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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip

Trump Expected to Pick Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) as Secretary of State; Trump Asks Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) as National Security Adviser; Trump Begins Naming Hardliners to His New Administration. AOC Asks Voters If They See Similarities Between Her And President-Elect; Comedian Toure Explains How Comedy Will Handle Another Trump Term. Aired 10-11p ET

Aired November 11, 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 ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, from Little Marco to Mr. Secretary of State, Donald Trump is expected to tap Florida's senior senator to be America's next top diplomat.

Also, the Trump transition, the picks are starting to come in, and Donald Trump is drafting hardliners to run his second term.

Plus, woke is broke. Democrats try to trace how they wound up in the political wilderness, as AOC goes into the comments section to find what her voters and Trump voters have in common.

And no laughing matter, Late Night takes the mic and offers two glimpses of how comedians will tell jokes about Trump.

Live at the Table, Mondaire Jones, Scott Jennings, Leah Wright Rigueur, and Josh Barro.

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, only the best people. Tonight, Donald Trump is making a major cabinet choice and sending a big signal about his foreign policy plans. Senator Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban exiles, Florida's senior senator, and Trump's onetime 2016 punching bag, is the president elect's pick to be secretary of state.

Now, the reasons for Rubio are pretty obvious. He's experienced, he's likely to sail through Senate confirmation. However, Rubio has spent the last several years converting from never Trump to MAGA, but the pick is an odd one, in a way, because Rubio's ideas, especially on Russia and Ukraine, they aren't exactly America first. Now, Trump also dipped into the establishment ranks to pick his national security adviser, opting for Congressman, Green Beret and noted hawk Mike Waltz, also of Florida.

Tara Palmeri, joins us in our fifth seat at the table today. She is the senior political correspondent at Puck.

And, Tara, this is a win for, of all things, kind of the establishment and, frankly, don't take it from me. Here is Trump Jr. or Donald Trump Jr. on this. He says, there's something about having someone from the outside the establishment -- from outside the establishment to further protect you from the establishment. He was arguing against Marco Rubio, and here we are.

TARA PALMERI, SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, PUCK: That's a very odd argument. And you also heard earlier today an entire like Twitter war among the grassroots saying, you know, block Mike Pompeo, block Nikki Haley. How is Marco Rubio any different than the former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, or Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador? I mean, it's clearly someone who is considered a neo con, and for so long, this was part of the reason why he wasn't chosen as vice president. I mean, there was an argument made internally that he was too much of a neo con and that was by Don Jr., and that's why they went with J.D. Vance.

I do know that Marco Rubio got priority above others because he was on the short list for V.P., and also Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, was really pushing hard for Marco Rubio. And I think if anything, this shows the power that Susie Wiles has in picking these positions.

Marco Rubio is a former client of Susie Wiles. They are very close. And she was lobbying very hard for him to be vice president for the running mate position, and she lost that one. But I think this time she put her foot down and made sure that Marco got this role.

PHILLIP: Florida is being represented quite strongly in the picks today but, I mean, the question that Tara asked was a good one. I mean, how is Marco Rubio any different from a Nikki Haley or a Mike Pompeo when it comes to foreign policy?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, he's a lot different. Number one, he campaigned hard for Donald Trump and did so without any reservation, whatsoever. I think he gave one of the best speeches at the convention. He was out there fighting for Donald Trump every single day. So that's number one.

Number two, the experience here matters. I mean, he brings a ton of experience into this specific position. And number three, let's remember one other thing. These people are not being picked to execute their foreign policy. They are being picked to execute Donald Trump's foreign policy. He's the boss. He'll be the president. So, whatever views you bring into one of these jobs, you're expected to execute Donald Trump's vision for the role, and obviously he trusts Rubio to do that.

[22:05:08] PALMERI: I mean, they'll always come in and they want to bring in their own influence into a job. You wouldn't take this job if you didn't have your own vision for the country. I mean, you see, you've seen this over and over again.

JENNINGS: I know. But he's an appointee and Donald Trump is the president. And I am certain before you make someone the secretary of state or anything else, you say, are you comfortable promoting and executing on my agenda?

PALMERI: What about Rex Tillerson?

JENNINGS: And you have to trust them.

PALMERI: Well, what about General Kelly? What about all the people he's appointed that have been --

PHILLIP: And then they ended up clashing with Trump.

JOSH BARRO, AUTHOR, VERY SERIOUS NEWSLETTER: I mean, that was the whole theme of the first Trump administration, this idea that he was being betrayed by the deep state, not just to mean, you know, staff, bureaucrats and career officials there, but people within his own cabinet. I mean, he, you know, grew so frustrated with Jeff Sessions, who he had picked to be his attorney general, fired him, blocked him from getting back into the U.S. Senate.

So, if I were a U.S. senator, I'm not sure I would want one of these jobs, because who knows if Trump is going to fire you in a year because he decides that you do, in fact, conflict with his vision in one way or another, and then may even further impede your political career. So, I think it's interesting that Rubio wants to be in the cabinet.

FMR. REP. MONDAIRE JONES (D-NY): We've already seen Marco Rubio evolve his position on the Russia-Ukraine war. A few months ago, he said that Ukraine has to end this war. It has to be done through negotiated settlement. And, of course, what that reads like to me is Ukraine needs to give up something to Russia, which would be horrible. And I don't think the Marco Rubio of old would have supported that kind of position.

So, I think you already see, to Scott's point, this nominee in particular changing his views to become more palatable to the incoming president of the United States.

PALMERI: It's different when you're auditioning, though. I really think it's different when you're auditioning. And there are going to be so many people around Marco Rubio who are going to try to sabotage him, that don't agree with his worldview and they can just cherry-pick all of his prior comments.

LEAH WRIGHT RIGUEUR, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: But I also think it's important to keep in mind, and this is the part about establishment politicians versus Trump loyalists, what have you. The real part is that you have to run the government. The government has to be run. It can't be run on campaign promises. It can't be just walk in and everyone says, okay, immigration, and that's it.

And I think it's one of the things that we will see is that, consistently, Trump is going to lean on these establishment politicians. We see it, not just with Marco Rubio. We're seeing it with other picks as well. These people who, by and large, are neo cons, right?

PHILLIP: Mike Waltz, who has been on this show, actually, recently, he is a Green Beret, he worked for Donald Rumsfeld, he has kind of like, neo con blood, and even went so far as to criticize Trump pushing for a withdrawal from Afghanistan. According to Politico, Waltz has warned about the U.S. completely pulling out of Afghanistan, the Florida Republican did it last summer when he cautioned about negotiations between Trump and the Taliban. He did it again when the Biden administration announced his plans for a complete withdrawal.

So, I mean, I guess the other question I kind of have in the back of my mind is, are we really looking at a Trump who is leaning on the neo cons or whatever, the establishment, or is this going to be kind of a bait and switch?

JENNINGS: He's leaning on people with the right experience. And if there's one thing about Donald Trump that he's proven to be able to do, it's bring together a very diverse set of people. I mean, think about the people who are around the table in this transition and who will be in these jobs in the administration. It runs the gambit from people like Stephen Miller all the way to a Marco Rubio to Waltz, Susie. I mean, these people all come from different wings of the Republican Party.

I think, if anything, Donald Trump is showing that he wants to have every -- you know, the conservative movement, the Republican Party has a lot of different corners and a lot of different people representing those corners. It's smart to bring in people from all these different corners. Maybe they don't all have the same exact vision, but that's a good thing.

PHILLIP: What's the policy going to be? I mean --

JENNINGS: Which policy?

PHILLIP: The Trump policy. I mean, are you expecting, and I'm wondering also if Mondaire can speak to this, you know, do you give a sigh of relief that maybe Marco Rubio won't be the guy to pull out of NATO?

JONES: A few years ago, Marco Rubio would have been the best person I could have hoped for as a secretary of state under a Trump administration. But when I read those comments he made about Ukraine, that gave me pause.

I'm a big believer in the fact and the idea that a president gets to appoint whoever he or she wants, right? I mean, that is what you do when you win an election. You get to advance your policies through your personnel decisions. And I'm not saying that like this isn't the best that we can hope for under a Trump administration is to have a guy like Marco Rubio, and yet I'm so alarmed by what may well be the quick end to this war to the benefit of Russia mainly with the United States.

PHILLIP: I feel like I have to say, I mean, a negotiated end to this war, it's not just Republicans talking about that. A lot of people think that might end up being the only way out of this war.

JENNINGS: How else is it going to end?

PHILLIP: Right. I mean, I think the question is, how much does Ukraine get to give back? So, you know, I mean, we'll see what that ends up being.

[22:10:03]

But it's also interesting that Trump is someone who doesn't like to forget the insults and the things that people have said about him in the past. I mean, here's one I think that might pique Trump's interest. This is on January 6th from Marco Rubio just a couple of years ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): We had police officers, the men and women that we walked by every single day that guard the doors and we say hello to, out there with riot gear getting spit on and attacked today, not ten weeks ago, just a few hours ago.

My entire life, I have lived with and next to people who came to America because their country was chaotic and their country was unsafe. What I saw today, what we have seen, looks more like those countries than the extraordinary nation that I am privileged to call home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: A lot of people have evolved since then, including our friend here, Scott, to the Trump side, even after that, and now Rubio is in the administration.

BARRO: Well, I mean, you know, the vice president-elect, J.D. Vance, is someone who has spent years being extremely critical of Donald Trump. He remembers these things, but he also moves past them. He's kind of capricious. So, that doesn't surprise me at all.

I think to Scott's point about having an ideologically diverse set of people, I think there could be virtues in that. The problem is that Trump seems to like to get a bunch of people in the room who disagree and just have them sort of fight it out. He draws energy from that.

PHILLIP: And that is good for you?

BARRO: And I don't that's a process that actually cleanly produces good outcomes. I think he's not providing the leadership from the top and you just -- I don't think, I don't know that there is a policy here. To your question about what is the Trump policy, either, I think he's going to bring a bunch of different people with different views and he's just going to sort of see how it goes.

JENNINGS: First of all, Trump is killing it right now on these appointments. They're coming fast. It's decisive. These are experienced people. He's obviously putting together a really talented administration and the people who are coming forward that want to say, yes, this is a good thing. And to the idea, why would you want to have 5, 10, 20 people in a room who are all just nodding, nodding, nodding? Don't you want ideas and let the best ideas rise to the top? That's what I would want if I were a president.

BARRO: I'm not saying you should. I'm saying that you need a president at the top who has a clear vision of exactly what it is that he wants to do, policy-wise. And I don't think Trump has that vision. I don't think that he brings that vision to bear, at least across a lot of policies, as we saw in the first administration.

JENNINGS: I disagree.

BARRO: I mean, you saw this on, you know, like, where is he going to be on trade? He has different advisors saying. He's serious about the 20 percent global tariff and then you have some of his economic advisers out there saying on Wall Street, oh, this is just a negotiating position. He doesn't believe it. Any of them could be right.

JENNINGS: I know where he was on trade in the first term. He cut great deals getting the NAFTA, renegotiated USMCA, did well with China. I mean, I think he wants to be tough on people until they want to work with us. The USMCA is fundamentally similar to NAFTA. I mean, that's the thing. He talked big that that was going to be a huge change.

JENNINGS: And seems to believe it's a great improvement.

RIGUEUR: But I also think that Josh's point is really important here, because you have all of these different peeping, but people that are coming together and ostensibly they are differing, they are challenging one another, they're coming up with the best policy. But the underlying thing that unites all of them is their loyalty to Donald Trump. So, if the leadership, right, if the leadership doesn't have a clear vision of what they are going to do, how they are going to proceed, then, really, all you have is a bunch of people arguing in a room who then swear fealty to whatever the guy who decides, you know, that he wants to make a decision that's going to do.

JONES: I think we know what his vision is on foreign policy. It's an isolationist vision. It is one that abandons our allies and that ultimately makes us less safe. And I think, sure, there'll be chaos in the meetings, but, ultimately, to a person, everyone understands that he wants us to be less involved in NATO, that he wants us to wrap up our involvement in this war in Ukraine and that he can be swayed, sadly, by the flatteries of dictators.

PHILLIP: All right. Guys, hang on, there's another side to this coin. We'll talk about it next.

Trump is recruiting hardliners to join the White House, including one of the most controversial MAGA figures of the past decade.

Plus, as liberals try to figure out what went wrong, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez gets surprised by what she and Trump share in common.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:15:00]

PHILLIP: Tonight, we're learning more about the men Donald Trump wants to carry out his agenda. We know them already. They are the dictionary definition of hardliners. Here is Stephen Miller, the always on Fox, former Trump official who wrote this line.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: And who takes America first to mean Americans exclusively.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN MILLER, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE POLICY ADVISER: America is for Americans and Americans only.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: And then there is Tom Homan, who doesn't blink when asked about the mass deportations that Donald Trump has promised during this campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have seen one estimate that says it would cost $88 billion dollars to deport a million people a year.

TOM HOMAN, FORMER ICE DIRECTOR: I don't know if that's accurate or not.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is that what American taxpayers should expect?

HOMAN: What price do you put on national security? Is that worth it?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?

HOMAN: Of course there is. Families can be deported together.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Tom Homan is a fixture for conservatives on this issue of immigration.

[22:20:00] And, I mean, it is what it is. Trump has ran on this. He promised mass deportations. He's picked the guy who's going to carry it out. He was just on T.V., as he has been much of today, saying, you know, he'd be fine if people just picked up and self-deported but the plan is to round people up in the interior of the country.

JONES: Yes. And Americans knew that when they voted for Donald Trump. I mean, you cannot -- this was a signature issue. There are a lot of things you could say people didn't know about because they didn't pay as close attention, but the idea of mass deportations, I mean, it's immigration, the border being a signature issue for this incoming president and for the electorate and a number of swing House districts, like in the one I just ran in was top of mind for people.

JENNINGS: Not only did people know it, it's overwhelmingly popular. Poll after poll after poll, Americans wanted this policy.

PHILLIP: Which policy exactly?

JENNINGS: Deportations.

PHILLIP: Mass deportations?

JENNINGS: Absolutely. And even Hispanic Americans wanted it, a majority of Hispanic Americans wanted it as well. It's just not controversial. Everybody's trying to make this controversial. It's not controversial.

A couple things, number one, presidents always deport people. Barack Obama deported 3 million people. This is not controversial.

PHILLIP: Yes. Actually --

JENNINGS: And on top of that one more issue, there's 1.3 to 1.6 million people who've already received deportation orders from a court. They've already gotten due process. That's a good place to start. Not controversial.

PHILLIP: Well, let me -- to your point about the deportations happening, one of the interesting things is, to your point, Barack Obama deported 2.9 million people in his first term, another 1.9 in his second term. But look at the Trump and Biden numbers. They're almost identical, they're almost exactly the same.

And then, just to add another point, because you mentioned the popularity of this, exit polling asked people, should most undocumented immigrants in the United States be offered a chance at legal status? 56 percent said, yes, in the same election in which Donald Trump won.

BARRO: There's a zillion different ways you can ask poll questions on immigration, and you can get people to produce answers that are very pro-immigrant and that are very anti-immigrant. Voters are cross- pressured. They see people in the community, and they realize that most of them, you know, are going about their day and working, and they also feel that the laws should be enforced. And so I think, you know, I wouldn't put too much weight on one poll question. I would put more weight on the election result, where you saw that obviously Trump won, but then also you saw that when you ask people, who do you trust more on immigration, Trump almost always won that question, which I think suggests that people in a vague sense want the more hardline approach on immigration.

Now, the thing about, you know, mass deportations and, you know, the, whatever it is, 20 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States, is it's logistically impossible to deport that large number of people, even if you want to. And the Trump administration is not going to do it. There could be a really substantial increase in interior enforcement in a way that could be, you know, somewhat effective, could be very disruptive, but it's not going to remove en masse this entire group of people. So if that's what people are actually expecting from Trump, then they're not going to get it.

But I think that, you know, in terms of what were voters looking for here, I think they want less chaos at the border. I think they want, you know, some of the changes that have happened over the last year. I think people expect a continuation improvement on that, a return to a situation that's more like before the Biden administration. But the politics of this changed because the situation on the ground changed, because you had this massive wave of immigration that was not authorized by U.S. policy. You've had all of this gaming of our asylum system. And so I think there is a mandate for Trump to do something here. I just think that it is a complicated and expensive area to execute. And I think a big part of his political problem is going to be actually doing what he said that he's going to do.

PHILLIP: Stephen Miller as a figure, I mean, when he was in the first Trump administration, I think he actually became so much more extreme actually and polarizing as that administration went on and as he left the administration. And there are many people who consider him to hold basically white nationalist views, but he's now in a deputy chief of staff role at this White House. What does that mean for a Susie Wiles who let's say that her job is to keep the clown car out?

PALMERI: Okay. Stephen Miller has always been involved in the inner circle throughout this entire campaign. Even before that, after January 6th, who was right near Trump? Stephen Miller, he never left his side. And even if he didn't have the title, he had a lot of influence in the first administration.

As we know, titles don't always matter around Trump. It's access to him. And Trump always had Stephen Miller by his side. He always had a line to Trump. Because he believed that Stephen Miller understood what the grassroots wanted when it came to immigration. And he had a policy. He came in with an agenda, he knew what he wanted. And he helped him craft his policy --

PHILLIP: Not just his policy but also his language around immigration is a big part of it too.

RIGUEUR: And so I would also point out that Stephen Miller is a figure who's not going to get through any kind of confirmation process, and so one of the best ways to ensure that he has access to Trump is to put him into one of these positions where he can be appointed.

[22:25:06]

I do want to come back where he can simply be appointed and has to bypass confirmation. But I do want to come back to this idea of, you know, is what is Trump going to do on day one. What are we going to see in particular given what Americans are interested in seeing or what they have given him, you know, permission to do?

And I think two things can be true at once. Both, he can reward his base and say, I'm going to do these things. And I think that is one of the first things that we are going to see. Stephen Miller has already been very clear about this is one of the first things that we are going to see. But it's also true that we heard from the base over and over again that they said they didn't expect Trump to fully act on these kind of immigration policies.

And so I think there, there are a lot of complications that come about because of immigration policies. And based on what we've seen with Trump, I think we may see a lot of pomp and circumstance. We may see a lot of rhetoric, including very aggressive rhetoric, but I don't know that we will actually see the level of kind of, quote/unquote, bloody deportation that he is promising.

I do think that we will see things that are alarming, particularly for people on the left who are concerned about immigrants and immigrant rights and the treatment under the law. But I don't know that we are going to see this kind of large scale --

PHILLIP: It's not going to be all of the undocumented people in this country.

PALMERI: Like he promised though on day one.

PHILLIP: It just logistically to both of your points, it can't be.

Tara, thank you very much for joining us. Everyone else stick around.

Coming up, what do Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President-elect Trump have in common? Well, for their voters, apparently a lot. We'll discuss that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:30:00]

PHILLIP: Who are Democrats and what do they believe? One of the most prominent progressives in the party is trying to get to those answers to these questions by asking the very voters who voted for Donald Trump but then still voted for her.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to know how there is a Venn diagram -- I think many of us want to know, where voters see similarities between her and the president-elect who is basically her polar opposite. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NEW YORK): There's a not insignificant amount of down-ballot Democrats like myself for which there were Trump AOC precincts or Trump slash Democratic House or Senate member precincts. And that I think is a very rich environment for us to dig into.

If you voted for Donald Trump and me or if you voted for Donald Trump and voted Democratic down ballot, I would really love to hear from you. I actually want to learn from you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: I mean we all do, to be honest. I mean yes.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I'll tell you what I think it is. People are sick and tired of fake, inauthentic politicians who can only operate off of a script, who are being handed things by consultants, whose every movement and facial expression is rehearsed.

And the thing that Trump and AOC have in common is that they both appear to be authentically speaking what's on their mind and what's in their heart at any given time. It's as plain as day the rejection of the political class in favor of the authentic class. And sometimes they're contradictory and sometimes they say things that make you lift an eyebrow, but that's the thread.

PHILLIP: I think you're spot on about that. Though -- I'm going to read though what she heard back from her constituents. One said, "You are focused on the real issues people care about, similar to Trump populism in some ways." Another said, "It's real simple. Trump and you care for the working class. Wanted to change, so I went with Trump and blew for the rest of the ballot to put some brakes. Both of you push boundaries and force growth."

But I mean, to Scott's point, I hear when voters say, okay it's about the populism and the working class. But I don't think a lot -- it's also about that the tone that the vibe of the candidate themselves and how they approach voters and whether they're believable.

LEAH WRIGHT RIGUER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: So, certainly, there's a lot that a lot of it has to do with energy. And I think one of the things that was really consistent about the people who gave AOC feedback, and I would say what she is doing is absolutely right. You should be asking voters why they voted the way that they did.

But one of the things that they consistently said over and over again is they felt like she was listening to them, that she was listening over and over and over again. They said the same thing about Donald Trump, those who voted for Trump, that they felt like they were listening and that they were getting it, that they weren't being lectured at.

I do think that this was an election that in a lot of ways was about anti-establishment candidates. So, a rejection of what they saw as establishment. But also, a rejecting and healthy -- I think a healthy skepticism of a political class that they have been very upset with for a very long time. And one of the things that Donald Trump did that I think was really quite effective in this election is he ran as an anti-establishment politician.

He ran by saying, you know, I am not them. And in an election where people were looking at incumbents and saying, all right, this is what the incumbent is doing. This is I am unhappy with the position of the incumbents, whether it be Democrats on the state and local level or whether it be at the federal level. One of the things that he said over and over again was, are you better off now than you were four years ago?

[22:35:00]

We know, especially in years where incumbents are trying to mount a campaign, that making that argument is something that cuts in to, particularly, this kind of establishment claim and resonates with voters. She did that very well and Trump did it as well.

PHILLIP: So, Josh, I'm going to quote Josh to Josh here. This is from your latest piece. "Trump didn't deserve to win, but we deserve to lose. As someone who lives in a place that is governed by, very badly, by Democrats, I can easily understand why, can you imagine what incompetent lunatic shit (ph) those people will do if they get control of the government?

Would fall flat as an argument against Republicans. The gap between Democrats' promise of a better living through better government and their failure to actually deliver better government has been a national political problem."

JOSH BARRO, CO-HOST OF THE "SERIOUS TROUBLE" PODCAST: Do you live in New York?

MONDAIRE JONES (D) FORMER NEW YORK CONGRESSMAN: Yes. Yes.

PHILLIP: What city run by Democrats are you talking about?

BARRO: Yes. I mean, and Donald Trump took more than 30 percent of the vote in New York City. It's the best performance by a Republican presidential candidate here since I believe George Bush Sr. in 1988. And he took about a third of the vote in AOC's congressional district, which is a diverse district partly in the Bronx, partly in Queens. A lot of Hispanic voters, substantial number of Asian voters in Queens.

And she, like most congressional candidates in New York, ran ahead of Kamala Harris which -- that doesn't surprise me. I hope she her campaign is out there with an actual poll in the district because the people --

PHILLIP: I'm sure that they are, don't you worry.

BARRO: Right, because the people who are responding on Instagram or people who follow AOC on Instagram are younger, more liberal than voters in this as a whole. I'm very interested to know what's happening there because the generation for Democrats is not just happening at a presidential level.

Grace Meng's district which is all in Queens -- Harris only won by five points. Meng, her own margin has been falling. She won with about 60 percent of votes is not close yet but there are these areas in Queens, in Brooklyn, in parts of the Bronx, where you're seeing real inroads, especially with Hispanic and Asian voters.

Republicans outright winning certain Asian neighborhoods in New York City. It has been a real deterioration with the working class, although in this election, actually, even in Manhattan, even in the wealthier lower parts of Manhattan, people's loss is around everywhere.

JONES: People see Democrats running their city and their state here in New York, and in many instances problems not improving, and they blame the Democratic Party and elected officials on the Democratic ticket.

JENNINGS: Yes, I mean, my God, they came and confiscated a squirrel and euthanized it the other day. I mean, this is like the worst run place in America.

WRIGHT RIGUER: You had to bring that in.

MONDAIRE: That was "Law and Order" as I mentioned to you.

JENNINGS: I know you were for killing the squirrel. FYI, everybody. But, but --

PHILLIP: Of all the problems New York City has got.

BARRO: That was upstate.

JENNINGS: I think it's competence for the Democrats. This is what sunk Biden and Harris. I mean, they promised that the adults would be in charge. And then it quickly became clear that the adults were not in charge. And that's what drove them under 40 percent to begin with, whether it was Afghanistan or inflation or other things.

And so, competence is an issue but I'm just telling it, to me, the real lesson here people want to see you do this on the fly, a high wire without a net. I mean, and that's what AOC appears to do and that's what Trump appears to do and it is appealing.

PHILLIP: There is a lot to politics that is exactly that. But Mondaire, I want to come back to you on this because I want to play what one Trump's political director of his campaign said earlier today about this ad about trans people that was for the Republicans. One of their most effective messages on the campaign trail. This is what he says it was about.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES BLAIR, POLITICAL DIRECTOR, TRUMP-VANCE CAMPAIGN: This really isn't even about transgender issues. This ad is really about misplaced priorities. At the end of the day, it is a small minority of the country that thinks taxpayer dollars should be spent on that sort of thing. And when you have a majority of the country who is saying very clearly that they don't believe the government is working for them, they're worse off than they were four years ago, the country is in the wrong track, people want the government to be doing what their priorities are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: You know, Maureen Dowd in "The Times" had a piece and the first line was, "Woke is broke."

JONES: Yes.

PHILLIP: So, I mean, what is -- what lesson do you take away from all this?

JONES: I still don't think people can define what woke is, but I think we generally know what people are referring to.

PHILLIP: I mean, at this point, it's lost its meaning.

JONES: Yes. I don't know that it ever had meaning.

JENNINGS: Well, it also lost the election. I mean --

JONES: I think it was inflation or the economy more generally and immigration. But look, my advice to fellow Democrats is to not be condescending when talking about some of these really complicated issues. People have a lot of questions about trans kids in sports, for example.

And I think rather than make people feel bad about the questions that they have and the concerns that are being raised, that a conversation be had, one that is respectful and understanding. And that does not in any way, of course, deny someone their dignity to be who they are and express, you know, how they're feeling.

But we saw an issue that is very rare in its occurrence, take on an outsized role in this campaign because of the amount of money that was poured into it and let's face it.

[22:40:00]

Because a lot of Republicans don't want to talk about their desire to repeal the Affordable Care Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, which kept the cost of prescription drugs. They were very happy to talk about kids and sports.

BARRO: Not just rare. My understanding is there have been zero trans surgeries for detained migrants and I believe two in the Bureau of Prisons for prisoners. But the thing is --

JENNINGS: And why did she say it?

BARRO: Why did she say it? No, that's my question.

JENNINGS: Why did she say it?

BARRO: She said it because she filled out a questionnaire from the ACLU in 2019 when there was a competition to get as far to the left as possible and make every specific promise to every specific interest group they could, and the ACLU cared about it. She didn't have to fill out the questionnaire. Joe Biden never filled out the questionnaire. He didn't have this problem in the 2020 campaign or when he was running.

The problem is that if you say something to one group, you say it in a questionnaire that actually CNN dug up earlier this year. She also talked about it on camera, so it was in the attack ads. You can't quarantine that and hide it away.

And in a few years when you're running a campaign somewhere else where that's unpopular, you know, the voters have object permanence. They know that you were talking about this in the past, your opponent will remind them you were talking about it in the past and remains as a liability.

So, Democrats, you know, that there was sort of this idea that there was temporary insanity in the party circuit 2019-20 and we said a lot of silly things and whoops, sorry, but the problem is that baggage stays with you. And you have to run candidates who don't have that baggage.

PHILLIP: I don't know if you don't want it to stay with you got to explain how you got from point a to point b which she -- she struggled to do in this campaign. We got to leave this one here. Everyone, hang tight. Coming up next from "SNL" to "Late Night"-- how will comedy handle a second Trump term? Another guest is going to join us in our fifth seat. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:45:55]

PHILLIP: A mea culpa, kind of, the joke-tellers at "Saturday Night Live" want the country to forget about all the laughs they had at Trump's expense.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOWEN YANG, COMEDIAN: On Tuesday, Americans went to the polls and elected Donald Trump to be the next President of the United States.

EGO NWODIM, COMEDIAN: To many people, including many people watching this show right now, the results were shocking and even horrifying.

KENAN THOMPSON, COMEDIAN: And that is why we at "SNL" would like to say to Donald Trump, we have been with you all along.

YANG: We have never wavered in our support of you, even when others doubted you. SARAH SHERMAN, COMEDIAN: Every single person on this stage believed

in you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Yes, that is a joke. But how comedy is going to handle a second Trump term is riddle. Do they go all in on making fun of the not so funny or do they look elsewhere for laughs? Joining us in our fifth seat is culture critic, Toure. You can follow him on his "Substack: Culture Fries by Toure". I want you to explain that title to me later. So, yes, I mean what do they do? What are they going to do?

TOURE, "SUBSTACK: CULTURE FRIES BY TOURE": You know, I wasn't really sure. I called a couple of comedians I know to try to unpack it. And one of them said, you can't just call him racist for four years, that is unsustainable, especially when a lot of the country likes him.

PHILLIP: You can't because they feel like they might --

TOURE: But you know, there's definitely a lot of silliness about this person. He is quite often not a serious person. And there are a lot of things that you can make fun of. And he is the gift that keeps on giving, as far as the things he says, the way he walks, the way he dresses.

So, they're going to continue to make fun of him, but they're going to have to modulate a little bit after this moment when so much of the country said, we like him. After 2016, there was still a large mood of like a lot of people who don't like -- now, so much -- the country said we actually like him or we accept him. So, comics are going to have to shift a little bit.

PHILLIP: I think it's also, I mean, the comedy shifted from just comedy to actual political positions. And then when Trump did win last week, I mean, here is the reaction from the late-night hosts, some of whom were actually involved in this last election.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JON STEWART, "THE DAILY SHOW" COMEDY CENTRAL HOST: This isn't the end. I promise you, this is not the end. And we have to regroup and we have to continue to fight.

JIMMY KIMMEL, "JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE" HOST: It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hardworking immigrants who make this country go -- for healthcare, for our climate.

SETH MEYERS, "LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS": This is a joyful place to work and we hope you can see the joy when you're watching at home. We're not going to let anything take that joy away. Even when we're talking about things that are not particularly joyful.

BILL MAHER, "REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER" HOST: Yes, we're going to keep doing jokes here, okay? Right? Both sides, right to the end. (APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Maher is the only one who kind of came out --

JENNINGS: Maher gets it. The rest of the -- I mean, there's these people have become pathetic. I mean, they stopped being comedians and they started be becoming political activists. I mean Jimmy Kimmel out here crying. I mean, it's pathetic. And so, my question is, if you're going to have a late-night comedy show, at some point people might expect it to be funny and not just a constant political screed against one party.

And you know, I don't know that this activism for four more years is sustainable. If you're going to market something as comedy but the actual product is nothing more than sort of low brow political activism.

TOURE: These people represent the way a lot of people feel so it will actually be interesting if the Trump folks could actually make us feel like we're not going to take away your rights and that doesn't make sense. You think it doesn't make sense. A lot of people think that actually makes sense. That is the way a lot of people see it.

PHILLIP: That is their audience.

JENNINGS: Is that their mission to be activists and not comedians?

TOURE: Well, sometimes the comedian does stop telling jokes and say serious things. And generally, a serious, a real comedian will have a serious moment in an hour-long set where I'm talking to you as a human-human and then come in with a joke.

[22:50:02]

But like yes, comedians are absolutely have the right to say serious real things about the world. That has been a part of comedy forever that we can say things that the average person wouldn't say.

JENNINGS: Just one other point, during the Biden years, there was nobody that provided more comedy fodder possible than Joe Biden. I mean, he was a walking --

TOURE: And he was made fun of.

JENNINGS: He was absolutely not. He was left alone. Harris was left alone.

TOURE: No. No.

JENNINGS: They got nothing. They didn't get 10 percent of what they deserved. Unbelievable.

TOURE: He is - he's too old. He doesn't understand.

JENNINGS: I mean, come on.

TOURE: He seemed like Gerald Ford the way they portrayed Gerald Heyward.

JENNINGS: They never got -- "SNL" never got Biden right until Carvey came in the last couple of weeks.

TOURE: They wrote -- significant White House correspondents there.

BARRO: I think comedians actually have a different problem here, which is that I think people are a little bit bored of Donald Trump in both directions. And I think you see this in the, frankly, in the cable news ratings, sorry, you see it in circulation numbers and subscription numbers for publications that are not "The New York Times".

I think that the level of sustained interest, not just outrage, but just interest in following day-to-day, you know, who did he fire today, that kind of stuff, I think is a lot lower. And I think it's not just a problem for news. I think it is a problem for the late- night shows. You know, if the late-night shows were broadly of interest to people who can't stand Donald Trump, their ratings would be a lot higher than they are right now.

And so, I think that, you know, part of the, you know, if you're a comedian who does not do a daily show that needs to be keyed to the news, I think the solution is that you are probably less political than comedy has generally been over the last few years, because I think people are exhausted.

PHILLIP: People want -- but might also want an escape. And also, given that Elon Musk kind of lost it about Dana Carvey's impression of him this weekend, it's not going to go over too well with this new crowd.

JONES: No, look, I'm - I don't watch late night except for your show.

PHILLIP: That sounded like an admission.

JONES: But I do think that even if you're a comedian who spends all of your time making fun of the world, there is a certain seriousness with which you have to take this period in American history. And when a guy like Donald Trump comes around and says he wants to terminate the Constitution and be a dictator on day one --

JENNINGS: Never happened. Never happened.

JONES: Yes, well he tried to when he tried to overturn the last presidential election.

JENNINGS: Never happened.

JONES: I was there for that, so that definitely happened.

BARRO: You said he would be a dictator only on day one.

UNKNOWN: Like you give that -- whatever that means. That's all you need.

WRIGHT RIGUER: That's also, that's like comedy in --

JENNINGS: He's the only one telling jokes in this election.

WRIGHT RIGUER: In the best of time, I mean in the best and the worst of times what comedy does exceptionally well is tell a story about who we are as an American people. One thing I will add in before we go to break is that I think that we are actually going to see a significant rise in the amount of comedy that is directed at the left and at the Democratic Party because comedy at its best is about punching up not punching down.

PHILLIP: Well, and I'd be curious to see if some of these were sort of right-wing comedic --

JENNINGS: Which late night show has the most has the best ratings?

PHILLIP: We got to go. Everyone, stay with me. Coming up next, the panel will give us their nightcaps including their takes on Harriet Tubman, butter and punctuation mark. This will be an interesting one, people.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIP: We are back and it's time for the "NewsNightcap". You each have 30 seconds to say your piece. Leah, you're first.

WRIGHT RIGUER; All right, so today is all about Harriet Tubman. So, it is Veterans Day and Governor Westmore of Maryland made Harriet Tubman an honorary one-star general. Her family was there, it was an incredible moment. It was a deeply moving moment. But for me, especially in a time where it really feels like black women, black history, black studies is under attack.

This is a really important reminder of the sanctity, of the importance, of the significance of somebody like Harriet Tubman, that her history is American history. But also that she is the truest kind of patriot because she fought for freedom, she fought for her country and she fought for democracy. So, here's to General Tubman.

BARRO: Beautiful.

PHILLIP: Here's to her. Go ahead, Josh.

BARRO: The exit polls. Everyone's desperate to know how Harris lost and why, and they rely on the exit polls. The problem is the exit polls are garbage. They just--they are not representative. They get people who are interested in spending time talking to an exit pollster on the way out of the polls.

In particular, the samples are way too educated. And so, the results are always inaccurate. In particular, people are throwing around this stat claiming that Harris ran 10 points better with the top third of Americans by income than Biden did four years ago. Now, all you have to do is glance at the map to see that's obviously

not true. He ran nine points worse than him in Greenwich, Connecticut and Loudoun County. People are so desperate to have any data to hang their hat on, they'll take even the bad data and they form false narratives about what happened in this election.

In like six months, we'll have good data from the Census Bureau, from Pew, we'll be able to talk authoritatively about what group she did better with and works with. You just have to be a little bit patient.

PHILLIP: You know, I'm with you on that one. Mondaire?

JONES: The Democratic National Committee is going to be having elections in the coming months, specifically an election for a new leader. And it is really important that as this party -- the Democratic Party, tries to rebuild and win the midterms and win the presidential in 2028, That we do some introspection.

There were so many people who, after Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance, said that he should stay in the race, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, with the voters and what we saw with our own eyes and what we heard with our own ears.

And the next person to lead that organization, the DNC, should not be one of those people who had the bad judgment to defend him staying in the race because it would have had even more disastrous consequences than what democrats experienced earlier this week.

[23:00:07]

PHILLIP: All right, Scott.

JENNINGS: Costco has been forced to recall 80,000 pounds of butter. Why? Well, the ingredients list didn't say that it contained milk, so the FDA and all its genius stepped in and forced a recall. My hot take tonight is when did America become this stupid?

PHILLIP: All right, Toure, you got a couple of seconds.

TOURE: You know, I've been a writer for 30 years. I still don't know how to use the semi-colon. Can we eliminate it? It's like a comma with an attitude. Is the sentence over? I don't know. How do I read it? Gets us all in the mix, and it doesn't make any sense. Can we just get rid of it?

PHILLIP: Okay, okay. All right, no semi-colons, everyone. Thank you very much. "Laura Coates Live" is up right now.