-The President is in a standoff with Congress
as some Democrats call for impeachment.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
President Trump is defying subpoenas from Congress.
His attorney general threatened
not to show up to hearings this week,
and several Democrats have called on Congress
to begin the process of impeachment.
So Trump has a lot going on, which means, of course,
that he decided to take time out of his schedule
to call in to a Fox morning show
and once again spent so much time on the phone
that at the end of the interview,
the host, Maria Bartiromo,
repeatedly tried to get him to hang up.
-Everybody wants people to go out
and find out what the hell happened,
where did all of this corruption start.
When you have --
-Well, certainly our viewers want to know.
-The lovers, we call them.
-Yeah, our viewers want to know that.
-Saying, "We want an insurance policy."
-Mr. President, thank you so much.
-"...Hillary Clinton loses.
We want an insurance policy where we can get Trump out."
Well, it didn't work so well.
But I'll tell you what, it really hurt our country,
and it hurts our country.
These people are corrupt. -Yeah.
-And then you look at a guy like Brennan with his big mouth.
But it's a disgrace.
Everyone wants to know, Maria,
and you might be number one on the list.
I watch your show. You're incredible.
You may be number one on the list.
Everybody wants to know, "How did it start?
Why did it start?
What about the dossier?" -Well, we want to know.
-How much did Hillary Clinton pay for the dossier?
You know she paid for it.
You know, everybody wants to know about it.
And that's really -- Hopefully they'll be going there.
-My God, that was like watching your grandpa
try to get off the phone with his grandpa.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
She ran out of minutes on her plan.
He's like one of those guys who calls a restaurant
to place an order for delivery
and then tries to have a conversation with the staff.
"Yeah, I'll take a large pepperoni,
and, hey, what's your name?
You always been interested in pizza?"
I know it's hard to remember this sometimes,
but that guy is the most powerful man in the world.
He should be, like, doing stuff.
And Maria knows. I mean, look at her face.
That's the face you make when your friend says,
"I want to set you up with a guy.
He's a count."
And then halfway through the dinner,
you realize she meant he can count.
[ As Donald Trump ] Oh, I know them all.
One, two, three. Can't live without that number.
[ Normal voice ] But aside from rambling incoherently
about whatever he was rambling about,
Trump also repeated the dangerous line
he's been using lately about the investigation
of him and his campaign -- that it was an attempted coup
and the people behind it were traitors.
He used it in the interview with Bartiromo
and repeated it in speeches and interviews
over the last few weeks.
-This was an attempted coup.
This was an attempted takedown of a president,
and they got caught.
And what they did was treason.
This was really a coup attempt.
-It's all quite extraordinary, Mr. President.
-It didn't work. We caught them.
-Yeah. -They tried for a coup.
Didn't work out so well.
This was a coup.
This was an attempted overthrow of the United States government.
-So, there you go. That's what the President said.
This was a coup,
and the people who orchestrated it were traitors.
And of there's anything Trump hates, it's traitors
who try to overthrow the United States government.
-There were very fine people on both sides.
-Oh, I've answered that question.
And if you look at what I said,
you will see that that question was answered perfectly.
And I was talking about people that went
because they felt very strongly
about the monument to Robert E. Lee, a great general.
Whether you like it or not, he was one of the great generals.
-First of all, no, he wasn't.
He led an armed rebellion
to bring down the United States government and he lost.
In other words... -They tried for a coup.
Didn't work out so well.
-And on top of that -- on top of that --
Can't believe we have to keep saying this,
but your response to Charlottesville was not perfect.
There were no very fine people on both sides.
There were literal white supremacists shouting,
"Jews will not replace us."
And they were carrying tiki torches,
which is something we will never forget,
because now when you buy a tiki torch,
you have to go out of your way to say,
"We're having a barbecue!
It's for barbecue stuff."
But, of course, Trump couldn't just stop
at heaping praise on a traitorous general
who defended slavery
and tried to bring down the United States government.
He also had to heap some praise on himself.
-Mr. President, how old is too old to be president?
-Well, I think that I just feel like a young man.
I'm so young!
I can't believe it. I'm the youngest person.
I am a young, vibrant man.
[ Laughter ]
-I can't believe I have to say this, but we can see you.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
I mean, what are we...
even supposed to do with that information?
That's a 72-year-old president of the United States,
a man who spends most of his time watching cable TV
and riding around in a golf cart
and stands like he's in "Weekend at Bernie's."
I mean, here he is at his golf club recently
with fellow lumpy grandpa Rush Limbaugh.
Look at that.
It's like an episode of "Star Trek"
where a transporter malfunction creates a second Trump.
[ Laughter ]
And in case defending Robert E. Lee
or calling himself a young, vibrant man wasn't enough,
Trump also made a bunch of public appearances where,
as usual, sounds came out of his mouth
that sounded vaguely like human words.
-Look, it's a rigged system, okay?
If I told you how crazy it is, the web -- It's a web.
You need 193 IQ to even understand.
This web of geniuses, they put this thing to lower drug price.
It has 19 effects here and 27.
We got it down, and we're getting it down further.
We have the smartest people,
the best people in that world working on it.
This treaty threatened your subjugate.
And you know exactly what's going on here.
Your rights.
I always say this, because as good as that equipment is --
and it's genius --
the greatest equipment in the world is a dog.
Dogs, a certain type of German shepherd in particular.
Dogs do a better job than $400 million worth of equipment.
-I mean, good Lord, it's like getting cornered at a party
by a guy who's almost run out of cocaine.
"I use a dog, though. That's what I use."
The only thing that's impressive about Trump
is that the range of subjects he rambles about
gets wider and wider every day.
Most of the time he'll say the same stuff over and over
about building a wall or crooked Hillary or fake news.
But once in a while he'll mix in something
totally bat[bleep] crazy like smart dogs with high IQs
or whatever the hell he was talking about.
Honestly, there's a good chance someone switched his Fox News
to an episode of "Wishbone" and he thought it was real.
[ As Donald Trump ] You have to see this dog -- so smart.
Solving mysteries.
[ Normal voice ] Also -- Also...
can we...
can we hear the crowd reaction to that line?
-The greatest equipment in the world is a dog.
Dogs... [ Scattered applause ]
...a certain type of German shepherd in particular.
-The weirdest thing about being at a Trump speech
is those moments you have to hesitantly clap
for stuff you know you don't understand.
"Yeah, dogs.
Yeah, the best equipment's a dog, right?
We didn't elect a [bleep] maniac, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah."
As all this dumb stuff keeps happening,
it's impossible to remember
that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's final report
came out less than two weeks ago,
and it confirmed much of what we already suspected about Trump,
including the fact that he and his team
openly welcomed the help of Russians
seeking to interfere in the election
and repeatedly lied about it
and tried to interfere in the investigation of it.
We've basically known that for two years,
but now we have a 400-page report to prove it.
I mean, even the page count looks bad for Trump.
If you hired a private detective
to find out if your wife is cheating
and he sent you 400 pages, you wouldn't even read them.
You'd go straight to your lawyer's office.
Like, "Chad has his own section!"
And let's remember the report specifically listed 10 times
Trump may have obstructed justice.
And Mueller's team even went out of their way to say explicitly
that they could not exonerate them.
Instead, Mueller specifically turned it over to Congress.
-While Mueller stopped short
of taking a position on obstruction,
his words suggest Congress now has a role to play.
He writes, "We concluded that Congress has authority
to prohibit a president's corrupt use of his authority
in order to protect the integrity
of the administration of justice."
-This is from the Mueller report.
The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws
to the President's corrupt exercise of the powers of office
accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances
and the principle that no person is above the law.
-It's amazing Trump and his supporters
are celebrating this as an exoneration
when Mueller keeps hinting that Congress could take actions
that were unavailable to Mueller.
For example, in Footnote 574, Appendix B, Subsection 48C,
Mueller writes... [Coughing] impeachment.
[ Laughter ]
The facts couldn't have been any clearer in Mueller's report.
Congress has the authority
to investigate Trump for obstruction of justice
and hold him accountable for it.
This is why we have a Congress --
to reign in a lawless president.
You have all the evidence you need.
But if you still want to find more evidence, just remember...
-The greatest equipment in the world is a dog.
-This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]