-After officially announcing his re-election bid,
the president spent the week rambling in phone interviews
while his administration threatened war with Iran.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
After his campaign kickoff rally on Tuesday,
Trump decided to relive the evening last night
by calling up one of his most loyal servants,
Fox News host Sean Hannity,
and he turned almost the entirety of his hour-long show
over to the president and grilled him
with hard hitting questions about the 2020 campaign.
-Joining us now is the president of the United States.
President Trump, sir, good to have you back on the program.
-Hi, Sean.
-You seem to really love doing what you did last night.
It looked like tailgating party.
I actually kind of regretted not going
because I wanted to hang out with the people outside
because they were having a blast.
There's 20-some-odd candidates.
I want to get your general thoughts on all of them.
-I look at some of them.
I don't see George Washington.
I don't see Churchill.
I don't see anybody in particular that I worry about.
-I don't see George Washington, either, sir.
-Ugh. What a suck up.
"I don't see George Washington either, sir.
You're so funny, sir.
I wish I could tailgate with you, sir.
Do you like my new haircut, sir?
I started wearing my tie down to my crotch just like you, sir.
Just like you, sir."
[ Cheers and applause ]
Also, what do you mean you don't see Winston Churchill.
You're no Winston Churchill, either, buddy.
I don't care if you tried on a Churchill-style hat
when you were in the UK.
You don't look like Churchill. You look like Hardy ate Laurel.
[ Laughter ]
And Trump, of course, loves to bask in this mindless praise,
which is why he once again droned on for so long
that even Hannity couldn't get him off the phone.
This has happened with Fox News hosts before, but this time,
Hannity had to hand it over
to the next fawning Trump sycophant,
Laura Ingraham, whose show started after Hannity's.
Again, this was like 45 minutes into the interview.
-Our military is almost completed
in terms of being rebuilt.
And we are doing missile and missile technology
that nobody's even seen before.
-Mr. President -- -I'm thinking about,
"Do we announce it or do we not announce it?"
Because I've said, you got to pay for NATO.
You know, the United States was paying for NATO.
-Mr. President -- -You had a lot of countries
that were delinquent. I think we're gonna --
-Mr. President... -I hope we're going to have
a good relationship, but we're a very strong country again,
and we're respected again, Sean.
>> I hate to interrupt you, but I actually took 15 minutes
of Laura Ingraham's show. -This keeps happening.
He's a meandering old man rambling on the phone
about nonsense and even his friends
can't get him to hang up.
Like, where is he even making these calls?
Is he wandering around the White House lawn
in his bathrobe?
At some point, you expect to hear a nurse on the other end
screaming, "There you are, Donald!
Come back to the White House!
You have to eat your pureed carrots!"
[ As Trump ] But I don't -- I don't want my carrots.
That's where they hide the medicine.
And I mean...
[ Normal voice ] And then, after that,
it got even worse because Hannity actually had to
hand Trump over to Ingraham,
and Trump still wouldn't stop talking.
-I actually took 15 minutes of Laura Ingraham's show.
But I want to tell you -- -I know that. I noticed that.
Laura must not be happy right now.
-It's her birthday today, sir.
-She's a great person. 'Cause I'll tell you what --
I've known her for a long time. She's great person.
-And thank you for being with us.
Laura, happy birthday from me.
And the president, I think,
would like to wish you happy birthday.
-That's right. -Hey, Mr. President.
Thank you. Happy birthday. Wow, that's great.
-We've known each other a long time,
and congratulations on your show.
-They're just passing him around like when your grandpa calls
on Easter and everyone has to take turns saying hello.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Oh! Oh! Here's Karen! I'm gonna hand you to Karen.
[ Laughter and applause ]
[ Cheers and applause ] Look...
Lookit, even Hannity -- Hannity throwing up his hands.
Even he can't believe it.
At this point, he could just stop showing up to work
and change the name of his show to "Grandpa's on the Phone."
So Trump rambled on the phone for almost an hour
about meaningless nonsense, and yet,
when you actually want him to go into detail
about something important like, say, his administration's
march to war with Iran, he's much more tight-lipped.
Today in the Oval Office, he was asked about reports that Iran
shot down an unmanned US drone.
Now, Iran says the drone was in its airspace.
Trump on the other hand, said the drone
was over international waters,
but his explanation didn't provide many details.
-Iran made a big mistake.
This drone was in international waters, clearly.
We have it all documented.
It's documented scientifically, not just words.
-Oh. [ Laughter ]
Well...
if it's documented scientifically,
I feel so much better.
If there's anyone I trust with science, it's Donald Trump.
I could definitely see him in a lab coat and goggles
writing down a proof on a chalkboard.
"What did you find, Donald?"
[ As Trump ] I -- I fou-- I ate the chalk.
[ Laughter ]
I ate the chalk before I was done.
[ Normal voice ] It's important to note that Trump
can't just unilaterally go to war with Iran.
The Constitution says he needs authorization from Congress,
which he does not have.
And even though he spent two years flouting the law,
during his rally on Tuesday,
Trump lied and claimed he would protect the Constitution
and even said Democrats were the ones destroying it.
-Imagine if we had a Democrat president and Democrat congress
in 2020.
They would strip Americans of their Constitutional rights.
This election is a verdict on whether we want to live
in a country where the people who lose an election
refuse to concede and spend the next two years
trying to shred our Constitution.
-Dude, you tried to stop an investigation
of your own campaign
and you called a fake national emergency
to build a border wall on your own.
The only way you could care less about the Constitution
is if it was written in Spanish.
I doubt Trump could identify
even one of the founding fathers.
If you showed him a picture of John Adams and said,
"Who's this?" He'd go,
[ As Trump ] Uh, is it Paul Giamatti?
[ Laughter ]
[ Normal voice ] In fact, as we speak,
Trump is waging war on congress,
instructing aides to defy subpoenas
and refusing to turn over his tax returns
or financial records, even though Trump keeps claiming,
as he did in his ABC interview on Sunday that he wants
some unspecified financial statement to be made public,
or rather, he tried to make that claim,
but was interrupted by a staffer in the room.
-At some point, I hope they get it 'cause...
-[ Coughing ] ...it's a fantastic
financial statement.
It's a fantastic financial statement.
And -- Let's do that over.
He's coughing in the middle of my answer.
-Yeah. Okay. -I don't like that, you know?
I don't like that. -Your Chief of Staff.
-If you are going to cough, please leave the room.
-Get a shot and I'll come over here.
-Sorry. -You just can't cough.
-Just to change the shadow. Sorry, Mr. Trump.
-Okay. Do you want to do that a little differently then?
-Yeah, we just change the angle. Yep.
-Thank you. -So at some point...
-Look, I -- I know we've all talked about the coughing,
but look at him glaring at the camera like that.
This looks like one of those nature videos
where a lion finds a night vision camera in a bush.
[ Laughter ]
So Trump's just brazenly defying subpoenas
in violation of the Constitution and the law.
In fact, Trump's White House even instructed
his former Communications Director, Hope Hicks,
to defy a subpoena for documents and refuse to answer questions
whence she testified yesterday
in front of the House Judiciary Committee.
The White House argued that Hicks is absolutely immune
from being compelled to answer questions about her time
as a senior advisor to the president.
Well, there we go. She has absolute immunity.
There's just one problem --
No one knows what the hell that means.
-There is no such thing as absolute immunity.
It just doesn't exist.
So I can't even explain to you
what they could or couldn't assert.
Because as far as I can tell, it's a made-up term.
-Absolute immunity sounds like a hair growth supplement
they sell at GNC.
This is totally the Trump administration's style --
When the existing legal terms aren't working out for them,
they just invent some new ones.
They're like kids on a playground daring each other
to lick a frozen pole.
"I have absolute immunity."
"Oh, yeah? Well, I have double dog absolute immunity."
"Well, I have triple dog secret immunity, no take backs."
[ Laughter ]
Trump's promise to restore the Constitution
was just another lie,
and another in a long list of broken promises.
And now that he's running for re-election,
Trump and his team are criticizing Democrats
for supposedly making promises they can't keep,
as his son Don Jr. did at that re-election rally on Tuesday.
-Joe Biden comes out, "Well, if you elect me president,
I'm gonna cure cancer."
Well, why the hell didn't you do that
over the last 50 years, Joe?
-You know what we need to cure --
whatever the hell is growing on your face.
Because it's definitely not a beard.
You look like a little kid going as a hobo for Halloween.
I think you might be using your Absolute Immunity wrong.
Also, what do you mean, we should have cured cancer
50 years ago?
That's not how scientific progress works.
It takes time.
When the iPhone first came out,
nobody said, "Um, why the hell didn't we have these
during World War II?"
There's even an app that helps you find Nazis.
But, hey, there you go.
Politicians who make outlandish promises like curing cancer
should not be believed, got it.
-We will come up with the cures to many, many problems,
to many many diseases, including cancer and others.
We will lay the foundation for landing American astronauts
on the surface of Mars.
-Amazing. Not only did he say the exact same thing
a few hours later, he went even further and said
we would land on Mars.
And to promise a cure for cancer as well as a trip to Mars
is pretty cocky for a guy
who's only about 35 bricks into his wall.
[ Laughter ]
[ As Trump ] This wall...
[ Cheers and applause ]
This wall is a lot harder than I thought.
Should we -- Should we just do cancer?
[ Laughter ]
Should we bail on the wall and do cancer?
This week, we've seen the core of Trump on full display.
He views the law not as a constraint on his power,
but as a weapon to be used against others,
and he's making wild promises because he's failed
on the ones he already made.
Not only should he be impeached, we should send him somewhere
he can't do any more damage. You know, like...
-The surface of Mars.
-This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪