-The Trump White House faced more stunning turmoil today
when new communications director
Anthony Scaramucci was pushed out,
and that comes just days after the resignation
of the former chief of staff Reince Priebus,
as well as the failure of
the president's signature health care bill.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
♪♪
He may have been quieter than most other Trump acolytes,
but Reince Priebus was one of
the president's most loyal supporters.
He played a pivotal role keeping mainstream Republicans in line
when most of the GOP was trying to rebel against Trump
after he won the nomination.
As you may recall,
he lavished Trump with praise
during a super creepy cabinet meeting last month.
-On behalf of the entire senior staff around you,
Mr. President, we thank you for the opportunity
and the blessing that you've given us to serve your agenda.
-Ugh. [ Laughter ]
You sound like a stalker.
Why don't you just go to his Instagram
and like 15 pictures in a row?
What was going through his head when he said that?
"Oh, look, there's history.
I'm gonna go stand on the wrong side of it."
There's a good chance
that's where Priebus was sitting when Trump fired him.
Although I assume Trump didn't actually say anything.
He just pushed a button
and Priebus fell through a trapdoor.
But of course, Trump wouldn't use a trapdoor to fire someone
because that is too quick and not nearly mean enough.
What really happened is on Friday,
Priebus deplaned from Air Force One
and got in an SUV with other staffers.
While he was in the SUV,
Trump tweeted that he had named a new chief of staff.
According to Politico...
Even worse, it was only raining on that car.
[ Laughter ]
Priebus was so willing
to demean himself in service to the president
that he went on TV and defended Trump's many absurd lies,
like the one about his inauguration crowds,
an interview that left even
Fox News host Chris Wallace completely bewildered.
-On the left, you've got the Obama inaugural crowd.
On the right, you've got the Trump inaugural crowd.
Which one is bigger?
I was there. I was there in the Mall.
-I was there too, Chris.
-I think this is a ridiculous conversation.
Put up the picture again.
Folks, put up the picture again.
-I can take a picture of -- Wait a second.
I can take an aerial picture right now, Chris,
and I can say "Look at the difference."
-That's right. He could take an aerial picture.
In fact, it would be easier now
since he's currently atop the Washington Monument
hanging out to dry.
In fact, Priebus was apparently so servile
that even trivial and demeaning tasks were delegated to him.
For example, the Washington Post reported on Friday that...
Wow.
You know your status is diminished
when you can be replaced by a strip of sticky paper.
Also, you called Reince Priebus in to kill a fly?
You should have called Obama.
-Nice.
-Now, that's a death panel.
[ Cheers and applause ]
And yet despite all the abuse and all the rumors,
for months, Priebus survived the constant gossip
about his rocky tenure and his impending firing.
That is until Trump hired his new communications director,
former Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci.
Scaramucci -- 114 pounds of Alfredo sauce,
hair gel, and rage, tore into Priebus
in a profanity-laden tirade last week, calling him...
I love that he used the word "paranoiac."
Paranoiac sounds like a town on Long Island.
[ Laughter ]
"How do you get to the Hamptons?"
"Oh, you just take the LIE past Ronkonkoma and Sagaponack
until you hit Paranoiac. Boom, you're there."
[ Laughter ]
Scaramucci had not limited
his attacks on Priebus to public interviews.
He also trashed him in private.
According to The Daily Beast...
So it's official.
The White House is a middle-school cafeteria.
"I'm sorry, Reince. Let me make it up to you.
You know, the president and I, you know,
we want you to join our reading group.
It's called the Pen 15 Club.
You just have to write it on your head and you're in."
[ Laughter ]
So Trump faced a choice.
He faced a choice, and he chose Scaramucci.
And as we know, Trump is nothing if not loyal,
which means "The Mooch" is here to stay.
-Breaking news out of the White House --
Anthony Scaramucci is out
as White House communications director
after just 10 days on the job.
-Man.
That's a kick in the Reince Penis.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
Scaramucci's last name is longer than his tenure.
Even at his last job, Trump only fired one person a week.
At this point, getting fired is part of orientation.
"Here's your desk. This is your extension number.
Now clean out your desk."
So just think about that --
Scaramucci got Priebus fired,
and then he got fired two days later.
That's like telling someone "See you in hell,"
and then literally showing up in hell the next day.
And now the question is who will be
the next communications director?
How do you follow Scaramucci?
Would it be an air horn with chest hair?
A lasagna with a switch blade?
A Monster energy drink with googly eyes?
Who knows, but it's important to remember that
while the White House is in chaos,
there's also another
dysfunctional branch of government,
and that's Congress.
Because on Friday, the White House suffered
its most humiliating defeat yet
when the GOP health care bill was shot down
in a stunning late-night vote in the Senate.
Three GOP Senators,
Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and John McCain,
voted against the plan.
And it happened in the most dramatic way possible,
with McCain waiting until
Collins and Murkowski had already voted
to deliver the final blow,
with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
standing right there in the middle of the chamber
watching it all unfold.
-It was approaching 1:30 when this dramatic vote began.
Collins voted no.
Murkowski voted no.
But McCain didn't answer when his name was called.
He'd walk in seconds later,
stand in front of McConnell,
and ask for the clerk's attention.
-Mr. Peters. -No.
-No. -[ Gasps ]
[ Applause ]
-And of course, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,
arms folded, staring at McCain, watching him walk off the floor,
knowing the bill was dead.
-Look at McConnell.
He looks like a bunch of teenagers just raised enough money
to save the rec center he wanted to tear down.
[ Laughter ]
You know, if there was one takeaway
from the health care vote on Friday night, it's this --
C-SPAN needs better cameras.
Kids are shooting HD movies with iPhones,
but I have to watch this high drama
on a 1980s mall security camera?
I need close-ups, dramatic zooms.
Somebody strap a GoPro to Mitch McConnell's head,
for God's sake. [ Laughter ]
Do something.
[ Applause ]
Here's something else important to take away
from this health care debacle.
It's not just Trump.
The current Republican Party is just as incoherent
and just as dysfunctional as the Trump White House.
They wrote the bill, known as a skinny repeal,
over lunch on Thursday
and released it just hours before the vote.
And Republicans themselves,
even the ones who voted for it, hated it.
Senator Lindsey Graham put it this way.
-The skinny bill as policy is a disaster.
The skinny bill as a replacement for Obamacare is a fraud.
-And then he voted for it!
He's like a groom whose vows are just a list of grievances.
"We have nothing in common.
Your parents hate me.
And I've cheated on you many times.
Anyway, I am sad to say this, but I do."
Now, Trump and his team like to repeat the lie
that Obamacare is imploding, which it's not,
but Trump does have the power to blow it up by,
among other things, withholding subsidy payments
for low-income people,
and now he's threatening to do exactly that,
tweeting over the weekend...
Trump is actively threatening to blow up the health care system
because he didn't get his way.
It's like we're all on the bus from "Speed."
Trump is Dennis Hopper,
the bus is Obamacare,
and Bernie's an old guy in the back yelling,
"This ride should be free of charge!"
[ Laughter ]
So with constant, constant turmoil,
grinding the business of government to a halt,
what's Trump's next move? Well, it looks like
he's gonna lean harder into authoritarianism.
On Friday, during a speech to police officers on Long Island,
he literally urged them to commit acts of brutality.
-And when you see these towns,
and when you see these thugs
being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon,
you just see them thrown in, rough.
I said, "Please don't be too nice."
Like when you guys put somebody in the car
and you're protecting their head,
you know, the way you put the hand over?
Like don't hit their head
and they've just killed somebody, don't hit their head.
I said, "You can take the hand away, okay?"
-After that comment, the Suffolk County Police Department
was actually forced to issue a statement making clear that...
And that comes in the same week
the Boy Scouts were also forced to issue a statement
distancing themselves from the president.
So the police and the Boy Scouts
have both rebuked the president's comments.
What's next?
"We here at the public library in no way support
the drawing of cartoon wieners in the margins of books"?
We're at the point now where all of the president's speeches
will have to be followed by a legal disclaimer.
-May God bless the United States of America.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
♪♪
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
-This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
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