-President Trump made up another weird thing
about a foreign country while attacking a retired Admiral
for not getting Osama bin Laden sooner.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
Whether you believe Donald Trump colluded with Russia or not,
whether you consider him a threat to democracy or not,
one thing I think everyone can agree on is that he is weird.
He is a weird man.
Just a flag-hugging, umbrella-ditching,
can't do a normal handshake kind of weirdo.
And one of the weird little things about
Donald Trump's presidency is that every few months or so
he concocts a bizarre lie about another country,
and then everyone in that country has to figure out
what the hell he's talking about.
Remember when he did it to Sweden last year?
-You look at what's happening last night in Sweden.
Sweden, who would believe this? Sweden.
-Now, those words about Sweden sparked a quick backlash
with officials in that country who wanted to know
what he was talking about because there was no attack
in Sweden the previous night.
-This was front-page news here on Monday,
it's also been the subject of a significant amount of ridicule
online and people you talk to here making jokes, you know.
What was Donald Trump referring to last night
when he spoke on Saturday, jokes like,
"Hey, did someone take all our Swedish meatballs?"
-Okay, but please don't joke about it
because then Trump will think you're serious
and start repeating that, too.
-Immigrants are sneaking into Sweden
and stealing their meatballs, folks.
And it's very upsetting to their celebrity chefs.
He called me last night.
He called me on the phone last night and he said,
and these are his exact words, he said to me,
"Schmorgity, borgity, borgity, borg."
And you know, it's so true. I said it's so true.
Seriously, you know it's bad when even the Swedes
are mocking us.
This would be like Ikea changing their instructions to this.
[ Laughter ]
Then Trump did it again in September
when he went to the U.N. and said something about Germany
that was so detached from reality,
even the German delegation couldn't help but laugh at him.
-Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy
if it does not immediately change course.
Here in the Western hemisphere we are committed to maintaining
our independence from the encroachment
of expansionist foreign powers.
[ Laughter ]
-Not only are these dudes laughing,
but look at this lady's face.
[ Laughter ]
She doesn't know what the hell he's talking about
and she's from a country where this is a real word.
[ Laughter ]
And then there's one of Trump's weirdest recurring lines,
that he has a friend in Paris
who keeps telling him that Paris is no longer Paris.
-I have a friend, every year he goes to Paris.
I haven't seen him in awhile.
Paris, oh, the city of lights.
He's told me for years, Paris, Paris.
I see him, like, a month ago.
"How was Paris this summer?"
"I don't go to Paris, are you kidding me?"
I have a friend used to go to Paris, loved Paris.
I said to him recently, "How was Paris this summer?"
"He said we don't go to Paris."
He said, "Paris is no longer Paris."
Which is obviously true.
I have a friend, he's a very, very substantial guy.
He loves the city of lights. He loves Paris.
And I said, Jim, let me ask you a question.
"How is Paris doing?"
"Paris? I don't go there anymore.
Paris is no longer Paris."
-I feel like what happened here, is Trump went to Paris,
met a mime, and misinterpreted what he was saying.
My friend Jim told me immigrants are climbing,
they're climbing into Paris -- They're trying to pull.
The police are trying to pull them out, but they can't,
and that's why, you know, they need, you know.
They need a wall.
[ Cheers and applause ]
I'd rather talk to a mime than an American who calls it Pa-ris.
He's telling me Pa-ris, Pa-ris.
So if you're keeping track, Trump he made up
a fake terror attack in Sweden,
claimed Germany was captive to Russia,
and said Paris just doesn't exist anymore.
And Trump did it again over the weekend when he traveled to
California to survey damage from the wildfires there.
He made a very strange claim
about how they prevent forest fires in Finland.
Watch as your deeply weird President stands awkwardly
to the current incumbent governors of California
and rambles, incoherently, like he just overdosed on SUDAFED.
-I'm committing to make sure that we get all of this
cleaned out and protected,
Gotta take care of the floors, the floors of the forest.
It's very important.
You look at other countries where they do it differently,
and it's a whole different story.
I was with the president of Finland and he said,
"We have a much different -- we're a forest nation."
He called it a forest nation.
And they spend a lot of time on raking
and cleaning and doing things and they don't have any problem.
And what it is, it's a very small problem.
I know everybody's looking at that to that end.
And it's going to work out. It's going to work out well.
-Look at everyone else trying not to look at him.
They all look like parents at the grocery store
Whose toddler just said, "Daddy, that lady is fat."
[ Cheers and applause ]
If you didn't know Trump was president,
you'd think he was a weirdo who just walked up to them
from his trailer in the woods.
He's going to be covered in leaves
and holding a giant walking stick.
You got to rake the floors!
You got to rake the floors of the forest!
[ Laughter ]
That's what my friend, Nutty the squirrel, told me,
isn't that right, Nutty?
Can we go back to this real quick.
-You got to take care of the floors.
You know, the floors of the forest.
-Why does he call it the floor of the forest?
It's the ground.
[ Laughter ]
Does he also call the sky the ceiling of the Earth?
The more he talks, the clearer it is
that he has never been outside.
[ Laughter ]
These wildfires, the floor is filthy, now we got to mop it up.
We'll also be replacing these wood columns with steel beams.
And as you can see, the roof is gone.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Once again it happened with Sweden, Germany, and Paris,
the president of Finland had to come out
and publicly clarify that he did not, in fact, tell Trump
that people in his country rake the floors of the forest.
-The President of Finland says he did discuss
the California wildfires with President Trump,
but he doesn't quite recall the conversation the same way.
He said they did talk about California's wildfires,
and some of the ways that Finland maintains the forest,
but raking did not come up.
-Keeps happening.
Trump makes up something insane about another country
and then the president of that country
has to come out and say it's not true.
We're like a week away from the president of Romania
calling a press conference to say,
"I did not tell President Trump that vampires are real."
[ Applause ]
And again, just as the Germans laughed at us,
and the Swedes made fun of us, the Finnish people are now
mocking Trump's comments on social media,
like this woman who tweeted
"Just an ordinary day in the Finnish forest."
with a picture of herself vacuuming the ground outside.
You mean that? That's pretty good. That's very good.
Can we see real quick the German reaction to that?
There you go. They like it.
Trump has to concoct fantastical lies like this
because they reinforce his diluted world view
and they're easier to swallow than reality,
and in this case the reality is that man-made climate change
is making these fires more frequent and extreme,
but Trump would rather make up an insane fantasy
about firefighters raking forest floors
than admit that climate change is having
deadly real-world consequences.
Just watch this exchange from an interview "Fox News"
aired over the weekend.
-I was watching the firemen the other day.
And they were raking areas.
They were raking areas where the fire was, right over there.
And they're raking trees, little trees, like this, --
not trees, little bushes, that you could see are totally dry.
Weeds. And they're raking them. They're on fire.
That should have been all raked out and cleaned out.
-What about the argument it's climate change?
That it's drier, it's hotter,
and that that's contributing to it?
-maybe it contributes a little bit.
The big problem we have is management.
You need forest management. It has to be.
I'm not saying that in a negative way,
I'm just saying the facts.
And I've really learned a lot.
-No, you haven't.
Though in fairness, if you don't know anything
and then you learn one thing, it seems like a lot.
[ Cheers and applause ]
The president is a conspiracy theorist
who makes up cartoonish lies about everything
from wildfires to immigration.
And when you call him out, he attacks you.
Just take retired Admiral William McRaven,
a Navy SEAL who oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
McRaven has criticized Trump's attacks on the press
and in return, Trump decided to insult him.
-Bill McRaven, retired Admiral, Navy SEAL, 37 years,
former head of U.S. Special Operations.
-Hillary Clinton fan. -Special operations --
-Excuse me, Hillary Clinton fan.
-Who led the operations, commanded the operations
that took down Saddam Hussein and killed Osama bin Laden
says that your sentiment is
the greatest threat to democracy in his lifetime.
-He's a Hillary Clinton backer and an Obama backer.
And, frankly -- -He's a Navy SEAL.
-Wouldn't it have been nice if we got
Osama bin Laden a lot sooner than that.
-You're attacking him for not getting Osama bin Laden sooner?
Oh, because I totally could see you charging in there
in your hat and your wind breaker,
swinging a rake like it's a sword.
Where are you? Osama? Osama!
I'm gonna -- I'm gonna rake your floors.
[ Laughter ]
Trump then went on to claim that it was obvious
to everyone where bin Laden was hiding,
and also found a way to work in a very strange dig
at bin Laden's compound.
-Think of this, living in Pakistan,
beautifully in Pakistan in what I guess
they considered a nice mansion, I don't know, I've seen nicer.
Mm.
You can make this idiot a president
And everything still comes back to real estate.
It's in a little neighborhood in the middle of Pakistan,
I call it Mid-Pac.
[ Laughter ]
The Mid-Packing district.
[ Laughter ]
Only Donald Trump.
Only Donald Trump can make himself feel better
by implying he has a nicer house than Osama bin Laden.
Bin laden's already one of the most hated evil people
in the history of human civilization.
You're not, like, burning him by saying he has a crappy house.
Who's Trump gonna go after next?
You know, people make fun of my hair,
but it's much nicer than the Unabomber's.
[ Laughter ]
We have a president who concocts outlandish lies
and spreads conspiracy theories and attacks anyone
who calls him out, and all the while
the rest of the world laughs at us,
from Finland to Germany to --
-Sweden!
-This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]