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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Disavows Stupid Supporters Over Epstein Bullsh*t; Trump Calls Epstein Files a Scam After Vowing Release; DOJ Fires Comey's Daughter, Who Prosecuted Epstein Cases. Trump Says Powell Is A Terrible Fed Chair; New CNN Poll Shows 60 Percent of Americans Dislike Trump Bill. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired July 16, 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, risky rhetoric. The president calls his own supporters weak and rejects their backing over the Epstein backlash.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I lost a lot of faith in certain people, yes.
PHILLIP: Plus, would the appointment of a special counsel quiet the mob or inflame it
TRUMP: I have nothing to do with it.
PHILLIP: Also tonight, as 60 percent of the nation rejects MAGA's mega bill, one Republican senator is already showing regrets.
And he's called him stupid, a moron and a dumb fool, but could Trump's potential firing of Jerome Powell shatter more than just their feud?
Live at the table, Van Jones, Scott Jennings, Ana Navarro, Ben Ferguson and Jeffrey Toobin.
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's talking about. The man who births and breeds conspiracies and stacked his administration with those who fanned the flames says his supporters who bought into those conspiracies are stupid, are weak, and are not welcome in MAGA anymore.
That is quite a twist for a president who owes his elections to his base. For days now, pressure has been building after the DOJ essentially said, case closed on the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, despite teasing lists of some kind. But Trump's MAGA will not let it go. So, he lashed out on Truth Social, calling them names and saying he doesn't even want their support anymore. Trump also ripped Republicans who have turned on him over Epstein.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It's all been a big hoax. It's perpetrated by the Democrats and some stupid Republicans and foolish Republicans fall into the net.
Certain Republicans got duped by the Democrats.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: He says Democrats duped them. So, what does that mean for all of the people that he hired?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list.
KASH PATEL, FBI DIRECTOR: Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are.
DAN BONGINO, FBI DEPUTY DIRECTOR: The Jeffrey Epstein case, you do not know all the details of this thing, I promise.
I'm not letting it go ever.
JOHN ROBERTS, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients. Will that really happen?
PAM BONDI, ATTORNEY GENERAL: It's sitting on my desk right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Jeffrey Toobin is with us in our fifth seat. Well, Jeffrey, I'll let you take the first swing at this. I mean, the DOJ now is in a tough position. Trump wants them to let it go, but the demand is there. There's also been floated maybe a special counsel. What would the special counsel even do?
JEFFREY TOOBIN, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Well, you know, it's important to remember that the Epstein case has been investigated a great deal and a lot is already public, including his little black book of contacts. I mean, there is a lot of information out there, but that is obviously unsatisfactory to the people who are closest to the president. And that's the paradox here that the president has to deal with.
And I think he's just going to brazen it out. I think he is counting on the fact that his supporters will never abandon him. There's never going to be a special counsel. I don't even think there could be one really to -- there's not that much -- there's not much left to investigate at this point. But I don't think Trump has ever (INAUDIBLE) at that point. PHILLIP: What's the even the authority -- what is the special council going to do? Well, I mean, are they supposed to bring charges? What are they supposed to do it?
VAN JONES, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's the dumbest idea that I've heard this week, and I've heard a lot of dumb ideas this week. But the idea that you would have a special -- what you want is transparency, so you bring in a special counsel or a special prosecutor, which means it's going to take five more years before anybody sees anything at all.
So, I don't know what Trump is doing. He just seems all goofy and weird. He's like he goes on Truth Social and he says, I don't want to be your friends anymore because you're being mean to me. This is not -- what is wrong with this guy? Just release this stuff and move on.
ANA NAVARRO, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I'm going to tell you what a special counsel would do. It would give him a fig leaf, right, it would -- he's trying to pull the wool over the eyes of his own MAGA supporters and give them something so that it looked like he's doing something.
Look, I think he's -- frankly, I think he's in shock because nothing else that he has done has led to a break like this that has lasted this long. This has outlasted the reaction to January 6th.
[22:05:03]
This has outlasted the reaction to the Access Hollywood tapes. I mean, you know, it's like -- and he keeps trying to do things to distract the base, right, whether it's fighting with Rosie O'Donnell, or whether it's Bondi firing 20 prosecutors. Today, they fired Jim Comey's daughter, who last week, they announced that they were investigating Jim Comey, and nothing is sticking to the wall.
PHILLIP: Let me play what Charlie Kirk has said about this, because he's trying to explain, I guess, to Trump why his base actually cares about this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE KIRK, HOST, THE CHARLIE KIRK SHOW: We're worried the deep state will derail Trump, and we look at the Epstein story as a skeleton key to be able to look under the hood, dismantle and deconstruct the administrative state to protect Donald Trump from his adversaries.
The base cares about this because we are defending you.
President Trump was elected primarily to go after the deep state. We want to go after the deep state. A lot of this is largely just a misunderstanding.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I'm a little confused. TOOBIN: I was going to say, I know what each of those words mean individually but I have no idea what the sentence is.
PHILLIP: It is a little confusing the pretzels that are being twisted. And it's not lost on me that my two conservative friends here very, very quiet at the table.
BEN FERGUSON, HOST, THE BEN FERGUSON SHOW: I'm enjoying hearing all of the things here, so I can tell you what the base thinks.
PHILLIP: Let me just say one more thing and just -- I think that Trump also forgets, as he tries to make this into a Democrats against Republican thing, that Epstein was first charged under George W. Bush, a Republican, and 2019, if you look at the calendar, who was president in 2019 when Epstein was put in prison and when he was found dead? Donald Trump.
NAVARRO: By the way, given a sweetheart deal by Alex Acosta, who was by then U.S. Attorney of George W. Bush by all the pretzels and became secretary of labor under Trump 1.
PHILLIP: So, why are all the pretzels to twist this into some kind of political thing of Democrats against them?
FERGUSON: One, I think what the base that I talk to every day on my radio show is saying. They want there to be accountability for people that abused children and sex trafficked them, and they feel like that there's only been basically one person that's gone to jail. And they feel like that this is a bunch of elite people that got away with abusing young girls and children, and they want transparency.
The second thing they want is the redactions to disappear from what they do have that's out there that we all have seen. But there's a hell of a lot of redactions in there and they feel like they're not being told the honest truth.
So, look, let me finish this, though. I don't think it's an issue with Trump. I think Trump's frustration is he's saying there's not as much there as we thought. I'm ready to say, let's move from this. And there's others that say, I'm sorry, I don't trust the government and I don't trust that we're not being lied to and we want transparency, the same way when he said, we're going to get transparency on the assassination attempt on a former president, the same way they said, we're going to have transparency on other court cases. He said, you're going to know what happened. So --
JONES: But why won't he just -- why won't Trump just give the documents over?
FERGUSON: Again, I think what you're going to end up seeing here is you're probably going to see, and, again, it's going to go probably through courts and they want to also protect the victims. Some of the redactions have to do with victims and you have to be able to protect them. It takes more than five minutes.
JONES: You can take a sharpie and in five minutes you can wipe out. FERGUSON: It's going to take longer than five minutes. Let's not simplistic -- make it that simple. It's not that simple.
JONES: Okay, ten minutes.
FERGUSON: But the point that I'm making is I think what the people around Trump are saying that are hardcore conservative MAGA voters that voted for him was like, dude, you're got to be consistent --
JONES: But why won't Trump --
FERGUSON: -- moving forward. I'm advocating for it.
PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, look, I think --
FERGUSON: I think he should make it transparent because there are people that should have gone to jail that didn't go to jail, and there's people that probably should have been prosecuted that didn't. And the fact that this was so big and that no one went to jail but one person is still insane to me.
PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, look, everything that you just said is generally correct, that nobody really was held accountable for what things that we know happened. But I think the interesting part to me is that Ben said all of this and he said, well, that has something to do with Donald Trump, even though Donald Trump is the guy in charge of the government. He's made a lot of things happen in this government. Why can't he make this one?
TOOBIN: Scott Jennings is so quiet. It's unbelievable. I want to hear what Scott Jennings has to say.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I'm sorry, I blacked out for the last seven minutes. I have no idea what we're talking about. Taxation?
Here's what I think. The president has said out loud now, if we have credible information, release it. I took that as instructions. What I don't know is what does that mean at the Department of Justice? Because I assume there are some things that can, there are some things that can't, like you guys were just talking about, there are some things that have to be redacted.
It's opaque to me what credible means in the realm of what a Department of Justice can do. They normally don't release things that have names of people who are not being charged with crimes.
[22:10:01]
I've heard Democrats say, well, we need to do away with that rule and release it all.
That seems like a bad precedent to set to me, but it strikes me that we're somewhere in between Trump saying, I want credible things released, and the Department of Justice trying to figure it out. My political advice is, whatever you're going to do, something, little bit nothing, whatever you're going to do it as quickly as you can and put this to bed. So, because until you do something, it won't stop.
NAVARRO: Scott, when Pam Bondi went on Fox News, what, February 21st and then she did it again March 14th, and so smugly said, I've got it on my desk and I'm reviewing it and it's going to be released, you know, very -- what was she reviewing? What was she -- what did she have on her desk?
FERGUSON: I had her on my show when we asked that question. And one of the things that she said was, we have to make sure that we're not putting on information on victims. And so that takes a lot of time. And apparently there were a lot of victims is what we were led to believe. It goes back to the point --
JENNINGS: Well, there were a lot of settlements.
PHILLIP: Ben, but do you buy that? If this was about the victims, that actually should be the easiest thing to redact.
JONES: It's a sharpie. I mean, I --
PHILLIP: Why -- do you -- truly, do you buy that the issue here is that they can't redact the names and identifying information of victims?
JONES: That's the easiest thing to do in the world.
FERGUSON: I go back to what I said at the beginning. I think it's pretty clear that there are a lot of people that said this was bigger than maybe it actually was, that there was more, that there was there. A great example, I would be furious if I was one of the people that left the White House with one of those white binders that said the Epstein's files part one.
PHILLIP: Right. And they are, in fact, furious.
FERGUSON: And they're furious. And the problem is when you sell something like that, and this goes back to political advice that Scott was saying earlier, you either have it or you don't, and you don't want to mess this one up.
I go back to the victims though. And that's all I care about. I want to see what is there that dealt with people that abused children.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Let me play --
NAVARRO: People are saying, okay, we exaggerated, we lied, we may have made some stuff up, we were being hyper --
FERGUSON: I don't think -- well, it depends on who you're saying made it up. I think there was a lot of people who --
NAVARRO: Well, Pam Bondi.
FERGUSON: No. I think there was a lot of people that were led to believe over years and multiple administrations --
PHILLIP: By whom, Ben?
FERGUSON: -- that there was a lot -- Democrats and Republicans.
PHILLIP: No. Hold on.
FERGUSON: I can go back and (INAUDIBLE) of them selling the Epstein files years ago.
PHILLIP: But who led them to believe that the Epstein files had incriminating information on their political enemies on Democrats?
FERGUSON: I could 20-minute montage of CNN selling it when Joe Biden was the president.
(CROSSTALKS)
NAVARRO: Do you think that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Charlie Kirk and all of these people were led (ph) by CNN?
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Ben, let me just give you one example of one such person. Here's J.D. Vance's tweets in 2021. What possible interest would the U.S. government have in keeping Epstein's client secret? Oh. He also says, if you're a journalist and you're not asking questions about this case, you should be ashamed of yourself. What purpose do you even serve? I'm sure there's a middle class teenager somewhere who could use some harassing right now, but maybe try to do your job every once in a while. I mean, he was one of the people who made it seem like it was a government and media conspiracy to protect certain people.
TOOBIN: One of the things I find odd about this whole subject, and this has been a conversation that fits in this pattern, one thing that doesn't get mentioned enough, it seems to me, is that who was friends with Jeffrey Epstein? Donald Trump. Donald Trump was part of the social network of the --
FERGUSON: He also kicked him out of his club. Let's be clear.
TOOBIN: Well, he kicked him out of his club eventually, but, I mean, that is no proof --
FERGUSON: Actually, he did it really early on. It wasn't like he kicked him out when he was running for president. Like to be honest.
TOOBIN: But he saw so many --
FERGUSON: If you're going to talk about it, let's not indict someone. And this is the reason why people don't trust media when they do it this way. He said he figured him out, he realized he was a bad guy. He kicked him out very early on. TOOBIN: After how long? After how many videos of them together --
FERGUSON: It was that long ago that it happened. You're acting like it was in 2016 he was running for president.
PHILLIP: Just to be clear, it was a long time ago that Jeffrey Epstein was first charged, 2005, okay? So, like that was also a long time ago when we knew for a fact that he was guilty of crimes against children. So, yes, it was a long time ago that --
(CROSSTALKS)
FERGUSON: Before he was charged, I have a lot of questions about people that hung out with him after he got out of prison.
TOOBIN: As well you should.
FERGUSON: And one of them was in the royal family. And if you're still hanging out with a guy that you know is a sex offender, you've got a lot to answer for, which goes back to the issue that I think so many conservatives have. They want to know who was involved and what they did to these kids.
NAVARRO: Can I ask --
PHILLIP: All right. We have to -- we're going to continue the conversation in the next block, but just hang tight for me.
Coming up next for us, we have more breaking news tonight involving Epstein. DOJ has now fired the daughter of James Comey, who was a prosecutor in those cases. We will try to connect the dots here to the extent that we can.
[22:15:00]
Plus, speaking of firings, Trump apparently is flirting with letting Jerome Powell go, which economists warn could wreck the economy. We'll debate.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: New tonight, as MAGA fumes over the Jeffrey Epstein files, we are learning that the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey was abruptly fired from her job as a federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York. It just so happens Maurene Comey worked on those cases against Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.
As a reminder, here's what Trump said as he tried to swat away the onslaught of Epstein questions today.
[22:20:03]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I would say that, you know, these files were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama. They were made up by the Biden -- you know, and we went through years of that with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, why? Why fire her now?
TOOBIN: Can we talk about Maurene Comey for a second? Maurene Comey was for ten years an extremely successful, dedicated and ethical assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. She was a high ranking person in that office. She became the head of the Public Integrity Unit. She supervised the case against Robert Menendez, the corrupt senator. She tried Ghislaine Maxwell. She tried P. Diddy.
The idea that she got fired is a disgrace to the Justice Department. And Jay Clayton, supposedly the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, ought to resign himself in disgrace because he allowed this to go on. This is an outrage that this woman got fired.
PHILLIP: Let me add to what you're saying. According to a source, a person familiar with the situation said that having a Comey is untenable in this administration given her father, James Comey, is, quote, constantly going after the administration. Last I checked James Comey has been writing fiction novels, mystery novels. I'm not sure going after the administration --
NAVARRO: Actually, last you checked was, what, like a week ago or ten days ago when Trump announced, when it was announced that they were going to be investigating James Comey and Brennan as part of what I think is a distraction strategy. And today or yesterday, Trump blamed Comey for having put together this what he's calling the Epstein hoax, despite the fact that it precedes Comey.
PHILLIP: It's also -- I mean, I don't know, seems like really bad timing to fire the person who prosecuted Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. It just seems like poor timing. I don't know.
JONES: I am looking at you, brother.
JENNINGS: Look, I don't know. I mean, she's no more entitled to this job than anybody else is. And the ne and if she's so great, the next president can hire her and maybe they will. And he can hire and fire whoever he wants. I don't know how good at her job -- I mean, did she do a good job on P. Diddy? I don't know. I mean, it doesn't seem like that went well. It looked like it didn't go very well to me. So, I don't know.
TOOBIN: I mean, the idea that because she didn't get a complete conviction -- she got somewhat of a conviction in P. Diddy is --
FERGUSON: Fairly. The dude was grinning at the end. That's not a good case.
TOOBIN: But you don't fire prosecutors --
FERGUSON: I went after P Diddy, and like that's not what you put on your resume. It was a disaster. (CROSSTALKS)
FERGUSON: She's amazing at this job when the biggest case she just had a moment ago sucked.
JENNINGS: But beyond all that, under Article 2, he can hire and fire --
FERGUSON: Anyone he wants.
JENNINGS: -- anyone he wants president.
TOOBIN: There are civil service rules for lawyers.
JENNINGS: I understand.
TOOBIN: And, well, I mean, you can laugh, but there are. I know the Trump administration doesn't really feel it's bound by lawyers.
FERGUSON: Wait. Are you telling me that Obama and Clinton and Biden never fired anyone?
TOOBIN: An assistant U.S. attorney?
FERGUSON: Never in history? I'm asking you. You're the expert in this category. You're saying they never did?
TOOBIN: Never.
FERGUSON: Not one single time?
NAVARRO: George Bush fired a bunch of U.S. attorneys, remember?
TOOBIN: U.S. attorneys, not assistant U.S. attorneys.
FERGUSON: They all fire people.
TOOBIN: Of course, they fire U.S. attorneys. They are political appointees. Every president is entitled to fire every political appointee. Maurene Comey was a line prosecutor. And I was one -- the tradition has always been that you stay from one administration to the next.
FERGUSON: If your dad is doing what her dad did and then you can't get a P. Diddy conviction, I think you ought to get fired.
PHILLIP: Wait, hold on. But let me -- hold on. We're going to -- Ben, let me ask you about that for a second. Because, I mean, you said it, so let's explore it. Her dad is doing what exactly?
FERGUSON: Her dad is a guy that constantly was going after Donald Trump with things that we now know are lies in entrapping people --
PHILLIP: So, how many years ago was that?
FERGUSON: It's his whole life story, his biggest accomplishment. PHILLIP: No. How many years ago was it that James Comey was in a position to do --
FERGUSON: Of power?
PHILLIP: Yes, a position of power.
FERGUSON: A position power, until he got fired by Donald Trump in 2017 --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Almost a decade ago.
FERGUSON: 2017.
PHILLIP: Okay. So, we're talking eight years now. So, there's that. The second thing is you're saying -- you're suggesting that because a jury decided that they were not going to completely prosecute P. Diddy, she is all of a sudden a terrible attorney?
[22:25:00]
Is that the suggestion?
FERGUSON: She's not good.
PHILLIP: Wait. So, she convicted Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Robert Menendez, she convicted P. Diddy just on every single charge, and she is not good?
FERGUSON: Again --
PHILLIP: All I'm saying is I don't know --
FERGUSON: An average job, when a guy's got gold bars in his jackets, in his house, you should be able to get that conviction. I didn't even go to law school and I think I could get that conviction. Hey, there's gold bars in the guy's jacket in his closet.
PHILLIP: Ben, I don't know what kind of lawyer she is.
FERGUSON: I though it's not like a --
PHILLIP: Ben does, but I'm just on, but I'm just saying that like an honest -- like let's be honest, right, like for just one second. Let's be honest. Are we really going to say that because she attempted to prosecute someone who -- let's be honest, probably should have been prosecuted and did not win a complete conviction, that's the reason you're going to say she's bad or is that just a political talking point?
FERGUSON: No. I --
JONES: You've spoken enough. This is all quite silly.
FERGUSON: She did ask me a question. Go ahead.
JONES: But I'm just -- I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. It's her show. So, look, people at home who actually want to know what's happening, this woman had a great reputation, like sterling. Her dad, I don't like very much. Most people don't get fired because of their parents. And I think that it is very, very odd and very, very bad that a great line attorney who has done a good job got fired for reasons that nobody here can explain.
And so I don't believe that she got fired because of P. Diddy. He hasn't mentioned P. Diddy. Even Trump has to talk about P. Diddy.
Here's what's going on here. This is a president that's in trouble. He has lied to his base. He told them that he was going to do something he's afraid to do. Why is Trump afraid to release these documents? That is the question.
I have been defending Trump actually saying it's inconceivable as anything that's in these documents that's going to hurt Trump because Biden would have released them. But he's been acting so --
PHILLIP: Do you still think that's true?
JONES: Well, now he's acting so weird. Trump is acting so bizarre.
PHILLIP: So, has that changed your view?
NAVARRO: Again, you actually think Merrick Garland, who moved with the speed of a wounded sloth and was definitely --
JONES: That's what I thought. Maybe I --
NAVARRO: -- would have released this, the guy took for forever and a day to bring a case against Trump?
JONES: Here's what I'm going to say. Those of us who were making that claim have been undermined this week by Donald Trump acting so bizarrely. Why is he on Truth Social crying, saying, I don't even want you to be my friend anymore because you're being -- this is unbecoming, this is strange, and it's starting to make people who don't want to believe the worst to believe the worst. And we should be talking about that, not about --
PHILLIP: Okay. Can I make one argument perhaps? We've seen this many times with Trump. Sometimes he acts a lot guiltier than he is.
JONES: Could be. He's acting weird. Releases stuff and move on.
PHILLIP: He sometimes acts extremely as if he has something to hide when the -- when just -- maybe just coming up with the truth, just confronting the thing is not as bad. He tends to do that. I'm not sure -- I think that it's hard at this point for us to say, just because Trump is acting this way, it means that this other thing --
JENNINGS: He has said --
PHILLIP: It's not a defensive Trump. It's just a pattern of behavior that we've observed over here.
JENNINGS: He said out loud, sure, any credible information, I'd be fine releasing that. They haven't done anything yet. It feels like we're in this period between an instruction and an action. I don't know when the action is going to come. But he has said out loud, release credible information. I assume they're going to do what they can do. It's just -- it's opaque to me what that is.
TOOBIN: Pam Bondi said she is not releasing any further information.
JENNINGS: She got a new instruction from the -- I mean, he said it out loud. I mean, he's the boss. Is he not?
NAVARRO: The question I wanted to ask. So, last week, I would've said there was no way in hell that Pam Bondi was going anywhere, but this is beginning to last a long time and it feels like somebody's head needs to roll. Do you guys feel there's any chance at all that Pam Bondi is on thinner ice today than she was a week ago?
JENNINGS: No. Look, it's extremely disruptive, this would be true no matter who the president is, to go through getting rid of a cabinet secretary of any kind, especially the attorney general. It is not worth it. And it's probably not warranted here.
But, look, they are on a roll. He's had a great six months. Democrats haven't really laid a glove on him. He's done virtually everything he wants to do. I think part of his frustration is that Democrats who didn't care about this until five minutes ago are using it and using the words of his supporters against him. And it's highly frustrating for a guy who thinks he's on a roll, and now --
NAVARRO: When Signal gate wouldn't go away, he got rid of Waltz, or someone got rid of him.
JENNINGS: Non-confirmed position --
PHILLIP: Well, yes, I mean, Waltz was a fall guy.
NAVARRO: He gave them a bone.
PHILLIP: Waltz was a fall guy for Signal gate.
NAVARRO: Exactly.
FERGUSON: She's not going to get fired.
NAVARRO: She's not going to get Waltzed.
[22:30:00]
FERGUSON: She's not going to get --
JONES: The head that just rolled is Comey's head. I mean, the Comey's daughter, that's a hit that just rolled.
NAVARRO: That's a distraction. JONES: Exactly, a distraction. So, I'm saying that's more likely.
PHILLIP: Okay. All right. Jeffrey Toobin, great to have you here. Thank you very much. Everyone else, stay with us. Next for us, Donald Trump suggests that Republicans -- that two Republicans, that he is about to fire the Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, but his tone suddenly changed just a few hours later. Another special guest is going to join us in our fifth seat.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:07]
PHILLIP: He's called him stupid, a moron, a dumb fool, and now today, Donald Trump apparently forgot who was responsible for hiring his Fed chair in the first place.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: He's a terrible -- he's a terrible Fed chair. I was surprised he was appointed. I was surprised frankly that Biden put him in and extended him, but they did. It is my pleasure and my honor to announce my nomination of Jerome Powell to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, if you want a real time reaction of how the markets responded to Trump's idea of firing Powell, just look at the Dow today. After reports surfaced that Trump floated the idea in a meeting with GOP lawmakers, that was at about 11:30 A.M., "The New York Times" reported that Trump had this draft letter ready to fire Powell. Markets then sank.
As CNBC reported, it was likely to happen soon. And then, a sudden turnaround. Stocks rebounded when Trump clarified to reporters that he was not going to go through with it, and Powell is safe for now.
Natasha Sarin, president of the Budget Lab at Yale is here with us at the table. What would happen realistically if Trump were to fire Powell just outright or what he's suggesting, which is to try to fire him from perhaps some "Trumped up" cause?
NATASHA SARIN, PRESIDENT, THE BUDGET LAB AT YALE: So, realistically, what would happen is a version of what you saw started to happen this morning. Our independence of our Central Bank is a pillar of our economic security. The Central Bank responds to two things and two things alone. Its dual mandate is to care about inflation, and its dual mandate is to care about employment.
In a world in which it starts to look like the Fed has become politicized and is making decisions about the interest rate trajectory because the President is telling them to, that's a world when markets start to get quite nervous because the fundamental soundness and security of our economic system is under attack. PHILLIP: And there are places in the world, obviously, where that
happens, and it's not pretty. Scott.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: So, here's what I think. The President has made it perfectly clear that he thinks the interest rates should be lowered. He thinks he's doing a great job. And I agree on getting the economy back on track. We have investments. The market's doing okay, get the tax rates now permanent. So, he's doing what he can do.
But he thinks the failure of the Fed to lower interest rates is holding back the American economy. So, he's made that view perfectly clear. The people elected the President to get the economy back on track. I know he said he wasn't going to fire him today but I 100 percent believe the possibility remains that he may want to do it. And I think Powell may need to think about resigning or he's going to get run over.
PHILLIP: Well, let me just add one, just -- because I alluded to this. But here is the thing that is starting to emerge as maybe a way that Trump can get Powell without it being seen as firing over the interest rates. Here's what he said about the renovations of the Fed building.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I think he's terrible. I think he's a total stiff. But the one thing I didn't see him as a guy that needed a palace to live in. You talk to the guy, it's like talking to nothing. It's like talking to a chair. No personality, no high intelligence, no nothing. But the one thing I would have never guessed is that he would be spending $2.5 billion to build a little extension onto the Fed. Nobody's ever seen it. I think it sort of is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Just to be clear, he doesn't live in that building.
JONES: Look, you have a building that has, you know, not been renovated, you have delayed capital expenses for a long period of time. And now, surprise, surprise, there's cost overruns. Anybody who's tried to remodel their house knows about cost overruns.
But this is a pretext. He's trying to find a way to do something he's not supposed to do. And the problem you have is all of us benefit. We're trust fund babies. We didn't build this system. Our parents and our grandparents built this system. And we get a chance to live in this great economy. But there are certain walls you can't --
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: I'm a refugee from Nicaragua. Where's my trust fund?
JONES: Hey, listen. I mean that -- hold on second. What I'm saying is that those of us who live in this country, wherever we came from, are benefiting from a great system we didn't build. And we're now laying somebody knocked down, pillar after pillar, the constitution that the independence of the Fed because he wants to but we are going to pay a price. And this is a pretext. It's not real. Say, pretext to get rid of drone pop out and we'll all pay the price if that happens.
SARIN: May I just say a couple of things that I think are pretty important. One is, the reason we're having this conversation about pretext for firing Powell is that the Supreme Court has been crystal clear in a case that had nothing to do with the Federal Reserve, they were explicit.
[22:40:04]
The President does not have the authority to fire Chair Powell before his term ends next May. There's -- a second piece of this that goes a little bit to what Scott was talking about with respect to the interest rate and where the interest rate should go that I think it's pretty important for your viewers to understand, Abby.
There is no magic button that Jay Powell can click to lower mortgage rates. And in fact, he is one member of a 12-member open markets commission that gets to meet eight times a year, and decide on the interest rate trajectory, and make that decision because of where inflation is and because of where employment is. I
In the world in which we're lowering interest rates by something like what the President has called for, a three percentage point decrease in rates, that's an environment where we are basically at a recession. It is such a significant downturn that we are having to take such an aggressive action. That's not where this economy is and that's not where any of us should want to see it go.
(CROSSTALK)
JONES: It will be inflationary.
UNKNOWN: Yeah.
FERGUSON: Look, I think, Powell should look at this and go, got, what, eight months left? It's very clear the President doesn't have confidence in what I'm doing. It's very clear that we're not getting along. I think if he's the guy that he wants us to believe that he is, he should probably say it's time for me to step down.
PHILLIP: Can I just ask, who cares if Trump doesn't like Powell?
(CROSSTALK)
FERGUSON: He's the President of the United States of America, so --
PHILLIP: No, no. Like, just from a straight up --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: -- like from a legal perspective, from an economic perspective, why does it matter whether Trump sees eye to eye with Powell, whether he likes Powell -- (CROSSTALK)
FERGUSON: Because the American people --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: --whether they're friends, whether he thinks Powell has a good personality?
(CROSSTALK)
FERGUSON: Let me say this.
PHILLIP: Why? But why, Ben?
FERGUSON: Because I think the President of United States of America had a mandate to do certain things with tax cuts, the economy, and say who's going to get us back on track. And when you see a guy that you believe and the President believes it, that he is holding back the American economy, maybe for personal reasons, I don't know.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: As Natasha has late --
(CROSSTALK)
FERGUSON: People voted for Trump.
SARIN: But we have tried this before.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I know. But Ben, let me -- let me ask you -- hold on. Hold on. How about you answer my question? Let me ask you to be responsive to my question. Why does it matter whether Donald Trump likes Jerome Powell or not? Why does it matter whether Donald Trump agrees with Jerome Powell or not? Why should that even cross the mind of the Fed chair? Why?
FERGUSON: I go back to what I said. The President of United States America was elected with a mandate to do certain things for the economy.
(CROSSTALK)
SARIN: Ben, can I point something about why --
(CROSSTALK)
FERGUSON: I understand what you're going say. I think the simple easy way out of this for the President, by the way, is eight months.
PHILLIP: Yeah.
FERGUSON: And then you're going to get someone that is like-minded, that he believes is not holding back.
PHILLIP: Yeah, well, I think that that's actually -- I think that that's actually --
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: Do you think people voted for Trump so that he would fire the chair of the Fed?
(CROSSTALK)
FERGUSON: No, I think they voted for Trump because they didn't like where the economy was. And part of that has been the Fed chair.
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: Americans have always known that the Fed is an independent agency.
(CROSSTALK)
FERGUSON: Again, I go back to what voters voted for.
PHILLIP: But Ben, where you ended up -- Ben -- Ben, where you ended up is -- is I think in the right place. Donald Trump is the one who needs to pump the brakes and recognize that he actually has eight months left and he can pick another Fed chair. But not Jerome Powell has to evaluate his life and think, oh, I don't get along with this guy, maybe I should leave.
The mandate -- the mandate that Jay Powell has -- Jerome Powell, excuse me -- Jerome Powell has is not to, frankly, the political environment that Donald Trump was elected in. It is to what?
SARIN: And that's exactly why we have an independent Central Bank, because in a world
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: But they did lower rates before the election, did they not?
FERGUSON: Yeah, right before the election.
(CROSSTALK)
SARIN: Yeah, I just say, Scott, in a world -- and in fact, Chair Powell has said that they would have lowered rates already --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: All right. Can I play that real quick?
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I know we have to go, but guys, let's play Jerome Powell so that we hear -- we hear what he had to say. (CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNKNOWN: Chair, would the Fed have cut more by now if it weren't for the tariffs?
JEROME POWELL, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN: So, I do think that -- I think that's right. In effect we went on hold when we -- when we saw the size of the tariffs and where essentially all inflation forecasts for the United States went up materially as a consequence of the tariffs. So, we didn't overreact to it. In fact, we didn't react at all. We're simply taking some time. As long as the U.S. economy is in solid shape, we think the prudent thing to do is to wait and learn more and see what those effects might be.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Could not be more crystal clear.
JONES: Hey, look.
JENNINGS: But what did we learn yesterday and today?
JONES: But hold on a second. If Jerome Powell wanted to hurt Donald Trump, he would raise interest rates. I mean, he would lower interest rates by three percent. That would be inflationary and hurt Donald Trump. In other words, sometimes people are asking for stuff that is actually not smart.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Not in the best interest. Yeah.
JONES: Like --
JENNINGS: A lot of businesses would disagree with you. I mean --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Let me give Natasha -- let me give Natasha a quick last word.
SARIN: One thing I want to say is we have run this experiment before in the United States. Nixon put a ton of pressure and politicized the Fed in ways that resulted in inflation rising from three percent to 13 percent in two years. That is not what you want to happen in the United States. An independent Central Bank is responsive to the long term, not the political short term, and not when the next election is.
JONES: Amen.
PHILLIP: On that note, Natasha, thank you very much. Everyone else, stick around. Buyer's remorse. The new poll shows that more than half of the country does not like the President's mega bill, and that includes one Republican senator who voted for it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: A new CNN poll tonight shows that 60 percent of Americans don't like Donald Trump's mega bill, and one Republican senator who voted for it is one of them.
[22:50:00]
Senator Josh Hawley introduced legislation that would roll back Medicaid cuts that he just voted for. What is happening? What can I even say? I mean, why would you vote for a bill and then try to undo it?
JENNINGS: Well, there's a lot of stuff in the bill --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Or perhaps, just symbolically.
JENNINGS: I mean, my guess is that he would say there's a lot of stuff in the bill that he did like, such as making the tax rates permanent, investing in southern border, energy deregulation. I mean, look, this was the President's domestic policy agenda on which he ran and won the national popular vote. So, there was good reason for every, virtually every Republican to vote for it.
Hawley Holley had long said he didn't like the Medicaid part of it. But he voted for the rest of it. I don't know where this idea is going to go. But I still -- I'm still of the opinion that this is stuff you can run on. And I know that because Trump just did. And he won the national election on it. And so, I don't know why Republicans would --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: He did not run on Medicaid cuts, by the way.
JENNINGS: He ran on encouraging work, lower taxes, a better economy.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: He didn't -- he did not run on Medicaid cuts. And in fact, he told -- he told the public, falsely, that this bill did not cut Medicaid. Sixty-seven percent of independents oppose the Big Beautiful Bill. The question about will it help the economy, about half of Americans say it would hurt the economy. So, I don't know. I mean, I think if Trump ran on Medicaid cuts, he should have acknowledged that that's what this bill did. And he absolutely did not do that.
JENNINGS: Well, he ran on improving the economy. The Republican view is -- is that we're encouraging people to work. Democrats encourage people to be on government dependence. I absolutely think he ran on this idea. It is the ethos of the party. It's what he embodied during the election. It's his agenda. It's his agenda.
JONES: And we can go back and forth on this but he did not run on Medicaid cuts. And frankly --
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: I just think that we're going to spend more on it than we are now. How's that a cut?
JONES: The people about to get dumped off of it know that's a cut. But look, and here's what I think is going on. Right now, political people like us care about this a lot. We're still pretty far from midterm elections. And so, one of things -- so -- so one of the things that's interesting, if this Big, Beautiful Bill is so big and beautiful, how come all the cuts don't start till after the midterms? A lot of this stuff is pushed off.
JENNINGS: Simple answer.
JONES: What?
JENNINGS: You have to give states time to implement federal regulations. It's a complicated program.
JONES: Oh, oh, now --
JENNINGS: We can't just do it overnight.
JONES: Now, we care about the complications of the federal government.
(CROSSTALK)
FERGUSON: If we get it quickly, you guys would be criticizing, saying this is a disaster because you did it too quickly and the states weren't ready and now we're hurting --
(CROSSTALK)
JONES: Au contraire -- au contraire. This is not proven to be the administration that really worries about not going too fast. They've gone very fast in everything they wanted to do, and they've gone very fast on running over the constitution. They've gone very fast and scaring the hell out of immigrants. They've gone very fast with whatever they wanted to do. But they -- but they pump the brakes when it comes to destroying middle-class programs because they know it's not popular. That's a reality.
(CROSSTALK)
FERGUSON: -- is not killing middle-class Americans. That's why Donald Trump won.
(CROSSTALK)
JONES: Listen. Medicaid and Medicare -- let's go directly to the heart of the working class and we know it.
NAVARRO: Including a lot of red states. Thom Tillis, I heard him talk about they're going to have to take out well what something like 650,000 people off of Medicaid in North Carolina, his state. But another part of the poll -- the CNN poll that, you know, I was very interested in is his numbers with Hispanics. He did incredibly well in the election, historically well for a Republican in the election. But his numbers are dropping like lead.
In mid-February, he was at 41 percent approval. He's lost 14 points. He's now at 27. And look, people did vote for him to get rid of hardened criminals and gang members. People did vote for him to control the border. People did not vote for him to disappear immigrants, to racially profile brown people, to put them in "Alligator Alcatraz", to ignore due process, to destroy families, to take people who've been part of our communities for decades, to go into hospitals and clinics and take people, drag them out of there.
And I think it's having a cost. And I think it's going to stop the advances that Republicans have been making with his fans.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Well, Trump is probably not running again, but Republicans, who are down-ballot are. The -perhaps -- so, Ana, this point is well- taken. Perhaps more important than that is his approval rating on the economy which -- his disapproval now stands at 58 percent. That's a very high number, especially for Donald Trump, when this is typically his strongest issue.
FERGUSON: Here's what I'll say. I think my concern coming in the midterms, the Big Beautiful Bill being a liability, is zero. I look at the map, the same numbers that were put on CNN earlier today show that Democrats are way behind where they were in the last two midterms when Republicans were in power. And Republicans were--
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Yeah. And they're not gaining anything in this environment in which Donald Trump is very unpopular.
FERGUSON: And so, my point is this. Donald Trump's plan is what he told the American people he's going to do. He has now done it. And I don't think that's the thing you run away from when that's what got you elected. So, I'm not worried about this. I think this is --
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: He did not tell the American people that he was going to deport legal permanent residents.
PHILLIP: Very quick last word, Van, and then we got to go.
JONES: I think -- I think your -- your confidence is warranted right now. I think -- I think that's right. But I think that body politics is still absorbing a lot of this, and we haven't put on our best case yet. So, you're right. Right now, I'm surprised. He's -- look, all the stuff he's done, the fear he has created in my base, you would think his numbers would be much worse than they are. But don't get too confident because we will make our case. We will make our case.
PHILLIP: Everyone, thank you very much for being here. We'll be back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[23:00:12]
PHILLIP: A special programming note. On Fridays, we are taking the show on a field trip. We'll be broadcasting our roundtable debate from the Food Network kitchen. We will, of course, have food, drinks and some lively conversation. You don't want to miss it, summer Fridays. And thank you very much for watching "NewsNight". "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
