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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
DOJ Launches Criminal Probe into Trump Accuser E. Jean Carroll; Trump's Cabinet Heaps Praise Amid Unpopular War, Economy; Trump Threatens to Blow Up Oman, Adding Another Nation to List. New York Fed Show Remarkable Increase In Americans Struggling To Put Food On The Table; Former First Lady Jill Biden Makes A Stunning Admission About Joe's Debate Performance. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired May 27, 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 feds launch a criminal investigation into one of Donald Trump's accusers tied to the lawsuits against him.
Plus, for Donald Trump's cabinet, he's the wind beneath their wings.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you for your leadership, sir.
DOUG BURGUM, INTERIOR SECRETARY: Under your leadership --
KELLY LOEFFLER, AGRICULTURE SECRETARY: You're leading us to the greatest economy.
PHILLIP: The president summons his praise patrol as the war gets longer.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: We'll outwait him. He's got the midterms. I don't care about the midterms.
PHILLIP: Also, after telling Americans that Joe Biden did a great job at the infamous debate, a new version from the former first lady.
JILL BIDEN, FORMER U.S. FIRST LADY: As I watched it, I thought, oh, my God, he's having a stroke.
PHILLIP: And a remarkable number of Americans are skipping meals because they can't afford food, as a Republican congressman gets an earful.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're making everything unaffordable. We can't afford gas.
PHILLIP: Live at the table, Keith Boykin, Peter Meijer, Jemele Hill, Pete Seat, Kmele Foster, and Staci Schneider.
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.
Let's get right to what America's talking about. Tonight, the Justice Department goes after another of President Trump's enemies. This time it's E. Jean Carroll, the former magazine columnist who sued Trump and accused him of sexual assault. CNN has learned that the DOJ is investigating whether she committed perjury in connection with those lawsuits.
In 2023, a Manhattan civil jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, and awarded her $5 million for sexual abuse and defamation in that case. She was later awarded $83 million in a separate but related defamation case.
Now, Trump has repeatedly denied those allegations and has appealed the 2023 judgment. Prosecutors' theory hinges on this 2022 deposition where Carroll said that she received no outside funding for her lawsuit. Later, it was revealed that billionaire Reid Hoffman had paid some legal fees and expenses. Hoffman has said that he had no involvement until Carroll filed the lawsuit, which she says is -- which he says is common practice.
Now, I think the bottom line of this is that if you were to tick through a list of all the people that Donald Trump wants to investigate, all the people he wants to charge, E. Jean Carroll would be on that list, Staci. And now she is being investigated despite successfully winning this lawsuit against him for defamation and for sexual assault.
STACI SCHNEIDER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR, U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT: Yes. She should not be on any list because this is so far afield of what the Department of Justice would normally do that I feel like they're almost lost forever. I mean, we saw James Comey get indicted over the seashells. This is even worse because this was a woman, she's now 82 years old, and in the 1990s, she alleged back then that this sexual abuse happened by Donald Trump, and she brought a lawsuit.
The statute in New York was extended -- the time was extended for her to bring a lawsuit. And in 2023, she sued him in front of a civil jury for damages for defamation. Defamation is a false or misleading statement made about somebody to the public that causes them damage or harm. And her damage or harm that a jury believed was that, first of all, her allegations were true. Jury believed that. They didn't believe Trump's denial, that they weren't true.
And they also believed that she was damaged. She was a journalist. Her reputation was damaged. He called her a liar, a hoax. He made it up. He said he didn't even know her. He wouldn't recognize her. And it turned down -- it turned out he went down in that lawsuit because they showed him a picture of her from years ago, 30 years ago, and his own lawyer said, can you identify this blonde woman in the picture? And he said, that's my wife, Marla. And he had made statements about E. Jean Carroll that she's not even his type, so there's no way he could have done anything to her. So, I think that was an example.
But getting this --
PHILLIP: But they're also -- they're hanging this on such a thin reed of -- no pun intended, no pun intended -- of whether or not some of her legal expenses were paid by a third party.
[22:05:07]
I mean, maybe you could litigate whether it's when she filed the lawsuit, after she filed the lawsuit, but that alone seems to be incredibly, incredibly thin.
SCHNEIDER: It's thin, it's weak, it's sort of -- it's fluff for nutter. It was already decided actually by the trial judge. The issue already came up, and the judge decided it.
So, I'll explain a little bit, because it's a little bit complicated. She's testifying in deposition under oath before trial, and a deposition is a way that lawyers get out discovery in -- they discover information about the case. They ask questions so they know what to expect at trial, they know what they're dealing with, they decide if they're going to settle.
She was asked, did you receive any outside funding for this lawsuit? The deposition was six months before they went to trial. She had answered no. Then two weeks before she went to trial, her lawyers came forward in full disclosure to the court, these are her lawyers, and said to the judge, Reid Hoffman, the billionaire Reid Hoffman, funded part of her lawsuit out of Chicago.
Trump's lawyers made a big stink about this, that this is unfair and she's a liar, so the judge allowed them to re-depose her. They put her under oath again. They asked her questions about that, and it was completely cleared because the judge said, I'm fine with her credibility, it was not damaged, and I'm going to let her testify at trial and this cannot come up.
PHILLIP: So, one of the things that you should know about this is that Todd Blanche, who's now the acting attorney general, he is a former attorney of President Trump's and represented him in this case. He's recused himself from this. But does that actually clear the Justice Department from the accusation that what they're doing effectively is going after people that the president wants to see prosecuted?
PETE SEAT, FORMER WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMAN, PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Well, to me, the number one question is, did she commit perjury? If the answer --
PHILLIP: Is that the number one question?
SEAT: If the -- you know, that's what they're potentially investigating.
PHILLIP: Well, given what Staci -- SEAT: I know you gave us the background of the entire unrelated case --
PHILLIP: Given what Stacu just said, which is that that issue was litigated in the case, it went before a judge, and the judge found that it did not affect her credibility, at a certain point, it was not pertinent to the case. So, is that really the main question here?
SEAT: Yes, and I understand that. The timing seems to be the biggest piece of this to what you laid out. But if she did commit perjury, then the next question is, should she be held accountable for that?
SCHNEIDER: Can I answer that, though?
SEAT: And I think this dividing line is, like everything else, is where you sit on the political aisle.
SCHNEIDER: You know what? It's not political.
SEAT: If you're on one side --
SCHNEIDER: I don't mean to interrupt you, and I apologize.
SEAT: But you are interrupting me, Staci.
SCHNEIDER: But I know I am. I am. But this is so not political. This is about -- when the Justice Department goes after people for perjury, which can put somebody in jail, they go after racketeering cases where somebody might have lied on the stand. They go after political corruption cases. They don't go after a civil lawsuit for defamation out of New York against a woman who's now 82 years old.
PHILLIP: And in a pretrial --
SCHNEIDER: They shouldn't do it.
PHILLIP: -- a pretrial deposition at that. But, again, Trump has -- Trump lost this case against E. Jean Carroll, period, the end. And now his Justice Department is putting her potentially in an investigation that could lead to a trial, that could lead to her being in legal jeopardy.
KEITH BOYKIN, FORMER CLINTON WHITE HOUSE AIDE: It doesn't pass the smell test. And to Staci's point, I actually did some research before I came on the show and looked at how many times the Justice Department actually prosecuted, criminally prosecuted somebody for a civil deposition perjury, I couldn't find any examples. There may be some, but I couldn't find any examples at all. And the evidence seems to suggest it is so incredibly rare that it clearly seems to be political.
If you add that to the James Comey investigation because of his seashells, if you add that to Letitia James because she went after him, if you add that to Don Lemon, the fact that he was out at a church and Trump doesn't like him, you add that to Jay Powell, the fact that he's the Federal Reserve chair and Trump doesn't like him, he wants interest rates hiked, every -- interest rates lowered, every time Trump has an enemy, those people mysteriously end up being prosecuted or investigated by the federal government from the Justice Department, and the person who's running the Justice Department is his personal lawyer right now. That just does not pass anybody's smell test.
PETER MEIJER, CO-FOUNDER AND HEAD OF STRATEGY, THE NEW INDUSTRIAL CORPORATION: How many times has the statute of limitation been extended by a state legislature in order to very specifically target one individual? I mean --
BOYKIN: And what does that have to do with the fact that Donald Trump is actually --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: But, Peter, that's not the question here. It was not extended for Trump. It was -- I mean, my recollection is this is the Me Too era, right? And so the statute of limitations was extended for victims in general. And Trump just happened to be in that timeframe.
[22:10:00]
MEIJER: The alleged incident occurred when I was in elementary school, and that statute of limitation was extended to when I was a member of Congress. I mean, this was a very large window that --
JEMELE HILL, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: But that had nothing to do with it.
PHILLIP: I guess this is just --
SCHNEIDER: Because the statute of limitations on sexual assault cases in many, many states are very short, too short, and it takes a long time, we've seen through the Me Too movement, through the Harvey Weinstein situation, how long it takes women to come forward, through the Epstein situation.
MEIJER: Most certainly.
SCHNEIDER: So, this is done in every state, that you can't narrow this down to it happened in one particular year.
PHILLIP: Okay.
MEIJER: But we're also -- yes, we're also dealing with, you mentioned on the question of the exception of like the perjury charge and how rare that is. I mean, we're about to talk about Mike Flood, who was mentioned in an earlier statement. He succeeded Jeff Fortenberry, who was a sitting member of Congress who was investigated for campaign finance fraud from some foreign donations. Without having a lawyer present, he answered FBI's questions. He never -- he was charged with lying to a federal official because he was answering off of his best recollection. The next thing you know, he is being indicted, he's being criminally charged. He resigns from Congress. He does the honorable, right thing. Like these questions of whether or not when you are trying to be truthful and accurate when it comes to the law are important.
BOYKIN: The federal government -- but what we're seeing is the federal government using the Department of Justice, going after somebody who Trump dislikes, his personal enemy, for a civil deposition perjury allegation. That never happens.
MEIJER: But again, it's a question, this is what happened within a civil deposition context, which is --
(CROSSTALKS)
BOYKIN: That just means that we can't trust this guy to make honest decisions.
SEAT: If someone committed perjury, should they not be held accountable?
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Guys, one second. Let me just play, let me play what Reid Hoffman said about this a couple years ago. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REID HOFFMAN, LINKEDIN FOUNDER: It is a standard practice that happens a lot where there's outside funding of lawsuits. They -- we didn't encourage the lawsuit to happen. We only got on board after she'd already filed it and was down the road. So, you're not trying to create something that isn't substantive real, that a person isn't really doing. We -- my team looked at it and thought that it was a -- that her voice should be heard, that because she was challenging someone who's so much more wealthy and powerful, it shouldn't be squashed.
The press kind of made a big deal out of secrets. Like, look, actually, in fact, most philanthropy in the world, and most philanthropy I do, I don't like publish lists of it, I just do it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, I mean, look, if you want to litigate whether she was telling the truth or not, I think there's actually a very strong case that she might not have been lying or withholding anything at all because of the timing that Staci laid out. A deposition that was six months before trial, and then a disclosure that happened before trial, and then according to Reid Hoffman, he wasn't there on the day that she filed the lawsuit. He was -- he came in after the fact.
HILL: This all go -- it kind of boils down to the fact that we know that the president is vengeful and he's petty. I mean, and he is -- that has been his entire character reveal. So, it is impossible to give him the benefit of the doubt, and we've seen how this Department of Justice has behaved. The whole reason Pam Bondi isn't there anymore is because she wasn't ruthless enough to do the things that Todd Blanche is clearly willing to do. And so you guys want us to kind of erase the history and erase the persona of Donald Trump, and we cannot separate the two because of who he has often shown himself to be.
SCHNEIDER: You know, and there's another reason why his fingerprints are all over this. This trial happened in New York, but this case, this DOJ investigation was referred to U.S. attorneys in Chicago, which is where Reid Hoffman has his nonprofit. It didn't need to go to Chicago. It went to Chicago because if it were to lead to something, Trump does not do well with New York juries, so they're putting it in Chicago. It's ridiculous. The whole thing is --
PHILLIP: We'll see how well he does with the Chicago jury.
MEIJER: So, he didn't to a Chicago jury?
PHILLIP: But we'll see.
All right, next for us, the president held another cabinet meeting today, and the top item on the agenda for his key leaders, well, praise the boss while he threatens to blow up yet another nation.
Plus, former First Lady Jill Biden's stunning admission of what she feared was happening during her husband's infamous debate. It's a very different take than the glowing review that she gave at the time.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:15:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, members of President Trump's cabinet can sleep a little bit easier knowing that they aced their latest loyalty test.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you for your leadership, sir. The fact that we have dedicated presidential leadership is really what's made this possible.
BURGUM: President Trump, under your leadership we've opened up lease sales on public lands.
You turned Venezuela from a sanctioned adversary into a strategic ally in 45 minutes, never happened in history before.
SCOTT BESSENT, TREASURY SECRETARY: We are more resilient to energy price fluctuations due to your energy dominance agenda.
Resilience and prosperity have been the mark of your second term.
PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: There's only one man, over the course of both presidency, who has stood up and said they will never get a nuclear weapon. You created the conditions to ensure the American people and the world are safeguarded from this generational threat.
LOEFFLER: Mr. President, you have made us a nation of builders again. You're leading us to the greatest economy that the world has ever known. I hear it everywhere I go, please thank the president for putting us back on track. They thank you. They love you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: The New York Times recently reviewed more than a dozen hours of these cabinet meetings and found that at least one in six sentences spoken by Trump's cabinet members offered the president some sort of praise.
[22:20:04]
For example, it revealed that Marco Rubio flattered Trump the most. J.D. Vance topped the list for insulting Trump's political opponents. Pete Hegseth repeatedly declared that no other president could single- handedly end conflicts. And Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick credited Trump with saving America.
The praise parade is a welcome show for Trump, who has a lot on his plate right now, an ugly midterm battle ahead, an economy stretching Americans to their limit, and the ongoing war with Iran. But Trump has vowed not to let political pressure rush him into making a deal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: They thought they were going to outwait me, you know? We'll outwait him. He's got the midterms. I don't care about the midterms. Look what happened last night. That was the prelude to the midterms. People understand it. They know that, very simple, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I'm doing that for the world. I'm not doing it just for us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Well, you know, look, he doesn't care about the midterms. He cares more about the outcome. I think that's a reasonable thing for a president to say, but he probably should care about the midterms because I think that the war and the midterms are so intertwined at this point. The Americans are unhappy, not just with how he's handling the war, but with how he's handling the economy, and gas prices are continuing to put downward pressure on these numbers for him.
KMELE FOSTER, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, TANGLE: And it's mystifying to hear him refer to yesterday's race in Texas as though it's some kind of indication of how much he doesn't care, or for some reason an, a clear explanation as to why, because I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. That Paxton race, the decision to get involved in a race to essentially elevate a candidate who has so many negatives going for him, it doesn't make any sense at all.
It complicates his party's ability to get anything done in Congress going forward. It gives him someone who he's going to be at odds with in the Senate for many, many months to come. And all of it, including that strange circus in that cabinet meeting seems like a president, who's utterly detached from the fact that his policies simply have not produced the golden age that was promised when he was accepting the nomination and accepting -- actually, no, accepting the office, being inaugurated the second time, it's just a -- it's an extraordinarily bad look for him. None of this suggests that he actually is tapped into what the American people are concerned about.
And the most dire aspect of this is that things are likely to get worse. We've seen these economic reports that continue to indicate that things are looking dicier for the consumer, but also that the market itself is under a tremendous amount of pressure. And we're not exactly certain how that's going to turn out.
So, my suspicion is that by November, things will look much bleaker for the administration than they currently do, and they won't be able to hide behind any of this rhetoric or people going around the table saying nice things about him.
PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, well, the public praise probably mirrors the private comments that the president is hearing. And if he's getting -- if he's only being told everything is great and perfect, and everything is -- everybody's thriving, that seems like bad information ahead of a midterm.
MEIJER: If he was being told that, he also wouldn't say, you know what? I'm going to make my decisions on Iran based upon what I think is right, not based upon the polling, not based upon the midterms. Yes, like he's putting himself in a difficult spot with the Senate.
A 30-point defeat for Senator Cornyn was not something that was decided by Donald Trump's endorsement. The House is certainly not enthusiastic about where gas prices are. But the reality is like a lot of these factors were either baked in by virtue of the way that a midterm is going to go with a president, you know, who holds the House and the Senate, and the thermostatic reaction among the American people.
And I remain, and I've said this before, I remain actually optimistic for an outcome in Iran, specifically because the Iranians know that if Donald Trump cares more about the midterms than about what the content of the substance of the negotiation of that deal are, that he would fold much more quickly because it's going to take some time for gas prices to go back down. It's going to take some time for the American public to feel like this has not been a tremendous burden on them financially.
The fact that Donald Trump is willing to wait that out, if I'm a Congressional Republican, I'm not pleased, I'm frustrated, but when it comes to actually hewing to the fidelity of what may be in the best interest of the American people as opposed to the best interest of the American -- of the Republican Party, Donald Trump's siding with the people.
PHILLIP: Let me play one more piece of what he said in that cabinet meeting today, this time about Oman. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Nobody's going to control it. We're going to watch over it. We'll watch over it, but nobody's going to control it. That's part of the negotiation that we have. They would like to control it. Nobody's going to control it. It's international waters. And Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we'll have to blow them up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:25:04]
MEIJER: Yes, let's not do that. We like the Omanis. They're good people. We have a free trade agreement. We got basing rights there. We're good.
PHILLIP: I'm not really sure what that is all about, but I guess it's worth noting that Trump has now threatened one in 13 nations on this planet, the 15th time he's threatened a country since, I guess, he became president this second time around. I mean, is the answer to -- I guess if it's a nail and you've got a hammer, the only thing that you can do is just use the hammer?
BOYKIN: Well, first of all, Abby, I want to tell you that you are the best host of all hosts. We've never had a better host in CNN history.
PHILLIP: Thank you. I appreciate that.
BOYKIN: And the world would be in a worse place were it not for you, you've made everything better.
PHILLIP: You can keep your job a little bit longer.
BOYKIN: So, I mean, Donald Trump clearly is not going to win another -- is going to win any peace prize. You know, he got the FIFA peace prize because he kind of bribed his way into that. But, I mean, the guy doesn't have any sort of foreign policy chops. And so his only way to handle conflict is to talk a big game, and then when the big game doesn't pan out, he's got to do something to deliver.
So, he's got conflict now in Iran. He's trying to negotiate what's going on with Ukraine, which he's been away from that. He's just got out of Venezuela a few months ago, and he's still kind of negotiating what's going on there. He's threatening Cuba at the same time. Meanwhile, he's got our allies wondering what's happening with Greenland and Canada and threatening to invade Mexico. And there's never been a president in my lifetime, maybe in history, who has been so disastrous in terms of international relations.
MEIJER: Well, you were alive in the Carter administration, weren't you? I mean, no, like -- but let's be honest. Like Venezuela is going actually very well. We don't talk about it in the U.S. because it doesn't really help narratively. Venezuela is --
BOYKIN: The people of Venezuela are --
MEIJER: Overwhelmingly like Donald Trump. BOYKIN: -- not necessarily any better off today than they were before. Just today, there was a new report that came out today that Donald Trump --
MEIJER: There's been good survey data of their expectations of his life getting better or worse. I mean, it is inverse of what it was under Maduro.
BOYKIN: Let me tell you something. There's a new report that came out today. It said that and that Delcy Rodriguez, the current president of Venezuela, acting president of Venezuela, the Trump administration is telling federal prosecutors not to go after her because they're concerned that she may not be able to do their job they're bidding for him.
So, they're not concerned about prosecuting her for the legal violations she may have made. They're not concerned about the people and the human rights in Venezuela. Trump is concerned about what looks best for him.
MEIJER: Sure. That's the legal side. But the three most popular people in Venezuela right now, one, Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, number two, Marco Rubio, and number three is Donald Trump. I mean, his approval rating in Venezuela is positive 20.
FOSTER: In fairness, what were the 27 things that he mentioned about Venezuela?
MEIJER: Yes. No, I know. No, but we can go through the entire list.
PHILLIP: All right, Jemele.
HILL: No, what I would say is like I watched those cabinet -- that cabinet meeting, and I was thinking, do these people realize we can hear them? And it is -- and this is a mistake I think the Democrats made as well, is that you're trying to tell people the reality they're experiencing they're not actually experiencing.
So, when you have Kelly Loeffler talking about, oh, the greatest economy, nobody feels that. Like you're just lying to people, and they lose respect for you because you can't tell this dude the truth. And it feels increasingly like when you see these meetings, or just in general the treatment of Trump, it's like they're trying to placate the uncle who's lost it.
I mean, and so the only way, and people know that the way to his heart is through flattery. And so they're doing this over and over again, and I hope these people understand that some of the decisions that they are making right now are decisions that historically are going to look terrible.
So, ten years from now when people are playing that meeting, and maybe this country has recovered from this and maybe it hasn't, and they know that you sat there in your position of leadership and you did absolutely nothing but glaze the president over terrible decisions, everybody's going to remember that. PHILLIP: Last word, Pete.
SEAT: Well, one, clearly President Trump doesn't conduct foreign policy the way Keith wants him to do it, but there has been a ton of successes in this administration. But I do want to point --
BOYKIN: There is --
SEAT: I want to point -- I want to make a point on this cabinet thing, because one of my jobs in the George W. Bush White House was to take the media into cabinet room meetings. And, typically, you'd go in at the very beginning, the president would tell you what they would talk about, or you'd come in at the end and he would recap what was discussed. Maybe take one or two questions, only the president, and that was the end of the story. You'd take the media out.
In this administration, the media has much more access, more access than they have had to any president in the modern era. The reason why The New York Times has 12 hours of footage to analyze is because Donald Trump lets them in there that long. If you had done it for any other president, it would be 12 minutes. And it would be only the president talking.
BOYKIN: I'll just make a quick note on that.
[22:30:00]
SEAT: But it is a window -- listen, it is a window --
BOYKIN: But is the substance of what they're observing matter?
SEAT: It is a window into our government.
PHILLIP: I mean --
SEAT: You get to hear updates --
PHILLIP: -- listen, access is not the be-all and end-all of everything. Access is not the beginning and the end of the story. To Camille's point, substance matters. And the President spends --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: When President spends 10 minutes talking about a reflecting pool, I think that also reflects on his priorities. So, I think that's the other piece of what we're talking about here is what are they actually talking about, not just how long are they talking and who's witnessing it. I mean, I think that matters more to the American people.
All right, next for us, because we were just discussing some of this. More Americans are apparently skipping meals because of high food prices as Republicans are getting confronted about Trump's economy at town halls.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [22:35:24]
PHILLIP: Tonight, an alarming report on the affordability crisis that's being seen as an indictment of Donald Trump's so-called golden age. New research from the New York Fed shows that there's been a remarkable increase in Americans struggling to put food on the table, and many are now resorting to skipping meals altogether. The report finds a greater share of Americans have become food insecure compared to the early months of the pandemic.
Low-income Americans are being forced to dip into their savings to cover expenses. More children are missing or skipping meals compared to 2020, and families need food donations or federal assistance to get by. Now this week, as the war in Iran drags on with Congress on a recess, Republican Congressman Mike Flood of Nebraska got an earful from his constituents.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNKNOWN: You're making everything unaffordable. We can't afford gas. We can't afford health care. We can't afford things here in Norfolk. While you guys are lining your pockets within the presidency, within Congress, what are you guys going to do to regulate this and actually follow laws? What is Congress going to do?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: It's really extraordinary to me to hear that compared to 2020, this is like pandemic era, that, well --
PETER MEIJER, CO-FOUNDER AND HEAD OF STRATEGY, THE NEW INDUSTRIAL CORPORATION: It's February 2020.
PHILLIP: Yes, that's the pandemic. Like the whole country shut down in 2020. Like that era, compared to that era, there is more food insecurity. That should be a real red flag for policymakers.
SEAT: It absolutely should be. It's heartbreaking to know that so many Americans feel that they are food insecure and that they can't afford their next meal, that they're skipping meals. And there are a lot of contributing factors. Obviously, cost is one of those, food deserts is another one.
I think politicians are contributing factor to the sentiment because they're not being honest from the President to members of Congress are not being honest about what they can and cannot do to tackle affordability. There are things Congress can do -- you would know it better than anyone at this table, former member of Congress -- and there are things they can't do. But the campaign trail is littered with promise after promise that politicians cannot keep which causes a lot of this anxiety.
Another thing that I would throw into the equation is -- and I know this is anecdotal. But I think it's part of it is irresponsible consumerism. There are a lot of Americans I think, and I know some, my friends do this. Rather than go to the grocery store and stock up for what they need that week, they order DoorDash or Uber Eats and pay massive premiums for convenience and then say, you know what, I'm going to skip the next meal because I can't afford it. There are decisions that we make in the name of convenience.
JEMELE HILL, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, "THE ATLANTIC": That's quite an argument.
SEAT: But there's something to it. I think it's something to it. I think a lot of people buy convenience --
(CROSSTALK)
HILL: You said "my friends" who I'm assuming are probably fairly educated, well--
SEAT: I'm using it as an example. But I think there are --
HILL: Your friends are not the friends we're talking about when we're discussing the real-life issues that people are facing.
SEAT: I think there are millions of Americans who make that choice because it's convenient to have something delivered because they're busy, and it costs a lot more than possibly doing something that would be cheaper.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: l don't want us to go down too far that route because we do know that grocery prices, not DoorDash prices, grocery prices are going up. So, the people who are getting out of their houses, going to the grocery store, buying food, cooking it in their homes, that is also going up. I do want to play Kevin Hassett. He's an economic advisor to the President. He has been putting his foot in his mouth, proverbially, for the last few months. Here's what he said recently, once again, about the state of the economy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEVIN HASSETT, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL DIRECTOR: I think that we should see very quickly energy prices, gas prices go back to where they should be. And the thing that I've seen, what I look at credit card data and other things that i can get for the private sector is that while people have been spending more money at gas stations, they've been spending more money at everything -- on everything else, which means that they're still very, very optimistic about the state of the economy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Maybe this is where Pete's theory and the rest of this converges. But I'm sorry, but like, it seems to me that people spending more money on everything is not something to be smiling about.
KMELE FOSTER, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, "TANGLE": Yes, I have a very hard time making sense out of what you were just laying out there, especially when I consider what the administration spent most of last year doing, which was waging wars on essentially the price level by trying to increase the tariffs across the globe.
[22:40:09]
That has a direct implication on the cost that consumers are going to pay for just about everything. Even the President himself was assuring us. We have there may be a little pain for a little while. That is not a DoorDash problem. That's not me not knowing how to cook a meal for myself at home. These are the direct implications of policy decisions.
And the reality is that the pain would have been a great deal worse but for setbacks that he had because of some complications he encountered in the courts and amongst some of you, unfortunately precious few, members of his own party who objected to these ruinous policy.
HILL: Yes, it also doesn't help that when you have Speaker Mike Johnson saying that Congress can't survive on $174,000 a year, when you have Trump saying, I don't care about people --
SEAT: How many people do you know that have to have two homes?
HILL: What -- I mean-- but --
PHILLIP: Okay. But that's a whole argument.
(CROSSTALK)
HILL: But my point is that the people in those positions that are telling people who are experiencing the real pain of their decisions, that, oh, you're being just irresponsible, or we can't survive on $174,000 a year, or a President that has told people to just suck it up and deal with the pain, or I don't care about the American finances, when you have to put food on the table, that's the last thing you want to hear.
And especially when you see the amount, a massive amount of money we're spending on a war that no one wanted. At the end of the day, it's one thing if it's COVID, it's one thing if it's something that you really can't control. These are all self-inflicted decisions that have cost the American people. And by them continuing to lie and say, well, the stock market is doing great.
I remember during Biden's administration when the Democrats had to run that same game, they got destroyed by the Republicans. And now all of a sudden, you all trying to run it back. So, I don't, I don't really get this very wide gap and why people don't believe that it is really tough out here for a lot of people, especially after you've levelled SNAP and you've levelled Medicare.
BOYKIN: Exactly. I think people have noticed here three different arguments to explain what's going on. One is the tariffs. The other is the war on Iran and the gas prices up to $450. And the third is the cuts to SNAP benefits in the quote, unquote "Big Beautiful Bill." Those are policy decisions that have an impact on ordinary Americans. And we have this K-shaped economy now where the people at the top are doing really well, the people at the bottom aren't doing so well.
So, I think the big problem with all of this is that Trump has a history of saying two different things about affordability. One day he thinks it's a concern, the other day it's a Democratic plot. But their big problem is that he's building this big UFC stadium. He's building a reflex, fixing up the reflecting pole and spending a billion dollars for a ballroom. He's doing all these different things that have nothing to do with the concerns of ordinary Americans. And it shows a rich old white guy who's out of touch.
MEIJER: But Keith, I mean, that was something that Pete was talking about, of like the politicians saying both things, right? When Donald Trump was out of power, it was -- everything is terrible, the world is coming to a close, America's a hellhole, get into office, everything's fantastic. When Joe Biden was in office, it's like, listen, don't believe your lying eyes, everything is fantastic, and then get out of office and oh my God, look at how terrible things are, right?
This is the challenge with trying to separate fact from fiction, with trying to separate actual economic indicators from feeling, the divergence between where economic sentiment should be based on where unemployment rate is, based on where the markets are, based on where all lower quartile job growth, that versus this sentiment.
I mean, we have lower sentiment in terms of the direction of the economy and overall consumer belief that things will get better, lower than when the unemployment rate was double what it is and when inflation was at 12 percent.
(CROSSTALK)
BOYKIN: I agree with you, but you're missing one point, though. You're missing one point, though. One of the people who's chiefly responsible for contributing to the distrust of government data is Donald Trump. He spent years discrediting the government data under the Obama administration and under the Biden administration. He spent years trying to discredit what government does in general. So people have a reason not to believe what the government data says. They're more concerned about their personal situations than what the government data is telling them.
PHILLIP: All right, next for us. Jill Biden says that she thought her husband was having a stroke during that infamous debate, but that's not what she said at the time. We'll discuss that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:49:02]
PHILLIP: Tonight, a stunning admission from Jill Biden about her husband's debate performance. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RITA BRAVER, CBS SUNDAY MORNING HOST: Were you horrified as you saw it unfold? JILL BIDEN, FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I wasn't horrified. I was frightened. Because I had never, ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never.
BRAVER: Or since.
BIDEN: Yes. Or since.
BRAVER: You've never seen him like that?
BIDEN: Never. No.
BRAVER: What happened?
BIDEN: I don't know what happened. I mean, as I watched it, I thought, oh my God, he's having a stroke. And it scared me to death.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: That interview comes just weeks before the release of the former first lady's new memoir. And it's the first time that we've heard her express any concern about that debate that ultimately ended Joe Biden's 2024 campaign. But that stands in stark contrast to what Jill Biden had to say just moments after the debate.
[22:50:01]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question. You knew all the facts.
(CROWD CHEERING)
BIDEN: And let me ask the crowd, what did Trump do? Lie.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Even Joe Biden seems a little amused by that. Jemele, okay, your instant reaction to the Jill Biden of it all.
HILL: You know, we talked about this a little bit in the last segment. When you lie to people right to their face, they have a tendency to not trust you. And, you know, a lot of people knew something was wrong with Joe Biden. I went to a dinner in Detroit, an AACP dinner. He was the guest speaker. His speech was great, but seeing him just make the walk through the stage, I was concerned. I was like, hey, this dude doesn't look right.
But I would say that especially now as we're looking at a president who often showcases that he is unwell, that we need to apply those same questions that a lot of people have been. People have the right to wonder about Joe Biden's health after seeing that debate, and those questions were fair and they were legitimate. I think the problem is that now those same questions aren't being asked even though we're seeing things that are just as concerning, if not worse. PHILLIP: Peter, is that fair?
MEIJER: Why the hell are they talking about this again? Why are you (inaudible)? It's the same with Karine Jean-Pierre. It's like, do you want to relitigate this?
HILL: They got a book to sell. She's got a book to sell.
MEIJER: But like, your book's not going to sell well, right? You need a political campaign to be buying up advance copies to give to donors that you're spending $20 on and the material costs are $5, right? That's what I do not get. You're not going to in the full sweep of history.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I mean, I appreciate that we now get to see at least some version of a truth that she's putting out there because I think, yes, the conversation should be had about the deceptiveness that was behind this. Like that's the conversation that I think ought to be had. The autopsy that the Democrats did didn't delve into that, but it should. What kind of political system covers that up and makes it okay to lie to people about what everybody knows is true? FOSTER: What I'm concerned about, the thing I'm wondering is what the next question in that interview is, because it ought to be, so why did you lie at the time? And I'm not certain that that's what's going to be asked. If I could wager about this on Polymarket, I probably wouldn't bet in favor of that question being asked, which I think is an indictment of our industry, the people who are asking these questions.
I actually think there's a heck of a lot of critical inquiry about the Trump administration today amongst the media elites. The challenge, however, apart from Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper, as they document in their book, there weren't a lot of people asking those sober questions early on about Joe Biden, which is why we did --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I have to say, I have to say, the real, the beginning, "The Wall Street Journal" wrote a story about Joe Biden's health that was attacked relentlessly by the Biden White House. That was before the book. That was before all of this postpartum stuff. It was happening in real time, but I mean, is it fair to ask, as Jemele did, are Republicans putting wool over their eyes now, too?
SEAT: I don't think so. Donald Trump goes up there and talks for hours at a time without stopping.
HILL: And he falls asleep a lot. And he --
SEAT: Well, so do I occasionally. That's why I'm drinking Diet Coke, so I can stay awake at the table. But I think the most alarming part, fine, she's got truth serum and she's telling us what she actually thought in the moment. But what I find alarming and hard to believe is this idea that she never saw that before or since from her husband. When everyone else in America and around this world saw a rapidly
declining president, I was in Dubrovnik, Croatia the night of the debate and I was at an international forum and to a person before the debate, the question was 330 million people and these are the two best you can run for president? Fair point.
After the debate, the question was, holy cow, forget running for reelection. Why is that man allowed in the Oval Office? And yet, the wife of the president, the first lady, clearly did not have that level of alarm that people across an ocean had.
PHILLIP: All right, we've got to leave it there. Next for us, the panel's going to give us their night caps. "American Bandstand" edition.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:59:10]
PHILLIP: The music line-up to celebrate the country's 250th birthday was announced and the 16-day Great American Fair on the National Mall will include country music star Martina McBride and rappers Flo Rida and Vanilla Ice, just to name a few. So, for tonight's News Nightcap, if you could pick an artist to represent America, who would it be? Peter, you're up.
MEIJER: America.
PHILLIP: What?
MEIJER: Horse with no name, right?
(LAUGHTER)
MEIJER: It's America's 250th, get America the band. They're on their Ventura Highway tour right now. They have the entire month of July open. I think their last stop is June 27th in Chicago.
PHILLIP: All right, we got to go quick.
HILL: For me, Outkast with the United States of Stankonia.
PHILLIP: All right.
FOSTER: Kanye West and only Kanye West.
PHILLIP: Oh, Lord.
FOSTER: It's redemption.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Okay, Keith.
[23:00:01]
BOYKIN: Oh, wow. Okay, I rebuke that. It must be Beyonce. That's it.
PHILLIP: That's true.
SEAT: A little something for boomers and the Beach Boys and a little something for millennials with John Stamos joining them. Why not? He tours with them. Uncle Jesse tours --
PHILLIP: Guys, this list was absolutely wild tonight. Wild selections from the panel. Everyone, thank you very much. Thanks for watching "NewsNight." You can stream the show anytime with an all-access subscription in the CNN app or at cnn.com/watch. "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
