attic show without tacos.

And I say without tacos.

Because that's an anagram for addict shows.

And personally, I think coming up with anagrams

is a fun way to pass time during a pandemic --

denim cap, which is a good one

because maybe the only thing worse than wearing

a denim cap is going through a pandemic. See?

Aren't anagrams more fun than baking a loaf of sour dough

or noon day rye, which is an anagram for Andy Rooney,

who I realize I'm starting to sound like.

Have you ever noticed how anagrams are just

the same letters in a different order?

But look, I'm not here to talk about Portland mud.

I'm here to talk about Donald Trump.

Because the president and his political allies are,

once again, trying to subvert the 2020 election,

sue it the 2020 convertible by using the levers of power

to target political opponents and disrupt

the voting process, itself.

For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look.

♪♪

Donald Trump is a deranged man.

We have been over this. You guys know the deal.

If this show were a book, that would be the subtitle.

His brain is likely the gelatinous texture

and consistency of pumpkin pie filling,

and there is no way to treat a brain ailment

like that, though, I guess we're going to find out

if hydroxychloroquine helps.

Trump is a deeply paranoid guy who sees enemies

and shadowy plots everywhere he looks.

And he encourages others to see those same conspiracies.

On Tuesday, for example, he met with farmers

and told the potato farmer from Virginia

that the state government was somehow trying

to take away the Second Amendment.

-We're going after Virginia with your crazy governor.

We're going after Virginia.

They want to take your Second Amendment away,

you know that right?

You will have nobody guarding your potatoes.

-I have been in quarantine for two months with two kids

and I still haven't said anything that crazy.

You know that farmer was like, "Oh, damn.

am I supposed to be guarding my potatoes right now?"

You know what's guarding your potatoes,

the fact that they cost about 12 cents a pound

and grow underground.

Of course, Trump probably thinks potatoes grow in bags

on supermarket shelves. I'm just kidding.

He's never been to a supermarket.

But that's how Trump's mind works.

He sees deranged conspiracies everywhere.

Take voting.

We like to think of it as perhaps

the single most sacred principle underpinning our democracy.

Voting is a universal right, not a privilege.

Even the Republican Party, which has for decades committed

itself to suppressing the votes of marginalized people

through voter I.D. laws and gerrymandering,

knows enough to at least pay lip service to that idea.

But on Wednesday, as is his want,

Trump just blurted out the truth during an incoherent rant

on mail-in voting.

He sees voting as an honor, not a right.

-I think just common sense would tell you

that it's massive manipulation can take place.

Massive.

And you do, you have cases of fraudulent ballots

where they actually print them

and they give them to people to sign.

Maybe the same person signs them

with different writing, different pens.

I don't know. A lot of things can happen.

Now, if you can, you should go and vote.

Voting is an honor.

It shouldn't be something where they send you

a pile of stuff and you send it back.

-They send you a pile of stuff and you send it back.

That's mail. That's how the mail works.

Now you go to a restaurant and send chicken to a stranger

you've never met, and the next thing you know

they bring it to you on a plate.

It makes no sense.

You know, voter fraud is virtually

non-existent in this country.

The most famous recent example with a voter fraud scheme

concocted by Republicans to cheat in an

Congressional election in North Carolina in 2018,

which invalidated the election and resulted in a redo.

Now, you might be wondering if Democratic voter fraud

is so supposedly widespread as Republicans claim,

why do we only know about voter fraud cases

involving Republicans?

MSNBC asked the then executive director

of the North Carolina GOP that question,

and he did not have a particularly good answer.

-We constantly are hearing Republicans say

that Democrats are engaged in voter fraud.

There is almost never any evidence of that,

and right here you're holding a board that has at least

22 cases of voter fraud in the state of North Carolina

and executed by Republicans in one district.

-In one Congressional district on one election.

-So, 22 cases of voter fraud by a Republican.

Where are the Democratic cases of voter fraud?

-Well -- well, I-I-I'm not keeping score of that.

-Well -- well -- well, it looks like you caught me

with my britches down, but as you have insulted

my honor, I have no recourse but to challenge

you a dual tomorrow morning in the potato field.

And yet yesterday, Trump threatened on Twitter

to unilaterally withhold funding from the states of Michigan

and Nevada simply for mailing out applications

for absentee ballots, which is perfectly legal

in which states with Democratic

and Republican governors have done for years.

Just five months, after he got impeached for threatening

to withhold funding from Ukraine

unless they interfere in the election.

In two months after he said governors who want help

from the federal government have to treat him well,

he keeps using the same move over and over.

It's only a matter of time before he threatens to withhold

funding from the post office, unless they promise to look at

every ballot and dump the ones marked for Biden in the shredder

he uses for his tax returns.

It comes with an extra large bin.

And the Republican party is fully

in lock step behind Trump.

In the middle of a pandemic that has killed more

than 90,000 Americans and created the economy,

they're transforming the Senate into an arm

of the Presidents' campaign.

The Senate Judiciary Committee,

led by Lindsey Graham is moving forward

with an investigation of the origins

of the Russia probe in an effort to target Obama administration

officials in the Senate Homeland Security

and Governmental Affairs Committee led by Ron Johnson

who voted to subpoena documents

as part of an investigation of Hunter Biden.

The same investigation Trump got impeached for,

and Republicans are fine with all of it.

You might get a little grumble, you know, from Mitt Romney

and Susan Collins might form a committee

to look into the possibility of furrowing her brow.

But otherwise the GOP is done with all of it.

They're like bank robbers who get caught planning a heist

and then say, "Should we do it anyway?"

Republicans are just as paranoid and conspiratorial as Trump.

He didn't come out of nowhere. He fits perfectly in the GOP.

They've concocted an insane fantasy

in which Obama spied on Trump by secretly monitoring

suspicious calls by Michael Flynn

and not telling Trump about it,

as Johnson claimed Tuesday on Fox News.

-So if that were the case, that they were genuinely

concerned that there was some compromise or something

going on, it was nefarious on those phone calls,

why would they have not told the incoming

President of the United States?

-Because it's a corrupt transition process.

You know, it's exactly what they should have done.

-They did. This isn't secret.

Obama warned then President-elect Trump

about Flynn during a meeting in the oval office

two days after the election.

I mean, do you remember?

That incredibly bizarre meeting where Trump sat stone-faced

next to Obama like a terrified seventh grader

who just got called into the principal's office?

These guys have concocted a bunch

of insane conspiracy theories.

Now they're using the levers of the government

to suppress votes and drum up politically

motivated investigation,

and they're doing that because they're losing.

Polls show Americans broadly dissatisfied with Trump's

handling of the pandemic and Biden

consistently ahead of Trump.

And when a Democrat is ahead of Trump in the polls,

it's all over, baby.

Oh.

Right.

The President has badly mishandled the massive

cataclysm that has left nearly 100,000 Americans dead

and the economy in tatters.

Yet, on Wednesday he insisted he had actually handled

the situation perfectly.

-Mr. President, with four percent of the world population

and 30 percent of the outbreak,

what would you have done differently

facing this crisis?

-Well, nothing. -Are you sure?

You don't want to think about it for maybe another second?

You don't think you would have changed anything

like, you know, maybe you shouldn't have said

coronavirus would disappear like a miracle,

that it was like the flu or that you could cure it

but chopping Tide GO Stiks

and shining a heat lamp up your ass?

Okay.

In reality, of course, there are lots of things

we could have been doing and should be doing now

to suppress the outbreak.

New data reported by the the "New York Times"

last night suggested that lockdown delays

cost at least 36,000 lives.

Instead Trump has been obsessed with pushing hydroxychloroquine

as an unproven miracle cure despite the fact

that his own FDA warns against taking it.

Now after claming out of nowhere

that he was taking hydroxychloroquine,

Trump announced on Wednesday that he was about to stop.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

-I think the regimen finishes in a day or two.

I think it's a two days.

-So Trump took an unproven drug for no reason

and decided arbitrarily the regimen finishes

in a day or two.

Yeah, I only have two days left, because last I check

there were just the two pills left in the dispenser.

You better not be holding out on me, Micky.

The President's pushing dangerous miracle cures

when there are actually lots of things, like testing,

contact tracing and isolation we could doing to save lives.

In fact, this week we have provided a fairly stark contrast

between things that do work and things that don't work

in combating the coronavirus pandemic

and which of those Trump has chose on the embrace.

For example, there was a polling this week that experiments

by a team in Hong Kong found that the coronavirus

transmission rate via respiratory droplets

or airborne particles dropped by as much as 75 percent

when surgical masks were used.

Now, that's potentially huge news.

However, there is one big caveat to this story.

The study used hamsters in two cages.

One group of hamsters infected with Covid-19

and the other healthy.

Now, if you're wondering how one group of hamsters

got infected, they were the hamsters

who violated stay-at-home orders to get haircuts.

You guys want to know something fun?

You see whatever that picture is?

I haven't seen it yet. You are seeing it before I do.