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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Says He's Banning CNN, Other Outlets From White House; Sources Say, Faulty A.I.-Assisted Intel Report Nearly Started a War; Republican Candidate In Iowa Not Showing Up As J.D. Vance Stumped; Trump's Son Pays Back To The Russian Oligarch For A Wedding Gift. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired September 18, 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, he took an oath to uphold the Constitution and all of its freedoms, and now Donald Trump is trying to ban CNN and other outlets for not being nice enough.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I will get a good story out of these people.
PHILLIP: Plus, did A.I. almost start a war? The chilling incident that nearly led to an American military operation against China.
Also, JD Vance campaigns in Iowa for a candidate who didn't attend.
J.D. VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: I know she couldn't be here today.
PHILLIP: As Joe Rogan says this about MAGA voters.
JOE ROGAN, HOST, THE JOE ROGAN EXPERIENCE: Trump supporters are (BLEEP) nuts, man. They're rabid.
PHILLIP: And as one senator calls Don Jr.'s gift from a Russian oligarch corrupt, the president reveals this.
TRUMP: I understand that he paid him back.
PHILLIP: Live at the table, Keith Boykin, Amy Robbins, Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland, Arthur Aidala, and Jeff Jarvis.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening. I'm Abby Phillip in New York.
Tonight, as the pressure mounts on Donald Trump, he's taking his frustrations out on the First Amendment. The president says that he's banning this network, MS NOW, and also Politico from the White House, with others to follow. Here's what he says is why. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I don't think that a court should allow fake news to be written day after day. I think that somebody has a right to keep them away if they're going to write false stories all the time.
REPORTER: How is this action legal and constitutional considering the First Amendment?
TRUMP: I don't think somebody should be allowed to come in and write fake stories. They're fake news, and that's why they have no credibility.
It's all been a victory, and I won the election like nobody's ever seen anything like it. I get no -- they never write a good story. There's something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories.
Now, if they want to write them, that's fine, but I don't have to let them into my -- into the people's house.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: CNN has released a statement defending its fair and accurate reporting, and calling his move an illegal and a- assault on the Constitution.
And just to be clear, this is nothing new with this president, as you may remember. What he calls fake news are just headlines that he doesn't like, and his decisions have created the headlines, like this. Despite Trump declaring the economy the greatest ever, a rising majority of Americans don't agree, and for good reason. Diesel just hit a record. Regular gas is nearing $4.50 a gallon.
Inflation is so worrisome that his own handpicked Fed chief just raised interest rates for the first time in three years. His own handpicked Supreme Court justices blocked him from an effort to limit all mail-in ballots. And with 46 days until the midterms, Trump is underwater on virtually every issue in recent polls, especially when it comes to the Iran war, which he has promised for eight months now has been won, and is almost over.
Now, the Republican-led House just voted to end the war in another rebuke, and a Republican is the one who's leading the charge to impeach Trump's own defense secretary, a Republican candidate is leaving him out of campaign ads, dozens of them are, and a Republican called him out directly in one of her ads.
And what seems most important to him this week, judges are blocking him from putting his name on the Kennedy Center. They're also blocking him from demolishing it without warning. And so, yes, it's been a rough week for the president.
Before we open it up here to the table, we invite you at home to join the debate. Go to cnn.com/abby and weigh in. We'll get to some of your comments as we go throughout the show. And, Jeff, we have seen this movie before with this president. Is it meaningful to you this time?
JEFF JARVIS, JOURNALISM PROFESSOR: Well, first, Abby, let me give you credit for giving him a whole menu of headlines he'll hate even more, and that you didn't back down.
PHILLIP: I'm sure he's seen them.
JARVIS: So, thank you for that. If he can't get his friends to buy the media, he will ban the media. It's the story we've seen again and again. It is authoritarianism, pure and simple. It is fascism. It's what we know. But what I think has to happen now is that your colleagues in the media have to stand up by you.
[22:05:04]
I'll look straight at New York Times, and MS Now is also banned, Washington Post and Associated Press and Reuters, walk out. Walk out in solidarity, not just with CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, walk out in solidarity with the Constitution and a free press.
If you leave the press room, you're not missing anything. We can watch it all on T.V. We can read his insane socials, whatever you want to call it. You can go out and you can cover the nation more and listen to the people, not him and his insane rantings. So, let's see journalists finally have some spine and stand up with you.
PHILLIP: What was striking to me, Amy, that the president said in that clip that we played, was that he's like, what kind of country allows you to print negative stories? And the answer, Mr. President, is this country, this country explicitly allows you to print negative stories about presidents, about congresspeople, about senators, about whoever. Why doesn't he understand that?
AMY ROBBINS, CEO, ALEXO ATHLETICA: Well, I mean, you're absolutely right. This is -- the bedrock of this country is free speech, and I believe that extends to everybody, and that we should not be stopping that. But we also have to remember that the First Amendment allows them to publish. It's not necessarily just unfettered access to the White House.
So, in that regard, I still think President Trump is going to come up against some legal battles because of the language that he used with the bias, with his exclusionary viewpoints. I think he's going to have problems with that. But he does have legal standing on some point, because the courts have already recognized it doesn't just give you free access to the White House.
KEITH BOYKIN, FORMER CLINTON WHITE HOUSE AIDE: Well, I don't even want to argue the legal point because who knows what the Supreme Court will do. But the Constitution clearly says that the government shall not infringe on the freedom of the press. Let's just leave it at there.
But I do know this, though: Why is this happening right now? He even was asked the question, why is he doing it? I haven't seen anything on CNN or MS NOW or Politico in the past week to justify this. You know what's happening? Donald Trump is in trouble. He's underwater in the polls. He needs a distraction.
And so he decided, I don't want my base to be -- to not turn with the polls. I definitely need them. They're upset about the Epstein files. They're upset about energy prices and gas prices and diesel fuel especially. They're definitely upset about inflation and the war in Iran. So, how do I distract my base and get them to focus on their common enemy, the press?
So, this is what this is all about. It's a huge distraction. It came out of nowhere because Donald Trump wants the American people, particularly his base, not to focus on his multiple failures as president.
ROBBINS: But to be fair, I don't think his base is watching the outlets that were being banned from the White House anyways.
BOYKIN: Except that they're watching Donald Trump say, the press is the enemy. That's the enemy. And so now they have another distraction instead of focusing on Donald Trump and the Epstein files, Donald Trump and the war in Iran, Donald Trump and the high gas prices. He wants them not to focus on his failures.
REP. MARILYN STRICKLAND (D-WA): Yes. And another thing, too, is that look at who is not part of this ban. Fox News isn't part of this ban. And so when you talk about what Keith just mentioned, the disastrous economy, the tariffs, the war, which by the way is opposed by Democrats, Republicans, and independents.
So, this is not just about a president being underwater with his party. He's underwater with the entire American public, and he knows it. And so it's just another distraction, which is what they do. Something's going badly, you get bad press, let's manufacture another distraction so that people don't pay attention. And this will pass as well.
And, again, in addition to trying to ban media outlets, he loves to litigate, too. And so where's CBS on this list? Where's Fox News on this list?
PHILLIP: Ari Fleischer, a former George W. Bush press secretary, who often sides with Trump, he says, I agree with POTUS that several media outlets covering the White House are biased and unfair. Banning them from the White House is not a solution. Open the pool and the briefing room to conservatives, challenge liberal reporters, argue and defeat them. Don't ban them, or one day they'll ban us.
And I should note, I mean, the briefing room and the pool are already open to conservative reporters. And there have been instances in the past where -- President Obama didn't even do this, by the way. I don't even want to equate it because it's not the same thing. They tried to exclude Fox from an interview with an official. And to Jeff's point, the rest of the press corps said, we're not going to sit for this interview if Fox is not included. So, there is a risk, I think, that some future president, a Democrat, could say, okay, well, you know, Fox is a propaganda outlet. Let's get rid of them.
ARTHUR AIDALA, HOST, ARTHUR AIDALA POWER HOUR: Well, the only reason why I don't think that's going to happen is there's precedent here. Like I'm enjoying the conversation, but you started off the whole thing, this whole segment, by saying, this isn't the first time it's happened, and it isn't.
PHILLIP: Yes.
AIDALA: So, the lower federal court and an appellate court have ruled on this.
[22:10:00]
It -- and you are correct, because Trump said not that they're inaccurate, but they're lying, it's fake new, it's based just on their point of view. You can't ban them based on their point of view. If you could ban them if they said something that was absolutely, totally inaccurate, but if it was based on their point of view, you can't do that.
You can -- the courts have ruled, you can limit their access in the Oval Office or in very limited spaces. The president does have a choice as to say, okay, well, you four people are coming and you four people aren't coming, but he can't say that you're not coming because I don't like your viewpoint.
So, there is -- the lawyers around the president of the United States will say, Mr. President, I'm glad you got a lot of media attention, but if we go, we're going to lose because they've already ruled on this.
What's very interesting and not surprising about President Trump is I've been very fortunate to be pretty close with all the New York City mayors, the last four, and all of them had a blanket rule that they didn't read the newspapers, they didn't watch the media. They just did their job.
And President Trump is just the opposite. He's so focused on the media and you're correct. But I don't think the MAGA folks are watching MS NOW, so he's not concerned about that. But, yes, causing a distraction and a little disruption before we go into the weekend may not be the worst thing.
JARVIS: And the Associated Press case is still out there, right, about the Gulf of --
AIDALA: Yes, but the Associated Press won. They got back in. So, they got the access.
STRICKLAND: But the president isn't parsing the legality of this. He needs a distraction.
PHILLIP: But I think he also is -- I think there is some awareness, though. He is aware that, legally, this is not on solid ground. He doesn't care, but he's aware. AIDALA: Yes. He made a comment saying, let's do it as much as we can or as much as we're -- like he threw a little throwaway line in there to cover himself.
PHILLIP: And, you know, Alyssa Farah Griffin, who's a contributor here, she was working in the White House when behind the scenes they were trying to ban Kaitlan Collins in the first Trump administration. So -- and they talked -- his staff actually talked him out of it on the grounds that it would not stand up legally.
So, he knows a lot of this. But what's also interesting is this is also in the context of the president about to host President Xi Jinping from China, right? And, first of all, he had a lot of positive things to say about Xi today in the Oval Office, and then he was asked about China's repression of journalists, and here's what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: President Xi coming here next week.
TRUMP: He is, a great honor.
REPORTER: China is one of the most repressive countries for journalists in the world. What signal does it send --
TRUMP: Well, I don't know about that. I think we're repressive also. We get fake news. We don't repress, but they write fake news.
He'll be here next week. I can tell you this, it's too bad we don't have the ballroom open because if we did, we could have -- we'd have thousands, we could have 2,000 people having dinner.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: He almost seems envious of what China is able to do that he can't do.
BOYKIN: It does. He admires authoritarian figures and dictatorial leaders, not just China, but Russia. And this is obviously happening at an odd time because just yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission approved Saudi Arabia and three other countries, or two other countries, actually taking a stake in Paramount, the company that is trying to take over CNN.
And Trump knows this, and he wants Paramount and the Ellisons to be able to do his bidding. And it's also happening at the same time we just learned today that the Pentagon was hiding or didn't fully reveal the number of American fatalities in the Iran war.
So, this is exactly the time we do need the press to be out there and to tell the truth because we can't trust this administration to do that.
PHILLIP: I mean, is he mad about the headlines, or is he mad about the reality? ROBBINS: That's a good question, you know? I don't know. I don't know what, you know, gets under President Trump's skin. But I do want to say one thing about the media because I am unashamedly all for the First Amendment. I like having the opposing views. I like the fact that you're going to -- you can get news from CNN.
You can get news from Fox. You can hear on Fox News things that you may not hear on CNN. You know, there're some times that I would like to see good border numbers. I would like to hear more stories about illegal immigrants that have murdered women and how we can keep women safe. I don't hear that a lot of times from certain networks, but we do hear it from Fox News and other networks like that.
So, you know, I don't want to see this happen because I want to keep the free flow of information going. I want to keep the dialogue and the discussion going because I think that is one of the most important things that we can continue to do. Even if we don't agree at this table, we can still continue to have discussions and debates and have outlets that we can go to get the information that we hope is accurate and correct.
JARVIS: What's beneficial, though, is to be able to triangulate. We have CNN. We have MS NOW. We have Fox. I don't think Fox is terribly journalistic. In the year 1900 in New York City, we had 46 daily newspapers. And that's the more natural state of media, I think, is that media covered various communities, spoke for various communities.
[22:15:01]
You had the publication that spoke for you, and that's what the internet, I think, is bringing back.
That's what Trump can't understand, I think, in the age of mass media. He wants it all to be the same. He wants it all to be positive to him.
PHILLIP: And he wants to control it.
STRICKLAND: He wants to control it.
PHILLIP: Which is the key part of it all.
All right, next for us, one of the stories that Trump may not have liked, the U.S. military used a faulty intel report assisted by artificial intelligence that nearly started a war, according to our sources.
Plus, Joe Rogan calls Trump supporters rabid and effing nuts. We'll discuss.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:15:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, did A.I. nearly start a war? In the midst of the war with Iran, an intelligence report circulated throughout the military that set off alarm bells. It said that a Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program, and it needed to be intercepted and fast.
Sources tell CNN that the military sprung into action. Planes were scrambled, and armed service members were ready to board the vessel. But only hours before that operation, officials dug deeper into that intelligence. According to a source, the report was entirely false, a potentially catastrophic miscalculation.
And officials determined that the report had been generated with the help of A.I., and the chatbot that an analyst was using misidentified the cargo that the ship was carrying. It almost started a war, that source said.
As the military under Pete Hegseth pushes to weave A.I. into nearly every facet of its work, the close call underscores the profound risks of using poorly understood technology in the theater of war. U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific and the Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment on this CNN story.
Congresswoman, this is crazy.
STRICKLAND: It is.
PHILLIP: And it's scary. What do you make of it?
STRICKLAND: So, when we think about artificial intelligence, and there are a lot of people in Congress trying to come up with laws and guardrails, but I think we have to focus on what problem are we trying to solve. Do no harm, look at national security, because this is what this issue is about, and make sure that we are protecting people.
And when I think about what happened here with this military instance, it's another example of we may have A.I., and it can do things for us, but you still need to put human eyes on it. And you talk to people in the industry, and they will tell you, A.I. can do a lot of things, but there's no substitute for critical thinking and analyses that humans can bring to this conversation. And in the report -- yes.
PHILLIP: So, I mean, is Congress even equipped to handle this?
STRICKLAND: I mean, I believe that it's become urgent, especially given the news that came out of the industry where they said, we need guardrails. But the question, again, is what exactly are we solving for? And for me, it's safety, doing no harm, and national security.
And we're not going to solve this with one piece of legislation, but I will say this, too, and this might be a little controversial for people. Public officials alone cannot solve this. Industry has to be at the table. And some people don't trust that because they say they're only going to come up with laws and rules to their benefit. But they are the experts. And so we have to talk about this in a comprehensive way, and we need a global standard.
Well, the fear is, you know, regulatory capture and all of that --
STRICKLAND: Yes, I get it.
PHILLIP: -- that they're going to just try to make rules that they want.
STRICKLAND: That they benefit from, yes.
PHILLIP: Yes.
JARVIS: The problem here is, I think, in this case, it's whoever the idiot was who used the A.I. And they shouldn't have used it in this case. How the A.I. would've known what was on the ship, I have no idea. That was a human mistake that was terrible.
The really bad news, I think the A.I. does some amazing things, the conversation of the last couple weeks has been crazy and wrong on all ends, hyper on the fear, hyper on the utopianism. But the real problem is going to be this. It's a general machine.
PHILLIP: Right.
JARVIS: It can do anything that you tell it to do. And that means that it's impossible for any company to predict and prevent every malign use to which it could be put, or bad accidental use.
PHILLIP: Right.
JARVIS: So, this notion that we can have guardrails or a kill switch is simplistic. We have to deal with the fact that this is a powerful tool. In the wrong hands, as in the case of the Pentagon, it can do bad things, and that's what we judge against.
PHILLIP: I mean, it's also on the Pentagon, right? I mean, yes, maybe this analyst did a dumb thing, but he shouldn't have been able to do a dumb thing. And one of the reasons for it is because of this big push by Pete Hegseth to use A.I. in every possible way as quickly as possible.
And, weirdly, I mean, the DOD's like meme bots or whatever have entered the chat. They've entered the chat. And the posts from this week say, Americanism, not effective altruism. The United States will continue to be A.I.-dominant. The United States will never be an effective altruist country. I'm like, did A.I. write this, first of all?
And, secondly, again, this is also about using it smartly. And it seems like there's such a rush to be, oh, we're first, that, yes, actually dumb, dangerous things like this can happen.
ROBBINS: Well, here's this point. So, I think that, as we are in the rush to be first and to do this, while we're trying to wait on all of this legislation to come out, while we figure out how are we going to regulate this, I think this could've been solved with a simple process and order of command. It almost seems like there were no processes in place.
I mean, couldn't it just be very easy for them to send out a memo on Monday that says, hey, let's stamp this as A.I.-assisted.
[22:25:03] Let's make sure every line is sourced. Let's make sure every single piece gets signed off by a human before anything moves.
So, that necessarily doesn't take the legislation piece. I think that we can start moving forward and putting some of these guardrails in place just by simple processes.
PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, that's about the attitude, the predisposition in the government, right? And this is a White House where the president has the top down, right, has basically said, look, we don't believe in the idea of guardrails. It's go, go, go.
STRICKLAND: Go, go, go and -- yes. I was going to say go, go, go, and how much can I profit from it financially?
PHILLIP: Well, he strongly believes, and there's been a lot of reporting this week about this, he strongly believes that if there are any constraints put on A.I., that it could lead to economic recession or depression even. So, he's worried about that, and he doesn't mind whatever the downsides might be.
BOYKIN: Yes. And I think it's really reckless. It's dangerous for the president to act this way, as though there's no possible downside. And, yes, we are concerned, and we should be concerned about whether other actors or different countries might use A.I. for malevolent purposes. But it's also possible that our government could use it for malevolent purposes.
And I think this is going to -- this cannot be solved by federal legislation. It has to be solved by international coordination. All countries have to get together and figure out what we can do to stop this from becoming a greater threat, and that requires leadership, something we have not seen from this president.
The same thing we -- it feels to me like we're going down the same road we were in with COVID, where the president just denied, denied, denied. The same road we went -- we continue to go down with climate change. Just deny, deny, deny. This guy cannot, for the life of him, decide to get ahead of an issue that is a potential threat and deal with it honestly and tell the American people in a level enough way what's going on.
His tendency's always just to lie, lie, lie instead of tell us the truth and let us handle it honestly, Mr. President.
STRICKLAND: And he's surrounded by people who are just there to say yes to everything he wants to do.
PHILLIP: So, Arthur, you probably paid attention to this when it happened. You know, when Mamdani said in New York that he was going to ban the use of A.I. in the instruction of basically elementary-aged kids, it was kind of controversial, and some people said, oh, he's being sort of like a dinosaur. But it kind of seems prescient now.
I mean, there was an MIT report that was reported on this week that said that A.I. was causing cognitive surrender in, I mean, these brilliant kids who are at MIT. They found that the technology caused major shifts in campus culture. It isolated students who were skipping office hours, ditching communal studying. Answers from the bot can create an illusion of learning for students who reach for A.I at the first hint of struggle. And now I think we can add to that an illusion of a whole complete hallucination of things at the national security level.
AIDALA: We are definitely at a very dangerous point. And it affects -- it really affects almost every area. Because when you're talking about education, it's also socialization.
STRICKLAND: Yes.
AIDALA: So, like in my firm, we don't do a lot of AI, but I have no problem telling you, Abby, and telling the whole world, like we're falling behind because --
PHILLIP: In your firm specifically?
AIDALA: In my firm specifically because we're not doing a lot of advertising on A.I. So, the search engine optimization, the A.I. stuff, we do a lot of hand-to-hand combat. We do a lot of, Abby, you know, someone in your family's in trouble, we'll help you out. Not, you know, put it in the system, but we're falling behind. And even the lawyers, the young lawyers who are in their 20s and 30s in my office, I have them do their own research.
But in other places, in big law firms, they're putting it in, here's the facts, here's the issues. Write the motion. Now, we've represented, I think, four lawyers who asked A.I. to write the motions, and they had cases in there that just didn't exist. They were absolutely made up. And federal judges called them to the carpet, and we got all these people out of trouble with -- because it's such a new technology, the judges kind of smacked them on the wrist.
But, you know, when you -- Keith, when you talk about, you know, an international thing, yes, that sounds great, but, you know, like it's a lot easier said than done. Who decides what the rules are going to be, what the rules aren't going to be? You know --
BOYKIN: I never said it was going to be easy, but I said that's exactly why we have to have presidential leadership, because it's not easy. Who knows how quickly this thing could go out of Trump -- go out of whack.
We just saw today there was a story from Gemini that they were hacking into three different companies, with three different companies. We saw another story I just saw today, OpenAI was being used to erase its own memory.
AIDALA: But you know what the Congresswoman said though? What she said, which is accurate, just because you're elected to an office, whether it's president, congressman, or city councilman, that doesn't mean you have all the answers.
BOYKIN: No, I'm not saying that. (CROSSTALKS)
BOYKIN: It is supposed to be the leader of the free world, allegedly. That person should at least try to get the people who are the players involved at around the table.
(CROSSTALK)
[22:30:07]
PHILLIP: It is the convening -- but, hold on. I mean, it's the convening power. We, look, we are the most powerful country in the world. We are not utilizing the convening power that we potentially have. And no, the President who doesn't use a cell phone and never has, is not going to be the person to write the A.I. regs. But there are a lot of smart people who know what they're doing on this issue.
JEFF JARVIS, AUTHOR, "HOT TYPE: THE MAGNIFICENT MACHINE THAT GAVE BIRTH TO MASS MEDIA AND DROVE MARK TWAIN MAD": The problem, Abby, is, and it's a really undercovered story out there, is that the faux philosophies that guide these A.I. boys, they're mainly boys who are in charge of these companies, are looney tunes.
This whole notion of doom and existential risk comes out of a set of fake religions. And so when we say let's have the leaders sit at the table, if it's from Anthropic and OpenAI and, God help us, SpaceX, they're the people who shouldn't be in charge of this technology. The technology can do amazing things.
It may help us cure diseases.
BOYKIN: But they are in charge of technology though.
JARVIS: But we need to have others. We need to have journalists and sociologists.
BOYKIN: That's what I'm saying. We need to get some people involved. Right now, only one group of people.
The Elon Musk of the world, the ones who control everything.
PHILLIP: All of those people that you described, I mean, they are working in, you know, nonprofits and looking at the ethics of this stuff all the time. The question is, who's going to bring them to the table? And so far, nobody has done that.
BOYKIN: King Charles, right?
PHILLIP: All right, Jeff Jarvis, thank you very much for being with us.
Your new book, out now, "Hot Type, the Magnificent Machine that Gave Birth to Mass Media and Drove Mark Twain Mad." Ooh, that sounds interesting. It's out right now.
Next for us, the Vice President hits the campaign trail in Iowa again, but one Republican candidate wasn't there for the photo op. We'll discuss.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Tonight, J.D. Vance is in an awkward position. In a state his boss won by double digits today, the Vice President found himself campaigning for a candidate who wouldn't even show up to his event. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: First, I want to make it a shout out to an amazing public servant. I know she couldn't be here today, but are we going to elect Ashley Hinson, the next United States Senator for the great state of Iowa?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: In the deep red state of Iowa, Republicans are facing unexpectedly competitive midterm contests, and that includes three- term Congresswoman Ashley Hinson, the GOP Senate hopeful whose spokesperson told "The New York Times" that she had a scheduling conflict today.
In recent days, Congresswoman Hinson has joined a growing number of Republicans distancing themselves from the administration ahead of the midterms. She's spoken out about Trump's beef policy and her campaign released an ad highlighting her efforts to reach across the aisle.
Now, all of this comes as new CNN analysis shows that Republicans are keeping Trump at an arm's length. They are effectively icing him out of their campaign ads. Now, Vance appeared to return the favor. He only mentioned her once in his 30-minute speech.
Contra to what the President says, and again, this is probably one of the headlines he doesn't like, but contrary to what he is saying, his candidates don't want to treat this election as if he is on the ballot.
AMY ROBBINS, CEO, ALEXO ATHLETICA, AND CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR: I don't think it is going to shock anybody when a candidate keeps a President off of the ads or from talking about them. They try to hide Joe Biden from the campaign too. We've seen this happen both times, but J.D. Vance did have to show up in Iowa.
No one thought Iowa was going to be in play. This is an extremely important election, not just for the House seats, but also for the Senate. So it's J.D. Vance's job to go there and to remind the Republican base what good things have happened in this economy so far.
You know, --
BOYKIN: The $6 deal, that's a great thing. ROBBINS: It is extremely important to the people of Iowa to get the
tax cuts on the tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime. They pulled very high that the border was extremely important to them. They're still pulling that they like the way that President Trump is handling it.
But it is up to each of the candidates to start tailoring the message. With or without President Trump on the ballot or in any of their ads, they have to start tailoring that message for how they're going to work for their people after the midterms.
BOYKIN: I think Iowa is a canary in a coal mine. Iowa, Texas, Kansas, even Florida, there are places all across the country where Republicans who should be in great shape are struggling. That's a sign of just how toxic Donald Trump is as a President, as a figurehead, as a leader of the party.
And I think, actually I hate to move forward beyond 2026 because I still think we should focus on 2026. I also think that it's a bad sign for 2028 because I don't see how Marco Rubio or J.D. Vance or any Republican candidate is going to be able to campaign in 2028 for President of the United States when Donald Trump is still around.
He's going to make the entire campaign about himself. He will never leave the center stage.
ARTHUR AIDALA, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY, AND HOST, "ARTHUR AIDALA POWER HOUR": That's going to be a problem. The last poll I saw with Trump was approval rate was like 38 percent, which is the lowest apparently of anyone.
You know the second lowest was the second time in the midterms, right? It was Barack Obama. He was at 42 percent. The midterms are their second term.
And if you want to talk about people not hooked and on to their President, Al Gore, in my opinion, if he campaigned a little closer with Bill Clinton, he would have been the President of the United States would have lost his own state of Tennessee.
[22:40:08]
So these are calculated decisions. You realize that, right? He lost his own state of Tennessee.
BOYKIN: I understand all that. I was in the Clinton administration. But I don't understand what you're saying because my point is that Donald Trump is so toxic and so unpopular, wildly unpopular, that I don't care what happens in the next two or three months, nothing is going to change Donald Trump's behavior.
AIDALA: Does most of his candidates win, Abby? You know these statistics.
BOYKIN: They win their primaries. They don't win their general elections. PHILLIP: Exactly. I think Trump's record in terms of endorsements and
primaries is pretty good. Some people have lost, but most people have won.
But that's because A, he picks people who are likely to win and B, these are Republican primaries. One GOP strategist said this in a CNN piece today, "The President is not the best message or our best messenger at this point."
This is not just about who he is, but also what he does when he is let loose on the campaign trail. He cannot stay on message and he will not exit stage right.
REP. MARILYN STRICKLAND (D-WA), HOUSE ARMED SERVICES, AND TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE COMMITTEE MEMBER: Not ever. And anytime he's campaigning for a candidate, if you're campaigning for a candidate on the road, then you make it about the candidate.
Donald Trump makes everything about himself, no matter what the topic. And so they know how toxic that is.
And there was a time when Donald Trump's endorsement was a highly sought after endorsement among Republicans. It's toxic now, so they have to distance themselves. And it's interesting how I see women who are Republicans actually being more aggressive and the most aggressive when it comes to distancing themselves from President Trump.
PHILLIP: There was that Congresswoman in Florida, Maria Salazar, but this is not a woman, but it is a man who I believe voted for Trump. He helped Trump get over the finish line, but Joe Rogan really has turned on the President lately, partly because of Iran, partly because of the economy. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE ROGAN, COMMENTATOR AND PODCASTER: Supporters are (expletive) nuts, man. They're rabid. He represents something other than just a person to them.
RON WHITE, COMEDIAN AND AUTHOR: Oh, it's Christ.
ROGAN: Yes. Well, he represents something, a leader that they wish they had, you know?
WHITE: Yes.
ROGAN: Which is a real problem in our society in general with leaders. We look to them as if they're something different than every other person that's ever been a leader before. Like, this is the one.
This is the one that's going to save us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AIDALA: I don't know if I agree with that. I mean, I don't know if I agree with that, that we look at every leader like this is the one who's going to save us.
PHILLIP: Do you think that's true of Trump supporters?
AIDALA: Well, I think certain Trump supporters feel very strongly about him, but, you know, Abby, if you look at history, every President people distanced themselves from. You think John McCain was like, oh, excited to run under George W. Bush's umbrella? No, not at all.
As I said, Al Gore distanced himself from Bill Clinton as much as he could. And as I said, Barack Obama's midterms, they weren't -- right. So, this is not so unique to Donald Trump. That's my only point. There have been plenty of presidents who have been in office and the people who are running under their umbrella really don't want anything to do with them.
Do I remember anything as embarrassing as the Vice President of the United States coming to your state and you have a scheduling conflict? I mean, unless it's open school night for a kid, I can't think of a scheduling conflict that would keep me from being here.
PHILLIP: It's not even the first time that's happened in this cycle. I mean, he went to Maine. Susan Collins didn't show up. But in Trump world, and I think part of this is what Rogan is implying, is that there is not as much room for that kind of dissent, they don't take it well. The President doesn't usually take it well.
ROBBINS: Look, I got something completely different from the whole Joe Rogan clip, because there's a part that we left out, too.
He didn't just say the Trump supporters were rabid and crazy. He also said he used to be a far leftist, but the COVID mandates were crazy. That the censorship got crazy.
So I don't think he was actually speaking out just against the Trump supporters. I think that he was saying, look, I think there is room to criticize people, I think there's room to criticize our government. That's the only way that we move forward.
But I don't think he was lumping everybody together saying that they're crazy. There's crazies on both sides, there are crazy things that happen on both sides. But he has to be able to come out and criticize things so that we can actually take a look at what's wrong within the party and move forward.
BOYKIN: I agree with a lot of what Joe Rogan said. I do think that people place too much faith in leaders of both parties. But I've never seen anything like Donald Trump before.
I like Barack Obama, I went to law school with Barack Obama. I know most black people love Barack Obama, but we weren't making up posters of him portraying him as Jesus. We weren't building golden statues.
AIDALA: Hold on. We weren't --
BOYKIN: We didn't change things. We weren't creating golden statues about Barack Obama. We weren't treating him like he was the cult leader.
AIDALA: Trump's doing that to himself. Trump's supporters aren't doing that. Trump's doing it.
[22:45:00]
STRICKLAND: But I want to talk about what Joe Rogan said because he said that they're effing nuts, right? And in many ways, the people who are his hardcore supporters, who are described as effing nuts. They see what's happening, they see how unpopular he is, they see what a disaster he is on every topic, but they don't want to be wrong. They just want to cling to it.
These poor people got bamboozled and hoodwinked, and they're just determined to cling to this idea that I was right.
PHILLIP: We've got to leave it there. Next for us, the President says that his son, Don Jr., is giving back that money that a Russian oligarch paid as a gift for his wedding party. We'll discuss next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:50:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: The President says that his son, Don Jr., is paying back Umar Kremlev, the Russian oligarch who funded part of his wedding.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I understand that Don's paying him back. I actually heard that when I heard the story, I asked about it.
He said, No, I'm paying him back, Dad. That was a while ago. So I heard he's paying him.
I have to say, though, you know, giving a wedding party's pretty common.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Don Jr. and his new wife, called the oligarch with close ties to Putin, dear friend, when reporters reports of this lavish gift broke in ProPublica, this is actually a rare acknowledgement that they know that this was wrong. Like they're pulling back.
BOYKIN: I think it's sort of an acknowledgement because Trump is trying to pretend like it didn't happen or that he's paying the money back, allegedly. Where's the proof that he's actually paying the money back?
Trump says a lot of things that aren't true, so who knows if this is really happening or if it ever did happen. The question is, why did this happen in the first place? Why would you invite or allow a guy who's a Russian oligarch friendly with Vladimir Putin who just got a state honor from Vladimir Putin, who was just palling around in China, why would you ask this guy to come and pay? Why would you want him to pay for your wedding? You're the son of the President and you just had this whole campaign of complaining about Hunter Biden?
AIDALA: They try to bring together --
BOYKIN: The nerve of you people.
AIDALA: They're trying to bring together the international coalition to deal with A.I.
That's what's happening. This is so obvious. Keith, what's the matter with you?
You've got to be friends with these people.
BOYKIN: They get to the Bahamas and they're talking about A.I.
AIDALA: Listen man, more work gets done on the golf course than anywhere else. I don't know what wedding gifts you got at your wedding, but we were loving it.
PHILLIP: Let me play, this is what Senator John Curtis, a Republican, said about this whole fiasco. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN CURTIS (R-UT): Another law, believe this, a Russian oligarch paid for a lavish wedding after party for Donald Trump Jr., which to me, it just stinks. It's corruption, I don't like it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Simple as that. It's corruption.
ROBBINS: I mean, but is it? He's a private citizen. There's a difference between --
BOYKIN: Who's a private citizen?
ROBBINS: Don Jr. So he can --
Of course, I guess in that vein, if we're going to say that this is corruption and this is giving preferential treatment to a President, are we going to use that same litmus test of Hunter Biden getting on the board of a restaurant, which he was not called by the board, and made $50,000?
PHILLIP: Let's not get distracted by Hunter Biden. What is your justification for Don Jr. who's worth $300 million accepting a gift like this from a Russian oligarch who he apparently met so recently that his own brother, Eric Trump, says Eric has absolutely no clue who this person is, nor has ever heard his name.
ROBBINS: I don't think it matters if I accept it or not, but I do think that there's a difference between tacky and treason, and I wouldn't put this in the treason category.
PHILLIP: What do you think Umar Kremlev wants from Don Jr.?
ROBBINS: I don't know. What do you think the people that put Hunter Biden on the board of a restaurant wanted from Hunter Biden?
BOYKIN: Here's the thing. Donald Trump ran on a campaign explicitly saying he was going to drain the swamp. How do you say that when you come and become the swamp?
AIDALA: But that wasn't the swamp he was talking about.
STRICKLAND: The only reason that Donald Trump is saying that his son repaid this oligarch again is because he knows that his approval ratings are low, the economy's in the tank, there's an unwanted war, and things aren't going well for him. So otherwise, they would just say, yeah, we took it, so what? But he knows things are going so badly that he even had to pretend that his son repaid this oligarch.
PHILLIP: I will be interested in some proof. I'm with you, Keith, on this. I think we ought to know from Don Jr. if what the President said today is actually accurate.
Thank you very much for joining us at the table tonight. We'll be back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:55:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: "Have I Got News For You" is back to help you laugh through the headlines with this week's guests, journalist Kara Swisher and Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger. Here's a preview.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROY WOOD JR., HOST, "HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU": The story is gas prices are soaring, the economy's in shambles, preventable diseases are running rampant, climate regulations are being destroyed, and it's all the fault of one man, Joe Biden. If you don't believe it's Joe Biden's fault, just listen.
VANCE: We're digging out of a massive hole that Joe Biden left us.
UNKNOWN: A massive hole that Biden left us.
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: We inherited an absolute disaster.
TRUMP: I inherited that war. That was Joe Biden.
I inherited all these high prices. It was Biden's thing.
Do you remember, you know, affordability? I inherited that from the Biden administration.
WOOD: Biden, you know if you say Joe Biden name five times, he'll appear.
[23:00:03]
MICHAEL IAN BLACK, TEAM CAPTAIN, "HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU": What's so weird is this is the one inheritance he hasn't squandered.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: You can catch an all new episode tomorrow at 9 P.M. on CNN and streaming the next day on the CNN app with an all access subscription.
Thank you very much for watching "NewsNight." "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
