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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
FBI Agent Who Tried To Probe Renee Good's Shooter Resigns; Trump Is Privately Frustrated Immigration Message Is Getting Lost; ICE Commander Defends Detention Of Five-Year-Old In Minnesota; Trump Angers Allies Claiming That The American Troops Avoided The Frontlines; Philadelphia Sues Those Responsible For Stopping The Slavery Exhibit. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired January 23, 2026 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST (voice over): Tonight, the feds defend the detention of a preschooler while introducing a new catchphrase for the outrage.
GREGORY BOVINO, BORDER PATROL CHIEF: I don't quite understand all the parameters involved in the DSP, the double standard phenomena.
PHILLIP: Also an international incident, Donald Trump's assertion that NATO troops avoided the frontlines in Afghanistan draws rebukes from Prince Harry to America's greatest ally.
KEIR STARMER, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: I consider President Trump's remarks to be insulting and frankly appalling.
PHILLIP: And the Philadelphia 86ers, the city sues after the fed's remove slavery displays from the walls of history.
Live at the table, Lydia Moynihan, Yemesi Egbewoel, Lance Trover, 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.
Breaking tonight, another Justice Department official has resigned over the investigation into Renee Good's death. The FBI agent who tried to investigate the ICE officer who fired the shots has quit. Sources tell CNN that soon after the agent opened the civil rights investigation, she was ordered to reclassify it as an assault on the officer.
Now, the FBI has since blocked that Minnesota agency from participating in the investigation. And this comes as CNN has learned that President Trump is privately very frustrated by the messaging of his immigration policies as the chaos on the ground intensifies. But rather than toning down the rhetoric, the talks inside the White House are focused on reminding people why this is happening in the first place.
And that seems to be not really working all that well. I mean, we're seeing the poll numbers. We're also seeing massive protests in Minneapolis and around the country over this. But going back to the Renee Good piece of it, the lack of investigation into this is both unpopular and contrary to what the administration said that they would do in the first place.
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's also the Justice Department typically opens an investigation anytime there is a police shooting and especially when there is use of excessive force and especially when it involves a federal agent. This is standard protocol.
This -- the FBI agent who resigned was doing their job. This is what she would normally do in a typical situation. And it is very rare and in my time at the Justice Department, I will say this never happened to where you had Washington, D.C., and political leadership then tell someone they had to reclassify something or not investigate something for political purposes.
And so it's also very rare for an FBI agent to resign. Yes, you typically have prosecutors resign. This is a supervisor. And I want to remind you, Abby, that this woman is -- also has a team who should be investigating the fraud in Minneapolis. So, you are removing key people from the FBI in Minneapolis who the president will need in order to investigate his priority, which is fraud there. So, all around, this isn't great for the administration, but it just signals that this decision to reclassify the investigation is political.
LANCE TROVER, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: But you're saying that there's not an investigation. There is an investigation that is going on. No, there's no civil rights investigation.
HINOJOSA: Who's investigating? Can you tell me who's investigating? They haven't been able to say.
TROVER: My sources I talked to said the FBI has investigated the entire incident.
HINOJOSA: That's not what happens. The FBI does a civil rights investigation. There is no other investigation that happens.
TROVER: I don't know. Look, I know you've worked over there. I have not. My sources say there is an investigation. It's just not a civil rights investigation and that's the issue of --
PHILLIP: Well, the civil rights division is where these officer- involved investigations usually happen. If it's not going to happen there, then you might think that maybe a criminal investigation would happen, but we also know that's not happening as well. So --
HINOJOSA: So, what are they investigating? PHILLIP: -- where is it?
TROVER: Look, I'm telling you what my sources tell me that they are still investigating. There's just not a civil rights investigation.
HINOJOSA: Well, they are -- I will tell you, you are right that they are investigating it. They reclassified it as an investigation into the -- off into potentially the -- into the protester herself and her wife going after the officer. That is what the investigation is. The killing of Renee Good is not being investigated.
TROVER: That part is correct because the DOJ and the FBI are in agreement that there is no --
HINOJOSA: They're not in agreement.
[22:05:00]
TROVER: They are in agreement and that's another --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Okay. So, I guess we've circled back around to you acknowledging what she's saying, which is that they are not investigating the shooting of a U.S. citizen and an officer-involved shooting. Why would that be, Lydia?
LYDIA MOYNIHAN, CORRESPONDENT, NEW YORK POST: Look, I think this is a very new, nascent developing story. We know that she resigned. There's some anonymous sources who were chiming in on that, as you noted. Yes, she was also on the Minnesota fraud case, which, of course, has a lot of eyeballs. So, I'm curious to see in the coming days why she says she ultimately resigned.
But I would say, I think DHS has always pushed for sunlight as the best disinfectant. And I think in almost every case when we get more information, they actually turn out looking a lot better, like the story was Liam Ramos that went halfway around the world, everyone was posting this viral photo of a young five-year-old boy looking very sad, and, of course, everyone is blaming it on ICE, and it turns out that actually his parents abandoned him and the ICE officers were there taking care of him.
And so I think DHS, as they lean into that, they come off looking better and the facts are on their side. Abby, you know, I --
PHILLIP: Well, I actually -- I mean, that part, there are a couple things. One, it's very much in dispute their account of what happened with that five-year-old. And let just tell you --
MOYNIHAN: You do know that his father abandoned him. His mother would not accept him. That is why you reported --
PHILLIP: Let me just read our latest reporting on this. Liam's mother, who's pregnant, also has a teenage son who was terrified of the agents outside of the door. That's according to their pastor, who'd been -- been helping the mother since his husband and son were taken away. The pastor says, ICE agents were trying to use the baby to get her to come out of the house, but the neighbors advised her not to do it, fearing that she would be detained. ICE has disputed that.
And, look, I think that in this particular situation given everything that we know about ICE and their credibility, DHS and their statements and their credibility, or lack thereof, I think you have to take into consideration both accounts and several people, the people who were on the scene, this from the school, this pastor say, they were telling the mother not to open the door because the fear was that ICE was going to detain her.
MOYNIHAN: If ICE was so horrible, why did she want to leave her child with them then if they're such monsters?
HINOJOSA: She did not want to leave her child with them. What happened is that this is a pregnant woman and she had a seven-year-old who was -- I'm not done.
MOYNIHAN: Why did father run away and leave this little boy in the cold?
HINOJOSA: He did not run away. He actually said -- according to CNN's reporting, he actually said that the son should come with him. And what they were trying to do is they were trying to use ICE --
MOYNIHAN: He literally ran away.
HINOJOSA: He did.
(CROSSTALKS)
VAN LATHAN, PODCAST CO-HOST, HIGHER LEARNING: Hey, do you guys -- when having these conversations, do you -- are we hearing how far we're going to be on the side of ICE with almost no investigation or using our brains at all? Like we have now said that these people are terrible, bad parents, Renee Good is a domestic terrorist, without actually even having a conversation about the people that are caught up and involved in these things, the woman who was actually dead, the child who was actually detained.
Before we jumped to silos, like currently detained, excuse me, we jumped to silos right away, like, really, to be honest with you, it all looks very bad and it looks very bad to anyone who looks at people as organisms that need care and love in any way. Like for you guys right now, like what you're saying, terrible, bad, abandoning parents- type people, and you said a second ago that the DOJ had already decided before there was an investigation that she was a terrorist. That's not how America works, or at least how you all say it works. It's not really how --
MOYNIHAN: What's frustrating is this sort of selective outrage. Everyone was obsessed with this photo. Not all the facts were out there. The facts are still in dispute. I think we can agree on that. Widely reported the father did run away. But why are we only focused on that when for four years there were almost 500,000 children who came across the border, completely abandoned.
They were trafficked. Kamala Harris is posting about this little five- year-old boy, but for four years, she was completely quiet as the Biden administration saw hundreds of thousands of children trafficked here without their parents. Why are we only outraged about this one story?
YEMISI EGBEWOLE, FORMER BIDEN WHITE HOUSE PRESS ADVISER: I think imagery of children is definitely something that always impacts people. It's something that affected Obama when it came to family separation, and it did affect Biden when it came to viewing children at the border. But this administration is unique because I think a part of the reason Trump became president was based off of immigration and now it's one of the issues he's the most underwater with.
And there's a public trust issue, yes, when it comes to the situation with the five-year-old, because there are conflicting reports. And at this point, whatever ICE says is the least likely to be believed because we just had this situation with the grandfather where it was declared he was a rapist and it was declared that he actually lived with the said rapist, and then it was declared that the rapist they were looking for in the first place had been in the Department of Corrections the entire time.
[22:10:00]
So, it's understandable that people wouldn't believe the account that's coming from DHS on this and public trust is further eroded now that this FBI agent has resigned. I think that, overall, the administration has an imaging problem on people trusting what ICE says.
MOYNIHAN: I mean, I think, look, the numbers don't lie. People clearly aren't happy with what the perception is, and perception is reality. But the numbers don't lie. There have been almost 2.6 million people who have either self-deported or deported. 70 percent of those are criminal, illegal aliens. I mean, you look at some of the people, they're deporting rapists, murderers. I think that's a pretty good thing. And it's tough for the Trump administration also because there's one photo that goes --
TROVER: We also bypassed the --
MOYNIHAN: And there's millions more who they deported, who I think we can all agree we want out the country.
HINOJOSA: Let me just say the administration has a major problem, and in this instance with the five-year-old little boy who has been detained. I will say they claim that that father is a criminal. That father is not a criminal. That father came here legally claiming asylum, and there is no reason why --
MOYNIHAN: This is all under dispute, of course.
HINOJOSA: Hold on.
TROVER: Why he run?
HINOJOSA: Because every Latino is terrified of ICE.
TROVER: To leave your five-year-old child there? Like what --
HINOJOSA: No. You know what? If you were an immigrant in this country here legally or not, or even if you are Latino right now, you were terrified of ICE. If ICE were to come to my neighborhood right now, I would be terrified right now. And that is just the reality. So, that is exactly what is happening because ICE terrorizing families.
TROVER: You're saying -- you're at least acknowledging that he ran number one.
HINOJOSA: I don't know he ran.
TROVER: Yes, you're acknowledging now that he ran and he left a five- year-old child there.
HINOJOSA: He should not be detention right now.
TROVER: Then why did he run if he didn't do anything wrong?
HINOJOSA: So, what did he do wrong? What did he do wrong? Can I ask you, what did he do wrong? What was the crime he committed?
MOYNIHAN: He's here illegally.
HINOJOSA: No, he is not. He's here because he requested asylum. He's here legally. Why is he --
TROVER: Then why did he run?
MOYNIHAN: The DHS disputes -- I know his attorney said that. The Department of Homeland Security says something completely different.
HINOJOSA: CBS and other news outlets have seen the records, have seen his immigration record where it shows that he was seeking asylum. So, are you saying those news outlets are wrong?
PHILLIP: The CBS reporting that she's talking about show that both the son and the father have open asylum claims, and that those claims are pending, which would actually prevent them from being deported in the first place.
And, look, I mean, to your point about murderers and rapists, again, basically, no one is disputing that. The issue though is, to answer Lance's question, why would you run when you encounter ICE? Well, because in Minneapolis, what we've seen is that even American citizens who are minding their own business and walking down the street, you don't get to walk away from an ICE encounter. They might detain you for hours or even days. That has also happened.
So, that, I think, seems to be a legitimate fear on the part of any person in Minnesota right now. But particularly if you are brown, if you are Hispanic, if you are Somali, that you are -- whether you have papers or not, whether you have status or not, whether you have a pending asylum claim or not, you might get detained, and that's exactly what happened to this family.
TROVER: But running from law enforcement is never okay. It's the same thing with the Renee Good case.
PHILLIP: Hold on a second.
TROVER: Oh, it's okay to park perpendicular on the street.
PHILLIP: Wait, but hold on.
TROVER: It's okay to ram your car into an officer. Like, come on --
PHILLIP: Hold on.
(CROSSTALKS)
TROVER: What happened to the part of impeding law enforcement.
PHILLIP: Hold on. Running from law enforcement may not be okay but it's also a reaction that people have to knowing that if they have an interaction with ICE, whether or not they are legal, whether they are a citizen, they might have their freedom stripped from them. That's a real thing. Do you acknowledge that that is happening?
TROVER: I acknowledge that it happens every day in this country. When somebody who's committed a crime or doesn't runs from the police, what are they going to do? Yes, you're going to be in trouble. That's how we should operate --
PHILLIP: Hold on. We are talking about people who have not --
TROVER: Why are we making an exception for illegal immigrants?
PHILLIP: But hold on. We are talking about people who have not committed crimes. We are not -- we are talking about people who have not committed crimes. That's what I'm asking you about.
TROVER: That's my point.
PHILLIP: Do you acknowledge that those people are having interactions where they could lose their freedom?
LATHAN: If you haven't committed a crime, ran from police is not illegal, right? A cop comes up to me and says, hey, stop. Come here. Come. I can go --
TROVER: Well, you're going to be chased by the police and then detained.
LATHAN: No. A cop comes up to me and says -- a cop comes up to me and says, hey, stop right there. Well, I want to talk to you for a second. I didn't do anything.
TROVER: Yes, you have to stop and talk. Yes, you have -- if you're stopped, you need to, yes, you have to engage with the police.
LATHAN: No, I don't. If I haven't done anything, if that police, if that officer doesn't have articulate suspicion --
TROVER: Whether they're stop and frisk or things of that nature.
LATHAN: I don't have to stop.
TROVER: It depends on your --
LATHAN: I legitimately do not have to stop.
HINOJOSA: It is also -- it is because ICE has eroded trust and the trust of the American people. And I will say the vast majority of law enforcement have done so much to build that trust. And I would say this as a -- if this were a regular day, this were a few years ago, yes, I agree.
[22:15:00]
Running from law enforcement isn't great. We live in different times. ICE is acting out of control.
PHILLIP: All right. We have hit pause here. We're going to continue when we come back from the break.
The border commander is defending these tactics by introducing a new catchphrase for the outrage that ICE is experiencing.
Plus, ICE officials are also trying to play up their detention facilities and they're getting help from MAGA media.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS HOST: These detention centers are amazing. You get dental care. You get free healthcare. Have you ever seen the kind of concierge healthcare services they have at these detention facilities?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I saw Alligator Alcatraz.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, the administration is defending its detention of 5- year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father. President Trump's border chief says that critics of that decision are being hypocritical and he warns that separating families is the price immigrants could pay when the entire -- when they entered the country illegally.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BOVINO: The DSP is the double standard phenomenon. We see this quite often, the DSP. American citizens that are arrested daily here in Minneapolis, are they separated from their children and families? Absolutely, as they should be. Criminals face consequences. Criminals face consequences, but yet that double standard does not seem to apply to illegal aliens.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Is there in fairness to that.
EGBEWOLE: He's comparing two different systems here. In one, when somebody is arrested, that child, if there is not an immediate caregiver, is placed within our child welfare system. In this situation, when it comes to immigration law enforcement, that child is placed in a detention center, sometimes in a completely different state, and then there are legal hurdles to even figure out where that child is to get in touch with them.
We have an ingrained system in America about the care of a child, that it's completely different systems that he's making comparisons about here.
PHILLIP: I also wonder, I mean, why is it not the policy to, at every possible opportunity, avoid detaining children? I mean, that seems like a good compromise. I mean, whether or not the father said for the child to come with him, shouldn't the policy be we should do everything within our power to not detain a child?
HINOJOSA: Yes, I think that's absolutely right. And I think the difference between what Bovino is saying here is that he's talking about criminals in the United States, U.S. citizens that, yes, deserve to be in jail, he's insinuating that every immigrant is a criminal and every immigrant is -- should be in detention. And the big controversy as part of this administration is Trump promised to deport, you know, those that are here and that are criminals and that are dangerous, and yet he has gone after legal immigration. And so -- and that is all because of quota. They're trying to meet numbers. They're trying to detain as many people as possible.
And so a lot of people who are here have followed the rules and the government isn't holding their end of the bargain by giving them not citizenship, by allowing them to stay and have legal status and go through the system. That does not make them criminals and they shouldn't be detained.
But I agree, children should not be detained. And you know what, this is a crisis for the president right now, the fact that there is a five-year-old detained in ICE custody and there now today there was a two-year-old who was also detained. If there are mistakes that, as J.D. Vance said, then they should release these children.
TROVER: But what are they supposed to do with the child?
HINOJOSA: Well, this child has a mother. There's family here. But they should not be here in the United States.
TROVER: It was offered to the mother and she refused to take the kid. HINOJOSA: It's not that she refused that. She thought that she was also going to be taken, and then both her children would not have a parent to go come home to.
TROVER: I mean, okay. I would think she would want to take her child. I would think the father wouldn't --
PHILLIP: So, Lance, you really don't understand --
TROVER: Well, there's two -- look, I --
PHILLIP: I know, truly --
TROVER: There's two version of the story here that we don't --
PHILLIP: Hold on, let me just -- you -- let's put aside the partisanship for just a moment. Do you understand the thought process of a pregnant woman who is in her home? There are armed people outside of her home. She is afraid. You don't understand the thought process of what might happen there, where she might actually legitimately be afraid to open her door?
TROVER: Sure. I understand the element of fear here, but I also don't understand, again, we're rehashing what we said before, why a father would also run away and leave his child behind. And that's the confusion here.
And, by the way, what the Border Patrol officer said is going back to exactly what I said, why are we making it a different set of standards for illegal immigrants than what anybody else in this country would make. It's not just about our children, it's about the fact that they've committed crimes or that they're here illegally. So, why are we separating that out? That's what I don't understand about this entire argument, it's that the left has --
PHILLIP: Because (INAUDIBLE) on whether or not they've committed crimes. I mean, even if you want to take your argument, did they commit -- did this guy commit a crime? Did the child commit a crime? I mean, we're asking about the detention not of the man, but of the child.
TROVER: What he's speaking to though is what has proliferated since the Renee Good shooting with the left, which is to say, ICE is wrong. They shouldn't be here doing their stuff. We need to defund them now and shut the whole thing down and let everybody --
PHILLIP: Well, I got to bring this back because 63 percent of Americans right now do not approve of what ICE is doing.
[22:25:03]
This is not a thing only about the left. And I also want to show, I mean, we have some images of what was happening on the streets of Minnesota today or of Minnesota today. It was negative 9 degrees, the low is negative 17, wind chills of negative 35. I mean, these, there are thousands of people on the street. There is no way that this is just a left or right thing.
And I think it's sort of like everybody is coming on T.V. and they've got to just defend it to the hilt. But at the end of the day, I think the American people are speaking and saying too much, too far.
MOYNIHAN: Again, the polling would suggest you're absolutely right. I think the question is there's so much fake news out there, and I think people see that and they react to an image instead of really hearing the whole story. And I guess what's kind of baffling to me in all of us, and I would actually just like to point out that the ICE officers were lovely to that little boy, they took him to lunch, they bought a McDonald's, they played his music.
I think everyone is doing the best they can. The reality is that the laws on the books are being enforced. And if you want to have a debate about changing the laws, that's okay. But to attack, for instance, the IRS officer, because you don't want to pay your taxes, that's not the way that we do things in this country.
And I would just say it's really baffling to me to watch over the last few years, few decades, I mean, there's clips of Obama attacking Bush for being too lax on deporting people. Obama gave Tom Homan, the current border czar a medal for deportations. And so all through the last, you know, few decades, we've all agreed that in immigration laws need to be enforced. And, again, if you want to change those laws, that's another conversation. But the reason that we're having so much chaos is because of the blue cities, because Tim Walz and Jacob Frey will not cooperate with ICE. This isn't happening anywhere else.
PHILLIP: Before you say -- I just have to say this because this has been said a lot, that's not even true either. Because, you know, there are people who are in detention in Minnesota. They do cooperate with ICE on detainers, for people who are incarcerated. And the Minnesota Department of Corrections person made it very clear that when somebody has reached the end of their prison sentence, they call ICE and they say, come pick them up. Sometimes ICE comes, sometimes they don't. The guy that they were looking for, to your point, he's in prison right now. They didn't even bother to Google it, to search where he was. They broke down the door of an American citizen. So, it's not just about cooperation because cooperation does happen for the people who are imprisoned and incarcerated.
LATHAN: Well, a couple of things. Number one, there were plenty of people that were paying attention to some of the abuses by ICE prior to them arriving in Minnesota, it was just difficult to get any traction on the story because it's such a fraught issue. As far as the Obama thing is concerned, there was a mid around 2011, 2012, course correct by the Obama administration to be more humane about that stuff. What you would've hoped is that would've been -- those would've been the lessons that would've been learned from administrations after that. But it seems like we regressed.
Bottom line is people want to see people treated like people. You can do it the other way if you want. You can shoot people in the face, put kids in handcuffs. You can do all of that stuff. But when you do it though, you're going to look like a ghoul and people are going to start to ask questions about what's going on in their communities and with the people that they've elected.
Now, I'm just letting you know, you can come out, you can wash it, you can try to sanitize, you can do all of that stuff. When people see children and when people see people dead on the streets shot by law enforcement, they're going to ask questions and you better have good answers.
TROVER: So, is your issue that they're just not handling it humanely, do you think that's what it is? Or do you think they just -- do they want people to be deported at all?
LATHAN: Well, I mean, you want my personal opinion?
TROVER: Well, I'm just asking what do you think these protesters really want. That's my question.
LATHAN: I think these protesters want anonymous ICE thugs out of their city.
HINOJOSA: I think it's --
TROVER: So, stop all deportations.
LATHAN: No. I think they -- I don't know if they -- I don't know if they -- what they -- they don't want to live in a papers please society. They don't want to live in a society where somebody in a mask can come up into you and ask you to prove that you're an American. And, honestly, you shouldn't want to live in that society and you shouldn't want to live in it either. What the hell is going on?
(CROSSTALKS)
TROVER: That's what you're saying they want.
LATHAN: When you sit down and think about that right there, somebody just being able to walk up to you and going, hey, you from around here, come over here, let me put you in handcuffs. What are we talking about?
TROVER: I can have the debate with you about tactics, but I think, overall, the American people have spoken pretty clearly that they want the deportation. And that's why I was asking you.
HINOJOSA: They want humanity.
PHILLIP: Look, you can't -- hold on. We also -- we've seen what the American people are saying. They are also saying pretty loudly they don't want what they are seeing right now coming out of ICE.
[22:30:06]
PHILLIP: All right, next for us. Allies are livid at Donald Trump tonight, not over Greenland, but his claim that NATO troops avoided the front lines in Afghanistan, even Prince Harry is calling him out for it. We'll debate next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:00]
PHILLIP: President Trump is angering America's allies over new comments he made, once again, undermining NATO.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I've always said, will they be there if we ever needed them? And that's really the ultimate test.
And I'm not sure of that. We've never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them.
You know, they'll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that. And they did. They stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, in the wake of 9/11, the United States became the first and so far the only NATO member to invoke Article 5. The alliance sent thousands of troops to help the United States fight its war in Afghanistan. And Trump's remarks have outraged lawmakers across the political spectrum, as well as veterans and families of those who gave their lives.
Tonight, Prince Harry, who served in Afghanistan, also pushed back, writing in part, quote, "thousands of lives were changed forever. Those sacrifices deserve to be spoken about truthfully and with respect, as we all remain united and loyal to the defense of diplomacy and peace."
President Trump, he's the President, but he seems to not have very much grasp of recent history or not so recent history. But in this case, it is astoundingly disrespectful to our allies to suggest that they did nothing when they actually did quite a lot.
LANCE TROVER, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, I think we can do two things here. I mean, we could and should acknowledge when our allies have been there for us and they have been there for us. But there's nothing wrong with holding our allies accountable, which I think is part of what the President's been doing, particularly with Europe, where we've seen they have moved closer into the arms of China, where we have seen them become more and more reliant on Vladimir Putin for their energy needs.
And for years, they've been saying they were going to step up and put more money into their own defense and national security. And they didn't do it. And it took President Trump coming in to get them to do it.
So I can kind of understand some of the frustrations that he brings forward.
VAN LATHAN, PODCAST CO-HOST, "HIGHER LEARNING": What they got to do with him lying?
TROVER: Lying?
LATHAN: He lied. He said that they didn't help out, they helped. He said that they haven't been there for all.
Let's say everything you just said is true.
TROVER: I started my statement by saying, I think we could and should acknowledge our allies are there.
LATHAN: I know.
All right. But then you. So that's the first part, this is what I like.
So the first part is the maybe. And then the second part is where you launder, where you the second part of your sentence, you launder what he said, as if there's some universe which it's sane in and it's not.
TROVER: There's no launder anything. I stated the facts. You actually did all three things that I said were fact.
LATHAN: President Trump, he came out and he said something that's demonstrably untrue. But let me tell you why. It's not that bad in the grand scheme of things.
He's President of the United States. The stuff that he says matters. We should care as an American community whether or not he's saying things that are true and whether or not he's saying things that our reputation benefits from.
And he's not doing that. He's acting crazy.
YEMISI EGBEWOLE, FORMER BIDEN WHITE HOUSE PRESS ADVISOR: I think it's particularly harmful when it's statements that undercut the sacrifice that a lot of these families made.
And it was great to see Senator Tom Tillis list out the countries and the amount of people who died. U.K., 457.
I mean, I know that he has continuous beef with NATO, but at some point we have to say, OK, a line has been crossed and we're talking about young men and women who died and sacrificed themselves when they didn't have to.
PHILLIP: Let me just say what one of those families said, family who lost or whose child sustained serious injuries in Afghanistan.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DIANE DERNIE, MOTHER OF BEN PARKINSON, SEVERELY INJURED BRITISH VETERAN: It's disgraceful, it's disrespectful, it's hurtful. These are the rantings of a child. This is somebody who is deflecting from other things that he said, and it's not acceptable in a supposed leader of the free world. (END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: It is, to Van's point, not even remotely in the same universe of things for Trump to have complaints about whether NATO is, you know, committing enough to their defense or whether or not they are too close to China, maybe they're taking Russian oil.
It's not in the same universe as him then using falsehoods to essentially smear people who sacrificed their lives for us, Americans.
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, they died. People died and they were on the front lines. And so you're right, he did lie.
And I wish more Republicans would come out and speak out against him. The crazy thing about this is this is the second time I have seen a clip in the last sort of five days from an ally or some, you know, from someone essentially saying that Donald Trump is acting like a child. You know, we saw this in Greenland where he admitted that because he didn't get the, you know, the Nobel Peace Prize, that's why he was upset about Greenland and wanted to, you know, at every turn, it is, he is embarrassing us on the world stage.
And it is embarrassing that he is now being called a child.
[03:40:05]
PHILLIP: Let's put up, let's put up real quick the penguin meme, because I think this speaks to what you're talking about. There is a kind of acceptance of, I don't know, a dumbing down of not just politics, but I mean, this is like foreign policy.
There's a -- he's walking, it's a meme, right? He stole a meme from somebody else. It's A.I.-generated. There are no penguins on Greenland, there are no penguins in the Northern Hemisphere.
HINOJOSA: Unfortunate.
PHILLIP: It's not even funny. It's just embarrassing at a certain point. When are we going to get back to a serious White House?
LYDIA MOYNIHAN, CORRESPONDENT, "NEW YORK POST": Well, look, I disagree with the President's comments, basically diminishing Europe's aid. And I'm super grateful for every veteran. And we should never pretend that they didn't sacrifice their lives because that is such an important contribution.
But I think a couple of things we saw at Davos this week, I think Americans, just generally, if I can kind of talk about how the MAGA base feels about this, they feel like we've contributed over the years. And we have 22 trillion to NATO.
And they look at Europe and they kind of feel like we're the older sibling who's spending for everyone's defense. And meanwhile, people in Europe are living La Dolce Vita, they're taking August off. And we're basically kind of bankrolling their lifestyle and they have all these fabulous social benefits.
Well, we can't buy houses and we don't have paid maternity leave and we don't have all these things in the U.S. And so I think that's what he was trying to communicate. And obviously that was not done in a great way, but the other thing is that--
PHILLIP: Those are choices that we make in the United States. We can certainly have paid maternity leave.
LATHAN: We've got common ground. You guys are saying that if NATO, if Europe plays the NATO bill, then we're going to get European style universal health care. You guys are down?
MOYNIHAN: I'm not commenting on health care.
TROVER: I didn't hear her say that.
MOYNIHAN: I'm just saying.
LATHAN: You're talking about what they got. Because I'm down for it.
MOYNIHAN: I'm saying how does the average American feel when people in France are living La Dolce Vita? And we're bankrolling their lifestyle.
PHILLIP: Next for us, the governor of Pennsylvania accuses Trump of whitewashing history after the feds begin removing slavery exhibits in Philadelphia. Now Philly is hitting back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:45:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Tonight in the birthplace of America, the Trump administration is removing an exhibit on slavery. The Park Service removed explanatory plaques from the brick walls of the Philadelphia home where George and Martha Washington lived.
The plaques included biographical details about the nine people enslaved by the Washingtons at the presidential mansion and a historic timeline of American slavery. Now just the names of enslaved individuals will remain. The city is now suing to stop it.
Unsurprising, considering that Trump has made it clear he thinks that we talk about slavery too much. But it's pretty astonishing that now we're just taking history right out of the pages of history books.
EGBEWOLE: Right. And I have to ask, what does history that actually happened harm? And who does it harm?
I mean, in response to the lawsuit, the Department of Interior said that this demeans the founding fathers. Well, the founding fathers have historical sites already that marry these two together. It's not either or. Either you celebrate the founding fathers or you recognize slavery. If you go to Monticello, you can walk through and you can see Jefferson's prolific writings, the things he wrote in his diaries, often about the moral conflict of slavery. And if you walk outside of Monticello and you go down to the slave quarters, you will learn about Sally Hemings.
You learn about the enslaved woman that he, what we believe, had up to six children with. There is a way to both honor the legacy of a founding father and then also acknowledge that they are human and therefore not infallible. And we're losing that nuance when we erase history.
LATHAN: They're human and they were also human slave owners. So I don't feel any need to soft pedal it. I don't feel any need to make anybody feel okay about it.
They owned human people. They treated them like animals. They whipped them.
At times they had sex with them. Deal with it. Grow up.
It's 9/11. Never forget.
It's Pearl Harbor. Never forget. Lives in infamy.
Slavery, the treatment of black people in this country. Let's try hard not to remember. Not going to work.
Right now, if you're living in Boston, the disparity that you're living under if you're black is the median white family has about $285,000 worth of wealth. You have around $8. All of these disparities that we're talking about come from a historical head start that one group in this country was given.
Now, we can try to talk about that in conversation and be brave about it and get through it. Or we can continue to pretend like that and Jim Crow and white racist terrorism and all of those other things, redlining, like those things never happened.
We can stay stuck in the traction that we're in right now. It's either the bedtime stories that you give to children or the real adult truth that you give to adults.
PHILLIP: So, can I just ask, to our conservative friends at the table, when the Trump administration is accused of pursuing racist policies, a lot of times conservatives say, that's unfair. And then they do things like this. How do you square the two?
[22:50:07]
TROVER: Well, I don't believe in really tearing anything down. I think we have to, to your point, I think we have to accept our history for what it is. I think if you talk to some in the conservative community, they would say, is this there, to your point about marrying two together, everybody knows slavery is terrible. It's taught in school. Everybody knows these guys own slaves. The
question among some, and I would say in the administration has become, is it there in this particular location to honor and memorialize and remember those slaves? Or is it there to diminish or somehow embarrass George Washington?
PHILLIP: Does it matter?
TROVER: I'm not, I'm telling you, I'm not-- I'm just telling you, you're asking me, you're asking me how they square, I'm saying that's the question that comes to mind.
PHILLIP: Does it matter whether the truth diminishes how people see a person if it is the truth?
TROVER: No, I'm not disagreeing and I'm saying that I think that's, you asked me how people in the conservative community square it. That is what I hear from people saying, well, we all know they own slaves. Why, you know, does this particular one, why does it have to be there to honor one of our founding fathers who, you know, or is it meant to disparage him?
I'm not saying I agree with it, Abby. I'm just saying you asked me to explain.
PHILLIP: There are a lot of things that Trump does, but it's things like this that make him the polarizing figure that he is and they could easily not do stuff like this, but they do it.
MOYNIHAN: Well, to be clear, no one at this table, no one in the administration is saying we shouldn't teach about the horrors of slavery. That was a shameful chapter.
I think the question is the balance and I pulled up some of, I pulled up what some of the things that are taught in the Philadelphia school system, widely taught that Western expansion was racist, widely taught that, foreign policy should be examined through the lens of race and racism. There's a huge emphasis though, there's a huge emphasis though on--
PHILLIP: I'm talking about the plaques that--
I know, you're pulling up what they are, what they are supposedly teaching in Philadelphia schools. I'm talking about the plaques that they're taking down off of a historical location.
MOYNIHAN: Again, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not removing any parts of history. I think there's a question though of how do we balance acknowledging this, but also saying America is the greatest country on earth. We got rid of slavery.
We moved past that chapter.
PHILLIP: We're the greatest country on earth and we enslaved people, human beings for hundreds of years. And that is a story. MOYNIHAN: And we've closed that chapter and we've moved forward.
PHILLIP: Hold on. But we cannot, hold on.
Just like we cannot move forward from the Holocaust, we don't need to move forward from acknowledging the existence of hundreds of years of chattel slavery in this country. It's not something that you ask of anybody else. As Van pointed out, why is it that black people need to forget and forgive when we're simply asking to just document it accurately? That is all that is being asked.
All right. We do have to leave it there because the panel is going to give us their nightcaps when we come back. It's no storm edition.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: The comedians of "Have I Got News For You" are back tomorrow and here's a sneak peek.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROY WOOD JR., HOST, "HAVE I GIT NEWS FOR YOU": What did Trump launch this week to replace our international alliances?
AMBER RUFFIN, PANELIST, "HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU": It's some fun name like the peace police, the peace group, peace posse, peace posse, final answer.
WOOD: On Thursday, Donald Trump launched the board of peace.
MICHAEL IAN BLACK, PANELIST, "HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU": B-O-A-R-D or B-O-R-E-D?
WOOD: Oh, that's good. Are you bored of peace? Hit him with a missile.
So this is meant to be an organization of the world's most important superpowers. Who's on this board of peace?
RUFFIN: Some freaking like Connecticut.
ANDY RICHTER, COMEDIAN: I bet it's lots of ones that have lots of consonants in a row.
WOOD: Yes.
BLACK: Narnia. Is Narnia one of them?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: You can catch the season premiere tomorrow, Saturday at 9 p.m. on CNN and the next day on the CNN app.
And before we go, nearly 100 million Americans are bracing for a record-breaking winter storm this weekend.
So for tonight's "NewsNight" caps, we want to know what is the one thing that you cannot live without if you are snowed in. Van Lathan, you're up first.
LATHAN: Spider-Man 2 for the PS5. Yes.
It's not a video game. You are Spider-Man.
PHILLIP: Done and done. All right. Lydia.
MOYNIHAN: I love a jigsaw puzzle. In fact, I need to get one tomorrow before the snow starts. It's so entertaining.
PHILIP: Can you finish it? You can finish it?
MOYNIHAN: Oh, Yes.
500, 1,000 pieces, 2,000. I'm locked in. And then I put a movie on, put on the fire, and make a fire.
PHILLIP: All right.
EGBEWOLE: Passwords to all the streaming services. Double check that you can still access like your exes. Check with your parents that you have their logins.
But I will be binge watching.
PHILLIP: This is right up there with winterizing your pipes. Your passwords.
All right, Lance.
TROVER: Like every good D.C. resident, I was flooding to the store this week to stock up on whatever we have. And the guy in front of me had five bottles of wine and a frozen pizza. I almost said that tonight.
But I will go with a good bottle of bourbon. I will go with a bad bottle of bourbon. Whatever it takes to get me through.
[23:00:00]
PHILLIP: All right. Go ahead.
HINOJOSA: My son says that school will be shut down until Wednesday. That is his prediction.
So I need a babysitter. Anyone on the block who would like to babysit, you are hired.
PHILLIP: That's like some kind of betting market thing.
TROVER: I volunteer, but we're across town.
PHILLIP: I say Tuesday. I think Tuesday they'll get their act together. Maybe longer in D.C.
All right, everybody. Thank you very much. Thanks for watching "NewsNight." Catch our Saturday morning
conversation show tomorrow morning, "Table for Five," 10 a.m. Eastern. "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
