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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Congress To Barely Avert Shutdown After Trump And Musk Chaos; Soon, Senate Votes To Avert Government Shutdown; Bannon Says, Kash Patel Will Investigate Enemies List In Book; "NewsNight" Discusses Sightings Of Objects Thought To Be Drones; Kylie Kelce Jockeys With Joe Rogan On The Ratings Charts; Paul McCartney And Ringo Starr Surprise A London Audience. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired December 20, 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 HOST (voice over): Tonight, shutdown averted, but the circus may have just delivered its opening act.
REP. TIM BURCHETT (R-TN): Washington sewer 101, nothing changes.
PHILLIP: Plus, Steve Bannon, now the one trying to dictate Donald Trump's agenda, including a tax hike on the wealthy.
Also, as the FAA bans drone flights over parts of the northeast, one town is taking neighborhood watch to a higher level.
And she's dethroned Joe Rogan at the top of the charts.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Welcome to Not Going to Lie.
PHILLIP: But hear why Kylie Kelce waited until now to reveal her politics.
Live at the table, T.W. Arrighi, Nayyera Haq, Katie Frost, Mondaire Jones and Charlie Dent.
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, Christmas isn't canceled, good news. After Donald Trump and Elon Musk threw a grenade into the bipartisan deal to keep the government open, Congress is about to get its act together and avoid a shutdown with just two hours until the deadline, at least we hope so. Any moment now, the Senate is expected to follow the House's lead by passing a clean version of the government funding bill.
But it leaves off one big Trump demand, killing the debt limit. Sources say Trump is frustrated tonight behind the scenes and has been warned that he could be blamed if the government did end up closing.
Meanwhile, the pressure is off, Speaker Mike Johnson, for now. Elon Musk is showing support tonight for the Speaker, writing on X, the speaker did a good job here, given the circumstances. But the episode has some Democrats calling Musk the real president, a narrative that he tried to put an end to on X. He wrote this, the political and legacy media puppets all got their new instructions yesterday and are now parroting the same message to drive a wedge between Trump and me. They will fail.
It's interesting little phraseology there by Elon Musk. He seems worried that this is a scenario in which he could have a wedge being driven between Trump and him, because everybody knows Trump reads the papers, he reads Twitter, he sees what people are saying, and he doesn't like to be anybody's second fiddle. Do you think there's a risk here?
CHARLIE DENT (R) FORMER U.S. CONGRESSMAN, PENNSYLVANIA: Absolutely. I mean, there's going to be a collision here between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Elon Musk got way out in front of Donald Trump on this continuing resolution agreement. And, basically, Musk kneecapped Speaker Johnson, and Trump gave an assist. So, I have to think that, you know, Donald Trump can't be too happy that Musk is trying to dictate how the Congress should operate.
PHILLIP: But he went along with it.
DENT: Well, he did. I mean, I can't imagine he's happy about this, though. He was kind of pushed aside. He was late to the parade in this case. But my question is was Elon Musk going rogue or was he given direction? I got the sense he was going rogue. There are a lot of unhappy people about this whole circumstance.
NAYYERA HAQ, FORMER OBAMA WHITE HOUSE SENIOR DIRECTOR: Part of what I think is interesting about this is that there doesn't really seem to be any political or real statement of belief in trying to undermine this budget, other than, oh, the numbers are too big, and that, in and of itself, is going to create a lot of enemies not only in Washington but outside that are going to make governing difficult. But for Elon Musk, he could actually survive this, because unlike many other people who have been around Trump, who have gotten out ahead of him, even Steve Bannon, who, when he got the Time Magazine cover of Man of the Year, that did not sit right with the former president. Elon Musk doesn't need money from him, doesn't need the T.V. time, is already the world's richest person. So, the idea that he doesn't need anything from Trump could actually work in his favor.
KATIE FROST, FORMER AIDE, TED CRUZ PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 2016: And also people have tried to do this before. Remember, there were a lot of stories going around, he's too visible in Mar-a-Lago. Why is Elon always there? And that didn't work to drive a wedge between him and President Trump. I mean, I think this is a partnership that's going to last for a long time, especially with DOGE. That's something President Trump is very excited about. So, I think --
PHILLIP: Why do you think -- I mean, look, it's clear what Trump gets from Elon. What is Elon getting from Trump, in your view?
T.W. ARRIGHI, VICE PRESIDENT, PUSH DIGITAL GROUP: in my view, I think he is passionate about his, all of his businesses basically are based here, right?
[22:05:00]
He's concerned about the future of his interest and the interest of the economy of the United States. And the best way to do it to make sure America is a prospering place in the future is to make sure we address the biggest, you know, internal threat that we have, which is our debt and deficit.
PHILLIP: But to your earlier point, he has his businesses, right? I mean, is this --
ARRIGHI: Sure, but everybody has that, right? They have families.
PHILLIP: Not everybody has a bunch of businesses before.
ARRIGHI: No, they don't, but they have interest --
HAQ: You are very generous and very kind and diplomatic and how you talked about Elon Musk's intentions here. I'm going to be a little bit more blunt and direct, which is that he gets significant subsidies for his research programs from the federal government, and he's now been put in a position where he can oversee any of the contracts that he gets and double dip and make sure that his interests and his companies are indeed protected.
FMR. REP. MONDAIRE JONES (D-NY): Well, I think it's more based on that. I actually think that this guy doesn't need any more money than what he's already got. He's on track to become the first trillionaire, right? He, at a base level, desires attention. He is childlike in that way. It's why he couldn't resist getting out ahead of the president -- excuse me, the incoming president of the United States, nominally and torpedoing this continuing resolution.
I mean, he likes the spotlight on him. In fact, you know, his politics have been all over the place. I mean, he tried to court Democrats. That didn't work out so well for him, so he attached himself to Republicans, like Donald Trump, who have embraced it.
DENT: Democrats buy Teslas too. I mean, I just --
PHILLIP: They were buying Teslas first.
DENT: They were. I'm just saying, I sometimes wonder when you're in business like he is, you know, Starlink and, you know, all the things he's got going on, especially in a consumer business, you know, you got to be a little careful. And that's why I'm surprised, maybe he doesn't notice if he loses business from Democrats, maybe he doesn't care.
PHILLIP: I think Mondaire is on to something, I think he has so much money, it's off the margins at this point. And the real business is in, you know, the Starlink and the SpaceX, where the contracts are huge. But take a look at this. This is what Democrats are doing to troll Elon Musk. This is an A.I.-generated image of Musk sitting at the king's throne, and Trump as the jester. It's meant to poke them in there.
ARRIGHI: Here's the bigger issue here. This, to the American people, is another day in Congress. This should have been -- this discussion should have happened weeks ago, okay? In jamming it up against Christmas, while it makes sense, people get antsy, they want to get this thing done, it backfired this time. And it did sound like Trump was caught flat footed by Elon Musk.
However --
PHILLIP: But whose fault is that? Is that not Trump's fault? They were negotiating for weeks.
DENT: There's whiplash.
PHILLIP: They were negotiating for weeks. So, the only person who did not weigh in until the 11th hour was Trump. He could have weighed in earlier.
DENT: Correct. Since the election, the plan was supposed to be to pass all 12 appropriations bills by Christmas. But then the hardliners in the House Republican Conference and Donald Trump said, no. Let's kick this all into the New Year to the middle of March. They got their way. And then they changed their mind. And then they threw the debt ceiling in the final hours, knowing that takes a little bit of time. And so they threw that in. I mean, it's almost like who was running this? But there is no --
JONES: Speaker Mike Johnson has said he's in a group text with Elon Musk, president-elect, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy. So, in a moment of honesty, I'd love for Mike Johnson to tell us, were these concerns raised by Elon Musk prior to like 72 hours ago?
ARRIGHI: Yes, but I want to make this clear. Congressional approval is in the teens for a reason because they see dysfunction like this every day, every single time. There is no change. When they think of Elon Musk, they think of Tesla, they think of Starlink, they think of the guy who automated spaceship landings, who has built these successful businesses, and Vivek. They're not getting mad at Elon Musk for saying we need to get our fiscal house.
HAQ: They're not getting out of hand. They're not -- right, they're getting mad at Congress for not doing their job on time and for kowtowing to a guy who just sent a mean tweet, right, that at the end of the day, Congress did not need to do that. But Elon Musk has not come out good in this either, right, because he's an unelected person who now clearly has influence over a significant number of people, whether in Congress or in the White House, and people are grumpy about that.
JONES: He's nervous about his relationship with Donald Trump, as of a few hours ago. PHILLIP: So, Steve Bannon is already talking about what happens to Speaker Johnson, because he's going to have to get the votes again with an even narrower margin to become speaker. Here's what he's been saying.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE BANNON, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: Johnson's not up to the task, he's got to go, right? He's got to go.
Clearly, he has to go. He doesn't have what we call the right stuff, right, that combination of guts and moxie and savvy and toughness.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Here we go again. We have been here before, people, if you're wondering. You know, Charlie, we're already seeing some members coming out saying, oh, I'm undecided now. After what just transpired this week, I'm not sure who I'm going to vote for the speaker. Are Republicans going to have a repeat of what they did the last time in basically Kevin McCarthy, Speaker Johnson at the beginning of the year?
[22:10:05]
DENT: They could. I'm not saying they will, but they could, because the margin on swearing in day will be 219 Republican to 215 Democrats. That means that Republicans can lose three votes or Johnson can lose three votes. He cannot lose four. Tom Massie has already said he's not voting for him. So, that means there are potentially two or three more who could go the other way.
And, by the way, when Musk and Trump kneecapped Johnson two days ago, they weakened him. And then, of course, yesterday they passed a bill that failed that further weakened Johnson. So, I think Johnson is going to have a rough few days.
Look, if Donald Trump comes out and Elon Musk comes out and say, Hey, we're all for Johnson, maybe that will save him. But now you've got Bannon out there. He's got his own constituency, you just heard him, and I do think that Johnson's on thin ice, but I don't know who would replace him.
PHILLIP: That's always the question. And I'm not sure that even Elon would be able to save him. There are obviously many members in the House, and we know this from experience, watching all of these speaker fights over the last couple of years, who -- they don't care. They want to put their foot down and say something, or really -- you know, or stick, stick put a stick in the gears for any reason at all.
FROST: And when you see, it feels like, so we talk about did Elon torpedoed this bill, well, he just pointed out what was in it, because the American people really didn't know what was in the bill.
PHILLIP: I'm not sure he knew what was in it either.
FROST: Oh, I'm saying, he's like, hey guys, look at this. And so people started paying attention. He rallied people.
There are a lot of members of Congress who feel that they're left out of all of the discussions. And so when they have these public floor votes, it might be their only chance to actually make a mark, to have a protest vote. It kind of reminds me of in parliament when you have a vote of no confidence. It's like that we don't have confidence in the leadership, and that's where I see a lot of it.
HAQ: So much of it ends up being about not having confidence, burn down the administrative state, which is a very Bannon-esque ideology, and very little ends up being, okay, so what are you going to do in its place? Right, you want to burn everything down. How do you actually build something that works for the American people?
PHILLIP: Is this a moment where Congress said, hey, Mr. Incoming President-elect, we are a co-equal branch, we got to do things the way we got to do them, or was this an example of Trump basically putting down a loyalty test and forcing a change? I mean, I'm not really sure how to interpret what just happened this week in terms of Trump's power.
JONES: Yes. So, it is very worrisome that only 38 Republicans were willing to vote against the C.R. that was there last night. I mean, that would be those 38 --
PHILLIP: Only 38? You think that's not enough?
JONES: The 38 people standing up to Donald Trump, so the vast majority of the House Republican Conference doing the bidding of Donald Trump is what occurred last night.
However, Donald Trump made a litmus test of this idea that the debt ceiling should be dealt with in the C.R. That did not happen. So, that was a stunning failure, I think an embarrassing failure.
PHILLIP: And it was a fight he didn't have to pick.
JONES: It was a fight he didn't have to pick, an unforced error. And I think it speaks to the fact that there wasn't a ton of thought put into any of what happened over the past 72 hours from Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
ARRIGHI: There did seem to be a communication breakdown between Speaker Johnson and President Trump. But can I just also say --
PHILLIP: Maybe because he had to go through Elon --
ARRIGHI: Where is the sitting president, Mr. Master Senate negotiator himself? Where did he disappear to?
DENT: He's got to sign the (INAUDIBLE).
ARRIGHI: Exactly. But co-equal branches of government, we have one third of the federal government --
PHILLIP: His absence was absolutely notable. I mean, it was just -- it was a complete absence of the White House in this conversation. But, hopefully, maybe by the end of this hour, we'll have a bill with a vote in the Senate, and we won't shut down the government at midnight.
Everyone, stick around. Coming up next, it's not just Elon Musk dictating Trump's agenda. Steve Bannon surprises by saying MAGA needs to raise taxes on the wealthy. We'll discuss that.
Plus, Joe Rogan loses his top spot on the podcast charts. Kylie Kelce reveals her political leanings and why she waited until now to make them public.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BANNON: If you think the last 48 hours has been unique, every day coming in when President Trump takes over is going to be like this, particularly as they -- as Elon tries to make these type of cuts and President Trump tries to reorganize the government and get back on the right track and save the country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: That was former Trump Strategist Steve Bannon weighing in on what we can expect upon Trump's return to the Oval Office, a warning, you might call it. This comes as Bannon has tried to set a potential agenda for the Trump administration in recent days, including by assuring that FBI Director Nominee Kash Patel will in fact investigate political enemies listed in his book, Government Gangsters.
Back at the table, this is the list here. I have it. It's about, what, four pages long. It has all kinds of people on it. And, T.W., Bannon told The Bulwark today in an interview He made an effing movie that's called Government Gangsters. And the first guy is Merrick Garland, okay? And Lisa Monaco is in there, who the nation doesn't know. We're trying to make these people famous. So, no, first of all, it has to happen. Number two, it's going to happen.
That sounded to me like, first of all, a message to Kash Patel, who is on the Hill, like all the other nominees, trying to make good with some of these senators. This is not something you can back away from. How is Kash Patel going to explain this if he has to back away from some of this retribution that he himself laid out in his book?
[22:20:06]
ARRIGHI: Well, I'm glad you said that because the senators are going to be the ones holding his feet to the fire on this because he's going to start bleeding support if he doesn't have a good answer. And the answer is he needs to show evidence to prove it. Like I am all -- I think we all are for rooting out corruption in our government, for rooting it out at the FBI, for rooting it out at DOJ. Sign me up. And there is plenty of history to look back on at the FBI and DOJ of wrongdoing. We know it became -- the DOJ became -- FBI became more political under Comey. But he needs to show evidence or else the support that he's building will crumble. JONES: I was thinking more of during the civil rights movement.
ARRIGHI: Oh, well, that too, for sure, or Martin Luther King.
(CROSSTALKS)
I mean, but, look, one of the things that Bannon -- I mean, Bannon in this Bulwark interview, he talks about a lot of things. First of all, he said it's going to happen, right? But then he talks about the types of investigations, and as we know, a lot of it surrounds Trump. He says there's a vast criminal conspiracy, including the media's. Was it Andrew Weissmann and all of those FBI guys that work on MSNBC? I think there will be big investigations into all of these people. I think there's going to be huge investigations, I believe, into 2020. I think it's going to be a huge investigation on January 6th, the fedsurrection. What?
JONES: It's insane.
PHILLIP: It's going to be a huge investigation about the vast criminal conspiracy against President Trump. I mean, really?
HAQ: It's an effort to rewrite reality, right? I mean, there was an election. It was considered a safe and secure election. There was an attack on the Capitol and everything that followed. But now we have somebody who's been reelected who still never acknowledged that that election was legitimate. We've had four years of President Biden. He is leaving. Election went for Donald Trump, yet they're still litigating four years ago. And Bannon is not in a position to be in the White House at the moment. He is not the senior adviser or chief of staff. So, he's finding ways.
PHILLIP: Yes, and he's very influential. I mean, he's out of prison now. And I think that he thinks of himself as one of the many kind of leaders of the MAGA army, the sort of rank and file who will power Donald Trump.
JONES: Yes. By the way, if he were so convinced that there was wrongdoing by the federal government on January 6th, why not provide that evidence and cooperate with the subpoena that he received from the January 6th select committee?
Steve Bannon doesn't believe this stuff. But, this is a feature of authoritarianism. You have to go after your political opponents by weaponizing the justice system. And you also have to rewrite history, even if it is history that we all watch unfold in starkly different ways with our own eyes.
I lived through January 6th, but you didn't even have to do that to know exactly what happened, what incited that insurrection at the Capitol and who was responsible. In fact, you have a number of senators and other high-profile Republicans on the record condemning Donald Trump in the hours and in the days afterwards. And then what happened? The force of political pressure was brought to bear on these people. PHILLIP: Can I put something on the table that's a little bit of whiplash? Here's Steve Bannon talking about what needs to happen from a fiscal perspective in a Trump administration. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BANNON: I hate to say this. I know you got a bunch of still Republican orthodox folks out here. You're going to have to raise taxes on the wealthy.
Hey, both parties got us into this. Only the populist nationalists could get it out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I don't know what the reception was in that audience. It sounded a little tepid. But he's talking -- he's serious about this. He told Semafor later, he also -- he believes raising taxes on the wealthy is the only way to get the other part of the Trump agenda, which is tax cuts, into existence.
FROST: What's kind of fascinating to me, because we've been listening to Democrats saying, the only reason that what was happening on the Hill was because, oh, President Trump wanted that debt ceiling so he could give all of his rich friends a tax break. Now, we have very prominent people in the movement talking about, we may have to raise taxes on the wealthy.
Like, it's never unpopular to say that, right? I mean, like, I think we had bipartisanship right there. You were agreeing with Steve Bannon, won't you?
JONES: Yes, absolutely.
FROST: All right. So, I mean, it's never unpopular.
PHILLIP: But do you think he's right? I mean --
JONES: Some of the American people, by the way, overwhelmingly, the American people --
PHILLIP: Trump is a populist candidate.
DENT: I'd like to hear how high he'd like to raise them. I'd like to hear how high he'd like to take the corporate tax. We had the highest rate in the world at 35 percent. Now, we're down closer to the average. Okay, we want a tax cut. Let's hear it from him. I'd like to see his proposal. You'll find out a lot of people aren't as rich as they think.
HAQ: Oh yes, and Trump was one of them, right? The irony being that he managed to work the tax system and call himself a billionaire, yet for many years, pay zero in taxes. So, that's part of it. It's not just tax the wealthy.
[22:25:01] It would be great if DOGE decided to actually look at the tax code and, you know, plug up some of those holes that allow people who are wealthy to not pay as much as people who are poor.
ARRIGHI: But I want to also just make the point, you know, Ronald Reagan once said, you can grow the economy as big as you want, you can tax people as much as you want, but it's worth a hill of beans if we don't get our addiction to spending under control. That's where we're at. And you are completely correct. It's very easy to say raise taxes on them. It's very hard to pick a number of what is fair. But that rich people don't just pay income tax. They often -- they pay different taxes. That makes up --
PHILLIP: Actually, rich people tend to not pay income tax at all.
ARRIGHI: Exactly. So, but my point is making the tax code fair, yes. The rate, that's where I would --
DENT: I remember the alternative minimum tax. I was going to hit 55 families. Those middle class people were getting -- we had to fix that years later. I mean, a lot of things sounded real good.
PHILLIP: I mean, here's the thing. I mean, and I think, T.W. you're certainly right, especially from a conservative perspective, you've got to talk about spending. Donald Trump was president for four years, he didn't do any of that. He didn't reduce spending. He increased the deficit. He's not that interested in cutting because it's not very popular to cut.
FROST: It's going to have to happen at some point, right? We're going to get to that point. When? I don't know, because it seems like it used to be Republicans and Democrats would fight over how much money we're going to spend, and now we fight over how we're going to spend it. Like we all spend a lot, but how are we actually spending it? But we'll see what happens in the future.
DENT: Let's be honest. Most of the federal spending is on autopilot. It's Medicare, Medicaid, it's Social Security, it's interest on the debt, and it's also, of course, things like, oh, veterans benefits.
HAQ: Let's not forget the massive check that is defense spending.
DENT: Which is, okay, less than 30 percent is discretionary spending. Of that, half is defense. So, we can wipe out the whole discretionary budget, about $1.7 trillion in the United States, and we still wouldn't get the $2 trillion. I mean, that gets rid of the Defense Department, Homeland Security, basically everything the government cuts.
JONES: (INAUDIBLE) were saying they want to cut spending by $2.5 trillion. How do you do that without cutting Social Security?
PHILLIP: At some point, the math has to start mathing. And nobody's -- we're talking about DOGE. Nobody's talking numbers. And until that happens, this is all just going to be fairy tales and unicorns. Everyone, hang tight, coming up next, the FAA restricting airspace around New York and New Jersey in the wake of mysterious drone sightings. We have a special guest who's joining us in our fifth seat at the table. He'll have a new look at what these objects in the sky really might be.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:31:56]
PHILLIP: If you were hoping Santa got you a drone for Christmas and you live in the Tri-State area, well you probably will not be flying it anytime soon. The FAA has issued flight restrictions over critical infrastructure in New York City and Long Island, and they did the same thing for New Jersey yesterday. The Department of Homeland Security says no specific threats prompted that reaction, adding that the move was out of an abundance of caution.
Joining us now in our fifth seat is Chris Neff. He's a wildlife photographer but he is also a member of the MEDEM New Jersey Skywatch Task Force. It is a group that was formed by the mayor to get a clear picture of these videos of the drone sightings that everybody's been talking about and reporting.
Chris, so, first of all, you have a very cool hat that we cannot forget about. You're officially in the Skyforce -- Skywatch Task Force. And, but that thing next to it is a thermal camera.
CHRIS NEFF, NJ SKYWTACH TASK FORCE, MEMBER: So, this is a thermal imaging camera.
PHILLIP: Yes.
NEFF: So, this is something that I use to help identify the drone, if it's a drone or if it's a plane.
PHILLIP: Right.
NEFF: -- to distinguish that so you can see at night.
PHILLIP: I want to show the audience here one of the images that you say may be a drone. And why? Why would you say that this image is probably a drone?
NEFF: Yes, so it had no lights. The camera picked it up. You could not see with the naked eye and it was -- it's shaking because I had the zoom on full but it was hovering, it was not moving, it was in one spot.
PHILLIP: OK, but let's show this other image of a flock. It looks like a flock of birds, right? A lot of people have been reporting that these drones were clustering, that they were flying together.
NEFF: Yes.
PHILLIP: What is this? NEFF: So, those are a flock of birds. At first, I thought they might
be drones because birds -
PHILLIP: They're actually a flock of birds. I watched them for about 30 to 40 seconds and they flew off and I kind of got attracted to them to see where they would go. But after analyzing the video for some time, they are a flock of birds, they're not drones.
PHILLIP: Yes, and there were planes that you saw. I mean, so what's your bottom line here? I mean, I think two things. One, clearly, some -- now that everybody is aware of this, everybody's looking up and they're seeing lights.
NEFF: Yes.
PHILLIP: What do you think writ large is happening here?
NEFF: So, I think there is something going on. We don't know what is going on. I think there are drones. I have seen some drones with this. They're small personal drones. I know that people are reporting large objects, like car size. I haven't seen those yet, not saying they don't exist. But right now, this task force was created basically to get an answer for our community, because we're not getting an answer anywhere else. No one's answering us.
And we've reached out and we're just like, OK, so we're going to do it ourselves. And so, the community, we're empowering them to join us on these night watches to send us information when they see it. We'll help identify it. We're logging it. We're putting GPS coordinates in there. We use flight tracking applications so we can point up the sky and go, yes, that's United Flight. That's confirmed.
We'll look through the thermal camera, as well, because one thing that's really interesting, when you see planes flying in the distance, especially where I live out in Mendham, we have three big airports near us. We have small airports like Morristown.
It's really hard to see in the night sky that their planes, because they all look low to the ground, but they're coming in for landing or they're far away or they're putting their landing lights on. This, without a doubt, can see through those lights that the planes have blinking and you can see it's a plane or it's something else.
PHILLIP: Yes, we're showing an image of --
NEFF: Yes.
PHILLIP: -- very clearly, a plane.
NEFF: A plane. So, there was a --that -- those were these planes were over 10 miles away in the beginning and they -- I actually thought -- I have a video here. I actually thought that they were drones. It's like, yes, I got some and I watched them and they did everything that they're supposed to do as drones would do.
They were hovering, they were just staying side by side and then I waited and they started getting closer and they got close enough for the thermal camera to pick it up and I could see that they were planes.
PHILLIP: I think it's so interesting how there was all this fervor and then the story kind of disappeared from the headlines. And I don't know. I mean, does anyone have any theories about why that might?
JONES: You say that in a conspiratorial way.
PHILLIP: I just think that there was a lot of speculation. We know now. There were people talking about Iranian ships off of the East Coast. I mean, that is not happening. There's no evidence of that. And so, now that those theories have gone away, people have just stopped talking about it.
ARRIGHI: I think my friends in New Jersey are still talking about it. We still are wondering what the heck it was because what they saw near the shore especially, they know the plane traffic fairly well in their area and they could tell these things were massive. The videos I saw were crazy.
By the way, just because they haven't flown over Mendham doesn't mean they haven't flown elsewhere. And you have literally public officials like that mayor in New Jersey saying that we had lost a radioactive device, a potential nuke, and that they think that those were sniffing it out. The government needed much better P.R. on this and get out quicker, and the fact they didn't, it's on them.
PHILLIP: But I also think that there is, I mean we have to be a little bit more humble here. As Chris has experienced, you see something with your naked eye, and you think, oh that thing is huge, it's hovering, it's a drone. But it's not. Sometimes, maybe much of the time, it's not.
HAQ: And that's the challenge, right, of the see something, say something, and this broader environment of fear if you see something, the anxiety that people are just feeling across generations right now, where everything is suspicious if it's different.
One of the challenges I think we had in identifying what this really is, is so different than how the Chinese balloon incident went down, but we had one firm government in power, you know, sworn in an administration. I think seeing this lame duck session -- this is one of those situations where could have gotten more clarity and information from our national security officials if they were, you know, deeply engaged and not trying to navigate what comes next.
PHILLIP: So, Chris, some of your colleagues on the task force do believe in the UFOs of it all, right?
NEFF: I think that we all believe that there are -- that there's something out there. I mean, I am, I'm going to -- because then what I do with the wildlife, if I know there's a rare animal, I'll take a picture of it, and then before I go public with it, I'll verify it first. I'll get some experts to look at it. Now, social media is not helping here, because people take a picture
with their phone, and all of a sudden it's like, this guy's full of drones. And then everyone starts to get nervous about that. And they should be nervous. You know, I mean, I can't blame them for being nervous, especially when there are no answers from our elected officials.
PHILLIP: So, just to be clear, you all in your group have not seen any large drones?
NEFF: Some on our team have.
PHILLIP: Like very large ones?
NEFF: Not recently. They haven't seen the very large ones but they have seen groups of what they feel are drones. They've explained that. They've documented where they are. This group started pretty recently. This is really proactive of our mayor.
I'm really happy to be part of this group. So, I'm just getting out there in the past few days. We just started documenting all of this So, we're hoping to run into these. I mean, I really want to see one of these because that'll be really cool. It'll do great for my Instagram.
HAQ: Yes, here's what you won't be seeing there's a brand of drone that was the most common and popular hobbyist drone DJI and they're a China based company. Congress recently banned their use in the U.S.
And part of that is because Chinese owned companies have access to the data that travels on these drones. So, that is one of the concerns about having unspecified drones in the air, is understanding what information and what's being collected on the American people.
FROST: Absolutely.
ARRIGHI: They also admitted some were law enforcement. So, which is --
PHILLIP: Well, yes.
HAQ: And they would also like to know what information they are getting.
PHILLIP: I'll give you the last word.
FROST: Yes, this to me just goes back to a failure by the government on the higher level to give a clear answer to people.
[22:40:00]
I mean, if they could go to Congress and give them the classified briefing, and they said the members of Congress were okay with that, how much of that is so classified and so important that you can't tell the citizens so they don't have a war of the worlds? Everybody thinks there's UFOs, you know, an alien abduction's happening. We really should have had clarity for everyone and helped put this to rest a long time ago.
PHILLIP: That's certainly true. Chris Neff, thank you very much.
NEFF: Oh, thank you for having me.
PHILLIP: Very interesting and good luck to you.
NEFF: Thank you so much.
PHILLIP: Everyone else, hang on. Coming up next, there's a new challenger for number one in the podcast space. Kylie Kelce is jockeying with Joe Rogan on the ratings charts, and she's speaking out now about her left-leaning political views. We'll discuss that.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:45:02]
PHILLIP: Have Democrats found their answer to Joe Rogan? Kylie Kelce, soon to be mother of four and wife of former NFL star Jason Kelce unseated the Joe Rogan experience as the number one podcast in the U.S. with her new show. Not going to lie remains atop Apple's most listened list competing against conservative heavy weights like Ben Shapiro and also Tucker Carlson.
But in a new "New York Times" profile, Kelsey publicly shares for the first time, excuse me, that quote her like -- I'm just going to come to the conversation, but essentially she comes out as a left-leaning host.
JONES: Yes. So, I think this is potentially what -- what Democrats are looking for as an answer to shows like Joe Rogan. There's been a lot of conversation and consensus in the wake of this disastrous election cycle for Democrats about the media environment and how, you know, respectfully, cable -- cable TV is insufficient for purposes of getting a message out, especially to younger people, and especially the folks who are not as tuned in, shall we say, to traditional news.
I don't want to get overly optimistic about that because there was a reason she waited until after the election to even talk about what her political leanings are. I'm nervous for her, frankly, because she doesn't seem like she really wants to talk about politics very much. Obviously, I did read "The New York Times" profile of her, and she's a Michelle Obama fan, but a lot of people are across the ideological spectrum.
PHILLIP: And a Pennsylvania governor fan. Although she's from Pennsylvania.
JONES: Yes, yes. So, you know, I don't want to be overly optimistic about it, but it is pretty cool to see someone be able to unseat someone like Joe Biden.
HAQ: But let's -- if you looked at that list of who were the leading podcasters, they were very much targeted to white men, and as we've seen coming out of this election, there is a whole swath of women who have been activated, have been engaged, and don't necessarily feel represented in what they're seeing in politics right now. And she's not saying she's going to talk about politics.
I would also say that left-leaning in this current environment actually means, you know, is OK with abortion rights and doesn't want children to be shot in school and want some restrictions on guns. Like, these are very popular American, we would normally call centrist opinions that in this current political context with MAGA in the White House suddenly becomes left-leaning.
DENT: She doesn't strike me as necessarily a political person. She might be a little leftist-center. She is also a little bit like a suburban mom in many ways. And by the way, her husband Jason, he is a god-like figure in the Philadelphia Eagles.
I have a Jason Kelce shirt. I watch the Eagles, I wear it. By the way, my sons watched it. You stole the shirt. I want it back. But nevertheless, we love the Kelces. These are great people. I mean, he gave the greatest Super Bowl speech of all time when the Eagles won the Super Bowl. Everybody loves them.
HAQ: The Kelces, overall -- the Kelces overall are a massive brand in America. I mean, my kid wanted to buy cereal because the Kelce brothers were on it.
PHILLIP: You're right. I think is that she is a mom. She's trying to be authentic. But I think -- I think the thing I also find interesting about this is that I think people wanted her to be conservative because I don't know, I mean maybe they wanted to create this feud between her and Taylor Swift, maybe because of football, whatever. But she's just like, I'm my own person and I don't really care.
ARRIGHI: Yes, I think, first of all, as a Patriots fan, I hate the fact that you guys won that Super Bowl, but I will say that I think the Kelces seem like good people, fun to be around. I'm kind of reaching my limit on the Kelces.
JONES: You seem to struggle to say that, just now.
ARRIGHI: Yes, I'm kind of reaching the point. They're everywhere. But I will say, the fragmented media space that we're in -- people are listening to podcasts of all different stripes, watching different cable news shows, but they're also getting their news from TikTok and from social media.
I was just talking to these recent college grads and they literally, I was like, where do you get all your news? They're like TikTok. I'm like, oh, OK. And then podcasts, they could listen to this podcast and then flip on Joe Rogan all in the same car ride.
FROST: I wouldn't write the eulogy for Joe Rogan's podcast just yet. I mean, he's dominated for a long time for a reason. Other podcasts have come out with a lot of fanfare. Meghan Markle had one, dethroned him temporarily, but then it kind of faded into obscurity. Didn't even get renewed for a second season. HAQ: Well, and also, right, like Meghan Markle doesn't exactly give
you suburban housewife, or like suburban mom who is younger, like a younger version of suburban mom who is interested and engaging. I mean, there's a there-there with her that I appreciate and I think could have a follow-up.
PHILLIP: I think for Democrats, I mean, let's not that this is all about politics, but if Democrats want to kind of edge in on some of this podcast energy, they have to be able to operationalize people who are politically aligned with them, who have big audiences.
[22:50:00]
And I'm not sure that they would necessarily be able to get her to really engage in politics the way that she wanted to.
DENT: I totally agree with you. I mean, this is a woman who is a -- she's a field hockey player. She has three daughters. She's pregnant with a fourth daughter. You know, I ran into her and her husband down at the Jersey Shore at Uncle Bill's Pancake House.
PHILLIP: Now, you're just bragging.
DENT: They're normal people. I don't think this is about politics. I think it's more about women. She talks about what a lot of women talk about -- their kids.
JONES: And moms in particular.
DENT: You know, moms' issues, balancing work and life and all that.
PHILLIP: And they also, I mean, if she's in fact going to do this kind of unfiltered podcast if Democrats want that, they're going to have to be willing to actually do that --which I think is the other part of the problem that they faced in this election. They went to places where, yes, they were podcasts, but everybody was like kumbaya holding hands.
HAQ: Kamala Harris at the end of the day did not show up on Joe Rogan's podcast. You can say what you want about the logistics and who should be going where, but she didn't.
ARRIGHI: And, by the way, one of the things that went like super viral this election were his appearances on Theo Vaughn. Thiel von is not a political person, but their conversation about cocaine went crazy viral. It was hysterical. But those are the byproducts of going places regardless of political outlook just to reach new audiences.
JONES: Yes, think it may be more about that than this sort of like artificial effort to create liberal spaces.
ARRIGHI: Yes, yes.
JONES: Some folks have quipped that, you know, Joe Rogan has at times been the left's answer or liberal answer to what we see on the right. And Bernie Sanders helped to create that when he went on there and was criticized actually by many Democrats who went on Joe Rogan's show. I think it was the right thing for him to go on that show. And I think frankly, while we're talking about it, more Democrats need to go on Fox News and have those tough conversations.
PHILLIP: Yes, that's very true. Everyone, stay with me. Coming up next, two famous musicians came together to surprise a London crowd. So, who else does our panel think needs to be reunited in the year 2025? We'll discuss that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:56:42]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
(PAUL MCCARTNEY AND RINGO STARR PERFORMING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: They get by with a little help from their friends. That is Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr surprising a London audience last night. They reunited during McCartney's concert and played Beatles songs together. That got us thinking. What other reunions should we see in 2025? Everyone at the table, you've got 30 seconds to tell us what you want to see. Let's start with you, Mondaire.
JONES: Yes, so the X-Files is my all-time favorite show. I want to see another reboot. I want Mulder and Scully to come together. I want to see multiple episodes. The last reboot was horrible, so I volunteer to write the episodes this time around to make them good.
PHILLIP: I've actually seen the last reboot. It was not so good.
JONES: It was so bad, I didn't even get through the last reboot.
PHILLIP: OK, I'll take your word for it. You're the expert. Go ahead, Katie.
FROST: All right, so my theory is we might need to see a reunion between Newt Gingrich and the Speaker Scabble. When Newt was Speaker, wait a minute. When Newt was Speaker, he laid out very clearly, this is what we're going to do, this is how we're going to govern. And he kept his caucus in line, say what you will. They kept that caucus in line, every one of the Contra for the America planks got passed in 100 days. Will we see it?
PHILLIP: Just to be clear, Gingrich is probably the most responsible for the unruly conference in the House right now.
FROST: And yet somehow we had surpluses after all the stuff that he put in place.
JONES: Who was president during that?
DENT: Let's get back to Pennsylvania again, Philadelphia. I want Daryl Hall and John Oates to come back together again, ok? They've had a business dispute, but we need them back together. "Rich Girl", "She's Gone" -- all these great songs.
PHILLIP: Yes, it's unfortunate.
HAQ: I want to see one of those reunions where cast members get back together and talk about the dirt from their era, that's "Family Matters". And here's Jaleel White has a book out that's created a little bit of controversy.
He played Urkel and has made some statements about how "Family Matters" just wasn't considered black enough because it wasn't good enough. But I just, I think I want to hear them talk about how a nerd stalking a woman and a black cop as a dad, how that would go down in a modern era.
PHILLIP: OK, so you disagree?
JONES: I think, Julie -- like I saw like snippets of the interview he did. I think he's out of his mind.
HAQ: I think this reunion would be messy and that's really why I want to see it happen. PHILLIP: A lot of these old, like, black family sitcoms, I'm not sure
they really -- some of them don't hold up in today's politics, necessarily. I don't know if you could really --
JONES: But if you use his own logic, there are so many great black familial shows that were nowhere near hood but are popular. And by the way, "Family Matters" is also extremely popular and iconic. And so, I don't know, I think he's insecure about something.
PHILLIP: Yes. It's very possible. Go ahead.
ARRIGHI: I believe that America's pastime has a problem and unless you play on the Fordham Club baseball team, which is a blast -- shout out guys -- it's becoming boring as sin. Pete Rose dying without being reunited with the MLB because he gambled, his crazy gambling makes baseball more fun. Gambling is fun in moderation. But I have a reunion for baseball that will absolutely bring the game back to life and it is reuniting it with steroids.
[23:00:00]
There was nothing better than watching a roided out guy mash a ball to the moon. You liked it, I liked it, the world liked it. So, Commissioner Manford, get on that, let's have some fun, make baseball great again, let him roid up.
DENT: OK, Barry Bonds.
PHILLIP: That is what you call a hot take. Everyone, thank you very much for a great show. Have a great weekend, and thank you very much for watching "NewsNight". Laura Coates starts right now.
