-The president's lawyer went on TV and basically admitted
that his campaign might have colluded with Russia.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
Every day, it gets harder to defend Trump's actions
in the Russia investigation which is why Trump
cycles through more lawyers than a "Law & Order" marathon.
"Oh, hey, that guy was a jogger three episodes ago."
[ Laughter ]
In fact, this week, Trump's nominee for Attorney General
William Barr was grilled by Senators
at his confirmation hearing about the fact
that Trump originally wanted Barr
to be his private criminal defense attorney,
which would be an obvious conflict of interest.
But Barr said he met with Trump once
and then never heard back from him.
-It was a very brief meeting where essentially the president
wanted to know -- he said, "Oh, you know Bob Mueller.
How well do you know Bob Mueller?"
I told him how well I knew Bob Mueller,
and he was interested in that,
wanted to know, you know, what I thought about
Mueller's integrity and so forth and so on.
And I said, "Bob is a straight shooter
and should be dealt with as such."
So he asked me for my phone number.
I gave it to him, and I never heard from him again.
[ Laughter ]
-Well, it's obvious why.
I mean, we've all seen Trump's tweets.
I mean...
what are the odds he wrote down a phone number correctly?
[ As Trump ] Yeah, dial this -- 213-55K-crying-emoji-8.
[ Laughter ]
What do you mean it's not ringing?
[ Normal voice ] So Barr didn't want to be Trump's lawyer.
No respectable lawyer does.
That's why Trump is stuck with
outer borough ambulance chasers like Rudy Giuliani.
Although Rudy doesn't really look like he chases ambulances.
They probably just follow him when he goes out for a walk.
[ Laughter ]
But apparently --
[ Applause ]
But apparently, even Rudy is having a hard time with the job,
especially as Special Counsel Robert Mueller
prepares to issue his final report.
"Vanity Fair" reported yesterday that Rudy fears that the report
will be horrific for Trump and that the mounting pressure
has also strained Giuliani's relationship with Trump.
"Rudy hates the job.
Trump is very hard to deal with."
Oh, you're just finding that out now?!
[ Laughter ]
Come on, Rudy, you went into this job
with your eyes wide open, and I do mean wide open.
[ Laughter ]
You look like you just saw a pretty lady in an old cartoon.
[ Ah-oogah! ]
[ Laughter and applause ]
We spent a lot of time on that today.
[ Laughter ]
And it really does seem like the pressure of the job
is getting to Rudy because last night,
he went on CNN and blurted out
another one of his trademark accidental confessions.
Rudy was interviewed by CNN's Chris Cuomo,
and the way these two yelled at each other was like watching
two guys play cards in the back of a butcher shop.
-They hated Trump. Hated. -"Hate"'s your word.
But clearly -- -No, when you say that a man --
-But the Inspector General, two of them,
said it didn't affect their work.
-You think it's fair?
-I wouldn't want to be investigated by anybody,
and it was the right move to remove them.
No, they didn't.
-By the time they were finished. -Yes, they did.
They don't pay any attention to the platform.
-I was raised by a guy who would have corrected the punctuation
in the party platform. I'm saying that, that was --
-Chris, let me explain -- -The guy was the head
of the A.G. at the time was his campaign guy.
-I'm hyperactive about the probe.
Chris, let's be truthful. Let's be truthful.
-Always. Always. -Come on, now.
-Mom!
The only thing missing from that conversation
was a few salami rolls hanging on strings.
[ Laughter ]
That interview should have had a voiceover from Ray Liotta.
[ Indistinct arguing ]
-As far back as I could remember,
I always wanted to be a gangster.
-And that was all -- That was, like --
[ Cheers and applause ]
That was, like, not even a minute into it.
Rudy starts every interview like he's in hour five
of a police interrogation.
"I want to welcome our next guest, Rudy Giuliani.
-You got me! I'll tell you everything you want to know!
And then Cuomo asked Rudy about the latest bombshell
in the Russia investigation.
Trump campaign's chairman Paul Manafort
shared political polling data with a business associate
tied to Russian intelligence,
and that's when Rudy made a stunning claim.
He never said the campaign didn't collude with Russia,
just that Trump himself didn't collude with Russia.
-Now you have Paul Manafort giving poll data --
-I never said -- -That winds up leading to
this coincidence.
-Well, you just misstated my position.
I never said there was no collusion between the campaign
or between people in the campaign.
-Yes, you have. -I have no idea -- I have not.
I said the President of the United States.
He said he didn't. He didn't say nobody.
How would you know that nobody in your campaign --
-He actually did say that, Rudy. He said nobody.
-Well, I never said that. >> And then he said,
"As far as I know." -If he said that, he said it
in -- Well, as far as he knows, that's true!
-Look at him!
[ Laughter ]
Even he looks surprised by what he just said.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Either that, or he's got a binder clip behind his head
pulling back all of his skin.
[ Laughter ]
He looks like a grandpa at a theme park
who didn't realize how fast the roller coaster was.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Also, also, also -- yes.
You did say there was no collusion
and you didn't say it once or twice.
You said it a bunch of times.
-Russian collusion. Here's what they found.
Zero. Nada. Nothing.
If anything, it's proof there was no collusion.
Nobody talked about Russians. Nobody knew about Russians.
There was no collusion with the Russians.
No collusion with the Russians.
There was no collusion.
There was no Russian collusion.
No Russian collusion. Case over.
Was there collusion? Come on.
Nobody believes anymore there was collusion.
-Think about how much their argument has changed.
It went from there were no contacts with Russians
to there was no collusion with Russians
to we tried to collude, but nothing came of it
to collusion is not a crime
to there was collusion, but it didn't involve Trump.
If this keeps going, Rudy is going to be telling Trump,
"It's not jail, it's a gated community."
[ Laughter and applause ]
Now...
We don't -- We don't know.
We don't know exactly what Trump's level of involvement was
in collusion, but we do know that as a politician
and president, Trump has always admired
Russian President Vladimir Putin and sought to emulate him.
Even before he ran for president,
he was desperate to be Putin's friend.
-Do you have a relationship with Vladimir Putin,
a conversational relationship?
-I do have a relationship.
I spoke indirectly and directly with President Putin
who could not have been nicer.
I was in Moscow a couple months ago.
I own the Miss Universe pageant.
And they treated me so great.
Putin even sent me a present.
Beautiful present with a beautiful note.
-[ As Trump ] It was a beautiful note, handwritten,
and it was delivered by a raven in the middle of the night.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Just tapped...
his beak, you know, his beak tapped, and that woke me up.
[ Normal voice ] And we also know that Trump
has had all kinds of business entanglements with Russians
and Putin, in particular, including the fact that
as late as the summer of 2016,
he was in talks with Putin to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
He was even going to entice Putin
by giving him an apartment in the building.
-One of the ideas for that Trump building,
according to one of his business associates,
was to give the top floor, the penthouse apartment
in a 250-apartment block, to Vladimir Putin,
the Russian president, as a way of attracting buyers.
-Trump's plan was to attract buyers by telling them
you get to live in the same building as Vladimir Putin.
Can you imagine what it would be like to have Putin
as your upstairs neighbor?
[ Russian accent ] Hello, would you mind
turning down your music?
Otherwise I poison your dog.
[ Laughter ]
"Okay. I see you at co-op meeting!
[ Laughter ]
[ Normal voice ] Trump repeatedly denied
he had any sort of business relationship with Russia,
but that line changed once we found out
about the deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Trump said, "If I did do it,
there would have been nothing wrong."
But there would have been something wrong.
It would have violated the Constitution.
There's a section of the Constitution
called the emoluments clause that specifically forbids
the president from taking gifts from foreigners.
And we know that because during the election,
Donald Trump supporters kept saying Hillary was breaking it.
-Every foreign gift, every foreign speech
while she was... -It's a big charge.
-...Senator or Secretary of State, every one --
No, it's not a big charge. It's the U.S. Constitution.
There's a section in the Constitution
called the emoluments clause.
It says, "No one, nor their spouse
can take money from foreigners."
She has to be guilty of 70 or 100 counts
just on that one charge.
-You think Hillary's guilty because she had a foundation
that gave out malaria shots to kids in Africa?
Trump had a charity,
and he used it to buy two portraits of himself.
Although when it comes to Trump portraits,
this remains my favorite.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Look at that, the difference between that portrait
and the actual Donald Trump is like the difference
between Spider-Man in the comics
and the Spider-Man in Times Square.
[ Laughter and applause ]
It's the difference between the Big Mac in the commercial
and the one you actually get in your drive-through bag.
[ Laughter ]
And on top of that, Trump and Putin have had
several private meetings with no one else in attendance.
And we have no idea what they discussed in those meetings.
The only people who do know are the Russians
thanks to note-taking practices they developed
during the Soviet era.
The "Washington Post" reported yesterday
the United States has no detailed record
of Trump's five face-to-face interactions with Putin
over the past two years.
Russia, on the other hand, almost certainly does.
The interpreters working for Soviet leaders
were trained to take nearly verbatim stenographic notes.
Can you imagine how hard it is
to take verbatim stenographic notes of Donald Trump?
Even closed captioning has a hard time
following what he's saying.
-God bless the United Schtates.
Thank you very much.
[ Laughter and applause ]
-That's why --
[ Cheers and applause ]
That's why their argument keeps changing.
They don't have an argument,
and the reality is slowly sinking in.
Trump can say he didn't know he was colluding with Putin
because Putin hypnotized him, and Rudy would say --
-As far as he knows, that's true!
-This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪