-President Trump has canceled his summit with North Korea.
Meanwhile, he and his allies
are pushing a baseless conspiracy theory
about the Russia probe.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
President Trump has spent weeks
hyping his upcoming summit with North Korea.
He's earned glowing praise from the media,
chants of Nobel from his crowds, and his government even made
a commemorative coin to mark the occasion.
And you know what?
I was so excited, I actually logged on
to the White House gift shop
and bought one of those coins myself.
Here it is. [ Cheers and applause ]
There it is.
Because I wanted to be a part of history.
So here's to you, Mr. President, and all your success.
-Breaking news.
-Back with our breaking news --
President Trump has just written a letter to Kim Jong-un,
the Leader of North Korea,
canceling the June 12th expected summit in Singapore.
-Damn it! [ Laughter ]
Although, it's my fault.
I should've learned my lesson after I bought
commemorative coins for the completed border wall,
"Biggest Inauguration Ever,"
Anthony Scaramucci's first 100 days on the job,
"Cleared of All Charges,"
and "People's Sexiest Man Alive."
[ Laughter and applause ]
So, Trump canceled the summit, which shouldn't surprise anyone.
He earned backslaps from the media,
desperate to praise him for something,
but he repeatedly made clear he had no idea what he was doing.
For example, when he spoke today at the White House,
Trump urged North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
-North Korea has the opportunity
to end decades of poverty and oppression
by following the path of denuclearization.
-There you go.
He wants them to follow the path of denuclearization.
But when he was asked on Tuesday how denuclearization worked,
Trump claimed he totally knew but wouldn't go into detail.
-I do. I have a very strong idea how it takes place,
and it must take place. That's what we're talking about.
It must take place. But I have a very strong idea,
and I have very strong opinions on the subject.
-Once again, Donald Trump is a teenager
who didn't prepare his oral report
and is now stalling for the bell to ring.
"I know a lot about the Louisiana Purchase.
It's fascinating -- a fascinating purchase.
And, uh, I have very strong feelings about it
that I want to show --
Will you ring, you damn son of a bitch?"
[ Laughter ]
So Trump is flailing on foreign policy.
Maybe, just maybe,
he's distracted by the Russian investigation,
which seems to get worse for him every day.
Since the investigation began, Trump and his allies
have tossed out one crazy conspiracy theory after another,
like when Trump said his wires had been tapped at Trump Tower
or when they said two FBI agents
had a secret society to undermine Trump.
Trump loves conspiracy theories so much,
I'm shocked he hasn't accused Don Jr.
of being a secret lizard person. [ Laughter ]
"Have you seen the way he blinks?"
[ Laughter ]
Now, every one of those claims turned out to be total B.S.
In fact, Trump's crimes are apparently so obvious
that his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is now trying out a new tactic.
Instead of denying that collusion happened,
he's saying if it did happen, it wasn't illegal.
In an interview with Huffington Post Wednesday...
Yeah, if somebody gives you something that's stole,
that doesn't make you a criminal.
It makes you a pawn shop.
[ Laughter ]
Also, are we sure Giuliani isn't working for Robert Mueller?
First, he told Sean Hannity
that Trump did pay off Stormy Daniels.
Now this.
If you called Rudy in for questioning,
you wouldn't need to do good cop/bad cop,
because he would confess to the good cop.
[ Laughter ]
"So, can I get you a cup of coffee?"
"All right, I did it -- I killed my wife!"
"We brought you in for a robbery."
"I did that, too!"
[ Laughter ]
If Rudy sang Bob Marley at karaoke,
he'd change the lyrics to, "I shot the sheriff,
but I did not shoot the deputy.
But even if I did shoot the deputy,
that wouldn't be illegal.
And, also, I did shoot the deputy."
[ Laughter and applause ]
So...
[ Cheers and applause ]
So, because they don't have a good defense,
Trump and his allies have instead decided
to go on offense, creating one fiction after another
to discredit the investigation.
A central figure in that effort
has been Republican Congressman Devin Nunes,
who in every single photo
looks like he just realized he brought you the wrong entrees.
[ Laughter and applause ]
"Oh, no.
Oh.
Oh, you said veal? I thought you said eel."
[ Laughter ]
Nunes has used his perch on the House Oversight Committee
to extract information about the investigation
and then use that information
to help Trump manufacture conspiracy theories.
And it's not just Nunes.
Trump's allies in the right-wing media
have been happy to run with his wild spying claims.
Just take Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.
She accused both President Obama and Hillary Clinton
of being in a sinister plot
to take down Donald Trump during the campaign.
Listen as she rambles through a list
of all the favorite right-wing buzzwords.
-In March of 2016, Sally Yates and Loretta Lynch
were both briefed by Jim Comey.
A couple of months later, we start seeing
all the dossier information
and that there's a dossier being written.
And then, we know that that dossier was used
to get a warrant to wiretap
and to spy on the Trump campaign.
We also know, based on the text messages
between FBI agent Peter Strzok and his girlfriend, Lisa Page,
that he said, "President Obama wants to know
everything we're doing on this."
So... -Right.
-Where was Obama? I don't know.
What do those texts and all of this information
tell us where Obama was?
It sounds like either President Obama
or Hillary Clinton were sort of masterminding all of this.
-Think about how insane that theory is.
She's saying Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton
sent a spy to infiltrate Trump's campaign
so they could get dirt on him
and then chose not to use that dirt during the election.
"Mr. President, we found the pee tape.
Should we leak it?"
"No, no, save it for my Netflix deal."
[ Laughter and applause ]
"I got an idea for a limited series."
[ Laughter and applause ]
You'd watch!
[ Laughter ]
Trump and his allies are literally
just making [bleep] up, and because he's the president,
the media thinks they have to take it seriously.
For example, Giuliani made headlines over the weekend
when he claimed, out of nowhere,
that Mueller "hopes to finish the obstruction investigation
by September 1st.
By putting end date on the obstruction inquiry,
he is apparently seeking to publicly pressure Mueller
to stick to that timeline.
I'm sorry. You think you can pressure Robert Mueller?
[ Laughter ]
Look at that dude.
That dude plays Jenga to relax.
[ Laughter ]
He has more steel in him than Wolverine.
His last job was support beam.
They make skyscrapers out of Robert Muellers.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Well, this will shock you.
It turned out Rudy's claim about the September 1st deadline
was entirely made up.
Like Trump, Rudy just goes on TV,
makes stuff up, and the media repeats it
because they think they have to.
For example, Rudy also claimed recently
that the President could just ignore a subpoena from Mueller
because past presidents have done the same thing.
But after he said that, a clip of Giuliani from 1998
resurfaced, insisting that then-President Clinton
would have to testify if he was subpoenaed.
-If the president is asked to testify,
subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury,
and says, "No, not gonna do it..."
-You gotta do it. I mean, you don't have a choice.
-Well, he said in a statement that he might not do it.
-Well, then, there is a procedure for handling that.
You go before a judge, and a judge decides
whether or not he has a recognizable exemption
or privilege from testifying.
And if a judge decides he doesn't,
then you have to testify.
You don't have a choice about that.
-Wow, that interview has not aged well.
[ Laughter ]
Unlike Rudy Giuliani who doesn't look a day over Crypt-Keeper.
[ Laughter and applause ]
So, Rudy is obviously lying and contradicting himself.
And yet the media keeps talking to him.
Last week on CNN, Rudy insisted
that if Mueller were to subpoena Trump,
he would interfere in the investigation
by going to Attorney General Jeff Sessions
and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein
and telling them to stop the subpoena.
-If Mueller did it, the Justice Department
could take the subpoena right back.
-Or you could just litigate it.
He could subpoena him, and you could litigate it.
-I'd go right to the Attorney General,
I'd say, "Jeff, you know, put on big-boy pants,
and you go take it away. -But he's recused from this.
-Then I'd go to Rosenstein and say,
"You want to try the big-boy pants on for size?
You put them on, and you get rid of the subpoena."
-Rudy sounds like a flustered salesman
at a store called Big Boy Pants.
[ Laughter ]
"What about you? Two-for-one Big Boy Pants?
Oh, come on, Rudy. You gotta make a sale!
[ Laughter ]
And I'm sorry, but if Jeff Sessions
tried to put on big-boy pants, they'd go up to his nipples.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Now, there is no reason --
no reason to ever believe what Trump, Rudy or their allies
say about the Russia investigation.
They've proven time and time again
they have no compulsion
about lying and contradicting themselves.
The media should stop taking them seriously.
In other words, the media should put on their...
-Big-boy pants.
-This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]