Whether it's on immigration or tax returns
the president once again reminded us this weekend
that he considers himself above the law.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
President Trump toured the border of Friday to once again
make the case that there is a national emergency
happening there, which there is not.
He touted a section of the border wall
that had been planned during the Obama administration
and in the process he invented a new word.
-So behind us is the wall
That's the new wall. we've done a lot of it.
And we're doing a lot more.
You see it over here.
Much of it's reinforced heavily.
And very, very hard to climb.
If you want to climb that, pretty sharp up on top, too.
But it's a very, very hard it's meant anti-climb.
It's called anti-climb.
[ Laughter ]
So, Trump went from being the anti-crime candidate
to the anti-climb president.
He's an old man yelling at kids to stay away from his oak tree.
"Don't climb that!
If you break your neck I ain't gonna pay for it."
Trump also hosted a roundtable event with border officials
and both at that event and later at his tour of the wall
he kept harping on how good they looked.
-I want to thank my men and women,
who do a tremendous job here every day,
I'm very, very proud of their commitment
even though they're facing extreme challenges,
as you've heard. -They're central casting.
I've never seen a group of people like this.
Everyone is in perfect shape.
Central casting.
You don't have anybody in Hollywood
that looks like these guys.
-I'm pretty sure -- I'm pretty sure they do.
At least in one of the suburbs.
I feel like maybe Pomona or something.
Also, Trump is very obsessed with central casting for a guy
who looks like the exact opposite of a movie president.
If Trump went to central casting,
they'd probably send him on auditions for
"alcoholic Irish priest" or "ghost who haunts a Queens OTB".
[ Laughter ]
The fifth horse in the sixth race, bet it all.
Trump has been furious at Mexico for supposedly
allowing migrants fleeing poverty and violence
to come to the U.S. seeking asylum.
Last week, for example, he threatened to
close the border completely, and when everyone,
including his own party, warned that that would cause
an economic catastrophe, Trump backed off and claimed
he was giving Mexico a one-year warning
before he would impose tariffs on Mexican imports.
-The only thing frankly better but less drastic
than closing the border is tariff the cars coming in,
and I will do it. Just like him --
You know will do it. I don't play games.
I'll do it. So we're doing it to stop people.
We gonna give them a one-year warning.
-Well, he's been promising to build a wall for two years,
so if I were Mexico, I wouldn't be that worried.
[ Laughter ]
A one-year warning is such a lame threat.
He's like a high school bully with no follow-through.
You better give me your milk money, nerd,
or I'll beat you up as soon as the McRib comes back.
[ Laughter ]
Trump has been especially furious
about the asylum process.
Now it's both U.S. and international right
to seek asylum. But Trump doesn't care.
He has repeatedly painted poor migrant families
seeking asylum as dangerous threats and he did so again
in a rambling speech over the weekend.
-The asylum program is a scam.
Some of the roughest people you've ever seen,
people that look like they should be fighting for the UFC.
-What?
Have you ever seen a UFC fight?
If Connor McGregor were trying to sneak across the border,
people would notice.
Uh, chief, we got a crazy Irish guy here,
trying to kick his way through the wall.
-[ Irish accent ] Ah, can't climb it, but I'll kick it!
This is anti-kick? [ Laughter ]
Ah.
Trump doesn't care that we have and established legal process
in this country for applying for asylum.
That system involves making your case in front of a judge.
It's a basic right enshrined in U.S. and international law.
But Trump has been saying he wants to get rid of that.
-We have to do something about asylum.
And to be honest with you, have to get rid of judges.
We have a stupid system of ports,
it's the craziest thing in the world.
They have to get rid of the whole asylum system
because it doesn't work.
And frankly, we should get rid of judges.
-Why do you want to get rid of judges?
Is it because they keep putting
everyone who works for you in jail?
[ Laughter, cheers, and applause ]
If we are going to keep judges, they should have to pay for
our monster.com account because we're getting killed
on staffing costs.
Maybe Trump wants to get rid of judges
because he doesn't understand what judges are
or how court cases work.
At the roundtable on Friday, for example,
he blasted a court case called "Reno V. Flores,
which protects migrant children from being held indefinitely
in custody and grants them certain basic rights
it's often referred to as the Flores Decision.
Court cases are named after parties involved
but Trump seems to think that the case was named
after the judge who made the decision.
-The Flores Decision is a disaster.
I have to tell you Judge Flores, whoever you may be,
that decision a disaster for our country.
-There is no Judge Flores.
No one calls the O.J. Simpson trial the "Lance Ito Case."
[ Laughter, applause ]
In fact, Trump has been so furious
at his own administration's inability to stop
legal asylum seekers that on Sunday
he took the step of ousting his own hardline
Secretary of Homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen
for not being tough enough on immigration.
And her firing leaves yet another
senior government position filled by
a temporary official.
-After months of rumors and speculation, Kirstjen Nielsen
is officially out as Secretary of Homeland Security.
-She apparently bore the brunt of the president's anger
over the issue of immigration.
-Now we will have an acting Homeland Security Secretary
on top of an acting Secretary of Defense,
on top of an acting Secretary of Interior,
on top of an acting Ambassador to the United Nations
and then an acting Chief of Staff.
-I mean this administration has more staff turnover
than a Walmart on Black Friday.
I don't know what to tell you.
we're out of Hatchimals. You know what? I quit. Good-bye.
Nielsen, of course, oversaw and defended
the administration's horrific policy of
separating migrant families and she was
an enthusiastic advocate for the Trump administration's
immigration policies.
At one point, she even started mimicking
Trump's language when she went to Congress
and asked for more border wall funding.
-I will continue to work with The Northern triangle countries,
with Mexico, to help vulnerable populations
as soon as possible.
from Congress I would ask for wall.
We need wall.
-We need wall.
I guess it's not surprising they're ignoring articles
of the constitution, they're ignoring articles altogether.
[ Laughter ]
Trump turns everyone --
Trump turns everyone he works with into Tarzan.
It doesn't matter how smart you are.
If Shakespeare had worked for Trump, the line would have been
"Be or not be. That is question."
The problem here is pretty straightforward --
Trump thinks he should be able to just ignore the law.
We've seen the same thing play out this week
over his tax returns.
For months, Trump has been building toward
a confrontation with Democrats in Congress
over those tax returns.
Trump has promised for years
that he would eventually release them,
but he has repeatedly used an obviously false excuse,
that he's always under audit.
It's an excuse he started using in 2016
that has continued to repeat as recently as last week.
-Are you going to release your tax returns?
-At the appropriate time I will release them,
but right now I'm under a routine audit.
I don't mind releasing, I'm under a routine audit,
an it'll be released and as soon as the audit's finished,
it'll be released.
Look, as I told you, they're under audit.
They're extremely complex. People wouldn't understand them.
Every year they audit me, audit me, audit me.
Nobody gets audi-- I have friends
that are very wealthy people, they never get audited.
I've been audited every year.
I'm always under audit, it seems.
I've been under audit for many years
because the numbers are big and I guess when you have a name,
you're audited.
-First of all it's not when you have a name.
It's when you have your name.
If you had four bankruptcies ties to mobsters
and lied about your net worth your whole life,
you're going to get audited.
That's the easiest call an IRS agent will ever make.
Who should we audit?
I don't know, how about the guy
whose penthouse looks like Goldmember's bathroom?
Second, this audit is obviously not real.
It wasn't real when he first said it in 2016
and there's no way it's taken almost four years.
It can't be that hard to find something fishy
in Trump's tax returns.
Just skim down to the charity line
where he listed his adult sons.
Trump is the first President in 40 years
not to release his tax returns.
And without them, we have no idea
where he's getting money from or who he owes money to.
Which is crazy. He's the president.
You'd want to know if your doctor
had a side business running a mortuary.
Your test results were negative but just in case,
have you thought about a wood casket? Pine?
After Democrats won back the house in November,
giving them subpoena power, Trump warned
that he would resist attempts to subpoena his tax returns.
And one point even said he was bored by the question.
-Just a point of clarification the tax returns issue,
you bought up the audit, that doesn't prevent you
from releasing them. -I know.
Sure but I didn't say it prevented me
but I said lawyers will tell you not to do it.
Go ahead. What's your next question?
-Well, it,s just -- -Come on. Let's go.
More exciting question than that, please.
-Oh, I'm sorry, are we boring you, Caligula?
It's not their job to entertain you.
Who'd win a fight, a tiger or an alligator?
Now there we go, that's a fun question.
[ Laughter ]
This is the White House, not the Roman Coliseum.
They're not gonna feed you grapes
while you watch them joust.
Kellyanne, make the reporters fight.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
At that same press conference, Trump also threatened
that there would be consequences if Democrats subpoena
his tax returns.
-Do you expect that when the Democrats take over
the chairmanship of all these important committees
you're going to get hit with a blizzard of subpoenas
on everything from the Russia investigation --
-Well then it's going to come -- okay.
-To your cellphone use, to your tax returns.
-Ready?
Then, you're going to, if that happens,
then we're going to do the same thing
and the government comes to a halt.
-Comes to a halt?
The government is already at a halt.
Forget the tax returns, you shut the government down
for a month because you didn't get your dumb wall.
Plus there's like four people working there
and half the time you're in Florida.
There are empty Blockbuster video stores with more activity.
Honey, I --
Great news honey, I just rented a VHS copy of "Forrest Gump"
from a very friendly squirrel.
That threat is telling because Trump isn't
actually making a legal argument,
he's simply saying he doesn't care.
If you try to hold him accountable,
he'll shut down the government. That's it.
And this weekend, after Democrats officially requested
six years of Trump's tax returns from the IRS,
his Chief of Staff -- oh, excuse me,
his acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney,
made a similar argument.
Mulvaney, said flat out the Democrats would never get
Trump's tax returns no matter what the law says.
-You believe Democrats will never see
the president's tax returns?
-Oh, no. Never.
N-Nor should they.
-What do you mean never? It's a congressional request.
You can't just turn it down like hors d'oeuvres at a party.
you've been served.
Oh, no thank you I've already had 100 Big Macs.
Whenever Trump is threatened politically,
he becomes more lawless, whether it's on immigration
or tax returns, he sees himself as above that law.
He's painting immigrants as criminals,
while he refuses to show us his tax returns.
You could almost say the whole thing is --
-A scam. -This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]