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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Claims War's Unpopularity Among Americans Is Fake; Generational Divide Over Trump's Iran War Is Growing Wider; Trump Admin Blames Biden For Gas Prices, Spirit Collapse, Inflation; Trump Demands To Cancel Elections And Rig Maps For GOP; Americans Not Happy With Jeff Bezoz Involvement With Met Gala. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired May 04, 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 VIDEOTAPE)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, the generation raised during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are getting louder against America's new one in Iran. Is the divide enough to end it sooner?
Plus --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We inherited a mess.
SCOTT BESSENT, TREASURY SECRETARY: This is just more of the mess we inherited.
PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: It's because the cascading effect of what Joe Biden did.
PHILLIP: -- as pressure mounts and polls crater, the administration dusts off the Biden boogeyman.
Also, the president demands Republicans cancel elections to redraw their maps, and in some cases, erase votes.
And the exclusive party for the fashion elites is under fire for rubbing elbows with the billionaires.
Live at the table, Adam Mockler, Hal Lambert, Tara Setmayer, Noah Rothman, Bobby Ghosh, and Kmele Foster.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening. I'm Abby Phillip in New York.
Here's a sign that we are in America's Iran war. The president who started it can't remember how long it's been going on.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: We have a war right now, and winter, like, what, six weeks? They said, what's taking so long.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Not quite. We are in the tenth week of the war and the third month, with no end in sight, frankly. Donald Trump may not be keeping track, but Americans certainly are via their gas prices. It's hit another high today. And one expert says that you can expect to see $5 at a pump if the Strait of Hormuz doesn't open soon.
Now, the president is also dismissing how unpopular the war is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: They give me fake polls. They tell me about polls and this. And, you know, it's interesting, they did a poll on the war with Iran and they said only 32 percent of the people like it. Well, I don't like it and I don't like war at all.
They said 32 percent of the people are against President Trump. Well, when you explain it, like is it okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon? It wouldn't be 32 percent. But even if you said that, there'd be a 32 percent because the polls are fake. I mean, they're totally fake.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: For the reality, at the start of the war, Americans were pretty evenly divided in their support for the conflict, but now, 61 percent say that the campaign in Iran was a mistake, and there is a clear generational gap too. While older Americans are split, 61 percent under the age of 35 opposed the war and 80 percent of those under 30 say there were no sufficient reasons to attack Iran in the first place. While 51 percent over the age of 65 say that there were.
So, this generational divide, I think, when it comes to war, has always been a thing in America, but it seems particularly acute right now, Adam.
ADAM MOCKLER, COMMENTATOR, MEIDASTOUCH NETWORK: Yes. For my entire life, the United States has been at war with some country in the Middle East, and young people have constantly been told that this will make us safer and make us better off. But when we look around at the world today, we are less safe and we are worse off.
Millennials grew up watching all these headlines saying that Iraq had been, you know, defeated, that we had taken out Saddam Hussein and we had killed all the bad guys. Well, that turned into a grinding counterinsurgency that cost us trillion, a trillion dollars, and it was a catastrophe. The same thing happened with Afghanistan, and now, Gen Zers are going to the same thing with Iran. We are watching the same people who defended these first two failed wars go on television and defend another failed war. This war is failing. We have not gotten any political concessions.
And I'm sorry, I'm not buying this trust the process line. I don't trust the same people who got us into the prior wars, amassed trillions of dollars in debts and are not putting America first on the global stage.
PHILLIP: So, putting aside perhaps for, just for a moment, even the politics of this current moment, I mean, is it fair for young people to have that level of distrust of the people, to Adam's point, who maybe defended the last war and were wrong and are defending this war too?
[22:05:06]
NOAH ROTHMAN, SENIOR WRITER, NATIONAL REVIEW: Yes, I don't think so. I think, honestly, Adam, that's immensely ungrateful to American service personnel and the people who keep us safe every day. After 9/11, it was by no means guaranteed that there would be no mass casualty terrorist attack on American soil in the immediate aftermath of that attack, especially since we had events in Madrid in London, et cetera.
And after the attack on Iraq and the elimination of Saddam Hussein's regime, we took a terrorist supporting enterprise off the map. We don't talk about Iraq anymore as a threat to a national security because it isn't. And those who would pretend as though Iran is not a national security threat, as the -- and are just frankly dismissive of the extent to which American service personnel get up every day to stop these people from executing the attacks on American and their allies that they plan every single day.
This is a thorn in our side. It absorbs a lot of American taxpayer dollars to say nothing of the energy of our service personnel. And I just think it's just ungrateful --
MOCKLER: I am so grateful --
ROTHMAN: -- to say that these, the service personnel are not keeping you safe when they are.
MOCKLER: No, I feel less safe due to the actions of our leaders. I'm incredibly grateful for our service men and you're doing these --
HAL LAMBERT, POINT BRIDGE CAPITAL FOUNDER AND CEO: Well, your feelings don't make a fact.
MOCKLER: Wait, listen, you are doing --
LAMBERT: Your feelings, the way you feel doesn't make it fact.
MOCKLER: Let me finish. He was talking to me. He was talking to me.
PHILLIP: Hold on second, Hal. I'll let you respond.
MOCKLER: You are doing the exact same thing that I just laid out in the opening. You are telling young people they shouldn't be asking questions. They shouldn't be questioning the people in power --
ROTHMAN: I'd love you to ask the questions about the nature of the --
MOCKLER: Okay. Then what was ungrateful about what I said? I said that the leaders are making us less safe, and I can prove that. Right now, Iran has control over the Strait of Hormuz, and that is a weapon they didn't have control of two months ago.
ROTHMAN: Of course they did. They shut down Strait of Hormuz in the 80s. And we opened it up in the 80s.
(CROSSTALKS)
LAMBERT: You think gas prices are high right now? Iran with a nuclear weapon, we'd have unlimitedly high gas prices. They would take control of the Strait of Hormuz, and they would blackmail the world.
MOCKLER: And how much farther away are they from having nuclear weapons? Where's the enriched uranium right now? Where is the enriched uranium right now?
LAMBERT: We're going to get the enriched uranium.
MOCKLER: Where is it? I want you to answer.
LAMBERT: It is buried right now. But you --
MOCKLER: No, where is it buried?
LAMBERT: You're asking me. I'm not in the classified briefings and neither are you. So, just --
MOCKLER: Where is it buried? We know it's buried in Iran.
LAMBERT: Let me finish.
MOCKLER: Okay.
PHILLIP: Okay, Adam, let him finish.
LAMBERT: We are more safe than we were before we took out Iran's nuclear capabilities, absolutely more safe. The Strait of Hormuz is going to be open and Iran's not going to control it. It is -- that is absolutely going to happen.
MOCKLER: In two weeks?
LAMBERT: It doesn't matter if it's two weeks or two months.
MOCKLER: It does actually matter. Because economists are saying if it's closed for a few more months and we're going into a recession, so it does matter. It absolutely does matter.
LAMBERT: No one's predicting that because the markets are at an all- time high.
MOCKLER: No one's predicting that.
LAMBERT: The market aren't predicting it.
MOCKLER: With the oil markets?
LAMBERT: The inflation rates the inflation rate has stayed where it is. And, by the way --
MOCKLER: What was inflation when Biden was in office?
LAMBERT: -- unemployment has stayed low.
PHILLIP: So, hold on.
LAMBERT: So, when you're talking about them, everyone's predicting them.
MOCKLER: Can you look the average American in the eye --
PHILLIP: Just to be clear just to be clear, inflation has ticked up. It has not stayed the same. But, Bobby, you were around for the politics and the conflict of the last two Middle East wars. I mean, what do you make of this generational debate about whether it's wise to be going into another conflict in this region?
BOBBY GHOSH, COLUMNIST AND GEOPOLITICS ANALYST: Well, I can't fault the logic that when you've seen this happen through your lifetime and you're still living with the consequences of it in one fashion or the other, you're bound to be reluctant to get into the war.
Nobody's disputing for the fact that for a moment that the Iranians are bad, the Iranian regime are bad guys. But when you hear the president and our leadership constantly changing the explanation they're giving for why we're at war, constantly changing the timetable of how long this is going to last, and then forgetting how long it has been going on, then you're right to push back and say, kindly give us a clearer explanation for why we're there, how long we're going to be there for.
It's not enough to say -- sit at the table and say, It'll be over, and then the Straits of Hormuz will be open. We've got no indication of that being the case. When the straits were closed, we were told this is a matter of days. Now, it's been a matter of weeks. And we're no closer to it being open than we were two weeks ago, three weeks ago and four weeks ago.
PHILLIP: Well, let me -- and on top of what you're saying there, I mean, I think one of the big problems with where we are in this conflict is that, very clearly, the administration has determined, because they've basically ended the kinetic conflict of it all, they've determined that the only way to actually get the things that we want, which is Iran abandoning its nuclear ambitions, moving away from funding terrorism, is to get to the negotiating table, which is the same truth that existed a year ago after they did the first set of strikes.
So, I mean, I think that's part of the problem is that war has not necessarily gotten us the outcome that they say that we are trying to get here.
TARA SETMAYER, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, THE SENECA PROJECT: No, and that's because the rationale for the war has shifted multiple times. No one here has ever said we want a nuclear armed Iran. That is a red herring at this point, because it's the only talking point that the pro-Trump folks have because they've gotten themselves into a situation that they were unprepared for.
[22:10:04]
And what's incredibly ungrateful, you know who's incredibly ungrateful? Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth, for the men and women who are serving in this war, who are on deployments that are extra long, who are not getting their ships resupplied, who are the -- who don't understand what they're doing over there, who are being taken for granted.
Our military is the greatest in the world and the men and women who serve are the greatest in the world, and they are being taken for granted as props in a political effort by Donald Trump to make himself feel better so he can distract from everything else that's going on domestically. And now he's gotten himself into a situation where he can't even explain cogently why we're there, what's going on, and why the American people should have to pay the price for it. So, that's what's going on here.
I mean, I was a Republican for many years, we absolutely looked at Iran as the threat that it is and, absolutely, were trying to do things to make sure that they did not continue to be the world's sponsor of terror, but this isn't it. This is not it.
PHILLIP: So, Noah, you talked about Adam -- you accused Adam of being ungrateful. I just want you to look at these charts. Look at what happened to public opinion when it came to the war in Afghanistan. Was it a mistake for the U.S. to send military forces to Afghanistan? The war started out as incredibly popular and then it became much less popular. So, about half of Americans said that it was a mistake and about half said that it was not.
The same is true of Iraq, incredibly popular, right decision, 72 percent, back at the beginning of it. And by the end of the conflict in 2014, it was down to 38 percent. I mean, are all of these Americans ungrateful? I mean, I imagine many of them have -- they ended up tasting the consequences of the war, including the impacts on their lives, people that they knew, people who may not have even lost their lives in theater, but came back forever scarred by it. I mean, it's ungrateful?
ROTHMAN: To clarify what I had said previously is that it is, in my view, ungrateful to American service personnel to say that they have not kept us safe when we do not measure --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Hold on. He didn't say that. So, you have to acknowledge that he didn't say that.
ROTHMAN: No. He's saying that we can't -- we can measure non-events, which is to suggest that the attacks that have not happened, which none of us are aware of, we're not avoidable because of the nature of these conflicts. And the conflicts themselves are what inspired the attacks. It's almost inviting that the notion that America is responsible for the terrorist --
PHILLIP: That's not really the argument that he's making. The argument that he's making is that the people who made the arguments to go into these conflicts in the first place misled, which is a fact, and, secondly, that the conflicts ended up lasting a very long time, costing a lot of American treasure, and those are also facts. He didn't say it's because they're -- you know, they didn't keep us safe. That's actually what he said.
ROTHMAN: Well, it is kind of what he said. But let's not belabor the point. I have all the time in the world for criticisms of the president's rhetoric, all the time in the world. In fact, I think a lot of the reasons why the public is soured on this is because the president never approached Americans and said, solicited their support, told them the burdens they were expected to bear and told them why they were going into this.
But as important as it is to criticize the president's rhetoric, it's also important to talk about what's happening on the ground. And we are closer today to opening up the strait by virtue of what we heard from Admiral Brad Cooper today and the operation that was engaged over the course of the last 24 hours, very important --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: (INAUDIBLE) response and then I want Bobby to have the last word.
GHOSH: Well, I covered the war in Iraq. I was there for all the arguments going into that war in Iraq. I remember people saying this was the major sponsor of terror and you pointed to 9/11 Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, and going into Iraq and toppling that regime, as much as I hated the regime as any right thinking people spawned from their direct consequence of that, the Islamic states, also a terrorist group, that came directly out of our actions in Iraq.
So, you know, if we want to look at historical precedents, we should not cherry-pick little bits out of a larger picture and pretend that the larger piece of that --
ROTHMAN: It's still over the Syrian war.
MOCKLER: To expand on my framework, I gave a very good faith criticism of this war and of the history of these types of wars, and I had one person say that I was ungrateful, and then another invoke the weapons of mass destruction that Iran could potentially be developing. What I was trying to say is that getting military successes, if you want to call them that, doesn't always translate to helpful outcomes for the American people.
We've seen this. We killed Saddam Hussein. We took out the bad guy.
LAMBERT: It's arguable that this war --
MOCKLER: In Afghanistan -- LAMBERT: -- is the most just the war since World War II, because Iran has killed thousands of Americans. Saddam Hussein hadn't killed thousands Americans. Afghanistan hadn't either.
MOCKLER: But he ran on no new wars.
LAMBERT: No, I'm saying I'm --
MOCKLER: He ran on no new wars.
(CROSSTALKS)
MOCKLER: He should've ran on it.
[22:15:00]
It's a 47-year-old war.
SETMAYER: Why didn't he take it to the Congress and the American people if it was so justified that --
LAMBET: Ultimately, he may do that, but --
SETMAYER: Ultimately? Why didn't he do that before the bombs were dropping? Well, you say, he had, do you -- using your own logic where you said it was so justified, the most just war since World War II.
LAMBERT: No, I'm saying, arguably, it could be.
SETMAYER: Why did he go ahead and present it to the American people that way?
LAMBERT: Iran has killed thousands of Americans.
SETMAYER: We've established this.
LAMBERT: Okay. Iran is a threat to the world, okay? If they get nuclear weapons, they would control the straight muse anytime they wanted to and people wouldn't be able to do anything about it. If you think we have high oil prices now, it would have skyrocketed.
GHOSH: They do not need nuclear weapons to control the Straits of Hormuz. The Straits of Hormuz are right there. You can't change geography. They need small speed boats. They just need to issue a threat. What happened in the last few weeks? They didn't do anything. All they had to say was we're going to shut the strait and the markets did the rest. The insurance companies refused to insure ships. Shipping companies refused to go. They do not need nuclear weapons to shut.
ROTHMAN: That is resolvable in the Horn of Africa and the straight Malacca, it's resolvable in Hormuz.
PHILLIP: All right. Bobby, thank you very much for being here. I appreciate you. Next for us, as gas prices keep rising and Spirit Airlines has gone under, the Trump administration is deploying a new strategy or an old one, blame Biden.
Plus, it's not getting a lot of attention, but the president is demanding that Republicans cancel elections to redraw electoral maps and suggest that some will have to, quote, vote twice.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: As President Trump faces a hugely unpopular war against Iran, growing economic anxiety, and dismal polling numbers, his administration is now deploying a new strategy to explain it all away, blame Joe Biden.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: Under the Biden administration, we dug ourselves a hole in this country.
TRUMP: Under crooked Joe Biden, American seniors were ravaged by the worst inflation in the history of our country.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We inherited a mess.
PETER NAVARRO, WHITE HOUSE TRADE ADVISER: There's not much we up here can do about that, but there are policies, for example, the withholding by the Biden vegans of literally millions of acres of grazing land.
HEGSETH: And it's because the cascading effect of what Joe Biden did in abandoning that mission the way that he did and that disastrous withdrawal had ripple effects for our military.
TRUMP: Biden added $6 trillion worth of new regulations.
Do you know what that means better than anybody? It means no good.
KEVIN HASSETT, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: He was just trying to offset all those terrible energy policies and get gas prices down ahead of the election.
BILL HEMMER, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Okay. That was then, but this is now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Kmele Foster's joining us at the table. I think after the year that Americans have had, they're kind of asking, Biden who?
KMELE FOSTER, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, TANGLE: It's been out of office a little while. The president of the United States has enact for trying to evade culpability for various things that he does wrong and blaming Joe Biden as one of those things, but also two things can be true at once. It is certainly the case that the Biden administration pursued any number of regulations that did in fact increase cost. Inflation was a problem under the Biden administration. Spending did continue to balloon. It's just that the president of the United States has done his seemingly best possible effort or made a best possible effort to make all of those problems considerably worse. So, here we are.
SETMAYER: Can we just be clear? The Biden inflation like talking point, I'm so tired of it. Inflation was high under Biden because he inherited the disastrous response to COVID from the Trump administration.
ROTHMAN: I seems to remember an inflation reduction act --
SETMAYER: Hold on. Hold on. Let me finish my thought.
PHILLIP: But it is also because they responded to the pandemic with a lot of government spending, which exacerbated inflation.
SETMAYER: It did. However, when it was at its highest point under the Biden administration, which was around 9 percent at one point, it went all the way down to 2.4 percent in October of 2024, and 2.9 percent when he left. So this idea that inflation was so, oh my God, terrible and they inherited something terrible, it's about the same right now that it was when Trump took office.
So, you know, we just need to be clear here that blaming Biden for everything, given that what he inherited from Trump after the pandemic and was able with the Inflation Reduction Act and all the things they did to stabilize our economy, it's just, again, another way to shift blame because Trump is failing so badly on domestic policy when he promised that he would bring prices lower, he wouldn't be in forever wars, he wouldn't do all of these things. Meanwhile, it's failing miserably and he's flailing, so he has to blame Biden.
PHILLIP: Well, let me -- I mean, I think we could even arguably simplify it even more. Trump has made two of the most consequential decisions of his presidency, liberation day and tariffs and the Iran war, both of which have resulted in stagnant job growth, reduced -- or, sorry, increased inflation. And both of those things are what Americans are living with right now despite all of his promises.
ROTHMAN: Yes. I mean, I have a lot of time for going back and relearning the lessons of the Biden administration so that we never repeat it. Those percentages just are the rate of increase and inflation is cumulative. So, you experience high prices and then they keep growing on you, but so they grow 3 percent, you know, that's not great. 9 percent, even worse, but they're still growing.
And we should absorb, you know, the lessons of the Biden administration. When you're throwing taxpayer dollars into the economy and overheating and already overheated economy, you're going to get high prices and price instability. And if you truncate energy, which we're experiencing right now, you get high prices in inflation, which is what happened under the Biden administration, when they shut down and signaled to the markets that there would be no new exploration of federal lands for gas and oil exploration.
[22:25:14]
So, all of these lessons are --
SETMAYER: Yes you're energy independent under the Biden administration.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Guys, U.S. oil and gas production increased under Biden.
SETMAYER: Correct.
PHILLIP: It did. So, look, I mean, I'm not discounting your statement about --
ROTHMAN: I mean Jennifer Granholm had to go hat in hand to gas position.
PHILLIP: I'm not discounting your statement about their posture toward oil and gas exploration, but the actual production went up under Biden.
LAMBERT: That was because the drilling started under Trump.
PHILLIP: So --
LAMBERT: They canceled the Keystone pipeline. Biden went to work against American energy. Trump's going towards --
PHILLIP: Right now -- okay. So, right now, over the weekend --
SETMAYER: When gas is $5 a gallon.
PHILLIP: Over the weekend, Spirit Airlines went out of business. And the Trump administration has responded to that by saying this. Let's listen to Sean Duffy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEAN DUFFY, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: And to be really clear, yes, jet fuel prices have gone off. This story was not written because of the Iran war. This story was written years ago because of what Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and the DOJ under Biden, what they did to prevent the merger from happening.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, according to the Spirit Airlines president and the CEO, the sudden and sustained rise in fuel prices in recent weeks ultimately left us with no alternative but to pursue an orderly wind down of the company. So, yes, they had a lot of problems, but the massive spike, almost doubling of fuel prices, is what got them to this point.
LAMBERT: Well, he did make that statement, but the merger should have been able to happen with JetBlue. And Elizabeth Warren and Biden's DOJ shut it down. And now we have 17,000 people out of work that wouldn't have been out of work had they let the merger go through. And I would argue that the two combined would have been much stronger and been able to handle this spike in prices. Because let's face it, energy prices, oil went to $120 under Biden. We had average gas prices around the country over $5, and airlines didn't go out of business then.
So, look, we had those same spikes under Biden. We've had the spike here under Trump. I believe it's temporary as soon as the Iranian war is concluded. I think those prices will massively --
PHILLIP: But that's a lot of shoulda, coulda, woulda. And I do think, like, look, I mean, we also have to know, the Biden administration, they opposed the merger, they sued but their suit was upheld in a court. It was upheld in a court by a Reagan-appointed judge. So, that's also true.
And, look, I mean, at the end of the day, Spirit Airlines, and, by the way, their competitors do not believe that the government -- the alternative here, which would've been for Trump to bail them out, would've been a good solution to this problem either.
MOCKLER: Yes. I mean, you can completely ignore what the CEO said if you want, but the reality is these gas and oil spikes have completely ruined a lot of companies, I mean, bankruptcies overall. You want to talk about Spirit in particular, bankruptcies overall among large corporations are at the highest point in 15 years. Let me finish.
LAMBERT: (INAUDIBLE) had a spike over two months and --
MOCKLER: Farm bankruptcies are at the highest point. I mean, they've gone up 46 percent since Donald Trump took office. Is that because of Biden too? Are the farm bankruptcies up 46 percent because of Biden too?
LAMBERT: There was a lot of fertilizer issues around farms, but I'm not going to --
MOCKLER: Because of what? Because of tariffs? No, this is it. We're talking about bankruptcy. That's exactly what we're talking about.
LAMBERT: Under Biden, we didn't bankruptcies there.
MOCKLER: And the massive inflation under Biden was definitely embedded into the economy, to Noah's point, but it went down. When we're looking at the trends, Donald Trump was handed an economy with 2.9 percent inflation and spiked it on liberation day.
LAMBERT: Biden was handed an economy with 2.4 percent.
MOCKLER: Yes, but there's a difference between shooting yourself in the foot like Trump did versus having extrinsic factors.
LAMBERT: He didn't shoot himself in the foot.
MOCKLER: Okay. What do you call liberation day? What do you call the Iran war? What do you call the fact that he could have just been steady handed and had a better economy?
LAMBERT: I mean, look, you don't understand how inflation operates. Inflation's from printing money, okay? Let, we don't need to get into whole economics about tariffs --
MOCKLER: Wait, who pays the tariff? Who pays the tariff?
LAMBERT: Look, we can talk about -- I do understand tariffs much better than you do.
MOCKLER: Who pays it?
SETMAYER: So, then who pays them?
LAMBERT: Actually, it depends. China paid a lot of those tariffs. I know that for a fact.
SETMAYER: Yes. And the American people paid a lot of those tariffs. They are tax on the American consumer and you know that.
LAMBERT: Okay. Well, then corporate taxes shouldn't be there either.
MOCKLER: It seems like he doesn't know about tariffs.
FOSTER: I wonder if we could return back to the Spirit for a moment, because I do think this is another example of us having kind of two things happening at once. It is certainly the case that there was a ruling, but, yes, the government has the ability to intervene in various things in the economy to regulate whether or not mergers can take place. The question is whether or not this merger would have helped this company survive these difficult times, and it seems likely that it could have.
PHILLIP: I think the other question is also whether the merger -- I mean, the argument that they made was that the merger was not in the best interest of the consumer. And the thing about a capitalist society is that you have to both worry about, you know, the -- you have to worry about both the ability to do mergers, but also the ability to keep competitive markets. And so it is in the government's interest to keep markets competitive.
[22:30:02]
ROTHMAN: So, let's review this --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: So, look, all I'm just -- all I'm saying is, look, we're not going to sort out the mergers and acquisitions part of this, but all I'm saying is that we're in a system, right? And the government takes one position, they take it to court, and the court has a role in it. They could have taken it to court and lost the court and the merger would have gone forward.
(CROSSTALK)
ROTHMAN: The court said you have the legal authority to do this really stupid thing. And they said, and they did this really stupid thing.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: So, so, yes, I mean -- but --
(CROSSTALK)
ROTHMAN: Yes, that's not the court's fault. And the notion here --
PHILLIP: But that is, Noah --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: But isn't it the government -- isn't it part of the government's authority to regulate mergers of, under anti-trust law? Under anti-trust, right. Anti-trust law is not part of their role.
ROTHMAN: You just made the argument. It was Elizabeth Warren's argument, it would be uncompetitive, anti-competitive for these two things to merge that would deprive Americans of consumer choice.
UNKNOWN: Yes.
ROTHMAN: Where's their consumer choice today?
UNKNOWN: Just lost it.
ROTHMAN: Just review it. But there's one less airline to compete with the big.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Well, hold on a second. I mean, look.
(CROSSTALK)
SETMAYER: -- by the fact that -- because of the Iran war, and they're not the only ones. It was happening in Europe, also.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I also think
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I also think, Noah --
ROTHMAN: They would have survived a price shock if they had.
SETMAYER: Not necessarily. But they're taking down JetBlue also.
PHILLIP: Listen, the death of a company
(CROSSTALK)
UNKNOWN: -- still go out of business. PHILLIP: The death of a company doesn't necessarily mean that another
competitor -- it does not come into the market. The problem with mergers is that you create a behemoth that becomes much more difficult to compete against. So, that's -- I'm just saying
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: All I'm saying is that's there are competing interest here. I'm not saying one thing is we can't know. It's a counterfactual, right? But there are competing interests here and there's something to be said for what happens when the market gets to decide who lives and who dies? And in this case, spirit has died because they were a bad company and they couldn't survive a -- an input shock. And that's how capitalism works. That's -- it's --
(CROSSTALK)
SETMAYER: Somebody needs to explain that to Donald Trump because that's what Republicans believe. That's what we, as free market economists. That's what Republicans believe for years. And then Donald Trump came in and said, oh man, we should buy them out.
(CROSSTALK)
ROTHMAN: Create a destruction, that's great. And the hand of the market should not crush spirit.
(CROSSTALK)
ROTHMAN: Spirit tried to save itself and it was thwarted by the public sector.
SETMAYER: But that's why Republicans were not very keen on the government coming in and bailing them out and they shouldn't have.
PHILLIP: All right, next for us. After a key Supreme Court ruling over Louisiana's election map, the President says cancel the elections and redraw them all even if means that voters might have to vote twice. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:36:56]
PHILLIP: Tonight, after the Supreme Court delivered Republicans yet another advantage in the midterms in Louisiana, Donald Trump is pitching an extreme proposal for other states -- cancel elections and redraw the maps, potentially invalidating votes that have already been cast. In a 6-3 decision last week, the Supreme Court rejected Louisiana's current congressional map on the grounds that it was drawn through race-based discrimination.
But although the court's decision applies just to Louisiana, over on social media last night, Trump directed other states to redraw their maps and supposed compliance with the decision. "If they have to vote twice, so be it, he wrote. The by-product is that the Republicans will receive more than 20 House seats in the upcoming midterms."
Noah, what do you make of Trump sending this very clear message to states to not just to redistrict, but to redistrict even if it means throwing out election results that have already happened?
ROTHMAN: Well, I just hate the way the President talks about this sort of thing. And the American public does not like it when they hear a party talk about this sort of stolen base strategy. And it backfired on the Republican Party.
The President, when he said we should do mid-decade redistricting, was to net Republican seats so they could absorb the impact of a Democratic wave in November. And Democrats around the country and some Republicans and independents said, what are you talking about? We're not going to allow that to happen.
This ruling was vital, in my view, for constitutional purposes. For 30 years, Republicans on the court, before we had a court majority, were saying that there is an irresolvable tension between the VRA as it is construed and interpreted. And the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.
For 20 years we've been hearing that and they've been gradually chipping away at it, Section 4, Section 5, Section 2 now, and you hear the President say stuff like that. And it gives people license to think that this is not a constitutional argument, that this is just another stolen base. And the Supreme Court is behind it. That's wrong. That's a misinterpretation of events. But it's one of the President does allow with loose talk like that.
PHILLIP: Yes, I mean it's an important point especially from a conservative perspective. He is confirming the view of this ruling as being just about giving Republicans a electoral benefit. And he's used the whole thing through what can you do for me in this election, as opposed to what's best for the system, what's best for the country.
FOSTER: To the extent the states were going to make some sort of decision to do something sooner, that is their responsibility, it's their obligation. The President doesn't have any control of the situation here. Giving these directives, I think, is no, already pointed out really bad optics for Republicans.
But I also think that, you know, as I think about this, I don't tend to think that anyone has particularly clean hands here. The reality is that whether you want to keep the current maps to get rid of the old maps and you're and vocally, vociferously in support of either outcome, it's really because you want to game the system. And ultimately, with respect to gerrymandering, what we really need is some sort of national policy with respect to actually having independent, competitive districts.
[22:40:00]
Every single incumbent ought to be under pressure in every single race. It may not always yield the best governance, but what definitely doesn't yield the best governance is everyone playing this game where they try to safeguard the districts for themselves on whatever basis. So, I do think the ruling was probably generally in the right direction. What we need now, however, is some actual gerrymandering reform.
MOCKLER: Republicans have power right now and they could pass a national gerrymandering ban. But instead, they're listening to Donald Trump and allowing him to drag us down to the depths of hell on this redistricting case. I don't think there's any better vindication of the VRA section two than what's happening after section two was effectively struck down.
We have Memphis where they're about to take -- I believe it's like a 60 percent black population and they're about to split that, dilute that into three separate districts. This is exactly why section two existed in the first place.
SETMAYER: That's what they did in Nashville also.
ROTHMAN: They can't ban gerrymandering. Reapportionment is in the constitution.
SETMAYER: But let's just deal in the reality here. From a conservative point of view and a constitutional point of view, the arguments around intellectually -- the academic arguments about the Voting Rights Act that have been going on for 30 years now are fair in ivory towers. In the real world consequences of this though, we are not a utopian society where we are race-neutral on anything. As much as we are aspiring to be -- to reach our more perfect union, we are far from that.
And unfortunately, under this administration and under what Donald Trump has been doing now for last 10 years and what Republicans have done, it has all been about diluting the votes of minorities because minorities don't necessarily vote in from for Republicans, and this is the way that they have been planning this for decades. This has been a long game. And especially in the south, Republicans --
(CROSSTALK)
UNKNOWN: You disagree ---
LAMBERT: A hundred percent disagree.
(CROSSTALK)
SETMAYER: If you look at the judges that Donald Trump has had federal judges that he has nominated to the bench at the federal level, in the south in particular, they have all been anti voting rights judges from Alabama, to Texas, to Florida. So, this has been a long-term game to get exactly what they want. Yes, and a Supreme Court that has been very anti-voting rights --
(CROSSTALK)
SETMAYER: So, let's just be honest about what this really about. LAMBERT: Let's be real. New England has gerrymandered everything. There's 21 congressional seats in New England. All of them are Democrats. Zero Republicans when there are 40 percent Republicans in New England. So, the only reason the South was never to gerrymandered like this because of the Voting Rights Act --
(CROSSTALK)
SETMAYER: Because the South was Jim Crow for how long and there was a hundred years plus of Jim Crow
(CROSSTALK)
SETMAYER: -- people of color. Let's not ignore why the Voting Rights Act is necessary.
(CROSSTALK)
LAMBERT: Let me finish my point. You're making an argument. The gerrymandering wasn't allowed because of the Voting Rights Act. Oh, and the New England took advantage of that and created a bunch of Democrat seats. So, but wait a minute, just back to your point. You're saying somehow that black representation is needed to improve the black. District two in Louisiana, let's get back to Louisiana.
District two in Louisiana has been represented by a black person for 35 years. The income in that district is still half of whites. There's been no improvement. Being represented by a black representative has not improved --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Hold on. Are you saying that a congressional representative is responsible for the quality of life of --
(CROSSTALK)
LAMBERT: No, that's what she's saying.
(CROSSTALK)
SETMAYER: No, I never said that.
(CROSSTALK)
LAMBERT: You certainly implied it. She certainly implied it.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: But I mean, listen. There are a lot of reasons that black people in Louisiana have poor outcomes than their white counterparts, and a big one is Jim Crow, okay? You can't tell the --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Hold on. You can't tell the story without telling that part of the story. And then on top of that, I mean, don't forget that that's a state that is controlled by Republicans. So, if Republicans at the state level, which has way more to do with people's day-to-day lives, can't improve the lives of black people in their own state, I don't know how you can make the argument that somebody who represents them in Congress --
(CROSSTALK)
ROTHMAN: That's outcomes, though. This is all outcomes. To Kmele's point, we're talking past each other.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Listen, I'm not -- I'm just responding to what Hal said, blaming black representation for the state of black people in a particular district.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I don't think that you can say that the black representative is responsible for the outcomes in a particular district where those outcomes came about because of decades and decades of policies --
(CROSSTALK)
LAMBERT: In Michigan, they didn't have Jim Crow.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: -- at the state level and at federal level that disenfranchised and hurt --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Okay? So, that's all I'm saying.
SETMAYER: Yes, but that's what happened. This is what happens, though, when you get into a process argument over making it more difficult for people to vote and to have representatives that represent them. If Republicans were so confident in the system, then they would not be trying to game it right now to their advantage. And Donald Trump is telling the quiet part out loud.
We could have had an intellectual argument about whether the VRA was still needed or not and whether it's fair or not. But if we were in a color-blind society but we're not, especially when you have someone like the Trump administration, coming in after diversity, women -- people of color, and all the things that they're doing to say that, oh, it's, you know, a reverse racism, and now they're coming for voting rights. That's what this is absolutely about.
[22:45:00]
And we can't ignore the game that we're in right now and the political reality of what they're trying to do.
PHILLIP: All right, Kmele, do you want a quick last word?
FOSTER: I was just saying that I don't know that colorblindness is the real standard here. Again, I think if we're looking for -- to create competitive districts, that's the most important thing. And vacating the sort of status quo, creating a circumstance wherein the law is not particularly interested in race, that actually seems like a very good outcome for me. The only question is how do we get more competitive districts from where we are now?
SETMAYER: In the long term, if you have good faith actors, that's not what Republicans are, unfortunately now.
PHILLIP: All right, next for us, the outfits worn by A-listers at tonight's Met Gala are designed to draw attention, but it's the honorary chairs who are stealing the spotlight tonight. We'll discuss, that's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:50:23]
PHILLIP: It's the first Monday in May, which only means one thing. A- listers came together for one of the most exclusive parties of the year tonight, the Met Gala. Tonight's theme is fashion is art, but the event is facing backlash for rubbing elbows with billionaires. Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sanchez Bezos, are this year's primary sponsors, and that is rubbing people the wrong way. Protest signs like these lit up New York City. People on social media called for a boycott, and some celebrities skipped the event altogether. This event has become, in some ways, a proxy for the kind of income inequality debate that America is having right now.
SETMAYER: Well, I mean, it is the Met Gala, which is one of the most elite events in the country. I think a lot of people, you -- you would watch it, I would, for an escapism. You want to see the fashion, you like to see the celebrities, you know. It's a good way to kind of escape the real world. But unfortunately, this year, there's a certain, you know, Jeff Bezos has now become quite the villain.
And you know, because maybe he's done things that people aren't comfortable with, I'm going to take the billionaire part of this out of it because I'm not one of those people --
(CROSSTALK)
LAMBERT: Well, he supported Trump. That's the reason.
SETMAYER: Well, he -- not more than that. He's also -- he also decimated "The Washington Post." He's made a decision. He's made decisions that have been against democracy and boosting Donald Trump for his own gain, which has hurt a lot of people. And so, you know, it's -- he could have been a good billionaire with his money. Instead, he's decided to do what he's done. And people don't like that.
I'm not one of those people that that is upset with people who have earned their money and earned it honestly. That's fine. I'm not about the income inequality part of this. But what I do -- don't -- what I don't appreciate about what Bezoz has done, it has been boosting Donald Trump, boosting his policies, doing things that -- to placate him in ways that have hurt the American people. And that's why I'm like there's just something distasteful about this.
(CROSSTALK)
UNKNOWN: They're making the Melania movie. The worst part was the Melania movie.
(CROSSTALK)
SETMAYER: The Melania movie, and now they talking about rebooting "The Apprentice."
PHILLIP: Jeff Bezoz catching strays over his political activities or business activities are seen as political activities is definitely part of the picture.
SETMAYER: For sure.
PHILLIP: Part of it is also, I mean, I think they donated $10 million to this event. The total raise this year is $42 million. If you do the math on that, that's about 0.014483 percent of his net worth. It's like just like handing over a hundred dollar bill if you're a middle class American.
FOSTER: He didn't steal the money, he earned the money, he earned it giving us products and services that have generally enriched our lives and he's giving the money to charity. I find all of this kind of obnoxious. He didn't gut "The Washington Post." He poured scores of dollars into "The Washington Post." He preserved the institution longer than a lot of people.
And revolutionized it in many respects. And now, the opinion page takes a particular -- takes a particular kind of orientation politically, as "The New York Times" does, as "The Wall Street Journal" does. That is not offensive to me.
(CROSSTALK)
SETMAYER: But you were okay with him conveniently putting his thumb on the editorial and news gathering.
FOSTER: It's newspaper. It's his paper. It's not mine.
SETMAYER: I'm just saying. And his paper, and the American people looked at that and said, we're going to cancel those subscriptions because you did it for political gain.
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: Can I take it a step further?
SETMAYER: I'm just saying. FOSTER: I think that there's something strange about kind of
demonizing billionaires and wealthy people. They're just citizens. This is the Met Gala. Let them have their fancy party at $100,000 a ticket.
SETMAYER: That's absolutely -- optics are horrible.
FOSTER: It's been overwrought with politics for years.
SETMAYER: The optics are horrible for them.
(CROSSTALK)
SETMAYER: Right now.
PHILLIP: Let them eat cake or whatever. All right. Next for us, the panel is going to give us their nightcaps, Outfit edition. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:58:40]
PHILLIP: So, just talked about the Met Gala and for tonight's News Night Cap, the question is, what would be your outfit? Noah, you're up first.
ROTHMAN: So, real statement piece for me. I'm going to bring back the medieval torture device, the hair shirt, so that I can express outwardly the anguish that I'm feeling inwardly. That is just not my scene.
PHILLIP: What's that again?
UNKNOWN: Hair shirt.
(CROSSTALK)
ROTHMAN: Google it, folks.
(CROSSTALK)
ROTHMAN: You put it on and it's extremely uncomfortable, and your discomfort is observable. That's the whole point of the thing. I'd swear to God. That's going to be me.
SETMAYER: So, if I ever had the chance to go to the Met Gala, I would wear something that was like the warrior woman, the warrior women of the past who have held it down at times when they needed to. And I would combine that with the glamour of the 1940s Hollywood scene. And I would have it designed by Christian Siriano.
PHILLIP: All right.
FOSTER: I have a proclivity to dress down in circumstances where I'm supposed to dress up if you hadn't caught on. But I would totally wear conventional black and white tuxedo situation Tom Ford design. Just don't take any chances at the Met Gala.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: -- Tom Ford, he's dropping some hints. Okay, Adam?
[23:00:00]
PHILLIP: All right, internet, do your thing. Okay, Hal?
LAMBERT: I think I'd have to go old school Hollywood. You know, maybe the look of "Capote" by Philip Seymour Hoffman back when he played the role in -- friends of mine tell me sometimes I look like I Philip Seymour.
UNKNOWN: You very much so here.
LAMBERT: Look, it's not the Philip Seymour Hoffman from "Boogie Nights," it's the Philip Seymour Hoffman from "Capote." That's what --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: You know what? You guys are all very true to type tonight.
(LAUGHTER)
PHILLIP: All right everybody, thank you very much and thanks for watching "NewsNight." You can stream the show anytime with an all- access subscription, the CNN app or cnn.com/watch. "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
