-Russia launched a full-scale
military assault on Ukraine last night
that shocked and horrified almost everyone in the world,
except, apparently, for the leader
of the Republican Party, Donald Trump.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheering and applause ] ♪♪
If you are like me or like most people around the world,
you were watching the news
of Russia's attack on Ukraine last night
with a sickening feeling in your stomach,
a mix of grief and sorrow and despair
at the mass human suffering this atrocious act will cause.
No one, aside from Putin and his cronies,
wants this reckless and illegal war.
Certainly not the innocent Ukrainians targeted by it,
not the rest of the world watching it,
and not the hundreds of ordinary Russians
who took to the streets to protest,
despite a total ban on such demonstrations.
So, if you're like most people, you were shocked and horrified.
But if you were Donald Trump,
apparently, you were at Mar-A-Lago,
watching it with a bunch of Palm Beach plastic surgeons
and their third wives and thinking,
"You really got to hand it to Vladimir Putin."
[ Guest laughs ]
First of all, stop talking about everything
like it's a [bleep] real estate deal.
[ Laughter ] It's an illegal war against a sovereign nation,
not an empty lot in Atlantic City.
[ Laughter ] Second, if you -- if you ever find yourself
at a fancy, high-dollar fundraiser,
clinking champagne glasses
while the keynote speaker applauds
an illegal and catastrophic war that will cause mass suffering
and destabilize an entire continent,
maybe take a moment to text your therapist and ask...
[ Laughter ]
Of course, then your therapist will just text you back...
[ Laughter ]
...and you won't hear that text notification
because you'll be yelling at the waiter about your salmon
or, I don't know, chanting, "Lock her up," for no reason
[ Laughter ] because, you know,
you're a bad person. [ Laughter ]
Trump then went on to brag, once again,
about how close he is with the guy
who is currently waging a violent
and unprovoked assault on a neighboring country.
But in the process, he, as usual,
rambled his way into talking
about something completely different
and pointed out one of the people in attendance,
GOP Congressman Ronny Jackson, his former White House doctor.
[ Cheering and applause ]
[ Laughter ] -Yikes! I would not want to be
Dr. Ronny in that situation.
[ As Trump ] My two best friends are Vladimir Putin,
one of the most reviled men on Earth,
who is currently in the midst of waging an illegal war
that has shocked and angered the entire world, you know;
and of course, Dr. Ronny.
[ Laughter ]
You guys are my best buds, my crew, Vlad and Ron.
I love them because they're interchangeable.
[ Laughter ]
Ronny, got up and wave to everyone,
so they can see the man I consider equal,
in every way, to Vladimir Putin.
[ Laughter ]
It's like an underling getting called out for praise
at a Legion of Doom cocktail party.
"Okay, who's here? We got Lex Luthor.
Great to see you, Lex. Brainiac. Welcome, Brainiac.
And, of course, who could forget Dave from accounting?
[ Laughter ]
Dave, you are just as important
to the Legion of the Doom as the rest of us.
Let's give Dave a round of applause.
[ Laughter, cheering, and applause ]
Yeah, yeah.
While the rest of you are out there,
robbing banks and building ray guns,
Dave is keeping the lights on."
[ Laughter ]
If you thought Trump's response to the crisis
couldn't get any more sickening,
he later called in to Fox News Live,
as the invasion was happening,
and found a way to connect it
to his unhinged claims about the 2020 election.
-A month ago or three weeks ago,
all the so-called experts were saying that, you know,
Putin was probably going to just be content
with staying in those separatist regions.
But I think, given what's unfolded,
sadly, with a lot of weakness in the United States,
they just decided to go for it.
I mean, it looks like they're going for it
and where does that leave the NATO alliance?
-I think you're exactly right.
I think that's what happened.
He was going to be satisfied with a piece
and, now, he sees the weakness and the incompetence
and the stupidity of this administration.
And, as an American, I'm angry about it
and I'm saddened by it
and it all happened because of a rigged election.
[ Laughter ] -How does he do it?
How does he find a way
to connect everything to his rigged election [bleep]?
It's like his version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
[ Laughter ] Let's see. Putin is from Russia,
just like Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson,
who starred in "Marriage Story" with Laura Dern,
who is in "Big Little Lies" with Reese Witherspoon,
who was in the movie "Election,"
which was rigged.
[ Laughter and applause ]
And, by the way...
[ Cheering ]
...the same guy who called our current leaders stupid,
later in that same interview,
got confused and thought Americans had launched
an amphibious attack in Ukraine,
which he started complaining about
until FOX host Laura Ingraham corrected him
and told him it was actually a report
about a potential amphibious assault by Russia, not the U.S.
-President Trump. -Energy independent
and he blew it.
-We're just learning that U.S. officials
are looking at a potential amphibious landing, now,
in Odessa, Ukraine.
-That's a very sad thing,
but you know what's also very dangerous is
you told me about the amphibious attack by Americans.
You shouldn't be saying that
because you and everybody else shouldn't know about it.
They should do that secretly, not be doing that
[ Laughter ] through the great Laura Ingraham.
They should be doing that secretly.
Nobody should know that, Laura, and, you know,
you or nobody should know. -No, that was the Russians.
-No, those are the Russians, the Russian amphibious landing.
-Well, I thought you said that --
I thought you said that
-No, no. -we were sending people in.
[ Laughter ] Oh, okay. -No, I did not.
-Alright. -No, no, no, no, no.
-Oh, okay, good. -That would be news.
That would be news.
No. -And you know what?
That's all we need.
That'll be next, okay?
[ Laughter ]
-That guy was commander-in-chief
of the United States Armed Forces for four years.
[ Laughter ] You know, I think, even when we were in grade school
and they told us anybody could grow up to be president,
we thought to ourselves, "Well, I'm sure not anybody.
[ Laughter ] I mean, Timmy keeps going
to the nurse for chuggin' paste."
[ Laughter ]
But now, we literally have to admit
it could be anybody.
[ Laughter ]
Honestly, I'd be surprised
if he even knows what amphibious meant.
[ As Trump ] Laura, I was confused because America, of course,
has the greatest amphibious forces in the world --
soldiers who can fight with both their right and left hands...
[ Laughter ]
...which is very useful if you only have left-handed grenades.
[ Laughter ] "Um, I think -- I think you mean ambidextrous."
[ As Trump ] Oh, okay. [ Laughter ]
Ingraham even criticized Ukrainian President Zelensky
for pleading with Russia and imploring them not
to attack his country.
He was desperately trying
to stop the catastrophic invasion
that would cause misery and death,
but Ingraham just didn't like it.
-We had a kind of a really pathetic display from the
Ukrainian President Zelensky earlier today, President Trump,
where he, in Russian --
he doesn't like to speak Russian, but in Russian --
he was essentially imploring Vladimir Putin
not to invade his country.
Now, we basically have the Ukrainian ambassador
to the United Nation Nations looking like a defeated man.
-What would you say is more pathetic,
trying to stave off a Russian invasion
that would cause mass suffering and death
by speaking in a second language
or having to explain to a former president live on television
that it was Russia and not America
who is reportedly launching [ Laughter ]
a secret amphibious assault in Ukraine?
I'd ask these people how they sleep at night,
but I'm guessing they own a MyPillow,
which means they don't sleep at all.
[ Laughter ] Have you ever tried sleeping
on one of those things?
Not only are they filled
with packing peanuts and broken glass,
but there's also a tiny little voice box in each one
that plays soothing sleep sounds
personally recorded by Mike Lindell.
[ Laughter ] -We already have
all the pieces of the puzzle.
When you talk about evidence, we had enough evidence
to put everybody in prison for life,
300 and some million people,
[ Pop, deflating, distorted voice fades ]
[ Laughter and applause ]
-A lot of work went into that.
A lot of work went into it.
You maybe also heard her mention the Ukrainian ambassador
looking like a "defeated man."
Here's what he was actually saying to the Russian ambassador
at a meeting of the UN Security Council,
as the Russian attack was happening.
-Call Putin, call Lavrov to stop aggression
and I welcome the decision
of some members of this council
to meet as soon as possible
to consider the necessary decision
that would condemn the aggression
that you launch on my people.
There is no purgatory for war criminals.
They go straight to hell, Ambassador.
You never hear language like that at the United Nations,
unless it's Model UN.
Those kids hold nothing back.
[ Laughter ]
For real, one time, when I was in Model UN,
in sixth grade, I moved to table the motion
to consider Lithuania's membership
to the Council for Ecological Preservation
and the ambassador from Belgium was so mad,
he put his Capri Sun straw right through my hand!
[ Laughter ]
I still have the scar.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Went all the way through.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
And, even when they're not openly praising Putin
or denigrating Ukraine, Republicans have all rallied
around this insane idea that Biden's "weakness"
somehow invited Russian aggression.
-To see the way the Biden administration
has handled Ukraine
is a testament to a historic truth --
that weakness arouses evil.
-I don't think they know what they're doing.
-Yeah -They are in way, way,
over their heads.
I mean, Putin played this
almost like a symphony conductor
and he had --
and he basically made Biden --
he kind of stretched it out to make Biden
look more and more foolish.
Now, Putin's an evil man. -Yeah.
-But Putin is a brilliant man.
I mean, as soon as Biden came in,
he and Xi said, you know, "Let's test him.
He looks like a weakling.
He's always been a weakling."
-Yeah. You know, you def want to get advice
on how not to get played
from the guy who unwittingly ended up
with the third-biggest speaking role in "Borat."
[ Laughter and applause ]
I mean, this guy doesn't know where he is half the time.
You're asking for his take on a conflict
halfway around the world, meanwhile, he can't even find
the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia.
[ Laughter ] When you asked him about Putin,
he probably thought you were talking
about French fries and gravy,
[ Laughter ] which, who are we kidding?
Rudy definitely calls poutine French fries and gravy.
[ Laughter ]
[ As Giuliani ] French fries and gravy.
I mean, that's a taste that goes together
like me and my cousin.
[ Laughter ]
We were married.
I didn't know at the time,
but as soon as I found out --
14 years into it. Anyway,
[ Laughter ] Joe Biden doesn't have a clue.
Russia's brutal and illegal act of military aggression
will create mass human suffering,
which is why the world must do everything possible
to alleviate that suffering, including taking in refugees,
helping the innocent displaced people caught up in this war,
and imposing severe sanctions to get Russia to stop.
And, as for people like Trump and Rudy...
-They are in way, way, over their heads.
[ Laughter ] -This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪
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