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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Officers Who Defended Capitol Sue to Block Trump's Payout Fund; GOP Moves Closer to Blocking $1 Billion Request for Trump Ballroom. Jeff Bezos Proposes Low Earners Should Pay Zero In Income Taxes; Trump Rhetorics Pre-War Prices and Concussions to a Fantasy World. Aired 10- 11p ET
Aired May 20, 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)
JESSICA DEAN, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, January 6th officers are suing Donald Trump over his slush fund to pay rioters as the party sounds the alarm.
SEN. JOHN CURTIS (R-UT): My first reaction was, this doesn't pass the smell test.
DEAN: Plus, Republicans are moving closer to blocking public money for Trump's big ballroom, which could make him big mad.
Also, a new twist in the tax the rich debate.
JEFF BEZOS, CEO, AMAZON: You could double the taxes I pay and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens, I promise you.
DEAN: One of the world's richest men says America's bottom half of earners should not pay taxes at all.
And the president creates a fantasy world about prices before his war as he dismisses gas prices.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: This is peanuts.
DEAN: Live at the table, Charles Blow, Noah Rothman, Xochitl Hinojosa, Arthur Aidala, Andrew Weissmann, and Natasha Sarin.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DEAN (on camera): And good evening to you. I'm Jessica Dean in for Abby Phillip tonight.
The most brazen act of presidential corruption this century, that's what two officers are calling Justice Department's new $1.8 billion fund for victims of alleged weaponized prosecution. In this new lawsuit, former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges claim that fund endangers them personally and is a violation of the Constitution.
Nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack could apply for compensation, and that includes people who assaulted officers that day. Both Dunn and Hodges say they continue to get threats. They argue the fund would, quote, compensate and empower the very people making those threats. They say it signals, quote, to past and potential future perpetrators of violence against them that they need not fear prosecution. To the contrary, they should expect to be rewarded.
And they both spoke to CNN today. Here's what they said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRY DUNN, FORMER U.S. CAPITOL POLICE OFFICER: It's a slap in the face, it's salt in the wound, if, whatever you want to call it. But this is something that Donald Trump believes in and he said this from day one.
DANIEL HODGES, D.C. METROPOLITAN POLICE OFFICER: Why should we be paying people to attack the Capitol, to threaten to kill the vice president, to try and stop the transfer of power?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DEAN: President Trump defended the need for the fund today.
TRUMP: So, the anti-weaponization of people, I mean, people were destroyed. They went to jail. their families were ruined. They committed suicide. You know, all the Biden administration and the Obama administration, both of them, I mean, the Obama administration started it.
We're reimbursing those people for their legal fees and for their costs and for anybody involved.
You know, it was the most violent thing I've ever seen in politics, what they did.
But we think that anybody involved in that process should partake, and you're talking about peanuts compared to the value. It destroyed the lives of many, many people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DEAN: So, we now have those lawsuits we were just talking about. We also heard from Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill today.
I'm joined now by all of our guests here at the table. I do want to play a quick clip from several Republican lawmakers who were questioning this DOJ fund. Here's what they said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CURTIS: I will tell you my first reaction was this doesn't pass the smell test.
SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): It sends a signal, hey, go breach the Capitol, destroy the building, assault police officers, and you may even get compensated someday. That's absurd.
REP. BRIAN FITZPATRICK (R-PA): We got to unpack exactly what it is, what the source of the funding is in order to stop it and/or reverse it, okay?
REPORTER: So, you want to stop it?
FITZPATRICK: Oh, 100 percent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DEAN: And we welcome everyone here at the table. Xochitl, I want to start with you because you spent some time at DOJ, and this idea that they prosecuted so many of these people and now this idea that there would be this fund to compensate some of these people and that it's going to be left up, Todd Blanche says, to this kind of arbitrary group of people that they're going to decide that the president can get rid of any time he wants. It's kind of -- it's a remarkable thing.
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's completely shocking. And I was there when they were prosecuting these cases, and it was a top priority for the administration. And I will note is that while President Trump continues to talk about how the last Justice Department weaponized the government and prosecuted these people, it's just absolutely not true.
[22:05:11]
If you look at the cases themselves, they were all brought -- all these cases were brought and none of them, even when they were on appeal, were acquitted by -- they were not acquitted by a jury, and they did not, they ended up moving forward. So, the fact that people are talking about how the Justice Department weaponized these cases is absolutely ridiculous.
The other thing I'll note about Todd Blanche is he is not only the president's personal attorney, but that he has no business being involved in a settlement of this matter. He should have recused himself. CNN had a reporting last week that talked a little bit about how he had been -- they had recommended that he recuse himself by top career Justice Department officials, and he didn't do that. And I know that when he was talking to Paula Reid, it evidently came up about how he was the one who essentially signed off on some of this stuff.
So, it's concerning overall, and my hope, and the only solution to this is for Congress to act.
ARTHUR AIDALA, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Okay. But there were some of these cases on January 6th, there were some very bad actors. There's no doubt about that. But there were other people who, if you look at the entire federal system throughout the United States of America, who got punished in a way that was much more harsh than typically people.
I mean, besides there was a handful of people who did horrible things, but the majority of them was trespass. It was trespass. The majority was they went somewhere where they weren't supposed to go. That's a crime.
HINOJOSA: No, they were part of a mob. They were part of a mob. But that's --
(CROSSTALKS)
AIDALA: Look, I'm just --
CHARLES BLOW, LANGSTON HUGHES FELLOW, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: That they just went to, where, like they went to the local 7-Eleven?
AIDALA: Like I'm talking about the law.
BLOW: This was the capital of the United States.
AIDALA: I'm talking about the law. Listen, I think it was the worst day in American history. So, let's -- well, 9/11 was the worst day in American history, but this is a horrible, horrible day. I'm not defending what happened that day. I'm being a lawyer. I'm not talking about the politics.
BLOW: Okay.
AIDALA: I'm talking about what they were charged with and what their ultimate sentences were. There were people who were held in solitary confinement for trespass. There were people who killed themselves in prison over this. And the president has the --
HINOJOSA: And there are those January 6th officers who were killed themselves.
BLOW: So, the person who's written a lot about mass incarceration, when I look across all of the ways that the Justice Department has punished people who did not deserve to be punished, put them in, what'd you say, solitary confinement. All the things, do you think that this group of people deserves $1.8 billion?
AIDALA: No, but I don't think it's limited to this group. As far as I know, I think Biden's son can go and ask for this say, hey, I was targeted by the Justice Department. I need my money back.
HINOJOSA: But how was he targeted by the Justice Department?
AIDALA: I don't think it's just -- I'm not saying it would be a viable claim, but I don't think the way I read the press release it's just January 6th people.
BLOW: But you don't think it's obscene? You don't think it's obscene? I think it's absolutely obscene.
AIDALA: Obscene? BLOW: No.
AIDALA: It's -- I would agree with the first --
BLOW: That's the word or the definition. Is it obscene or not?
AIDALA: With the first senator, it's a little beyond the pale of normalcy. How about that?
ANDREW WEISSMANN, FORMER LEAD PROSECUTOR, ROBERT MUELLER'S SPECIAL COUNSEL OFFICE: Can we go back one step? Because this is a perfectly good debate about why would you pay money to people who are convicted criminals. There is a system already to deal with those issues. But let's just talk about the fact that we have a, quote/unquote, settlement for $1.8 billion. This is -- let's leave aside that it's collusive because the plaintiff and the defendant are the same person.
AIDALA: That's not typical.
WEISSMANN: But then let's just -- so one of the reasons you know it's collusive is not just that they're the same party. Donald Trump himself said it's -- when he brought the case, saying, I know this is odd because I'm on both sides.
But let's look at the merits of the case. The merits of the case were -- and this was in front of the federal judge who had it in Florida, was that there was no case. The reason the IRS general counsel quit is obvious. Because the IRS is defending the IRS, the public, for the same type of violations and claims that are made by Donald Trump. But here, when it's Donald Trump, they pay out the money.
The clear way that this case should've been dismissed is it was not brought timely. It was supposed to be made within two years. There were -- do you know how much money that means that the public would owe Donald Trump? Zero. And zero is a lot less than $1.8 billion.
AIDALA: It's not Donald Trump who's getting the money, correct?
WEISSMANN: But that's irrelevant.
AIDALA: Well --
WEISSMANN: Because the money is styled --
AIDALA: -- you're saying it's getting to Donald Trump
WEISSMANN: The money is styled --
DEAN: Some people have argued that it's his allies, that he's able to then reward allies. What do you think about that with the $1.8 billion?
AIDALA: Well, it's -- again, according to the fund, the way it's written is it's not supposed to go to Donald Trump's allies. It's going to be a process. There's going to be people appointed by, I think, members of Congress, members of the executive branch. BLOW: The vice president stood up on stage and said that all the people who had gotten any sympathy were the people who had stormed the Capitol and voted for Donald Trump. The vice president was saying that these were going to be Trump voters and people who stormed the Capitol for him.
[22:10:00]
DEAN: So, on the question of who this would be, we do have a clip from Todd Blanche talking to CNN today about who this would be and if it would be people who assaulted cops. This is what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TODD BLANCHE, ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL: One of the factors the commissioners have to consider is what the claimant did, the claimant's conduct, okay? So, in the hypothetical you just described the claimant would have to say, I assaulted a cop and I want money. So, whether the commissioners will give that person money, that claimant, it's up to them, but that's one of the factors they have to consider for the very reason that was raised yesterday, which should be raised, which is that President Trump, this Department of Justice does not stand for assaulting law enforcement.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DEAN: So, we still don't have a clear answer. There's clearly not a, if you assaulted a cop, you can't apply. You can. It's the commissioners, who, again, can be fired by Donald Trump, the president, at any moment. And they get to decide who this would be. We also have reporting now that the head of the Proud Boys is going to apply for this restitution.
NOAH ROTHMAN, SENIOR WRITER, NATIONAL REVIEW: Look, you can be very reluctant to say that nobody deserves restitution for things that happened in the Biden administration. I'm reluctant to say that, and also acknowledge that this is obviously a gimmick designed to advantage the president's political allies, not necessarily financially, but certainly ideologically. It's not just $1.8 billion, it's $1.776 billion, because it's definitely not a gimmick.
However --
DEAN: Well, and he's tied it to the 250th anniversary, right?
ROTHMAN: Right. However, the president does have a point insofar as what he's doing is not necessarily unprecedented if you're talking about rewarding your ideological allies, which Joe Biden did at the very end of his presidency.
HINOJOSA: How did he do that? How did he reward his allies, Joe Biden?
ROTHMAN: Joe Biden? About to tell you.
HINOJOSA: Tell me. ROTHMAN: At the end of his presidency, DOJ, an ethics attorney in writing said, Joe Biden, you cannot say that you have pardoned non- violent drug offenders. It is, quote, untrue, at the very least, misleading. And that's exactly what he did. He said, I'm going to flatten individuals, render them just an avatar of a tribe and say you're all pardoned and commuted, and this is all non-violent drug offenders. It was not true. To say nothing of the fact that you had fraudsters, Cuyahoga County guy, the cash for cars judge who was imprisoning (INAUDIBLE), leave that all aside
WEISSMANN: But two wrongs make a right? I mean, let's assume that you -- let's assume everything that you said is true.
ROTHMAN: It is true.
WEISSMANN: So --
ROTHMAN: Go check the facts.
WEISSMANN: Let's assume that. How does that make what's happened, we're talking about, correct?
ROTHMAN: It doesn't, and what I'm frustrated by is the degree to which you hear from some on the left when you say things that are consistent, oh, this is obfuscation. How does that make it right? No. What I'm saying is consistent revulsion to the abridgment of procedure, of law, and the diminution of the rule of law in this country is something we should oppose wherever it comes from. And it came from the Biden administration.
HINOJOSA: You were comparing the Trump administration to the Biden administration.
ROTHMAN: I sure am.
HINOJOSA: And I will say, Joe Biden purposefully did not pick an attorney general that was going to do whatever he said. And, frankly, we were criticized by the left on a lot of investigations because people thought we weren't bringing them too fast --
ROTHMAN: So, why did the president lie, according to his own DOJ, about what he was doing if he was going to --
HINOJOSA: Because you don't -- let me tell you. Let me tell you the process. The pardon attorney, their role, is to make recommendations to the president of the United States on who should be pardoned. That is a recommendation. It is up to the president of the United States on who to pardon. Did the Justice Department know that Joe Biden was going to pardon his family? Absolutely not. Did the Justice Department know that Joe Biden was going to pardon the January 6th committee? Absolutely not. Would the Justice Department recommend that? Absolutely not. But that is very different. That is very different than the attorney general of the United States, the Trump's personal lawyer, essentially having, negotiating a settlement with Donald Trump's attorney to help his allies and give $1.8 billion of taxpayer money to his friends. ROTHMAN: And the procedure --
HINOJOSA: And Justice Department and the Biden administration did not do that.
ROTHMAN: Can I respond to what you're saying? Yes. And the procedure is -- the violation of the procedure is bad. And it's bad when the Biden administration does it and when the Trump administration does it.
HINOJOSA: The Biden administration didn't do it.
ROTHMAN: And you know better than I, Xochitl, that in writing the Justice Department said Joe Biden did not give members of Congress who sought to advise this process the time to --
WEISSMANN: I wonder if we could go back to what we're here to discuss, because it sounds to me like we may be in violent agreement. I don't hear anyone saying that this is not sort of a fig leaf or a settlement, that there are -- that the plaintiff and the defendant were on the same side and that there were valid arguments that the IRS could have asserted. So, that seems like I don't hear anyone disagreeing with that point one, which is the $1.776 billion is sort of conjured up as a way -- as a fig leaf to get that money.
And I don't hear anyone saying that maybe there are some small quantum of people that -- not just people in J6, but a whole range of people who could deserve restitution. But if you're planning on doing this wholesale, as the president just said in the clip you played, that this was a grave national injustice and we're going to be paying all of their legal fees.
[22:15:02]
And, remember, he pardoned them all en masse. He did not do a triage.
So, I don't hear anyone here at the table saying that they would disagree with the commission saying, oh, you know what? We're going to give huge amounts of money to people who attacked police officers and did more than just trespass.
AIDALA: Well, it sounded like Todd Blanche was saying that that's not what the president wants, that he's got -- he's on the record in saying he's not supportive of anyone attacking a police officer.
I just want to talk about the two officers who brought that lawsuit.
DEAN: He pardoned them.
HINOJOSA: He pardoned them.
DEAN: Yes.
BLOW: He's already pardoned the people who attacked the police officers.
AIDALA: I understand.
BLOW: So, it can't be true.
AIDALA: There's a difference between pardoning them, they already did their jail time, so there's a difference between pardoning them --
BLOW: They haven't done it all.
AIDALA: Okay, but they did four years or three years.
The two lawyers -- I'm sorry, officers who said they were bringing a lawsuit, and I'll defer to Andrew or my colleagues here, I don't think they have standing to bring a lawsuit. You have to be harmed. So, the fact that there's money that's going to people that could harm them, there's not a controversy.
To bring a case, there's got to be some controversy. It can't be there might be a controversy. This might lead to somebody harming me. So, I think on a summary judgment motion, if they bring that lawsuit, it'll be dismissed.
DEAN: We have to go to break, but quick question just for my clarification. But what if they were there that day and were emotionally harmed? Does that count emotionally?
WEISSMANN: So, I actually agree that the argument for standing, because it turns out, like, you know, not every taxpayer could say, oh, I want to sue because you're using my taxpayer money. That's under the law that would -- you would be basically opening up the courts to just myriad lawsuits. So, here, I agree that the reason that these people say they're individually hurt is pretty weak. So, in terms of just -- that's not the merits. That's just whether they have an individual stake.
DEAN: We're talking about, yes, standing.
WEISSMANN: Exactly. So, it's a very procedural issue. It doesn't mean that this is correct. There are all sorts of other people who may sue who have better arguments for standing. But I agree that this lawsuit is maybe not the best in terms of seeing it go to the end of the day. But I think for the moment, I think we're going to see a political solution here rather than a legal solution.
DEAN: All right. Up next, Senate Republicans are moving closer to rejecting Trump's request for a billion dollars for his ballroom. Is this payback for his recent revenge spree against senators?
Plus, a new twist in the wealth debate as Jeff Bezos says the bottom half of America's earners should pay zero in income taxes. We'll talk about that.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
DEAN: Tonight, Republican lawmakers appear to be moving closer to blocking public funds from going to Trump's White House ballroom. The president has struggled to sell his own party on his request to include a billion dollars in security funding in an immigration enforcement bill with many Republicans openly questioning its price tag.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune suggested to reporters today he's got two problems, a vote problem and a problem with the Senate parliamentarian, putting the funding into jeopardy, potentially. Outgoing Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy and swing district Representative Brian Fitzpatrick didn't mince words when asked about the project.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BILL CASSIDY (R-LA): There's no architectural plans. There is no environmentals. There's no engineering. There's no sense of -- when we ask, how did it happen to cost exactly a billion?
It could cost a lot less, it could cost a lot more. I just don't get it, and I think this should go through the normal appropriations process.
FITZPATRICK: I don't think it's a good use of taxpayer money.
MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I mean, the president --
FITZPATRICK: Half the country's living paycheck-to-paycheck. We shouldn't be talking about ballrooms.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DEAN: Okay. Andrew, I'm going to start with you here. You have a new book, by the way, out, Liar's Kingdom. Oh, look, we have it there on screen. I don't even have to hold it up. How about that? Liar's Kingdom is out today.
So, again, just to make sure everyone's on the same page here, they want to put this into something that's called reconciliation, which is just a fancy word for a Senate procedural vote that allows them to just do it along party lines. The wrinkle in all of that is that the Senate parliamentarian can decide if certain things can go into that legislation or not, which is where they're running up against that. But as much as they may want to -- as the president may want to blame the parliamentarian, it sounds like he doesn't have the votes in the Senate.
WEISSMANN: So, this is, in many ways, if you primary people like John Cornyn or Bill Cassidy, there is a cost. Because in normal times you would think the Republicans would get behind this, even though the president has assured the public that there would be no taxpayer dollars being spent on this. And now we're being asked to spend another, we just talked about $1.776 billion of taxpayer money, and this would be a billion dollars, which is completely different than what the president said when he tore down the East Wing without any oversight, whatsoever. But this, to me, feels like payback, which is, you know, if you are going to primary people and you have now -- you know, you have Cassidy sitting there going, you know what? I saw what you just did to me. You have people in both the House and the Senate looking what happened to just -- happened to Senator Cornyn. You feel like this is, you know what? We're not going along with this. This is a bridge too far, and there's a cost to you, the president, for taking this political position.
[22:25:00]
DEAN: Charles, are you surprised that Republicans are pushing back, Senate Republicans are pushing back on the president on this?
BLOW: No, I think you're actually right, that it's payback. I think, you know, there's been a long period of time where we thought that Donald Trump rightfully thought he was defying gravity, that he could do whatever. He could deluge us in negative headlines and ideas and policies, and because people are drowning in it all, nothing really seemed to catch. Well, things are starting to catch.
I think when you put the word billions in the same sentence with ballrooms, for most people who are struggling to get a bag of groceries and fill up a car, that starts to sound off. That's not even partisan that it sounds off. It just sounds off. I think that when you start talking about giving criminals money, it starts to sound off. It's just -- it's not really -- people can't put their hand on it, but I just know that I'm struggling right now. None of this sounds right.
And I think that Republican Congressmen are hearing some of that. They're worried about what's about to happen in the midterms. We can do all the redistricting battle that we want to do, but it's --
DEAN: But they're the ones on the ballot, right?
BLOW: They're still worried. Yes, absolutely.
ROTHMAN: I mean, you don't have to be a political consultant to know the phrase billion dollar ballroom just trips right off the tongue and is not something you want to walk into a midterm election season with.
Initially, the president said this was going to be a privately funded enterprise, put Republicans off the hook for it. And I think he can probably raise that sum privately, and should seek to do so. This ballroom would be of immense practical utility. There's --
AIDALA: Especially after the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and that's --
ROTHMAN: The lawn is not equipped for these events, and there are security concerns.
AIDALA: That's why, I mean, it really gave him a talking point of, look --
BLOW: But the White House Correspondents' Dinner is never going to be at the White House, so that's not a thing.
AIDALA: Okay, but that's just --
(CROSSTALKS)
AIDALA: But that's just an example of a state dinner. You know, the king of England was just in, and they were trying to squeeze it into this bill. But I agree, the word billions, they went too far, in my -- I bet you if they said 700 million, it would've gone through. But you hear a billion and a ballroom?
ROTHMAN: Well, the president keeps talking about this --
WEISSMANN: Is that your line is $700 million versus a billion?
AIDALA: Yes, that's where I got this. That's how I roll, Andrew. That's how I roll. I'm Brooklyn guys, you know, $700 million.
WEISSMANN: Well, for us former government people, $700 million is still a little too high.
HINOJOSA: It's a little too much, yes.
AIDALA: Well, not here in Manhattan, I'll tell you that much.
HINOJOSA: Yes. And I will say it's interesting, because Susie Wiles said, you know, before everyone started campaigning in the midterms that Trump would be out there campaigning, and that he was going to be an asset to the Republican Party. And now we're seeing with gas prices, with the war, with this $1.8 billion slush fund for his friends, with the ballroom, with all of these things, it's not sending the right message to voters. And what you hear, and primary and costing, you know, millions of dollars into these primaries or whatever, it is hurting the Republican Party.
And you have to wonder if Congressional Republicans have just had enough, and at what point will they? And at what point do they see this man is going to lose us the midterm elections, and potentially even the presidency?
BLOW: If you tell a politician he's never safe, he's never safe unless he is agreeing with you 100 percent of the time, no one wants to feel that way. And I think that a lot of Republicans in Congress, they really do agree with him 99 percent of the time.
What do you mean that I can't one time disagree with you? I am never safe from your wrath? No one wants to operate like that. I think you're seeing that manifest.
DEAN: Yes, or if you have a swing district where, you know, maybe you need to break with him to keep getting elected.
All right, stay with us. Andrew, thank you, Andrew Weissmann, thank you for being here.
WEISSMANN: Great to be here. DEAN: Good to see you.
WEISSMANN: Thank you.
DEAN: Billionaire Jeff Bezos says lower income working class families should not pay any income tax at all. We're going to have another special guest join us at the table when we come back.
[22:30:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DEAN: Tonight, billionaire Jeff Bezos has some thoughts on taxes that even the likes of Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could get behind.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEFF BEZOS, FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, AMAZON: A nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year pays more than $12,000 a year in taxes. Does that really make sense? Some people talk about making the tax system more progressive. How about we start by having the nurse in Queens not pay taxes?
We already have the most progressive tax system in the world. The top 1 percent of taxpayers pay 40 percent of all the tax revenue. The bottom half pay only 3 percent.
We have already, and I think it should be zero. I don't think it should be 3 percent. I think it should be zero.
So we'd be making it more progressive that way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DEAN: Natasha Sarin joins us at the table now as well. Natasha, good to see you and welcome.
We can start with you there. We have plenty to talk about when it comes to this interview that Jeff Bezos did. But let's start first with just the idea that he's presenting.
And we can get into why he's maybe talking about this. But he says we have the most progressive tax code in the world. Do you think that's true? And do you think what he's suggesting could make a difference?
NATASHA SARIN, PROFESSOR AT YALE LAW SCHOOL AND PRESIDENT OF THE BUDGET LAB AT YALE: So I want us to first ground ourselves a little bit in some of the math of what Jeff Bezos was presenting there. Because I think it's flawed in some pretty important ways.
[22:35:00]
The first way that it's flawed is that if you take someone like Jeff Bezos, a billionaire who's worth $280 billion, our tax system actually doesn't have a great way to generate revenue from him. And if you take what he said, if you decided to tax me double, you wouldn't be helping those teachers in Queens and those nurses. That's just like factually inaccurate.
If you taxed him double this year, you would be increasing the salaries of every teacher in New York by $35,000 a year. On the bottom of the distribution, as Jeff Bezos is describing, the tax proposal that I think that he has in mind isn't going to cost 3 percent of federal tax revenues. It's going to cost something like 16 percent of federal tax revenues.
And it's going to do nothing for the people at the very bottom of the distribution who currently don't have a tax bill because they are so poor. And those people aren't helped by deciding to have a tax system that cuts taxes further. Those people are helped by designing a system that is able to generate more revenue from people like Jeff Bezos to increase the social safety net to make a refundable child tax credit that lifts millions of kids out of poverty.
DEAN: Noah, I feel like you want to respond to that.
NOAH ROTHMAN, SR. WRITER, NATIONAL REVIEW, AND AUTHOR, BLOOD AND PROGRESS: A CENTURY OF LEFT-WING VIOLENCE IN AMERICA : Well, I think actually what Jeff Bezos said there is actually kind of cleverly subversive.
He's going to have a lot of progressives now saying, well, look at even this billionaire, and we hate billionaires, and even he's saying that we have to reduce the tax burden. And meanwhile, he's articulating and advocating a position that conservatives have said for a very long time that 10 percent of the income earners, the highest 10 percent pay 70 percent of income taxes.
Yes, the tax code is very complicated, but we're talking about income taxes and the progressive income tax schedule. And he's correct that the highest earners pay 70 percent, 1 percent pay 40 percent of all income tax revenues. So now he's saying, well, listen, I'm on your side.
You just have to agree with me on our actual numbers, which does educate the public about the nature and also when he's right on education spending, the extent to which we've doubled in New York City. We've doubled the amount of spending that we spend per pupil in students over the course of the century. Meanwhile, test scores have collapsed.
CHARLES BLOW, SUBSTACK AUTHOR, BLOW THE STACK : It's all kind of sleight of hand, because what is really bothering most Americans is that the tax code just doesn't deal with the wealth in the first place. We see these big headlines about this CEO has just been awarded $200 million, $300 million in compensation, but most of it is awarded in multiyear stock dividends, stock awards, and they can't be taxed on it. It's called unrealized gains.
But you can go to the bank and use it like money. You can get a mortgage based on unrealized gains. You can use it as collateral for things. So the bank recognizes it as money, but the federal government does not recognize it as money because you have not taken it out so that you can put it in your pocket and spend it.
SARIN: Which is when you're paying the taxes.
BLOW: That's when you pay the taxes. So I think most Americans look at that and go, yes, I know.
I understand what's happening here, but it's just not right that if I get a paycheck and a W-2, my income tax will be higher than the person who gets the stock.
DEAN: It's the wage earners, right?
SARIN: That's exactly right, and I think it's really important for your viewers to understand. You are in a system right now in this country where the effective tax rate on the top 400 wealthiest people in the United States, if you think about their economic income, which is their salary, but they're not taking salaries because salaries are for suckers.
They're not taking salaries. They're making capital income, and the effective tax rate on them is something like 8 to 10 percent. That is lower than the tax rate on nurses, that is lower than the tax rate on teachers.
And if you were actually in a system where we were able to get a hold of the capacity to tax people, no matter how they make income, in a way that is fair and right, you would be in a system that was collecting a lot more tax revenue from people like Jeff Bezos. You would be collecting a ton more.
ROTHMAN: Here's the political problem, though. When we were debating the Green New Deal in 2019, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez floated a confiscatory tax rate of 60 to 70 percent on your 10 millionth dollar, right? That is, at the time, 16,000 people in the United States paid taxes on their 10 millionth dollar. You'd raise about $200 billion.
For a $32 trillion program, the math doesn't make a lot of sense. So, you have to argue about going after a lot of people. You have to argue about the channels.
You have to go after unrealized gains, which isn't real money.
BLOW: There are very few people out there who are literally getting a salary for the $10 million. They're stupid, right?
ROTHMAN: Every homeowner in this country, they have to pay taxes on the house they sit in and can't see.
BLOW: Under this system, it is better to take it as stock because you don't have to realize the gains, and therefore you don't fall into the 10 million.
SARIN: Can I just be very specific with you because I think it's helpful? Over a four-year period, the wealth of the 400 richest people in this country went up by $400 billion, and the amount of federal taxes that they paid into this system was less than $14 billion. That is an effective tax rate of 3.6 percent.
[22:40:01]
ROTHMAN: I understand what you're saying, but what do you want that money for? Is it merely to confiscate it? No, what do you want the money for?
What do you want it to do? Yes, that really does matter. Is it merely to confiscate the wealth?
BLOW: No, we just had DOGE go through. First of all, they said they were going to cut billions of dollars.
They didn't do it, but they did do massive damage to both domestically and internationally. The number of children that are suspected to have died because of DOGE in Africa raises my blood pressure every time I even think about that number. It is outrageous, and it is unconscionable.
And then we had the Big, Beautiful bill go through and cut health care for the poorest members of America because they said they wanted to pay for those tax cuts. When you ask somebody what do you want the money for, we want the money for basic importance. A basic importance, it's not for that.
Also, make sure that a grandmother doesn't die from a preventable disease because she can't get access to health care in this country. That's what it's for.
DEAN: I do want to go back to something that Natasha mentioned, which is if it was Bezos talking about will raising taxes on me actually help the nurse. This was the quote you were talking about.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BEZOS: People sometimes say that I don't pay taxes. It's not true. I pay billions of dollars in taxes.
Again, if people want me to pay more billions, then let's have that debate. But don't pretend that that's going to solve the problem. You could double the taxes I pay, and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens.
I promise you. So you can't connect those two things. Not logically.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DEAN: And then Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, did say, I know a few teachers in Queens who would beg to differ in response to that. But that kind of gets at the heart of what we're talking about.
ARTHUR AIDALA, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, let's not talk about Zohran Mamdani, because he's about to ruin the economy of New York City by chasing the billionaires out. And we need their money, they create jobs.
BLOW: What set of facts do you have to back that up?
AIDALA: Oh, I don't know. Griffin was just about to spend $6 billion.
BLOW: What massive exodus are you talking about?
AIDALA: He was going to hire 6000 people.
BLOW: He said there's a massive exodus in New York City. I would like to know the evidence.
AIDALA: The state of Florida, Charles, is your evidence for this.
BLOW: Everybody who are moving to Florida is not moving from New York. I want to know.
AIDALA: No, they are moving from New York.
BLOW: I'm sorry. What numbers? What is the source of that?
AIDALA: Clients.
Clients are a source. Clients are very wealthy. They do not want to stay here anymore, they don't need to stay here anymore.
BLOW: I'm not you talking. What is the source for the data you're sorting?
AIDALA: How about the fact that Jeff Bezos, I think in that exact,
BLOW: Thank you very much. You have no data. We can't just do this whole thing like I know a guy.
That's not data.
ROTHMAN: David Charles is at a revenue at the city center.
AIDALA: Griffin said I'm not putting up all my seats.
DEAN: Hang on. I think there's a question.
BLOW: Here's a chart that shows who's moving to New York.
AIDALA: Young chicks who don't have money.
BLOW: Also, the millionaires. There are not too many billionaires moving here. Holding steady on this chart.
What are you talking about?
DEAN: Hang on. I think there's the question of who is staying or not. And then there's the point that I think you're making, which is a tax base.
Whether they're leaving or not, let's put that to the side for a second. I think what you're trying to say is that they are responsible for a lot of the tax base. AIDALA: Tremendous.
Yes, and Governor Kathy Hochul said I, Kathy Hochul, am going to go to Florida and go get the billionaires back to New York because we need them in the state of New York. Eric Adams begged them.
Mayor Adams begged them. Please stay in New York.
SARIN: Just to give a bit of a perspective on this that I think is important, I agree with you.
Billionaires do remarkable things. They start remarkable businesses that bring in a ton of economic growth, create jobs. But we have a two-tiered tax system in this country.
If you are a wage earner, your tax liability is automatically fulfilled and you are paying taxes at ordinary income rates. If you are someone like Jeff Bezos, you play by a different set of rules. And to be clear, it's not their fault that the rules are this way.
Our tax system is not well-equipped to capture capital income and that's something that we have to do something about.
BLOW: No. Please, off the hook.
There's a lot of lobbying that goes on. There's a lot of political campaign donations that go on.
SARIN: Carrying interest. Look at that.
BLOW: It is not their fault that it's like that. It is like that because they give money to make it like that.
DEAN: All right, we've got to leave it there. But this, as I thought, would be a very robust debate.
Up next, the President calls high gas prices, in his words, peanuts, and dreams up a version of what the economy looked like before the war. We'll debate that.
[22:45:04]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DEAN: Tonight, as Americans confront rising costs over the war in Iran, Donald Trump is concocting a convenient but inaccurate narrative about life before the war, defending what he's called his excursion into Iran. He's claiming a pre-war reality that did not exist.
[22:50:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We actually had, just before the war, before the energy forced other things up, but up or down, we had the best numbers. We had inflation was at 1.6 percent for the last three months, just prior to the war, and now you're going to see numbers like that again.
As soon as this war is over, gas is going, you know, I had gasoline down to $1.85 in Iowa. I was down to, in many cases, less than $2 a gallon.
We inherited high prices, and we got the prices down, and we got them down to numbers that, in some cases, people have not seen before.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DEAN: The fact is this.
At under no point since the President took office this term, has inflation ever fallen below the 2 percent watermark. Meantime gas prices were $2.98 nationwide, the day before the war started, with the nation's cheapest prices in Oklahoma, not Iowa that day, at $2.47 a gallon, and that claim that prices were down across the board, not true either, given that through February, prices were up 2.9 percent compared to when Trump took office.
Xochitl, so those are just the hard and fast numbers of what we know from the data, but there's also what Americans are seeing every single day for themselves.
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, FORMER DOJ PUBLIC AFFAIRS DIRECTOR: There's what Americans are seeing, and a year ago, I was probably sitting at this table talking about Donald Trump's trade war, and I remember at the time really thinking about, listen, he promised to lower costs, and that is not happening.
He caused uncertainty in the economy, which meant that costs went up, and he thought, and this message was the same as the war, is just, we need to feel a little bit of pain for a little bit of time, and at the end of the day, it'll be better for all of us, and that didn't sell well with Americans then.
It's not selling well with Americans now, and he is trying to rewrite history because he understands, and I'm sure there are aides in his ear, talking about how lowering prices is the key to the midterm elections, and he wants to paint a picture that he was responsible for lowering prices, but in his presidency, that is not the case.
DEAN: And I just want to add to that, we have Fox News polling, his job performance on inflation among registered voters, 76 percent disapproval rating, 24 percent approval rating.
ROTHMAN: Yes, that's atrocious. He's telling you he's terrified of consumer prices, and he should be. That's voters' primary concern.
It was their primary concern under Biden, and it's their primary concern now. It's why they voted for Donald Trump, to deliver that sort of thing. He's not going to give up on his tariffs, he really should.
He's not going to give up on this war, and he shouldn't. The way out of this price problem with gasoline is to complete the project that he began in Tehran, open up the strait militarily, and watch. Gasoline prices follow Brent prices.
Brent prices collapse on speculation. He says something in the morning, go down $10, $12. It takes a while to get down to refined products, but you get some relief there by November.
And you also have a condition in which Americans see this regime, which is universally loathed in this country. It's backbroken, militarily, isolated, unable to draw revenues, and retreating into itself in a way that looks a lot to the average viewer-like victory. That's the sort of thing that could mitigate the conditions that currently prevail.
AIDALA: Somehow or another, the stock market, even though everything you just listed over there may be accurate, somehow the stock market doesn't, I don't know, they don't care? They're not going with it?
Because the stock is doing okay, but I would like to ask you a question. Don't mind me being the host for a second. How does a President get prices lowered of milk and eggs and carpeting for your house and lumber? I don't know how a President does that.
SARIN: You know what's so striking about that chart you showed is that inflation was at its lowest point when President Trump took office. And the reason for that is because you are in a situation where we've done a lot of unforced policy errors, right?
We've ignited trade wars that cost the average American family something like $1,000 per household. These gas price increases are going to cost the average American family something like $850 over the course of this year.
And prices don't just come back down, even as crude prices come down because of this phenomenon called rockets and feathers. Prices go way up as crude goes up, but it takes a long time for those price decreases to filter through to consumers. And so the answer to your kind of difficult question is there actually aren't magical policies that you can point at that will bring down prices tomorrow.
But one thing that would is if we rolled back this trade war. That is something concretely that could be done that the average American family could do.
BLOW: If Donald Trump is calling it peanuts, it's not going to happen.
DEAN: Unfortunately, we are out of time. But up next, the panel will give us their nightcap, retro edition when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:55:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DEAN: The Hacky Sack is back. Teens today reviving the 90s game with viral tricks. So for tonight's news nightcap, we're asking what retro item would you bring back? And, Arthur, you get to go first. AIDALA: Well, it's not just an item. It's just a style. If you look at old pictures of Yankee Stadium, people at the Yankee game, their men are in suits.
They got their fedoras on.
DEAN: Look at this look.
AIDALA: They're ready to go. And people should get dressed up, whether you're going to a Yankee game or Broadway show or anything in between.
DEAN: Very sharp. Xochitl?
HINOJOSA: Landlines. So the landlines are coming back. The Surgeon General said kids should not be watching T.V. anymore.
So we're going to go with the tin can phone. It's a new phone that is all the rage for kids these days.
DEAN: I love it. Perfect. Natasha?
SARIN: Fanny packs. We all got to use them. And I cannot recommend enough chasing toddlers around, Jessica.
You're going to need hands right around.
DEAN: And it holds it all.
SARIN: It's so cool.
DEAN: Charles?
BLOW: Cursive. Not just because I want you to be able to sign your name, but you can't do research because everything's written in cursive, but also there are cognitive benefits to writing in cursive.
DEAN: Amazing.
[23:00:00]
Alright, Noah, we also want to mention your new book, just out yesterday, Blood and Progress.
ROTHMAN: Thank you very much.
DEAN: Available now.
ROTHMAN: Yes, I appreciate it.
DEAN: All right. End it for us.
ROTHMAN: So you probably heard that the American right is the threat to, yes, to the American civic compact. And you hear about it after an assault on an ICE facility, or an attack on a right-wing figure, or even the mobs that descend on cities daily. It's a right for exploration, and that is something I hope people take up. DEAN: And mixtapes.
ROTHMAN: Oh, and mixtapes, yes. Cities and burnt cities, yes, because there's a little more intimacy in the mixed states.
DEAN: I like that. Yes, it's personal.
All right, thanks to all of you for being here. Thank you for watching "NewsNight." Laura Coates Live starts right now.
