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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip

Trump-Backed Spending Bill Fails, Shutdown Nears; Blame Game Erupts as U.S. Nears Government Shutdown; Biden Stays Out of Public Spotlight as Shutdown Looms. Donald Trump Scores A Major Legal Win; Georgia Court Of Appeals Disqualifies Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis From The 2020 Election Interference Case; Trump Invites Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos To Washington For His Inauguration Next Month; Luigi Mangione Flown From Pennsylvania Back To NYC. Aired 10-11p ET

Aired December 19, 2024 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[22:00:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, tis the season for chaos. The world's richest man led the charge to nearly shut down the government, begging the question, who's got shotgun?

Plus, has Joe Biden quietly quit his job? The current president is MIA, as new revelations show just how far his team went to keep him in a bubble.

Also --

FANI WILLIS, ATLANTA DISTRICT ATTORNEY: I'm not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.

PHILLIP: An alleged love affair involving one of Trump's legal rivals may help bail him out of yet another case.

And the extraordinary show of force to battle the notoriety of an accused cold blooded killer.

Live at the table, Scott Jennings, Julie Roginsky, Geoff Duncan, Katie Frost and Michael Harriot.

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 Philip in New York.

Let's get right to what America is talking about, shutdown. We're just over 24 hours away now, and there is no solution in sight after Donald Trump and Elon Musk blew up a bipartisan spending bill. Tonight, the new one that was backed by Trump just failed, and failed badly. The deal needed two thirds majority to pass, so that means Speaker Johnson needed to get Democrats on board.

But still, 38 Republicans voted against it. One of those Republicans is Congressman Chip Roy, who spent the day getting berated by Trump on Truth Social. Trump called him weak and ineffective and very unpopular. He said Republicans like him need to be done away with and that he hoped Chip Roy would get primaried.

So, what exactly did Chip Roy do to deserve Trump's wrath? Well, he espoused a position on the spending bill that was, well, a very Republican position.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CHIP ROY (R-TX): To take this bill yesterday and congratulate yourself because it's shorter in pages, but increases the debt by 5 $trillion is asinine. And that's precisely what Republicans are doing. I am absolutely sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and has the temerity to go forward to the American people and say, you think this is fiscally responsible. It is absolutely ridiculous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: And in case you needed a reminder of what is at stake here, a shutdown would put key government services on hold, hundreds of thousands of federal employees would stop getting paid, and that's right in the middle of the holiday season.

It always seems that we end up in this place, Geoff Duncan, but I have to say, Chip Roy is absolutely right. There were so many members tweeting out pages of the big bill from yesterday and the little bill from today. Well, the little bill from today spends more money and Republicans are saying nothing about it.

GEOFF DUNCAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: That floor speech, which I listened to on the way over here was spot on. I mean, that's conservatism 101. And it's what everybody talks about on the campaign trail, but rarely shows up to do. I mean, I think we have to look at this. Both sides are broken right now. This process is broken, and nobody's really serious about solving this debt problem.

And if you ask outside of campaign season what our biggest threat to this country is it's our debt. It makes us militarily weak, it makes us economically weak, when I watch things like the ten-year note over 4.5 percent today, and continuing to climb, it's a true threat. And, you know, Scott reminds us every day, on the day, on the hour almost, that this is what America signed up for was change, and we're certainly going to get change.

I hope it's positive change. I hope it makes sense. But I do worry about folks like Elon Musk showing up in a process that he may know how to build rockets, he may know how to build technology, but I'm not certain he understands the complexities of building a budget.

PHILLIP: Or counting votes. There are not the votes for this plan. I don't know how this has changed also, by the way. I mean, I'm not sure what about this bill is anything different from what Congress has been doing all along.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. Look, there's always some haggling here on these deadlines and, you know, I hate to say it's a little boring to me, but it feels like we have the same fights over the same sort of procedural tactics, over the same kinds of issues, and, you know, usually gets worked out.

It seems to me that what Republican voters want is some party unity, and that's where Trump comes in. And although this effort to try to get the government funded tonight that he backed came up short, I think, to bring the party together, he has to be an integral part of it.

[22:05:04]

You can't go around him. He's the incoming president. The current president of the United States, according to The Wall Street Journal, hasn't been able to function in the job for the last four years. Somebody has to take some leadership responsibility here. It's going to have to be Trump. And he tried today and he's going to have to keep at it to get his party unified around some idea.

PHILLIP: Didn't he show, though, that he doesn't have full control over his party? I mean, he put his foot down and said vote for this bill and they didn't.

JULIE ROGINSKY, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, Scott, you break it, you own it, my friend. It's the party bar and rule.

JENNINNGS: Break what?

ROGINSKY: Break the system. You guys broke it. You broke it. How did you break it? You got everything you wanted. You have full control of everything now.

JENNINGS: We're not -- you know, we haven't taken office yet.

ROGINSKY: But even before you have full control, you have control of the House, you guys showed that you can't even govern when you have control of one House. I can't wait to see what's going to happen, when you have control of all parts.

JENNINGS: Where's your party? You control two of the three legs of the stool. Where's the president? Where's Schumer?

ROGINSKY: Well, as you know, obviously, as you know, all these bills have to emanate from the House. That is actually the way our laws function. And so the House is responsible for sending a bill to the Senate.

Now, the House is not able to send a bill to the Senate because Republicans can't even get on board, because Elon Musk decided he was going to send some mean tweets out and everybody started to cower. And they decided to cut and run from a bipartisan deal that would have actually been set and done and the Senate would have voted on it by now. And we all would have been home. But the reality is that this kind of chaos is what we're in for the next four years. And, you know, as I -- all I'm going to do is sit back and I'm going to drink my martini, sit back and watch the chaos unfold.

JENNINGS: Is that what Democrats in Washington are doing? Because they -- all but two of them voted to shut down the government.

ROGINSKY: No no. Excuse me, Democrats --

JENNINGS: They did. They voted against the CR.

ROGINSKY: Democrats could have uniformly voted to shut down everything down and you guys still would have been able to do it because you're in the majority.

JENNINGS: But you're talking about drinking martinis.

ROGINSKY: Because you're in the majority, you're in the majority.

JENNINGS: Do you not have any governing responsibility on a two thirds vote?

ROGINSKY: No, we do have a governing majority and it's called a deal that was cut -- it was called a deal that was cut, and then you guys decided to walk away from it.

PHILLIP: I guess the part of this that I don't understand -- I mean, look I get the politics of blaming Democrats, but the practicality of it is that the speaker decided to take a deal that he had with Democrats, throw it out the window, put another deal that he did not negotiate with them on the table and take a vote on it that failed. I mean, that's what happened here.

MICHAEL HARRIOT, COLUMNIST, THE GRIO: I think we have to first stop pretending that this is politics. Politics is appealing to the voters, and in the Republican Party now there is, for the first time in recent history, no repercussions from voters. They fear Trump, not voters, right? Trump -- the voters want to get this done.

And Trump -- this is kind of what democracy looks like when it fails. Like when there is an authoritarian presence, you don't fear the voters, you don't fear the people, you fear an authoritarian. And that's what we saw today because there was a bipartisan effort to do the work of the government, what the voters vote for you to do.

And in you, as in the past, if you didn't do that, there might be repercussions at an election. But the repercussions at elections now are, is Trump for you, or is he against you, in the Republican Party?

And so, this is what authoritarian looks like. Like it's not one guy standing and banging his fist on the table. It is the people not mattering, and everything else in Congress (INAUDIBLE) authoritarian.

KATIE FROST, FORMER AUDE, TED CRUZ PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 2016: Well, if the people mattered, we would never be in this situation to begin with. The idea that this is somehow a novel thing, this is brand new, respectfully, I disagree with that premise, because look at how Congress has worked or not worked candidly for so long.

People are frustrated. If Congress truly feared the voters, they're really going to be repercussions of the voting booth. We wouldn't be saying in the position where we are. People are concerned about spending, they're concerned about the debt and no one is actually addressing it. So, the idea is somehow you guys wanted to --

HARRIOT: Well, actually, we all want a deal to address it.

ROGINSKY: You guys wanted to -- I'm sorry. You guys blow through the debt ceiling. You're talking to Democrats about the debt? Your president, the man that you all just got behind, is the one --

JENNINGS: He's everybody's president, by the way.

ROGINSKY: Well, not yet. Thank God. We still have a president right now. His name's Joe Biden. Thank you for acknowledging that.

JENNINGS: You're the only person in America that seems to know (INAUDIBLE) party in. I think it's interesting that this is --

ROGINSKY: But you guys -- but let me finish my thought, which is to say that you're the ones, the Republicans are the ones, who now, all of a sudden, want to get rid of the debt ceiling. So, if you're concerned about the debt, then maybe you should talk to Donald Trump and talk about other stuff.

PHILLIP: Here's the other part. I mean, what she said is notable, right? Okay. A year ago, 43 Senate Republicans wrote a letter to Chuck Schumer saying we will not be voting for cloture on any bill that raises the debt ceiling without substantive spending and budget reforms. That used to be the position of the Republican Party. Why is that out the window?

DUNCAN: Republicans today sat in their offices and thought about what their constituents would want them to do and then feared more about Elon Musk's Twitter account and Donald Trump's social media account if their names were to come up in wrath, right? That's where this came down to and they had a deal.

[22:10:01]

Mike Johnson put a deal together that had a majority, had the votes. He counted the votes.

JENNINGS: We don't know exactly. They never voted on it.

DUNCAN: Well, we were signaled. We received the historical signals that said this was going to be a favorable piece, a favorable vote. And it blew up because of 41 tweets, 41 tweets. I don't care if it was Elon Musk or Donald Trump or you or anybody else. None of us should be able to send 41 tweets --

(CROSSTALKS)

HARRIOT: Stop framing this though as something about the debt. Because it's not about the debt, right? It's about two guys, Donald Trump and Elon Musk. It's not about there's no fight over raising the actual debt, because we always raise the actual debt. Republicans take on more debt than Democrats when they control Congress, right? So, this is not about the debt. It's not about political performance. It's not about what the people want. It is about two guys and the fealty to him and the fear of him.

And like this performance that we're doing where I'm Democrat, I'm on this side, I'm really not on a side except for like the business of what people elected for if they would have voted to lower the debts or not to raise the debt ceiling genuinely because of conservative principles. I wouldn't have agreed with it, but it could have been expected, but this is not what that's about. And we're sitting here pretending that it is about politics as usual or some kind of Democratic or Republican principles. It is not.

PHILLIP: This is not about, as Democrats have been calling him, President Musk. I mean, are you comfortable with the role that he's played in all of this? I mean, he has been an outsized player not really understanding the game.

JENNINGS: I am not going to accept any criticism about unelected people having influence over the presidency. After what I read in The Wall Street Journal today, that the president has not been functional for four years.

PHILLIP: I'm not stopping the conversation. We actually have a whole segment on it coming up. But with Elon Musk, I mean, first of all, Joe Biden was elected. So there's that. But Elon Musk?

JENNINGS: And his staff wasn't, but we'll talk about it. Elon Musk, it's not the tweets. It's the reaction. I talked to a member of Congress today who told me that when the tweets started, immediately, people from their own district started calling and asking questions about what are you spending my money on? What's going on here? It's not the tweets. It is how people are reacting. And when they find out what's going on in Washington, then they pick up the phone. It's not the tweets. It's the people. So, you say it's not about the people. I'm telling you the people were flooding the congressional offices with calls today.

There's something to be said for that big part of the process. And is it a little messy here at night? Fine, I don't have a problem with messiness. They'll get something done eventually.

PHILLIP: Can somebody explain to me, what is the complaint? I mean, I take what you're saying, Michael. I think it's correct. But from Elon Musk's perspective, what was the complaint? That there were too many pages in the bill or was it something actual?

HARRIOT: They were going to take money from China. They were going to take -- limit how much you can invest in China, which directly affects Elon Musk, and that's how oligarchs work, but we can pretend, we can have another conversation. Go ahead.

PHILLIP: Okay. Let's say that's one thing. What is his complaint? Again, is it the pages in the bill, or is it how much money is being spent? Because if it's how much money is being spent, this new bill would not pass muster. So, what is the Elon Musk like ideological position here?

FROST: Well, one of the things that always frustrates me, and I think also frustrates the American people about the legislative process, is how these massive bills are dropped and they want you to vote on it right away. There's very little time. And, Geoff, you remember when you were in the statehouse, what was it, an hour on signing that they gave you.

PHILLIP: They dropped a bill between yesterday and today and had a vote.

FROST: I know, I'm saying that's the process.

DUNCAN: Because the words on the page -- the words on the page don't matter. It's the words on the tweets that matter. It just doesn't -- the content doesn't matter at this point.

I think the alarming part for me is Elon Musk paid $27 billion for a board seat with Donald Trump. That's what he paid out of his pocket. That was the cash to buy Twitter. And he's used it as a tool. He's done an amazing job. I mean, when I open up Twitter, the only tweets I see are a couple of yours and six or seven other (INAUDIBLE).

JENNINGS: Geoff said it, the two most influential tweets, Elon's, Jennings'.

DUNCAN: There you have it. But think about this. $27 billion bought him exactly what he wanted and that's unfettered access.

Now, I hope he uses it well, and I hope he uses DOGE to the credit of all these great opportunities to cut spending. I'm really, really genuinely hope he's successful. But if he acts like this and uses that Twitter power to wreck the car, I mean, we want change, but not all change is good change.

JENNINGS: And the counterargument is If he gives information to people that they didn't previously have, or some transparency into our government, and they act on it, is that necessarily a bad thing? I might offer that.

DUNCAN: I think that's a great idea.

HARRIOT: Do you think Elon Musk is actually telling people things that they couldn't find out, except for Elon Musk, this great reporter --

ROGINSKY: Elon Musk is doing this to gin up people, to call their congressman or congresswoman and tell them to vote against something Elon Musk doesn't want them to vote for because it doesn't directly benefit Elon Musk. Let's be very clear. He's not here.

JENNINGS: How do you know that?

ROGINSKY: He's not -- how do I know that? Because look at this bill.

JENNINGS: You're making an allegation. It's a serious allegation. You're essentially alleging corruption.

[22:15:00]

ROGINSKY: I'm not alleging -- first of all, I'm not alleging corruption. I'm alleging that Elon Musk has a particular interest in seeing certain things happen that benefit Elon Musk's business. And that's a fact. He's a businessman. He's not here as a staffer. If you were a staffer, if you were working on the Hill, then he should go work on the Hill. DOGE is not -- he's purposely not going in to the government because then he'd have to show a lot more information about himself than he and Vivek Ramaswamy want to. So now they're just advisers. They're unpaid advisers. And for that reason, Elon Musk is puppeteering Donald Trump and every other member of Congress that he wants to, and every other member of Congress that he wants to benefit Elon Musk.

PHILLIP: I'm not sure that Trump is doing anything to dissuade people of that position.

JENNINGS: In October, the principal Democratic argument was, Donald Trump is going to be a dictator, and today it's Donald Trump is just being puppeteered by other people. Which is it? Which is it?

HARRIOT: Well, remember, Elon Musk's skill is to get into a position and then you serve the company That's how he got -- took control of Tesla, right? Like he didn't invent Tesla. He didn't found Tesla. He eat his way into this deceased with the founders and then say, you guys, get out of here, right? And we kind of see the same thing happening again, but it's good.

FROST: I will say, someone who is involved in grassroots politics, that's where I come from, so many times you go to these GOP meetings and people are upset because their member voted for something that they had no idea what was in it. Information is very hard to get out of Washington. A lot of this is not broken down for people. So, with Elon Musk is sharing information and activating the grassroots, I mean, that -- its sunlight is an incredibly powerful disinfectant.

PHILLIP: Everyone stick around for us.

Coming up next, despite that potential shutdown, President Biden is keeping a fairly low profile in his last month alone at the White House. What has he been up to?

Plus Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis is now disqualified from Georgia's 2020 election interference case after a court of appeals said her conflicts of interest were too great. Was that actually the right decision? Our panel will debate that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:20:00] PHILLIP: Where is Joe Biden? As the nation barrels toward a shutdown, the president is largely MIA. Biden himself has not made any on-camera comments about this looming crisis. And this disappearing act comes as The Wall Street Journal reports how signs of the president's decline arose just months into his term, quote, administration officials noticed that the president became tired if meetings went too long and would make mistakes. They issued a directive to some powerful lawmakers and allies seeking one-on-one time. Those exchanges should be short and focused, according to the people who received the messages directly from White House aides. If the president was having an off day, meetings would be scrapped all together.

Scott Jennings, you were just talking about this, so I'll go to you first because I know you have a lot to say, but this piece does show Biden having all of these sort of walls up.

JENNINGS: Yes.

PHILLIP: And the walls kept getting higher and higher as the years went on.

JENNINGS: It is the biggest scandal in America and the level and volume of people who dedicated themselves to lying to everyone at home about this man's condition for four straight years up through this summer is breathtaking. It's a scandal of epic proportions. And it's a fair question to ask, who is running the country? Who has been running the country? And as I said earlier, if you're worried about Donald Trump's advisers having influence, for the last four years, apparently, this president, duly elected, but this president was not capable of fulfilling the duties of the office. And his staff and the White House lied about it and kept it from the American people. It's an absolute scandal.

ROGINSKY: Look, I'll say two things. One is that I think Joe Biden, despite all this, had a very successful tenure. You may disagree, but I think on policy as a Democrat, he had a very successful four years. But there's a bigger problem here, and that is that I think Democrats are at the point where Republicans might have been right after the Bush election or after the Bush term was up, which is that I think Democrats are starting to mistrust their institutions.

And this goes back to a bipartisan effort to lie us into the Iraq war, not just by George Bush, but also by a lot of Democrats. It has to do with the fact that Barack Obama did not hold anybody accountable after the 2008 crisis, which also happened on George Bush's watch, but he became president. He never threw a hostage on the tarmac from Wall Street. You saw the rise of Bernie Sanders as a result of that and saw a lot of institutional Democrats, me included, saying no, this is not the time. We have to stick with the institution.

I think you have a lot of Democrats now, me included, who are pretty sick of the institution and trusting people in institution. And this is just one example, most recent example, I think, of people institutionally lying to the American people. And what you're ultimately going to see, and I don't have a problem saying this as a Democrat, is that you're going to see a tea party version rise up in the Democratic Party based on the fact that this is yet another marker of people just not trusting our leaders any more. And I'm sorry to say that, but I think we brought this on ourselves.

PHILLIP: I remember so distinctly when The Wall Street Journal's first story came out, and the uproar about it among Democrats and the anger that they were making things up in this story, they have multiple sitting members of Congress on the record talking about how they hardly ever heard from the president, their chairman of their respective committees going all the way back to the Afghanistan withdrawal.

[22:25:03]

I mean, this is something that they told the public was a Joe Biden decision. And according to this article, he was not really a huge part of rationalizing it even to his own party among the elected officials.

HARRIOT: But I think there is, like I don't know if everybody's looking at me like I'm supposed to be defending the Democrats right now, because like I think the interesting thing about this entire question is like when even the Democratic institutionalists realize like this dude can't be president, they said he can't be president and then didn't blindly defend him, you know, he would have been running for a second term except for the Democratic Party.

And now I don't -- I think I've -- and there were people who always thought that this man could not be president now, right? But that is not up to -- well, that could be up to the cabinet, right? And they've been lied to but I don't know how to defend that because I didn't think he should be president for a second term. I think that the party, when they -- people realized that he could not do the job of president, they did something about it.

PHILLIP: There were a lot of people, even at that time, still defending his ability to run for president again. Some people even suggested that it didn't matter whether or not he could continue as president, that he should continue to run.

FROST: Even after that disastrous debate on this network, there were some people being like, oh, he had a bad night. He had a bad night. You know, and one of the quotes in that Wall Street Journal piece was, you know, there are good days and bad days. Today's a bad day. We'll deal with this tomorrow.

The problem is tomorrow never came. It was just one bad day after another after another. And this kind of shielding President Biden, lying to the American people, telling them, don't believe your lying eyes, is yet another reason why President Trump was so successful. Because people just don't trust what they're being told when they see, clearly, there was a decline in President Biden, and you're told, don't believe your own lying eyes, nothing to see here. People go, all right, what else do they want?

PHILLIP: He also in this lame duck period has -- I mean, look, we talk about all the time how Democrats ran on Trump being a threat to democracy. But just listen to what has changed between January of 2024 and just yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: Trump's assault on democracy isn't just part of his past. It's what he's promising for the future. He's being straightforward. He's not hiding the ball.

The fact that he doesn't abide by the rules of the democracy we've established is not my concern. My job is to make a transition workable and available.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DUNCAN: That's hard to watch. And I've got nothing for you. I got no excuses for certainly I think all of America sees what's going on here. I will say I was at the White House this week for a Christmas party and Joe Biden talked for about ten minutes. He cracked some jokes and he was pretty lucid and it was a good -- but it certainly was not prepared in my opinion to run the country.

I do think we need to go back to the conversation that was happening on the campaign trail, and that's about age limits. I think we've got to start figuring out what that looks like, boardrooms that have billions and billions and billions of dollars of investor money does that.

And I know we talked about voters need to have the right, you know, the opportunity to cast those votes, but I do think age limits on that position. It is the most demanding job anybody's ever held in their entire life.

JENNINGS: I'm not for age limits because I do think voters -- that's something you can easily discern. And people were discerning that when they were turning against Joe Biden. I just have to ask when the accountability is going to come for every single person who sat in front of a television, who held some position of responsibility and lied their rear end off about what they were seeing behind closed doors. People came on television and said, oh, I'm with him all day and he's really engaged and he's doing the job. He's running circles around us and these videos are cheap fakes and on and on and on, brazen lying by people who work for our government, and they lied to us about it.

PHILLIP: What do you have in mind in terms of --

JENNINGS: I don't know. But if I were in Congress or I were the incoming administration, I would be thinking about -- because I agree with you on institutional trust. I think there is a lack of trust across the board. It's happening in your party. It's been happening in my party. How do you ever regain trust if there's no accountability for the people who lied us into the deficit in the first place? That's my question.

FROST: And if I'm a Democrat, I would never hire anyone who helped perpetrate this to be in a future administration. How can you regain trust the American people if you're putting the exact same people back who lied to them?

ROGINSKY: I think you're opening up a Pandora's Box if you want to start investigating people who lie on behalf of their president. Because one day there's going to be a Democrat in office after Donald Trump leaves, and I promise you, you don't want that to be happening to your party.

But I will also say, to your point --

JENNINGS: I don't agree with that.

ROGINSKY: You don't? You don't think Donald Trump's been honest and the people around him have been honest?

JENNINGS: Here's what I think. If you go to work for the government and you stand up at the podium, like Karine has done, and knowingly and fully lie to the American people, because you know full well what you see behind the scenes and what you're saying in front of the podium. I mean, maybe the accountability is they never get hired.

ROGINSKY: Like it was the largest inauguration crowd in the history?

JENNINGS: Is that as consequential as this? I'm sad.

ROGINSKY: It's a lie. But it's a lie. It's a lie.

GEOFF DUNCAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think it's a systemic problem, right? Because I agree with your comments around somebody hiding the fact that Joe Biden was unable to do his job and casting all these fake narratives. But I'll also say those same stories came out of the Trump's White House also. Like when I --

ROGINSKY: Of course.

MICHAEL HARRIOT, COLUMNIST, THE GRIO: And the Reagan administration.

JENNINGS: There was no "Wall Street Journal" expose.

DUNCAN: There was a 2020 election. Do you remember that?

JENNINGS: Yes.

ROGINSKY: If there were, you call it fake news.

DUNCAN: He lost. He lost. But I haven't heard him say that. Thank you for saying that. But I haven't heard him say that.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: I don't want to -- I think this is a Joe Biden conversation, but I mean, I think the point Jeff is making, we -- you know, we know for a fact that Donald Trump spent a lot of time in that -- at space between the Oval Office watching television when January 6th was occurring.

JENNINGS: OK, but no one is saying they have to shut down the White House because he's not with it today. This man is awake 23 hours a day. He's clearly engaged. And the American people just elected him over somebody who was much younger, I will point out to you.

My question is this. We elect people for a reason. The elected leadership of the government is supposed to be making decisions. For four years, the unelected have been in charge of our country during critical moments.

We don't live in a country where the unelected are supposed to rule us. We live where the elected are supposed to rule. My problem is for four years we were lied to about who's actually running the country. This is a problem.

HARRIOT: I think --

PHILLIP: We have to leave it there, unfortunately. Everyone, hang tight for us. Coming up, a Georgia court of appeals has disqualified Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis from the 2020 election interference case that she trumpeted Donald Trump -- was that the right decision, ultimately? We have a special guest joining us in that debate in our fifth seat, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:36:23]

PHILLIP: Donald Trump scoring a major legal win today. A Georgia appeals court has disqualified Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from prosecuting the president-elect in his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Willis came under fire earlier this year for her relationship with ex-prosecutor Nathan Wade.

In the 2-1 ruling, the court noted that although an appearance of impropriety isn't generally enough to disqualify someone, this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated. However, the court noted it wouldn't dismiss the case entirely. Willis fighting back on the decision filing a notice to the Georgia Court of Appeals to ask the state's Supreme Court to review the ruling. Joining us in our fifth seat, trial attorney Donte Mills. Donte, was this the right choice, the only choice, perhaps?

DONTE MILLS, NATIONAL TRIAL ATTORNEY: No. I never thought I would say this because the legal industry is very important to me, but the cancel culture has made it into the legal industry. I have a lot of celebrity clients and they're concerned that if somebody brings an allegation, they may lose business whether that allegation is true or not.

Here in the legal field, a defendant said Fani Willis did something wrong. It was determined she didn't, but now she's disqualified, anyway. And that's a problem because now if defendants bring up allegations just and make them up, does that disqualify the prosecutors from going after them? And if we follow this specific case through, we know that now it's going to be difficult to find a prosecutor to move forward with this case.

PHILLIP: Isn't it also true that while maybe to the letter of the law she didn't do anything wrong, but there was a clear impropriety. I think even the judge in the case found that she acted in a way that undercut her own case that she was making. And that appearance taints the process.

MILLS: Except for the fact that the judges in the decision said, that an appearance of impropriety does not generally disqualify. So, why is there an exception here? And we just don't want to create a situation where you can raise enough of a stink to get a prosecutor kicked off of a case and now you walk free as the defendant when clearly that prosecutor did not do anything wrong by the black letter of the law.

JENNINGS: I mean, I think the answer to your question is when you're trying to throw the president of the United States in jail, you have to be above board in all appearances across --

MILLS: Why?

ROGINSKY: Why are team -- special than the rest of us?

Look, for -- I mean, look, these people are elected officials and we all live under the government that we elect and the idea that someone would be trying to throw the president in jail, while conducting themselves in a way that is made up -- none of this is made up. She did this stuff.

MILLS: But she didn't do anything wrong.

JENNINGS: But the allegations against her are not made up. She clearly engaged in these relationships. She clearly engaged in conduct that a lot of people thought, let's get somebody different.

So, I'm just simply suggesting to you that we live in a world of politics and when you take on the appearance of the impropriety that Abby mentioned, it does taint the process. If you're someone who wants to see justice done, maybe in this case it would be better if justice was done by someone who hasn't had such poor judgment.

KATIE FROST, FORMER AIDE, TED CRUZ PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 2016: And as a Georgian sitting at the table, you know, I'll speak to this real quick. You -- when you look at this case, it was clearly politically motivated from day one. This is not the first defeat she's had in this case. And also, this is not the first case that she's had a big loss in.

I know we were discussing this before. She has given the appearance that she is all about self-promotion. She's wanting to get these big high-profile media cases and she's losing them, whether it's against President Trump, whether it's against rappers.

[22:40:04]

She keeps losing these cases to the detriment of Fulton County. Fulton County is struggling and she has just gone out on this self-promotion tour and this is not the first time she had someone pulled.

You know, she was hosting fundraisers for Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones' opponent while she was trying to bring charges against him. And they went through the same process and removed him as someone she could be charging because it was such a clear political conflict of interest.

DUNCAN: As another Georgian who actually sat with Fani Willis twice in the grand jury hearings and watched that process play out, two things can be true. One, there was crimes committed after the 2020 elections debacle, during the debacle. Secondly, I believe Fani Willis became a bigger story than the actual crime -- crimes that were committed and she did deserve to be removed in my opinion.

DUNCAN: But what I will say this, is we've got to figure out a way to -- the biggest travesty to all this is that all of these facts and evidence are not going to actually come out, right? For the public to see, she wrecked the car in the garage before she even pulled out of the driveway with this case.

PHILLIP: But the case can go forward, right?

DUNCAN: I want to -- I wish these facts and evidence, but it's going to take so much more time and distance.

MILLS: But she didn't wreck the car in the garage. Donald Trump brought this up. He made this an issue. And although it was determined that there was no there-there, now he gets a -- he's in a position where the prosecutors are moved because he made this an issue.

DUNCAN: I'll put it this way. When I was playing baseball and there was a bad umpire, it always seemed about, they wanted to be on the front page of the paper the next day instead of the players. And it really became all about Fani Willis being on the front page of the paper instead of the facts and the details and the evidence.

And the case itself, it became all about Fani Willis. And it was just an awkward cadence, in my opinion. To Scott's point, you're going to take on the president of the United States. And I've said this from day one, and I'm no Donald Trump fan. I've been on this mantra since the hours after the 2020 election. You have to be above reproach.

MILLS: But can I just use your example, your analogy? If we talk of baseball, if I'm a coach and I'm complaining that the umpire was cheating, they do an investigation and say, well, he wasn't cheating, but he can't rough the rest of the game anyway because you said he was cheating, and it was determined he wasn't.

JENNINGS: But he was having a relationship with someone on the other team.

DUNCAN: But what does that have to do with Donald Trump's legal case? You just ma de my point. When you started playing 3D chess and not playing the game, right? The game was the case, right? That's what we should have been focused on.

ROGINSKY: But two things could be true, as you said, right? Two things could be true. One is, yes, Donald Trump and people around him did commit alleged crimes. That's one, right? For which he should have been charged and for which grand jury did charge him.

The second thing that also is true is that Fani Willis has behaved incredibly stupidly and arrogantly. Of all the prosecutors she could have brought into this case, did she have to engage in a personal relationship with one of them? And I'm not saying that from a legal perspective, I'm saying that from a political perspective.

I will also say Scott, the third thing also could be true, that if this were me or you or anybody at this table, that prosecutor would not be removed. And so -- and so, the problem for me is consistently, as the former president, Donald Trump gets special treatment.

And maybe it's not just Donald Trump, maybe it would be a Democrat, I would also get special treatment, except no Democrats have ever been in this kind of situation. But I would say that nobody at this table, and nobody watching today, unless Donald Trump is watching, would get this kind of treatment.

JENNINGS: I don't know. I mean, it's any defendant's right to question --

ROGINSKY: You could question it.

JENNINGS: -- the procedures of the prosecutors.

ROGINSKY: There's no way -- there's no way --

JENNINGS: I mean, is any defendant's right to go to court saying, I don't like this? This is not fair to me.

ROGINSKY: They could, but there's no way the Appeals Court is going to rule this way.

FROST: But there was clearly some miscalculation. Also, this is not just about President Trump. There were a lot of other people involved in this case, too. People like I know personally.

ROGINSKY: Including the person sitting next to you who probably --

MILLS: She didn't do anything illegal or wrong.

FROST: Well, let me finish for a second, please.

MILLS: We keep forgetting that point.

FROST: People were treated like criminals. They were hauled in, including someone who was like an adopted grandmother to me. Like a sweet woman in her 80s, you know, Kay Godwin (ph). She lives down in South Georgia. Nathan Wage was up at her house to investigate and interrogate her, and she serves him lunch and invites him in. I'm just saying it's like --

DUNCAN: Some of these --

PHILLIP: You said this earlier but I think that the idea that the allegations that were being raised in this case were all politically motivated is definitely not true. I mean, Donald Trump actually, and he did it on tape, he was trying to find votes that he didn't have in the state of Georgia. And all -- a lot of these people who were charged, 19 of them, they were involved in that.

DUNCAN: And some of them actually pled guilty. Some of them have already pled guilty to these charges. I mean, these crimes happened. That's why they pled guilty. And the fact that not -- we haven't even opened up the first page of this evidence book because of all of the riff-raff and the mis -- and the confusion and the lack of personal judgment that was made. That's the travesty in all of this.

MILLS: It wasn't because of that. It was because Donald Trump set this smoke screen and it worked.

ROGINSKY: But she loved it.

JENNINGS: It's only possible because of her behavior, right?

PHILLIP: I think, Donte, you're right that Donald Trump made this a thing, it wouldn't have been a thing if it hadn't happened.

MILLS: Yes.

ROGINSKY: And the irony --

MILLS: But it's still not illegal behavior or improper behavior.

JENNINGS: OK, so she didn't shoot anyone, but are you -- do you condone what she did as someone who has to go to court?

[22:45:02]

Do you condone it?

MILLS: Listen, we all had relation -- listen, they worked together.

ROGINSKY: No, no, not all of us.

MILLS: They worked together. They worked together. We all -- they worked together and they had a relationship. It does not mean that she brought him into the case for anything other than his legal acumen. He's a good attorney. So, the fact that they had a relationship is legal acumen.

ROGINSKY: Is there no other good attorney in Georgia that she could have found? And I mean, I say this as somebody who wants to see Donald Trump brought to justice. Is there no other attorney?

MILLS: But if she wanted that, if she wanted somebody she could trust, that she knows has legal acumen.

ROGINSKY: But why does she need to be involved with somebody?

MILLS: Listen, it wasn't the best decision but it's not able to determine not to be illegal, not to be improper.

FROST: But an irony --

PHILLIP: You know what, Donte Mills? You are a very good lawyer, my friend. Criminal defense lawyer sitting right here. He's going to make the case for you. Thank you very much for joining us.

Everyone else, hold on. Coming up next, the suspect in the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. He made his first court appearance here in New York City today and law enforcement launched an unusual show of force ahead of it. We're going to explain the reason they did that and discuss the validity of it, next.

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[22:50:26]

PHILLIP: An unusual scene played out in New York City today. The city went above and beyond to receive Luigi Mangione, the CEO murderer suspect, who has flown from Pennsylvania to the city today.

You can see him surrounded by dozens of heavily armed officers. Even New York City's mayor, Eric Adams, was there. He explained to reporters why, saying, "We wanted to personally be there " to show the symbolism of leading from the front."

Michael Harriot is back with us. I don't know, I mean the guy has already become kind of a folk hero and I think New York just helped him out.

HARRIOT: I don't know if he's become a folk hero, right? He's a violent criminal. What's interesting is that when it's a white guy we always have to search for a reason. He might be a folk hero, he might have -- it might have been about capitalism or healthcare or anything.

Like literally this story, I can tell you this story, this story is the exact same thing that happened to a guy named Nipsey Hustle who was a CEO, who was stopped and killed in front of his business and nobody cared about the -- the reason for it and everybody said it was gang related and it turned out to not be gang related. But when it's a white guy we search for a reason and valorize him and make him a hero, when he's just a violent criminal who did a violent thing. He's a thug.

JENNINGS: We are not searching for a reason to make him a folk hero.

ROGINSKY: Thank you.

JENNINGS: The left is searching for a reason. When I see -- when I see Democratic politicians do the perfunctory, well, violence is never the answer but you can see why people are mad. Yes, I believe people on the left and you see it online, they are searching for a reason and want to turn this person in and they want to just -- into a -- and they want to justify violence to change the system they don't like.

UNKNOWN: The ability to -- right wing junk into a funnel and make it into something that is crazy, but it's not right.

PHILLIP: OK, but I just want to show. I mean, we are showing the signs. This was today, OK?

ROGINSKY: Maybe it's a MAGA person.

UNKNOWN: Does this look like a MAGA?

ROGINSKY: Could be.

FROST: I haven't seen a mega person wearing a mask for years.

UNKNOWN: There's not a gallows in it.

PHILLIP: I don't know that we can really say, actually, I mean, who knows what the politics of some of these people are. But there's no question that this guy, we know his name. People are calling him on a first name basis which is crazy.

UNKNOWN: It's probably his culture. And New York decided to create a whole cinema scene around him, almost like he is a Batman villain.

DUNCAN: The fire arises. I don't get it.

UNKNOWN: Not enough parents to know.

DUNCAN: The true story should be here. The absolute above and beyond call of duty of law enforcement to be able to track down a grainy self or security video and a water bottle with a thumb print on it and be able to track this guy down and in just a couple of weeks he's being returned back to the city that he committed this murder.

And look, anything to justify this with health care and everything's broken. Health care is broken but I guarantee you it had nothing to do with a 50-year-old CEO who worked his tail off to get to that spot.

There should never be any justification in any party in any state in any demographic region, we should ever excuse murder -- cold-blooded murder, shooting somebody in the back. I'm 49. My kids out there and he's your age. He's shot - he's shot right in the back, right down from where we're all staying. It's crazy.

FROST: On his way to a business meeting, gunned down in cold blood, shot in the back. I will say, I've not -- I've heard a lot of discussions about healthcare after this, have not heard a lot of calls for gun control, which typically happens when there's an incident. We haven't heard gun control calls here or after President Trump's assassination attempts, but it is abhorrent, and we shouldn't make him into a folk hero.

I mean, I've seen the memes, we've all seen the memes. Some of them can be amusing, but it's almost like this is made for TV. And kind of going back to our last segment, we have prosecutors who want to make a name for themselves. We have people who just want to jump on this very high-profile case. We have to be extremely cautious here.

ROGINSKY: You know, the one thing I will say is we had a school shooting a few days ago and you don't see the mayor of that town. You don't see the kind of attention that that's been getting because that's kind of become accepted, right? And so, to me, a CEO gets shot and all of a sudden the world shuts down and school shootings have become so routine.

PHILLIP: Isn't it also because in that scenario, they decided not to publicize the person's name, not to make this person someone who is valorized. I think that you're right that there's a big difference between what happened.

But New York City, I mean I hear what the mayor is saying about leading from the front, but what he did was basically make this front- page news, put this guy's face on every single news paper, live television all day today.

[22:55:00]

ROGINSKY: You know who's responsible for this? I'm sorry. You know who's responsible for catching this guy in New York City? Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner. You didn't see her doing this perp walk. You saw the mayor using this as a campaign event because he's got a primary, it's a very tough primary coming up next year. That's disgraceful. I don't know what Eric Adams was doing there, but this was not a time to be campaigning.

HARRIOT: I think there's a connection to what she said about -- like this killer, the school shooter valorized some violent killers in their manifesto. And so, I think there's a connection to publicizing and valorizing these killers and violent people and perpetuating it.

PHILLIP: Yes, we got to go. But everyone, thank you very much. Coming up next, guess who's coming to the inauguration? We'll tell you, next.

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(23:00:17]

PHILLIP: New tonight, CNN is learning that Trump invited Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to Washington for his inauguration next month, this after Amazon announced a $1 million donation to Trump's inaugural fund. Thank you very much for watching. "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.