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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
ICE Halts Most Traffic Stops After Deaths, A Reversal In Tactics; U.S. Launches New Strikes On Iran As Blockade Of Strait Resumes; Trump's Rhetoric Raises Questions About Iran Endgame; Donald Trump To Address The Nation Tomorrow Night On Free and Fair Elections; Scott Bessent Teases New Dollar Coin featuring Donald Trump's Face As The New $100 Bill Bearing Trump's Signature Unveiled. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired July 14, 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 president says all options are on the table in Iran.
REPORTER: Are you ruling out a ground campaign?
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I would say no if I thought it was appropriate.
PHILLIP: As strikes intensify, the question remains, what's the endgame?
Plus, after two deadly ICE shootings in less than a week, a change in tactics, most ICE vehicle stops suspended.
ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: It's about time.
PHILLIP: But is that the root of the problem?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The real problem is the pressure for them to make more arrests more quickly.
PHILLIP: Also --
TRUMP: It's really big news.
PHILLIP: The president teases big news in his primetime speech on Thursday. But is it going to be a rehash of his old election grievances?
TRUMP: Our country has to shape up.
PHILLIP: And the treasury secretary's show and tell. We can put living people's images on a coin. He says Calvin Coolidge had a coin for the 150th, so Trump should too.
Live at the table, Ashley Allison, Scott Jennings, Joe Borelli, Yemisi Egbewole, and Ana Navarro. 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, after two deadly ICE-involved shootings and countless questions, the Department of Homeland Security is making changes to its immigration policies. First, ICE is pausing most traffic stops, and, second, each ICE arrest team plans to have one agent wearing a body camera.
Now, the changes are coming after a week in which ICE officers in Texas killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. He's a Mexican immigrant. And days later, in the state of Maine, an agent killed Joan Sebastian Duran Guerrero, who was from Colombia.
Now, neither men were targets of the ICE operations, and agents did not have body cameras in either of those incidents.
Protests are now erupting across the country, and memorials are growing in Houston. Salgado Araujo's son visited the spot where his father died. And in Biddeford, Maine, a witness told Portland Herald that after she heard the gunshots yesterday, she saw a man on the ground, and she heard cries from a family, including a child. That witness says that the child couldn't have been more than three years old. She was still dressed in her Bluey pajamas. People are now leaving Bluey-themed stuffed animals to remember her father.
Now, before we open it up to the conversation here at the table, I do want to invite you to join us at home. Head to cnn.com/abby, and you can weigh in. We'll get to some of your comments throughout the show.
But just to, you know, underscore how unusual and really significant it is that ICE has -- as a result of both of these really tragic incidents, they've changed their policy. And, frankly, it's a policy that has been problematic from the beginning. In both of these incidents, ICE officers appeared to shoot the driver of a moving vehicle, and in both incidents, it was not someone that they were looking for.
ANA NAVARRO, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. And it's -- you know, it's not just a Mexican immigrant, the one that died last week in Houston. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo is a father, a husband, a hardworking man who had been in this country for 35 years, who was on his way to work when he was incorrectly targeted. They were targeting somebody else.
And it's kind of amazing that given that case just a few days ago, within seven days, we see it happen again in Maine with -- this time, it was a Colombian immigrant, Joan Sebastian Guerrero. His three-year- old was in the car wearing her little pink backpack. She saw five bullets pumped into her father's head. They dragged him out of the car. They handcuffed a dead man as his bloodied head hit the pavement. And then we see this pattern over and over with ICE, right, where they pretend that these people weaponize their cars despite the fact that we see the video, and we know that that's not true, where they are targeting the wrong people. Neither of these two had criminal records, and most of the people that are getting detained and deported by ICE, and by most I mean over 70 percent, don't have any criminal record.
[22:05:08]
And so this -- supposedly, there have been policy changes after Minnesota when we saw two blonde, blue-eyed U.S. citizens killed in the streets of Minneapolis. And now, months later, it's happening again.
And it feels -- you know what it feels like for a person of color, for Latina immigrant? It feels like we are being hunted down by our government with impunity and absolutely zero accountability.
PHILLIP: So, I mean, to Ana's point, I mean, the issues with these types of vehicular stops have been there for a long time. And, in fact, in this Maine incident, they said that he was shot because there was a perceived threat to public safety. There's not a lot of information to support that. But one thing that is a threat to public safety is a moving vehicle with a deceased driver in it, which is one of the reasons that you really don't shoot and kill the person driving a moving car.
So, where is the accountability and even acknowledgement that there's a problem here from just -- even from just a straight policing perspective?
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think the acknowledgement is pretty clear. They've paused traffic stops, at least temporarily and we'll see how long that lasts. I think the -- you know, every stop is different, I think. But one thing that should be the same, they should all be wearing body cameras. And I know that the provisions have been made to send them body cameras. I know they're going to have at least one body camera on every team. I can't help but think that the repeated shutdowns of the Department of Homeland Security caused a delay in getting these things deployed. But no matter, body cameras here would help the public a tremendous amount.
Now, in the case of Maine, you know, there is no video. There is at least one witness who says the person disobeyed repeated commands to stop, but we don't really know. And so I hesitate to jump to conclusions on it other than to say this, every loss of life in any of these interactions is extremely regrettable. And it's not anything any of us should wish for. But figuring out what happened after the fact should be a lot easier than it is, and it would be made easier if the body cameras were deployed.
NAVARRO: Scott, there is some video, and there's also there's also eyewitnesses who -- you know, who witnessed the driver saying, I tried to stop, eyewitnesses who saw the little three-year-old in the back of the car. I mean, you are a father. The idea that this three-year-old is going to have to live the rest of her life with the image of her father's bloodied head because these ICE officers shot straight into this car. You see the bullets in the windshield, and killed her father in front of her with her in the backseat. It's outrageous that that is happening in the United States of America.
ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think all of this was actually preventable. I've been working on police reform issues since I came out of law school. We've known body cameras are not the final solution, but when I was at the White House and Michael Brown was murdered or Philando Castile was murdered, Philando Castile's daughter also saw them murdered in cold blood by a police officer, and body cameras should have been implemented if you're going to deploy law enforcement.
Well, I struggle to even call ICE law enforcement, but deploy ICE into communities at an aggressive rate in which they did having quotas. This was avoidable, but this was an overreach. This was a go-round folks up. And, quite honestly, I do think from the top down, from Donald Trump to the Supreme Court to Kristi Noem, to Markwayne Mullin, to Tom Homan, there has been this guilty until presumed innocent, and that is not actually how this country works when it has dealt with black folks, but also now that it is brown people and this immigrants rights justice as well.
YEMISI EGBEWOLE, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF AND ADVISER, BIDEN WHITE HOUSE PRESS OFFICE: And to talk about Kristi Noem, and we talk about Greg Bovino, remember him, there was also this idea right after January that this was a leadership issue. It was the way that Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski, it was the environment and the culture that had manifested in DHS. And so you cut off the snake's head, you send her off to be a special envoy wherever, and you bring in somebody else, and now we will see a culture change.
But when you try to amass this many officers in such a short amount of time and then you set these goals of 2,000 per day, these situations are going to keep happening. I think it's really going to be up to Markwayne Mullin to figure out a way to --
ALLISON: And the other thing I would just say about that -- just real quick, is that we were also told that these things were happening in blue states because Tim Walz or the governor or the mayor in Minneapolis wouldn't help them. This also happened in Texas.
So, this is not about where these things are happening. This is about the policy that is being implemented by this government is aggressive and will cause people to lose their lives.
PHILLIP: It is actually a, an important point, because in Texas, it wasn't just that it happened in Texas, it happened in coordination with local law enforcement.
[22:10:01]
ALLISON: Exactly, yes.
PHILLIP: And it still didn't make them more accurate in terms of who they were targeting. It still didn't make it so that the actual practice of what they were doing in that moment was something that was in the interest of public safety. So, it does kind of undermine that argument.
JOE BORELLI, FORMER REPUBLICAN LEADER, NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL: Look, you know, you mentioned people shouldn't be presumed guilty before they're proven guilty, and I think that goes two ways. I think that also goes for law enforcement officers who, more often than not, are involved, when they are involved in shootings, are justified shootings. The minority of cases of police-involved shootings are criminal or done against policy.
That said, when you have two incidents like this in a week, both related to a traffic stop and the perception that there was some threat of physical violence from the car itself, certainly, there needs to be some sort of policy change or an investigation. I think Homan's doing the right thing by pausing this in the interim while they can staff up on body cameras, while they can review the changes because that's the right thing to do.
We also can't pretend like this is something that only existed in the Trump administration. There were police-involved shootings during the Biden administration, and I pulled one of the more controversial ones. It was in Provo, Utah, in 2023, and I looked at what happened. It was the same policy being followed where the FBI took the lead on the investigation first and then allowed the local Utah attorney general and other law enforcement agencies to follow suit.
So, what's happening right now is following the precedent of previous law enforcement police-involved shooting investigations, and we should let that play out. If the cops are guilty -- if the cops are guilty -- I just want to be clear. If they're guilty of something wrong, I think they should be punished.
PHILLIP: Let me ask you a question. Do you think we ought to know who the officers were who were involved in this?
BORELLI: I'm sure we will. I mean, this has --
PHILLIP: You're sure we will? Because we still don't know who was involved in either of the incidents in Minneapolis. It's been seven, eight months.
BORELLI: If there is a criminal indictment of these officers, yes, I think their names should be public, just like everyone else.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: But same question. I mean, you're saying just let the process play out. It's been seven months. We don't know. We don't have a name.
Just going back to Minneapolis, no name, no sense that there's been any report done about what happened here, no actual, you know, thorough investigation. There's been nothing.
ALLISON: Inconsistencies in stories. I think the other -- to your point, Joe, yes, let the investigation play out. But the distrust that is being built in this country right now because of the inconsistencies from the people that should be actually doing the investigation gives us great alarm.
BORELLI: We haven't seen the eyewitness statements from the officers. We've had a statement from the DOJ. We had a statement from CBP and ICE, et cetera. We haven't -- we've only heard the eyewitness statements and I have no reason to doubt them. I'm not going to prejudge them. Maybe they're accurate. But we only have those statements from the witnesses who were in the car with the victim.
PHILLIP: Yes, it's on the government to get us the eyewitness statements from their officers. Because trust me --
BORELLI: It's not the government's role to meet the media's need. It's the government's role to meet the investigators' need, not to appease the people at this table.
PHILLIP: We want their perspective. We actually want to know what they say happened.
BORELLI: We don't want to appease people on political panels on T.V.
PHILLIP: But the problem is that we aren't getting anything from them.
(CROSSTALKS)
ALLISON: but this is our government. They actually do need -- they do answer to me. Actually, I'm a voter. I'm a citizen in this country and a taxpayer. And so --
BORELLI: The proceedings of a grand jury in all cases are secretive and deliberative, right? But they're not --
ALLISON: But we're not just some like willy-nilly observers. Like this is our country.
BORELLI: It is not the priority of an investigation to make sure --
NAVARRO: But who's going to indict them? Who's going to proceed to a grand jury?
PHILLIP: And just one last point. I mean --
NAVARRO: Joe, do you think Donald Trump's DOJ is going to indict, do a grand jury investigation --
BORELLI: They're following the same protocols --
NAVARRO: -- when we don't even know --
BORELLI: -- that were in place during the Biden administration, during Trump 1 --
NAVARRO: That's just not true.
BORELLI: -- during the Obama administration.
PHILLIP: So, here's what's different about this.
BORELLI: The laws about police-involved shootings have not changed.
NAVARRO: Time and time again, we have seen incidents. I remember being on this panel with Scott, and I remember you having a very strong reaction to a case that happened where there was supposedly a Venezuelan immigrant that had pounded an immigration agent with a shovel. That's what Immigration told us. That's what ICE told us. And months later, the truth came out, and video came out, and that had not been -- that was not what happened.
JENNINGS: Actually, it wasn't months later, it was days later. And I think that particular incident, and I think we talked about it here, that was extraordinarily damaging because the statements of the officers in that case they came out right away, were absolutely not true.
Now, what also happened is the Department of Homeland Security and the White House immediately acknowledged it. They said it was a lie, and they said they were moving on disciplinary and, I think, other actions against the officers, which was also the right thing to do.
But to Joe's point just because this happened, and it is extremely regrettable when anyone dies, taking the side against the police officer in every single case is not right. They do have a right here. They have rights, too. The people involved have rights. Everybody here has rights, but that doesn't stop at the cops. They have rights, and they're in a very difficult situation.
PHILLIP: Listen, I think that that's right, but you have to acknowledge that, let's think back to Minnesota, for example, the White House and the administration prejudged those cases. They made it very clear they were not going to investigate, that they -- that the victims --
[22:15:03]
NAVARRO: They called them domestic terrorists when they were still --
PHILLIP: -- that the victims were perpetrators. So, they prejudged those cases. And I think that's one of the reasons why there is so much of a push for more accountability, because they stay silent and then they denigrate the victims, and they don't provide the other side of the story so that the evidence can speak for itself.
ALLISON: Abby, they do more than just put off -- make statements that could be diminishing to the victims. They tell lies. They actually say things, and then they immediately contradict themselves. And I do think we need to be able to hold our appointed, confirmed cabinet secretaries to a standard that they are truthful to the American people when a citizen or a human is murdered because of the policies they have put in place, and I don't feel like we get that from this current administration.
PHILLIP: All right. We'll leave that there.
Next for us, Trump renews his threats to Iran, even leaving ground troops as an option, but what is his endgame here?
Plus, the president says that his prime time speech on Thursday is going to contain really, really big news, and elections are going to be the centerpiece, but which ones is he talking about?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, with the ceasefire in tatters, Donald Trump is all over the place on Iran, relying on familiar threats and old tactics. The U.S. military's naval blockade of Iranian ports went back into effect just hours ago, and it was followed by additional U.S. strikes in Southern Iran, according to Iranian state media.
Iran's claims that they have struck U.S. military assets in Jordan, including an area where F-18 fighter jets are stationed, have not been independently verified by CNN.
Now, the rapid escalation comes a day after Trump said that the U.S. would act as a guardian of the Strait of Hormuz. But the president's endgame for the war remains entirely unclear. In an interview tonight, Trump again threatened to bomb Iran to submission if they don't negotiate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We're going to hit them very hard tomorrow night. We're going to hit them very hard the night after. And then next week it gets really bad for them because next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges. We're going to knock out all their power plants. We're going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you believe the Iranians are serious about making a deal?
TRUMP: I think they have no choice.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why haven't they yet?
TRUMP: I think if I didn't do the way I'm doing, they would never make a deal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And in addition to the specific, Trump again threatened the apocalyptic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: You better make a deal. You're not going to have any -- you're not going to have anybody left. We're being very careful with the civilian population, as you know. But I said, you better make a deal. You're not going to have anything left.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you think they will?
TRUMP: They should. I don't know if they will or not.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Joining us now in our fifth seat is Max Boot. He's a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of "Reagan: His Life and Legend".
Max we've heard a lot of this before from President Trump. Any sense of whether any of it is to be believed?
MAX BOOT, SENIOR FELLOW, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: It's really hard to take seriously anything that Trump says, Abby. I mean, look at what happened just this week. Yesterday, he says, I'm going to start charging a 20 percent toll on traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Today, he says, never mind.
I mean, no wonder it's so hard to negotiate with him, and no wonder that they're we're having so much trouble getting an agreement with the Iranians this late because he changes his mind basically every day. He throws things out there, he takes them back.
Obviously, the Iranians are no better. They're no more sincere in their negotiating style. So, you have two very duplicitous, untrustworthy parties trying to negotiate an agreement. No wonder that the agreement they reached in mid-June blew up. And now, of course, Trump is back to recycling golden oldies, his threats against Iran.
We all remember in early April when he threatened that an entire civilization will die tonight. That was a prelude to a ceasefire, of course, with Iran. Now, he's back to once again threatening to kill lots of Iranians, blow up infrastructure, destroy power plants and so forth.
Is he serious this time? Nobody knows. But one thing we can be certain of is that if he carries out these threats, Iran will retaliate. They're not going to take it sitting down. They still have the capacity to do a lot of damage, not only to traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, but to energy infrastructure throughout the Persian Gulf region, even to desalinization plants.
And so if Trump carries out these threats, Iran will probably carry out their threats, and the energy shock that we saw in recent months will get much, much worse.
PHILLIP: So, Scott, I mean, does Trump know what his endgame is?
JENNINGS: Well, I think he, he wants the end game to be a world where Iran comes to its senses and makes a deal and chooses to act rationally.
PHILLIP: Why would they do that if they've -- I mean, Trump has tried all these things before. Why would they do that? JENNINGS: The idea that this particular regime would act rationally has always been a lesser percentage chance. So, I guess the end game then shifts to, okay, what can we do from a military side to try to bring them round? He's reinstituted the naval blockade, which I think before actually was quite promising. You know, we didn't have ongoing military strikes, but we did have a blockade that was, I think, pretty harmful to Iran. But you have to exercise time and patience with a blockade, and we'll see how much time and patience the administration has for it.
[22:25:06]
You know, the president previously ran out of patience when the Iranians kept violating the memorandum of understanding, and he seems to be out of patience with them today. I don't blame him.
Also, I disagree with Max. I don't think there's any equivalence between the United States and Iran when it comes to our credibility, our military power, our values, and what we stand for on the world stage. To say that there's some equivalence between these two countries, I think, is ridiculous.
PHILLIP: Well, I mean, I think --
BOOT: As usual, you're mischaracterizing what I said, Scott. I wasn't saying there was --
JENNINGS: You said they were the same.
BOOT: No, I did not say there was any moral --
JENNINGS: We'll roll the tape later, Max.
BOOT: No.
JENNINGS: You said equally duplicitous.
BOOT: No.
JENNINGS: You said equally duplicitous.
BOOT: What I said, Scott, let's try to set the record straight. I did not say there was any kind of moral equivalence between the United States and Iran. Iran is an abhorrent regime. What I suggested is that the leaders of both countries are duplicitous in their negotiating styles and can't be trusted, which is why it's so hard for them to reach a peace treaty.
JENNINGS: Thank you for restating my correct argument. I mean --
ALLISON: That's not the same thing.
PHILLIP: Well, yes, I mean, it's not. It's really not the same thing. I mean, how they negotiate, I think, is the big issue here. Trump is, every day, changing his mind about what the objectives are, what the goalposts are, what his red lines are, and Iran, presumptively, is doing the same.
So, how do you get two parties to the table where nobody's really sure if anybody is really on the up and up?
BORELLI: I think, unfortunately, at this point, the only way to bring the Iranians to the table with any sincerity is to make the partisans in Iran, the IRGC and other hardliners, adopt the same position of some of the Araghchi and Ghalibaf who are more willing to negotiate. And I think the only way to do that might be with continued military strikes.
The fundamental problem with the MOU was that there was a, you know, vagueness in the Lebanon situation where each side could allow a tit- for-tat, where Hezbollah was able to fire rockets, Israel would respond. And the other big vagueness was Article 5, where it wasn't clear whether Iran actually has control, and they've used that now to basically say, we're no longer following the MOU. That was a problem. And that's not going to be resolved, I think, until the U.S. continues to blockade.
PHILLIP: Those two are certainly problems with the MOU, but one of the bigger problems with the MOU is that there are actually absolutely no real concessions in the MOU from Iran, and only concessions from the United States.
And I still don't understand. Trump keeps talking more bombing, okay? He even was asked about ground troops. Let's play what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you still intend to take Kharg Island?
TRUMP: So, I can't say that to you because if I did it would be foolish, right? But it'd be nice, it would make a little headlines, but it would be foolish. But I'll tell you about Kharg Island. So, we've already --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you ruling out a ground campaign in a limited capacity?
TRUMP: Well, I don't want to say that either, but I would say no if I thought it was appropriate. I'd say sometimes you need a ground campaign, but we have other people that will do the ground campaign for us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JENNINGS: Why would you take any options off the table?
PHILLIP: Who is he talking about?
ALLISON: Who will do the ground campaign for us?
PHILLIP: Who's going to do it for us?
ALLISON: Who's going to do that? JENNINGS: No, he's saying that we have other military assets.
PHILLIP: No. He said, we have other people that will do the ground campaign for us. That's what he said.
JENNINGS: What I understood him to mean was that we have different ways of getting the outcomes that we want. And, by the way, Israel does sit in the region over there dealing with this as well. But no matter, why would you take any options off the table in a television interview? It's crazy.
PHILLIP: I think if Trump is really putting ground troops on the table, that is a profoundly --
JENNINGS: Why would you ever tell the enemy, I won't do this and I won't do that?
PHILLIP: That is a profoundly unpopular.
Well, I guess, let's put it the other way. Iran knows that ground troops are not really on the table. They read the same polls that we do, okay? They're not stupid. They understand that there's domestic politics that Trump has to deal with.
BORELLI: We had a brief incursion --
PHILLIP: So, I don't see why would Iran even take that seriously.
ALLISON: But I take issue --
JENNINGS: Are you mad that he wouldn't take it off the table or that he would?
ALLISON: Well, I think ground troops is something that this president said that he wasn't going to do. I don't think the American people want to send American soldiers in to fight this regime. I also just want to point out that I feel like there is just a casual passing by of an elimination or the killing of civilians to meet our outcome. He has said that before.
BORELLI: Like the seven or eight that were killed by Iran in strikes on boats in the Strait of Hormuz over the past week?
ALLISON: I'm saying I want to hold --
BORELLI: I think this is why the U.S. should reengage with hitting back --
ALLISON: I want to hold my president to a different standard than the Iranian regime. And we should. And I think that he lately --
BORELLI: Yes, by not operating terrorist proxies, by not developing nuclear weapons and proxies to eliminate other countries over that.
ALLISON: So, Joe, are you okay if we just blanket kill civilians in Iran? BORELLI: We're not blanket killing every -- you're living a hypothetical that is not true and not happening.
ALLISON: I'm not living a hypothetical. I can -- I have ears and I heard what the president just said in that interview, and you heard it too, and then you also read it on Easter Day.
BORELLI: Carpet bombing residential neighborhoods, he's not doing that.
[22:30:01]
ALLISON: But he's saying he --
BORELLI: To frame it as though the president of the United States is just indiscriminately bombing civilians --
ALLISON: I didn't say he would.
BORELLI: -- is wrong. It's wrong to kind of say that.
ALLISON: I didn't say he is right now. Just on this point, did he present it as an option in that interview and does that make you comfortable?
BORELLI: He presented the option of bombing power plants, no, power plants and bridges.
ALLISON: And people. And their people.
BORELLI: And he said, he teased the apocalypse. Yes, you know how you bring up the apocalypse? You allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon and threaten another nuclear power issue.
PHILLIP: Hold on, just two quick things. I mean, Trump did suggest that there would be nothing left, effectively, was what he said.
He also said, no, I'm talking about what he, no, Joe, we're not changing the subject. We're talking about what he said he was going to do. He also threatened that a civilization would end.
So I don't know what he means by that, but it seems to suggest that he's threatening the enemy with obliteration. But then here's what he said when he was asked about an attack that already happened on a school in which over 100 children and adults were killed. Here's what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I don't think anybody's going to ever be able to say what happened there. Because if they don't know by now, and as of a couple of weeks ago, they didn't know.
And while things like that happen in war, there are missiles flying all over the place. And I don't know how anybody could say that we shot it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Look, CNN's reporting suggests that what he just said there is not true.
According to our reporting on July 7th, U.S. military officials knew within days of the strike on the school how that mistake happened. It was obviously old information.
So, again, our standards are higher than Iran's. They're not the same. We don't hold ourselves to the Iranian standard, we hold ourselves to our standard. So when the President kind of glosses over this stuff, it undermines American values.
EGBEWOLE: And their regime doesn't care if their citizens die. They operate on totally different rules. So I just think it's two people playing a game that don't have the same limitations.
I mean, we have democracy here where people that live here get to have an opinion about the President's actions. And part of the reason we even engaged in this, part of how it was marketed, in a sense, to people at the top of this year, was that Iran is a regime that subjugates its people.
And we have to be the standard bearer for freedom. So we should care when those same people are then dying from our strikes.
ALLISON: I also think you can hold these two truths. I think you can say you want the Iranian regime to fall and you don't want them to have a nuclear weapon. And you also don't want our country to be the reason why Iranian civilians are killed.
BORELLI: But who's arguing that? Who's waving that flag? Zero people.
The President is not suggesting we bomb schools. The President is not suggesting we bomb civilians. Just stop saying it, it's nonsense.
ALLISON: Tell him that.
BORELLI: The President promises a primetime speech on Thursday. And the main focus, as of right now, is elections, apparently, both past and present. We'll talk about it next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Tonight, a possible primetime speech preview. President Trump all but confirmed election integrity will be at least one of the focal points of his Thursday night speech.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: But I'd rather save it. But it's really big news. It's really big news.
And our country has to shape up. But what we're going to be talking about Thursday is, it doesn't get bigger. Because without free and fair elections, you don't have a country.
We'll be discussing other things, too. But it's going to be a very big announcement.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: We are less than four months away from the midterm elections, and President Trump's election security bill, which would create proof of citizenship requirements for voting and end most mail-in ballots, has largely stalled in Congress.
But the question remains, have the last six years foreshadowed what we may hear on Thursday?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Because the only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged. Remember that.
This year, they rigged an election. They rigged it like they've never rigged an election before.
This election was rigged, and the Supreme Court and other courts didn't want to do anything about it.
Radical left Democrats rigged the Presidential election in 2020, and we're not going to allow them to rig the Presidential election in 2024.
There's no way we lost, Georgia. There's no way.
Look at some of the places, the horrible corruption on elections. And the federal government should not allow that. The federal government should get involved.
They're trying to stop anybody from looking. You know why? Because they cheated like dogs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Joe, are we really going to do this again?
BORELLI: You know what's funny? You presupposed this package of clips with, let's go back six years. What about if we went back eight years to when the Democratic Party was convincing the American public that the Russians colluded with the President to steal the election? Now, that's past history.
Marist, shout out to my alma mater, had a poll out February 26 or March 26 this year, and it showed that voter confidence in elections was the lowest it's ever been since Marist started doing that.
[22:40:09]
PHILLIP: I wonder why.
BORELLI: And the drop actually came from Democrats and independents. If the President is going to make a speech and talk about election --
PHILLIP: He has never lost an election that he thought was free and fair. You know that?
ALLISON: He never won one, clearly, that he thinks is free and fair.
PHILLIP: He has never lost an election.
Going back to the 2016 primary in Iowa that he argued was stolen by Republicans, I guess. So I'm asking you, is he really going to use his megaphone as President of the United States, maybe even prime time, to rehash crazy election conspiracies about 2020, about anything?
BORELLI: In 2016 with the Russians. Anyway, two things.
ALLISON: You know he won in 2016. You know he won.
BORELLI: Voter confidence in elections is, as I mentioned, very low. If the President is going to give a speech highlighting how elections should be more secure, I'm not sure why that's a bad thing.
Number two.
Two segments ago you talked about how we shouldn't be prejudging things without seeing the evidence. You criticized the administration for defending some of these cops in some of these situations. Why are we presupposing that whatever the President says, whether it's evidence or it's opinion, or there's some new evidence that a foreign government tried to hack our elections, why are we presupposing what the DOJ, the President, the White House is saying is false?
I think that's a big reason.
ALLISON: Because people have looked and they have found nothing. We're not prejudging. We're actually reading facts.
BORELLI: No, you don't know what he's going to say. You don't know the evidence. And you've already decided that it's wrong.
ALLISON: He told us. No, oh my gosh, I feel like --
BORELLI: The President he said nothing in the interview that he was saw. He said nothing about what they're going to talk about on Thursday night.
EGBEWOLE: But politically, can we talk about that?
ALLISON: If he doesn't talk about the election, fine. But if he has evidence that there's some sort of fraud or corruption --
PHILLIP: Hold on. Evidence of what? BORELLI: So we've gone through this, we've gone through --
PHILLIP: Evidence of what?
BORELLI: -- the mouse on the wheel.
PHILLIP: What evidence is he going to present about the election that he lost in 2012?
JENNINGS: I think it's not good to prejudge a speech that hasn't been made yet. But there has been speculation that investigators have found that there may have been foreign interference or attempts at foreign interference in 2020.
Now, it wasn't that many years ago, as Joe pointed out, that we were all a flutter about foreign interference. If he has allegations and evidence, don't you want to know it?
PHILLIP: So, Scott, the same conspiracy of the people who were involved in the 2020 election coming back again, but now Trump has put his people over at the Director of National Intelligence. And apparently some of these same folks are behind this speech.
The "Washington Post" reports that he's making this primetime address at the urging of Bill Pulte, the acting DNI, and John Solomon, the former conservative journalist who temporarily joined the White House to help review government records for release. Solomon has long requested investigations surrounding Trump and has pushed for the release of FBI investigatory files related to alleged election interference.
These conspiracies, to be clear, there was no evidence in 2020. There is no evidence today. Trump literally went down to Georgia and asked for them to look for 13,000 votes that he lost in a Republican-led state where Republicans down-ballot won and he lost.
So, again, what are we rehashing here?
ALLISON: And I think the thing that is most confusing right now is that you actually used to believe that too, Scott. So I hope right now in this moment you are not actually questioning the results of the 2020 election because that is really dangerous.
JENNINGS: I've said nothing of the sort.
ALLISON: Okay, let's just make sure. I just wanted to double-check.
JENNINGS: Have you heard me say otherwise? If you want to attack me, let me answer.
ALLISON: I'm not attacking you. I'm just questioning what you were saying.
JENNINGS: Here's all I've said, is that we know what we know today. The President plans to make a speech on Thursday. There have been speculations that they have found possibility that foreign governments may have tried to interfere in the election.
Now, whether that changed anything or not, I don't know. But don't you all want to know if that is true?
ALLISON: We do know.
EGBEWOLE: Don't you think that the worst step is to lie?
ALLISON: We know.
PHILLIP: The answer to that question, honestly, is no. I don't think that --
JENNINGS: If there was concrete evidence that a foreign government tried to --
We used to want to know around here. It used to be undercover.
PHILLIP: I think that we are giving a lot of credence to things that have already been debunked. And that is not appropriate, okay?
These theories have already been debunked. And by suggesting that they're going to put their hand in the hat and pull out a rabbit on this is completely disingenuous.
[22:45:06]
BORELLI: The fact that you're prejudging evidence you have not seen, you don't know what you're investigating --
PHILLIP: Every case that they have ever brought on this has been tossed out. Every case they have brought on this has been tossed out. They have never provided any evidence of any wrongdoing in the 2020 election significant enough to change the outcome of the election.
The only people playing around with voting machines are Trump and his people.
EGBEWOLE: And I haven't forgotten Fulton County, but I think a lot of Georgia Republicans have tried to move past. And I think Mike Collins and Rick Jackson are going to -- Coming from Georgia, I'm telling you, they're going to be put in a more precarious situation.
JENNINGS: Grave allegations require equally grave evidence. That is what I am looking for on Thursday night. You all should all be looking for it.
ALLISON: I think you're going to be disappointed, my friend.
PHILLIP: All right, we'll see about that.
The Treasury Secretary says that if Calvin Coolidge can have his face on a coin for the country's 150th anniversary, so can President Trump for the 250th. We'll debate that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [22:50:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Tonight, from passports to airports and now cash, the list of things that Donald Trump's name and face are on is only growing.
The administration has drawn up plans to put Trump's image on a special coin and a signature on paper currency this fall to celebrate the America 250th anniversary. But the move is raising some legal questions. Even though federal law says no living person can appear on currency, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is defending the move.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT BESSENT, U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY: As Treasury Secretary, I only have two mandates. The currency has to say in God we trust somewhere on it, and there cannot be an image of a living person, but we have the President's signature, which, again, I think it is appropriate for the 250th.
During the 150th, there was a Calvin Coolidge coin, so we can put living people's images on a coin. The President's also going to have a coin coming out with his image on it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: What a bizarre thing for the Treasury Secretary to be fixated on in this moment for our country.
EGBEWOLE: I would rather they focus on increasing the value of the dollar rather than the presence of him on the dollar. That would be helpful right now.
BORELLI: What a bizarre thing for the media to hyperventilate about. I mean, look, I looked up the Grover Cleveland coin to see if it was even real, and it's just a dumb picture of him with George Washington. No one's thought about the Calvin Coolidge coins.
No one's thought about the coin for 99 years. It's gone unnoticed, and Trump's going to have a coin.
PHILLIP: I didn't tell Scott Bessent to do a puff piece with Fox without the coin or the $100. He held up a sheet of $100 bills with Trump's signature on it. Why are you blaming the media when Scott Bessent is the one who invites the media to talk about it?
ALLISON: I don't care, actually.
BORELLI: I'm with you.
ALLISON: I actually don't care because the put it on the coin, because you know how many people want to carry coins?
EGBEWOLE: We got rid of the penny.
JENNINGS: Well, let me tell you something.
BORELLI: Trump pulls some things that drive people nuts. I get that. You shouldn't be with him.
ALLISON: I don't care. Be on the coin, because how many times do you carry a silver dollar?
EGBEWOLE: Apple pay for life.
JENNINGS: I've seen the coin, by the way. A few weeks ago, I held one in my hand before this became public, and I asked the treasurer of the United States, I thought you couldn't put a living person on money, and he said no printed bills, but the coins were okay, so that answered one question for me.
You know what I think is going to happen to it? It's going to be a collector's item.
ALLISON: No, it's not.
JENNINGS: There's going to be a whole bunch of people who want to collect it, and that's what's going to happen to it. I agree.
ALLISON: Go ahead and collect it. Take mine, too.
PHILLIP: Apparently even the signature is controversial. The Post asked if you support or oppose his signature on paper money, 68 percent say they oppose it. This is a 70-20 issue, my friends.
Yes, it's actually not controversial.
BORELLI: If you're asked a question, you're going to answer the question, right? You're going to say yes or no.
PHILLIP: Almost all Americans oppose.
BORELLI: It's not controversial to anyone's actual day. No one's going about that. People can oppose stuff on the Word, on inflation.
There's plenty of things.
ALLISON: People do think about the dollar every day. I don't know if they think about whether or not Donald Trump should be on the dollar.
JENNINGS: It's $100, not $1.
ALLISON: You can still have it.
PHILLIP: She's talking about the image. The image is on the $1 coin.
JENNINGS: It's a coin.
ALLISON: I said Merry Christmas. Here you go.
JENNINGS: I would love that if you have one. If you come up with one, you send it to me. ALLISON: I bet, I will. Everyone I get. I'll go broke giving it away, okay?
PHILLIP: All right. Next for us, the panel is going to react to your feedback from cnn.com/abby. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:55:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: And now some viewer feedback from cnn.com/abby. Here's the first one.
Regarding Iran, can we at least agree that Trump must get congressional approval if we put troops on the ground? We should have it already. That should be a hard line.
ALLISON: Agree.
PHILLIP: Scott?
JENNINGS: I think it depends on the circumstances.
PHILLIP: Troops on the ground with no congressional approval?
JENNINGS: We'll see what the circumstances are.
BORELLI: We had a limited incursion when we rescued that pilot, right?
PHILLIP: We're not talking about that kind of thing.
BORELLI: Technically speaking, troops on the ground. A small incursion to secure --
JENNINGS: It depends on the circumstances.
PHILLIP: All right. Here's another comment.
Trump could not prove any of the election conspiracies he made. All of them were thrown out in court, which we discussed a little bit earlier.
And lastly, why can't the primetime really big news be about making the lives of the American people better? That's a good question.
JENNINGS: I think --
BORELLI: Stay in school, kids.
JENNINGS: I think this show is about -- I mean, we talk about the big issues here.
[23:00:01] PHILLIP: No, I'm talking about -- They're talking about Trump's address. Why can't it be about making the lives of the American people better as opposed to his election hobby horses?
JENNINGS: Are we carrying it, by the way?
PHILLIP: I don't know the answer to that.
ALLISON: Don't pivot.
JENNINGS: I'm asking.
PHILLIP: Why can't it be about making America -- Why can't it be about the things that matters?
JENNINGS: It does matter according to polls to a lot of Americans.
PHILLIP: All right. We'll see about that. Next for us.
Thank you for watching "NewsNight." Don't forget, you can stream our show, "Confessions and Obsessions," anytime on the CNN app. "Laura Coates Live" is right now.
