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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Starts Midterm Season With Memes, Trade War, 9/11 Claim; Trump Touts Sold-Out Convention Despite Some GOP Skipping; Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-New York City, NY) Ignores Calls To Stay Away From 9/11 Ceremony; Trump Administration Removes Criticism Of The Confederate Memorial Statue. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired September 08, 2026 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SARA SIDNER, CNN HOST (voice over): Tonight, Donald Trump dives into memes, a trade war, and a new 9/11 claim as midterm season kicks off.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Two firemen, they literally lifted me up and they started running with me.
SIDNER: Plus, as Zohran Mamdani exposes what officials knew about the health risks after 9/11 --
MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI (D-NEW YORK CITY, NY): People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air.
SIDNER: -- some are calling on the mayor not to attend this week's ceremony.
FMR. MAYOR RUDY GIULIANI (R-NEW YORK CITY, NY): Having lost friends there, it offends me that he's coming.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My message to Mayor Mamdani is, dude, we don't want you to come.
SIDNER: Also, the administration erases criticism of a Confederate statue at Arlington in its so-called war on woke.
And as Lindsay Clancy's fate remains in limbo, her lawyer asked Donald Trump for a pardon.
KEVIN REDDINGTON, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Mr. President, I would hope that you would consider a pardon.
SIDNER: Live at the table, Cornel West, Jason Rantz, Xochitl Hinojosa, Shermichael Singleton, and Ana Navarro.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do
(END VIDEOTAPE) SIDNER (on camera): Good evening to you. I'm Sara Sidner in New York for Abby Phillip.
Midterm season is upon us. Americans have been clear they care about the rising cost of everything from housing to healthcare. But President Trump has been concentrating on other things, at least publicly, like the first GOP midterm convention, an extravaganza that begins tomorrow in Dallas starring himself.
Trump promoted the event tonight, calling it really hot, and bragged that it was totally sold out, even though a number of Republicans are not going to go. He escalated his trade war with Canada by threatening to ban Bombardier jet sales in the United States. It comes after our northern neighbor kept its promise to retaliate, imposing the same amount of tariffs on American goods that Trump imposed on Canada.
Trump also posted to social media nonstop, it felt like, flooding his feed with A.I slop on everything from his ongoing war in Iran to Hulk Hogan. And today, during a 9/11 ceremony, President Trump regaled the crowd with this story about himself.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I'll never forget, two firemen, we thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen, big strong guys, and I'm not the smallest guy in the world, they grabbed me under the arms, said, we got to get out of here. And they literally lifted me up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: There's no record of evidence of that actually happening. We did contact the White House to get comment. They have not responded.
He also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a 9/11 hero, and then said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Today we also remember another hero of 9/11 after the plane hit the south tower.
They call him the man in the red bandana. Have you heard that term, the man in the red bandana? He's become more famous than me. I don't like it. Very unhappy about it. He's become much more famous than me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: Before we open it up to the table here, we invite you at home to join the debate. Head to cnn.com/Abby and you can weigh in. You know, we'll get to some of your comments throughout this show.
All right, let's start with someone who has been out and about on vacation for a little while. Ana Navarro, I'm putting you in the hot seat. All right, I do want to ask you --
ANA NAVARRO, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: What's the topic again? SIDNER: I want to ask you about what we just heard from President Trump, where he first told this story that we can't corroborate about him being picked up by firemen and then he made the comment about the 9/11 hero, saying, I don't like that he's more famous than me and he laughed and joked.
Is this just something that people have just gotten used to, or could any other president get away with this?
NAVARRO: No. I mean, you know, this entire week, the memes, the attacks on Canada, making 9/11 about himself, no, this is not something that any other president could get away with.
[22:05:01]
And I think it's shameful that the American people have gotten accustomed to this, that we all kind of just shrug our shoulders and say -- I don't know how many times I have heard people say, on both sides, oh, that's just Trump being Trump. Well, the problem is Trump is the president of the United States.
You know, as you said I've been on vacation. I've been out of the country. I can't tell you what the image of the United States and of the president of the United States is in Europe when you go out of this country. People think we don't have a word. People think our president is insane. People think that this is a stupid war.
And I think all of these things that Donald Trump is doing, particularly these ridiculous, asinine, infantile memes, is a distraction ploy so that people, as we are 56 days from the midterms, don't focus on the bad economic numbers, don't focus on the cruelty going on with immigration, don't focus on a war that he said would end within weeks and we're now in month six of, don't focus on a stupid deal with the remnants of the Maduro regime in Venezuela, and of all of the abuses of power and vanity projects that he's engaged in while Americans can't pay for healthcare.
SIDNER: And a year back and you didn't miss a beat. I just want to put that out there on the record.
Jason, when you hear some of this, but also when you see -- he posted something like 100 memes with everything and anything but solutions to things that Americans are saying, hey, we need help with this, the affordability crisis is a real one, and we need help with this.
And one of the, the things that he posted was about Canada, and you saw him sort of in a hockey jersey like hitting the prime minister of Canada, and then kind of leaning over him. And then he had this other one that has the American flag posted over, you know, parts of Canada, Mexico and Greenland. What is this all about? Is this the messaging that should be happening as we are now officially, or unofficially, in the midterms?
JASON RANTZ, SEATTLE RED RADIO HOST: Sure. The messaging is not for you, it's not for me, it's not for anyone at this table. It's specifically for the base. That's what this is for. It's to generate some excitement going into Trumpapalooza over the course of the next two days. It's separate from the message that you're going to hear presumably on that stage tomorrow night and over the next couple nights about some of the successes.
I know folks like to always focus on the negative. And I would too, if I'm the opponent, right? You always focus on the negative. But with respect to the economy, the jobs numbers that came out just last week were a huge success for this president. We have crime that's going to record low levels, violent crime specifically. We actually have a president who's brought down, helped bring down the price of drugs, which presidents have been talking about --
NAVARRO: So, why isn't he highlighting that instead of posting stupid memes?
RANTZ: You're going to hear that tomorrow. You're going to hear that the next day. You don't follow him on Truth Social. I don't use Truth Social. The base uses Truth Social.
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Can I say something about the base real fast? I just want to say something about the base, especially since everyone is going to be on Texas over the next two days, and that's where the midterm convention is. That is where I'm from. My sister is running for governor there. I see a lot of the data in that state.
And what I'm seeing a lot of right now is, in particular, his base, they're not only -- they're not motivated to vote in this midterm election, to your point, and I understand that he's probably speaking to them, but they're the ones that are actually hurt by his policies, whether that is tariffs, whether that is rising costs.
If you're looking at a place like Texas, data centers right now, those are in rural areas where Republicans own farmland, and that farmland is going to be taken away from them. And now they are considering whether to vote for a Democrat, because right now Donald Trump is --
RANTZ: So, that part's not true. That's not true.
HINOJOSA: Yes, it is.
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: The base? The base?
RANTZ: It is not. Not the base.
HINOJOSA: Well, yes, Republicans that voted for Trump that are MAGA are absolutely thinking about --
RANTZ: There's no data that backs up --
HINOJOSA: Yes, there is.
RANTZ: But you're right, I think, when it comes to independents.
HINOJOSA: Have you read The Washington Post? There are tons of quotes -- RANTZ: I think you're right when it comes to independents. But the base has not abandoned Trump at all.
HINOJOSA: No. This is MAGA. I am --
SINGLETON: No, not at all.
HINOJOSA: Hold on. I'm not done. I am from Texas. They are abandoning Republicans. They might not admit that they're abandoning Trump but that doesn't translate to voting for Ken Paxton right now or anyone else in that state.
What they're essentially upset at is that Republicans have put forward policies or not done anything about regulating things like data centers that will end up increasing costs, taking away their water, and taking away their land. That is something that is a huge issue. But it also --
RANTZ: Well, Republicans are pushing back on that. It is a talking point coming from China.
HINOJOSA: Well, Trump is not.
RANTZ: We're seeing a lot of that going on, on social media.
HINOJOSA: He loves data centers.
RANTZ: It's based in nonsense.
HINOJOSA: He thinks that your land should be taken away.
RANTZ: It is a national security issue that, of course, benefits China.
HINOJOSA: He loves them.
RANTZ: The more we push this nonsense about data centers. I think there is risk that you have to talk about and --
HINOJOSA: It's not nonsense. People's land is taken away.
RANTZ: Some -- the whole idea of creating these data centers, all of a sudden, all of our water, for example, is going to go away. That's not the system that the data centers use. And every single day that goes by that we have a data center, the technology increases even more where it becomes even more efficient.
SIDNER: But, Jason, let me just tap onto this because we have heard from people, I myself have heard from people, when it comes to these data centers.
[22:10:05]
They're concerned that they are not let into the process, that there are NDAs being signed, and these are in small towns where some of them certainly are Trump supporters or at least were. Now, they are extremely concerned about the price of their electricity and other things. And they've been kept out of the process, and that has been huge.
RANTZ: There's a lot of fear around data centers. The process has to include the community. But I would point to Quincy, Washington, a really small town that has a huge data center, and they are seeing the praises of this thing because they understand what it means for their local economy. Yes.
SIDNER: All right. Let me ask you about something that we heard from Dr. Oz, who suggested that Americans need to, you know, sort of buck up to help the whole system when it comes to retirement. Here's what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. MEHMET OZ, MEDICARE AND MEDICAID ADMINISTRATOR: If we can get the average American to feel so healthy, so vital, so with it, that they want to work one extra year, just one extra year. Instead of retiring at 62, they want to go to 63. That's worth $1 trillion to our GDP every year.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: Shermichael, look, we've heard many years ago during World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt was asking people to make sacrifices, and there were things like rationing. And Americans did follow along, although the party got punished later on because it went on. Nixon also asking Americans to sort of turn down their thermostats when there was an energy crisis. Jimmy Carter, we know what happened with him.
SINGLETON: Yes.
SIDNER: But Americans went along for a little while by carpooling and doing different things when there was an energy crisis. Is this something that should be asked right now?
SINGLETON: Well, look, people are living longer. You can do more as you live longer because of technology, medicine. I'm not necessarily opposed to that if that's an option people select. I don't think it should be mandated from the government.
But I want to touch on this midterm issue. So, between 1946 and 2022, the party of the president has lost 18 out of 20 midterm races. This is not an unusual phenomenon to Donald Trump. And despite the critiques coming from Ana and my friend, Xochitl, here, if this was several years ago, the expectation would've been that Republicans would have had a 60-seat loss, similar to Barack Obama, if you recall.
But because of Donald Trump, there are far fewer competitive Congressional districts now than there were a decade plus ago. You also look at how Donald Trump has reoriented the Republican political base and also the Democratic base. It's younger, more men of color. He's doing a lot of things on criminal justice reform. Just a couple of days ago Alice Johnson, the czar, pardon czar, just announced 30 pardons and commutations, a lot of younger men of color, that resonates with them.
There's a reason why Democrats are struggling with some traditional folks that they could rely on over and over again that have said, you know what, we're not fans of the party today. We're looking at the Republican Party. There's a reason, and you have to give the president credit for that. Why aren't Democrats more competitive considering these critiques than they were years ago? That has to be factored in.
NAVARRO: Let me tell you what there's incredible statistics on.
SINGLETON: Sure.
NAVARRO: He made incredible strides with Latino men. Had, you know, a ten-point lead with them on election day over Kamala Harris. He has now gone down 51 points. He's 41 under.
It's because those Latino men, those men of color who trusted him, who thought he was going to do something on the economy that was going to benefit them, are seeing these stupid foreign wars where men of color are over-represented in service, are seeing themselves racially profiled by cruel immigration agents, are seeing people who look like them and sound like them killed in the streets of America, are seeing their girlfriends and their mothers and their aunts and their grandmothers deported. Some of them are being deported while they are serving the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy.
SINGLETON: Can I interject?
NAVARRO: No. But do you admit that he has lost double digits with Latino men?
SINGLETON: It is legitimate about whether or not support among Hispanic men and black men are soft or hard. I'll give -- I'll cede that point to you. That does not necessarily correlate to Democrats regaining that support again. That's the overall point about the realignment.
NAVARRO: But I'm not making that point.
SINGLETON: But that's my point about the realignment --
NAVARRO: I'm saying he's lost the support because of the abuses of power that he --
(CROSSTALKS)
NAVARRO: And Democrats can't take that for granted.
SINGLETON: No, they can't.
NAVARRO: They can't think that it's just going to come back.
SINGLETON: But my overall point though to the initial question about midterms and the competitiveness of my party compared to the other side, they should be far more competitive than they are not. Why is that? Because Trump has reoriented the political system. I will cede your point, Ana, on the softness of Hispanic men and black men, and yet when you talk to them, look at the focus group data, the qualitative work, the surveys, they will tell you, I'm not moving to the Democratic Party. There's nothing over there for me. So, that gives -- put a strategic advantage to Republicans. You look at a state like Texas, where you're from, I'm from.
HINOJOSA: Yes.
SINGLETON: Donald Trump got 34 percent of Black men in Texas.
[22:15:01]
Now, as a strategist, I'm looking at the correlation, I'm thinking, Ken Paxton probably won't get all of them, Ana, but can we get 6, 7, 8, 10 percent of them? Can we make it more competitive? Do Democrats like a Talarico pull more of them? I don't think he does. And so what does that tell me mathematically? There's a clear path to victory for a Paxton.
And so my point is, despite some of the fumbles, if you will, that you've seen from my side, I still think the losses that we are to expect in the House will not be as grave as they could have been if you were to fast-forward or go backwards.
SIDNER: And we will only know, Mr. Cornel -- Mr. West, we will only know this when the actual election happens because polling has been a little spotty here.
DR. CORNEL WEST (I), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, yes.
SIDNER: We'll be fair.
WEST: That's true, not the most reliable polls in the world.
SIDNER: Yes, what are your thoughts on --
WEST: No, it's true. It's true. Yes. I want to begin just by wishing brother Bernie Sanders happy birthday.
SIDNER: Okay.
WEST: 85 years young. And why do I begin with him? Because we're talking about a certain kind of consistency, whether you agree with him or not. I agree with him much of the time. He's consistent, he has an integrity.
What I love about this brother here, even when I have deep disagreements with him, he's an honest brother. I don't mind being on the deacon board with him because I know he's going to make sure that communion gets to the sick and the shut-in.
Now, we got political disagreements that's going to cut deep, no doubt about that. But because I want to look at the world through the lens of poor and working people, no matter where they are. Mass incarceration, poverty, not enough jobs, not enough healthcare, not enough love, not enough high-quality family and community.
I don't see any party speaking to those deeper issues. But I do see the possibilities of persons concerned about innocent human beings locked into the prison system who are being treated unjustly and unfairly, and that's what we could come together on. I think we could have a common agreement on that. And I would hope that both parties would be able to step forward in that regard.
Now, of course, I'm not crazy about either one of these parties. I think it's going to be a mess after the midterms, more chaos, more corruption, more lies, more crimes, not just in the Middle East, but other parts of the world.
People say, oh, he's cynical. Oh, no, I'm not cynical at all. I'm just trying to tell the truth of an empire that's in such decline and decay that so much of our discussion doesn't get at the roots of what's really pulling the rug from under the country.
SIDNER: All right. Next, Rudy Giuliani and some 9/11 families are demanding that New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani stay away from this week's ceremony, and they cite his religion.
Plus, the Trump administration is again sanitizing language about slavery in America, and this time at Arlington. We'll discuss what's happening there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
SIDNER: Tonight, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released 170,000 pages of records about air quality following the September 11th attacks. Those documents show that city officials knew conditions around Ground Zero were unsafe to breathe despite repeated assurances to the public.
This is occurring as some Republicans and some family members of victims of 9/11 are asking Mamdani not to attend Friday's memorial ceremony.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIULIANI: Frankly, whatever he'd like to say, he doesn't agree that September 11 was an Islamic terrorist attack on the United States of America.
Having lost friends there and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he's coming.
This is not they want to be just another religion. They want to dominate us.
COUNCILWOMAN JOANN ARIOLA (R-NY: What he's trying to do is deflect.
He does not care about 9/11 or the tragedies that took place because he surrounds himself with people who believe that America deserved what it got, and he does not disavow them. He does not step away from them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: So, that last part that you heard is a reference to comments that were not made by Mamdani, but instead political podcaster Hassan Piker, which Mamdani did disavow prior to getting elected.
This time, Mamdani is responding to those calls for his absence from the 9/11 event.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAMDANI: I'm proud to be in the city. I love this city. I love this country. And what I want this week to be a focus on is on the families whose loved ones were stolen from them 25 years ago in the horrific act of terror of September 11th, and a focus also on the first responders who gave everything they could to this city, and to the people who came together to try and help their fellow New Yorkers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: All right. Mr. West, do you think that Mamdani would be this criticized or that anyone, any mayor would be this criticized? And do you think he'd be criticized if he didn't show up? I mean, does he have a choice here? Showing up or not showing up, does he get criticized either way?
WEST: I've been a New Yorker for 50 years, and every mayor of New York I know has been trashed, vilified, demonized, showing up in different contexts when he's not welcome. I tell my dear brother mayor, you show up, preserve your dignity and you tell that truth, and make sure you are in genuine solidarity and empathy with people who suffered that day, and keep moving.
[22:25:00]
That's all.
SIDNER: Your recommendation is to show up. He is the mayor of --
WEST: Oh, absolutely.
SIDNER: Shermichael, let me ask you about -- and I want people to listen to what one of the family members said this was not about in asking him not to come.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHERI SPARACIO, LOST HUSBAND IN 9/11 ATTACKS: I want to make clear that our petition is not about Mayor Mamdani's religion or where he came from. It is strictly about the policies that he has today. Yes, he was a nine-year-old boy when 9/11 happened, but it is today that he stands with people like Hassan Piker. It is today that he hires people, like Ramzi Kassem. It is today that he stands with an imam that was a co-conspirator of the '93 bombing. That is what we object to. (END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: So, Mamdani has talked about both Ramzi Kassem and the imam who was also, he points out, met with Mayor de Blasio and Mayor Bloomberg as well at one point.
But I do want to see if you -- when you test the waters there, if you think that religion is somewhat a part of this.
SINGLETON: He's the mayor of the city. Just politically, he must show up to this event. This was a consequential event in our nation's history and it was a consequential event in world's history. I mean, it led to a war, with trillions of dollars. We lost a lot of men and women, other countries lost a lot of men and women. And so whatever disagreements may exist and persist on the religious front, he is the mayor of the city.
And I don't agree with him on much of anything but I can't imagine seeing an elected official of the most prominent city in this country, on such a tragic commemoration event, not show up for that. I mean, he has no choice. He must be there.
I understand the cries and the complaints and critiques by some I presume are on my side, but just as a political matter, I don't know how you don't attend some of these events.
NAVARRO: Do you think Trump should be showing up?
SINGLETON: He's the president. I mean, the president wants to speak. He's speaking, I believe, a couple of days before. But if I were advising, I would go.
NAVARRO: They've never had political speeches during a 9/11 commemoration. Every other president has shown up and is showing up.
SINGLETON: He's a New Yorker. He loves this city.
NAVARRO: You just said that the mayor of New York had to show up because it's a national historic event in our country and in this city, but you're not holding Trump to the same standard.
SINGLETON: Well, the president -- no, the president should show up, and I don't have any issue with that. I would advise the president to show up. He is a New Yorker. He loves this city far more than I do. I don't particularly care for the politics of this town. But he loves the place. And I would say, Mr. President, this is your place. Show up.
(CROSSTALKS)
RANTZ: So, I do think Mamdani's in a very difficult spot, because if he doesn't show up, it just brings a greater spotlight to the concerns of folks. He does have to show up.
I don't think he's making it necessarily easy on himself here. Just within the last week, handing the symbolic 9/11 pen to the Al-Qaeda defense attorney was a bad look going into this with the context of the complaints about him showing up.
I also think as much as, you know, we said, well, you know, in retrospect, I don't like the comments from Hassan Piker. The Hassan Piker comments and all, that's been out there for a very long time. He embraced him anyway, and the Democrats embraced him anyway.
And I do think that it is fair to criticize that relationship until you completely cut ties, not just say, well, that one comment I disagree with. You either disagree with the person who has a history of these kinds of disgusting comments or you don't, and you're just going to use him politically when it benefits you.
SINGLETON: But he has to show up though, Jason.
RANTZ: He does have to show up, absolutely.
SIDNER: So, Jason, speaking of this, somebody that has the president's ear when they're talking about religion, Laura Loomer put this really Islamophobic comment out there surrounding all this and here is what she said.
She says, actually, the most America first thing Vice President Vance can do on 9/11 is refuse to shake the dirty Muslim mayor's hand. She calls Mamdani, she goes on to call him all sorts of name, a jihadist, blah, blah, blah.
I mean, how do you explain this? This is a person who the president, who went along with the president a couple years ago to this memorial, and she herself is a conspiracy theorist who thought that 9/11 at one point was an inside job and made that very clear.
RANTZ: Yes. I mean, the only people who talk about Laura Loomer are folks on television. I don't hear the influence coming from the administration.
SIDNER: She has the president's ear.
RANTZ: I don't think that she's out there --
SIDNER: She has influence. You don't think she has any influence?
RANTZ: I have no idea if she has influence.
HINOJOSA: He made national security decisions about the NSC based off of who, Laura Loomer thought should be fired.
RANTZ: You're not seeing Laura Loomer show up to campaign events and speaking on behalf of the president or this administration.
HINOJOSA: But people get fired in the federal government based off of Laura Loomer.
SIDNER: She has the president's ear. She has been involved in --
RANTZ: you say that. I have no idea if she has the president's ear.
HINOJOSA: No, there's facts.
RANTZ: So, I -- no.
I know some people say that. I'm not dismissing that.
HINOJOSA: No, she calls it. I will be fired if they get fired.
[22:30:05]
RANTZ: I'm simply suggesting I think people are overstating her influence on this President simply because they're trying to deflect from people who are active within the Democratic Party, getting people or trying to get people elected. Hassan Piker's influence, both on culture and on the party, is much different than Laura Loomer.
People aren't talking generally about Laura Loomer. People are generally talking about Hasan Piker. If Laura Loomer comes out and has a podcast that has an influence on a younger generation of voters or any generation of voters, we can have that conversation. I think that's a fair point.
I don't necessarily like the influence that Laura Loomer, you say, has to the extent that she has any. I agree with some of what she says. I disagree with a lot of what she says.
That tweet, I don't listen to it.
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, AND REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: But I'm not convinced it's just a matter of advising the political principle that the Vice President of the United States will take advice from someone on social media. Laura is certainly entitled to her position whether we agree or not.
But I don't think the Vice President is at her whims in terms of what he decides to do in his interactions with mayors of a prominent city --
ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, AND PODCAST HOST, "BLEEP WITH ANA NAVARRO": We glossed over and I couldn't believe that it took 25 years for there to be transparency about the air quality and the toxicity in New York. Thousands of people have died, people have known for years that there was something going on, and that there was mayoral administration after mayoral administration that kept this from being public should really bother all of us and we can disagree on Mamdani, we can discuss Mamdani, all of that.
But what he did today in being transparent 25 years later with all of the family members who've lost people because of 9/11, I think was a good thing.
RANTZ: Well, the people who brought the lawsuit deserve the credit. Also, I'm not dismissing that.
NAVARRO: When were they brought?
RANTZ: I'm saying that they had to bring a lawsuit. I give them a lot of credit for stepping up and doing that difficult thing.
SIDNER: It is also interesting to note, though, that Mayor Giuliani, who was hailed America's hero at the time for his actions, was also there when some of these reports came out that this was terrible and first responders ended up suffering so much and were not helped for many years, which is why you also saw Jon Stewart standing there who's been fighting for first responders in particular who have suffered so terribly for just doing their jobs down there at 9/11.
And I cannot believe that we are at 25 years since that horrific day. So we will leave it there.
Coming up, sanitizing language that depicted slavery in the Civil War. That's what the Trump administration is doing at Arlington National Cemetery. Or at the same time, saying history should be preserved when it comes to Confederate monuments there.
What is happening there? Next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SIDNER: Tonight, the Trump administration continues its quest to rewrite history, this time at Arlington National Cemetery, where it is sanitizing language about slavery and a monument dedicated to the Confederacy.
After facing backlash over its depictions of an enslaved woman portrayed as a nanny carrying the child of a white officer, and there's another depiction there of an enslaved man following his owner to war. The Confederate War Memorial was removed from Arlington in 2023 by a bipartisan naming commission.
Now, not only has the Trump administration pledged to reinstall the statue, but according to the Post, in recent weeks, it's also stripped necessary historical context from plaques at the cemetery and on a Defense Department website.
Quote, "The Army expects to display the sculpture at this site in 2027 after it has undergone comprehensive conservation and refurbishment." A new marker at Arlington reads.
I'm going to start with you, Mr. West. This was a bipartisan group that said, hey, this is inappropriate, let's take this down. It's coming back. Why do you think that is?
CORNEL WEST (I), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, AUTHOR, "TRUTH MATTERS", AND DIETRICH BONHOEFFER CHAIRMAN, UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY: Well, you know, first, my dear brother Lonnie Bunch is retiring. He's a giant.
SIDNER: The head of the Smithsonian. WEST: Head of the Smithsonian, concerned about museums, truth-telling.
And no one of us have a monopoly on the truth. We're all crack vessels.
But he was a grand and remains a grand quester for truth. But the condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak. Everybody suffers indigenous peoples, it could be white workers, it could be black people, it could be Spanish-speaking, whatever, Italians and so on.
But let's just be honest. Given the deep, vicious legacy of white supremacy, can you imagine us having a debate about an army that was protecting a regime whose constitution said we're keeping these black people enslaved in perpetuity forever?
Just substitute that. Any other people.
We're keeping these white people. We're keeping any people. That's sick. that's spiritually sick and morally decrepit.
Now that's what the cause was. And the South said it was a lost cause. They should have lost.
But white supremacy won the peace even after the war with Jim Crow and Jane Crow and lynching every two and a half days some black body swinging from a tree. So what are we talking about here?
All Lonnie Bunch and the others were trying to say is let's tell the whole truth, the best and the worst about the country. But when it comes to, again, it kind of connects to what we were talking about before in terms of folks locked in the hood, mass incarceration and so forth.
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Somehow, there's this something that these black people really don't count, especially the poor and working ones. We might make a little space for the black bourgeoisie and the middle class for a while, and even they get pushed. But when it comes to the black poor and the black working, they get completely overlooked.
And that's what we're talking about in the Confederacy. Four million precious Africans and black folk who were told you would be enslaved in perpetuity forever. That's the Confederacy.
And we just ought to be honest about that. We could be honest without hating people. We're just concerned about the truth, and that's what Lonnie Bunch and others were trying to do, I think.
SIDNER: Jason, can you explain why bring this back? At the same time, the Trump administration is doing things like removing some murals, for example, in Philadelphia that depict slavery in an honest way that have been there for a very long time. Why erase one and bring back the other?
RANTZ: I can't speak specifically to this decision, but more globally, that this is a response to what we saw over the course of the last several years. The administration believes, and I think there's a lot of data to back this up, that there was an attempt to actually rewrite history from a political lens that was intentionally framing things towards the negative rather than giving both sides equal treatment and saying here's the actual context.
The Smithsonian is a perfect example of that. Why for example, and this is in that report that they released a couple months ago, they have a space on chest binders for trans athletes. Like why specifically did that come up?
I think most honest people looking at this would say well it's because they're responding to a political moment in time that was advanced by progressives. And so this is a reaction to that.
I don't think all the responses in reaction are the correct ones. I think they're trying to correct and perhaps are overcorrecting in this particular case. I have no problem showing context.
SIDNER: The Confederacy was a seditious movement. They lost.
RANTZ: My argument is that they are looking at everything and they are overcorrecting what they saw as an overcorrection coming from the left. That's the response here. That's why they're doing it.
HINOJOSA: I think the CHS is them trying to erase history.
RANTZ: But they're not erasing history. We're talking about it. The actual piece of history, they took it off of a website that no one knew existed except for some historian.
HINOJOSA: But why do you think that the head of the Smithsonian, and this isn't just one thing, this isn't in a vacuum, this is a series of actions by the administration to trying to rewrite history. And I guess--
RANTZ: It's not rewriting history. That's just not true.
HINOJOSA: I guess the question is, what are they scared of?
RANTZ: No, here is actually something that might be concerned with.
It's that when you use a political wet and in this case a progressive political political -- hold on -- to define history, it's going to tell younger Americans not to be proud of this country.
The argument from someone like me and others are saying, no, let's give the context from both sides.
SIDNER: Hold on a second. There is nothing in the museums that say you should not be proud of this country. But there are hard truths in these museums that show you what happened
Perhaps so that we learn from history. And I think there is a difference between --
RANTZ: -- versus apolitical. That's the argument. SIDNER: If you've been in these museums, most of them do not say what
you should think. They say, here is what has happened. Here is what has happened to these white people.
RANTZ: But you can write things in a way that tells you how to think.
NAVARRO: Well, you know what? Back to the point, Xochitl's point.
This is not something that's happening in a vacuum. Let's also remember all of the black officers that have either not been removed from promotion lists or fired.
Started with C.Q. Brown, who is the second black man who was the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was fired in February 2025. The admiral that was also pushed towards retirement. The Navy officers and Army officers who have been taken off black from promotion lists, the names of Navy ships like the John Lewis ship, the Doris Miller ship that have been stopped.
It's the taking out of art from U.S. embassies painted by the artist Wiley, who's black. It's the fact that while we are removing TPS from Haitians and other black and brown groups, we are letting South Africans, white South Africans in, fleeing a made-up fabricated genocide.
So you can look at action after action where this administration has proven that they are coddling white supremacists and racists. You can deny it, but the actions are there.
SIDNER: We're going to continue -- you get the first comment when we come back. We're coming right back. We'll talk about this. You will.
We'll come back. We will continue this discussion because it is a topic that is important. We'll be right back.
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SIDNER: All right, we are going to continue the conversation we had before that Shermichael wants to talk about. It's important.
SINGLETON: This is an important topic. I mean, obviously, I grew up in the South. The Confederacy, they were treasonous.
There's no logical reason for me, for any American who loves this country, to be in support of them. Now, I understand your point, Jason, about political overcorrection, like capitalism is white supremacy. I don't necessarily agree with that, I'm very pro- capitalist.
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But these monuments do tell a story, a very horrid story, part of our country's history. And to me, when you think about those black slaves and black Americans today and this Herculean effort, you have doctors and lawyers and entertainers and athletes.
We should be proud of that history. We did something really bad. But look how far black people have been able to come, what we've been able to accomplish.
I mean that story is a story that isn't told in most parts of the world. And so why would you want to change that? Why would you want to water it down?
We should embrace it, we should be proud of it. We should be proud of what black Americans have been able to accomplish.
And so to me, when you see these stories, and earlier we were talking about black men. And we were talking about the black men that support the President. And I have been very loud about this for a long time now. This is this odd duality about the Republican Party.
We make a couple steps forward with attracting people of color. And then you have individuals with very obvious racial views in my personal perspective, I'm just being honest, that make decisions where if you're a strategist trying to engage with members of that community, they say, maybe I agree on capitalism, maybe I agree about social conservatism, maybe I agree about strong military defense, maybe I'm very anti-DSA or maybe I'm not very liberal.
But you know on the race stuff, I just can't stand with you guys on the race stuff. It makes people like me, my job, very damn difficult to do. Because black men in particular may agree on every other issue.
But when you come to this, most people will say, I can't stand with you guys on this point, I just can't. It's a constant battle in my party, going back multiple presidencies, where we've had this infighting. How progressive, and I don't mean in the liberal sense, but how progressive should the party be with being open and welcoming to people of color, and that also means acknowledging what the history of the country is, and that's okay to acknowledge. It doesn't mean you're erasing it.
It doesn't mean you're looking down on our white brothers and sisters. What it does mean is it existed.
WEST: I think one of the reasons that Lonnie Bunch's vision was so crucial, because he understood that when Americans of all colors look at the history of the black freedom movement, they ought to give black people a standing ovation.
SINGLETON: It's amazing.
WEST: Because to be hated like this, terrorized like this, and traumatized like this, and produce a Frederick Douglass and an Ella Baker and a Martin Luther King who refuse to hate back and terrorize and traumatize back. If we had committed black versions of the Ku Klux Klan, black versions of the Confederacy, to enslave white folk forever, there'd been a civil war every generation.
So love, freedom, joy, deeper than politics. Much deeper than politics. There is no America, there's no American democracy if black folk had created black versions of Al Qaeda.
SINGLETON: But doesn't that speak to the beauty of Dr. West?
WEST: We produce Martin King.
SINGLETON: Of the country, exactly. That speaks to the beauty of our country.
WEST: We produce Fannie Lou., we produce John Coltrane, we produce Curtis Mayfield at our best. We got our gangsters, I got a lot of gangsters in me. Pray for me.
But the point is, is that this is deeper than just politics. Deeper than Republican Party. Deeper than Democratic Party. We're talking about something human. And we're losing it.
We're losing it. You erase that history. All the rest is something that has to be.
SINGLETON: And we should erase it because it is -- I would argue, a beautiful part of the American story.
WEST: Oh my god, yes.
SINGLETON: To the point that you're articulating, Dr. West, and for me as a conservative, I say embrace it. Embrace it. You look at the number of black capitalists, business owners, entrepreneurs, and you say, we want this. We want to tell this story.
NAVARRO: I remember in the primary, the Republican primary, when Ron Desantis was in the race and he said a phrase that I think captures the way that a lot of Republicans want to portray slavery. He talked about both sides of slavery.
And I think that what we're seeing in this cemetery, what we're seeing in the removal of the renaming commission and the actions that they had taken is that them trying to portray the both sides of slavery of something that does not have both sides.
SINGLETON: There's no both sides. There was a right side, and there was a horrible, horrid wrong side. And as a conservative, liberty, family, values, contextually, you go back to Edmund Burke, and you understand philosophically what the writings and critiques were about what conservatism is supposed to represent.
I'm talking intellectually, not this crap we debate about in terms of politics. There is no way you can believe in those principles and then both sides this. It's impossible, it's literally impossible, it cannot coexist with anyone.
NAVARRO: But when you're trying to wax poetic about when you're trying to wax poetic and I'm not saying you but when people are trying to wax poetic about a statue of a black mammy, right?
[22:55:08] And somehow romanticize the idea and take out the context of what it meant which is what is exactly what just happened that is both citing --
SINGLETON: But that was the obligation of the daughters of the confederacy and in some ways they were successful and what they sought to do which was to build these statues torment freed blacks. And to me, I think, Republicans just say we don't, we're not going to permit this. We've seen the successes of black Americans, it is a part of the American story and we embrace the conservatism and the capitalism that most black people absolutely applaud.
HINOJOSA: Well, Donald Trump would have to not be the leader of the Republican Party for that to happen.
SIDNER: Good luck, Shermichael, with talking to your Republican colleagues about this issue.
SINGLETON: Thank you. Because it's an important one.
SIDNER: Yeah. All right. Next, we'll react to your feedback, ahead.
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SINDER: We're going to end the show with a bit of kindness. A viewer has a question, and it was this.
I would love it if Dr. West would wish my husband, Trent, a happy birthday. He's our favorite on "NewsNight."
WEST: I say, Brother Trent, happy birthday to you.
SINDER: That's the Stevie Wonder version done to try to get MLK Day in place and it worked.
WEST: And it worked.
SIDNER: Thank you for watching. "Laura Coates Live" right now.
