Return to Transcripts main page
CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Begins Forming His Shadow Cabinet After Win; Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Blames Loss On Biden Not Leaving Race Sooner; Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Says, Guns, God and Gays Culture Issues Led To Loss; "NewsNight" Tackles Trump's Mass Deportation Promise During Campaign; Jay Michaelson's Column Explains Why Trump Won. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired November 08, 2024 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:08]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST (voice over): Tonight, am I on speaker? Donald Trump holds a leader to leader call with Ukraine's president while passing the phone to Elon Musk. Is this a preview of the sequel?
Plus, Nancy Pelosi pins the blame on Joe Biden and the president's stubborn streak for denying Democrats a chance to choose their future.
Also, walk a mile in Trump's voters' shoes. A new column tries to demystify the election and explain the anxiety in the electorate that Democrats missed.
And Trump says you can't put a price on this, his plan to deport millions of migrants.
Live at the table, Jay Michelson, Erin Perrine, Shermichael Singleton, and Tanzina Vega.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening, I'm Abby Phillip in New York.
Let's get right to what America is talking about. Your government and how it will work. Well, tonight we are beginning to assemble the pieces of the second term Trump puzzle. Who is going to run the country? Who is going to fill out the cabinet? Who will land in the White House because they stand zero chance of getting past a Senate confirmation?
Now, that last category is more important to the president-elect than you might think. Now, if you listen to these two reporters who know Donald Trump best, here's what they say is going to happen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I mean, there are very few cabinet roles that he cares about. Attorney general is the main one. The secretary of defense is another. And the CIA director is another. Beyond that, he had almost no use for his cabinet in his last term. That's not going to change dramatically this time.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was talking to someone who's close to Trump and they were sort of speculating to me that the White House becomes the home for the unconfirmable. So, if you have been indicted one too many times and whatever, the White House might be the place for you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: CNN Presidential Historian Tim Naftali joins us in our fifth seat at the table. He's the former director of the Nixon Presidential Library.
Let me just repeat what Jonathan Swan just said. If you've been indicted one too many times, you're not out of, you know, the chicken coop, you're in the White House, in the White House. This is the reality.
ERIN PERRINE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST, AXIOM STRATEGIES: So, some of that, it's almost that polling that you've seen where it's threats to democracy, right? It means, it almost means different things to different people, like there are a lot of Republicans, especially within the Trump orbit, who believe that lawfare has been used against those who support President Trump.
So, the line that Jonathan Swan used to say, oh, it could be those who have been indicted one too many times. If you're on Trump's end of that, what are you saying? You're saying, well, yes, it was because they were targeted for believing in me. And this is just a further replication of the lawfare system against those.
Whether or not I believe that to be true is irrelevant to where their frame of mind is to frame what Jonathan is saying more largely to what Trump would believe on that subject.
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, look, I think if someone is indicted, they haven't necessarily been found guilty of a thing. And I remember once upon a time when my friends on the other political side would say people should be given second chances, second opportunities.
The president-elect is within his right to consider whomever he wants as his adviser. Some people may like it, some may not like it. I think Susie Wiles is going to do a pretty good job in providing roadblocks, if you will, for individuals that she believes would be a distraction to his overall agenda. But I think it's too soon and too early to be skeptical about who may be in his ear and who may not be in his ear.
PHILLIP: I think what the point, though, that Jonathan was making was that the White House itself is going to be the end round around kind of the Senate confirmation process, which is partly about public accountability for people who serve in the government. I mean, I presume he would not be the first president to do that. That's actually their prerogative in a way. TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: It is their prerogative. On the other hand, he's not going to want to embarrass members of his party in the Senate, because after all --
PHILLIP: Do you really think there's anything left to embarrass?
NAFTALI: Not much. Not much.
PHILLIP: Donald Trump's colleagues in the Senate?
NAFTALI: No, they're not. There's not much. Although it looks like his majority in the Senate will include people who could be embarrassed.
My concern is the extent to which he wants to send a signal right from the start that January 6th didn't happen and that the people he selects are people who participated in the unconstitutional actions in 2021.
[22:05:09]
And that, I think, is going to have a corrosive effect. The very snubbing of the nose of the system by saying, you know, this so called insurrection, it didn't happen. And, you know, the people who were involved to try to protect me, I'm going to reward all of them. They will all have an important part to play in my administration.
TANZINA VEGA, JOURNALIST AND CONTRIBUTING BOSTON GLOBE OPINION WRITER: And I think we also need to pay attention to the fact that, as we know, Trump is erratic. He's impulsive and he's back for a second term. And so he's got more experience. He is more prepared. He's familiar with what it was like the first time around.
And so, you know, we also have to keep in mind that the system, the Supreme Court, is now essentially very much in play for President Trump. Chevron, the Supreme Court decision that took away a lot of the regulatory protections for Americans, all of these things are just going to -- essentially, the wheels are off for the Trump administration. It's all, you know, systems go right now. And it's really a question of how is there any way to contain that while maintaining basic rule of law.
PHILLIP: One of the other things we're learning today is just about the role of Elon Musk in the transition as it's starting to unfold. He was with Trump on Tuesday. He took a picture with Trump's family. He was on the call with Trump and President Zelenskyy of Ukraine today. And CNN is reporting that he's been a part of these transition meetings. He's a part of the staffing conversations. He is close to the wealthiest person in the entire world. And now he is basically kind of a part of this running of a shadow government around Trump.
JAY MICHAELSON, RABBI AND AUTHOR, GOD VS. GAY, THE RELIGIOUS CASE FOR EQUALITY: Yes, you know, I think we know from the first Trump administration that there are certain kinds of people that Donald Trump does actually trust and respects, and people who are successful in business are some of those people. Obviously, Jared Kushner and Ivanka are not in the White House this go around. To me, it seems like Elon is kind of playing that role.
And I don't know that there's really this two tiered system. I don't think it's so sophisticated, three dimensional chess that, you know, there's the cabinet appointees need approval. You know, I also think a lot of the cabinet appointees in the first Trump administration were central to the agenda, Betsy DeVos at education, Wilbur Ross at commerce and the efforts to change the U.S. Census, Scott Pruitt at EPA. There were a number of folks who really did move the ball forward. And I don't buy this differentiation that, you know, the sort of the bad guys who were targeted are going to be at the White House. Everybody else will be in the cabinet. I think Donald Trump has broad -- perceives that he has a very broad mandate to do whatever he wants.
PERINNE: And also, just to be clear, in the early parts of the original Trump administration, coming out of the 2016 election, there were a lot of people who made it into the White House who were then walked out of the White House, who might've made it into a first wave or a second wave of staffing who maybe didn't make it long-term. There are always turnover and changes in a White House and an administration. As things move along, you don't always get the first piece of the puzzle right.
Senate confirmations will be the much larger hurdle for Donald Trump to go through than it is about who's sitting in the East Wing or the West Wing. It is more about who has access to the Oval and if you have Susie standing at the helm there, that is actually somebody that is a big, bad force.
PHILLIP: I just want to be clear though, like when we talk about the turnover that happened in the Trump administration, which I was there for, it's not like normal White House turnover. It was literally people knifing in each other.
MICHAELSON: You have units of measure now, right, (INAUDIBLE) their time in Scaramucci.
PERRINE: That is a very select measurement.
These are the people who are invited in and they cycled out not because people cycle out, but because there was chaos and division and knifing of each other. Some of them were extremely controversial. So, it was incredibly chaotic. I just want people to remember that because that is what it was like.
SINGLETON: People remember that and they voted for him anyway. It's at his discretion. I worked for the former president.
PHILLIP: I'm not saying that they shouldn't vote for him, to be clear. I'm just saying this is how he runs the White House.
SINGLETON: That's fine. And some people aren't going to agree with that type of executive leadership. But it is at his discretion to hire and fire anyone he appoints, and everyone who works for him accepts that. The American people accepted it, they voted for him anyway, he has a clear mandate. So, if he decides to be a little chaotic, some folks here may say, that's nuts, I wouldn't want to run the White House that way, that's perfectly fine.
The American people said they're okay with the way Donald Trump runs the White House. There are more pertinent issues that they're concerned about that they believe he's going to address. I think we got to give the guy an opportunity. He hasn't even started the job again.
PERRINE: And also, to be clear, very clear here it's the pleasure to serve at the discretion of the president, right? Like you are given the honor to work in the White House, and so if the president decides one day you deserve that honor and the next day you don't, You can find any job in the country where that is the same exact way.
MICHAELSON: If this election had been a referendum on professionalism in the White House, right, Biden Harris obviously would have prevailed. It was a very stable White House. It was very respectable. It was ordinary. It was normal. The American people did not care. That was not anything that drove any of their dissent.
NAFTALI: And I would, I think, let's keep in mind, I think we focus sometimes too much on cabinets. The modern presidency is run out of the White House.
[22:10:00]
Cabinet secretaries are far less important. They are symbolic and at times they can play a role in saying no, but for the most part, the White House will define this presidency. So, the people that end up close to the president in the White House are the people that matter and this president has told us on the stump, time and time again, I want loyalists around me. And he said maybe --
(CROSSTALKS)
NAFTALI: No. But he's made the point that he couldn't achieve what he hoped to achieve the first time around because of disloyalty.
Now, that's something new for presidents.
PERRINE: So, I will say this about the disloyalty. Having -- you know, I know Mick Mulvaney. He's a great guy, former acting White House chief of staff. And I have heard from a number of people who worked in the White House who said that Mick was one of their favorite chiefs, that he was just a great steady hand to have.
But when they talk about loyalty and disloyalty, this goes back to the argument that Republicans and especially those within Trump camp make about the fact that the bureaucracy is so entrenched against them and against Republicans, that this is where those kind of schedule C employees that they've been talking about whether or not they would upend then in the government, that's where this comes in. It's not necessarily the cabinet officials, it's more the people that sit within like OMB. No --
PHILLIP: I disagree with what you're saying, partly because I think Trump actually has been pretty clear about what he's talking about. He's talking about the people that he hired. He said, I made bad hiring decisions. So, he's not talking about the career employees. He's talking about John Kelly. He's talking about the cabinet secretaries who have then -- some of them come out and said that they don't think he's fit for office. He thinks those people aren't this soiled (ph).
SINGLETON: Well, obviously, their opinions are irrelevant because he won.
PHILLIP: I know. Shermichael, just for one second, the answer to everything is not just that he won.
SINGLETON: But he did. That's a big deal, Abby.
PHILLIP: What I'm saying is that Donald Trump is telling us the truth how he is going to govern again.
SINGLETON: And every president wants loyal advisers working for them. I wouldn't want disloyal people working for me or --
NAFTALI: Shermichael there's a difference between a loyal person who says yes, Mr. President, even though it's a bad idea, we'll implement it, as opposed to people around you who say, you know, Mr. President, maybe you should consider this or that, or more importantly won't implement what the president --
PERRINE: And that's the (INAUDIBLE) he worries about.
PHILLIP: Just to give you a very concrete example, his attorney general, Bill Barr, did not like that he wanted to use the Justice Department to pursue his election denialism. And Trump doesn't like that and thinks he was disloyal. That is the kind of disloyalty that we're talking about.
So, yes, he won, but people should understand that the Trump of 2016 to 2020 is going to be a person who took the lessons that a Bill Barr is not loyal enough because he won't go along with election lies. That's pertinent information for Americans as we go into a second Trump term.
VEGA: I think we need to be careful to remember that we're not in 2020 anymore, right, or 2016, like this is a different moment that we're in. We've been through a pandemic. There's been an entire presidency in between his first and now second term. And so lots has changed. You know, Americans, those who voted for him may have voted for him on certain -- you know, for certain reasons. But I don't think if the internal workings of the Trump White House are chaotic, that's really going to spell good news for policy at the end of the day, right, that the president -- President Trump started his first term just signing a ton of executive orders. It was a flurry of E.O.s, you know, the first two weeks that he was there. We're going to see if he's actually capable of creating a government that functions without executive orders, right?
But this could be really chaotic, and I'm not sure if Americans, even those who voted for him, are going to be, you know, satisfied if things really are, you know --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: I'm about to take pause here, guys. Tim, thank you very much for joining us. Everyone else stick around.
Coming up next, Nancy Pelosi, she's blaming President Biden for the Democrats loss here. Why? And how she says, quote, God, gays and guns also played a role in this. Another special guest is going to join us in our fifth scene. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:15:00]
PHILLIP: Hindsight is 20-20. Well, tonight Nancy Pelosi says everyone in her party could see Joe Biden needed to step aside sooner than he did, and that it's the president's fault for clinging to the nomination, and ultimately his fault for his vice president's loss on Election Day.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race. The anticipation was that if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary. And, as I say, Kamala may have -- I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward, but we don't know that didn't happen. We live with what happened.
And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: That was Nancy Pelosi speaking on the interview podcast from The New York Times.
Joining us now in our fifth seat is CNN Political Commentator Errol Louis. He is the political anchor of Spectrum News and the host of The Big Deal with Errol Lewis. He is a big deal and is joining us today.
So, Errol what do you make of that from Nancy Pelosi of all people?
ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Listen, the word chutzpah comes to mind for a couple of different reasons. I mean, the first is that, look, if a hurricane hits the small town sitting after the fact and arguing that we should have built the house out of brick, or stone, or wood, doesn't really matter. For a lot of different reasons, this was going to be an election that incumbents were going to have a very, very hard time holding on to in this country. And to then say, well, if we'd had a primary and, you know, a knife fight between some unknown group of Democrats, one would have emerged who would have been a stronger candidate than Kamala Harris, and somehow run a better campaign than what we just saw in that 107-day sprint where she raised a billion dollars and ran an almost flawless campaign, it just wasn't enough to --
[22:20:01]
PHILLIP: Many people would disagree with that.
PERRINE: 0-7 in the swing states means it's not very close. Yes.
LOUIS: Well, other than the outcome.
PERRINE: I mean, going 0 for 7 and losing the popular vote is -- there are a few things in the way.
MICHAELSON: I don't think that speaks to the campaign. Like we were discussing before --
PERRINE: I think it does. I think it speaks exactly what the American have.
MICHAELSON: we were discussing before in every developed nation, the incumbent party at the end of the pandemic has lost. They have lost bad. The Democrats here lost less badly than the ruling parties. Conservative, liberal, it does not matter. Across the world, the convulsions caused by COVID, by inflation by supply chain problems, people are angry, right? Often they are choosing nationalist candidates, like Trump or like Meloni or like the National Front in France, which just barely lost, right? But often they're just picking someone who's going to get stuff done, right?
I thought the best Trump slogan was the Trump will fix it slogan. People feel that society is broken. I don't think any Democrats could have possibly won this election.
LOUIS: Who's this person Nancy Pelosi --
MICHAELSON: Right, who's the dream candidate here to win this?
PHILLIP: Let me just -- I just want to play this because, you know, to your point, Errol on the Pelosi of it all, I mean, this is Pelosi at two different junctures in her evolution on this question of whether President Biden should serve out a second term.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PELOSI: I hope he runs. I'm for him if he runs. And I know that the Democrats will fully embrace him. If he runs, it's over.
It's up to the President to subside if he is going to run. We're all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short.
But he's beloved, he is respected and people want him to make that decision, not me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SINGLETON: I mean, you know, the former speaker is twisting herself into a pretzel. When Joe Biden dropped out, they said, oh, he's a statesman, he's beloved, he's doing this for the country, he's the greatest man in the world, and now that they've gotten their butts whooped, now they're blaming it on the guy who they were just saying several months ago was the greatest guy in the world. She did say that. But they're looking for someone and anyone to blame.
And to your point, I think that's a valid point. This election was always going to be tough because of the economy. You look at all the net negatives for the Biden Harris administration. I'm not certain there was this magical candidate out there who suddenly could have defeated Donald Trump. I just don't believe that.
MICHAELSON: I totally agree. And imagine a different post mortem from Nancy Pelosi where she says, you know what? We obviously totally disagree with 8,000 things that Donald Trump stands for, but we should have done a better job of hearing the pain of the American people. We should have taken it more seriously. We should have not stigmatized, you know, the dumb Trump voters and all those MAGA people. We should have taken this more seriously, and we could do a better job moving forward, because we, the Democrats, have solutions that might actually work. Instead, this like finger pointing --
SINGLETON: It's in the messaging. It's our messaging.
VEGA: What the Democrats need to do is take a page from, believe it or not, from the GOP, who, after two losses to Barack Obama, went back and said, wait a minute, this isn't working.
PHILLIP: Although, let's be clear. They threw out that Autopsy.
VEGA: They did.
(CROSSTALKS)
SINGLETON: But they tried for two years. I was a part of that. We tried for two years.
VEGA: You tried to figure it out.
SINGLETON: We tried for two years.
VEGA: Somehow or another, you figured something out. I'm not sure it was the plan, but there were voter -- you know, voters did move.
I just wrote about this for the Boston Globe, how there was a lot of economic frustration, particularly among -- you know, the sort of Democratic coalition is splintered at this point, right? And what Democrats cannot afford to do, especially in public, especially right now, is, say, well, it's your fault and it's your fault and it's your fault. What they need to do is assess and they need to start developing young leaders now.
I could -- I honestly -- when I heard that Biden was running again, I was shocked. I was like, wait a minute, where are the -- where's the next -- you know, compared to the 2020 Democratic candidate, you know, for president slate, which was diverse and interesting and, frankly, all over the place, you know, why are the Democrats refusing to really develop that next generation?
PERRINE: So, I think that's a really interesting point, though, because Democrats went from a big change candidate, Barack Obama, fundamentally -- and he changed the electorate of the Democratic Party in a way that fundamentally changed the electorate of the Republican Party, right? We switched to low propensity voters, you guys switched to high propensity voters, and then you went back to Joe Biden, then you went to Hillary Clinton. And they were like no, Joe, sit aside. And then you went to Joe Biden, you went from this transformational winning this candidate with Barack Obama to much more of what people had already seen. And then Republicans walked in with a transformational change candidate who changed our electorate as well,
People wanted that change. And when Democrats decided to double down on more of what they had seen, the electorate said, okay, 2020. COVID's wild. And I think if Trump had just shown a little bit more -- a little more empathy in that situation, this would have been a different outcome.
LOUIS: I mean, if there was somebody out there, whether it's Gavin Newsom or somebody else, they should have announced themselves and fought their way, you know? Waiting for Nancy Pelosi to bless you was not --
PHILLIP: That was never going to happen. That was never going to happen three weeks before the DNC. But I actually think that the other reason that this Pelosi postmortem kind of misses something, is that -- think about what happened in this election.
[22:25:01]
Kamala Harris was held to her primary positions in 2019, positions that she took when she was running for the Democratic nomination. Democrats have a primary problem where they have to get a candidate out of a primary that can win a general election. Joe Biden came out of the primary because he did not do what all the other candidates did, which is run all the way to the left. So, they still have that problem, and it would not have been fixed this January, I don't think.
MICHAELSON: And yet, you know, on the Republican side, that's sometimes not the case, right? Where Republicans run a more centrist candidate, you know, Mitt Romney kind of candidates, they don't win, right? And so I'm not actually sure that it's the left right axis that matters for Democrats winning or not winning in the general elections. I think it has to do much more with emotional, even, dare I say, spiritual qualities. And Trump has these in spades. He taps in --
PHILLIP: Maybe it's not left, right, but maybe it is common sense, right? So, like it doesn't matter where on the spectrum of extremes you are, but if you're not sort of addressing people in the place where they are --
SINGLETON: And they never did.
PHILLIP: -- that's going to be a problem. SINGLETON: They kept saying the economy was incredible. It was great. Look at how well the stock market is doing, 401(k)s. And average people say, well, wait a minute, I just went to the grocery store last week and $200 bucks really didn't get me very far. Or I went to the gas station and I don't have enough gas for the end of the week.
I mean, these very real tangible things in people's individual economies, if you will, it seemed a bit detached from the messaging of the candidate and coming from her campaign writ large. And I think that was a terrible mistake.
VEGA: Let's be clear though. President Trump is also -- you know, the optics of his campaign may have been this sort of populist messaging to I'll fix it, right, and we'll get that economy back on track. But, frankly, that's a lot of hypocrisy. And it's not -- you know, it remains to be seen whether or not that's actually going to happen. Are there going to be policies that support the working class coalition and the voters, non-college educated voters and others who voted for him, right?
I think the Democrats were struggling to figure out who they were speaking to. Were they speaking to the middle class, which is, by the way, shrinking in this country. As we know there are more people who are likely to be wealthy or poor than they are to be in the middle. So, we've seen that 10 percent decrease in the middle class and yet the messaging didn't seem to connect for a lot of folks.
PERRINE: But they kept almost telling the American people from the podium like they're dumb, the economy's fine.
MICHAELSON: Right. What are you talking about?
PERRINE: When you're talking about, everything feels great, they're there.
MICHAELSON: We're recovering.
PERRINE: And it was so patronizing. The American people -- I was listening to NPR. I heard a woman in an interview say, going to the grocery store, chips feel like a luxury item. And you have Karine Jean-Pierre as the White House press secretary and the, at the podium saying the economy is great. And it's just because the media isn't telling the American people. That's Democrats' biggest problem right now, if you are blaming the media for not carrying your message, well, welcome to being a Republican, buddy, because we have to fight back all the time against, how many times has it, Republicans pounce, Republicans seize, Republicans this, that, or whatever. How about it, Republicans acknowledge the facts and make that a headline.
PHILLIP: Let's just put one thing though, just because I think -- just to be clear, I don't think we should overindex even on the economy as an explanation for what happened on Tuesday. There were a host of other things and part of it is also like you look at what Republicans spent their money on, it wasn't just the economy. They were spending money on the trans ads or immigration issues --
SINGLETON: Cultural issues.
PHILLIP: Cultural issues. So, there was another part, you know, for Pelosi where she talks about this. She believes that's a big part of it, you know?
MICHAELSON: Well, but there's the base and there's the swing, right? So, obviously, the anti-trans ads, which I found absolutely deplorable, I worked as an LGBTQ activist for ten years, I think it's outrageous and I'm terrified for my trans friends and family members. Those ads were for the base, right? That was to motivate the base to get out there. And that base, that sort of that MAGA base and the sort of, I would call Christian nationalist base, they did show up. But I don't think that that is what motivated the swing voters to vote for Trump.
I do think there's a mismatch between -- you know, Democrats are really good at offering a lot of solutions.
SINGLETON: I don't think that's just for the base.
PERRINE: Yes, not in the closing message of the campaign.
SINGLETON: I would disagree a little bit with that.
PHILLIP: I'm not so sure, personally.
SINGLETON: I think there are a lot of families out there who, you know, don't believe boys should play girl sports.
MICHAELSON: They're not boys. I'm not going to listen to transphobia at this table. I am not going to listen to you call a trans girl a boy, that is just not how it is.
SINGLETON: When you use a word that's a slur, I'm going to interrupt.
MICHAELSON: That's not how it is. They're not boys. They're not boys, but they're not playing girl softball. I'm not going to sit there and listen to that.
PHILLIP: Let's reset for a second because, look, this is a really heated issue, right? And, Shermichael, I know you. I know that you understand that people have different views on this. I think out of respect for Jay, like let's try to talk about this in a way that is respectful.
SINGLETON: Okay. So, let me rephrase this since I'm being targeted here.
PHILLIP: I don't. You're not. Just to be clear, you are not being targeted. I'm specifically saying that I know that you are not intending to be transphobic.
[22:30:00]
SINGLETON: He should know that I'm not. I mean, he wants to sit here and blame me -- MICHAELSON: I'm saying that you're using a phrase that you know --
SINGLETON: So, the way regular people interpret it --
MICHAELSON: That's not regular people. That's not regular people. There's no consensus that these are actually boys. This whole thing about trans girls is a is a canard. It's we're talking about a tiny, tiny sliver of the population -
SINGLETON: That maybe the case but my point in terms of its effectiveness --
MICHAELSON: --and we're using that to take away health care.
PHILLIP: Hold on. Just get to your point.
SINGLETON: My point in terms of its effectiveness, regular people with children look at these things and they say, you know what? This is a bit too far. I do not agree with this. I don't like this. I think Democrats are going way too much to the left on social issues. They're uncomfortable with it.
A lot of people believe that. A lot of families believe that. You may disagree with that reality, but that's why Republicans kept running those ads over and over and over again because they saw the metrics suggested that they were working.
MICHAELSON: And lying in those ads over and over again and using rhetoric like you just used saying this is boys playing girls sports.
SINGLETON: Oh, which is -- what's the language you would prefer?
MICHAELSON: We're talking about trans girls playing -- playing, being allowed to play with the people who are in their gender. And if you don't believe, you don't have to listen to me. Listen to the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association.
SINGLETON: No, the American Medical Association --
PHILLIP: Guys, guys, just one second.
LOUIS: But this is not about the -- this is about trying to --
PHILLIP: Last word to you and then we have to go.
LOUIS: -- rile people up and throw this in a basket with the economic uncertainty and make a case that we have to disrupt this, we have to get these people out. You may not understand it, you may not believe it, you may not have any fact to support it, which is almost always the case, but we're going to tell you that it's time to change everything. Throw everybody out, even if you don't like Donald Trump.
And that's the margin of victory that he has. The people in the polls who said, I don't like him. I don't like the way he talks. I don't think he's actually very presidential, but we need disruption so badly between the ads, and the scary ads and everything else that's going on. Let's just throw everybody out.
PHILLIP: All right. Everyone, hang tight, we got more for you. Coming up next, Donald Trump made a lot of promises on the campaign trail, including, "the largest mass deportation in history". So, the question is, what will happen after he is sworn into office? We're going to discuss that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:36:01]
PHILLIP: Tonight, chapter 2 in what is going to be an ongoing conversation for us here on this show, taking a single Trump campaign policy promise and trying to understand how it's actually going to look as policy in the second Trump administration. This evening's topic is mass deportations.
Now, Democrats called it inhumane, and a key Trump ally counters that the president-elect isn't worried at all about perception.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEN CUCCINELLI, FORMER ACTING DHS DEPUTY SECY. UNDER TRUMP: There'll be a lot more efficiencies this time than there were last time, and the truth of the matter is the President himself in his first term held back very significantly in terms of the level of aggressiveness he applied in this area.
PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Why?
CUCCINELLI: Even on the even on the interior side. That's an excellent question -- because I think that he was concerned with the sort of attack that he would look mean and he is over that. He's over that. As we all saw, he ran on doing this, and he has a mandate from the American people to do it, and he's going to do it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: He ran on this. He ran on --
VEGA: That's right.
PHILLIP: -- camps. He ran on deporting all undocumented immigrants even including the many millions who are in the workforce and are contributing to the economy. That's -- that is real life, and that's what what is going to come.
VEGA: Yes, I mean, these are -- these are deportations will happen. The question remains, how much will they cost? What are the logistics of this? And what are the effects going to be legally, materially, and socially? Right? And I think, legally, we're going to see a battle here for sure.
Socially and economically, as you mentioned, Abby, this is a base of people who work, who contribute to the economy, who do a significant amount of work, particularly in our care economy and in manufacturing and also in agricultural work.
I mean, I've been -- if anybody's never been to the farms out in, you know, Santa Cruz, California, please go and visit and see for yourself the work that these folks are doing, largely undocumented folks. And I also want to point out that immigration is not a Latino issue specifically. You know, just weeks before the debate, we were talking about they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs, and we were talking about Asian immigrants to the United States. So, this is going to affect more groups of people, I think, than people are really aware of right now.
PHILLIP: And you talked about the price tag. There's some estimates. This is from the American Immigration Council -- $88,000,000,000 per year. And if you go all the way 10 years, what's -- that's at a million immigrants per year. You're looking at nearly a trillion dollars.
And this is, like, a somewhat conservative estimate. It's going to cost a lot of money. That's just in how much it's going to cost to execute it, not including the economic impact of it all?
PERRINE: Well, I think that there are a couple of things that need to be considered here. One, the Trump administration that's coming in has been clear that their first focus is going to be those who are violent, who have committed crimes here in the United States, and who are already being adjudicated through the process of the courts here in the United States, and have been flagged through the judicial system as somebody who has an ICE detainer or can be removed through the United States.
And two, when it comes to the monetary value, that means the House and the Senate are involved. All monetary legislation is going to start in the House. It will have to go through the Senate, it will go through on the budget reconciliation process likely when it comes to that kind of monetary spending, where it would be on a simple majority.
I've worked in both House leadership and Senate leadership. I've gone through the birdbath myself, which is the senate legislative process to make sure that something is fiscally appropriate that it can go on.
PHILLIP: So, what's the line, do you think? I mean, Trump --
PERRINE: It's going to have to be called since spending.
PHILLIP: Trump himself has said there's no upper limit to what he's willing to pay.
PERRINE: Well, that's one thing that has changed dramatically in the Republican Party under Donald Trump. We used to be the fiscal conservatives. And as we saw under the previous Trump administration, especially when it came to the Department of Defense and the Pentagon, spending was no limit. And so, I don't know that necessarily Republicans in this era believe that there should be, right, the limit does not exist to, "mean girls".
[22:40:01] SINGLETON: But I could see some pushback, though, Erin, coming from some of the conservative party. I mean, the I mean, not Tea Party.
PERRINE: I know. What era are we in?
SINGLETON: -- years before. But I can see some of the Freedom Caucus guys saying, wait a minute here, the debt is already at 30 plus trillion dollars. Do we have the ability to pay for this? So, I'm not necessarily searching how easy this this would be in terms of passing the House.
PERRINE: Hey, of course, there's Thomas Massie. Like, there are some members. When you have a one member majority in the House, yes, you get to a member of Thomas Massie in Kentucky where he is consistent on the budget stuff, that could be a member that could --
VEGA: Remember that you mentioned criminality and criminality and the fact that they want to go after the folks with criminal activity first. But in order to do this at scale, this is going to mean raids in people's homes. This is going to be raids in workplaces. This is not something that's going to happen one by one if what he's talking about is doing mass deportations.
I also think there was a lot of hot air. I think that, you know, that was a really big strategy to sort of get people to vote for him. The number of folks, I don't -- I can't, you know, I don't know how long long -- large that's going to be, but I do think that we need to understand the optics of this are also not going to look really loud.
MICHAELSON: I'm a little, I think I'm less focused on the financial cost than the moral cost. And there, I think it's a real open question what Americans will put up with or not. So, I agree. The low hanging fruit, I think there won't be a lot of discord around that. But again, when it gets to some of the more difficult --
LOUIS: Yes, it won't be a regular budget discussion about, you know, how are we going to build all of these detention plans.
PHILLIP: Let me just play this because I think we -- it's worth listening to this. This is, Indiana Senator-elect Jim Banks talking about what he thinks Trump has to do.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Children, adults, older people, they all should be gone?
REP. JIM BANKS (R) INDIANA SENATOR-ELECT: The goal should be to deport every illegal in this country that we can find. And I as I said a moment ago, if you take away the incentive for them to come here in the first place by -- by turning up the pressure on those who employ illegals, then then you've taken away the incentive. They're going to go back to where they came from.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LOUIS: That's not going to happen.
VEGA: No. It's not. The congressman, if he ever gets up to speed on this very basic issue, will see that something like a 100,000,000 people are migrating all over the world. It is unprecedented, but they're fleeing persecution, starvation, human rights violations, and all kinds of different problems.
Where are you going to send them to? What's -- how is this supposed to work? This has been going on -- this very much, like some of the other issues we were talking about earlier in the hour, is something that every country is dealing with. Europe's dealing with it. Asia's dealing with it. This is not going to be something where you just, like, sort of round up some people and send them where?
PHILLIP: I want to ask, Tanzina, this one part about the political part of this. This election, we saw a bunch of border counties flip to Donald Trump. Starr County is the one a lot of people talk about, 97 percent Hispanic. It was 42-58 Trump this year. Back in 2016, Hillary Clinton won 79 percent of this district. Explain, if you can, why -- why the border is flipping under these circumstances.
VEGA: I don't even think we have to go all the way to the border. We can stay right here in New York City and look at communities that have flipped, you know, immigrant communities in particular. I think the other question that we need to consider, as I mentioned earlier, immigration isn't just a Latino issue, and it's also something that if you happen to be Latino, and, again, that's a very imprecise term, I try to stay away from using it because it lumps in together Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, people who just arrived, immigrants, you know, 10th generation born folks.
There are people who are very disconnected from this issue, frankly. There are people that I've spoken to who say, look. I came in this way, whatever the right way was. We don't want other people coming in. I think there's a sense of there's a lot of xenophobia.
There's a lot of racism in that as well, but there's also a sense of fear, I think, that they're holding on to whatever they have. You know, why open this up to other folks? Right? Remember, at the same time, undocumented folks cannot vote, and so we are not hearing from the folks who are going to be most affected by this.
MICHAELSON: I think there's also -- there's a real unknown here, which is that while it's absolutely true, this is a global phenomenon. Europe is dealing with the same question. We have not yet seen what populations do when mass deportations actually happen. And I think that's the profound open moral question for our country.
I'm actually afraid that a lot of Americans will be okay with some of the family separation and with some of the excruciating acts that will be necessary to put this policy into action. But this is really Terra Incognita, and I think it falls to my colleagues in the clergy to call our attention to what it really means to see everyone as created in God's image and whether this is the kind of country we want to be.
PHILLIP: All right, everyone. Hold on for me. Coming up next, throw the bastards out. Someone at the table took a look at Trump's non MAGA voters and what they see.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:48:50]
PHILLIP: Tonight, a potential explanation from one of our panelists about why Tuesday night played out the way that it did. Jay Michaelson's column asks Democrats to do what they are probably loathed to do, "Try to see Trump as his voters see him." Jay, you talked about the global trends that are happening for incumbents. What else is the reason why we are here?
MICHAELSON: Well, I do think a lot of Democrats focused on what we, I see, as incredibly important features of who Trump is, right? January 6th, attacks on democracy, the felon convictions, and a lot of people, you know, I work also as a rabbi, and a lot of people are really terrified and upset as how could people vote for this person.
And I think there -- that we do need a little more imaginative empathy on the left side of the aisle to not see, you know and I've seen this in a lot of other conflicts. We see this in Israel, Palestine. We see this over and over again to try to see the other side the way that the other side could recognize themselves. And, obviously, folks at the table can speak for that.
But I think to see Trump as Trump voters, swing voters saw him, it's some of what we talked about before, right? That there is a real, I would say, spiritual malaise around the economy. And no data, we talked about it before, no data about the stock market is going to take that away when you go to the supermarket and eggs are more expensive and you can't make rent. And I think, see -- understanding that something has to change and putting it in a global context can also make me feel a little better about the country.
PHILLIP: Can I also just add to that perhaps that voters don't understand, the argue -- they don't really understand how to contextualize Trump is a fascist, Trump is an authoritarian, Trump is all of these bad things, and maybe they don't believe it? There's a believability gap here, that is part of it.
And I hear a lot of liberals denouncing people for voting for all of those bad words, but is it possible that voters put it to the side because they just don't think it's true?
SINGLETON: And I just feel like these are conversations that occur in neoliberal circles about Trump and his policies and many of the people who vote for him. I think you're absolutely right. And maybe if Democrats will listen to you, maybe they'll have a better chance in the next two years.
I mean, there is this idea that, you know, these highly educated people look down upon others who they sort of otherize because of their culture or because of their views and we sort of talked about it in a conversation about the ads and why they were effective. And I think you do have to make a serious and concerted effort to understand why is there this detachment. Why do people believe these sort of technocratic elites live in their bubbles while the rest of everybody else who the country really is built upon their backs, doing the hard labor, the hard work, and all the other folks said, well, this is how you should live. This is what you should believe. And if you don't vote this way or view things this way and vote for this guy, then you're abhorrent. You're racist.
LOUIS: Well, but people believe in the Constitution. They believe in the rule of law.
SINGLETON: Yes, of course.
LOUIS: They know that it's important. We have a lot of Americans who have served in the military. They understand what's at stake. What we need though or what has been lacking is politicians like a Joe Biden who will run at the issue rather than try to skirt it or run away from it, not talk down to people, but engage people.
SINGLETON: Like Bill Clinton did.
MICHAELSON: Bernie Sanders did, right? In the primary, Bernie attracted a lot of Democratic voters who were not Democratic socialists but they heard the message. And there were the Bernie to Trump phenomenon. A lot of us, I remember, were scratching our head back in 2016, like --
VEGA: To Cardi B - that was a big deal.
PERRINE: Having this conversation at this table right now, and I respect each and every one of you as brilliant individuals. It's never the -- it's almost like we're moon men walking for the first time on the moon, like, oh, how are you supposed to talk to the American people? Here's the thing. The reason Joe Biden, he might be, like, he might be a sala joe, he might be, you know, the American people still heard a president who was like, hey, you're fine.
It's -- a it's a detachment. It is a complete detachment by the Democratic party from the reality the American people were living. And even in your piece, you I feel that that a lot of the Democratic party is like, this feels so foreign to us that the American people wouldn't believe what we're saying, And they were screaming and pulling. It is the economy, stupid. It's not only immigration.
VEGA: -- about the economy -- it's this conversation that's scary.
PERRINE: The Democrats kept arguing about --
VEGA: What happens when we talk about the economy is that we think if you have a job, it's enough. And frankly, with 50 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck all the time, 70 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck some of the time. And that's the reality for folks with or without a college degree oftentimes.
MICHAELSON: I do want to say though that, well, I think that Donald Trump is excellent at diagnosing the problem and has been much successful at doing so than the Democrats. I do think his solutions are terrible.
UNKNOWN: Absolutely.
UNKNOWN: I assume that's why you didn't go for him. I'm just taking a wild guess.
MICHAELSON: That's right. Right. If tariffs ever happen, right, that will definitely not curb inflation. That will increase inflation. There is not if -- if another round of Trump tax cuts going to the top point one percent, you know, so we could have more superpowers in the United States. So, I don't I don't want to go too far, right? It is odd that the Democrats have a lot of nice solutions, but can't talk properly about the problem.
PHILLIP: All right. Jay Michaelson with the buzzer shot. Everyone, stay with me. Coming up next, the panel gives us their nightcaps including a call for a spending spree. A spending spree. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:58:06]
PHILLIP: We are back and it's time for the news nightcap. You each have 30 seconds to say your piece. Jay, you're up.
MICHAELSON: Here's what Joe Biden needs to do. Sixty billion dollars of the eighty billion dollars in the inflation reduction act for 2024 have not been spent. He needs to spend, baby, spend. We need to spend all of that money. There's three hundred and sixty-nine billion dollars. The irony is that a lot of the spending for clean energy is going to Republican districts. Republicans may save climate change legislation, and we need to spend all of that money now.
PHILLIP: All right, Erin.
PERRINE: I want to congratulate my incredible sister on being elected the 1st female district attorney of Wayne County, New York. Christine Callanan, you are a legend, and I could not be more proud of you as your little sister. Little sister, though. She's older.
PHILLIP: Well, congrats to Erin's sister. All right, Shermichael.
SINGLETON: So, look, I think we're all going to agree on this one issue with Donald Trump. He believes we should have a constitutional amendment to have term limits for members of Congress. The president has it. Why not members of the House? Why not members of the Senate? These guys go there. They get rich as heck. They forget about everybody else. Vote for them. Serve one or two terms and get the heck out of there.
UNKNOWN: Thumbs up.
PHILLIP: All right, Errol. Go ahead.
LOUIS: There's a promise that Donald Trump made. You know, I suppose you'll talk about it at some point, that he's going to get rid of the so-called E.V. mandate. There is no E.V. mandate. But given his friendship with, Elon Musk, it's not clear, though, where he's going to come down on E.Vs.
Not just because of his friendship with Elon Musk, but because where they make electric vehicles, and a record number were sold last year, where is it? It's Michigan, it's Georgia, it's Wisconsin, we're talking about 30,000 E.V. making jobs in Michigan, 40,000 in Georgia. He's going to have a very hard time keeping that promise.
PHILLIP: All right. We'll see if it's just for Elon Musk and not for everybody else. Go ahead, Tanzina.
VEGA: I'm going to change the tone entirely. All I have to say is that the Beatles should not be in the running for the album of the year. I remember Beyonce and Taylor Swift. They had their moments.
[23:00:00]
We do not want this. Make a separate category for A.I. music. That's all I have got to say.
PHILLIP: Oh my gosh, yes.
UNKNOWN: A.I. music.
PHILLIP: Co-sign on that.
PERRINE: Yes, that's good.
PHILLIP: We should just not put them in the same category. Everybody, thank you very much for joining us, and thank you for watching "NewsNight". "Laura Coates Live" --- she starts right now.
