-President Trump admitted on Sunday
that his campaign tried to collude with Russia,
capping off a busy weekend
of tweeting and watching cable news.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
♪♪
[ Cheers and applause ]
Donald Trump loves doing three things --
golfing, campaigning, and watching TV.
He's our first retiree president.
Pretty soon, he's going to put
a retractable awning on the White House
and sit out there with a word-search puzzle
in his shorts and black socks.
[ Laughter ]
And this weekend, Trump did all three
of his favorite activities.
On Friday night, he was at his golf course in New Jersey
when he went on Twitter to attack LeBron James
and CNN anchor Don Lemon.
Now remember, Trump has repeatedly insisted
that he never watches CNN while simultaneously complaining
about what he sees while watching CNN.
-You look at, like, CNN, they'll have a council of seven people.
And of the seven people, every one of them is against me.
I'm saying where do they even find these people?
-I'm not your doctor, Mr. President, but I would --
I would recommend you watch less of them.
-I don't watch them at all.
-Oh.
[ Laughter ]
That's like me saying I don't watch "Real Housewives"
but Dorinda better watch out!
[ Laughter ]
Well, apparently, Trump decided to tune in Friday night
when CNN aired an interview with LeBron
about a new public school LeBron opened for at-risk youth.
Lemon asked him if he'd ever meet with Trump,
and LeBron said this.
-What would you say to the president
if he was sitting right here?
-I would never sit across from him.
-You would never? You wouldn't talk to him?
-No.
I'd sit across from Barack, though.
-Oh.
Donald Trump isn't an at-risk youth,
but LeBron just took him to school.
So Trump decided to soothe his ego the way he always does
by surrounding himself with fawning supporters.
On Saturday, he flew to Ohio
to campaign for a local Republican Congressman
and concocted a fantasy
about winning the women's vote in the 2016 election,
which he actually lost by 12 points.
-I won the women. I won the women.
Oh.
[ Light laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
You know, when those numbers came, how is it possible?
Because I never heard I was going to win the women.
I said, "I think the women like me."
My wife, the First Lady, Melania, said,
"The women really like you."
They do like me. And I like them.
But I said, "How did we win the women?"
We won the women.
[ Laughter ]
-Is it me or he is starting to sound
like late-stage Jerry Lewis?
How did we win the women? We won the women.
[ Laughter ]
That's right. Trump says he won the women.
And we only had to pay off some of them.
[ Audience "Ohs" ]
I love --
[ Cheers and applause ]
I love how obviously fake this story is.
But this is the part that really gives it away.
My wife, the First Lady, Melania, said,
"The women really like you."
-Can't you just see Melania on election night
poring over the exit polls with a green eye shade on?
"Darling, the women really like you,
especially white women age 80 to 110."
[ Laughter ]
Trump wants us to think his wife talks to him.
Look at her.
Her body may be there, but her mind is on Amazon Prime
shopping for a LeBron Jersey.
[ Laughter and applause ]
You can tell.
You can tell Trump's ego is really bruised this weekend
because he ripped through some of his greatest hits on Saturday
while adding a few new wrinkles,
like when he bragged about his plan to create a Space Force,
but also seemed to imply that something was happening on Mars.
-I've also directed the Pentagon to begin the process
of creating the sixth branch
of the United States Armed Forces
called the Space Force.
Space.
Very important.
[ Cheers and applause ]
That's going to be great.
Look, so much is happening now in space.
I mean, your great defense.
I'm not just talking about Mars and the moon,
I'm talking about tremendous defense capability.
-What does he think is happening on Mars?
[ Laughter ]
[ As Trump ] Mars is a great place.
I've been there many times.
In fact, it's red because they voted for me.
[ Laughter and applause ]
We -- We won the Martians.
They said we'd never win the Martians,
but we won the Martians.
My wife, First Lady Melania, she says,
"I think these Martians really like you."
[ Laughter ]
[ Normal voice ] But it wouldn't be a Trump rally
without a bizarre rant about how popular he is.
This time, he was bragging about taking down a GOP Congressman
who is critical of him, Mark Sanford,
after supporting Sanford's opponent in a primary.
Now, when Sanford was governor in 2009,
he famously had an affair with a woman in Argentina
and told his wife he was hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Trump has brought this up before,
but he keeps getting the name of the Appalachian Trail wrong.
-Katie Arrington, South Carolina.
She was behind by a lot,
and she is fantastic, by the way.
She's fantastic.
And we endorsed her,
and she beat a man that likes flamingo dancers from Argentina.
You know about that.
He was supposed to be vacationing
on the Tallahassee trail, but he was actually in Argentina.
[ Laughter ]
I don't know.
Jim, do they have a Tallahassee trail in Argentina?
I don't think, right?
-No, they don't, and they don't have one in America either.
[ Laughter ]
Tallahassee trail sounds like a cheap rip-off
of "The Oregon Trail."
The year is 2018, and you must survive the treacherous journey
from Tallahassee to your private golf course in New Jersey.
Your only supplies are a private jet and a bucket of KFC.
And uh-oh! You have dementia.
[ Laughter ]
Also --
[ Cheers and applause ]
Can we go back to this part of the clip for a second?
-She beat a man that likes flamingo dancers from Argentina.
-Flamingo dancers?
Do you mean flamenco dancers?
[ As Trump ] Everyone knows the famous
dancing flamingos of Argentina.
[ Laughter ]
Of course, Trump would rather everyone talk
about his attacks on LeBron or the Space Force
and his mounting legal problems,
which are getting worse by the day
as more information comes out
about that infamous Trump Tower meeting
with the Russians in 2016.
Now remember, when we first learned about that meeting,
the president's son, Don Jr., insisted
that his father wasn't there.
He also claimed the meeting was about a law
sanctioning Russian officials called the Magnitsky Act,
as well as Russia's response to that law which,
was to ban Americans from adopting Russian children.
-The pretext of the meeting was, "Hey, we have information,"
and there was, you know, some small talk.
I don't even know what it was.
It just was sort of nonsensical, inane, and garbled,
and then quickly went on to, you know,
a story about Russian adoption and how we could possibly help.
And really, that's where we shut it down,
which is, "Wait a second.
What does this have to do with what we were talking about?"
-Did you even know what Magnitsky Act was?
-I'd never even heard of it before, you know, that day.
-So his defense against Russian collusion
is that he's an idiot who's also a bad person.
[ Light laughter ]
Did you know what the Magnitsky Act was?
I had no idea, and as soon as they started
talking about helping orphans, we shut it down.
Also, can we go back to this for a second?
-There was, you know, some small talk.
I don't even remember what it was.
It just was sort of nonsensical, inane, and garbled.
-"Nonsensical, inane, and garbled."
So your father was there!
[ Laughter ]
A dead giveaway.
[ Cheers and applause ]
It was nonsensical, inane, and garbled.
It was something about dancing flamingos on Mars.
So there you go. That was their story.
It was about adoptions,
not about getting dirt on Hillary Clinton.
At least that was their story until yesterday,
when Trump, in an effort
to distance himself from the meeting,
tweeted that he wasn't there, and admitted its real purpose.
-Here's a tweet that he sent out.
He writes...
-He's so bad at this.
[ Laughter ]
[ As Trump ] You guys, it's totally legal,
and I didn't know anything about it.
Ask anyone that was hiking the Tallahassee trail!
[ Laughter ]
[ Normal voice ] So now -- Now that the president
has admitted that he and his son lied repeatedly
and that the meeting actually was about colluding
with a foreign adversary,
Trump's lawyers are trying a new argument
that even if he did collude, it's not a crime.
-Trump wrote on Twitter...
-I've been sitting here looking in the Federal Code
trying to find collusion as a crime.
-It's not. -Collusion is not a crime.
-This was a meeting to get information
from the Crown Prosecutor of Russia
on Hillary Clinton's campaign.
How would that be legal?
-Well, the question is how would it be illegal?
-How would it be illegal? I don't know.
How about a conspiracy to violate election laws
or conspiracy to defraud the United States?
Seriously, how is it possible that these are the best lawyers
the President of the United States can get?
They're like personal injury lawyers
in that they're lawyers who personally injure their client.
Rudy Giuliani is the kind of lawyer
who would spend all day chasing an ambulance
only to realize it was an ice cream truck.
[ Laughter and applause ]
And then today, there were major developments
in the trial of Trump's ex-campaign chairman
Paul Manafort.
Manafort's business partner Rick Gates,
who was also Trump's deputy campaign chairman,
testified against Manafort.
And here is the real transcript from Gates' testimony.
Oh, my God.
This whole thing is like a "Law & Order" episode
that ends in first five minutes.
"Did you do crimes?" "Yes. I did crimes."
♪♪
[ Laughter and applause ]
-This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪