-Well, it was another super-chill weekend
with the President of the United States
retweeting a deranged conspiracy theory
accusing a previous president of murder.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
Donald Trump has changed many things in his life,
but there are a few constants.
He's always been a racist, he's always been a con artist,
and he's always been a conspiracy theorist.
Trump has paranoid fantasies about everything
from climate change to government surveillance
to the food he eats.
According to the book "Fire and Fury,"
he had a long-time fear of being poisoned,
one reason why he liked to eat at McDonald's.
Nobody knew he was coming, and the food was safely premade.
Okay, first of all, at this point,
I think they know you're coming.
You are the norm of McDonald's.
If you want to catch a restaurant off guard,
walk into a Just Salad.
Also really hammers home how anti-science our president is
that he eats fast food to
[ As Trump ] "My body is a temple.
Two Filet-o-Fish, please."
[ Normal voice ] During a 2016 town hall on CNN,
Trump basically admitted it to Anderson Cooper.
-I'm a person that I like cleanliness,
I like clean, and the one thing about the big franchises --
You have to have a certain --
You know, because of the importance --
One bad hamburger, you could destroy a McDonald's.
One bad hamburger, you take Wendy's
and all these other places, and they're out of business.
You can't do it.
So, I'm a very clean person. I like cleanliness.
And I think you're better off going there
than maybe some place that you have no idea
where the food's coming from.
-First of all, I would not call you a very clean person.
The only clean thing about you is your desk,
and that's because you don't do anything.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Look at that.
That looks like a Hollywood tour
where they let you take a photo on the set of "The West Wing."
[ Laughter ]
There's not a single piece of paper on that desk.
When the next president moves in, all they're gonna find
are the water rings left by his Diet Cokes.
Also, you only think McDonald's are clean
because you send other people to pick up the food.
You based your opinion of McDonald's on the commercials.
[ As Trump ] "Here's the money.
And remember -- Only take food directly from the clown.
He's the only one I trust."
[ Normal voice ] Of course, Trump launched
his political career by fabricating
a racist conspiracy theory about President Obama's birthplace,
and it wasn't just that Trump accused Obama
of being born in Kenya.
He also invented an insane fantasy
where Obama had faked documents, and at one point,
he even claimed his own investigators were
discovering evidence that proved Obama was hiding the truth.
-Three weeks ago, when I started,
I thought he was probably born in this country,
and now I really have a much bigger doubt than I did before.
-He doesn't have a birth certificate,
or he hasn't shown it.
He has what's called a certificate of live birth.
That is something that's easy to get.
When you want a birth certificate,
it's very hard to get.
-But it's considered the equivalent in the state --
-Excuse me. It's not the equivalent.
-In the state of Hawaii,
they said they have seen his document.
-I saw his. I read it very carefully.
Doesn't have a serial number. Doesn't have a signature.
There's not even a signature.
-The biggest lie in that interview was Trump saying
Obama didn't have a birth certificate.
The second biggest lie was Trump saying
he read something carefully. [ Laughter ]
I'd be shocked if he could make it through something
as long as a birth certificate.
To help him fall asleep at night,
he probably reads a business card.
[ As Trump ] "Oh, they also have fax!"
[ Normal voice ] Anyway, continue with your bull[bleep].
-I have people that have actually been studying it,
and they cannot believe what they're finding.
-You have people now down there searching in Hawaii?
-Absolutely. And they cannot believe what they're finding.
-He said that eight years ago, and he's never once explained
what they were finding, and the reason is
because there were no investigators
searching for documents in Hawaii.
If he did send anyone down there,
it was probably his two weird sons.
"You can't believe what we're finding, Dad!
Their rocks have juice in them!"
[ Laughter ]
"Did you tell him about the juice rocks?!"
"I'm telling him right now!"
[ Cheers and applause ]
Trump even went so far as to claim
that the contemporaneous newspaper accounts
of Obama's birth in local Hawaiian newspapers
had to have been faked.
-There were two announcements the week he was born
in both Honolulu newspapers saying that he was born, okay?
That is impossible to make happen
if he had not been born in the hospital.
So, I just dismissed it, but you made a big deal out of it.
-Bill, I grew up with Wall Street geniuses.
What they do in terms of fraud and how they change documents --
And I'll tell you something.
If you notice, those dates were three days later,
and here's what I ask people.
Who puts announcements?
Here are two poor people, a man and a woman with no money.
They have a baby. There's announcements in the newspaper?
-The grandparents did it. -The grandparents.
Nelson Rockefeller doesn't put announcements --
-Sure, there are birth announcements all the time.
-I've never seen one. -Really?!
-No, I've never seen one. -No, they're common.
-I've never seen one. -Maybe you've never seen one
because your parents never did one for you.
If anything, they probably took out an add that said,
"Donald Trump was born. We're sorry."
Then, of course, there's the racist conspiracy theory
that Trump has repeated since he was elected
that millions of undocumented immigrants
are voting illegally in states like California.
In fact, he just repeated it last month in a speech
to a group of young conservatives,
and it barely registered as a blip on the news
because we're so numb to it now.
-And then those illegals get out
and vote because they vote anyway.
Don't kid yourself.
Those numbers in California and numerous other states,
they're rigged.
You got people voting that shouldn't be voting.
[ Cheers and applause ]
They vote many times, not just twice,
not just three times, they vote -- it's like a circle.
They come back, they put a new hat on.
They come back, they put a new shirt on.
And in many cases, they don't even do that.
You know what's going on.
-I love the moment he's like,
[as Trump] "Oh, [bleep] what's the word for this?
Uh, I know there's a -- I'm gonna fall back on circle!"
[ Normal voice ] Trump has always been
an unhinged conspiracy theorist,
and we saw that on display yet again this weekend
when he retweeted an insane conspiracy theory
tying the Clintons to the death of convicted pedophile
and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
-We begin this morning with a retweet
from the President of the United States.
Not a message about healing or uniting the country
one week after two horrifying massacres,
not about the victims of those tragedies.
Instead, President Trump, using his massive Twitter platform,
63 million followers, to spread a deranged conspiracy theory
tying the death of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in prison
to the President's former political rivals, the Clintons.
I'm not gonna show you the tweet.
-Think about that.
The President's tweets are so insane,
the news can't even show them now.
It's getting to the point where when he talks to reporters,
they're gonna have to blur out his entire face.
They're gonna have to treat him like accidental nudity.
We elected President Nip Slip.
[ Laughter ]
Trump's penchant for peddling insane conspiracy theories
isn't just a weird personality quirk.
It has real consequences for real people.
For example, he's repeatedly given voice to the racist
and anti-Semitic conspiracy theory
that Democrats and the Jewish philanthropist George Soros
are somehow funding a plot to have refugees invade
the United States by organizing caravans of migrants.
-The Democrats want caravans.
They like the caravans.
A lot of people say, "I wonder who started that caravan."
You know how the caravan started?
Does everybody know what this means?
I think the Democrats had something to do with it.
-Do you think somebody's funding the caravan?
Do you think anyone's paying for the caravan?
-I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised.
-George Soros?
-I don't know who, but I wouldn't be surprised.
A lot of people say yes.
-"I don't know who, but a lot of people say yes."
He always tries to do this move where he pretends
he doesn't know anything, but a lot of people are saying it.
I'm starting to think these people
are just other Trump personalities.
Golf Trump says it's the Democrats,
Sweaty Trump says it's Soros,
and Empty Desk Trump says, "Cheese!"
Of course, Trump's not alone in peddling this racist paranoia.
The right-wing media outlets he loves and echos
constantly repeat deranged theories
about invading refugees,
the same language used by white supremacists.
In fact, multiple Fox hosts have defended the President's use
of the word "invasion" to describe desperate refugees
seeking asylum, including Fox host Jeanine Pirro,
who used a very bizarre analogy on her show Saturday night.
-Stop blaming the President for this stuff.
Even the guy said before President Trump,
"I didn't like the people coming in,"
so let's stop blaming Trump. -He used that rhetoric.
That's what makes it dangerous. -Oh, come on.
-Hey, we all use the same language!
We speak English! So what?!
-I don't call illegal immigrants "invaders."
-Yeah, well, a lot of people do.
You know, I watch cartoons, they have invaders, too,
you know, from Mars.
Stop with this craziness!
-You can't say, "Stop with the craziness"
right after you say, "I watch cartoons,
and they have invaders from Mars."
[ Laughter ] That is as jarring as hearing
a dog scream, "No pets allowed."
-By the way, the same weekend Trump retweeted
his deranged Epstein theory, he was in the Hamptons
for a series of fundraisers where tickets ran as high
as $250,000, which sums up
so much of our politics right now --
a paranoid president spreading unhinged racist conspiracies
while raking in millions from a crowd of mega-rich supporters
who don't care as long as they can line their own pockets.
Meanwhile, most sane people are saying...
-Stop with this craziness!
-This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]