-Well, we just got back from a 2-week break and I thought we'd have a lot to catch up on, but it turns out nothing happened. There was no news, yeah. Yeah, I'm as shocked as you are.
I thought when we got back to the office today, we'd have to spend hours writing an exhaustive 2-Part Closer Look to cover everything we missed. But then I, you know, I picked up my phone for the first time in two weeks, and I was surprised to find there wasn't a single news alert. Oh!
Hold on. This is embarrassing. I had it in airplane mode.
[ Laughter ] Let me just switch that off real quick. [ Alerts pinging rapidly ] Okay, so. .
. Yeah, so now I'm realizing that was dumb of me. I mean, of course, a lot of stuff happened.
I mean, you know. [ Rapid pinging continues ] It's Donald Trump, right? Whoo!
Never seen it go off like this before. And here I was worried we were going to have to do a 2-hour Closer Look about Adrien Brody throwing his gum during the Oscars, which, by the way, dude, you know, just eat the gum or put it in your pocket, but, like, never throw the gum. You know?
[ Rapid pinging continues ] I'm saying this now because obviously, based on what I'm seeing here on my phone in regards to Trump, we will not have time to discuss the gum throwing within the body of "A Closer Look. " [ Laughter ] [ Rapid pinging continues ] Oh, my God, it's still going. Ooh, it's hot to the touch!
Yeah, we're definitely gonna have to make this a two-parter. For more on this, It's time for "A Closer Look," part one. ♪♪ A lot has happened in the first month or so of the Trump presidency, and it's not all good.
[ Laughter ] He and his cronies threatened to investigate a sitting congressman for calling Elon Musk a dick, accidentally fired, then tried to rehire staffers in charge of containing bird flu and keeping nuclear weapons safe, and claim that someone, for some unknown reason, might have stolen all the gold from Fort Knox. -We're actually going to Fort Knox to see if the gold is there, because maybe somebody stole the gold. We want to find out.
Did anybody steal the gold in Fort Knox? I'm going to actually go. We're going to open the doors.
We're going to inspect Fort Knox. Wouldn't that be terrible? We open up this Fort Knox, it's got nothing.
It's just solid granite that's five feet thick. The front door, you need six musclemen to open it up. We want to see lots of nice, beautiful, shiny gold in Fort Knox.
-Are they going to -- -Well, certainly, sir -- -So, Air Force One showed "Goldfinger" as the in-flight movie, and Trump thought it was a documentary? [ Laughter ] And by the way, it's a shame you fired a bunch of people at the FAA because they tell you when there's turbulence, you're supposed to sit down and wear a seatbelt. That's why you never hear the captain say, [Imitates static] We're about to enter some turbulence.
So we invite you to stand in the aisle and have a conversation about stolen gold. And. .
. if you do feel a bump, feel free to yell out [As Trump] "That was a bad bump. " [ Laughter ] Also, what does this mean?
-The front door, You need six musclemen to open it up. -It's not El Dorado. It's Fort Knox.
[ As Trump ] There are six musclemen who opened the door, but, of course, they won't budge unless you can answer three riddles. [ Laughter ] But even if you get the riddles right, there are booby traps galore. That's why JD is going first.
So I can see which stone tiles make the arrows shoot. [ Laughter ] By the way, spoiler alert, I guess, no one stole the gold. There are pictures, don't you think someone would have noticed if literal tons of gold bars were being smuggled out of one of the most secure military installations in the world?
Unless it was Trump himself. Maybe that's what's inside that giant coat of his. [ As Trump ] Bad news everyone.
The gold wasn't there. And now to just slowly walk to the plane in my un-lumpy coat. [Straining] Err.
. . Err.
. . Err.
. . So there's a lot going on.
But there's one story that flew under the radar that I think explains a lot. -US cuts task forces on foreign influence and Russian sanctions. -That's right.
One of the first things Trump and his new attorney general, Pam Bondi, did, was disband a task force that was set up to seize the assets of Russian oligarchs. It was called. .
. And my question is -- How do you disband something with such a cool name? This reminds me of when Grand Funk Railroad broke up.
You got to stay together for the name, dudes. Need I remind you "You're an American band"? [ Laughter ] And that was a reference for the Classic Rock uncles.
[ Classic rock guitar plays ] The point is, Trump immediately disbanded that task force which went after Russian assets like this. -This 255 foot luxury yachts name is "Tango. " It's currently docked on the Spanish island of Mallorca.
It's estimated to cost a whopping $90 million. It's staffed by a crew of 22 people and equipped with cabins for 14 guests, a swimming pool and a beauty salon. Tango belongs to the Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.
He's a longtime ally of Vladimir Putin. Or we should say Tango did belong to Viktor Vekselberg until early this morning, when it was seized by the FBI and Spanish authorities. Prosecutors in Spain obtained a court order allowing U.
S. authorities to swoop in and take control of the ship. -If you're an FBI agent, is there any sweeter gig than flying to Mallorca to seize a luxury yacht?
How do you get that assignment? The guys who have to monitor online Nazi forums and go undercover for drug busts must be so pissed. All right, everybody, we're gonna go around the room to review your recent investigations.
Agent Brown? Yeah, I was undercover with a white nationalist biker gang. In order to win their trust, I smoked crystal meth and committed arson.
I. . .
haven't seen my family in six months. Okay. And you, Agent Sullivan?
Uh, yeah, I just got back from Mallorca. The weather was honestly too gorgeous. Is that even possible?
We had to bring the boat back to the US, so we were on it for six days. Got to hang with the Spanish authorities who, no surprise here, are intensely attractive and the only foods we ate were the fruit on the side of our Mai tais. The point is, this is what it's really all about for Trump and his cabal of billionaire backers, protecting other rich criminals.
That's an international alliance of oligarchs. That's why they're on Russia's side, because they like Russia's brand of corrupt autocracy and they want to emulate it. They want to concentrate political power to enrich themselves.
That's why Trump is so obsessed with getting access to Ukraine's so-called "rare earth minerals," which are used in the defense and technology sectors to make things like missiles and smartphones. Although in his meeting with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, even before things got tense, Trump kept mistakenly calling them by a name he seemed to just make up. -We're going to be putting some money in a fund that we're going to get from the raw earth, from the sale and from the use of raw earth.
And as you know, our country doesn't have much raw earth. We have a lot of oil and gas, but we don't have a lot of the raw earth. We have a lot of oil and we have a lot of gas.
We have a lot, but we don't have raw earth. So this, uh. .
. This has just about every component of the raw earth that we need for computers, for all of the things we do. We'll have workers there digging, digging, digging, taking the raw earth.
-Rare earth. Not raw earth. Rare earth minerals are soft, silvery heavy metals like scandium or promethium.
Raw earth is, I don't know, dirt. [ Laughter ] Dirt before you cook it. And I'm no IT guy, but you don't want to just dig up dirt and start jamming it inside your computer.
Zelenskyy should trick Trump into signing a contract for raw earth. [ As Trump ] Due to a clerical error, we will not be receiving any of the precious metals we thought we were getting. But thanks to our deal with Ukraine, every American will be getting one egg-sized rock to tide them over until real eggs are affordable again.
But things started to get uncomfortable when one of Trump's toadies in the right wing media piped up to ask Zelenskyy about his attire. -Do you ever -- Why don't you wear a suit? -I don't -- What did you say, sorry?
-Why don't you wear a suit? You're the highest level in this country's office and you refuse to wear a suit. I just want to see -- Do you own a suit?
-You know it's a [bleep] question from the start, but the ass [bleep] really comes out with, "Do you own a suit? " The guy's a leader of a country that was invaded by Russia. And you're grilling him like a fop at a garden party?
[ Snooty accent ] I have a question. Is your stylist legally blind or just farsighted? [ Laughing smugly ] [ Cheers and applause ] [ Applause ] Also.
. . just because someone isn't wearing a suit doesn't mean they refuse to wear a suit.
I mean, I don't wear a suit anymore, and it's not because I refuse to wear one. It's because NBC refuses to notice I stopped. [ Laughter ] What's the point of acting out if no one is even paying attention?
[ Laughter ] And please, please don't pretend like anyone actually cares about this. -Really, I don't have such. .
. -No they [bleep] don't. People care about the cost of groceries and health care.
Not whether the President of Ukraine has ever been to a Men's Warehouse. I don't see you asking Elon Musk if he owns a suit, even though he shows up to cabinet meetings. .
. [ Cheers and applause ] Yeah. Look at this dude.
This guy shows up to cabinet meetings looking like a Lithuanian record producer. [ Laughter ] [ Lithuanian accent ] I gotta have more cow. [ Laughter ] Musk dresses like it's casual Friday on the Death Star and.
. . I'm sorry to say, I can't do the Darth Vader voice because I did airline pilot earlier in "A Closer Look.
" And if I do both on the same night, I get zapped back to a comedy club in the '80s. [ Laughter ] So that's where things started to get rocky. Trump then got very defensive about someone very close to him, his most valued friend and ally, his most trusted confidant, Vladimir Putin.
-I've known him for a long time. I've dealt with him for a long time. He had to suffer through the Russia hoax.
You know, Russia, Russia, Russia was a hoax. It was all Biden. It was nothing to do with him.
So he had to suffer through that. -That's right. Hasn't this poor man suffered enough?
This poor shirtless man who can't even afford a car. He has to ride a horse to work. [ Somber music plays ] Won't you please help this poor Russian dictator?
You can end his suffering today with just a 25-cent donation at. . .
But Trump kept repeating this insane suggestion that Putin had somehow suffered during the Russia investigation. -Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia.
He had nothing to do with it. It came out of Hunter Biden's bathroom. It came out of Hunter Biden's bedroom.
It was disgusting. And then they said, oh, oh, the laptop from hell was made by Russia. The 51 agents.
The whole thing was a scam, and he had to put up with that. -None of that made any sense whatsoever. If you heard those words come out of anyone else's mouth, you would think, Oh, God, there was something else in that Adderall.
That's. . .
That's the kind of bad trip where you snort some suspicious looking powder and then 20 minutes later, turn to your friends at the club and say. . .
-And then, of course. [ Cheers and applause ] It's what you'd say. It is what you say?
[ Applause ] -And then, of course. . .
everything went totally off the rails. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I also think it's crazy that part one was the on the rails part. We'll show you that moment when we come back.
Welcome back to Late Night, everybody. We're here with part two of "A Closer Look" or as we're calling it, "2 Close 2 Look. " [ Laughter ] Trump's disastrous meeting with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy started to go off the rails when JD Vance, a former Cabbage Patch doll who.
. . when given one wish by a magical fairy wished to be an ass [bleep], intervened to suck up to Trump, and the meeting devolved into chaos.
-What makes America a good country is America engaging in diplomacy. That's what President Trump is doing. -What kind of diplomacy JD you are speaking about?
What -- What -- What do you -- What do you mean? -I'm talking about the kind of diplomacy that's going to end the destruction of your country. -Yes, but if you are no stronger -- -Mr President.
Mr President, with respect, I think it's disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media. You should be thanking the president for trying for trying to bring an end to this conflict. -Have you ever been to Ukraine that you see what problems we have?
-I have been to -- -You've come once. I have actually -- I've actually watched and seen the stories. -You don't have the cards right now.
With us, you start having cards. -I am not playing cards. -Right now, you don't -- Yeah, you're playing cards.
-I'm very serious, Mr President. -You're playing cards. -I'm very serious.
-A lot of times, even today. Even today. My God, JD Vance sounds like a boyfriend who just got caught cheating for the third time.
You keep asking where I was last night, but have you said thank you once for the bracelet I got you. That was two years ago. And I said thank you when you gave it to me.
But have you said thank you during this fight? Because it wasn't just any bracelet. I stole it from a jewelry store and it is made of.
. . -Nice beautiful, shiny gold.
-Trump then kicked Zelenskyyy out of the White House and later explained his reasoning to reporters. -He doesn't have to stand there and say about Putin, this, Putin, that and all negative things. -It's rich for Donald Trump, of all people, to tell Zelenskyy to stop being negative.
Zelenskyy has obvious reasons to say negative things about Putin. Trump, by contrast, once tweeted I've never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke for no [bleep] reason whatsoever, just randomly taking a shot at people who drink Diet Coke, a group that it turns out includes Donald Trump. [ Laughter ] And for the record, Zelenskyy has said thank you many times directly to the American people in English, a language he speaks more fluently than Donald Trump.
You tell me which of these sentences is more coherent? -I want to thank you. All of you.
I thank every American family. -It came out of Hunter Biden's bathroom. -What came out of Hunter Biden's bathroom?
The Russia investigation, the laptop, the raw earth? [ Laughter ] Seriously, what are you talking about? Now, I think it's important to say a few things.
One, there is a lot to criticize about American foreign policy and the so-called international order over the last 80 years. Two, diplomacy is good. We should try to achieve a ceasefire, to stop the killing and bring peace.
But it is possible, in fact, it's necessary to do that while also remaining clear eyed about who the aggressor is, who violated sovereignty and international law and human rights by starting the war in the first place. But Trump doesn't give a [bleep] about any of that. All he cares about is self-enrichment and raw power and territorial conquest.
That's why he's doing a solid for Russian oligarchs by letting them keep their super yachts. And that's why he's threatening to use force to annex Greenland or retake the Panama Canal or make Canada the 51st state. But predictably, the usual right wing suspects are falling over themselves to slather praise on Trump.
-If he doesn't get the Nobel Peace Prize after this, that thing, it means nothing. -The plan that I've seen, that President Trump has, I think he could win the Nobel Peace Prize for this. -By the end of this all, we're going to have the Nobel Peace Prize sitting next to the name of Donald J.
Trump. -If this was a Democrat that was doing this, everyone would be saying, Well, he's on his way to the Nobel Peace Prize. Oh, come on, Marco, don't act like you weren't trying to disappear into the couch during that meeting.
You look like a five year old at a wedding who just got put in a time out. Marco, you were not supposed to touch the cake. Now go sit on the couch and think about what you did.
And if you need any more evidence of how spineless and amoral the Republican Party has become, just watch the transformation of Lindsey Graham from two weeks ago, when he effusively praised Zelenskyy to Friday when he called on Zelenskyy to resign. -I want to tell you and your people you're the ally I've been hoping for all my life. I don't know if Zelenskyy can ever get you to where you want to go with the United States.
Either he dramatically changes or you need to get somebody new. -[ Southern accent ] That's what I told my memaw about that deadbeat Colonel Beauregard she keeps going around town with. You need to get someone new.
I've seen him going in and out of that bordello. Memaw, he only wants your gold! [ Laughter ] And yet, almost as dispiriting as the Republican response has been the Democratic response, or lack thereof.
-It certainly is the case that we'll need to see some mature leadership from the Trump administration. -Do you think there will be some mature leadership from the Trump administration? -Oh, oh, I know this one.
[ Buzzer buzzing ] I know this one. [ Laughter ] I know this one. Let me answer this.
-No [ Laughter ] What is wrong with all of you? What is wrong with you? [ Applause ] -You want to see some mature leadership from the Trump administration?
Well, I want to see all the gold in Fort Knox, and guess what? Neither of us is getting what we [bleep] want. Seriously, Democrats, show some spine.
Do you want to get primaried? Why do you guys keep acting like this is your first day on the job? -You voted for Secretary Rubio.
Do you have confidence in him and the way that he's trying to manage this? -I did vote for Senator Rubio to be Secretary of State. I regret that vote.
-You voted to approve his nomination to be Secretary of State. You still think you made the right choice? -Nope.
It was a mistake. It was a mistake. I think a lot of us thought that Marco Rubio was going to stand up to Donald Trump.
-You thought Marco Rubio was going to stand up to Donald? There's a better chance of Kermit standing up without a hand up his ass. [ Laughter ] People are desperate for an opposition party that speaks to their anger.
They're confronting Republicans at town halls across the country, and they even protested Vance's motorcade on a ski trip this weekend. It couldn't be any clearer what's going on. It's the oligarchs and the autocrats versus everyone else.
But there's still time. We can still save our democracy and ensure that instead of a permanent decline, the Trump era is more of just a. .
. This has been "A Closer Look. " ♪♪ [ Theme music plays ] [ Head whooshes ] [ Hair creaks open ] -Hey guys.
