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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Soon, Musk's Deadline For Workers To Explain Their Jobs; Trump Taps MAGA Podcaster As FBI's Second-In-Command; Pardoned Ex-Proud Boy Chief Confronts January 6th Cops; President Trump Meets Macron At The White House. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired February 24, 2025 - 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, federal workers have less than two hours left to email Elon Musk to explain why they should still get paychecks as Trump's cabinet says one thing, while Trump says another.
Plus, polite disagreement, the French president plays the part of a happy visiting foreign head of state while checking Donald Trump's facts.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: They get their money back.
EMMANUEL MACRON, FRENCH PRESIDENT: No. In fact, to be frank we paid.
PHILLIP: Also, red-pilled and ready, the new number two at the FBI is a podcast host who makes a living by promoting conspiracies and promising to fight the feds.
And reclaiming the narrative, Jane Fonda uses a primetime stage to send a message to MAGA that having empathy is not weak or woke.
Live at the table, Ana Navarro, Scott Jennings, Tara Setmayer and Joe Borelli.
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, confusion and contradiction. Tonight, Elon Musk is alerting all federal government employees via X that they may get more time to justify their jobs. But, quote, failure to respond a second time will result in termination.
Now, whether the rest of the Trump cabinet actually agrees with that is a separate question. And the answer seems to be no. This all started with Musk emailing the federal workforce trying to elicit an explanation, asking those employees to send five things in a bullet point that they achieved this last week. Letting the email go unanswered, he said, would be taken essentially as their resignation.
The agencies who would have let their people go for not replying are, shall we say, not about to let that happen. Health and Human Services, the Department of Agriculture, the FBI, the Justice Department, the Pentagon, Homeland Security, the State Department, the Office of Personnel Management, they are all saying, in essence, that Musk's email means nothing. There's no penalty for not replying. And if someone wanted to respond, according to OPM, they should assume that what they are writing is going to be read, quote, by malign foreign actors.
But this is President Trump on the side of Elon Musk, of course, or, you know, the side of the agencies. It's not exactly clear. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Some of the agency heads instructed their employees not to respond because they are waiting on further guidance. Are you concerned at all about that?
TRUMP: Only -- no. That was done in a friendly manner. Only things such as perhaps Marco at State Department, where they have very confidential things, or the FBI where they're working on confidential things, and they don't mean that in any way combatively with Elon. They're just saying there're some people that you don't want to really have them tell you what they're working on last week. But other than that, I think everyone thought it was a pretty ingenious idea.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I'm not so sure about everyone. And he's talking about -- I mean, we listed out all the different agencies. That's probably about half of the federal government workforce. If you wanted to exempt all of those people, why send the email to everybody, including air traffic controllers, including, you know, people who are dealing with covert agents overseas? Why?
ANA NAVARRO, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Because they can, because he -- because I think he did it at Twitter and he thinks it worked for him there, and he thinks that the federal government, he can treat it in the same way.
I think part of it is really showing control and lack of empathy towards the federal government and disdain. I think there's this like notion that federal government workers are sitting there playing words with friends, or, I don't know, twiddling their thumbs and that somehow there is a quick magic way to root out fraud and waste and corruption.
And there's so many things that Elon Musk is doing and Trump, I guess, by extension, that if they did it surgically, if they did it strategically, if they did it deliberately and thoughtfully, I don't think anybody would have an issue with cutting some government waste, with identifying programs that are not working.
[22:05:00]
But the way they are doing it is haphazard, it is dangerous, it is frankly abusive of federal workers, and it is just plain wrong.
PHILLIP: And it's random.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's abusive right now?
NAVARRO: Yes, I do. I do think that -- I think the way that they are -- yes, just the way that they are treating them --
JENNINGS: How is this abusive?
TARA SETMAYER, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, THE SENECA PROJECT: Scott, have you ever gotten an email from someone that said, you better do this or else you're going to resign --
JENNINGS: Yes. It's called having boss. It's called having the boss of the private sector.
SETMAYER: -- from someone not from someone who's not your boss --
JENNINGS: Well, the White House is every federal workers' boss. That's number one.
SETMAYER: Elon Musk is not anybody's boss. Scott, how is
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Scott, how is Elon going to evaluate -- I mean, how is he going to evaluate the work of thousands of federal employees when he has no idea what he's doing?
JENNINGS: He is not. The test was, are you even paying attention to your email? Are you even at your terminal?
PHILLIP: Well, some federal workers -- he sent it on a weekend. Some federal workers do not have access to their emails on the weekends. They just don't.
JENNINGS: Well, did they go to work today? I mean, look, the amount of outrage melting down and sort of outpouring of emotion over this ought to tell you everything you need to know. We had a lady on CNN today, a supposed federal worker, who said she was infuriated by getting this email. She had time to go on CNN, but shouldn't have time to send a 30-second email saying, well, here's what I was working on last week.
This is what people in the private sector have come to hate about how they view the public sector. And I think there's a great many very dedicated public servants. But you said, you know, it's about control. Yes, it's about control and it's about finding out who is actually at their job working and who isn't. And do we need all these people?
PHILLIP: How does sending this email actually determine who's actually doing their job?
JENNINGS: Did you answer?
PHILLIP: No. But, seriously, okay, so let me say you're a lazy employee and you decide, oh, this is an easy way to make Elon think that I am doing work. Let me fire off five bullet points. Are you actually identifying who's doing work?
JOE BORELLI, FORMER REPUBLICAN LEADER, NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL: You're giving an example of the most lazy employee doing the basic minimum, which is you test.
PHILLIP: Are you doing a little bit of a gimmick and getting people who are just willing to write an email?
BORELLI: It's not a gimmick. And to Ana's point, she said that this is something that could have been done with a scalpel. And yet politicians have been talking about doing this with a scalpel and maybe we can find waste, fraud and abuse here, but did nothing about it for the last 20, 30 years, probably since Ronald Reagan.
PHILLIP: Including Donald Trump, he was president for four years.
BORELLI: Point stipulated. That said, Elon Musk is here now, doing something, and spare me the outrage of the woe is me federal employees, who have to do it every single person, and I've been saying it -- I'm not finished. I'm willing to bet every line producer here at CNN has to answer to their boss every week, hey, this is what we did this week, this is how we accomplished it, these are the goals we met. This is what normal people do.
NAVARRO: It's probably a boss that they know personally, who they have no issue being evaluated by, not some, you know, person with no identity, not big balls sitting somewhere looking for algorithms. And, yes, he's doing things in a way that is haphazard, as proven by firing, you know, people working on the nuclear stockpile who then they had to refine, firing people working on the avian flu who then they had to accidentally, you know, admit they had fired and go somehow find again so that they could bring back.
PHILLIP: Tara, go ahead.
SETMAYER: Okay. So I want to dispel this myth that federal employees are some lazy, you know, bureaucrats that don't show up for their work. Listen, 85 percent of federal workers work outside of Washington, D.C. Those are people who work at our national parks. Those are people who work on, you know, the ag departments in farm bureau states. Those are people who are taking care of Medicaid and processing payments for people in red states, like where Donald Trump lives.
So, we need to stop being so cavalier, Scott, about people and whether they're working or not, and how come they're so upset about getting an email because these are people's livelihoods.
JENNINGS: Because some are getting cavaliered. SETMAYER: You have the privilege of (INAUDIBLE) getting six-figure paychecks from CNN.
JENNINGS: And I have to show up every day and I had to show up and earn it. And I have to show up and earn it.
SETMAYER: These federal workers have put their entire careers in public service, and they do the same. And the fact that you assume that they don't is obnoxious and insulting to those people to make (INAUDIBLE) service.
(CROSSTALKS)
JENNINGS: Why are you assuming that they are?
PHILLIP: Hang on.
BORELLI: No one's assuming anything.
PHILLIP: Hold on, Joe, let me play for you just because apparently you think that it's only Ana and Tara who are concerned about this. Here's John Curtis talking about this yesterday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN CURTIS (R-UT): If I could say one thing to Elon Musk, it's like, please put a dose of compassion in this. These are real people. These are real lives. These are mortgages. It's a false narrative to say we have to cut and you have to be cruel to do it as well. We can do both.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Joe and Scott Tara, we all cannot speak at the same time, but, okay, his point is, let's not be cruel. You can find out how people are performing on their job without sending a gimmicky email that is only going to get -- you're going to get false positives, you're going to get people who are bad performers responding to the email and good performers not responding to the email. And what does that tell you, Scott?
JENNINGS: The premise of your question is that there are thousands of federal workers who are lazy and dishonest.
[22:10:00]
You're saying that if people respond, then they're trying to game the system of a gimmicky email. That's number one. And I don't necessarily believe that.
PHILLIP: I'm just saying federal workers are like human beings on the planet.
JENNINGS: There's nothing -- (CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: That's not how you evaluate people by asking them to send you a random email.
JENNINGS: They're not being evaluated. They're simply being asked, what five things did you do last week? It is a simple question can. And the fact that no one seems to want to answer it tells me --
NAVARRO: Let me put this in context though. This is after just in the first few days of the administration, they received a buyout offer that then it wasn't really a buyout offer then, and it was very confusing.
JENNINGS: No, it's not. They got a buyout if they want it.
NAVARRO: There's colleagues all over the country being fired in a haphazard way. There's probationary workers being fired, supposedly for performance issues, when nobody is actually evaluating their performance. Then this email goes out. Then the agency heads say, no, don't answer the email. Don't you find it a little bit -- don't you think it would be a little bit stressful right now to be a federal worker, to be a park ranger? Yes.
JENNINGS: To be a federal worker? To be on the government payroll?
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Joe, Tara, and Scott, and Ana, everybody hold on one second.
NAVARRO: (INAUDIBLE) your colleagues fired. It is stressful to be working at the NIH.
JENNINGS: No air traffic controllers were fired. That's a lie.
NAVARRO: It is stressful to be --
JENNINGS: Not one. Name one --
PHILLIP: Elon Musk tonight -- Ana, hang on a second. Elon Musk tonight, just to add to the confusion about this, to be honest, he sent out another message on X saying the email requested was utterly trivial as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send. Okay. Yet so many failed, even that inane test and urged on in some cases by their managers. Have you ever witnessed such incompetence and contempt for how your taxes are being spent? Makes old Twitter look good. Did not think that was possible. There was also some indication that maybe they might have more time. So, can they get the story straight?
SETMAYER: But he also put out a Twitter that said that, oh, Donald Trump now has given them a second chance for the people who didn't respond the first time, and that's the second chance. Like, first of all, let's get this straight. Elon Musk, no one elected him. DOGE is a fake, illegal operation that the courts will decide because it's being litigated what they're doing. Also, people who are working at the federal government, the cruelty of this, are people who have just graduated from college or just finished their master's or came from PhD programs and now they're being told by NASA or by HHS or by NIH after they moved their lives to wherever to be public servants and they're told now, well, no, pack up, you got to go.
This is happening indiscriminately across our government. That is cruel. It's unnecessary. It's dangerous. And when our own agencies are telling us that malign actors, are just ignoring that part?
BORELLI: No one actually (INAUDIBLE) in the world thinks it's cruel to get an email from your boss asking, hey, what did you accomplish? No one. No one thinks that's --
JENNINGS: He works for the president.
BORELLI: And no one thinks that cruel. He is. If he is appointed by the president, he is their boss.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Joe, you said no one, but that's not the case, okay? Here's Lisa Murkowski, also a Republican senator. She says, he should get to know each department and agency, she's talking about Elon, and learn about the jobs he's trying to cut. Our public workforce deserves to be treated with dignity and respect for the unheralded jobs they perform. The absurd weekend email to justify their existence wasn't it.
BORELLI: We deserve. A better accounting of the $271 billion we spend in a federal payroll.
PHILLIP: I totally agree.
BORELLI: If someone cannot answer a single email --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: I actually think you're 100 percent correct about that. There should be an accounting. But that's not this.
SETMAYER: That's Congress' job. That's the inspectors general's job that they fired.
BORELLI: Well, it's Elon Musk's job.
SETMAYER: No, it's not.
PHILLIP: He doesn't tell you anything about what's going on with the government.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: What is it telling you, Joe?
BORELLI: The argument that this was gimmicky is okay.
PHILLIP: What is it telling you about where the money is being spent? BORELLI: Yes, this was gimmicky. It's saying, who is actually coming in? Lee Zeldin just required his workforce to come in on Fridays and Mondays.
SETMAYER: That's not what we're talking about here.
BORELLI: But my point is that's something that hasn't even been thought of in years.
SETMAYER: You just acknowledged it was gimmicky by Elon Musk, like him going out on the CPAC stage with a chainsaw, jumping around like a buffoon. When people's lives are on the line (INAUDIBLE).
PHILLIP: All right. Hold on. Scott?
JENNINGS: I think one other point, and this is the push and pull of when a Republican is the president. There's an attempt, when a Republican's in the White House, Donald Trump or any other Republican, to argue that these federal agencies, federal workers, the bureaucracy, sort of, can act independently or autonomously from the political leadership of the country. And that's what's happening here. That's why everyone is melting down. That's why the lady came on CNN today. They don't want to answer the email because they don't want to answer to the president. And the message from Trump and Musk is we have political leaders in this country and you got to answer to them.
PHILLIP: I'm not following you. Are you saying -- are you suggesting that it's only when Republicans are president that agencies express independence?
JENNINGS: Yes.
PHILLIP: Well, you know that that's not true.
JENNINGS: No. I know that it is 100 percent true that the bureaucracy is not aligned with -- mostly not aligned with Republicans,
NAVARRO: There are career civil servants who work after every one president --
(CROSSTALKS)
NAVARRO: And do so for the Constitution and the love of country.
PHILLIP: Hold on a second.
[22:15:00]
Among Democrats and Republican presidents, there are certain agencies that are statutorily independent from politics. That's the same whether it's Republican or Democrat.
JENNINGS: You're saying that the bureaucracy is responsive to Republican or Trump priorities as Democratic?
PHILLIP: Is that what I said? No, it's not. JENNINGS: You're saying that bias doesn't exist, and I disagree.
PHILLIP: Okay. Scott, let me just repeat what I said. There are certain agencies, regardless of the president, that are statutorily independent from politics because they deal with things that pertain to the American public and there needs to be continuity, regardless of who the president --
SETMAYER: Federal Reserve.
PHILLIP: The Federal Reserve, the Security and Exchange Commission. There are plenty of agencies that are like that. And --
JENNINGS: But an email doesn't jeopardize continuity of government.
PHILLIP: And there are many, many at federal employees that are civil servants, meaning that they don't come in because of partisan politics. That's there to protect you as a conservative and Tara as a liberal.
JENNINGS: I'm sorry. I think that's --
PHILLIP: It's there to protect both of you.
JENNINGS: I hear your debating point. I think it is incredibly naive to believe that there are not civil service bureaucrats who would love nothing more than to thwart this president for four years and wait for a Democrat to take over.
SETMAYER: And why are Republican senators worried about it also then? They're not liberals.
NAVARRO: I'll tell you why. Because there's almost 8 million federal workers in red states. You know, you think that the people working at the border have a bias, pro-Democrats, you think people working for USDA in Miami have a bias for Democrats?
JENNINGS: Answer the email. Answer the email.
PHILLIP: All right.
SETMAYER: And let malign actors, you know, and national security risk --
NAVARRO: It's not the president.
PHILLIP: Ana and Scott, we'll continue this conversation many a times, I'm sure.
Coming up next, the MAGA podcasters who made his name on conspiracy threats, he is now the number two at the FBI, why Dan Bongino thinks that Trump should just ignore the courts.
Plus, the pardoned Proud Boy leader is confronting a January 6th officer, a police officer, and calling those people cowards.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You were coward that day. You were coward after.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just go home. Just go home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're a traitor in this country.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We saw you (BLEEP).
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, fidelity, bravery, integrity, it is a coda for the FBI, but it is one that the new number two of that agency presumptively believes the Bureau may not still stand for. It's a question mark that we're asking tonight.
Listen to Dan Bongino over just the last few months and decide on what you think he means.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAN BONGINO, FBI DEPUTY DIRECTOR NOMINEE: Power. That is all that matters. No, it doesn't, Dan. We have a system of checks and balances. That's a good one.
You are going to get your ass kicked if you are an anti-Trumper for the next four years.
My recommendation is Donald Trump should ignore this. This judge is obviously not acting constitutionally at all. It should be ignored.
We need to set up a courtroom, Donald Trump can sit there, he can even wear like the wigs they wear in the U.K. court system, and he can just start making judicial decisions.
My entire life right now is about owning the libs. That's it.
But what the FBI did to Donald Trump, that wasn't law enforcement. It was tyranny.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: This guy, Joe, the deputy director of the FBI?
BORELLI: I can't wait. I mean, I'm here for it. He's the type of guy that I voted for Donald Trump for. I mean, look, three months ago, I heard the president of the United States talk about the politicization of the DOJ and how it is not impartial, right? That was President Joe Biden who said that. That wasn't Donald Trump. Joe Biden said that. Donald Trump is saying the same thing.
PHILLIP: And that actually is also what Donald Trump said, just to be clear.
BORELLI: Yes, but my point is that both of them are saying the same thing that the DOJ has politicized. So, someone who comes in out of the box, someone with a law enforcement career, federal and state level, someone who's been on this network as an expert in law enforcement, I think, is just the right person, outside of the box, to reform the FBI.
PHILLIP: So, he says, to hell with checks and balances, his whole life is about owning the libs, that, you know, just ignore the courts, Donald Trump is basically the judge, jury, executioner. Where is the law in the law enforcement part of this?
JENNINGS: Well, my view is he's been appointed to a position in the Department of Justice. He now serves at the pleasure of the president, the attorney general, and the FBI director. And he needs to follow all the laws and all the directives he's given by his superiors. And I'm going to judge him on that because, as was just stated, this man was a cop, he was a Secret Service agent, he's got a master's degree. He does have credentials for the job, and so now he has the job. And I expect him to fulfill the duties of the office. And I suspect that's what Donald Trump expects him to do.
NAVARRO: Scott, you know, this idea that he's got credentials for the job. The credentials that he has for the job are much lesser than the people who have held that same job for decades now.
PHILLIP: Actually, just to add to what you're saying, just so people understand, the deputy director of the FBI for 117 years has been from within the ranks of the FBI, somebody who actually understands the organization, who is a special agent. And the FBI Agents Association says that in a meeting with them last month, Kash Patel said that he would do this she said -- Bara wrote in an internal newsletter to members sent on February 23rd that Patel had agreed during a January meeting with her that the FBI deputy director, quote, should continue to be an onboard active special agent, as has been the case for 117 years for many compelling reasons, including operational expertise and experience, as well as the trust of our special agent population.
[22:25:00]
So, in a merit-based world here, this person does not actually have the qualifications for this particular job in the FBI.
SETMAYER: That is correct.
NAVARRO: Neither does the secretary of defense, who was appointed and approved. Neither does the guy who's been nominated for secretary of the Navy, who's like an art collector. Neither does Kash Patel. Neither does RFK. And none of these people have the experience in running departments that are that large, so they don't have the academic experience. They don't have the managerial experience, but they have the one thing that matters, loyalty to Donald Trump.
And I think that when Donald Trump said, look, I'm going to be the retribution, he is putting people in place at DOJ, at FBI, who are going to be his retribution and who can execute what he wants. So, people voted knowing that. With that, I agree.
SETMAYER: Here's the thing that we need to be very clear about. You and you would never put up with a Democratic nominee -- a Democratic president nominating someone with the temperament, the history of making comments that are extrajudicial, that are not respectful of law and order. I was a Republican for 27 years. I come from a law enforcement family. I am married to a federal officer. Never in a million years would either one of you ever put up with someone that has the resume of Dan Bongino.
And the fact that he has repeatedly made the comments he's made, what he calls fellow Americans all kinds of expletives, the anger, the constant rage, the saying that we shouldn't follow laws, there are 38,000 members of the FBI, an $11 billion budget, and that is one of the most premier law enforcement agencies in the world that they deserve better than someone like him who has made his career, after his law enforcement career, which was a long time ago, has made his career insulting people, threatening people, losing his temper, and now he's in charge of one of our preeminent law enforcement because he's next to Kash Patel, who also doesn't know what he's doing, is unqualified --
PHILLIP: Eventually, the management role and the hierarchy --
SETMAYER: Yes, it's the (INAUDIBLE).
PHILLIP: This person is the person who is effectively running the sort of day-to-day of the organization, which is why, for all these years, that person has been from within the ranks.
JENNINGS: Well, it doesn't have to be that way, and I suspect Kash Patel is going to be a hands-on manager. But just, if I may address one issue, you just denigrated Bongino's law enforcement credentials. He was a cop and a Secret Service agent. You denigrated his academic credentials. He has a master's degree.
SETMAYER: Just because he was a police officer doesn't make him qualified to run a 38,000-person, $11 billion budget agency, just like Pete Hegseth, a National Guardsman, that doesn't either. Thank you for your service.
JENNINGS: Because he enjoys the confidence and the pleasure of the president.
SETMAYER: His judgment is terrible.
JENNINGS: And I'm sorry that you're not yet over the outcome of the election. But in our system, we elect people, and they appoint people to office. That's the way it works.
SETMAYER: This is dismantling our democracy in front of our eyes, and you guys are okay with it.
BORELLI: We had a city that was smaller than the amount of people that live on this block. And he was the secretary of transportation. You had the guy who was stealing luggage. I mean, I think anyone who's defending at any point, defending the Biden administration.
PHILLIP: Joe, but this is the FBI.
BORELLI: So? And this is someone who has a career in law enforcement for many years.
PHILLIP: Let me just ask you, does Dan Bongino have the qualifications to be the second person in charge of the FBI?
JENNINGS: Yes. He has law enforcement, he has academic, and, again, let me just stress this. I've mentioned this before. They serve at the pleasure of the president. That's the political appointment.
PHILLIP: I know that is the answer to every question, is that Donald Trump wants it, so therefore it is good.
JENNINGS: For political appointments? Yes.
PHILLIP: But when we look at -- if we -- or we're talking about people who are qualified and not, and you look at his resume and compare it to Republican and Democrat nominees for that same position, is he qualified?
JENNINGS: I mean, first of all, I'm not sure all the people that have been appointed in the past have covered themselves in glory. I mean, some of them have done a terrible job and gotten in lots of trouble.
PHILLIP: Look, I want to get to one other thing because I think this is also extremely important in terms of the way that Donald Trump has taken people from the fringes and put them smack dab in the center of our society. This is what played out this weekend. This is Proud Boy Enrique Tarrio harassing a former Capitol police officer who served on January 6th.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You were a coward that day. You were a coward after.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just go home. Just go home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're a traitor to this country.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We saw you (BLEEP).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're a traitor to this country.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's why they fired your ass and that's why a lot of people turned on you, you piece of shit. You're (INAUDIBLE).
You little failure. Run from me (BLEEP).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's not staying in the hotel.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You piece of shit.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Pardoned, excused, welcomed back into polite society and he goes chasing people down the hallway to say things like that, people who were injured, seriously, on January 6th.
[22:30:03]
BORELLI: I don't support the Proud Boys. I don't support what he did. And I think he's a hypocrite for saying what he said at his sentencing, where he basically praised those same officers when he was being sentenced, you know, the day he was getting sentenced.
He actually came out said these were American heroes, right?
PHILLIP: That's clearly a lie.
BORELLI: But that makes him a hypocrite. You know, who else is a hypocrite? It's Democrats who look at this thing which was which was tamed in comparison to what we see in America's big cities all the time. When police officers are violent. No, no, we're not -- we're not --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Hold on, hold on, Tara. You know that -- you know that there could have been a period at the end of the first -- you know that there could have been a period at the end of the first part of your sentence. There's actually no reason to create another scenario about this.
UNKNOWN: Correct.
PHILLIP: It's either, I mean --
BORELLI: Apples to apples.
PHILLIP: I agree with you. Yeah, but Joe --
BORELLI: Democrats only care about assaults on police when it happened on January sixth in front of the U.S. Capitol. If it happened on March 25th in, you know, Grams C Park, no one cares. Democrats don't give a fiddler's fart when it happens night after night.
PHILLIP: Okay, hold on, okay, let's not, let's not, let's not, let's not use that word on the air. Go ahead.
NAVARRO: This was a conference that was happening this weekend. It was about freedom of speech. It was a conference where these four cops were. So he --
BORELLI: And you get protesters at conference. When you speak, you get protesters. I've got protesters before, too. It's a public speech.
NAVARRO: Okay, this is a guy who now feels that he is untouchable, right? He's got the President of the United States who's got his back and who pardons him no matter what he does, so he can go out and he can do this. This is also a guy who wants to increase his Twitter likes and increase his Twitter followers and have a higher profile and sell merchandise. And so he wants to create a moment.
PHILLIP: Just one second because I just feel like this needs to be said. This is what's wrong with our politics is that we can't just say it's wrong for a guy who participated in an attack on the Capitol to taunt the police officer who was viciously attacked on that day. Just period and just let it go. I don't understand why in our politics we have to take that and then say, well, some other random incident over here is also bad and so therefore nothing matters.
BORELLI: The democracy should be pulled out on both sides.
PHILLIP: Joe, hang on a second. You can just say it's wrong and leave it there. Why can't you just say that?
BORELLI: But hypocrisy should be called out on both sides.
PHILLIP: If so, just a second. So if you saw somebody, let's call it a Black Lives Matter protester who assaulted a police officer, then go to where that police officer was of his own volition and harass that person, you would say, well, you know --
BORELLI: But I didn't say that. I said what he did was bad. I said what he did was bad.
PHILLIP: -- That's bad but it's also bad that Enrique Tarrio did this.
SETMAYER: Right, but you made a false equivalency. There is no false -- no, you got your chance, and I'm going to have mine right now about this.
For the law enforcement officers who lost their careers, who almost lost their lives, who protected those ungrateful bastards that day that are now pardoned like Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy.
He's the traitor, and anyone who defends what they did or tries to make a false equivalency, actually, they are traitors to this country and our constitution and every law enforcement officer that puts on the badge that defends our democracy.
How dare you and anyone else that tries to make a false equivalency with people like the January sixth rioters who were pardoned by the same president. You want us to have confidence in his judgment? He pardoned, seditious conspiracy traitors.
PHILLIP: Hey, so, just a point of fact, okay?
SETMAYER: There is no equivalency.
PHILLIP: Enrique Tarrio, one of the things that he was convicted of was planning to try to overthrow the government, like that is actually substantively a different thing than -- than, you know, even just random city crime. Don't -- why can't you acknowledge that?
BORELLI: No, no one's defending him.
PHILLIP: Don't you think that it's bad, worse to try to overthrow the government than it is to just do random --
SETMAYER: And how black lives many matter? Seditious conspiracy. How many? Zero.
PHILLIP: He's making an equivalency between those two things. And the question is why?
JENNINGS: He was saying that if you're against somebody who attacks police officers here, you should think more broadly about that. I think it's an interesting point.
PHILLIP: Okay, I think everybody agrees with that. But why can't you just say this is wrong and just call it a day?
JENNINGS: I think you're trying to paint one -- one attack on a cop here as somehow better or worse than an attack on a cop there. But, look.
PHILLIP: No, no, no. I'm just saying --
JENNINGS: But I haven't had a chance on this yet.
PHILLIP: -- a person who was pardoned for attack -- for trying to overthrow the United States government and for facilitating the attack of many police officers, that was a display -- that was a terrible, disgusting moment. And you should just be able to say that call it a day.
JENNINGS: Yeah, I don't -- I don't -- I haven't talked on the -- I don't like this. I hate this.
UNKNOWN: Which this?
JENNINGS: This video that we just play. I don't like this coming up this time all the way. I don't like these public confrontations.
SETMAYER: And you don't like the pardons either.
PHILLIP: Hold on, Tara, let's let him finish.
JENNINGS: I don't, I mean, this is -- and I also don't frankly like the pardons of the people who committed violence. I do think some people got swept up on January sixth who weren't violent. But that wasn't him. And him going after that police officer on that video.
[22:35:00]
Look, if he has some beef with this guy and he believes he's been wrong, could take him to court, you know, you could -- you could do other things. But this idea of trying to force a public confrontation that could have easily spilled over into some more violence.
NAVARRO: That's what it's about. Creating a spectacle for the sake of likes.
PHILLIP: I do want to leave it there and Scott, I will just say I appreciate you saying that because I think we should just call a spade a spade and let it be. Coming up next, France's Emmanuel Macron fact checks the President of the United States to his face as Donald Trump makes clear the one thing that he will not say about Vladimir Putin. That's next.
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[22:40:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, two allies in two very different sets of facts, Donald Trump and Francis Emmanuel Macron, looked as chummy as any two world leaders, but looks can be deceiving. Over and over today, the pair were not on the same page. They really weren't even reading from the same book.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNKNOWN: Mr. President, if Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a dictator, would you use the same words regarding Putin?
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I don't use those words lightly. I think that we're going to see how it all works out.
EMMANUEL MACRON, PRESIDENT OF FRANCE: This is the responsibility of Russia because the aggressor is Russia.
TRUMP: Just so you understand, Europe is loaning the money to Ukraine. They get their money back.
MACRON: No, in fact, to be frank, we paid. We paid 60 percent of the total default. And it was through, like the U.S., loans, guarantees, grants, and we provided real money, to be clear.
TRUMP: I think we could end it within weeks if we're smart.
MACRON (through translator): We want peace swiftly, but we don't want an agreement that is weak.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Joining us in our fifth seat is Jamie Metzl. He's a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the author of Superconvergence. Jamie, Donald Trump is very clearly signaling a major shift in United States' foreign policy. And it's one where Ukraine is not necessarily seen as an ally, where Russia is not necessarily seen as an enemy, where, heck, Europe, you're on your own. And is that just where we're headed now?
JAMIE METZYL, SENIOR FELLOW, ATLANTIC COUNCIL: It may be where we're heading, but I think it's extremely dangerous. The reason we have this architecture in Europe and in the world is that some very wise Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, came together at the end of the Second World War and looked back at the history over the last 100, 150 years of the world wars and looked at the balance of competing powers and said, we need to have a better system.
And the basis of that system is the alliances, it's the protection of sovereignty and all of those things. God knows it's not working perfectly. Absolutely, we need to work to bring this war to an end, but it needs to be brought to an end in a right way that doesn't decimate the security architecture in Europe.
And to do that, we need to negotiate from a position of strength. And it may be, I would love to be surprised and to say that there's a secret plan, and that we're going to pull some kind of victory out of the hat and that could be.
But when I look at what Donald Trump has said and undermining and attacking our Ukrainian allies, undermining our allies in Europe, and seeming to praise Putin and not being able to say that Putin is a dictator and a thug and a murderer and supporting rape and all these kidnapping of children, to not be able to say that Russia has invaded Ukraine and the Ukrainians are defending their homeland, it's at least a very concerning first step. It may be this four-dimensional chess thing that people are talking about, and if so, I'd love to come back here and listen to that.
PHILLIP: But to your point, I mean, they won't say now, apparently it's for voting to say that Russia started the war. Listen to this from this past weekend.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX NEWS SUNDAY MORNING HOST: Can you acknowledge that Russia is the aggressor here?
MICHAEL WALTZ, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Well, you know what? Who would you rather have and go toe to toe with the likes of Vladimir Putin? President Trump's own words have been that Russia invaded a neighbor under Bush, under Obama, and under Biden, but not him.
PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I don't need to get into the characterization of we know who invaded who. We understand the stakes of this game. Does all the finger-pointing and pearl-clutching make peace more likely?
STEVE WITKOFF, SPECIAL ENVOY TO THE MIDDLE EAST: The war didn't need to happen. It was provoked. It doesn't necessarily mean it was provoked by the Russians.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: It wasn't provoked by the Russians?
JENNINGS: Well, Russia invaded Ukraine. I mean, we can say it out loud. It's okay. It's also okay to say that Zelenskyy may not have played his hand correctly here in the last few weeks vis-a-vis Donald Trump. I'm willing to give the new administration some latitude to try to enact the political will of the people of the United States, and that is for this to come to an end.
The political will to continue to funding an open-ended engagement is draining rapidly. I think you would acknowledge that. And so, Trump here is a new broker on the field and has a chance to do something amazing, and that is to get these two people to stop fighting, and in that case would bring some stability to the continent of Europe.
And you know, what he has to say publicly about Russia or Ukraine over the course of time, I guess I'm willing to give them some latitude if the ultimate result is this. What Pete Hegseth said initially, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine -- those were his words.
The United States strikes a rare earth mineral deal with Ukraine, I would love that. And the governments in Europe decide that they do need to take a little more responsibility for their own national security. If these are the outcomes and the killing stops, they ought to give Donald Trump the Nobel Peace Prize.
PHILLIP: Is it -- is it, Scott, hold on, to Scott's point, is it a short, is it possible that there, you take a short-term hit on insulting Putin? And if you get a war that ends and modest concessions from Ukraine, is that a win?
[22:45:03]
NAVARRO: Well, this isn't a short-term hit not insulting Putin, right? I mean, from his first term, Donald Trump likes dictators. Donald Trump likes strong men. It's kind of comical to hear him say that he doesn't use the word dictator lightly when just last week he was calling Zelenskyy the president of the country that is the victim here a dictator. He used that term quite lightly there.
I thought Macron today gave a master class on how to navigate Trump. He stroked his ego continuously, called him my dear friend, dear Donald, and then put out things that I think are very important, like the idea of there being security forces in Ukraine if a peace agreement is reached.
PHILLIP: And Jamie, what's your response to what Scott said?
METZYL: Well, what does victory look like on our side, on the side of Ukraine? I think it has some of the elements that Scott described. But we have, as I mentioned before, Europe has been structured in a way that has essentially guaranteed peace for 80 years in probably the most warlike continent over the past many centuries.
And why has it happened? It's not happened because America had 10 million soldiers on Ukrainian soil. It happened because we had a system of alliance, as NATO, the most successful alliance in history. And because people respected that the word, the guarantee of the United States that we would stand by our allies stood for something.
What Putin is trying to do is not just get a little bit of Ukraine. He is trying to completely undermine and destroy that system. And so, yes, it's frustrating to work with our allies, but we need to make sure that the message is very clear. So, if there is peace, and we should all be hoping for peace, because war is terrible, we need to make sure that there are ironclad security guarantees.
Because if Putin gets a win here, even a little win here, and he feels there is weakness on the side of the United States and our allies and our word doesn't really mean anything, we can guarantee that there's going to be a next step and a next step because what we're seeing now is the next step from what happened in 2014 without a sufficient response.
PHILLIP: Right, and history has told us that that's what's going to happen. And to Jamie's point -- to Jamie's point, on the security guarantees, that apparently is one of the things that the United States is resisting. They want Ukraine's resources, but they don't want to guarantee security.
SETMAYER: Which is a first.
PHILLIP: Which essentially says to Russia --
SETMAYER: Right.
PHILLIP: -- there's no reason to stop if we start here.
SETMAYER: Which is a first for the United States, and words do matter. And the fact that the president of the United States can acknowledge that Russia started this, that Putin is a dictator, cannot give those security guarantees, creates instability in Europe, and it won't stop there.
We can try -- we can all agree that we want to see this war end in Ukraine, but it should not be at the expense of selling them out and selling out our strategic alliances with Europe. To your point, Jamie, that has been at the hallmark of stability in the world for 80 years. That matters here. And you know who else used the term dictator, who Trump talked about? Himself.
So, there is a certain affinity for this strong man posture and the bromance he has with Putin is on purpose at the expense of Zelenskyy, because Zelenskyy has stood up for his people and democracy in ways that Donald Trump never has for America.
PHILLIP: All right, we got to leave it there. Jamie Metzl, thank you very much for joining us. Everyone else, hang tight. Coming up next, our panel will give us their nightcaps involving one of the most infamous parties of all time.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:52:54]
PHILLIP: We're back with our nightcaps, the unnecessary sequel edition. Do you remember the disastrous fire festival? Well, apparently it's giving itself a second try after multiple lawsuits and two documentaries and a prison sentence for its founder. So now, you each have 30 seconds to tell us what doesn't deserve a sequel. Tara?
SETMAYER: Well, I'm going to go, not necessarily doesn't deserve a sequel, but some things are just so wonderful the first time around that they don't need one. And I'm choosing the musical, "Singin' in the Rain" which is one of the best movies of all time. It is absolute perfection. And, I don't ever want anyone to make a sequel for anything like that or "West Side Story". Some things are just better left alone. And it's perfection.
PHILLIP: Isn't there a "West Side Story" remake though?
SETMAYER: Yeah, that's okay. But it's not a sequel.
PHILLIP: Yeah, that's not a sequel, yeah. That's like the opposite of "Firefest".
NAVARRO: Arianna, though, will say won an Oscar for it.
SETMAYER: That's correct.
PHILLIP: All right, go ahead, Joe.
BORELLI: Mine are kids YouTube influencers. It started off with this pudgy kid, Ryan, who opens up the boxes and plays with some toys. Now my kids, they watch some guy plays Minecraft and narrates and just screams like a banshee every 30 seconds. If my kids were taking aerosol and like sniffing it and you didn't -- they don't kill their brain cells, I'd stop them. And yet my wife and I seem powerless to let these influencers stop rotting my children's brain.
PHILLIP: Man, that sounds awful.
JENNINGS: This man speaks the truth, by the way.
PHILLIP: I think so. It sounds terrible.
JENNINGS: Yeah, mine is societal lockdowns, never again. Businesses and livelihoods were ruined. A generation of children were ruined by school closures. We had an epidemic and an explosion of drug abuse, suicides. I still think we're in a mental health crisis from the lockdowns during COVID. I think we should admit that these lockdowns helped nothing, hurt many, and all agree, never again, no sequel to the societal and school lockdowns that hurt this country.
PHILLIP: Let's, let's hope that there's no once in a generation pandemic, which they --
JENNINGS: And the lockdowns helped nothing.
PHILLIP: -- and I would admit is, is rare. We don't have lockdowns really ever, except in pandemics, but go ahead, Anne.
NAVARRO: Well, six months ago, I told, I would have told you we definitely didn't need a Trump sequel, but apparently most of America disagreed with me.
[22:55:00]
But what I don't want a sequel of is, to your point, epidemics, plague, diseases that have been eradicated by vaccines and that are now popping back up in America and the world, like measles, that is, you know, the outbreak that's going on in Texas. I'm very worried about that and I don't want another sequel of those epidemics.
PHILLIP: All right, the flies and the locusts are next.
NAVARRO: The frogs.
PHILLIP: Everyone, thank you very much for being here. Coming up next, the deadline is one hour away now for workers to respond to that email from Elon Musk. Laura Coates has more after this.
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