-Well, it looks like 2020 is off to a great start.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Theme music plays ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
I'm just [Bleep] with you. 2020 is already the worst.
[ Laughter ]
The sky in Australia is blood red,
thanks to a climate crisis;
Republicans are trying to rig the impeachment trial;
and the president is threatening more crimes on Twitter.
We're less than a week into 2020.
The world is like your friend who tells you
this is the year he's going to quit drugs and take up yoga,
and then, on January 6th,
you see him trying to sell his mat for crack.
[ Laughter ]
I mean, we should have at least been able to come together
and enjoy the Patriots getting knocked out of the playoffs,
and the first round at home.
[ Cheers and applause ]
I mean, finally, Bill Belichick was as sad as his outfit.
For a guy who's supposed to be good at clock management,
he always looks like he woke up five minutes before game time.
And you know, we couldn't even take 24 hours
to savor that small victory,
because the president spent the weekend
threatening war crimes against Iran
after ordering the assassination of a top Iranian general
and then, in Orwellian fashion,
claiming he did it to stop a war.
-Breaking news this morning.
The U.S. has carried out the assassination
of a top Iranian military and intelligence commander.
The president ordered this.
It was carried out by drone last night in Iraq.
-His name was Qasem Soleimani.
He was Iran's top military commander.
-I went to a State Department briefing today,
a background briefing, and the officials basically said
the ball is in Iran's court, and we are trying to de-escalate.
Actually, one official said this was an act of de-escalation.
-We took action last night to stop a war.
We did not take action to start a war.
-Trump thinks we can't accuse him of rushing into a war
if he reads his TelePrompTer super slowly.
[ Laughter ]
You can't just kill a top general of a sovereign nation
and call it de-escalation. That's like getting drunk
and driving your car into a Kmart
and then telling the cops, "I did it to stop my car."
[ Laughter ]
Trump and his allies are lying in the exact same ways
the Bush administration lied us into a catastrophic war
in Iraq nearly 17 years ago,
and the exact same people are doing it.
After the attack Fox News decided to turn to
their stable of lumpy white guys
who have been wrong about anything,
like Lindsey Graham, a champion of the Iraq war,
and former Bush officials and serial liars
Ari Fleischer and Karl Rove.
Why are these the best experts we can get?
This is like doing a segment on organizing music festivals
and interviewing Billy McFarland and Ja Rule.
And the same people are trotting out the same lies
they did 17 years ago. For example,
Vice President Mike Pence lied
and tried to link Soleimani to 9/11 in a tweet
that was not supported by the evidence.
And if that sounds familiar to you,
it's because it's right out of
the playbook of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld,
who repeatedly linked Saddam Hussein
to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups
without providing any evidence.
-The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship
between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda --
because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
-There are reports that there is no evidence
of a direct link between Baghdad
and some of these terrorist organizations.
-Reports that say that something hasn't happened
are always interesting to me
because, as we know, there are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns.
That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns --
the ones we don't know we don't know.
-Excuse me, but is this an unknown unknown?
[ Laughter ]
-I'm not -- -There are several unknowns --
-I'm not going to say which it is.
-Oh, you're not going to say, so it's unknown
whether it's an unknown unknown.
But one known that we do know is what Trump knows,
which is a known unknown,
because he un-knows what he doesn't know.
Meaning we know he knows no knowns.
[ Laughter ] It's amazing.
[ Cheers and applause ]
It's amazing that we found a way
to elect people who think these guys have the right idea.
It's like if, 17 years from now,
someone made a movie called "Cats 2" --
this time with genitals.
[ Laughter ]
So, Pence lied, just like Bush and Rumsfeld lied.
But, hey, at least this isn't the first time
Mike Pence has been wrong
about a disastrous war in the Middle East.
-I am here to report,
as the United States military confirmed in Iraq on Monday,
weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.
-It's fitting that 16 years later,
Pence is telling the same lies,
because 16 years later, he looks the exact same.
I mean, I'm pretty sure he's just
a stock-photo businessman come to life.
When he takes off his shirt,
it says "Getty Images" across his chest.
[ Laughter and applause ]
So, the Trump administration tried to link Soleimani to 9/11.
They also claimed they were stopping an imminent threat.
But if that's true, they haven't presented
any evidence of that threat to Congress or the public.
In fact, a "The New York Times" reporter tweeted
that the evidence for such a threat
was razor-thin. And "The times" also wrote
that national security experts and even other officials
at the Pentagon said they were unaware
of anything drastically new about Iranian behavior
in recent weeks. But that's not good enough
for "Fox & Friends" host Ainsley Earhardt,
who said today that we just have to trust
the intelligence agencies. -So interesting
that people are critical of the president's decisions,
of our intelligence community's decisions,
our generals' decisions. -They want details.
-General Tata said -- Well, they can't have it.
They can't -- Everything can't be made public.
We heard Pompeo over the weekend saying,
"Everything that we have, the intelligence community has" --
he said, "I ran the CIA at one point.
We can't release everything.
We can't release all of our intelligence information.
We'll release as much as we can,
but you just have to trust us, basically."
-Oh, we just have to trust them?
I'm sorry, but I'm not inclined to trust an administration
that lies about everything, even the most dumbest thing.
Let's not forget, this is the same guy who literally
drew a circle on an official weather map, in Sharpie,
to claim that Alabama was going to get hit by a hurricane
and then pretended he had no idea how it got there.
Can you imagine if Trump actually tries
to present some evidence against Iran?
[ As Trump ] "I have it right here --
the top-secret intelligence briefing
that proves I was right.
It says, 'Iran bad,' right there."
[ Laughter ]
"Right there." [ Applause ]
[ Normal voice ] So, there you go.
You heard "Fox & Friends."
We have to trust our intelligence agencies.
I wonder, though, if she felt the same way back in May,
when the intelligence agencies were investigating Trump.
What? No, she didn't?
Oh, and the next clip proves it?
Oh, why are you telling me? You ruined the surprise.
Alright, well, let's just show it anyway.
-There was a Fox News poll, and folks were asked
how likely intelligence agencies, like the FBI,
broke the law to investigate President trump.
Look at that.
58% said "extremely," "very," or "somewhat,"
and only 31% said "not at all," so that just shows you --
-And you get that number when you add up the first three.
-That's pretty scary that we can't trust the FBI.
-What?! We can't?
But that lady on the news just a second ago said we can!
[ Laughter ] Wait a second!
Oh, my God, one of two things is happening here.
Either Trump supporters are self-serving hypocrites
who defend intelligence agencies when they want to bomb
other countries, but attack them
when they investigate the president's crimes,
or Ainsley Earhardt has an evil twin!
[ Laughter ]
[ Suspenseful music plays ]
[ Applause ]
Now, if you're a Trump supporter out there,
claiming anyone who opposes this act of war
is siding with the enemy, let's just remember,
this is the same president who literally said
he and Kim Jong-un, a brutal dictator
who starves and tortures his own people, quote,
"fell in love because of Kim's beautiful letters."
Trump actually said that about a brutal dictator.
He sounds like a Southern belle meeting suitors at a cotillion.
"My dear Beauregard, I fell in love with you
after your beautiful letters."
[ Laughter ]
I'm pretty sure most people
hadn't even heard Soleimani's name until recently,
and that includes Trump himself, who was asked about him
in a radio interview in 2015 and clearly had no idea who he was.
-Are you familiar with General Soleimani?
-Yes. Go ahead. Give me a little.
Go ahead, tell me.
-He runs the Quds Forces. -Yes, okay. Right.
-Do you expect -- -And I think the Kurds,
by the way, have been harshly mistreated by us.
-No, not the Kurds, the Quds Forces --
the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Forces,
the bad guys. -Yes, right.
-Do you expect his behavior to change as a result --
-Oh, I thought you said "Kurds."
-I love -- I love how Trump tried to
pretend he knew who he was, even though he clearly didn't.
"Do you know General Soleimani?"
[ As Trump ] Yeah -- No, I do.
But I want to see if you know who he is.
[ Normal voice ] Clearly, this was
a reckless act by an impulsive president
who hasn't thought through any of the consequences.
But a lot of people, including prominent Democrats,
are also asking, "Why now?
Why would a president who's facing an impeachment trial,
and mounting evidence of his guilt
suddenly start a war with Iran
as he heads into an election year.
I wonder if 2011-2012 Donald Trump
had anything to say about that
when it came to President Obama.
-I say that he starts a war in Iran
before the election,
which will make it very hard for the Republican to win, okay?
And I've said that, and I predicted that.
He doesn't talk to anybody. He'll start a war.
You know, lives will be wasted for no reason.
I happen to think that the president
is going to start a war with Iran.
I think it will be a short-term popular thing to do,
and I think he's going to do that for political reasons.
Our president will start a war with Iran
because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate.
He's weak, and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures
that he's going to get re-elected,
and as sure as you're sitting there,
is to start a war with Iran.
I believe that he will attack Iran
sometime prior to the election because he thinks
that's the only way he can get elected.
Isn't it pathetic? -Yes, it is.
The thing about Trump is that he never tells the truth
about himself in the present,
but he always tells the truth about himself
like 10 years in advance.
When he accuses people of crossing the border illegally,
that means, 10 years from now, he's going to get caught
climbing over his wall, trying to flee to Mexico.
[ As Trump ] David, uh, why did we make it so tall?
[ Laughter ]
[ Normal voice ] So, it's already terrifying
that the president is impulsively lurching
into an unjust and unmoral war,
and then, on Sunday, he decided to go even further
and threaten war crimes against Iran
with a truly psychotic tweet that he genuinely thought
counted as some sort of official legal document.
Here is the very real tweet
the president of the United States
sent out on Sunday.
"These media posts will serve as notification
to the United States Congress that should Iran
strike any U.S. person or target,
the United States will quickly and fully strike back
and perhaps in a disproportionate manner.
Such legal notice is not required
but is given nevertheless." That's right.
The same guy who brought you such tweets as,
"Robert Pattinson should dump Kristen Stewart,"
and, "I have never seen a thin person drinking diet Coke,"
now thinks his tweets
serve as official legal notice to Congress.
I don't think this tweet counts
as legal notice to commit an act of war,
but I do think it counts
as legal notice to have you committed.
That tweet sounds like something
that could be scrawled on the walls of a psych ward.
"Let this serve as a legal notice
that I know you're hiding pills in my applesauce,
and I will find them and sue you for malpractice."
[ Applause ] And by the way,
threatening a disproportionate response is a war crime,
just like when Trump tweeted the previous day
that, "If Iran strikes any Americans or American assets,
we have targeted 52 Iranian sites,
some at a very high level
and important to Iran and the Iranian culture.
And those targets and Iran itself
will be hit very fast and very hard."
First of all, it's not reassuring
when the president tweets in all caps like a lunatic
who sees his ex-girlfriend posting pictures
of herself with another guy, and texts her at 3:00 a.m.,
"Who is Brad? Why are you in Cabo?
I will hit him very fast and very hard!"
A war with Iran would be unjust and immoral,
cause mass death and suffering,
and destabilize the region and the world.
And Trump obviously hasn't thought about,
or doesn't care about, those consequences,
because, by all accounts,
he made this decision impulsively,
to the surprise of his own top military officials.
"The New York Times" reported that they were stunned,
flabbergasted, and alarmed when trump chose
the option of killing Soleimani.
Apparently, Trump's military advisers
put the option on one PowerPoint slide
to make the other options seem more reasonable,
not actually thinking he would pick it.
One briefing slide shown to Trump
listed several follow-up steps the U.S. could take,
among them targeting Soleimani.
Unexpectedly, Trump chose that option.
Oh, oh, did Donald Trump do the unexpected...
[ Laughter ] ...instead of the reasonable?
Did you guys not get a briefing on him?
You can't expect the reasonable choice
from the guy who stared into a eclipse,
and when his umbrella got caught,
just left it on the stairs.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Congress must do everything in its power
to stop an unjust and immoral war with Iran
that will have disastrous consequences.
That's why thousands of protesters took to the streets
over the weekend in cities across the country
to say no to war with Iran.
We have an impulsive, lawless president
threatening war crimes,
who thinks his tweets count as official legal documents.
You got to ask... -Isn't it pathetic?
-This has been "A Closer Look."
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