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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Threatens To Wipe Out Iran In New Threat; Far-Right Provocateur Says, Very Ashamed Of Trump Support; James Talarico Calls Oppressive Capitalism In One Of His Previous Forums, Scott Bessent Tells Socialist Voters That They Are Underachievers. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired September 01, 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 HOST (voice over): Tonight, does history rhyme?
GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: You're either with us or you're against us.
SCOTT BESSENT, TREASURY SECRETARY: Either you are with us or against us.
PHILLIP: As Donald Trump again threatens to wipe out Iran, the public shrugs.
JOE ROGAN, HOST, THE ROE ROGAN EXPERIENCE: It could distract you from the fact that we're in a war that we can't win in Iran.
PHILLIP: Plus, he's the far right provocateur who cheered on ICE. Now, listen to the firebrand after ICE arrested him.
MILO YIANNOPOULOS, FAR-RIGHT PROVOCATEUR: I was weeping like an old woman for an hour. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
PHILLIP: Also, in one of the seats Democrats hope to turn blue, old video surfaces of James Talarico calling to dismantle capitalism.
And a (BLEEP) show is coming. A whistleblower warns of a secret plot by the Postal Service to carry out Donald Trump's wishes on mail-in ballots.
Live at the table, Leigh McGowan, Joe Borelli, Jemele Hill, Brianna Lyman, and Kmele Foster.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIP: Good evening, I'm Abby Phillip in New York.
Tonight, the president of the United States is once again threatening to wipe out Iran as the two nations continue to trade attacks. The new U.S. strikes are in response to attacks in the Strait of Hormuz and American troops deployed in the region. Donald Trump says that if Iran retaliates again, there will be little left of the country, and it'll be, quote, totally wiped out.
The escalation runs counter to Trump's own claims that the war has been won, specifically claiming, quote, mission accomplished. But unfortunately for Trump, that's only where the similarities in tone from the Bush administration begin.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: When somebody comes up and says, why are we doing this? Just say, because we cannot let them have a nuclear weapon. It's very simple.
BUSH: We know the treacherous history of the regime. It has waged a war against its neighbors.
TRUMP: Because they did something which was very foolish, very stupid I would say. They attacked their neighbors.
BUSH: Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies.
TRUMP: Iran, number one state sponsor of terror. They send their money all over the world to create problems.
BUSH: That you're either with us or you're against us in the fight against terror.
BESSENT: And we're telling people either you are with us or against us.
MIKE WALTZ, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: You're either against us or you're with us. And you don't want to be siding with Iran right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Before we open it up to the table here, we invite you at home to join the debate. Go to cnn.com/abby. Weigh in there. We'll get to some of your comments throughout the show.
I think, Joe, the concern that many Americans who oppose this war, which is a majority of Americans at this point, the concern that they have is that, yes, we are definitely stronger, more powerful than Iran. No question about it. They've taken major blows. But that was also true when we started the Iraq War, and then we still ended up being in the region, in Iraq and Afghanistan, for two decades. So, I think Americans are worried that this is basically a deja vu kind of situation. JOE BORELLI, FORMER REPUBLICAN LEADER, NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL: I think Republicans were worried about long-term commitments in the Middle East. That's something President Trump campaigned on. He's gotten some grief from his own party about this war, and we've discussed that.
I think the comparisons, though, to the Iraq War are a bit lazy on the media side. I mean, this is not the same thing. This is not a deployment of several hundred thousand troops to occupy a country, to nation build based on faulty intelligence. I mean, start there. No one is disputing the fact that Iran has tried to nuclearize its arsenal, that they've funded proxy groups.
PHILLIP: There are actually disputes about the intelligence --
BORELLI: They are trying to nuclear -- nuclear wars. They are funding proxy groups in Gaza, in Hezbollah, in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, right? This is all true.
PHILLIP: Listen, I take your point that these are not the same conflicts.
BORELLI: They're not the same.
PHILLIP: But it is true that the American people feel like they weren't being -- the administration was not leveling with them about the war.
[22:05:07]
I also think that there are disputes about the factual basis that predicated this war because a year ago when the Trump administration bombed Iran, they said they had neutralized the nuclear the nuclear issue. And then that was confirmed by the CIA director who said that Iran had done nothing in the last year to advance its nuclear program, which calls into question why this war started in the first place.
But it's also about the tone, Joe. I mean, the American people don't like hearing, we're done, mission accomplished, nothing more to see here, when there are still troops on boats, on ships in the region, when soldiers -- troops are getting killed over there.
LEIGH MCGOWAN, PODCAST HOST, POLITICSGIRL: Yes. Troops are getting killed, but they're also -- as I understand it, a lot of them aren't even getting the recognition they're supposed to get because we haven't actually declared it a war by Congress.
So, there's all these weird things that we've done wrong. We didn't ask Congress to go to war at first. Now, we're at war, but we're not at war. And it keeps being over, and then it's not over, and I think it's problematic for people.
And then you hear like retired generals saying things like there's a reason that they've gotten rid of every single general that pushed back against Hegseth. There's a reason that there's soldiers leaving en masse for moral reasons. There's a reason that, you know, they're warning us that what we're doing is illegal, and we're losing our respect and credibility and trust that the United States has built over decades and decades, and our military has built over decades.
I know my father-in-law is a war hero. He -- it's his birthday today. He was a Navy soldier for years and years. He was a sailor, and then he was a helicopter pilot. And this is not the Army he -- this is not the military he fought for. This is not the American values he fought for. And what we're doing right now is not -- it's not reflective of what I think the values are of most Americans.
PHILLIP: Let me play what -- Manu had this interesting exchange with House Speaker Mike Johnson about the war and about Congress' role in defending it, in authorizing it. Here's what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: On Iran, you said repeatedly that this war was going to be over soon. You said that this would be a temporary blip on short term, on gas prices. It has stayed more than six months. People are getting hurt still at the pump. Should the American people not also judge you on your projections here that were clearly off base?
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): Manu, that is one of the stupidest questions you've ever asked.
RAJU: Why is that stupid?
JOHNSON: I have nothing to do with the prosecution of the war across the globe. I am responsible --
RAJU: You are responsible.
JOHNSON: Do you want me to answer? Do you want me to answer?
RAJU: You are selling this to the American public, are you not?
JOHNSON: So, should the House Speaker be held responsible for the duration of a military conflict around the globe? You answer that question.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I don't know. Does Congress have a role?
MCGOWAN: Are we allowed to say yes?
JEMELE HILL, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Are we allowed to say yes? We should be.
PHILLIP: In declaring or authorizing the use of force against our adversaries? Did Mike Johnson not declare that the war had been won?
HILL: He did.
PHILLIP: I mean, why should there not be accountability for those statements? BRIANNA LYMAN, REPORTER, THE FEDERALIST: Well, I actually do agree that the Trump administration and Republicans need to better manage expectations. Because to earlier points, we were told this was going to be a four-week thing, then they told us it was six weeks, now we're at the six-month mark, and I do think that of a lot of Americans, one would maybe buy the war efforts a little easier if they were even honest, like, hey, guys, this is going to go on another eight months, right?
Because that would help them, one, better understand where we are, and, two, it might even help Congress kind of decide, okay, well, if this is going to go on another eight months, what can we do here at home that can alleviate pain at the pump, right? States can get rid of their state gas taxes. So, those are things that I do think needs to be done by Republicans in Congress, and it's not helping them heading into midterms to keep saying either the war's been won or we're getting there.
That being said, I do think there are wins that we should talk about. You know, the U.S. military, our Navy actually neutralized all the mines in the Strait of Hormuz. That's a tactical victory, and that does push us one step closer to ending this conflict. But if our messaging is simply, the war is won, and then, the war isn't won, that's going to be a problem for voters in November.
HILL: But that wasn't the only messaging. The other messaging was, you guys just have to suck it up as we are at this war in Iran, which is not what American people want to hear. They're never going to be able to escape the reasons we got into this to begin with. Not only was it the issue about whether or not the intelligence was good, the other issue was that being perhaps seduced by a foreign power, being seduced by Bibi Netanyahu to start this offensive.
And people aren't going to forget that. Like, are we, America, standing on our own, or do we do what another country's leader says?
And so people are not going to forget that. And so there's no amount of verbal word salad that Mike Johnson can do that are going to get them to escape those inevitable realities. The American people, even if you told them it was eight months, they didn't want no endless war. That was one of the number one things that American voters --
LYMAN: Yes, but eight months wouldn't be endless, you know?
HILL: No, it wouldn't be endless, but the whole point is they didn't really want a war.
MCGOWAN: They didn't want a war. They campaigned on, If you vote for Kamala Harris, you will get a war with Iran. We are the anti-war party, and they went immediately to war with Iran.
[22:10:02]
So, let's be honest about that.
KMELE FOSTER, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, TANGLE: I worry quite a bit about the seduction language. The reality is that the culpability for the conflict lies with American politicians, particularly the president of the United States, who made this decision unilaterally to go to war.
HILL: But people felt like he was being pressured into this decision.
FOSTER: Some people may feel that way. Ultimately, he is culpable. And I do think it's appropriate --
HILL: That's true. I mean, I don't want to make it seem like he's absent of any responsibility.
FOSTER: Right. And I just think narratives about seduction, there's a lot of kind of ickiness related to that.
But the important thing here that I want to point out is the rhetorical similarities with respect to the Iran and Iraq conflicts worth pointing out and highlighting. But I think it's the dissimilarities that really stand out to me, which perhaps should have been the things that the administration was paying more attention to. Iraq is a small country.
It, in 2003, was isolated, relatively speaking, had been denigrated and deteriorated by years and years and years of sanctions by a prior conflict. Iran, by comparison, was robust. 90 million people versus 20-odd million people. I mean, these are apples and oranges comparisons.
The notion that you could have cakewalked your way through Iran with using only air power, never putting boots on the ground, when the original Iran war -- the Iraq War was a conflict where the United States had not just a willingness to use boots on the ground but a demonstrated willingness to do so, quickly decimated that military. And what we ended up with was a long-lasting conflict, this enduring conflict, where we were trying to figure out, where do we go from here?
Here, the uncertainty is about whether or not this conflict will even end ever. It it's not --
BORELLI: Well, if you listen to the Iranians, you know, other than the renewed kinetic strikes over the past seven days, we saw three Iranian leaders, foreign minister, president of parliament, all going on state T.V. and acknowledging finally to the Iranian public that the blockade and the economic sanctions are having disastrous effect inside of Iran.
That's a change of posture inside of Iran, and they seem to be --
FOSTER: That's messaging meant to hurt the United States.
BORELLI: No, they're trying to stave off a revolution from happening inside of their country. They're trying to shore up support for their regime. That's -- no question about that.
But they are acknowledging that more pain is coming because of the blockade and because of the third-party economic sanctions that we've dealt with.
PHILLIP: And I think that is definitely true. I think the question that we all have to deal with is when will it actually start to matter? Because the only thing that really matters is when they capitulate, and they determine that timeline.
And I just want to make two points. One, let me just point out that today, Vladimir Putin and Iran's -- I believe Iran's president met today, and they said, during this difficult period, this is Putin, we are striving to provide you with the necessary assistance, as we've discussed, and we are supplying you with essential goods. Putin is pledging to support Iran.
And a viewer, Josh, is asking, will the Republicans on the panel admit that in order to get what they want from this war, it's going to take a while?
BORELLI: So, I think it's a good question. And I was going to start and say, you know, part of this conflict, I think we've set a false timeline. We've always framed it in terms of, is this going to be over by the --
PHILLIP: Not we.
HILL: Yes.
BORELLI: No, I'm not talking about what Trump said. I'm talking about what we in media have said. We've always sort of framed this against the backdrop of the midterms. Are oil prices going to, you know, come down before the midterms?
PHILLIP: Wait.
BORELLI: I think the politics have been baked in.
PHILLIP: Hold on, Joe. Hold on, Joe. That's crazy to say that the media is responsible for that timeline when the timeline was established by the president in the first 24 hours of the war.
BORELLI: I'm not debating what the president said.
PHILLIP: And on top of that, he has subsequently said repeatedly that gas prices will come down by the end of summer. He has said that.
BORELLI: I'm saying how we -- broadly speaking the royal we, right, how we've all been framing this conflict --
PHILLIP: You said the media.
BORELLI: But we've all framed this conflict in terms of how things will approach the midterm, whether things will resolve itself. I actually think this has now gotten to the point where the political calculation is out the window, and now, ideally, the president is making the choices of what's actually going to starve the Iranian regime and bring them to the table again. MCGOWAN: This is what happens when you hire leaders, though, for loyalty and not for expertise, and you get rid of everybody that tells you no. Because you make poor decisions, and you go into things like conflicts without the education and knowledge that you need to have.
I don't think Hegseth was ready for this. I think we said that from the very beginning when he was in his confirmation hearings. I think that Trump wasn't ready for this. I think he was, you know, seduced in some way into this. I think the last person that talks to him is often the person that seduces him.
And I think we're in a position now where we don't know how long it's going to be, because we didn't really know why we were there in the first place.
FOSTER: I mean, the reporting on this is that the president was getting feedback about this being a good idea and a bad idea from plenty of people, and he made a determination himself. Again, I do not think it is particularly helpful for us to introduce other foreign parties or whatever else into the conversation and talk about seduction. It's not helpful.
PHILLIP: All right. Next for us, the MAGA influencer who cheered on ICE has been arrested by ICE, and now he says he's ashamed of his support for Trump after a degrading arrest.
[22:15:01]
Plus, is capitalism oppressive? Why a Democratic Senate candidate is now walking back his past remarks and sparking a new debate in the process.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: A far-right provocateur who once pushed hardline nationalist views on immigration is suddenly doing a 180 after ICE came for him. You'll remember the Department of Homeland Security arrested and deported Milo Yiannopoulos last week after the agency claimed that he overstayed his visa.
Now, Yiannopoulos was an early supporter of President Trump's who built his career on making controversial statements, including calling for aggressive immigration enforcement.
[22:20:06]
But in a new interview tonight, he says he's got regrets.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
YIANNOPOULOS: To think that the promise and hope and joy and anticipation of Trump 2016 could sort of, you know, over the course of ten years, collapse into this ugly, warmongering, you know, taken as a whole mentally ill heap of crazy with some of the most, you know, unstable and, you know, lunatic people seemingly directing the president's actions. If I had any clue that anything remotely like this, you know, was even possible, I would never have got involved in supporting Trump in the first place, and I'm very ashamed that I did.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And all it took apparently was being subjected to the same treatment that he advocated for other people. He once said, the justice system should just be ICE.
MCGOWAN: Yes. No, I never thought the leopards would eat my face, right? I mean, that's where we're at. I think the thing is that he can feel the way he feels now, but just imagine if that -- like everything that he's talking about in that video where he talks about how scared he was, how he cried, how he was terrified, now imagine that happening to a five-year-old, which is what's happening all over our country right now.
This guy is the one who tilled the soil that Donald Trump grew in, right? He worked at Breitbart. He ran Breitbart. He was a huge promoter of alt-right and neo-Nazi-type ideas. He totally attacked the Black Lives Matter movement. He said multiculturalism was cancerous to western society. He's completely Islamophobic. He's anti-immigrant. He -- everything he said half the time was categorized as hate speech or incitement or racial targeted abuse. And now he's like, I can't believe this happened to me. If I'd ever known.
I'm like Trump came down that escalator and said that all Mexicans were rapists and killers and they weren't sending their best. We knew from the beginning if we were paying attention. So, it's not a surprise now. It's just happened to him now.
HILL: And it's tough to have any level of empathy for these people because I'm looking in this coffee cup. I'm looking under here, and you know what I'm fresh out of? You know what? I don't care. Because you were fine with that happening to somebody else. You just then decided to have this sort of awareness and consciousness once it happened to you.
And across social media, across even if you want to take it to like some of the farmers who are now complaining about the fact that they got exactly what they voted for, I don't have any sympathy for any of these people.
And I know that might sound harsh and I know it might sound unforgiving, but as long as you were fine with this happening to somebody else, I'm like have the day you voted for.
PHILLIP: Let me play a little bit more about what he says happened to him in his arrest. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
YIANNOPOULOS: The manner in which they arrest you, they put you in manacles, your hands, your feet chained together. I mean, like everybody who's arrested is like an MS-13 gang member, and it hurts a lot more than it looks like on television.
You know, every three hours, they were sort of trying to keep ahead of my lawyer so I couldn't -- you know, so whatever. But no one would tell me anything. It was -- I mean, I know it's designed to be like that, but it was -- sure, it was humiliating, and it was disorientating and the rest of it. It was physically degrading. It was frightening.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I mean, let's for a second just pretend that it's not this guy just for one second. But what he's saying actually checks out based on what other immigrants have said they have experienced, that ICE has moved them around, made it difficult for them to reach legal representation.
They've put chains on people who have done nothing more than overstay a tourist visa or another kind of immigrant visa. Are those types of tactics really warranted given that many of these people, actually the vast majority of them, have absolutely no criminal record at all?
BORELLI: Look, we arrest people and we deport them. We detain them and we deport them. The methods are really not up for, you know, debate. I mean, this is someone who did --
FOSTER: Why?
MCGOWAN: I think they're absolutely up for debate.
(CROSSTALKS)
BORELLI: Someone who had an opportunity, he had an opportunity to go to court and achieve the outcome he wanted through the court system.
PHILLIP: You don't think that the means and the methods are worth even addressing? Because, I mean, one of the issues is, like how do we conduct our --
BORELLI: He got arrested and got put in handcuffs.
PHILLIP: And like I said, like I said --
BORELLI: That's par for the course.
PHILLIP: -- pretend this guy is not Milo for one second, okay?
BORELLI: No, I don't want to pretend.
PHILLIP: Because -- no --
BORELLI: Let's go back into Milo.
PHILLIP: Well then don't pretend, because this is the same thing that happens to a lot of other people.
Just this week, The New York Times ran a story. They spoke with ten deportees who were on a flight to Liberia. They described the conditions as abusive. One man said he was wailing in pain for hours on a deportation flight from Louisiana to West Africa. He had been cuffed around his wrists and ankles, a chain around his waist dug into his grossly protruding abdomen.
[22:25:05]
When he protested, or -- and when some protested, they were beaten by agents, five of the deportees said. Some were slammed to the ground and struck with blows.
Now, DHS says that this is another day, another hoax about ICE detention from the Times. They say the media is clearly desperate for these false allegations to be true. No one is being tortured, denied medical care, or beaten in ICE detention facilities.
I ask the question, if the U.S. government has to respond to allegations that people are being beaten on planes, they use the term torture.
BORELLI: Yes, I mean --
PHILLIP: That seems like something we should ask questions about --
BORELLI: People who are arrested sometimes file false claims against officers. That's why they deny it. Sometimes --
(CROSSTALKS)
MCGOWAN: Every single day --
BORELLI: Sometimes they're true.
MCGOWAN: -- come on and --
BORELLI: I'm speaking now.
MCGOWAN: -- defend the indefensible.
BORELLI: I want to talk a little bit about Milo, right? This is a guy -- you keep framing him -- first of all, he's so irrelevant -- you don't even pronounce his name right. But he's so irrelevant, he's so irrelevant that no one had this guy on TV for about ten years. He was kicked out of Breitbart. All of the -- hold on. All the right wing influencers --
PHILLIP: Are you trying to turn me against Milo?
BORELLI: No, I'm just talking. I'm talking.
PHILLIP: I don't -- I'm not -- we're not pro-Milo over here.
BORELLI: they pushed Milo out the door. No one cared about what he had to say. No one took him seriously until he decided to be anti-Trump. Then suddenly, let's put him on --
PHILLIP: He's on your team.
BORELLI: He's not on my team. That's the point I'm trying to make. He's on your team. He was kicked out of the conservative movement. He was pushed aside.
(CROSSTALKS)
BORELLI: None of the social media influencers on the right talk to him anymore.
PHILLIP: Joe, he was saying the same thing that you are saying today.
BORELLI: The social media influencers you talk about turned him in.
PHILLIP: He was saying, it doesn't matter to me how we deport people.
BORELLI: We talked about that last week. My point is no one took this guy seriously until he decided to be anti-Trump. Now, he gets mainstream primetime treatment because now (INAUDIBLE).
PHILLIP: Joe, does it bother you then that you and Milo have the -- had at one point the same perspective on the deportation issue? He basically said, by any means necessary. I don't care how we do this. That doesn't bother you?
FOSTER: And he was saying that up until last week.
BORELLI: There's no question -- well, first of all, I don't --
PHILLIP: Especially considering that you're saying that he's such a terrible person.
BORELLI: First of all, I wouldn't paraphrase my opinions on that. I think people should have due process. I think people shouldn't be tortured. I think people should be afforded, you know, common decency. So, don't paraphrase my opinions to Milo.
PHILLIP: Actually, well, you know what, Joe?
BORELLI: And, again, Milo was an awful human being who no one took seriously until he decided to bash Trump. Now he's on Piers Morgan going global.
PHILLIP: Because I gave you an opportunity to say it a couple of minutes ago, and you didn't. But I'm glad that you did finally say that people shouldn't be treated like animals, even if they're immigrants.
BORELLI: But you brought up the allegation of that, not proof.
PHILLIP: I don't know. I mean, listen --
BORELLI: And that's fine, but it's an allegation.
PHILLIP: All I'm asking you --
MCGOWAN: Joe, your response was sometimes people get handcuffed.
PHILLIP: How do we --
BORELLI: Yes, people do get handcuffed. That is true.
PHILLIP: How do we think people ought to be treated when they're arrested for immigration offenses?
FOSTER: I think a lot of people who are pro-immigration enforcement, who have been very concerned about these issues for a long time, and in many instances legitimately have also been kind of for a maximally punitive carceral system to kind of come down on people for breaking our immigration laws and running afoul of them, and they turn a blind eye to the reality that abuses will happen in our system and have happened in many instances.
The administration, some of officials associated with the administration, have actively, openly lied and misrepresented the facts of particular incidents in this country that have happened that have been national news. All of that should have been a concern for a very long time.
It is wonderful that Milo has managed to find some empathy and religion on these issues now. And I actually think despite the fact that it's hard to find empathy for him, it is useful and instructive that someone like Milo is now talking about these things in a very candid and clear way.
BORELLI: He defended pedophilia. We should erase him --
FOSTER: We're not talking about that.
MCGOWAN: No. But the point is we're not listening --
FOSTER: We're talking about immigration enforcement.
MCGOWAN: The point is we're not listening to the people on the plane from Liberia. We're listening to the white man from London.
FOSTER: I don't really care about his race. I do care about whether or not we're attentive to the suffering.
PHILLIP: You're accusing us of defending him. Nobody here is defending him, first of all. Secondly --
BORELLI: No, we're taking him seriously.
PHILLIP: -- he was in the MAGA camp until all of a sudden he wasn't. And nobody was bothered by his --
BORELLI: They were. They literally kicked him out. They removed him. He was fired from Breitbart. Some of the people --
PHILLIP: I'm going to put this on you. You've claimed that he defended pedophilia. I'll put that on you.
BORELLI: That's why he was fired from Breitbart.
PHILLIP: But he said a lot of other horrendous things.
BORELLI: Yes.
PHILLIP: And so all that time it was fine because it was directed against other people who he said didn't belong in this country.
Just one quick thing. Today, The Washington Post had a really tragic story about a 20-year-old Haitian college student who lost his TPS status in the last couple of weeks. He was forced to wear an ankle monitor. He was a soccer player. He was getting ready to go to college, couldn't play with the ankle monitor on. He walked into traffic, and his family believes that that was -- that was him dying by suicide.
[22:30:00]
This is a story about whether or not people are being treated like people rather than being treated as just part of a group and being sent back to a gang-ridden country despite anything about their individual circumstances. And that's just one example, but this is probably happening to, I mean, there are 350,000 Haitian immigrants who just overnight, all of a sudden, became subject to that kind of treatment.
BRIANNA LYMAN, REPORTER, "THE FEDERALIST": Well temporary does mean temporary so eventually this individual may have been ordered to be removed and I think it's kind of insulting that we're talking about this immigrant instead of Brianna Connelly from Massachusetts who was strangled last week by an illegal alien. Why is the focus never -- why is the focus -- it's exhausting for you because your daughter wasn't the one strangled.
LEIGH MCGOWAN, PODCAST HOST, "POLITICSGIRL": Oh my god.
LYMAN: It's not exhausting because parents of Americans who watch their children get murdered by illegal aliens.
JOE BORELLI, FORMER REPUBLICAN LEADER, NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL, AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, CHARTWELL STRATEGY GROUP: -- if he did and blamed Trump.
LYMAN: And also he walked into traffic. Do you know the accident he could have caused for Americans driving?
MCGOWAN: Oh my God.
JEMELE HILL, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, "THE ATLANTIC", AND PODCAST HOST, "SPOLITICS WITH JEMELE HILL": That's not here?
LYMAN: I'm saying right now that this is a man, first of all, that the "New York Times" even themselves wrote in their article, I think it was the second paragraph, they said no one cause can be attributed to suicide. There was no proof that this suicide was because of his ankle monitor. Second of all, Americans have the right to enforce their border laws,
and if that means an ankle monitor, that means an ankle monitor.
PHILLIP: What we were talking about, what I said was that his family believes that the humiliation that he experienced, he's 20 years old.
LYMAN: It's not humiliation.
PHILLIP: This is somebody who's literally --
LYMAN: We have a right to enforce our laws.
PHILLIP: Listen, you --
HILL: No, that is humiliating for a young person to work around that.
PHILLIP: You have a right to your opinion.
LYMAN: He could have voluntarily left when his family was satisfied with his revolt.
PHILLIP: You have a right to your opinion, but I just want to be clear about what the actual reporting says. His family believes that this was suicide.
LYMAN: Okay, beliefs is not the same as confirmation.
MCGOWAN: Do you hear your voice?
LYMAN: There's no suicide. Am I talking?
MCGOWAN: You should sound like an automaton. Listen. This is a person's life.
PHILLIP: Listen, I want to end the conversation by just being really clear about one thing.
Whenever the deaths of Americans, the murder of Americans, by anyone, is brought up at this table, it is a horrible tragedy. There's no question about that.
LYMAN: But it's preventable when it's done.
PHILLIP: Hold on. When it's done --
LYMAN: If they weren't here, the person wouldn't be killed.
PHILLIP: Listen, it's preventable when it's done by anyone. So whether it's done by an illegal immigrant, a legal immigrant, an American citizen, it literally does not matter because all of those are horrible crimes and those people should be punished for them. But just because that happened does not justify other things happening to people who have done nothing wrong.
So that's the only point that we're trying to make here. I think it's totally fine for you to bring up that you care more about certain other things, but I think it's also fine that some people might say
Let's have a little humanity in the situation writ large, right? Don't you think that that's a fair thing to say?
LYMAN: Yes, and we've actually offered our money to self voluntarily deport.
PHILLIP: Every person should be treated individually, not as a group, as if they are all culpable for everything that somebody else in their group has done.
LYMAN: Well, they're all culpable for being here illegally.
PHILLIP: That is --
LYMAN: If they're here illegally.
MCGOWAN: He was here illegally.
LYMAN: Yes, and then his temporary status card revoked, so now he's no longer allowed to be in the country.
MCGOWAN: So you expect a kid to be able to come up with the means to just automatically deport and get out of the country?
LYMAN: We are offering thousands of dollars to people to self-deport. What do you want to say?
PHILLIP: All right, we're going to leave that conversation there. Next for us, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico having to answer for comments that he made six years ago when he called capitalism oppressive. But do liberals actually agree with that?
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[22:35:00]
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PHILLIP: Tonight, is capitalism oppressive? Six years before becoming the Democrat Senate nominee for Texas, State Representative James Talarico sure seemed to believe that was true.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMES TALARICO (D), THEN-STATE REPRESENTATIVE, TEXAS: Young activists have really drawn the link between climate change and white supremacy and capitalism in our country. And I think only in the ways that all three of those oppressive systems work together are we going to be able to begin the process of dismantling them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Those remarks, which were unearthed by CNN's K-file, come from a Sierra Club forum Talarico was participating in back in 20020. But at a time that he's hoping to broaden his appeal, Talarico has been forced to walk back his history of progressive politics.
A spokesperson for the campaign told CNN that Talarico has already acknowledged some of his past comments, quote, "missed the mark," and Talarico called them cringey.
It is what some people are calling peak woke. It's almost like woke mad libs in that statement. But I will say right at this moment, he's not alone. I mean, a lot of Democrats don't think capitalism is working.
KMELE FOSTER, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, TANGLE, AND PODCAST HOST, "THE FIFTH COLUMN": It's one thing to not think capitalism isn't working ideally. It's another thing entirely to insist that it is oppressive, that it is bound up with white supremacy.
[22:39:52]
I've always preferred Adam Smith's description of capitalism as the natural system of liberty, the idea that people can own property, that they can exchange it freely with one another for profit, that they can find ways to put their resources to good use, those private property, and profit in a way that is actually beneficial to everyone else, that there can be gains from trade that are mutually beneficial.
These are foundational ideas that have created more wealth than any other system in human history. That is what capitalism is. That is not white supremacy.
HILL: Do you think capitalism has always worked that way?
FOSTER: I've just described the actual --
HILL: It's not always working.
FOSTER: I've actually just described the basic facts of economics.
HILL: Yes, the basic facts --
FOSTER: Slavery is an institution that is older than writing. It predates capitalism. The notion that white supremacy and all these other things are bound up with capitalism in an intrinsic and fundamental way is so absurd and laughable that it barely needs to be defended.
HILL: What do you mean it barely needs to be defended?
FOSTER: It barely needs to be defended. You actually have to articulate what the connection is. How are these two things the same? I'm talking about private property, the right to exchange and sell it with whoever you like.
HILL: But you're talking about capitalism in the first form of how it was intended to work versus how it's actually working.
FOSTER: I'm talking about how it's working right now today. What is the white supremacist dynamic of private property? MCGOWAN: It's not working well. I think that's the problem. I think
the problem is it's not working well today.
I think that for a long time that is a great way to describe it. Adam Smith capitalism, if we had that, that would be totally different.
BORELLI: I was like, I wish it worked that way.
MCGOWAN: But we don't have that. If you look at something like United Healthcare, right? So if I'm in the business of health insurance, but my job is to give the shareholders the best deal that they can get. So then I deny the actual business I'm in to the people who paid me to give them health insurance.
I deny them all the time because it gives my shareholders more money. That's where capitalism has gone awry.
BORELLI: Government regulates healthcare.
MCGOWAN: Yes, I think government regulation is exactly what we need more of when it comes to capitalism. If we want capitalism to work, we actually need regulation which we have removed and removed. So there's only about 11 people who are succeeding.
PHILLIP: We're just not catching what either of you are saying. Joe, respond to what you were saying about health care.
BORELLI: I was saying health care is not something you could say is a pure capitalist thing in this country. It's probably the industry that is the least capitalist. The government's the biggest financier of it, the biggest regulator of it. It's the socialist part of our economy. We do have some democratic socialists.
MCGOWAN: It is absolutely not the socialist part of our economy.
BORELLI: More than 70 percent of the national dollars coming from health care comes from the government.
PHILLIP: Leigh, let me have him put a period at the end of the sentence.
BORELLI: I'm always, to piggyback on what Kmele said, I'm always fascinated by the Boris Yeltsin image of him visiting the grocery store and his comments afterwards essentially saying that if people in the Soviet Union knew the abundance and wealth of a regular grocery store in Texas, they would have a revolution. And that just is the symbol of how much wealth and success capitalism has been for many years.
MCGOWAN: Yes, and unfortunately capitalism is not working like that anymore for most of the country. We have got to a place where we have deregulated everything so much that only a certain handful of people are actually succeeding in this version of capitalism. We have gone from laissez-faire capitalism to like a predatory capitalism.
And where we are right now, and I've said this a million times, is like when you play Monopoly and somebody has all of the hotels on the whole board, and it doesn't matter if you're playing the game right. It doesn't matter if you're doing what you're supposed to do. It doesn't matter if you get the education. If you get the job, you are still always going to lose.
That is where we are in America right now, and that is not how we should want to be. And I'm saying capitalism is a wonderful system if it is working. It is not currently working for the American people.
PHILLIP: All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll resume our conversation on the other side of it. We'll be right back.
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[22:45:00]
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT BESSENT, U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY: When you talk about socialism here in the U.S., when we look at the demographic of those voters, they are overeducated and under-earning. So these are underachievers who are jealous of those who want to go and work every day.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So it's easy to see why that would be very appealing to conservatives. But take into consideration, Brianna, a CBS News poll, YouGov poll, says conservatives
Just about 46 percent of Americans have a positive view of capitalism. That's less than half of this country. And 73 percent say that the income gap between the richest and the middle class is increasing.
So Scott Bessent seems to be ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that Americans really aren't thrilled with the way that capitalism was working, and they don't think they're getting ahead.
LYMAN: I think there's a few things to say. I think one, to Leigh's point, the model we have now is not a pure capitalist model. It's actually more corporatist, right?
And I do think that frustrations with corporatism are real and should be addressed by both Republicans and Democrats because the way to defeat, for example, companies lobbying Congress for regulations that benefit them and put smaller places out of business, the response to that shouldn't be socialism, but it should be, how can we make the market more competitive? And I don't think the answer is to say, let's give the government that has already colluded with big corporations more power, right?
So I do think that there's a problem, but I don't think socialism is the answer. To the polls you just indicated, there's also another poll by Gallup that came out, and it found that when you ask about the specifics of capitalism, 81 percent of Americans actually like free enterprise. What they don't like is monopolies, market control, things like that.
[22:50:02]
So I do think that Americans don't dislike capitalism, they dislike corporatism. And that's the kind of economy we have right now, which to bring it back to Talarico, the reason he's now trying to step back from his comments is because despite the socialist surge you see in New York City and some of these other places, the average American still likes capitalism.
They don't actually like socialism, and these Democrats know that and I would be curious for someone to ask Talarico or for him to explain why he no longer thinks capitalism is oppressive. It's not enough to just say I've changed. Tell me why capitalism isn't oppressive.
PHILLIP: So a viewer is asking, does the panel agree that America is not a true capitalistic economy? Isn't it true that we have a mixed economy with socialist-inspired programs?
BORELLI: We've nationalized our railroads and privatized our prisons. That's about as mixed as you could be.
PHILLIP: Yes, and I mean, we have social safety now. We have, I mean, I think there are elements of the health care system that are moving toward more of a single-payer model, or at least that was the attempt with Obamacare. So, I mean, the viewer seems to be right.
FOSTER: I'd say that that's true. I'd also say that a lot of the things that aren't working all that well have nothing to do with capitalism. As Joe was pointing out earlier, our healthcare system is dominated by government.
Nearly half of every dollar spent comes from the government. What it doesn't spend directly, it regulates incredibly heavily. And a lot of the dysfunction that we see there, the incredible prices, the denials, honestly, the bizarre system that we have for paying for absolutely everything through insurance schemes, rather than having meaningfully competitive healthcare markets where we can actually get prices and compete on quality for healthcare services, that isn't a function of a lack of government intervention.
It is a function of there being a lack of a real free market for healthcare in this country. It would be wonderful if we could talk about meaningful reform, the notion that single payer, hiding prices, making the government the primary purchaser and provider of all health services would actually improve things that is absolutely insane. Where has that ever worked?
MCGOWAN: It's worked in about 73 countries in the world on different variations.
FOSTER: It's lower costs, it's actually increased access.
MCGOWAN: It would absolutely lower our costs.
FOSTER: Absolutely it is true. PHILLIP: It is true that we pay more for health care than for --
FOSTER: We buy more health care --
MCGOWAN: -- than any other country in the world.
FOSTER: We buy more health care than anyone else.
PHILLIP: It's also true that in countries that have universal healthcare, they're all covered. Everybody gets access to healthcare.
LYMAN: Yeah, but it takes you like eight months, 10 months. People have dime waiting.
HILL: Not everywhere though.
PHILLIP: I'm just saying, in answer to the two points that you brought up, both the cost of the system and the coverage, a universal healthcare system would drive down costs and increase coverage.
FOSTER: We buy more, we pay more in certain ways, which also helps to fund innovation in various places. We also get a higher standard of care in many instances.
PHILLIP: Yes, but you know what, the innovation is also driven by the government. That is also a government function.
FOSTER: I think that has a lot to do with the way that some of our research institutions work. But that's not a function of there being an inability for funding itself to drive innovation.
PHILLIP: Ask the pharmaceutical companies who are developing these drugs. It would not happen without government investment. So there is a role, right?
I mean, look, it's somewhere in between. But I think that the idea that just saying capitalism good socialism bad is that in this moment is what up for debate right now. Americans are --
BORELLI: You guys did the Republicans tried to have Talarico right now publicly. I mean that is that is exactly how they would love to frame the Texas Senate right now.
MCGOWAN: I will say, I think we have a whole lot of socialism in this country and it goes to corporations to your point about --
HILL: That's what I was going to say.
MCGOWAN: We get a ton of money to oil and gas companies we give it a ton of money to airlines to big banks when they're having trouble. But the rest of us are supposed to be rugged individualists who pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.
And I will tell you as someone who grew up in Canada with universal healthcare and now lives in the States and pays $4,300 a month just to have my premium paid, this is not the system we should be using. And America would be smarter to spend less money and have a better universal healthcare system where they pick and choose from all the best ones in the world, anywhere from South Korea to the U.K. to Canada and said, that works, this works, and give their system here, to be something --
HILL: And the way that we would allow.
PHILLIP: All right. Next, we're going to react to your feedback from cnn.com/abby. We'll be right back.
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[23:55:00]
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PHILLIP: And now some viewer feedback from cnn.com/abby.
Evan asks, "Why were white South Africans welcome under the Trump administration and given up to $4500, apparently?"
HILL: Is that a trick question?
PHILLIP: It's a real question.
LYMAN: Well, I think with immigration policy, it should always be who's going to most likely easily assimilate to America. And white South Africaners just happen to have the same kind of language. They happen to have the same kind of culture.
So it makes their assimilation process easier.
PHILLIP: So we're just good as long as they're white.
LYMAN: As long as they're white. Do they speak the same language? Do they have a similar culture?
PHILLIP: They're fine. And we can actually take our taxpayer dollars and give them money.
LYMAN: I don't agree with giving them money. That's definitely not a family.
MCGOWAN: Well, they got those lovely gift baskets, so --
LYMAN: We spent so much money on illegal aliens, so what's $4,500 at this point?
FOSTER: I have many thoughts. None of them particularly succinct.
But I will say that the administration gave its stated reason. They believed they were being targeted for racial oppression in their country. There was some dispute about that.
HILL: Some?
[23:00:06]
PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, there's basically no.
All right, last one. I'd love for you to invite Mrs. Borelli on the show some night. So that Joe -- with Joe, so that we can see how they discuss things at home.
BORELLI: Oh, wow. My wife would gut me like a fish. Do you think I talk to my wife like I debate on this panel?
I am just a nice, humble guy, you know, cleaning the dishes.
PHILLIP: Good to know, Joe. Good to know.
Thank you for watching "NewsNight." "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
