House of Representatives Passes Bill That Could Ban TikTok

-Good night. I'm Seth Meyers. This is "Late Night." We hope you are well. And now, if you don't mind, I'll go to the news. Former President Trump suggested this week that he was open to cutting Social Security and Medicare. Dude, you're 77 years old. Those should be your favorite things right now. And let's be real: You

could

use the cash. The Republican National Committee is reportedly imposing mass layoffs or, as Fox News reports, "unemployment rises under President Biden." A video has drawn attention online that appears to show former President Trump ignoring his 10-year-old grandson at a UFC match this weekend to talk to other attendees.

In his defense, I'm sure he had no idea he was his grandson. The House today passed a

bill

that would force TikTok's Chinese parent company to sell the social media platform or face a national ban. Well, if you're worried about the Chinese collecting data on Americans, wait until you find out who makes the phones. A Texas school board voted last week to suspend the district's superintendent after a transgender student was removed from a high school production of "Oklahoma!" Good, because if you start eliminating LGBTQ+ students, you're going to end up with a terrible musical. Realize. A 12-year-old boy who was reported missing in Ohio was recently found safe at a Target after spending the night inside the store.

His parents came to pick him up and somehow ended up spending $300. How does it happen? Elon Musk today visited the Tesla factory in Germany, which suspended operations earlier this month after an alleged arson attack. Why would an arsonist waste your time? If you want a Tesla to catch on fire, you know, wait a few minutes. Retailer Dollar Tree today announced plans to close nearly 1,000 of its Family Dollar stores. Wow, 1,000 stores. This

could

affect almost 1,000 ATMs. According to a new survey, the average man feels insecure more than 900 times a year. Well, make it 901, because he didn't know everyone else was counting. 900.

How many times have I felt insecure? I think 900. And finally, the fast food chain Taco Bell announced yesterday that it will close its dining rooms at several locations in Oakland, California, due to crime in that area. Of course, the biggest crime is calling this a dining room. And that was a monologue, y'all. We are underway. We have a fantastic show for you tonight. She's an Academy Award-nominated actress you know from "Spencer," the "Twilight" movies and "Still Alice." She is currently starring in "Love Lies Bleeding," which opens in theaters around the world this weekend. My friend Kristen Stewart is back on the show, y'all.

And he's an amazing Emmy-nominated actor who you know from "The Hateful Eight" and shows like "The Righteous Gemstones," "Justified" and his latest series, "Fallout," which will be on Prime Video next month. Walton Goggins is back on the show. Very happy to have you here. But before we get to all that, a congressional hearing into Joe Biden's handling of classified information backfired for Republicans when the special counsel confirmed that Biden actually had a photo recall and admitted there were clear reasons why. that Donald Trump was impeached and Biden was not. . Meanwhile, a key witness in the Trump case came forward and revealed the suspicious behavior he saw in an explosive interview.

To learn more about this, it's time for "A Closer Look." ♪♪ For some reason, Attorney General Merrick Garland gave Republicans exactly what they wanted when he appointed Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate Biden's handling of classified documents. Hur is a registered Republican who clerked for a conservative Supreme Court justice and was originally nominated to be a federal prosecutor by Donald Trump. In fact, he allegedly received help from right-wing operatives connected to Donald Trump to prepare for his testimony yesterday. Although I can't imagine what kind of advice he got from Trumpworld. Were you shown sketches of Trump in the courtroom to prepare? "Okay, the best way to appear trustworthy and credible during testimony is to make a face like you're passing a gallstone, a face like you're passing a second, larger gallstone, a face like you just saw his wife having sex with Grimace, then put your hands up like you're waiting to be handcuffed." In fact, the lawyer Hur got to help him represented three Trump White House officials, including Steve Bannon.

If he ever needed legal help, he personally wouldn't hire someone who also represented Steve Bannon. Steve and I have nothing in common except that we are both pioneers in the field of dressing casually for jobs where most people wear suits. Although I prefer to wear my clothes sequentially instead of, you know, all at once. I would never wear two collared shirts on top of each other like Bannon does, a style popular with '80s movie villains who say things like, "Aren't you a little poor for the yacht club, Gordo?" The thing is, Republicans got exactly the kind of prosecutor they would want: a registered Republican with a history in right-wing politics and connections to GOP figures.

And yet, even that guy wrote in his report that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter and the evidence suggests that Biden did not intentionally withhold these documents. Hur even went so far as to explain in very specific detail why Trump was charged but not Biden. -Hur made this distinction in his report, and I quote here: "Several material distinctions between Mr. Trump's case and Mr. Biden's case are clear." -Special prosecutor Robert Hur's report even included this distinction. "After having multiple opportunities to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but also obstructed justice by recruiting others to destroy evidence. and then lie about it, Biden turned over classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations, including his homes, submitted to a voluntary interview, and cooperated in other ways with. the investigation." -Yes, that was such a concise and logical summary of the situation that I'm surprised he didn't end it with a callback clip, "And this was 'A Closer Look.'" By the way, that's how long "Closer Looks" would be if we removed all the crazy tangents, but don't hold your breath, honey.

The differences between the two cases are obvious. Biden returned his documents immediately and cooperated in every way possible, while Trump lied, obstructed investigators, moved documents, insisted they were his, and kept them hidden in that weird Mar-a-Lago bathroom that has something fancy for every cheap thing . Beautiful chandelier, plastic trash can with bags on display, crystal chandelier, tissues still in box, ornate gold mirror, nursing home toilet, fine marble countertop, tall strange windows through which you have to jump to see. And of course, worst of all, the $5 shower curtain. This just speaks to how brazen Trump was. The only reason to have a shower curtain like that is to hide in the shower.

But he said, "No, you can stack the boxes in front." Why do you have a cheap shower curtain there? This is how you hide a cheeky poster in your college dorm when your parents come to visit. "What's back there? A sign with an alien smoking marijuana that says, 'Take me to your dealer'?" That was pretty good. Don't you understand, Gordo? And yet, surprisingly, Republicans actually think this makes Trump look good. This is what James Comer, Republican chairman of the oversight committee, said last night on Fox. -Look how they are treating Donald Trump. He had documents in one place, behind a closed door. -Okay, first of all, the bathrooms in a person's

house

are usually only locked if someone is there.

So the Republican argument is basically, "Don't worry, our national security secrets were safe while Donald Trump was in jail," which, of course, based on his diet, is probably true most of the time. . But he still has to go out to eat. Secondly, none of that is true. Trump had more than 300 classified documents spread across an active social club with more than 150 employees, where anyone can pay to be a member or attend a social event, such as a fundraiser, a wedding or a pre-Rudy Giuliani funeral. "Hey, Rudy, let's put you in the coffin now to save time." "Hey, I just got evicted from my apartment, so this is cool and it's bigger." Plus, I have no idea why you would want to have your wedding at Mar-a-Lago, of all places.

I mean, maybe you can't afford Chuck E. Cheese, but that's not fair. A wedding at Chuck E. Cheese would be great. For one thing, animatronic Chuck won't interrupt your wedding to rant about voting machines or bird-killing windmills. -Do you want to see a bird cemetery? Someday pass under a windmill. -Yeah! You won't get a Chuck E. Cheese tangent like that from old Robert Hur. You wouldn't have the courage. So Hur was everything Republicans could have hoped for, but they were still angry with him. Sean Hannity even compared it to another investigation that Republicans are still obsessed with. -Today, for me, was the equivalent of July 2016 and... and James Comey came out saying: "Yes, Hillary had top secret classified information, 33,000 deleted emails, BleachBit, hammers, gadgets, everything we learned, but no reasonable prosecutor would prosecute him." Is it quite similar? -That's very similar.

Exactly the same. -Oh my God, are they still talking about Hillary Clinton after all these years? Get over it, guys. You're like the people who still complain about the ending of "Lost," when smart people know that "Lost" never ended. I don't have time to explain it now, so watch my two-hour YouTube video "'Lost' is still on, you're just not trying hard enough to watch it." There's no comparison to the Trump case. In fact, one witness previously anonymous in the impeachment against Trump just came forward and revealed to the world that he saw some very shady behavior related to the transfer of boxes of classified documents to a plane I just spoke exclusively with one of the central witnesses in one of the cases. most important (I should point out criminal cases) in American history, the Trump classified documents case, he has until now been known to the world as Trump Employee 5, as a Mar-a-Lago valet in Special. .

Attorney Jack Smith's replacement. He is mentioned six times and has never spoken publicly until now. -I ended up carrying all the luggage he had, and he had a bunch of boxes. -Oh, yeah. They were the boxes that were in the accusation, the white banker's boxes. That's what I remember carrying. -How many boxes were there? -They asked me in the interview, and I think it was 10 to 15 is what I remember. -Have you ever thought why there were so many boxes at Mar-a-Lago? -For me, I'm just thinking, "Oh, the former president. He has a lot of things he likes to carry around." -Do you remember ever seeing those boxes return to Mar-a-Lago? -No.

I don't. -Wait. Boxes of classified documents were then loaded onto a plane and never returned to Mar-a-Lago. Where are you now? Trump Tower? Russia? Are they just hanging around on a luggage belt at Newark Airport? Oh God. Was it an Alaska Airlines flight? Oh no! Oh, that would explain why everyone in the Portland area is suddenly an expert on nuclear submarines. "I almost built my own nuclear bomb, but the last part was covered in ketchup stains." That's my Oregon accent. "Hey! Hey, you're in Portland now, baby!" I have a lot of ear for the regions. Also, can we get back to this part? -He has many things that he likes to carry with him. -Of course he does.

Look at this lugger. If Steve Harvey asked you to name something Donald Trump does in his free time, "lug" would definitely be one of the top five answers on the board. Even the way he walks seems like someone carrying two invisible suitcases. So that's the reality of the Trump case versus the Biden case, but of course the media latched on to Hur's completely gratuitous claim that Biden would present himself to a jury as a sympathetic, well-intentioned old man with a bad memory. a claim that was contradicted by the transcript of Biden's interview and by Hur himself yesterday when asked about Biden's memory. -Told President Biden: "You...seem to have a photographic understanding and memory of the House." Did you say that to President Biden? -Those words do appear on page 47 of the transcript. -"Photographic" is what you said.

Alright? -That word does appear on page 47 of the transcript. -Although it never appeared in your report. Is that correct? Theword "photographic". -That doesn't appear in my report. -Wait. I'm sorry. Joe Biden has knowledge and a photographic memory, but he didn't put it in his report? Because? That's much more shocking than saying he has a bad memory. It doesn't surprise me at all that an 81-year-old has trouble remembering some names or dates, but if you tell me that Joe Biden has a photographic memory, then that's the turn of the century. That should be breaking news on CNN.

Although Biden seems like one of those grandparents who remembers exactly what temperature the thermostat was in each room before messing with it. Friends. Hey, friends, friends, you have the room elevated to 72 degrees. I had it at a cool 68. I'm not kidding around here. You have to return it, Jack. I don't want my ice cream to melt. Now, to contrast how well his brain was working, Democrats at yesterday's hearing aired not one but two montages of Trump failing at his rallies. And while they were effective, I have to say I was a little upset. That's our thing, guys.

We've been doing that for nine years. Our investigators have spent so much time examining videotapes of Trump's brain explosion that they are scarred for life. They can't outdo us, Congress, when it comes to a Trump setup. So don't try, because we can always outdo you. In fact, I'm going to prove it right now. Let's hope this isn't too long. You watch and I'll stay busy. Roll it up, Alex. -They are using law enforcement as a weapon for high-level electoral interference against Joe Biden's main and only political appointment. A boy named me. China has total respect for Donald Trump and his very, very big brain.

Saudi Arabia and Russia will have... 10,000 known or suspected gang members. The wheel is older than the wall, did you know that? Every single car out there, even the really expensive ones... Controlled by grand juries. Regulators and non-elected regulators. Our hope is a word and a world... ...authority and authoritarian powers. Exceeding expectations in the Chamber for Midtown and the mid-turnover year. They sacrifice every day for the furniture and the future of their children. When they contemplate your Semites, Yosemites, towering redwoods. We did it with Obama. We won an election that everyone said couldn't be won. They are going to change the name of Pennsylvania.

You know how to spell us, right? You spell us USA. I just picked that up. I hope you guys are going to take a look at the oranges now. The oranges of research, the beginnings. I wish the Mueller report would cover the oranges, how it started. One of the great memories of all time. It's called up here. Ding, boom! This is me. I hear "bing!" If you have a windmill near your

house

, congratulations. They say noise causes cancer. Tell me that, okay? Nikki Haley is in charge of security. Nancy Pelosi, or Nancy as I call her.

We really appreciate it, Tim Apple. Have you just seen Maduro, Venezuer? Is incredible. Now you have a voter ID card to buy a loaf of bread. People flush the toilet 10 or 15 times. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, pshh, pom. God bless the United States. -Oh look, I drew a brand new sketch of Trump's courtroom. There is obviously no equivalence between these two, neither in the way they handled the classified documents nor in the way their brains worked. Don't take it away from me. Take it from Robert Hur and the Congressional Democrats, though we can certainly get behind them, because when it comes to Trump's most embarrassing moments, here at "Late Night" we have a... -Photographic understanding and remembrance. -This has been "A closer look." ♪♪ We will be back with Kristen Stewart soon.