-So many of President Trump's friends and aides
have abandoned him that the only people left to defend him
are Stephen Miller and Rudy Giuliani.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
Things would be a lot easier for Trump
if he still had Republicans in Congress to protect him.
But now he has to deal with Democrats
as they prepare to take control of the House.
And right now Trump is fighting with them over the budget.
Trump wants money for his border wall,
and Nancy Pelosi has been adamant that he won't get it.
And I'm just gonna guess, from looking at the two of them,
that Pelosi is going to win.
I mean, look at the two of them.
He looks like he had a panic attack in a steam room,
and she looks like Neo from "The Matrix"
if he shopped at Talbots.
She's Tom Cruise. He's "Risky Business."
In fact, Trump is so easy to beat in these situations
that in last week's tense meeting in the Oval Office,
Pelosi called the potential government shutdown
a Trump shutdown, and Trump was annoyed
that Pelosi beat him to the punch.
-I think the American people recognize
that we must keep government open,
that a shutdown is not worth anything
and that you should not have a Trump shutdown.
-Oh, wait a minute. Did you say Trump --
Oh. That's what I'm gonna call it.
-You have your White House. You have the Senate.
-Oh, were you?
Trump's like a guy who gets checkmated in chess
and says, "I was gonna say that."
And then you'd say, "Why would you say that?
You didn't checkmate me."
Then he'd just eat all the pieces.
After Pelosi outwitted Trump in the Oval Office meeting,
the White House got really desperate
and turned to a staffer who has mostly stayed
out of the public eye lately,
and that's senior policy advisor Stephen Miller.
[ Thunder crashes ]
Miller has been quiet in the last few weeks,
although he occasionally lurks in the backgrounds of photos
like the White House janitor who's been dead for 30 years.
Yesterday, he went on "Face the Nation"
to aggressively proclaim
that Trump would hold the government hostage
if he doesn't get money for his border wall.
-We are about five days from a potential government shutdown,
and Republican leadership says there's no plan.
What is the President's plan, and will he shut it down
to get this $5 billion in border-wall funding?
-We're going to do whatever is necessary
to build the border wall, to stop this ongoing crisis
of illegal immigration.
-And that means a shutdown?
-If it comes to it, absolutely.
This is a very fundamental issue.
The Democrat Party has a simple choice.
They can either choose to fight for America's working class
or to promote illegal immigration.
You can't do both.
-Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh, what the hell's going on with Stephen Miller's hair?
I mean, here he is before that interview.
And here he is during it.
Is that a proceeding hairline?
Does Stephen Miller get a hair hard-on
when he talks about the wall?
"Stephen, did you hear ICE is breaking arrest records?"
"Eww!
Stephen has a hair boner!"
I mean, look at that thing.
It would have been more believable
if he just Charlie Brown'd it.
Is that spray paint, or did he get the inauguration crowd
tattooed on his head?
Trump was forced to turn to Miller
because of the unprecedented turnover in his administration.
For example, after he announced the departure
of his current chief of staff, John Kelly,
Trump said he would replace Kelly with someone
who already works in the White House, Mick Mulvaney.
And the White House said that on top of being chief of staff,
Mulvaney would also keep his current job
as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget
and the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
It's getting to the point where there's only going to be
like four people left in this administration
and they're each going to have 30 jobs.
-"I'm pleased to announce that I've appointed Stephen Miller
Secretary of State, Defense, Commerce, head speech writer,
Communications Director, and White House Babadook.
[ Laughter ]
And I have to say... I have to say...
Stephen is so excited about it,
his hair boner is down to his nose."
[ Laughter ]
Trump has lost Republicans in Congress
and Republicans in his own White House,
but, of course, the gravest threat to his presidency so far
came from the man who was, for years, closer to him
than almost anyone else,
and that's his former lawyer, Michael Cohen.
In an interview with ABC, Cohen made clear
that Trump had directed him to break the law
and explained how he'd grown apart from the President.
-I will tell you that the gentleman
that is sitting now in the Oval Office,
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,
is not the Donald Trump that I remember from Trump Tower.
He's a very different individual.
-No, he's not a different individual.
He's just in a different location.
There's not an expression "like a bull in a barn,"
but move it to a china shop, and suddenly everyone's like,
"[Bleep]. Get this bull out of here!"
They're like, "He was fine in the barn."
"This is not a [bleep] barn!"
Now, Trump, for his part...
for his part...
[ Cheers and applause ]
...has insisted that he had nothing to do with the
hush-money payments Cohen made to cover up Trump's affairs.
Trump has also argued that Cohen should have known better,
an argument he repeated in an interview with Fox News.
-Michael Cohen says that he lied in order to protect you.
-Yeah. -What's your response to that?
-Let me tell you.
I never directed him to do anything wrong.
Whatever he did, he did on his own. He's a lawyer.
A lawyer who represents a client
is supposed to do the right thing.
That's why you pay them a lot of money, et cetera, et cetera.
I think, by "et cetera, et cetera,"
you mean because it's illegal.
Only Trump could "et cetera, et cetera" the law.
He pulled an Elaine.
"I met a porn star, went up to my room.
Yada yada yada. I'm an unindicted co-conspirator."
Yet even in the last few days,
Trump's story on this has changed again.
First, Trump insisted he never heard of the payments.
Then he said they were legal.
Then he said it was Cohen's fault.
And now his current lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is saying...
So what if it was illegal? Nobody died.
-Here's what Rudy Giuliani, the President's lawyer,
said this week.
"Nobody got killed. Nobody got robbed.
This was not a big crime," Giuliani told The Daily Beast.
And then he added, "I think in two weeks
they'll start with parking tickets that haven't been paid."
-This is ridiculous.
And they're going around with this,
and you're talking about all these other investigations.
I'm telling you, George, they're going to go try
to look for unpaid parking tickets.
-Oh, my God. Rudy managed to out-crazy Stephen Miller.
Congrats, Rudy. You get the hair boner.
[ Laughter ]
Even Trump's closest friends and advisors
are getting as far away from him as they possibly can,
and the only people he has left to defend him
are Rudy Giuliani and Stephen Miller,
and that's because people are starting to realize
a fundamental truth about working for Donald Trump.
You can keep your job or you can keep your dignity, but...
-You can't do both.
-This has been "A Closer Look."