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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump's Unprecedented Trade Wars Wreak Havoc; Dow Sinks 1,600- Plus Points, Worst in Five Years, Fueling Recession Fears; Senators Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Rein in Trump Tariffs. Trump Invites Laura Loomer To The White House; Kamala Harris Speaks In California For The First Time In Months. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired April 03, 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 ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, Donald Trump declares victory.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I think it's going very well. It was an operation.
PHILLIP: Except the surgery is far from over and the patient is in severe pain.
Plus, many Republicans are suddenly silent after years of insisting the risky operation wasn't needed.
MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: The buyer pays the tariff.
PHILLIP: Also, the far right conspiracy theorist who called 9/11 an inside job is giving the president advice on who to fire from his national security team.
And --
KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This case has been closed here at the White House.
PHILLIP: -- apparently it ain't over till the watchdog sings. The Pentagon investigates its own leader.
Live at the table, Scott Jennings, Congressman Ro Khanna, Jim Schultz, Xochitl Hinojosa and Van Lathan.
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. The patient is in shock. You just heard how Donald Trump is comparing his unprecedented economic war to an operation, but he thinks that we're in the healing phase of it, when, in fact, the knives are still out.
A couple of reminders here before we show you inside the trauma unit. One, it's not the problem that most people disagree with. It's the solution, the methods. And, two, your prescription for pain meds may be needed for weeks, months, even years. No one really knows.
So, here is day one, stocks having their worst day since 2020, $2 trillion dollars just wiped out, the dollar erasing all gains since the election. The tariffs may cost every household in America more than $2,000 a year. Nations are starting to retaliate, including France, which is telling its people not to invest in America. Banks, retailers, clothing, airlines, big tech, all of them hard hit today, one economist comparing Trump's economic wisdom to that of a suicide bomber.
And a rather ironic image, the folks who opened the market this morning on what would become one of its worst days is Newsmax, the pro-Trump T.V. network. That company you might remember recently paid millions to settle a lawsuit for pushing Trump's election lies. Yes, that is Rudy Giuliani, who you see there in the corner, who also lost his shirt for defaming election workers.
Now, since Monday when it arrived on the Stock Exchange, Newsmax peaked at $265 a share. Today, it closed at $62.
So, despite all of this liberation, the president is at Mar-a-Lago tonight and he is in good spirits.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: How's it going?
TRUMP: I think it's going very well. It was an operation, like when a patient gets operated on.
The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom. And the rest of the world wants to see is there any way they can make a deal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Joining us at the table is CNN Business and Editor-at-Large Richard Quest. Also with us Tim Doescher, a conservative economic commentator.
Richard Quest, The patient is, literally, perhaps in shock at the moment. The stock market, I think, could not have been more clear about how they saw this, nut even more important than that, businesses are coming forward. And just being very transparent, prices are going to go up. They're going to go up and Americans are going to start to feel it.
RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS EDITOR-AT-LARGE: Yes. The president said he thinks it's going very well. I would hate to see his definition of going badly, bearing in mind what we saw today. This was America's investors and the world's investors, if you look at other markets, basically saying they are terrified at the way in which the United States is unilaterally reworking the global trading system.
I've got a couple of examples, if I may. Here we go. This is a bottle of Sam Pellegrino. Now, of course, there are plenty of U.S. domestic options as well. This is going to go up by 20 percent because it comes from Italy, therefore the E.U. If you want Fiji water, it's a bit of a luxury product, it's quite good, this is going to go up over 30 percent because of where it comes from. And good old fashioned, Tim Tams from Australia.
PHILLIP: I see the package has been broken into because they're so good.
QUEST: There's a distant standard chance.
[22:05:00]
The Tim Tams from Australia, which is a wonderful biscuit, these are going to go up by 10 percent because they're imported.
Now, by the way, these just came from the deli across the street, along with everything else. There are alternatives. But if you extrapolate all of this into all our individual products, the short answer to the -- the long answer to your short question, we're all paying
PHILLIP: And, Tim, it's not just those products that, you know, maybe luxury items, they're available elsewhere, it's a lot of things that the United States isn't producing, never is going to produce. Why slap tariffs on the whole entire world and why not just acknowledge the mistake and let's fix it and move on?
TIM DOESCHER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UNLEASH PROSPERITY: Well, I don't know if you can call this a mistake, number one. Number two, I don't know many Americans who are going to actually consume those products on a regular basis. So, we'll see if they're going to feel the hit on that one. But what I will say is this --
PHILLIP: But it's not just those, you'll acknowledge it's everything, right?
DOESCHER: Sure, sure. You're going to feel a hit for sure. That's what tariffs are. They're attacks, no question about it. And if these tariffs stay on long-term, yes, that's bad news for the American consumer. That's bad news for all of us in this country.
However, you saw in that conference yesterday in the Rose Garden the real deal, which was when he called out Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Thune, and said, pass the tax bill and pass it soon, pass it now, because that's what this is about. That's the pro-growth policy and the regulatory reform, all that stuff, that's going to bring this economy --
PHILLIP: So, let me get this straight. DOESCHER: Absolutely.
PHILLIP: First, this was a negotiating tactic to reduce global tariffs. Now, it's a negotiating tactic for his own party? He runs the show and all of a sudden this is about them?
DOESCHER: Well, I mean, he made it yesterday. We can still see negotiation come through this. There's no question about --
PHILLIP: I don't think they need any incentive to pass the tax bill.
REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): I have a (INAUDIBLE), the Republican caucus about two months ago had this screening of Ronald Reagan, and I went for the movie. And they should have another screening and they should play Ronald Reagan on tariffs. And Ronald Reagan will say, it seems like the patriotic thing to do, but those people in Congress, they're just bowing to special interests. And tariffs always raise rates, they cause inflation, they hurt competitiveness, they hurt innovation, and it's a false patriotism. Don't fall for it. And they should just watch that over and over and over again.
PHILLIP: This seems pretty straightforward if you're a conservative. What also makes this, I think, somewhat absurd is they put out this formula here. I have it here. It's a chart like this that the president held up. And in the blue and white column, they basically had a made up formula.
Here's how Larry Summers describes it. It's now clear that Donald Trump's administration computed reciprocal tariffs without using tariff data. No tariff data at all. This is to economics what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy or RFK thought is to vaccine science. The Trump tariff policy makes little sense even if you believe in protectionist, mercantilist economics.
I don't understand. I mean, I guess they think nobody is going to bother to check, but making up numbers and then saying, oh, we're going to have that number and be generous, is not math, it's also not economics. It's kind of no way to run the economics of the greatest economy in the world.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, look, I'm not going to get into the mathematical formulas they came up with because I wasn't there and I don't, I don't know how or why they did it. I had mixed feelings about this, truthfully. I wasn't trained to believe in tariffs. You know, if those of us who grew up as traditional Republicans have always thought what Ronald Reagan thought.
And so what Trump is doing here is implanting new economic theory DNA inside of the Republican Party. And what you're seeing is some Republicans are rejecting it. Some Republicans are reluctantly going on with it. Some Republicans are enthusiastically embracing it.
I know people in the business community who are on both sides of it, frankly, back home in Kentucky and elsewhere. I'm also persuaded, frankly, by the Trump argument regarding the working class in this country and also by the fairness argument. So, I'll just say this, if it works, it'll be the ballsiest and gutsiest thing a president has done in decades. Let me finish. And if it doesn't work, if it doesn't work, the political consequences fall on the shoulders of one man,
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Actually, and I totally agree with you, this is the one time I actually agree with you. Jim Cramer said it best.
JENNINGS: Just one?
HINOJOSA: There are some several, maybe five times. This is one of those five times. Jim Cramer said this is a manmade issue. One man made this issue and it was Donald Trump. And I think that the Americans wanted lower prices. They didn't want higher prices. What's going to happen, and what economists are saying is not only are people going to get laid off, but costs are going to go up. And that's not what the American people want. And they're going to see it in the midterm elections. And so I think that the Republican Party needs to be very careful about what they're doing.
The other problem with all of this is the uncertainty. He's not saying how long these tariffs are going to go. He's not saying, is this a done deal for a while, or is it a short-term deal? And that's a problem about businesses.
[22:10:00]
PHILLIP: Let me let Richard in.
QUEST: You talked about the political consequences will be on the shoulders of one man, but the economic consequences are going to be on the whole world. This is an experiment that should not have been taking place because -- and you talk about the Republicans who are not speaking up so far.
I mean, Mitch McConnell has come out with a statement. Where was he talking about this, by the way, during the campaign when we knew that tariffs were going to be large on the agenda? You also said --
JENNINGS: You just raised an issue. You said during the campaign when we knew because Donald Trump was talking about it --
QUEST: No, they didn't expected this madness.
JENNINGS: They expected Donald Trump to enact tariffs. He did it in his first term.
PHILLIP: Well, actually, let's be clear --
(CROSSTALKS)
QUEST: This is economic vandalism.
PHILLIP: I mean, this is actually not --
JENNINGS: So, I would think a lot of working on second class Americans would say what was done to them was economic plus.
QUEST: But the jobs that are going to come back, according to the Peterson Institute, the very jobs that Donald Trump says are going to come back are the jobs that America doesn't need. America needs high paying, high skilled, digital, new age, A.I.-based economy. What he's talking about bringing back is old start, basically.
Look, here is a shoe. It's my shoe, right? It is made in China. You talked about these luxury products.
DOESCHER: They are.
QUEST: Right, but you take your shoe off and see where it's made. Made in China, made in Vietnam. This is going to be 34 percent more expensive. It's an ordinary shoe bought in a discount store.
KHANNA: Look, I represent Silicon Valley, but I think this country needs more than tech and A.I. jobs. We definitely need manufacturing and we need to be a manufacturing superpower.
Here's my problem with the tariffs. On the one hand, he's saying, well, this is not permanent. This is just a negotiating technique. Now, if you really think that and you're Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, or you're the CEO of Mary Barrow, are you going to go to your board and say, well, let's put billions of dollars in, build new factories, when Donald Trump himself is saying that two months later, he may take this down.
PHILLIP: Congressman, I don't think Donald Trump is saying that. Donald Trump is saying we need to raise revenue in a different, old school way through tariffs. He would like this to be permanent. I think the people who are saying that are people, like Scott, who would like it to be contemporary.
DOESCHER: He's saying that they're, that we're here and they're here, and they want to do that.
PHILLIP: He is tariffing countries --
DOESCHER: That's what he saying.
PHILLIP: Tim, he is tariffing countries that do not actually tariff us at the levels that we are now tariffing them because he's using a made-up formula based off of trade deficits.
JENNINGS: Tonight, I saw before I walked in here that he's gotten a number of calls from the leaders of other nations around the world. See, you wonder what kind of negotiations are going on, if I might offer a piece of advice though --
PHILLIP: His treasury secretary literally said there are no conversations.
JENNINGS: Well, he -- the president of the United States said it on the plane tonight. So, I don't know who outranks who. But let me just offer -- PHILLIP: Yes, but to what -- yes, exactly, I think to what end, it's a very important question.
JENNINGS: Just to offer piece of advice, I do think that if an American ally comes to the table, like Israel did, and said, we're totally eliminating our tariffs, we should immediately reward that. Because I do think part of the game here is if you want to work with us and you want to treat us and American creators and American businesses fairly, we want to do the same for you. Israel did that. I assume other countries are going to do that, right?
PHILLIP: Israel did that. And guess what they did to Israel? They slap them with a 17 percent tariff.
JENNINGS: I know. I'm saying we should treat them the same.
PHILLIP: 17 percent tariff.
QUEST: If all the countries do what you say, Scott, and everybody does sort of come back to us this level playing field, then the president is not going to get this other renaissance in manufacturing and renaissance of new jobs because the level playing field, it's -- you make goods and services where it is economically advantageous to do so. And at the moment in the United States --
JENNINGS: I agree. I agree with that.
PHILLIP: Let's start digging up some diamond mines and exporting those, and then it will justify the tariffs that been placed on small African nations for diamond imports. Some of this does not make logical sense, Scott.
JENNINGS: You guys make a good point about where you make things and where does it make sense to make things. One of the arguments the president is making is that it does actually make some sense to try to make some things in the United States that we outsource long ago.
And I don't know what you have against the Keebler elves of Battle Creek, Michigan, but I'll take them. I'll take them over your Tim Tams any day. They're Americans We trying to put them out of business over there, Richard?
QUEST: I'll pay good money to charity to see you eat the chocolate.
JENNINGS: What's sad -- I'm sure it's delicious.
KHANNA: The best thing that Donald Trump did in terms of industrial policy was Operation Warp Speed, where he said, if you build it, we'll buy it. And guess what? Not only does he not have that approach, he fired the guy, Dr. Marks, who actually did Operation Warp Speed. I mean, you've got a -- so yes, build manufacturing, but at least study Hamilton or look at how they built manufacturing here.
QUEST: I'm seriously worried about that. Tonight, there are people seriously worried about their 401(k)s. If you are all like me, 63 years old, and you're looking at retirement in a year or three, you are thinking, how long is it going to be before we get back?
[22:15:01]
That's the reality
DOESCHER: We have never had true free trade in this country ever. And if that that's the goal to get to free trade reciprocal low, or no tariff, you can't say what's going to happen because we've never seen it before.
So, you say, oh, they're, you know, they're not coming back. Well, you don't know because it's never happened before.
PHILLIP: Well, we have seen, we have --
DOESCHER: So, I would just say that if Trump is going to go out on a limb and do this and risk his political capital, that's his bad.
PHILLIP: We have seen tariffs at this level before and it wasn't good for the United States.
DOESCHER: I'd say reciprocal low. We've never seen that.
PHILLIP: Sure. But high tariffs or no produce high tariffs because it causes a trade war. That's not rocket science.
JENNINGS: But not necessarily. What if other countries do come back and say, we're going to lower ours? They might.
PHILLIP: It's not rocket science. I'm not an economist, but we've actually done this before and it didn't bode well for us.
Richard Quest, Tim Doescher, thank you very much for joining us. Everyone else stick around. We will pass the candy at the table.
Coming up next for us, how MAGA voters are hearing about this news in MAGA media, plus more special guests at the table.
Plus, Donald Trump gets a visit from a 9/11 truther and then proceeds to fire the people that she called disloyal.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: So, what happens if the economy continues to falter and Donald Trump refuses to course correct? Tonight on Capitol Hill, there is word of a potential parachute, a bipartisan bill that would require Congress to approve new tariffs for forbidding the president from acting alone. The tariffs are making many Republicans nervous, and it makes sense since this was the party's position for years and this clip put together by an anti-Trump Republican group is serving as a reminder.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUBIO: A tariff is a tax on Americans.
A tariff isn't paid by the exporter. China's not going to pay the tariff. The buyer's going to pay the tariff.
SEN. TED CRUX (R-TX): Donald Trump has proposed a 40 percent tariff, which is a tax on all of you. I think raising your taxes by 40 percent would kill jobs all across this country,
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Taxing European car imports hurts BMW because they can do the same thing to us.
China wins when we fight with Europe.
SEN. JAMES LANKFORD (R-OK): Now, with a 10 percent tariff laid down, who pays that tariff? The American workers and the American companies pay the brunt of all those.
SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD): I hope that our administration is looking at ways to expand and grow opportunities for American businesses and farmers and ranchers and not get us into this tit-for-tat trade war with some of these countries, even China.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Jim Schultz and Van Lathan join us at the table. Congressman Khanna, do you think that this is actually going to go anywhere? Are Republicans, like many of those who were correct in their assessment then are going to actually say, actually, I don't think we can take a chance on this one?
KHANNA: Not right now. I mean, in candor, I mean, you don't have enough Republicans speaking out. But if the markets continue to go the way they're going, then you may find suddenly Republicans having a little bit more courage. So, I think there are people who are concerned in private, but they're going to give it a little more time.
PHILLIP: We're also -- you know, it's kind of like a split screen situation for Americans depending on what they're watching in the media over on Fox where a lot of conservatives get their news. Here is how they tried to cope, I guess, with this today. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEANINE PIRRO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I don't really care about my 401(k) today. You know what, I believe in this man.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The last thing we want to focus on right now is the stock market.
PIRRO: Who's complaining? Wall Street. Too bad.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't care what the initial reactions are.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is the great deal maker, the great negotiator.
WILL CAIN, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I would argue and that we should see it as a potential restructuring of the American spirit,
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The American public, we've been making a huge mistake to watch the stock market.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's an exciting time to be alive.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Okay, having a little bit of a hard time there. To be fair, I'm not worried about Jeanine Pirro's 401(k) either, but many other Americans are worried about theirs.
JIM SCHULTZ, CNN LEGAL COMMENTATOR: It's still a snapshot in time, right? And Democrats criticized this president in the last term time and time again for saying that, you know, he only was concerned about Wall Street. He was only concerned about the stock market. Now, they're turning around and using the stock market against him. Now, they're the ones that care about the stock market and he's the one actually fighting for the towns in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Indiana and Ohio. Those places, the blue wall states, where you have working class Americans, you have union members in those states, the unions are supporting this effort, especially the Auto Workers Union.
HINOJOSA: I don't think that the American people would actually agree with you on that. There have been 18 races so far this year and 17 Democrats have won 17 out of the 18 races. There is a feeling around the country that Donald Trump is not fighting for them. And I think that if you have Republicans in hard line districts right now looking at these tariffs, where prices are going to go up, you're worried. You're a little bit worried that -- how -- what is this going to look like for the midterm elections?
So, I actually think that as much as Donald Trump might try to say he's fighting for the working person, they're not at feeling it, and that's a problem for him.
VAN LATHAN, CO-HOST, HIGHER LEARNING PODCAST WITH VAN LATHAN AND RACHEL LINDSAY: You know, I'm going to say something on this show that I'm not sure I've heard anyone say before. I was wrong. When Donald Trump won, I thought that 75, 80 million Americans were all captured by the MAGA cult and that they would go along with whatever President Trump said. And I was wrong. I was wrong.
There are a lot of people who voted very purely and clearly on the fact that they were experiencing economic distress and they wanted that economic distress to come to an end.
[22:25:00]
I'm hearing from these people, I'm hearing from brothers, brothers who believed not in all of the social things or the rhetoric or the religious part of who Donald Trump is but in the actuality in their minds that Donald Trump was a whiz businessman that was going to fix the American economy. They're confused. They don't know what's going on. They did not vote for harder times. And the reality is, as much spin as can be done on any network, it is going to be, in my opinion, irreparable harm done to the president's reputation if people experience a tremendous amount of pain, even in the short-term from the tariffs.
PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, a tremendous amount of harm done to his reputation. But also I just want to, I think, need -- I need to correct the record, because I feel like I hear a lot of conservatives talking about, oh, the last time when Trump was in office, he put in those tariffs and everything was fine.
Okay. Here is JPMorgan talking about what happened the last time when he put in those tariffs. Steel tariffs created about a thousand jobs for steel makers who were protected by tariffs. They reduced employment by 75,000 in steel-using industries, such as autos and construction, as prices rose and sales fell. Similarly in all industries affected by Trump's tariffs, duties boosted factory employment by 0.4 percent but reduced payrolls by 2 percent because of overall costs rising in retaliatory tariffs.
LATHAN: By the way --
PHILLIP: It costs jobs to raise prices.
LATHAN: By the way, there's something else to pay attention to when you're looking at the job creation from the tariffs in the first Trump administration, the price per job. When you look at some of the jobs that were created, you're paying, in one case, like $815,000 per job for the jobs that were created because of the costs that are offset by the tariffs themselves. So, it's not a great way of job creation. It's very costly to the American public to do it that way.
KHANNA: You know what's sad about this is 90,000 factories did shut down in America since 2000, and Trump said there's a hole in the ship. And that's one of the reasons he won. And to Van's point, people thought he is a business guy. He's going to fix this. He's going to disappoint those talents. He's going to disappoint those people who have been betrayed for the last 40 years because this isn't going to help improve their lives. And there's going to be more disillusionment in this country and more anger that their lives aren't changing. And that to me is the saddest part of all of this.
PHILLIP: Scott?
JENNINGS: Well, I think what is true today was true for Joe Biden and every other president that came before either of these two guys. If people feel like their economic trajectory is on the upswing, they will give you political leash. And if they feel like their own trajectory is on the downswing, they will punish you.
You go back to Ronald Reagan and he -- even though there were hard times in that first Reagan term, people felt like the country was getting back on the right track. They were willing to give him time because they believed in his program. They believed in the confidence that Reagan was projecting about America. That's what Trump has to do here to the people that you think are going to be impacted in the short-term, and they may well be, and Trump has acknowledged that. He has to make them believe that the long-term implications for this in their communities is worth it even if they're experiencing a little short-term pain.
So, the political implication, Abby, I think, all goes on to the trajectory. Do you feel like things will go better in the future? And that's his -- that is the salesman's challenge.
PHILLIP: Yes. It also has to be true. Because at the end of the day, people start losing their jobs, which some of them will, this is going to end badly for Trump. Rhetoric is not going to do anything about that.
I just want to play what one car dealer said earlier this morning just about what's ahead for his business, pretty much immediately.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVE KELLEHER, PRESIDENT, DAVID AUTO GROUP IN GLEN MILLS, PA: The cost is going to get passed to the consumer. There's no doubt about that. There's nothing we can do about that. We can't eat -- I can't eat the cost.
No matter what, all of us are going to sell less cars, and then we have to make these hard decisions. So, that's laying people off. That's cutting vendors out. You know, that's reducing our inventories and not ordering as many cars. All these things to me are negative impacts to the economy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCHULTZ: But I think he's got to get some deals in the short-term, right? He's got to get some wins early. Start equaling out these -- with our trading partners. If he gets those early wins and people start to see progress, he will continue to have that leash.
LATHAN: What's interesting, we're having a lot of conversations about President Trump and his political future and what it means for him to lose people. What we're not talking about, at least in a robust way, are the actual American people, the people who are being asked right now to sacrifice, to pay higher prices, to potentially lose their jobs for an economic future that they can't see, and that there's absolutely zero clarity on that you don't know why the tariffs are really there. You get four or five different answers as to why they're there.
[22:30:01]
You don't know how they're going to benefit, but you're expected to lose your job, pay higher prices, not buy a car, do all of this stuff. For what?
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: I think that the choices facing the administration are tough, but one of them is just to -- just change course. They can do that at any moment, and I think it's also possible, given how Trump has behaved in the past, that he would do that in the future, maybe even the near future.
Coming up next, the President invites a 9-11 Truther with a history of racism to the White House, and then proceeds to fire several members of his own team. We'll discuss.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:15]
She's a far right conspiracy theorist who called 911 an inside job, and she has a history of racist rhetoric, including calling herself a proud Islamophobe. And tonight, apparently, Laura Loomer is giving Donald Trump presidential advice, and he is listening to it.
The President fired three members of his national security team just hours after she visited the White House. She handed him a list of names of people who she claims are disloyal. Trump was asked about that tonight. Here's what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Laura Loomer is a very good patriot. She is a very strong person. And I saw her yesterday for a little while. She has -- she makes recommendations of things and people.
And sometimes I listen to those recommendations like I do with everybody. I listen to everybody, and then I make a decision. Always, we're going to let go of people, people that we, don't like or people that we don't think can do the job or people that may have loyalties to somebody else.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: First of all, I just have to say, I mean, the national security thing is important, but the President just said that Laura Loomer, who is a 9-11 conspiracy theorist, is a good patriot. I -- I cannot believe that. -- I mean, I really cannot. This woman has said she's shared videos that claimed 9-11 was an inside job.
She's called Islam a cancer. She posted a video that Marjorie Taylor Greene called racist, extremely racist. And the -- the President is saying this is a good patriot welcoming her to the White House. I don't get it.
JIM SHULTZ, CNN LEGAL COMMENTATOR: I'm not going to defend anything about Loomer, I'm not - or anything she says. I agree with little of what she says. So, I -- I can't -- I'm not going to defend that. But it is with the -- all these folks are at the pleasure of the President, right? And if the President wants to take advice and evaluate that advice, if she brought documents in that were -- that showed some type of disloyalty or not following the President's agenda. And he wanted to ask his team to look into it over the weekend and decide if they were going to verify that information and then make a decision that he wants to make in terms of staff well within his province to do that. But in terms of who he's getting advice from, I can't agree with who he's getting advice from, but it is within his province to make those decisions.
PHILLIP: I mean, he's the president. He can do what he wants, but he is getting advice from a person who is pretty loony.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I actually think -- I don't know if this has been reported or not. I actually think they let go of more than three people. There's a longer list. And my understanding is that some of them, just don't support the President's agenda. Their own political history, I think some of them may have been holdovers. Their own political history indicated they supported Biden or Harris or -- or other Democrats, which just aren't aligned with Trump's worldview.
So, regardless of where he got the advice or what information that person brought forward, at the end of the day, any president for the core White House staff, you have to believe that every single person in there fully believes in your agenda, and that's why they serve at your pleasure. And when you lose the pleasure, you lose it. But you shouldn't expect a president to have anyone on the payroll who was actively working against you or working against your worldview.
PHILLIP: Are you --you're comfortable with him getting national security advice from Laura Loomer?
JENNINGS: I'm not comfortable with it. I I don't think that's what he was getting -- A. B, I don't defend anything Loomer believes in the examples you cited. And, C, my understanding is she bought it -- she brought in basic vetting information that could have been brought forth by anybody. So, the messenger, can be criticized, but I'm -- as I understand it, the information is -- is good, and they use the information and he made some decisions.
LATHAN: So, like, in the future or in the past, wherever it is, you're going to hear people say that they're afraid that President Trump is in bed with white nationalists, that he's in bed with racists, that he's in bed with people, particularly to people in my community, black people. You're going to hear them say that, you know, there's all kinds of reasons that we don't trust President Trump because of things that he said and done in the past.
And then a lot of times when you're talking to your Republican friends or your friends on the right about that, they'll tell you, no. That's not true. He's denounced it at every turn. He's denounced this. He's denounced that. Very fine people on both sides was taken out of context. There's no doubt about it.
A white nationalist is giving the president advice. Someone who has, given speech -- at speeches at white nationalist conferences, someone who's called themselves a white advocate, someone who's, demonstrated abhorrent racism on Twitter has the president's ear. If you are black, if you are, just AAPI, if you're anything non-white,
that should frighten you, and it is now unassailable. That is fact. It's right there. And not only is she talking to him, he's listening to her.
[22:40:01]
But there -- there's got to be a line. I understand anyone can give the president advice, good advice, bad advice, but there's got to be a line of who the most powerful man in the world can surround himself with and have all Americans feel safe.
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLOTCAL COMMENTATOR: Well, she's also giving -- she is giving him national security advice because she's making him shake up her national -- his national security team. And that you don't want the national security apparatus within the White House to be in disarray, and that's exactly what happened.
There see there seems to be a rift within the National Security Council, which has been reported before, and it's -- this isn't the first time that there has been any sort of, firing or anything like that in the national security apparatus. You have that at the FBI. You had it at DOJ.
And this is what worries me. It's every single part of the national security apparatus, what whether it's signal gate or whether it is firings at these various agencies, top courier officials, or officials within the NSC, all of this makes us less safe.
And it's actually very scary that we have these people all across the federal government that either don't have their jobs anymore or being pushed aside for other jobs, all because of President Trump's ego.
PHILLIP: Yeah. I mean, he hired these folks.
JENNINGS: Some, not all. My understanding is some -- some were hired, some were hired.
PHILLIP: OK, but -- but I -- I'm not speaking to the ones that we don't know about. With the three that we do know about, one served Trump in his first term. The other was a legislative affairs director for --his current national security adviser, and then another worked for Marco Rubio in the senate.
So, I -- I mean, I don't know what the secret information is. But my point is only they just hired these people, and now, the -- the trigger is this person who is all of those things that Van described and all the things that we talked about calling the shots apparently.
REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): This is, what Laura Loomer does. You know, she was trying to get people fired earlier by saying that they supported me on Twitter. She'd say, you know, Sriram, who's in the A.I., he supported Ro Khanna. Please fire him. And she tried this with David Sacks.
And I think this is a bigger window into Donald Trump, which is, her argument was they weren't with you when you were down and out after January 6th. I was with you. And Trump had a choice when he won. He had a choice whether he would try to be a president for over 51 percent or whether he would hunker down with the people who he thought were really loyal to him.
And I think the fact that he's not willing to jettison her is not political. It's emotional. He feels that he was aggrieved for four years, that she was with him, and the people who were with him are the people who he's with. But I don't I mean, that's not a way to govern the country. I understand his emotional state, but I --that's, you know, what she thinks.
PHILLIP: Yeah. All right, everyone, stay with us. Coming up next, Kamala Harris speaking out tonight for the first time in months reacting to what's happening in Trump's White House.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:47:24]
PHILLIP: Just in tonight, Kamala Harris speaking in California for the first time in months with some choice words about the team that beat her in November. The former vice president says that she won't say I told you so, but that we knew that this would happen. Speaking of all of that, she essentially said that basically, she was right about all of this.
HINOJOSA: And she is.
PHILLIP: Yeah. And well, I mean, in the sense that she did warn that Trump was going to do the things that he said he was going to do despite many people saying that it was all just rhetoric. That's cold comfort for Democrats right now, but that's what she had to say.
HINOJOSA: This feels like deja vu. Right after the 2016 election, everyone looked back and said, oh, Hillary Clinton said all these things. These are exactly the things that he's going to do. This time around, it was all in Project 2025. We knew. The Harris campaign talked about it.
Whether people believed it, I'm not sure people believed it, but it's just like tariffs. You were right. I think both -- we were talking about this earlier about how Trump promised tariffs. He is doing it. He is delivering on it. People do not like it, but people voted for it. So, I agree she did tell people so, and I think that what's what we're seeing right now is exactly what he said he was going to do.
SCHULTZ: But very few people in America think she should be there right now, and that's because all the problems that came out of the Biden administration, the inflation, the costs, all those things, they weren't that -- you can't recreate history. That was a-- that was a failed administration. That's not changing. She could say, I told you so all you want, but he also said, this is what I'm going to do. Now, he's doing it.
LATHAN: Not very few people. Millions and millions of people voted for -- for former vice president Harris. I will say this, though. They're about to be mad at me. I don't like this.
PHILLIP: Like what?
LATHAN: I don't like the I-told-you-so-stuff, man. I don't like it.
HINOJOSA: It's true.
LATHAN: It's true. It's definitely true. All of it was predicted. We need to listen to black women. We need to prioritize black women in leadership, all of that. But when people are struggling and when people are confused, I do not think it strikes the right chord to be like I-told-you-so. And --
HINOJOSA: I agree with that.
LATHAN: I -- I just don't think that it does. And I think that coming from the left right now, the leadership needs to be stronger about what their messaging is, not about I-told-you-so, but I tell you how you're going to be better.
PHILLIP: And also, perhaps acknowledging that a failure to get what was motivating voters is also at underlying the loss. So, maybe she was right about Trump, but -- but not putting on the table something that voters actually wanted to vote for.
[22:50:02]
JENNINGS: Well, yeah. I mean, elections are ultimately about choices. They aren't you know, you don't have them in a vacuum. And I would just argue back to Kamala Harris that, you know, I told you so. I -- I agree. I told you so that Donald Trump was going to close the southern border. I told you so he was going to bring order to immigration. I told you so he was going to drag this country out of the left wing cultural ditch and put us back towards more mainstream middle of the road.
LATHAN: You think he's not the last name?
JENNINGS: I did tell you so. Now, he's also executing, as you all have acknowledged, his economic agenda, just as he said he was going to do. He's enacting tariffs and he's asking the Congress to make the tax cuts permanent, and he's unleashing American energy. So, I agree. It is I told you so, and about half the country is okay with it, and about half the country voted for it.
So, it strikes me that this is a healthy level of copium going on right now among Democrats who are telling themselves stories that the people who voted for this are not happy with it. The vast majority, if not everyone who voted for Donald Trump, is some level of happiness ranging from nine to 10 on --
(CROSSTALK)
LATHAN: On that, I completely, Sir. I think that you're seeing -- I think that you're seeing, we -- we've talked about it on the show tonight. A large, large number of people that are expressing consternation with what they see happening to the country financially, with, like, Laura Loomer being in the White House, I think the I-told- you so doesn't necessarily have to do with specific policy points that President Trump laid out.
It has to do with how the country would fare overall under Donald Trump. And if people are going to be in financial ruin or, God forbid, if there is a recession and the chances of that seem to be going up every day, then I-told-you-so is going to be very, very prophetic from Kamala Harris.
KHANNA: The thing is that the Vice President Harris is a brilliant prosecutor. And in the campaign, I think the way she did in the debate, she prosecuted the case, and she prosecuted the case about all the bad things Donald Trump was going to do. I don't think there was any person who didn't know it. The problem was we didn't have an affirmative vision. What are we going to do to help people who are hurting?
PHILLIP: She said I'm not going anywhere but people are rumoring California governor's race -- most likely?
LATHAN: I'd vote for her.
KHANNA: I -- I think I think if she runs for governor in California, she would clear the field, I mean, on the Democratic side. She's obviously a -- a strong figure, but I --
JENNINGS: Is she your best option for '28?
PHILLIP: All right.
KHANNA: We'll see.
PHILLIP: All right, guys. Coming up next, the panel is going to give us our nightcaps. They're going to tell us what they think needs a remake inspired by the newest installment of a decades-old series.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:57:23]
PHILLIP: We're back and it's time for the "NewsNight" cap remake edition. That was the new trailer for the reboot of "The Naked Gun" franchise that started back in the '80s. You each have now 30 seconds to tell us what else could use a remake. Jim?
SCHULTZ: So, I'm saying I'm going to say "All The Right Moves". That's a football movie out of Western Pennsylvania -- Ampipe, Pennsylvania, failing manufacturing town, football player trying to get out played by Tom Cruise. David Urban probably thinks he could play that Tom Cruise character. He probably has a better shot at being at business. That's where he's from.
PHILLIP: All right, Xochitl.
HINOJOSA: I phoned a friend, which is my sister, and then she had a good one, "Never Ending Story". It is a little quirky, a little odd, but with modern technology, I think it could be a big one.
LATHAN: "Blank Man". Broke superhero, okay, from the '90s. We all about to be broke because of these tariffs anyway, so we're going to have to figure some things out. You put Damien Wayans Jr. in it. Damien Dante Wayans directs it. The Wayans family is back. "Blank Man", bring it back. It's perfect for the times.
PHILLIP: Oh, God. You guys are stumping me on these.
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: You don't seem to --
UNKNOWN: It's a great movie.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Sorry.
KHANNA: I'm going to stick to the theme of the -- the show that Trump's economic team needs a remake. He needs to call -- he needs to call, Larry Kudlow even or -- or call Stephen Moore. Get some people who've studied economics in there.
HINOJOSA: Always on message. Always on message.
JENNINGS: You don't have -- you don't have a movie?
PHILLIP: He broke the streak on all the movies.
HINOJOSA: Always on message.
PHILLIP: He's a politician. What do you --
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: I'm just going to start by saying I'm a little nervous about this "Naked Gun" business. It's a -- it's an amazing movie and amazing -- I -- I think it's hard to improve on certain things. I trust Liam Neeson. We trust him, but I am a little nervous about that.
PHILLIP: Before we move on though, Van, I know, I feel like you took the other side of this. You think it should be remade?
LATHAN: I didn't think that it should be remade. I've had no faith, but that trailer was fantastic.
JENNINGS: I'm hopeful about the trailer on your word. I just, I -- you know, I don't even want to watch "Happy Gilmore two". I'm like, I'm worried, I'm worried about those things that I love being done.
PHILLIP: Once again, I just have to ask, can we not make any new things? But anyway, Scott.
JENNINGS: You know, I've been, I put a lot of thought on this tonight, and, I don't -- it feels like "Snow White" should be remade. I feel like nobody has done this lately. It came out in 1937, and I just feel like it's time that someone actually tried to do a remake of "Snow White".
It feels like it would be highly successful for the company that owns the intellectual property, and if they were to do it properly, I think they'd make a bajillion dollars. So, I'm going to go with "Snow White".
[23:00:00]
UNKNOWN: You know?
LATHAN: Well-played.
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: Yeah. Great film. I think it could be done.
LATHAN: Well-played. Well-played.
PHILLIP: The live action stuff, I think, is -- is very tricky. It's hard to make that stuff work with classics. So, that's -- that's all I got to say about that. Everyone, thank you very much. I'm going to go watch some movies tonight, apparently, because I have a lot to see.
Thanks for watching "NewsNight". You can catch me anytime on your favorite social media platforms -- X, Instagram and TikTok. "Laura Coates Live" is right now.
