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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip

Trump Orders New Strikes in Iran After Calling Ceasefire Over; Rahm Emanuel Says, U.S. Should End Unconditional Support to Israel. Graham Platner Suspends Maine Senatorial Campaign Over Sexual Allegations; Security Precautions Force Trump to Use His Old Air Force One. Aired 10-11p ET

Aired July 08, 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, Trump declares the Iran ceasefire over. And the negotiations?

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: They're a little loco. They're a little crazy.

PHILLIP: What happens now with the war that was supposed to only last a few days?

Plus, a potential Democratic presidential candidate points to a turning point with Israel.

RAHM EMANUEL, CNN POLITICAL AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: Israel does not have a problem with the Democratic Party. Israel has a problem in America.

PHILLIP: Also, Platner exits.

GRAHAM PLATNER (D), FORMER MAINE SENATE CANDIDATE: We are suspending campaign operations.

PHILLIP: And in Maine, the race is on to find a new candidate fast.

And Trump talks communism.

TRUMP: I would be the greatest communist in history. I'd be right up there with Lenin.

PHILLIP: He says the threat from Democratic socialism is greater than world wars, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11.

TRUMP: You'll be living in squalor and --

PHILLIP: Live at the table, Neera Tanden, Scott Jennings, Peter Meijer, Jemele Hill, and Brad Polumbo.

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.

Tonight, it's over. That's how President Trump is describing the 60- day agreement that he had signed with Iran just 21 days ago. For the second night, the U.S. military launched another round of strikes in Iran. Central Command says that, at the direction of President Trump, the U.S. is holding Iran accountable for, quote, unjustified aggression against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

Now, today, at the NATO Summit in Turkey, the president unleashed his harshest insults yet against the Iranian leadership in recent weeks, and he made it clear that the ceasefire is finished.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Is the ceasefire done? Is the MOU dead?

TRUMP: That's a very interesting question. To me, I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore.

They're scum. You know what scum is? They're scum. They're sick people. They're led by sick people. And they're vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they'd use it. As far as I'm concerned, it's over.

As far as I'm concerned, it's just a waste of time dealing with them. They're liars. There's something wrong with them. They're cuckoo. As far as I'm concerned, it's over.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Iran's deputy foreign minister said that the insults are not a sign of strength. Instead, they show Trump's policy based on brute force and sanctions and threats have failed. He then called Trump a criminal and murderous.

But Trump's rhetoric today is just a complete 180 from the tone that he's struck over the last month. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: And we're dealing with people that I think are very rational people, and they were nice to deal with.

They're very dangerous people from Iran. They're sick. There's something wrong with them. And, of course, they're dirty players, so they go after everyone.

I don't like them, and they're evil people.

They have a new group of leaders that I think is -- actually, I think they're smarter. I think they're very smart. I think they're far less radicalized. I don't think they know what the hell they're doing, but they're bad people, very bad people. I think they're incompetent, and they're a bunch of scum, if you want to know the truth. They're scum.

I think they're really good. They love their country.

These are evil, sick people, and we have to rid -- they're cancer. They're cancer. And you know what you do? You got to cut out cancer early. They're liars. They're cheats. They're sick people. They've hurt their people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Just hours after departing Turkey, Trump claimed that Iran called him wanting a deal, but he isn't sure if they're worthy.

Kian Tajbakhsh is with us in our fifth seat. He's a former political prisoner in Iran and an international relations professor at New York University.

But before we open it up to the table here, we invite you at home to join the debate. Go to cnn.com/abby and weigh in. We'll get to some of your comments throughout the show.

Kian, it just seems that all of this was entirely predictable.

KIAN TAJBAKHSH, FORMER POLITICAL PRISONER IN IRAN, RELEASED 2015: Yes, I think it was. It was predictable in two ways. There's a long- term animosity by the Islamic Republic against the United States.

[22:05:00]

This is part of the DNA of this regime. That is to say, their mistrust is really not rooted in the fact that President Trump ripped up the JCPOA or reneged on other kinds of deals. This is whatever the United States does the Iranian regime believes that it is an enemy of the United States. That's the long-term issue.

The short-term issue that I think was predictable was the fact that the MOU was, in fact, so ambiguous and gave the store away so much to the Iranians, in my view, that what the Iranians, and I've been following internal media from Iran, is they think that the MOU represents a moment of weakness in the United States.

And so they're going to not lose the opportunity for a historic opportunity to grab the Straits of Hormuz. And in other words, it doesn't matter what's in the MOU what they promised, they are not going to give up their -- you know, what they see as a historic opportunity.

PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, look, it's hard to not see what Kian is describing because Trump thinks that, you know, however many days of bombing, bombed Iran into submission, when, in fact, it not only has the opposite happened, they are exerting control of the Strait of Hormuz, they've come to the negotiating table, they're treated as equals, but it seems to have hardened Iran in a position that is adversarial to us.

This past week during the funeral for the now dead supreme leader of Iran, the Iranian president was attacked by a crowd of hardline supporters, according to The New York Times. They were shouting, death to the appeaser, because he was at the negotiating table with Trump. Another government official, the foreign minister, Araghchi, was assaulted with a rock on Monday as he was chased down an alley during the funeral, again, for sitting down with Trump. So, they are getting it from the hardliners, and the people at the negotiating table are losing.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. I don't agree that this conflict has somehow hardened Iran even further. I think they were already as adversarial to the United States as they could be. They've been adversarial to us for 47 years. And it was this president that decided to try to do something about it. He also tried to give diplomacy a chance.

I concur that, you know, there was always a high percentage chance the Iranians were never going to come to the table here in a meaningful way, in good faith. I'm not surprised it's ending this way. You know, the morning that the president signed the MOU, I talked to him, and he said to me, as he'd said publicly, look, if they don't behave and they don't meet their obligations, we'll go back to the military campaign. That's what he has decided to do.

And now it may just be time to say, look, we're not going to have some grand peace deal, and we're going to have to monitor these guys. We're probably going to have to hit them from time to time. We are going to keep enough oil flowing through the strait. We're going to move other oil-producing nations away from reliance on the strait. They're not going to get a penny in sanctions relief. And, you know, and the outcomes here are we've destroyed their military and turned all their neighbors against them.

That's a way to declare victory out of this, and I think that's what the president will do.

PHILLIP: I don't know if that's a victory. That seems like not a victory at all.

JENNINGS: They don't control the strait. Because they've already got 20 days of sanctions relief, the Iranians are still exerting some control over the Strait of Hormuz, and on top of that, we are committing ourselves to indefinite bombing? How does that work for our -- in our favor?

NEERA TANDEN, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: They're bombing other countries. The Strait of Hormuz is essentially a contested area. You can say it's easy for everyone to get through, but it's contested. That makes -- yhat is a problem for the global economy. You know, it is -- I think the real problem here is that the president cannot get a face-saving deal out of the Iranians and that is why he's back to bombing.

But just as a reminder to everyone, when there are bombings of Iran, essentially, we all pay more for gas because prices of gas and prices of oil go up, as they did today. And I think this is the conundrum that the president is in.

JENNINGS: What's the price of gas today? Do you know?

TANDEN: It's 7 -- The -- it's -- the barrel went up to $78 for crude. And it was before --

JENNINGS: Okay. And what's the price of a gallon of gas in the United States right now?

TANDEN: It's $4.30?

JENNINGS: No, negative.

(CROSSTALKS)

JENNINGS: And what was the highest price of gas under Joe Biden?

PHILLIP: No, I don't -- that's not --

JENNINGS: Did you ever conduct a meeting about gas prices?

PHILLIP: Scott, that's actually not the question. The question is how are --

JENNINGS: No, it keeps getting thrown out. Gas is lower today than it was before he --

PHILLIP: No, it's not. No, it's not. No, it's not.

TANDEN: Gas is $3.20 when Joe Biden took office.

PHILLIP: Gas is not lower today than when Trump took office. And it's not lower today than it was when Trump -- before Trump started the war.

So, look, you can dismiss the gas thing but it's a real thing, that people are going to the gas pump filling up their tank, and it's costing them $70.

[22:10:01]

TANDEN: I appreciate conservatives don't care --

PETER MEIJER, CO-FOUNDER AND HEAD OF STRATEGY, THE NEW INDUSTRIAL CORPORATION: Brent crude was $80 on January 20th, 2025.

TANDEN: I appreciate people don't think that people are paying it.

MEIJER: Just saying.

JENNINGS: It's less.

MEIJER: Yes. We're at a lower Brent crude price today than we were on January 20th. PHILLIP: What is the price at the pump compared to when Trump came to office?

MEIJER: I mean, it varies.

PHILLIP: The average gas price is higher today than it was when Trump came to office.

But -- okay. But, look, let's go back to where are we in this war. The president seems to have made a complete 180. I'm trying to see the people who have said that President Trump doesn't seem to know what he's doing seem to be getting a lot of evidence, given the fact that 21 days later, he has decided all of a sudden that the people that he said were trustworthy and were completely different, and we -- you know, we've turned a corner. And J.D. Vance said that the Iranians have changed for good and they want to approach the world differently, and now he's saying the exact opposite. It seems like they don't really know what's going on.

MEIJER: No. I mean, the very simple response is that when the Iranians are abiding by the terms that they agreed with, Trump will say nice things about them. When they are not, he won't. They go back to compliance.

PHILLIP: How do you explain them saying that they have changed? That's a different thing.

TAJBAKHSH: Okay. Can I add an angle to that? Look, I think that, you know, we've been at this the Americans for many years. I was involved as a civil society activist working, you know, going to the White House, going to the State Department, telling about how to negotiate with the Iranians.

One of the ways to make sense of this apparent switch about who these people are is that they're talking about different people. That is to say the United States, and I'm sorry to say this, has fallen for the trap that the Iranians have laid for every administration.

First of all, personally, I think it's very undignified that the vice president of the United States is our representative to, with someone who the counterpart is really just the fourth level person in Iran. This guy, Ghalibaf, he is not in this.

So -- but what happens is that he sent, unfortunately in my view, Vice President Vance to meet with a group of diplomats. These are the smoothest, most sophisticated diplomats you can find. They will tell you whatever you want to hear in public.

And remember I said this, I think, on the show last time, is that in the Middle East you have to understand what anyone says to you in private in English is meaningless. It's only what they say in their own language and publicly that has any meaning.

So, what happened is --

PHILLIP: And that's the opposite of what people would expect in the west.

TAJBAKHSH: Well, because it's different from the United States where, you know, politicians, you know, lie in public and tell the truth off record. But it's exactly the opposite in Iran.

So, Vance and Witkoff apparently, and Trump doesn't -- didn't realize this. They went to Istanbul. They heard -- you know, first of all, there was no photograph of Vance and Ghalibaf in the same room. By the way, that's a kind of a scoop. I mean, there is no evidence that they were actually in the same room.

PHILLIP: Red flag, yes.

TAJBAKHSH: Well, I mean --

JENNINGS: Well, they had mediators, right? Weren't they in separate meetings?

TAJBAKHSH: Well, that's the other thing. The United States should never have accepted this absurd -- you know, the Iranians can't impose the terms of the deal. So, what happens is the people that he -- Vance reported to Trump that, oh, I'm talking with these people and they're very rational, well, they are. I've met them too. They're very smooth. But the people who are shooting at the ships are different. They are the IRGC and the leadership, and they don't care what the diplomats are saying.

PHILLIP: So, let me just --

MEIJER: Well, that's why you bomb those guys, and you don't bomb the diplomats you're talking to.

PHILLIP: Well, look --

(CROSSTALKS)

TANDEN: Or maybe they're saying that we just got suckered into this deal because we're desperate.

PHILLIP: One of the problems, I think, for the Trump administration right now is that they already used the war card. The problem with using --

MEIJER: That's not a one-time play, by the way.

PHILLIP: The problem with using the war card early and often is that it loses its effect as it goes along, because now we're searching for targets. We're re-bombing the same targets, and it's almost like playing whack-a-mole with this regime, and that's, that is the problem that they're facing right now.

Every time they go in for strikes, yes, it's degrading a little bit, but Iran keeps coming back, and they're still the problem that they were four months ago.

JEMELE HILL, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Yes, I mean, I think the bigger problem in the strategy is that Iran from the beginning has been fighting a different type of war than the type of war we want to fight. It's like we want to get into a fistfight with people who have understood that Americans in this country do not have a stomach for an endless war, don't want it, definitely don't have stomach for higher gas prices. And so they know that they are okay with suffering. We are not. That is the biggest leverage that they have. And so because they have that leverage, well, now it looks as if our government has been exposed of being incompetent and not knowing what they're doing.

So, to me, the Iranians have been able to win the narrative war because they don't want -- they know what we can't stomach.

[22:15:02]

TANDEN: The truth is the president won't put down troops there, right, because he knows -- I mean, that would be an important thing.

MEIJER: We learned our lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan that you don't go in with a land invasion to try to change a regime. You try to do that through the least --

TANDEN: From the air in the least effective way ever.

MEIJER: Permissive means possible. It worked in Bosnia, has worked in the past in our efforts to control and to change the direction of the regime.

PHILLIP: But it has -- no, it has actually -- that's not true. There's no example of a war by air successfully alone changing a regime.

MEIJER: Venezuela, right now, Delcy Rodriguez is in power.

PHILLIP: Delcy Rodriguez is the regime, okay? Delcy Rodriguez was the second in command to the regime.

(CROSSTALKS)

PHILLIP: The Venezuelan regime is still in place. We did not oust that regime.

TAJBAKHSH: Right, but maybe this is the problem.

MEIJER: We have a compliant ally there.

TAJBAKHSH: Maybe this is the problem. I think the Americans are understanding -- you know, this administration is misunderstanding the nature and the depth and intensity of the ideological revolutionary nature of this regime. The core of this regime is built on resistance. That is to say, they're not built on making a compromise, you know?

And so there was a lot of talk and I was -- you know, I was very dismayed to see Vice President Vance say, you know, this was a -- well, he said, this was really cool. I met people who really want to make -- you know, I mean, he literally used the word cool.

PHILLIP: Yes.

TAJBAKHSH: And, you know, part of the problem with that, Abby, and I want to bring in the Iranian people here, by the way, because today is six months exactly after the massacre of January 8th and 9th. And Amnesty International has come out with a report saying that the international community, let alone the Iranian inside, which, of course, they'll never find anyone accountable, but the international community has not done a good enough job in pursuing international law against that.

But, essentially, when the U.S. administration comes out and says things like these people are wonderful, the people inside Iran are completely demoralized. Even those who are looking to the United States, they say to themselves, oh my God, either he doesn't know what he's talking about, or he's being suckered, or they just threw us under the bus. And either way, the Iranian people are highly demoralized.

PHILLIP: Yes. I can definitely see that being the case.

Next for us, Rahm Emanuel says Israel doesn't have a problem with the Democratic Party. Israel has a problem in America. So, is that a sign of the future change for centrist Democrats?

And some breaking news, Graham Platner drops his bid for the Senate. What now for his supporters and the Maine Democratic Party? We'll debate that ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:20:00]

PHILLIP: Tonight, a turning point for mainstream Democrats on U.S.- Israel relations. Speaking in Tel Aviv, potential Democratic Presidential Candidate Rahm Emanuel said that unconditional U.S. support for Israel must end, warning that its leadership has turned into a territorial pariah.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EMANUEL: I want this to get across. Israel does not have a problem with the Democratic Party. Israel has a problem in America, and very specifically, a generational problem under 30. I don't know if you saw this, but there's a poll out today. Mamdani is more popular with American Jews than your prime minister. I want that to sink in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: He's right. That new poll out today shows that Netanyahu is at negative 17 points in terms of his favorability among American Jews while Mamdani is up by five points. And I know that's counterintuitive but given how many, you know, people are critical of Mamdani when it comes to Israel, but I think what it really shows is just how deeply underwater Netanyahu is, and that is Democrats, but it's also spreading to other parts of the electorate as well. MEIJER: Yes. And I think there's -- you know, Netanyahu doesn't make himself the most easy figure to like on the U.S. side of the house, and he's a very easy person to pin blame on for the consequences post- October 7th of the Israeli campaign.

But I think that also misses a point that the vast majority of what Netanyahu has done, maybe not the entirety of his cabinet, maybe not some specific actions, but 98 percent of the prosecution of the war would have been the same under any other Israeli government. If it was Yair Lapid, it probably would have been the same thing.

So, I don't know how much you can read into it that it's just one person as opposed to Netanyahu being a relatively easy person because of his association with Trump to say, you know, we're pinning it on him versus an alternative.

PHILLIP: Maybe, but it's not just the war, right? It's also this perception and maybe the reality because some of the reporting in Maggie and Jonathan's book, for example, indicates that even in the White House, the president is starting to believe that actually maybe Netanyahu doesn't want the war to end. Maybe he just wants to be fighting perpetually in a way that is counter to American interests.

HILL: Yes. I think people -- Israel has kind of a narrative issue in this country now. Obviously, you have people who have vast -- you know, vast access to a lot of information, so people are changing their minds and opinions in real time.

And I also think that there's a lot of people here who just don't like the idea or feel like we were talked into something, that feel like he had one over on the president and that he was somehow suckered into getting into this conflict.

[22:25:11]

And so people just don't like the idea of Israel running the shots for us and controlling what we do, and I think that's the perception, whether that is one rooted in fact or just one rooted in emotion. To a lot of outsiders, that's what it looks like, is that we're not calling the shots here and that Israel is the one determining our action instead of the other way around.

And given what this economy looks like right now, people see the vast amount of money that we're pouring into Israel, and they don't like it. They don't like the idea that we are single-handedly writing blank checks to this country, and people are asking a lot of questions about that.

TANDEN: I mean, I actually think this is a really crucial point, which is the fact that Marco Rubio, at the beginning of the war, pointed to Israel that there's been reporting that essentially Netanyahu talked the president in the Situation Room, talked him into this war, that the president himself is pointing fingers at the -- at Israel, basically saying they want to continue this war, that they -- he's calling them up to pull them back from Lebanon is a sign. I think the real problem here is that under Netanyahu, Israel has seemed like an aggressor nation and in a way that has undermined support for people. It's really pushing --

JENNINGS: Who was the aggressor on October the 7th, just for the record?

TANDEN: Absolutely, Hamas was the aggressor. But right now who did -- has Israel told the president, did -- I mean, this is the reporting, that Netanyahu told the president the war would be over in two weeks, that their regime would fall, that this would end.

And I think many people think he kind of pushed him into this war that the president has had to spend a lot of time trying to resolve. And I personally think that Israel's role in the war with Iran is actually another reason why so many Democrats have turned against us.

PHILLIP: Let me add just one more factor. I mean, here's Rahm Emanuel about the violence in the West Bank, which is also something that has accelerated under Netanyahu and especially post-October 7th. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EMANUEL: Your government has been complicit in the horrors now being inflicted on innocent families in the West Bank. That undermines your international legitimacy as a small nation at a time when you can least afford it.

The hard truth is that America's silence through the years has engendered the worst of your domestic politics.

To that end, if I have anything to say about this in the future, every Israeli found attacking Palestinian civilians or their property in the future will be sanctioned.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: So, Kian, you've long said October 7th changed everything and it certainly did in the region. It also changed a lot in the West Bank. It enabled a huge surge in violence against Palestinians and it also seems to have crushed any idea that maybe there could be a world in which Palestinians can live safely and in peace in the West Bank or in Gaza, or, yes, in Gaza.

TAJBAKHSH: Yes. Look, my views on Israel are deeply shaped by my experience with the Iranian regime. I was always, you know, like looking at the question of Israel from a realist perspective until I spent many months, many years under the boot, literally, of the IRGC as a political prisoner.

When I looked them in the eye and they told me how important the destruction of the state of Israel is to them, I came to believe it in a way that I hadn't before. And in other words, many people said, well, this is not actually a very ideological thing. Iran needs to do this. They need to support Hezbollah, for example, so that would be a first line of defense if Israel wants to attack Iran. And none of that made any sense. In fact, it seems to me that the issue of Netanyahu's government is a government, and I'm not entering into domestic Israeli politics here at all, but what I hear when I talk with Israeli policymakers or Israeli students, and I've been teaching at Columbia University for the last ten years, and I was there on October 7th, so I have a lot of stories to tell there, but I'm astonished by the way, and I think it's coming through this, I think, I'm astonished by the way the narrative in which Israel is the aggressor has become so dominant in the United States and especially among young people.

The question of the West Bank, the question of Gaza, the question of the Houthis, these are all a linked form under the Iranian regime. And they're designed to strangle Israel and ultimately eliminated.

And I think coming back to your point, which I agree, I think that any leader in Israel, whether it be Netanyahu or anybody -- and Yair Lapid actually just the other day, he said that he criticized Netanyahu for not continuing the bombing. And so any leader of Israel, I think, quite apart from any kind of coalition politics or right-wing politics or domestic politics, realizes that Iran is an existential threat and that it has to be dealt with.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: We do have to leave it there.

Next for us, breaking news, Graham Platner has suspended his campaign and denies the allegations against him. What that late exit means for Democrats in Maine as they scramble for a replacement.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:35:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIP: Breaking news tonight, Graham Platner is suspending his bid for Maine Senate, clearing the way for Democrats to choose a new candidate in one of the most consequential races that could decide who controls the chamber in November. Platner made the announcement just days after facing accusations of rape, which he denies.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRAHAM PLATNER (D), FORMER MAINE SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: We are suspending campaign operations. This is incredibly difficult, because I know that some will think it's an admission of guilt, and it most certainly is not.

We're not doing it because of the allegations. We're doing it because of the structures that are being taken away from us by those in power. And I also feel an immense amount of responsibility to everyone who has worked so hard to get us to where we are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Platner had been under immense pressure to drop out as his initial support crumbled. We're told behind the scenes Platner worked with staffers to navigate that exit.

Maine's Democratic Party says it's approved a plan to hold a nominating convention to replace Platner. And several candidates are already jockeying to try to fill that spot.

Brad Polumbo joins us at the table. Several candidates hitting the airwaves tonight, they've already declared. But what do you make of how Graham Platner exited and how long it took him to do that?

BRAD POLUMBO, CO-FOUNDER, BASEDPOLITICS, AUTHOR, AND JOURNALIST: Well, I just got my little violin out for him. You've got to feel so bad. He's playing the victim. It was really probably AIPAC that made him get a Nazi tattoo, lie about it for years.

It was probably AIPAC that made him allegedly physically abuse a Republican woman he is today. And it was probably AIPAC or the establishment or something that made this latest accusation. I think he's disgraceful.

I genuinely think that's one of the worst, I don't even know, announcement videos I've ever seen. No accountability, no reflection, just a weird combination of backing away but also denying the allegation, not even standing on business.

This whole thing is such a black eye for the Democratic Party writ large, though. It's not just him. They're doing the right thing eventually. But where was this energy when Lindsey Fifield came forward?

Yes, she's a Republican operative. Doesn't mean she couldn't be a victim. She had contemporaneous corroboration, the Graham Platner that she said at the time physically abused her and locked her in a room.

That should have been enough for the Believe Women Democrats. Zohran didn't withdraw the endorsement, didn't withdraw support. Bernie didn't.

What are we doing here?

PHILLIP: Look, I think that for some Democrats, for sure, it was enough. And that's what the Civil War in the party was for a while there. And now those, the Bernie Sanders' of the world, the Ro Khannas, they have egg on their face, quite literally, tonight.

Because also, there's a lack of contrition, for sure. He denies the allegations. He doesn't even really address the women that have come forward.

I shouldn't say doesn't really. He did not address them in this 11- minute video.

NEERA TANDEN, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS, AND FORMER SENIOR ADVISER TO PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: He called them liars, basically, because he said everything's false.

PHILLIP: Yes. SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, AND FORMER AIDE TO

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Yes, he did. And while he was being supported through all the things that Brad was talking about, Democrats like Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and on and on kept saying that, oh, he's gotten over the rough patch in his life.

You know, he's apologized, Ro Khanna, he's on a redemption. You're bringing redemption to our nation. So they were willing to overlook or believe all of his explanations up until now.

The only thing that changed is that he's no longer politically viable. His poll numbers went down to the point where it wasn't politically palatable to say that this redemption tour was going to be good for America anymore.

I think you're right. He's never actually taken accountability for any of these things. The Democrats knew 98 percent of the things we knew about Graham Platner, we knew before the Democrats voted in the primary in Maine, and they still voted for him.

TANDEN: 98 percent of the left. Look, there were lots of Democrats who had some concerns, I definitely get yelled at for my concerns. So I want to be clear about that.

I have to say, I'm not going to accept lectures from people who support Donald Trump, who was credibly accused by 13 women of sexual assault for listening to women. Okay.

Other people can talk about this, but people who stand up for Trump every day as he's faced those assaults on any side should not be throwing egg at the Democratic Party. It is unfortunate that some people were willing to look past some of these things. But the Democratic Party has done something different than the Republican Party, which is they have -- let me finish -- they are finally acting against a candidate who is credibly accused.

[22:40:05]

He's not found guilty, but credibly accused of assault. And that is very different than what has happened under Donald Trump's presidency and the Republican Party.

POLUMBO: I was just going to ask, honestly, Scott, Peter, maybe you can answer this.

As an independent, I really feel like everyone's abandoned any pretense of character in politics, but I do agree Republicans have been particularly egregious at that. And when we have this serious corroborated allegation against Graham Platner, but you have dozens of accusations against Donald Trump, one of them was litigated. You have a court finding against him.

Isn't that significant more weight behind accusations against Donald Trump than there even is against Graham Platner? How can one be disqualifying but not both? JENNINGS: Well, I think, I mean, the President would say there isn't

serious corroboration.

TANDEN: I mean, there's a judgment by a jury, a federal jury.

JENNINGS: And the person who accused him couldn't even remember when it happened.

PHILLIP: Well, at the same time, Trump identified the person who accused him as his ex-wife in part in those proceedings. But what do you say? I mean, you said what Trump would say. What would you say?

JENNINGS: My view is this. If there is serious allegations, if there's serious evidence of corroboration, everybody has to take responsibility --

PHILLIP: To Brad's point, those are serious allegations. Those are serious allegations and then if you add to the, look, I don't want to, it's not a, I think it is just a fair question that if you're going to be throwing the book at Graham Platner, not just about what the women have accused him of, but also about his own statements about women and rape, then you should at the very least have a look at Donald Trump. He's on video saying that he could grab women by their genitals.

PETER MEIJER (R), FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE, MICHIGAN, FOUNDING PARTNER AND HEAD OF STRATEGY, THE NEW INDUSTRIAL CORPORATION: Have we not played that video 15,000 times?

PHILLIP: That's exactly the point.

MEIJER: And the American people voted.

PHILLIP: I think that's what Graham Platner is arguing, is that the Maine voters voted. And that's what Democrats said. Actually, no, that's not good enough.

We are not a good enough candidate to hold this job. And that's a different position.

TANDEN: He was running even.

MEIJER: But let me be very clear about what happened. There were --

JENNINGS: No, he's losing now.

MEIJER: Jen Raskin and Lindsay Fifield, they both said, and this, some of this is going back several months. This guy is a creep.

Do not trust him. He's bad.

TANDEN: There were 13 women who said they were assaulted by Trump.

MEIJER: We're talking about Graham Platner because he dropped out tonight. We've been talking about Donald Trump for the past 10 minutes.

TANDEN: No, I'm so sorry. You do not get to throw stones at a Democratic party when you have stood by Donald Trump.

MEIJER: I'm talking about the media right now. I'm talking about the media and the fact that these women were not believed. It got to the point where Lindsay Fifield had to say, he took off a condom while he was having sex with me.

She had to leave, give those details.

TANDEN: It is horrible that that had to happen. You are 100 percent right. It is horrible.

POLUMBO: So Peter, can't we talk about how terrible that is?

MEIJER: That was what it took for them to actually get believed.

POLUMBO: The Republicans in the media accounts are controlling people on X and saying, if you voted for Platner, you voted for a rapist, which in fairness to the Platner voters, they didn't know about this accusation when they voted for him in the primary. There's just something very tone deaf when you've just rallied around Trump on every single thing.

JEMELE HILL, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, "THE ATLANTIC": It's the hypocrisy level. But I hope this is frankly --

MEIJER: I hope this isn't glass houses. It's politics.

HILL: Yes, but glass houses are racist.

TANDEN: You shouldn't do that yourself.

MEIJER: Eric Swalwell, Tony Gonzalez. We have these people.

TANDEN: And they're terribly gotten rid of them.

HILL: That's why they're gone. But this is a bigger problem.

The bigger problem was the premise that a lot of people supported Graham Platner around of trying to come to terms with this idea of maybe the Democrats should run the Republican game plan. That was what I always rejected about this. Like Democrats have to stop holding everybody up to a purity test.

Okay. I agree to some extent, but Nazi tattoo. And then all of the rest of the signs all pointed to the fact that they were trying to run a bad play from the beginning.

PHILLIP: All right. We're going to leave it there. We'll be right back after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:45:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) PHILLIP: Tonight, Donald Trump departed from Turkey on an old Air Force One plane and not the new Qatari gifted jet. The "New York Times" reports that this came at the urging of Secret Service as a precaution related to the resumption of hostilities with Iran. Trump offered little clarity on the swap when he was asked today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Do you think there wasn't a security concern?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: No.

REPORTER: Do you know why they had us close our window blinds? That was unusual.

TRUMP: Well, yes, because you're, you know, probably on a dangerous flight because of the sleazebags that we have to deal with.

REPORTER: Do you think that Iran was possibly thinking about that?

TRUMP: Well, I mean, if they asked you to close your windows, probably they'd feel that way. They didn't ask me to close mine, but if they did, I would have done it.

REPORTER: Were you aware of any credible threat by Iran against Air Force One?

TRUMP: Well, I have a threat all the time.

I'm number one on their list before you. But if I go, you go. Right?

REPORTER: But was there a specific threat today?

TRUMP: Perhaps someday you want to change professions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Trump later boarded the new Air Force One at Royal Air Force Middle Hall, a base that was used by the U.S. troops. The Times is also reporting that people briefed on the plane's capabilities.

[22:50:03]

The new Qatari plane say that it does not have the capabilities of the normal Air Force One planes, including sensitive security features that made this precaution necessary. Not necessarily a specific threat, but the general issue that they rushed the retrofit of this plane at great expense. And it's still not up to stock.

HILL: Yes, not to mention the optics of the fact that a lot of people at the time had a lot of questions about what exactly gifting that plane, what kind of currency that was getting the Qatari government with the President. So there were ethical concerns about this throughout.

But in general, I mean, just this is bothersome for me as just a citizen, is that seeing his callousness and seeing his flippancy about something that's very serious, which is we're talking about being the enemy of another country and putting people's lives in danger. It's like this is not the time for all that jokey stuff.

There are people's real lives that are being affected by the decisions that you're making. And people would like to have some sense of confidence that you're actually someone who's fit for the leadership that comes with handling the position that you're in. And a lot of times I just do not get that sense from him that he understands the gravity in which what we are dealing with.

POLUMBO: And this was the concern to be shot at a few times. And we'll probably get to that. That's just the way he is.

PHILLIP: But this was the concern to begin with --

HILL: At least not for me.

PHILLIP: In addition to the ethical concerns, this was the concern to begin with about this Qatari plane was that there's a reason Air Force One takes a long time to become Air Force One. And it's because it's a military-grade plane that has state-of-the-art capabilities that are designed to keep the leader of the free world safe.

And if they felt like they could keep him safe on that plane, they would have kept him on that plane. But they didn't.

JENNINGS: Yes, I think there's probably a big difference between flying around U.S. airspace and flying around overseas, number one. Number two, I think the President ought to be in whatever conveyance, wherever he is, on the ground or in the air, in whatever the security people say he has to be in.

So if he has to switch planes for this particular flight, that's what you have to do. And if they can use this new Air Force One when they're in the United States, that's what, if that's safe, that's what they, I guess that's what they should be able to do.

PHILLIP: What was it? $400 million retrofitting a plane that he can only really use safely in the continental United States?

MEIJER: In fact, I mean, so this, the VC-25A bridge that we're talking about, the Qatari plane, that's supplementing the two existing Air Force One 747s, the kind of original models are close to 40 years old. The new ones were supposed to be delivered several years ago. They're running behind.

So this is a bridge. To your point, it does take a long time because there are very sensitive countermeasures against all types of threats that take a lot of time and are going to be highly classified. When you're in an area where you need those countermeasures, it makes a lot of sense to use the ones that don't.

PHILLIP: Yes, but I guess that's my bridge.

MEIJER: Because the reliability of the 40-year-old plane is -- TANDEN: The ones that's protecting him right now, the ones that's the

super-protecting him right now.

PHILLIP: The time that it takes.

JENNINGS: The downtime he has to use.

PHILLIP: The time that it takes to make the plane safe. He criticized that time. It is a, it is necessary time to make the plane safe.

You either want a plane that can do what it's supposed to do, or you don't. The idea that there needs to be a bridge just because he would like a nicer plane, that is just a Donald Trump thing.

MEIJER: He means reliable plane.

TANDEN: Other presidents have been relying on these two planes, I guess, I think.

MEIJER: For 40 years, going back and forth.

JENNINGS: We can get him a horse and a buggy if you want. What does he only have to?

PHILLIP: I don't know. Can we all agree on that?

HILL: I hope we can all agree on that.

POLUMBO: That he shouldn't be gifted from foreign governments.

JENNINGS: Gifted to the United States.

POLUMBO: Yes, from Qatar. Maybe we should have, we should pay for our own planes. Avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

Because that would seem a little bit, be negotiating with these leaders, and they're also gifting you multi-million dollar planes. A little bit conflict of interest-y.

TANDEN: Could seem like a bribe.

JENNINGS: What's the payoff?

TANDEN: I don't know.

PHILLIP: I guess we cannot agree on that.

All right, next for us, a new addition to the table. You at home are going to read some of your feedback when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIP: We've got some viewer feedback from CNN.com/Abby.

A lot of folks weighing in on gas prices across the country. It's almost like a little insta-survey.

Here's one person who says, I just paid $4.70 per gallon in Alaska. Almost a dollar more than before the war. I thought gas prices were supposed to be lower in Alaska, but I guess not.

POLUMBO: Shipping is refining.

PHILLIP: Another said, I paid $4.68 today in Illinois, and another said, gas in San Diego is $5.39 with cash.

JENNINGS: California.

TANDEN: In Alaska. Interesting.

JENNINGS: National gas prices current average, according to AAA, $3.79.

PHILLIP: Yes.

JENNINGS: Now, that's the national average.

PHILLIP: Yes. And the national average of gas when Trump took the oath of office, it was $3.07. So we are about 70-something cents above where we were a year ago.

JENNINGS: In Kentucky, $3.37. That's where I live. My dad paid $2.79 in Southern Indiana the other day.

So it varies widely based on where you live.

PHILLIP: That's why we use averages.

TANDEN: People concerned about this are obviously whining. But you would admit some states do things that make the price of gas much higher. California being the number one.

[23:00:07]

PHILLIP: California is the worst--

Alright, we have a new show coming up. "Confessions and Obsessions," drops tomorrow, including some familiar faces to reveal things that they want to get off their chest and some things that they can't stop thinking about. You can stream it now at cnn.com/confessionsandobsessions or on the CNN app.

Thanks very much for watching "NewsNight". "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.