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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip

Two Trump Nominees Facing Viability Concerns Over Revelations; Trump Allies Lobby Him To Fire FBI Chief And Install MAGA Loyalist; "NewsNight" Discusses Voters' Reaction To Election Results; CNN's "Have I Got News For you?" Comedians Share Thoughts on Trump Administration Picks. Aired 10-11p ET

Aired November 15, 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, double trouble. The fates of two Donald Trump nominees already in doubt after new revelations emerge.

Also, Trump's shock and awe picks admit they'll be wrecking balls to Uncle Sam's staples. And now they may bulldoze without a permit from the FBI.

Also, as liberals embark on the We Told You So tour, Charles Barkley says they're anything but role models.

CHARLIES BARKLEY, FORMER NBA PLAYER: And I just want to say this to the Democrats, shut the (BLEEP) up.

PHILLIP: And that apparently includes Nancy Pelosi, whose star may be fading.

Live at the table, Catherine Rampell, Charlie Dent, Ameshia Cross, Jeff Bartos, and Marc Caputo.

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. Are doors closing in on Donald Trump's cabinet before it's even stocked? Tonight, a woman told the House Ethics Committee that she saw Trump's pick for attorney general have sex with a minor. That's according to her lawyer.

Now, remember, Matt Gaetz is Trump's pick to lead the Justice Department, the very department that investigated him for sex crimes and ultimately did not pursue those charges. In a statement, Gaetz's team responded to saying, quote, Merrick Garland's DOJ cleared Matt Gaetz and didn't charge him. Are you alleging Garland is part of a cover up? There is, however, trouble for another Trump pick, the defense secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth. Pete Hegseth's past is causing some headaches down in Mar-a-Lago. We are told tonight that Trump's team is now raising questions about his viability after word surfaced of a 2017 sexual assault allegation. The former Fox host was not charged or named as a defendant in any case, regardless, though, the revelation caught Trump's team off guard. And it underscores their lack of vetting, perhaps, among these nominees.

We're here at the table. You know, I mean, you have to wonder, is there anything that would tank Trump's nominees in this environment, in which they've got a pretty clear majority in the Senate, in which I think most of the senators seem pretty happy to just let Trump do whatever?

FMR. REP. CHARLIE DENT (R-PA): Well, I would say, in the case of Matt Gaetz, I bet they're going to have to withdraw his nomination. I think that's a bridge too far. No one should underestimate how much these House Republicans dislike him. I mean, dislike is actually -- that's a dramatic understatement to use that term to describe how much they dislike him, the House Republicans. So, I think he's got a problem.

You know, that ethics report that's looming. There's a good chance that might come out as well, and those reports are not pretty. I was chairman of that committee, and I can tell you, you know, you don't resign from Congress if that report's going to be clean. It's not going to be clean. And there could be a referral in there, too, to the Department of Justice. That happens from time to time, plus sanctions of all sorts.

PHILLIP: Yes. I also think, you know, the Matt Gaetz of it all is so strange because these allegations have been out there. And I also think it's interesting that statement that they put out that we read Merrick Garland's DOJ cleared Matt Gaetz. It is true, right? It's also true that Donald Trump's DOJ initiated this investigation. It seems to undermine Gaetz's own justification for wanting to wreck the Justice Department. They're not pursuing justice against him, apparently, and that's not a conspiracy, but he's been dealing with this for a really long time. And there's stuff underneath the surface, but obviously it hasn't come to charges.

MARC CAPUTO, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, THE BULWARK: Well, it hasn't. He wasn't cleared. They just didn't bring charges. And the reason they didn't bring charges, not only has he been stuck with this for a few years, so have I, I've covered it since 2021, I have a PhD in this, unfortunately, is that there just wasn't enough credible evidence and a lot of the witnesses had credibility problems.

But the young woman who we believe gave the statement was among those who had credibility problems in the eyes of the Department of Justice, specifically if it's the woman who's known as K.M. She had apparently encouraged this minor to sell herself on seeking arrangements, a dating website, and act in a prostitution fashion, knowing the young woman was underage.

[22:05:07] Therefore, this witness herself was, by her own admission, essentially guilty of sex trafficking a minor herself. That's the reason, in part, that DOJ never brought these charges.

PHILLIP: But even all of -- I mean, all of that is, whether it's true or proven, or true or false, it's problematic that the guy who is being nominated to be at the Department of Justice has that in his record. And then we're also learning that the Trump transition team has tried to avoid or has avoided FBI background checks, which are typically standard for these kinds of positions. Why?

CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, presumably because they know that their candidates would fail them. Like why else would you not vet them, or why else would you not have this very standard security procedure go in place, unless you thought that they were potentially going to fail the test, essentially?

I mean, I think what's interesting here is that besides what we know or don't know about what Matt Gaetz may have done behind closed doors, and the allegations are quite disturbing, there's plenty of stuff he's done in public that I think should have disqualified him from this job, including bringing a Holocaust denier to the 2018 State of the Union, including palling around with the Proud Boys, a white supremacist group. You know, there's plenty of stuff that was bad enough that you don't even need to get to the possibility of child sex trafficking, in my view.

AMESHIA CROSS, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, if that was the case, then there's plenty of things that would disqualify Donald Trump from ever being president United States as well. I think that at the end of the day, there are also at least a couple of Congress members at this point who are also Holocaust deniers.

The American voter has decided to take a very different path when it comes to what is acceptable and what is not in the past few years, a place that we had not seen them, you know, in decades prior. But these are interesting picks. Part of it I think is the shock and awe factor of Donald Trump trying to showcase just how far he can go.

The other part is him basically owning the party. And because he feels that he had a mandate in this most recent election, MAGA is not going away, he is choosing the most radical people he possibly can, acknowledging that they have questionable past, but, hell, he does as well.

JEFF BARTOS, TRUMP CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISER IN PENNSYLVANIA: I don't agree with that. I think what we saw in the election just ten days ago or so, the American people gave the president a mandate. And they knew -- I mean, the president -- I was at a lot of rallies around Pennsylvania for President Trump and for Senator Vance. And the weaponization of the Justice Department and what happened at the FBI and what happened at DOJ was brought up. I can't recall a rally where it didn't.

So, voters clearly understand. I think we need to give some credit to the voters here who looked at all of this and said we trust Donald Trump to make America great again. We trust Donald Trump to fix the economy, fix our borders, secure our borders, secure our communities, bring peace through strength. And we trust him to make the picks in his cabinet that are going to make those policies a reality. So, the president's making a selections. The Senate is going to do their investigation. They're going to advice and consent. We're going to have hearings. But I think to say that --

CROSS: Well, my argument was never that they didn't understand. I never said that. I think that they fully understood it and they went along with it. That is also problematic. I never said that the American public didn't understand. All the evidence was there before them. They saw it.

BARTOS: I think you should give the voters credit. I mean, I can always --

CROSS: I do. I give them credit for making the choice that they made, irrespective of all of the things that were problematic, that are outside of --

BARTOS: Well, they prioritized other things. They prioritized the cost of eggs. They prioritized being able to put gas in the tank. They prioritized having a safe, secure community. They prioritized not having fentanyl in their communities. They prioritized peace and strength.

RAMPELL: I agree that probably people were voting based on the price of eggs, but the argument that I think you're also making is that now Trump has a mandate to do all of this other stuff that voters were not motivated by, including putting a alleged child sex trafficker/pal of Holocaust denier in charge of the DOJ.

PHILLIP: I mean, the Pete Hegseth of it all as well. I mean, how committed do you think, Marc, that he is to this? And what exactly do you think he wants Pete Hegseth to do?

CAPUTO: Well, from what I understand, the top mandate is to get rid of the wokeness, his, not my words, in the Department of Defense.

PHILLIP: Which we've discussed here, yes.

CAPUTO: This was something that Hegseth had said on a podcast just like a week before he was chosen, or it aired about two weeks before. That's his mandate. And the idea that Donald Trump is going to back away from a man that he has nominated because he's been accused of sexual impropriety strains credulity.

PHILLIP: Can I play this from Congressman Ryan about why he thinks so many of these candidates and their problems seem to kind of circle around the same drain, so to speak?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PAT RYAN (D-NY): This is a pattern if we zoom out across all these nominees. You have Matt Gaetz. You have now Hegseth. You have the president-elect himself and a whole host of others with longstanding patterns of disrespect for women, in Trump's case, civil liability, for these types of charges.

[22:10:01]

So, I don't know why anybody is surprised, frankly, That's, I think, something I wish I didn't have to say.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: It is strange that -- I mean, look, I got three guys at the table here. As far as I know, I don't think there are any allegations against you in this vein. Most people don't have allegations against them in this vein. How did we end up here?

BARTOS: Well, I mean, it wasn't -- I'm old enough to remember when these allegation smears against then Judge Kavanaugh, now Justice Kavanaugh, reared their head at the last minute, and the nation was riveted to these hearings. Justice -- well, Judge Kavanaugh at the time, he stood firm, he looked the camera right in the eye, he pushed back against those allegations, he was confirmed, he's turned out to be a spectacular justice, an excellent justice of the United States Supreme Court.

So, these smears happen. I mean, it is -- there is a pattern here of smearing people who President Trump has nominated to high positions.

PHILLIP: I don't know that we are at the point where we can describe either of these incidents as smears. I think the argument that Hegseth's lawyers are making is that he wasn't charged and that there's no active case in here. It's not a denial and nothing happened. So, we're not there yet.

RAMPELL: I mean, a smear suggests that somebody went back in time and called the police retroactively about this alleged sexual assault.

PHILLIP: Yes.

RAMPELL: Right? I mean, this also is on the record from before.

BARTOS: This is from 2017, right?

CROSS: And this also plays very strongly into how sexual assault cases work. Over 80 percent of sexual assault is not charged. So, I think that, you know, this goes down the path of how, in many cases, there are women who --

PHILLIP: But there is also a House Ethics Committee. There's a document, right, that has these allegations against Matt Gaetz. They have them. And Speaker Johnson has said, oh, it's not appropriate to release these documents. Matt Gaetz resigned this week before any paper has even been sent over to Congress, a couple of days before this report was supposed to be put out, so that it would not be put out, it seems. Does that hold water for you?

DENT: Well, what's not appropriate is for the speaker of the House to tell the Ethics Committee what they can and cannot do. When I was appointed as chairman of that committee by John Boehner, the only thing he ever asked me is just make sure the committee functions. They never got involved in the investigation. Speaker Ryan also was -- he was speaker too when I was chairman. They never interfered. The committee makes these decisions themselves. It's not -- I don't think it's appropriate for the speaker to try to tell them what to do.

And, by the way, there's plenty of precedent for releasing these types of public statements or reports after a resignation. In fact, the man who preceded John Boehner in the U.S. Congress was issues with a 16- year-old child and he was, he left Congress and Boehner came in, but they released a report afterwards. There was another case I think in 1980 as well.

PHILLIP: So, there's definitely precedent to release the report?

DENT: There's two. You remember Congressman Blake Farenthold?

PHILLIP: Yes.

DENT: There were statements made after his departure. So, it's only -- and, by the way, usually when somebody is forced to resign for misconduct, they usually go away quietly. But this man is being elevated to become the top law enforcement officer in the United States. This is unprecedented. Usually, they are not promoted. Usually, they resign and they go home and in disgrace in many cases. This is a very different situation.

PHILLIP: They're going to have to figure it out. Any chance you think that they will withdraw these nominations? I mean --

CAPUTO: This is where I disagree with Charlie. From what I've been told by the Trump team is they think they can actually get him nominated.

PHILLIP: Gaetz?

CAPUTO: Gaetz.

PHILLIP: And Hegseth?

CAPUTO: And if they can't get -- yes, they're not worried about Hegseth, at least not right now that I'm told. And if they can't get Gaetz through the Senate, Trump, I'm told, will use a recess appointment and will make him the attorney general through next December, December of, what, 2025.

DENT: It's easier said than done.

CAPUTO: That's what I'm told. I don't know if it's true.

PHILLIP: Buckle up, folks. Buckle up. Everyone stick around.

Coming up next, why MAGA is pressuring Trump to put one of their mercenaries in charge of the FBI. Another special guest joins us in our fifth seat.

Plus, the dunking on liberals for their loss is now coming from royalty.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARKLEY: And I just want to say this to the Democrats, do me this favor, shut the (BLEEP) up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:15:00]

PHILLIP: Tonight, will Trump nominate the deep state destroyer? New reporting tonight that Donald Trump is facing strong pressure to pick Kash Patel to lead the FBI. Now, if you're not familiar, Patel is seen as a MAGA faithful. He worked behind the scenes of the first Trump administration at the National Security Council and the Defense Department.

And some of Patel's greatest hits are that he tried to declassify intelligence related to Russia that Trump thought would reveal a big conspiracy against him. After the 2020 election, he was reportedly a driving force in the administration, pushing the lie that Trump won. He spent the better part of the last four years screaming that the FBI is a deep state hive, while he's been sanitizing the crimes committed by convicted insurrectionists. And now Patel could be in charge of that very hive.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KASH PATEL, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF TO ACTING DEFENSE SECRETARY UNDER TRUMP: And I always say this about Jan. 6, some people come in at some pretty violent stuff, they need to go away. But when you're bringing in the 65-year-old grandmother who doesn't have any priors and she's held without bond for years to force pleas so that you can weaponize and politicize the two-tier system of justice even further, so that Christopher Wray, the FBI director, can go to Congress and lie and say, domestic terrorism prosecutions are on the rise.

[22:20:00]

It's a political narrative and it's tough to defeat.

When you look at some of the people involved, their lives have been destroyed by the Justice Department because of a political vendetta they want to enact through the justice system to take out Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Joining us at the table now is Shawn Turner, the former director of Communications for U.S. National Intelligence, and former press secretary for foreign affairs at the National Security Council.

Shawn, what's so striking to me about this pick and so many of the other ones so far, the more controversial ones, is that they all revolve around incredibly narrow slices of what these massive departments do, and the plan is to basically try to gut and malign and demonize the people who work at the FBI, the DOJ and other places. As someone who's been in those circles for a long time, what do you make of the prospect that he could be in charge of top law enforcement agency in the country?

SHAWN TURNER, FORMER COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, U.S. NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Yes. Well, you know, Abby, in a word, it's startling. Look, the issue I have with Kash Patel beyond the lack of experience and the talk about weaponizing the FBI is that he has -- he clearly has a sort of burn it down mentality with regard to the FBI.

Look, in this country, the way that we determine that agencies have abused their authority or violated the law is we do investigations, we look at the evidence and we hold people accountable. The problem with Kash Patel is that, you know, we don't make sweeping decisions based on melodramatic statements like, you know, the FBI is corrupt, so we need to clean house. But he clearly approaches this, would approach this job from the perspective that he needs to reshape this agency in his form.

And the problem with that is that look, a lot of really good, important law enforcement work won't get done by the people there, and that's just something we should all be really concerned about.

PHILLIP: I mean, why is the entire government now oriented around what seems to be Donald Trump's gripes about --

BARTOS: Because that's what he ran on.

PHILLIP: I mean --

BARTOS: But to be fair, and I know Jash very well, he's a friend, he's very smart. He came to Washington to work for Congressman Nunes, the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, very idealistic when he came to Washington. And when he got to work and saw the way that the DOJ and the FBI and the Steele dossier and all the things that were targeted against President Trump, and then, of course, you get to the independent -- not the independent counsel, but you get to the Mueller report, all of that, the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, Kash uncovered a lot of that. Devin uncovered a lot of that. They're very smart guys and they saw what happened. And so Kash's background in all of this is watching some actors.

And I think it's a fair comment to say that it's not the whole agency, but a reformer's mentality to say, I know how bad this can get, and the way this was a drag on the first term, Kash would be coming in I believe very much as a reformer to look at the FBI and say, this can never happen again. Not only did Donald Trump, any future Democrat or any future president, he has that mentality.

PHILLIP: To Shawn's point, okay, let's say there is wrongdoing, why is there no thought that there should be a process around this? Why is there no thought that actually these people who are being accused of wrongdoing maybe should have due process, maybe should have their actions looked at by an independent person as opposed to this guy who, by the way, is, you know, a 2020 election truther, who himself is not a neutral arbiter on these issues?

BARTOS: Well, to be, again, to be fair, we don't know what he would say in a hearing, but I do think that's the job of the Senate if he's nominated. If he's nominated to be the FBI director, he'll go through a process with the Senate and they're going to ask him a lot, the Judiciary Committee will ask him a lot of questions about that.

DENT: We need to talk about qualifications of some of these candidates. I mean, I'm sorry, Kash Patel, he doesn't strike me as he's ready to be head of the FBI. Pete Hegseth, I appreciate his service. But, you know, he ain't no Jim Mattis or a Richard Perry or a Bob Gates. And these people had gravitas and real experience taking over these agencies and departments. Our former governor, Dick Thornburg, was an attorney general, a governor, a very buttoned-down lawyer. I mean, that's what kind of disturbs me about all this, real, serious people.

RAMPELL: What disturbs me is not how young or inexperienced or whatever. It's that Kash Patel wants to lock up journalists. Like he has said that. He has said that one of the jobs of the next Trump administration should be a sweep, where they lock up all the journalists, because, apparently, the First Amendment no longer applies. I mean, I think that is way more disqualifying than anything else that we've been talking about.

PHILLIP: And, Marc, you, I mean, you were correctly saying --

RAMPELL: This is -- yes, authoritarian instincts.

BARTOS: Of course, President Trump did run on the First Amendment, I mean -- and freedom of speech. He talked about it.

RAMPELL: And locking up the journalists and shooting the journalists.

PHILLIP: He also argued that six, you know, CBS' broadcast license should be taken away. So, it's only a little part of the First Amendment that he's concerned about. But you were saying, I mean, correctly, that, yes, I mean, Trump did tell people that he was going to vindicate himself, and that was going to be what he wanted to do as president.

[22:25:02]

And that's what he's doing with this Kash Patel, potentially.

CAPUTO: Right. The more we at this table, or maybe not all of us, complain about Kash Patel, the more Kash Patel is described as unqualified, the more likely it makes it that he's going to be the next FBI director. Like Donald Trump ran on taking a wrecking ball to the system, as you said at the beginning of the show. And Kash Patel is just one of those big hunks of steel that is going to slam into the wall of the FBI.

TURNER: Look, I, you know, and I think this is a good point. We may be talking about Kash Patel too much, but we really should be thinking about what this means for these agencies. I mean, look, Kash Patel, his approach will break the FBI. Make no mistake about it. And it's not that what he wants to do in terms of finding what's wrong in the FBI and rooting it out and dealing with it.

It's not that there's anything wrong with that, but you have to understand that in each of these agencies, and I'm thinking about my old agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in order to do these jobs effectively, you must have experience. You must have a background in the areas where you're going to be working. And if you don't, then you must surround yourself with the people in those agencies who understand these jobs and who can help impress upon you the weight of these jobs. And I just don't see in many of these candidates any indication that that's the kind of thing they're going to do.

BARTOS: Of course, the last four years was all about the adults being back in charge, and the world's on fire, the border is open, and our economy was broken. So, I think, let's give a little deference to the reformers and --

DENT: We should talk about the mandate.

PHILLIP: I mean, let's just put -- I mean, to put -- can we just put for a second aside the talking points on that front? I mean, just practically, the FBI, which does, I think you would agree, quite a lot of things that don't have anything to do with Donald Trump or Republicans, the question is, is he qualified to do it? Do you think he's qualified?

BARTOS: I do. I do.

PHILLIP: And why?

BARTOS: I've spent a lot of time with him. I find him to be very smart. I find him to be very focused. I find him to be very interested in reforming. He cares deeply about this country.

PHILLIP: He's interested in reforming the FBI only as it relates to Donald Trump and his supporters.

BARTOS: That's not -- I hear you, I hear what you're saying.

RAMPELL: And throwing the journalists in --

PHILLIP: And throwing journalists in, perhaps.

BARTOS: That is not my perspective, that's not my take, and I've spent a lot of time with him.

PHILLIP: Charlie?

DENT: Well, I just got to say again, You know, we need people with serious experience. You were in intelligence, Jim Clapper, 40 or 50 years in the intelligence realm. I mean, I think --

CAPUTO: I'm a liar, though, you know?

DENT: I'm just saying. But he knew the business. These people knew the business. And I'm just --

BARTOS: Like the 51 intelligence experts and the Hunter Biden laptop.

DENT: But let's talk about the mandate. But look at the mandate. When you get --

PHILLIP: Every time that that comes up. I don't even understand it. Those guys were not even in the roles. They're former, literally by definition. It doesn't matter what they say in a letter.

CAPUTO: They're exercising their right to free speech.

PHILLIP: Yes.

DENT: But you know what? Why is it that -- you know, okay, Donald Trump has a mandate to deal with the border deal with inflation and the economy. It's not to do whatever the hell he wants to take retribution against everybody who he feels wronged him. And yet, by the way, Biden misread his mandate too. I mean, his wasn't -- he didn't have a mandate to go big or to be FDR or to be LBJ.

PHILLIP: I don't think it matters, honestly. I mean, I don't think Trump thinks it matters whether he has a mandate.

CAPUTO: Trump just thinks if he's got the votes, he's going to do it.

PHILLIP: Yes.

CAPUTO: Well, he's got the votes right now.

PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, Republicans could get killed in the midterms. I don't think Trump cares about that either.

BARTOS: Isn't that the beauty of our system? The voters have their say. And we just saw it ten days ago, and we saw it in the midterms in 2022, and we saw it in 2020 as well.

PHILLIP: But there is damage that can be done.

RAMPELL: The Constitution still matters. I'm sorry, I can't get past the like locking up all of the enemies, whether they're journalists or otherwise. That matters. I don't think the voters get a say on whether the First Amendment still exists.

BARTOS: And, again, I would say, first of all, on the record, I don't think journalists should be locked up.

RAMPELL: Thank you, I appreciate that.

BARTOS: I'm a big fan of journalists.

CAPUTO: Great job, Jeff.

BARTOS: Thank you.

RAMPELL: I assume I'm not at the top of the list anyway. BARTOS: There you go. But I would say, of course, that, you know, when we're looking at this, President Trump ran -- I mean, he talked about the First Amendment at every rally. He talked about it in every interview. He talked about free speech. So, I think we have to, again, give these nominees an opportunity to get before the Senate. They're going to get asked a lot of questions.

RAMPELL: Okay. No, I'm sorry. What politicians do is so much more important than what they say. And if you look at what Donald Trump did when he was in office, he tried to -- first of all, he tried to block the merger of the parent company of CNN because he didn't like CNN. He frequently tried to pursue -- he tried to sic various FBI investigations, IRS investigations. His staff blocked him on his personal enemies. He frequently -- you know, he talked about trying to take away the broadcast licenses of various news organizations. I'm not even sure what that means.

I don't care if he talks the talk about the First Amendment. He needs to walk the walk.

PHILLIP: He also -- I mean, I would argue honestly, he does not really talk the talk on the First Amendment.

RAMPELL: Also fair.

PHILLIP: He only talks about free speech as it relates to speech that he likes.

[22:30:01]

You have to have like fairness about that. It's not just the people that you like, it's also the people that you don't like. He doesn't like it when journalists say things he doesn't like.

And he wants them locked up. He's also said, I mean, he wants people who disagree with him that the election, which was free and fair in 2020, was fairly won. He wants those people locked up, too.

BARTOS: So -- and, let's look at the contrast of that, which is that Elon Musk, who is the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, is with the president -- what do they call him now, First Buddy? X is whether you like it or not, there is endless amounts of free speech on Twitter.

PHILLIP: I don't think that has anything to do with Donald Trump's views. Again, it does not have anything to do with Donald Trump's views on whether free speech really is free. He really cares about whether you -- if you sat in front of Donald Trump and you said, Mr. President, you lost the last election. Guess what he's going to say to you. I don't want to ever see you again.

BARTOS: I disagree with you. I disagree with you.

PHILLIP: Have you ever said that to him? Have you ever said that to him?

BARTOS: Well, we've never talked about that. We talk about Iran. We talk about anti-Semitism. We talk about supporting Israel.

PHILLIP: I think we've heard enough.

BARTOS: We have not talked about that.

PHILLIP: We all know what would happen if that ever came up in the conversation. Sean Turner, we appreciate you for joining us. Everyone else, hang on for us. Coming up next, more finger-pointing within the Democratic Party after their election loss. This time, they're turning to -- and turning on former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:35:52]

PHILLIP: Tonight, the grief process for liberals has hit the anger stage. Some are sick of one of their own legends, like Nancy Pelosi. We'll get to that in a moment. But first, other Harris voters are just plain sick of the Democratic Party itself.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLES BARKLEY, ANALYST, TNT'S "INSIDE THE NBA": And I just want to say this to the Democrats, which I'm an independent who voted Democratic. Do me this favor. Shut the (BEEP). When you win, you get to say what you want to. When you lose, you need to shut the hell up.

Oh, President Biden, they didn't get him out of the race soon enough. Kamala didn't do this. We lost because we had no game plan. We still haven't solved the immigration problem, have no viable answers, never addressed inflation. Bringing all these stupid stars out to rally the vote. What was that?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Ameshia is back with us now. I mean, does he have a point?

CROSS: I think he was 100 percent on target. Democrats are licking their wounds, but they're also looking for somebody to blame. At the end of the day, the message didn't land. The issues that they were focused on were not issues that the American voters were focused on.

And they lost ground not only in the states that they lost, which was all the battleground states, but also in places like my hometown in Chicago, where you see there being a ticker point up for Donald Trump, who previously would not have stood a chance in a city like that.

I think that there's a reckoning that has to happen. And sitting around and, you know, trying to play the blame game isn't necessarily helpful. This is something that has been built over time. They do have to, you know, rectify with themselves how they're actually listening to voters, but also creating and speaking about the policies that matter to them and talking to them and not at them.

There's a lot that needs to be handled but I don't think that going back and talking about the globe that was in Nevada, the celebrities, stupid move. However, that's not what cost Kamala Harris the election.

PHILLIP: I mean, those are symptoms of larger problems.

DENT: This is a time for introspection now if you're a Democrat. You lose, you need to analyze what right -- what went wrong. And a lot went wrong. They didn't take the border seriously enough. They were late in the game on inflation. I got a long list of things that they didn't do right.

Their candidate was too old. Seventy percent of the American people were telling us that said -- that one candidate was too old, the other, too dangerous. And what did the parties do? They gave us the old guy and a dangerous guy. That's what they did.

And so, they should be having this conversation. And that's why they're talking about bringing guys like Rahm Emanuel back in to help right the ship and who knows who else.

CROSS: Well, they forget that Rahm Emanuel, again, as a native Chicagoan, 16 shots and a cover up is a real thing. We think about Laquan McDonald. We think about the diverse members of the party who are stalwarts against anything and everything Rahm Emanuel.

We think about the largest closings of school -- public schools in the nation's history happening in Chicago under his regime. He is not someone who's a unifier up today. Now, if you had to set this 15, 16 years ago, absolutely. But reaching into the recycling bin to bring somebody who's supposed to unify today is problematic.

PHILLIP: Let me play, let me play with David Axelrod, who was the first person I saw talking about this. What he says about Rahm Emanuel and why he would be good to revamp the DNC, for example.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID AXELROD, FORMER SENIOR ADVISER TO OBAMA (voice-over): "Well, what should we do? Who should lead the party? I would take Ambassador Rahm Emanuel and I would bring him back from Japan. And I would appoint him Chairman of the Democratic National Committee because he is the most skillful political kind of in-fighter in the Democratic Party. He's been -- you know, he's been a member of Congress. He's been White House Chief of Staff. He's been the Mayor of Chicago. He knows how to do this and he would be a presence in, you know, in the media and so on, fearless about taking on Trump."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: I hear what Ameshia's saying and I think that a lot of Democrats will agree exactly with what you're saying.

[22:40:01]

Here's another way of looking at Rahm Emanuel. If you need somebody in the Democratic Party to say, to give the middle finger to a bunch of different constituency groups and do what needs to be done to win, it kind of sounds like what our friend David Axelrod is saying is that Rahm Emanuel, who's known to be a pretty, you know --

CAPUTO: In-fighter. In-fighter.

CROSS: Rahm Emanuel got --

PHILLIP: Keyed in on that, too. I think that that's what he would have --

CROSS: He would have still been there. But the only reason the lawyer liked that was because Rahm Emanuel couldn't put together his own coalition.

BARTOS: Which I think we give a lot of credit to -- I mean, I understand from my -- where I said, the Washington Democrats nationally lose this election, all the battleground states, they were structurally incapable of responding to a message. Donald Trump blasted through 10 years of identity politics and putting us all in silos.

He blasted all through that with a message that united Americans across -- across race, across gender, across socioeconomic, looking at, you know, fix the economy, fix inflation, secure the border, secure our communities in Pennsylvania, unleash our energy, and take care of our veterans.

That united, I mean, I would walk around Allentown or Redding, my wife's from Allentown, I'm from Redding. You walk around these towns and the people coming and lining up for hours to go to rallies, look, it was America.

And I would say to you, and I think this is an important point, maybe the Dems will learn from it, America first can also mean starting to think of ourselves as Americans first. Not in these silos, not with hyphens, but really looking at the issues that unite all of us. And I think that's the genius and the brilliance of what the Trump campaign was able to do.

DENT: Identity politics certainly hurt the Democrats. I'm convinced that we should be looking at people's humanity more than their identity. And I think the Democrats have really lost a lot of ground on that issue over time.

And, you know, to call somebody transphobic because I think somebody who at the University of Pennsylvania who transition and breaks all the records in swimming, they say that's not fair and they say what person's transphobic for saying that, well, people got annoyed with that kind of thing. I think it has really hurt the Democratic Party.

CROSS: I think every campaign runs identity politics. It's just that the Trump campaign was a lot better at it. This was a guy who was absolutely reaching out to males. This was a guy who was absolutely reaching out to rural voters, younger voters, making sure that he was reaching the podcast that those people talk to, not doing as much of the traditional media because he recognized that there are groups who it will never touch. He was very, very strategic when it came to identity politics. Let's not pretend like he wasn't. You cannot win an election without having identity politics.

PHILLIP: Let me let Catherine get in there.

RAMPELL: I was just going to say, I don't know if Rahm Emanuel is the magic bullet for all of this, but whatever Democrats are doing right now obviously is not working.

And I think that there may be something to the sort of in-fighting reference that may be useful here, that Democrats kind of suffer from coalition brain, where they're so nervous about, you know, ticking off any part of their coalition that it's very difficult for them to get stuff done.

Like you see this in some of their actual policy. You see this with like permitting reform, for example. There are a lot of things like that basically has gotten killed because the good things in it are not enough to satisfy certain fringes of the party.

They're mad about some of the bad things, whatever. And so, maybe, you do need some tough love within the party. Again, I don't know if Rahm Emanuel is the right messenger for that.

CROSS: I don't know if that brand is going to work but when you're a "Big Tent" Party which is what the Democrats have poised themselves as, obviously they're growing. pains along with that and there are going to be some people who are on the fringes and some people who want certain things that will offend other parts of that tent and that party.

Republicans have never expressed themselves as a "Big Tent" of anything .And I do think that, you know, when we look at the people who came out who largely voted for Trump, when we look at the cross tabs there, it was largely white women, it was white men who --this is not surprising --

PHILLIP: Here's the only thing I will say about that is that, when you look at you look at those numbers, if we take them for what they are, Harris didn't do worse among white people this time around. She just did worse among non-white people. So, she won enough white voters potentially to win, if this were 2020 or, you know, 2016, but there is erosion happening. And I think Democrats have to acknowledge that erosion and they have to address it.

BARTOS: To Catherine's point, and I think she made it very well, President Trump clearly picked the lane and saying, I support Israel, I support getting Israel everything it needs to win this war. He went to Michigan. He talked about ending the suffering. He talked about ending this war once Israel needed to do. And he won astounding numbers of Arab American voters and Muslim American voters in Michigan. Whereas Vice President Harris --

CROSS: Won a lot of Jewish votes.

BARTOS: -- was trying, well, not in Pennsylvania. She had a historically low number. And since going back to at least to I think it was 88, right? At least 88. RAMPELL: No, no, I think she won the highest share of Jewish voters.

BARTOS: No, no.

RAMPELL: On record.

BARTOS: No, no, those polls are all over the place. I mean, we can -- there's a good post, but I do think it's important.

PHILLIP: We can't get into that now, but let's leave it there for now because we have much more ahead. Everyone hang tight. Coming up next, some liberals are urging Democratic lawmakers to skip inauguration ceremonies this January.

[22:45:00]

We're going to discuss the wisdom of that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIP: In 2017, you may remember the civil rights icon John Lewis skipped Donald Trump's inauguration and protest. Fast forward now, and one liberal columnist is urging Democrats to do exactly the same thing for Trump's second presidency.

Joan Walsh writes in "The Nation" that everyone from Kamala Harris to the Obamas should boycott the quote, "Sorry Spectacle". This comes after President Biden took heat this week for his friendly and all smiles meeting with Trump at the White House.

[22:50:02]

This is kind of a continuation of where we were in the last segment, liberals navigating this world in which they lost. Many of them are upset about what Biden did this week, about the graciousness, frankly, with which he welcomed Trump. And many of them are also leaving platforms like X and saying, I quit. I'm going to blue sky or wherever they're going.

RAMPELL: I'm less prolific on X in part because it's just like a whole bunch of neo-Nazis coming at me all the time. So, that's a different reason. It's not a principled state. It's just a matter of my mental health.

PHILLIP: I don't think it's a different reason. I mean, I think that's part of the rationale, right, that some of them are giving.

RAMPELL: Yes, like, I don't know if it's coincidence or what, but whatever. It's gotten worse. In any event, on the question of the inauguration, I have very mixed feelings about this because I agree that Trump has authoritarian instincts. A lot of his staff or potential staff have authoritarian instincts. Very anti-democratic plans, you know, weaponizing the state to pursue enemies, that sort of thing.

But the people did elect him, and we do need to have a peaceful transfer of power. I think that there are other symbolic things that -- symbolic and actually more potent things that they could do other than sitting out --

PHILLIP: It's probably crazy, but I could see the Obama's not going.

CROSS: I don't think that's going to happen just as much as Biden.

PHILLIP: I mean, they don't have to go. It's a courtesy for a former president.

CROSS: That's true, but it's tradition and they typically don't step outside of it. Also, it signals a certain thing for them to be there. And I think that, you know, if you're somebody who stands for democracy, the peaceful transfer of power, you're supportive of our tradition, you're supportive of the narrative around them, then you will show up.

Now, if potential Congress members decide they're not going to show up, that's a very different thing from a former president not showing up or the current president not being willing to have that conversation.

I was quite frankly disappointed with some of the social media angst around President Biden actually, you know, shaking hands, taking the pictures. What the hell was he expected to do? Again, this is a statesman. This is a guy who has spent his life in public service. The expectation he would --

PHILLIP: But maybe he just wanted to smile -- the guy that Democrats said was not a fascist.

DENT: Look, look. Former members of Congress -- but members of Congress should show up to this inauguration. I think it is petty not to be there. You know, it was terrible when Donald Trump didn't show up at the Biden inauguration. Joe Biden should most assuredly be at Donald Trump's. He's a better man in that sense. And Joe Biden was right to greet Donald Trump in the White House. This is all part of the norms and traditions of this country.

But again, it bothers me when I hear members of Congress, I'm going to boycott it. I won't go to the White House if a Democrat is in or a Republican is in. I think it's wrong. I mean, this is -- it's our presidency. It's our White House. They're all in the same team.

BARTOS: And the world's looking to us. I think it was wrong when members skipped Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech in July. I think it would have been wrong to skip President Zelensky's speech, the times he's addressed a joint session of Congress.

PHILLIP: And I presume it was wrong when Donald Trump skipped Joe Biden's inauguration.

BARTOS: He didn't ask my advice on that, but if he had had, I would have advised him go to the inauguration. It is a tradition. But also, the world looks to us. We are, whether some people like it or not, we are the leader of the world. People look to us, and I think everyone is right here that is, it is our tradition, it is also the peaceful transfer of power.

And I think it is the pageantry of everybody coming together, the traditions, the history that strings us together over the -- we have presidents going back to the Clintons, right? So, from '92 to 2024, it's important. And I would advise no member should skip those.

PHILLIP: We are where we are only because Donald Trump created this moment for the country four years ago. I don't even think we'd be talking about this had he not done what he did four years ago.

Everyone, thank you very much for joining us. Coming up next, how would you describe R.F.K. Jr. as a potential health secretary? The comedians on CNN's "Have I Got News for You?" have some thoughts on that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(22:58:43)

PHILLIP: Donald Trump's pick of vaccine-skeptic R.F.K. Jr. for health secretary is raising a lot of eyebrows, and the comedians of "Have I Got News for You" are eager to give their take on it. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROY WOOD JR., COMEDIAN, "HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU": Fulfilled his campaign promise of nominating RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Yes. But what are people saying -- what are people saying about the possibility of having a Kennedy back in the government? I see. Yes. Yes.

AMBER RUFFIN, COMEDIAN, "HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU": RFK Jr.

(APPLAUSE)

WOOD JR.: What are people saying? What are people saying about R.F.K.?

MICHAEL IAN BLACK, COMEDIAN, "HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU": The comedian Lori Kilmartin had a great joke. Now, a Kennedy is trying to assassinate us. With this.

(APPLAUSE)

WOOD JR.: "The New York Post" called RFK Jr. "nuts on a lot of fronts". And 10 out of 10 health officials agree with that.

REP. TIM BURCHETT (R-TN): It's not like they're giving him a needle to poke in you. I mean, come on. We write the laws. That's the bottom line.

WOOD JR.: Yes, because you all listen to him. So, you write the laws based on what he's saying, no?

[23:00:03]

UNKNOWN: Wait. WOOD JR.: So, then why hire a (BEEP) who you are not going to listen

to?

(APPLAUSE)

WOOD JR.: I'm sorry, I'm the host.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Don't miss the new episode of "Have I Got News For You". It airs tomorrow at night at 9 P.M. Eastern Time right here on CNN. And thank you very much for watching "News Night". "Laura Coates Live" starts right now. Have a great weekend.