that
happened to Wally, we just assumed he was trying
to hide from his bookie after he bet on the Yankees
to win the World Series. [ Laughter ]
Anyway -- Oh, they laugh when it's close
to the bone, Wally. [ Laughter ]
Anyway, so the recall system is nuts
and it should be scrapped. As the California secretary
of state put it... A hundred years. If something isn't working, you don't give it 100 years. I did a standing monologue
for about a year and never figured out
where my hands go and then, Shoemaker said,
"You know where they go? On a desk." [ Laughter ]
We shouldn't be
running elections on a system that is older
than the Cyclone. The Cyclone doesn't even
have any loops or twists, just missing planks of wood. The thrill comes
from seeing your life flash before your eyes
before you get on. A priest administers last rites,
but it's not a real priest. It's just like a high school
sophomore on summer vacation. Although,
I guess it makes sense. California's electoral system is as complicated
as their highway system. One time, I was trying to get
from Burbank to Santa Monica and my GPS killed itself. -I can't do this anymore. [ Laughter ] -Why is every electoral system
in this country so backwards and insane? Gerrymandering,
the Electoral College, recalls. Why can't there just be a winner who gets the most votes
and that's it? Why is it easier to vote
in "America's Got Talent" than it is to vote in America? If Doritos chose
their flavors this way, the top seller would be
cilantro & cauliflower. This dumb, waste-of-time recall
has already cost $276 million and could end up costing more
than $300 million, all because Newsom went
to dinner during the lockdowns at a fancy restaurant called
the French Laundry, which, we can all agree, was absolutely stupid,
on his part. It's like that restaurant
was named specifically to piss people off. It's named after two things
everybody hates. He might've gotten away with it if he'd gone
to a place called... [ Laughter ]
I don't think -- I don't think he should've
been recalled, but I do think they
should've punished him by passing a law stating the only dinner
he's allowed to have from now on is pizza from L.A. Have you ever had pizza in L.A.?
It's not even pizza. It's like an English muffin
with ketchup on it. Oh, but good news --
they deliver until about 7:30 [ Laughter ]
and they put weird [bleep]
on it, like seitan or avocado. To this day, I think
California Pizza Kitchen was like "Springtime for Hitler"
in "The Producers." It was built to fail, and then against all odds,
it was a hit. [ Laughter ] One time, I bought L.A.-style
pizza for my crew and they threatened to dump
my body in the East River. Luckily, none of them
could lift me because of their belly cramps. [ Laughter ]
[ New York accent ]
Barbecue sauce isn't supposed to go with peaches! [ Laughter ]
Point is -- It's really nice
when California's in the news because we make a lot
of New York-centric jokes here. California, stop wasting money
on recalls, and fix your pizza. But it's also not surprising
that this was the way Republicans tried
to stage a takeover of the most populous state
in America, not through a normal election, but through a weird loophole
where they would only need a small percentage
of voters to win. This is the same party
that's appointed a majority of the current
Supreme Court justices, yet, has only won
the national popular vote once in the last 32 years. In 2012, they won control of the
House through gerrymandering, despite getting fewer
total votes than Democrats. In the Senate,
there's currently a 50/50 tie, despite the fact
that Democrats represent 41 million more Americans. In fact, Senate Republicans
haven't represented an actual majority of Americans
since 1996. The GOP's entire
political strategy is based on exploiting cheat codes, rather than appealing
to a majority of voters, like when
Mitch McConnell realized he could just manipulate
the filibuster to stonewall everything
Obama did and turn reconciliation --
an arcane budgetary tactic -- into the only vehicle
for passing legislation. They're like those kids
in middle school who would cheat
during "GoldenEye" by turning themselves
invincible and you'd ask them
how they did it, and they say, "It's easy. You just do
L+down, R+C right, R+C up, L+right, L+C down, R+C up, L+right, R+down, L+left+R+C right," and then you'd spend
the rest of the game trying to figure it out and, while
you're not paying attention, they'd eat
all the cauliflower Doritos. Anyway, Newsom defeated
the recall easily. And, yet,
as he warned last night, the forces that led to this
recall are not going away. -Just in the last,
you know, few days the former president put out,
saying this election was rigged. Democracy is not a football. You don't throw it around. It's more like a, I don't know,
antique vase. [ Laughter ]
You can drop it and smash it in a million
different pieces. And that's what we're
capable of doing, if we don't stand up to meet
the moment and push back. I said this many, many times on the campaign trail,
you know. We may have defeated Trump, but Trumpism is not dead
in this country. -It's true -- Trump may be gone,
but Trumpism is not dead. In fact, it is very much
the core of the modern GOP. We can't just plug our ears
and hope it'll go away, like Larry David
at New York Fashion Week. [ Laughter ]
And you know, as a society,
we should force Larry David to attend more events he doesn't
want to go to for our amusement. It would be great to see him
at Burning Man or Cirque du Soleil. [ As David ]
I...It's bad. I...It's a bad circus. [ Laughter ]
I don't care for the sad clowns. "You know, I actually was
the sad clown tonight, Larry." Oh. Can I ask you a question? [ Laughter ] When you go
to the clown college, do they separate you
into funny or sad or, uhhh, do you choose it? "Well, they suggest
what clowning suits your strengths, yes." Because you know,
it seems to me like, uh, a funny clown, little bit harder
than a sad clown. [ Laughter ]
"I don't think that's true
at all, Larry." I...think it'd be
a little bit easier. [ Laughter ] One balloon, painted-on tear. Pretty, pretty
sure I could do it. [ Laughter ]
So, as the California recall -- I don't know
how that episode ends, but I think it's
with Larry David going -- [ As David ] Sad clown!
[ Laughter ] So, as the California recall
showed last night, Trumpism has real political cost
for the GOP, since it's massively unpopular. In this case,
it was a disaster for the GOP, but that doesn't mean it's dead. It's still very much alive. It's the central animating force
of Republican politics. In fact, the same
insane conspiracy theories about nonexistent fraud that Republicans circulated
about the 2020 election have circulated again
in California. GOP frontrunner Larry Elder's
campaign pushed baseless fraud claims before the
election even occurred and, on the eve of the recall, Elder tore a page
out of Trump's handbook by refusing to say that he
would accept the results. -Whether or not you win or lose, will you accept the results
of the election tomorrow? -I think we all ought to be
looking at election integrity, no matter whether
you're a Democrat, an Independent,
or a Republican. -Is that a commitment
to accept the results of the election tomorrow?
-Let's all do that together. Let's all work together,
on both sides of the aisle, to make sure that the election
is a fair election. -Is that a commitment
to accept the results of the election tomorrow?
-Let's all work together to find out whether or not the election tomorrow
is a fair election. Let's all work together
to do that. -So that is not a commitment to accept the results
of the election tomorrow? -Boy, Jacob, honestly. I answered your question. Let's all work together. We all should have
a vested interest in making sure that the
election is a fair one and is one that was conducted
with integrity. -Why do you keep saying
all of us? The rest of us
already do believe elections are fair
because they are. Republicans talk
about nonexistent voter fraud like the drunk guy
at the Houlihan's who ate too many spicy wings. "Damn it, guys!
The spicy wings made us all [bleep] our pants! We all need to go change
our pants together." [ Laughter ] As it turns out, that strategy backfired big-time
on Republicans and Elder ultimately conceded after the polls closed
last night. Nonetheless,
Elder had previously claimed there might be shenanigans
in the election and Republicans
spent the campaign spreading the same old
bat[bleep] conspiracy theories about supposed voter fraud
they've spread in other states across the country.
For example... Of course, of course, Lindell
is somehow connected to this. The guy has inserted himself into every political story
of the last two years. It's like if Forrest Gump
had a louder, dumber brother. [ As Lindell ]
I heard they've been
getting rid of ballots by going down to Santa Monica
and dumping them off da piers! [ Laughter ] Nice when a new one turns up. Every time
you think we're out... [ Laughter ] In fact, it's now become
a baseline requirement for aspiring
Republican politicians to insist that Trump actually
won the 2020 election and that any election
Republicans lose
is illegitimate. According to a new poll
released this week by CNN... Democracy can't function
that way. It depends on everyone
accepting the results. The NFL would stink,
if the Jets declared themselves Super Bowl champions every year
they went 2 and 14, not to mention that, if they did
have the Lombardi Trophy, they would most certainly
fumble it. [ Laughter ] See? Fall comes and the Mets
come out of our focus. [ Laughter ]
The Jets come into our focus. Last night's landslide
repudiation of Trumpism in the country's most populous
state proved two things -- Trumpism is deeply unpopular,
but it also still drives the Republican Party.
It's not going away. They can't win majorities
of voters the normal way, so they use anti-democratic
loopholes, instead. We have to fix the system
through major electoral reforms, fast, before Republicans
can take advantage again. Otherwise, Republicans could do
to democracy what they did to Mike Lindell's reputation
and... -Smash it in a million
different pieces. -This has been "A Closer Look." ♪♪ God's Love We Deliver
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