-President Trump confessed on TV to the thing
he's being investigated for, and on top of that,
he managed to drag Vice President Mike Pence into it.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
First, let's just remember the central issue at question here.
Trump had a phone call with the president of Ukraine
during which he dangled hundreds of millions of dollars
in military aid and in return asked him
to dig up dirt on a political opponent, Joe Biden,
by literally telling the president of Ukraine,
"I would like you to do us a favor."
That is extortion and a flagrant abuse of power.
And as we said before, you never want to do Trump a favor
because then he'll befriend you
and then humiliate you on national television.
I mean, yesterday, all the president of Finland did
was sit next to him in the Oval Office
while Trump descended into madness,
and at one point, when Trump tried to get close to him
by putting a hand on his leg,
the president of Finland literally had to swat him away.
-Finland is the happiest country in the world.
-Finland is a happy country.
[ Laughter ]
-That is...
That is like...
That is like when you get in a fight with your wife
on the drive to a dinner party, and then when you sit down,
you try to act like it didn't happen
but she wants you to know she hasn't forgotten.
"Isn't that right, honey?" "Get your hand off of me.
We will talk about this when we get home."
In fact, during that whole press conference,
the president of Finland was turning to the cameras
and pleading for help like Mr. Roper
when Mrs. Roper gets horny.
Now, as you'll recall, Trump has lashed out at accusations
that he did anything wrong on the call
with the president of Ukraine,
insisting there was no quid pro quo
and that he did not pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden.
-There was no quid pro quo. There was nothing.
It was a perfect conversation.
There was absolutely no pressure put on him.
There was no quid pro quo. At all.
There was no pressure. No nothing.
There was no pressure.
Uh, that was not pressure.
I know when I give pressure. And that was not pressure.
-What does that mean? "I know when I give pressure"?
Trump's only defense is,
"I know when I commit a crime, and that was not a crime."
Like if the cops knocked on your door and said,
"Did you beat a guy to death with a tire iron,
chop up his body with a chain saw,
and throw his limbs into the river?"
And you said, "I didn't chop him up. I know when I chop guys up."
You might also remember
that in addition to the actual notes from the call,
we also have the whistleblower's complaint
which has been deemed urgent and credible
and alleged that the President
pressured Ukrainian President Zelensky
to initiate or continue an investigation
into the activities of former Vice President Joseph Biden
and his son, Hunter Biden.
And even though we've literally seen the call notes
and Trump has basically admitted to doing
what the whistleblower alleges, he also keeps calling
the whistleblower a liar and a spy.
In fact, he even claimed that once House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
saw the actual notes from the call,
she changed her mind on impeachment.
-The whistleblower was so dishonest.
The whistleblower said terrible things about the call,
and if you remember at the beginning,
it was "quid pro quo."
That's all you heard about.
And I think he said seven or eight times "quid pro quo."
In other words, you're gonna do that
or we're not gonna give you money.
You're gonna do this, or we're not gonna --
Nancy Pelosi called for essentially impeachment.
"Let's impeach the President." Before she saw the transcript.
So when she saw that, she -- I heard she went crazy.
She said, "We can't impeach him in this conversation.
That's a great conversation."
[ Laughter ]
-I guarantee you she did not say that.
At this point, he's just writing
fan fiction about Nancy Pelosi now.
"Nancy Pelosi walked into her office,
and she read the transcript and said,
'We can't impeach him!
We can't impeach him on this conversation.
That's a great conversation.'
And then she gazed out the window
and had the same thought that had nagged her for years.
Why hadn't she married someone as handsome as Donald Trump?"
[ Laughter ]
So, again, all of this --
all of this is confirmed by the call notes themselves.
We already have all the evidence.
It's all there in plain sight.
But yesterday, a reporter tried to ask Trump a simple question.
If you weren't pressuring the president of Ukraine
to investigate Joe Biden,
then what were you asking him to do?
And instead of answering that question,
Trump got mad and told him
to talk to the president of Finland instead.
-Go ahead. Ask a question.
-The question, sir, was what did you want President Zelensky
to do about Vice President Biden and his son, Hunter?
-Are you talking to me? -Yeah.
It was just a follow-up of what I just asked you, sir.
-Listen. Are you ready?
We have the president of Finland. Ask him a question.
-I have one for him.
I just wanted to follow up on the one that I asked you.
-Did you hear me? Did you hear me?
Ask him a question. -I will.
-I've given you a long answer.
Ask this gentleman a question. Don't be rude.
-He's like a teacher telling his class
to listen to his guest speaker on Career Day.
"Look. I know Kyle's dad is boring
because he's an accountant,
but you got to ask him a question.
Kyle's right there. He's super upset about this."
So, to recap, Trump said there was to pressure,
no quid pro quo, the whistleblower was wrong,
and he did not -- he did not ask the president of Ukraine
to investigate Biden.
And then this morning,
he told reporters on the White House lawn
that he wanted Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.
-What exactly did you hope Zelensky would do
to Hunter Biden after your phone call?
-Well, I would think that if they were honest about it,
they'd start a major investigation into the Bidens.
It's a very simple answer.
They should investigate the Bidens.
I would say that President Zelensky, if it were me,
I would recommend that they start
an investigation into the Bidens.
[ Laughter ]
-So -- So he just confessed on TV.
After two weeks of lying and spinning,
he just admitted to the crime he's accused of.
He basically just blew the whistle on himself.
He should have a whistle just around his neck at all times.
"Ukraine should investigate Joe Biden."
[ Whistle blows ]
"Putin should find Hillary's e-mails."
[ Whistle blows ]
"I'm gonna release a sex tape."
[ Whistle blows ]
So Trump has once again just outed himself as a criminal,
but as we all know, when Trump implodes,
he doesn't just implode on his own.
He takes everyone else in the White House down with him.
Trump's like a tornado.
You don't know when or where it's going to touch down,
but when it does, it's going to suck up some cows, a few houses,
and maybe even a scarecrow.
And we're seeing the same thing happen in the Ukraine scandal
that sparked the impeachment inquiry.
For example, you might remember last week when out of nowhere
Trump dragged Vice President Mike Pence
into his mess by telling the press
that Pence had also spoken with the president of Ukraine
and that they should look at Pence's phone calls, too.
-I think you should ask for V.P. Pence's conversation
because he had a couple of conversations, also.
I could save you a lot of time. They were all perfect.
Nothing was mentioned of any import
other than congratulations.
But the word is that they're going to ask
for the first phone conversation.
You can have it any time you need it.
And, also, Mike Pence's conversations,
which were I think one or two of them -- they were perfect.
-And let me just say, with all sincerity,
no one deserves to be dragged down by Donald Trump
more than Mike Pence.
Although, Pence is --
[ Cheers and applause ]
Pence should have seen this coming...
when Trump tried to give him a "Godfather" kiss
at the RNC in 2016.
"Come here, Fredo. Come here, Fredo."
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
And then after Trump dragged Pence into his mess,
you'll never guess what happened.
"The Washington Post" did some reporting,
and it turns out Pence also had a phone call
with the president of Ukraine where he discussed cutting off
the hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid
that Trump had dangled as part of his quid pro quo.
-"The Washington Post" reports President Trump
repeatedly involved Vice President Pence in his plan
to exert pressure on the new president of Ukraine.
Trump used the Vice President to inform the Ukrainian leader
that hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid
was still being withheld.
-Well, Mike Pence, you can't be surprised
that the ass [bleep] you pledged your loyalty to
is now throwing you under the bus.
This isn't a case of the carriage turning
back into a pumpkin, because he's always been a pumpkin.
[ Cheers and applause ]
And on top of that, on top of that,
White House sources are clearly leaking to "The Washington Post"
that Pence was involved so they can dirty him up, too.
I love imagining how this is all playing out.
Pence coming home from a hard day's work
of trying to blend in with the background during meetings,
flicking on the lights, and the house is empty
except for Trump sitting there in the corner
with his back turned.
"Ohh.
Hello, Mike.
Weren't expecting me, were you? Oh, you're in trouble, Mike.
It's all -- It's all here in this note.
I know what you did last summer because I did it, too."
[ Laughter ]
In fact, if you read --
if you read this "Washington Post" article,
you can almost see, line by line, Pence's aides
trying to claim he's innocent
and White House aides claiming he's guilty.
Pence's aides, for example, say they didn't know anything
about Trump's efforts to pressure Ukraine's president
to investigate Biden.
Officials close to Pence insist he was unaware
of Trump's efforts to press Zelensky
for damaging information about Biden and his son.
All right, I'm sorry, but that's just insane.
Of course Pence knew about it.
You think Trump kept this a secret?
The guy can't keep his mouth shut about anything.
He probably ran over to Pence's office immediately to tell him
about it just like a kid who figured out
how to type "BOOBS" on a calculator.
"Mike! Mike, look.
Do you see, Mike?
Mike.
Mike. Mike.
Mike.
Do you see?"
[ Laughter ]
So, obviously, Pence knew what was going on,
just like Trump's Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo,
who was on this call, and his Attorney General, Bill Barr,
who was named repeatedly during the call.
So now, because they're all implicated
and because they have no defense,
they're just threatening to block the impeachment inquiry
all together. Trump's calling it a treasonous coup,
and Rudy Giuliani is actually threatening to sue Congress
for following the impeachment procedure
laid out by the founders in the Constitution.
And if you're wondering just how serious this lawsuit is,
here's a real text-message exchange
Rudy had with a reporter for "The Atlantic"
who posted it to Twitter on Tuesday.
"What are you planning to do next?"
"Looking at a jawsuit to end lawless action."
"Who are you going to sue?"
"The swamp. Trump v. the swamp."
"How do you sue the swamp?" "In federal court."
You know it's bad when "jawsuit"
isn't even the stupidest part of the text message.
Seriously, why are these guys so bad at spelling?
Yesterday, Trump spelled "moat" with two O's.
Rudy spelled lawsuit "jawsuit."
In fact, if you showed up at court
and told the judge you wanted to file a "jawsuit"
against impeachment, they would call it moot
and then dismiss it like the president of Finland.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
Again, what happened here is very simple.
The President extorted a foreign country
to meddle in the 2020 election,
his staff tried to cover it up, and then they got caught,
and now he's admitting to it.
Several of his most senior aides are involved, and they're
threatening to obstruct the impeachment inquiry.
And, most importantly, the Vice President is now involved, too.
Trump is turning on Pence, and all Pence can say is...
-Don't be rude. -This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]