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Laura Coates Live

Trump Hours Away from Swearing In, Plans 100-Plus Day One Actions; Trump Says He Now Wants U.S. To Have 50 Percent Ownership In TikTok; Biden: I'm Not Going Anywhere, I'm Not Kidding. Aired 11p-12a ET

Aired January 19, 2025 - 23:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[23:00:00]

LAURA COATES, CNN HOST: In just 13 hours, America will find itself at the beginning of the second Donald Trump presidency. He'll be sworn in inside the Capitol Rotunda at noon here in a very snowy and very cold Washington, D.C. Although you don't see any snow on my screen, I assure you it's there. It marks one of the most extraordinary political comebacks in U.S. history.

And tonight, he's taking a victory lap. Trump's speaking at a pre inauguration rally at the Capital One Arena, and unveiling what's to come on day one.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: By the time the sun sets tomorrow evening, the invasion of our borders will have come to a halt.

Tomorrow, everybody in this very large arena will be very happy with my decision on the J6 hostages.

Every radical and foolish executive order of the Biden administration will be repealed within hours of when I take the oath of office.

Somebody said yesterday, sir, don't sign so many in one day. Let's do it over a period of weeks. I said, like hell we're going to do it over weeks. We're going to sign them at the beginning.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COATES: And when he says, at the beginning, you probably want to take that statement literally, because one adviser says, Trump will indeed sign actions within minutes of being sworn in. How many? It could be more than a hundred. We're told they will include orders on immigration, on energy, pulling back federal DEI policies, and the very shape of government operations.

Millions of Americans will be looking to see if he signs one that will delay the TikTok ban. But tonight, Trump is taking credit, of course, for the app's return after it went offline for about a dozen hours. He is now vowing to take action that will keep it operating in the United States, at least temporarily, to buy some time to work out a deal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I like TikTok. I like it. I like it. I had a slightly good experience, wouldn't you say?

I said, we need to save TikTok because we're talking about a tremendous -- who in this audience It goes with TikTok. Many? Yes, very popular. And, frankly, we have no choice. We have to save it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COATES: Well, TikTok CEO, that probably had music to his ears just now. He was at that victory rally tonight and he will be at the inauguration tomorrow.

It's pretty clear that Trump is trying to at least signal very clearly that he'll be stepping on the gas on all fronts. He's already claiming credit for the hostage deal that saw three Israelis return home today from Gaza.

And he has his eyes on the war in Ukraine as well. He's telling us that Trump wants a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the coming days. The goal being to discuss a possible in-person meeting in the months ahead to try to bring an end to that war, of course, much easier said perhaps than done.

But what is clear is that Trump is entering office with the political wind at his back and he intends to use it. Time Magazine illustrates it like this, Trump in the Oval, clearing out Biden's desk.

Well, joining me now, CNN Political Commentator and former Trump Campaign Adviser David Urban, CNN Political Analyst and White House Correspondent for PBS NewsHour, Laura Barron-Lopez, CNN Political Commentator and former Democratic State Representative from South Carolina Bakari Sellers, and Politics Reporter for Semafor Shelby Talcott. Good to have you all here on this eve of another inauguration.

I'll begin with you, David, on this point. Trump was promising, this is his quote, by tomorrow evening, the invasion of our border will have to come to a halt and then raids could be obviously underway as early as Tuesday. Any concerns about overpromising and underdelivering on that timeline?

DAVID URBAN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think, look, Laura, I think you'll even see raids tomorrow. I think you'll see raids very soon. Tom Homan's been out and about talking to people. I think the border will, you know, will be sealed tomorrow. There'll be literally a new sheriff in town in terms of enforcement of the border. And so I think that'll become effective immediately.

What I think is going to have to take a long time is obviously the mass deportations they're talking about, right?

[23:05:03]

There's a million-plus, a million, five or so adjudicated folks who have been adjudicated and ready to be sent home, the 300, 000 or so criminal aliens who've been convicted of murder or rape that have yet to be kind of rounded up. So, if they were to just do that, imagine 2 million people, the Obama administration did this. They did about 6 million, but over eight years, it took them eight years to do it. So, 2 million people is no -- it's no mean feat to identify, locate, detain, and expel them from our country. But you'll see that beginning to occur tomorrow, 12:01.

COATES: Well, we'll see to the -- I don't hear about a lot of coordination with different localities that would obviously facilitate all you're talking about. That's just one thing he mentioned then, Bakari. He's talking about energy policy, DEI policies as well. He mentions getting rid of or eliminating job protections for federal workers. If you're a Democrat looking at this and you're in office thinking about it, is there a red line for you? Obviously, strategically, you don't want to maybe attack everything on minute one. But what is the priority that they should do?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, I think right now, you don't want to have a hair on fire moment for everything Donald Trump does. I mean, you'll find yourself out there just, you know, chasing every little executive order or thing that he does or the way that he enunciates this or who he castigates with that. So, you want to stay away from that.

My fear is that, and I said this earlier this morning, it bears repeating, by targeting the city of Chicago, for example, he has a foe, which is by no means politically astute enough or has the deftness to maneuver around someone like Donald Trump. And I'm saying that in terms of the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson.

And then you also have a faction of individuals. I know there was I think yesterday or day before a big march here in D.C., but, you know, a march without a demand is just getting your steps in. And so I think Democrats have to refocus a little bit, and I don't think that there is any reason to have this kind of huge outrage tomorrow. I mean, the leader of the party now is Hakeem Jeffries gearing up for elections in New Jersey and Virginia. Those are going to be crucial in November, you know, building a communications base, electing a good leader, those are things.

Tomorrow is going to be another day. And for me, personally, this is who America voted for. I think in a hundred days, from a hundred days to 18 months, I'm going to be looking at David Urban and being like, well, this is what you asked for.

URBAN: Listen, we're going to be celebrating a more prosperous, secure America.

SELLERS: Oh, I pray. I pray it is.

URBAN: It is, as McCarthy says, it's in Democrats interest, right, to cooperate. President Trump did win the popular vote, won Electoral College vote. And so if they're going to try to kick down everything he puts up, right, throw, just say no for the sake of saying no, they're not going to win again in 18 months. If they do it strategically, right, if they do it strategically, and, you know, and pick their battles, then they stand a chance of taking the House back.

COATES: Let me ask you, actually, Shelby and Laura, bring into this, because I want to know, I mean, it sounds like there's a strategic, not resignation, but keeping one's powder dry because we're trying to figure out what's the best step forward. But in the meantime, there are people who are -- who the State Department, Washington Post is reporting, that scores of career diplomats are resigning from State Department.

Now, everything he wants to do globally, it will take the work of a lot of these people and they're doing it at the direction of Trump aides.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: They're resigning?

COATES: Yes.

BARRON-LOPEZ: Yes. I think that, I mean, because Donald Trump wants his own people in these agencies.

COATES: But as career diplomats.

BARRON-LOPEZ: He still wants to get rid of career diplomats. He's made that very clear, I mean, across his campaign. He has said that he wants his loyalists and their people who he feels will not combat his agenda. I mean, that's why tomorrow we're going to see him issue what is known as Schedule F's executive order. It's going to have impact across all of the agencies, not just the State Department.

Now, people who have long time been civil servants, yes, they're concerned about it because they do feel as though that this could have a negative impact on government in terms of the type of intelligence and just the experience that exists at these different agencies. And during Trump's first administration, when he tried to move some more of the federal government jobs outside of D.C., mind you, 80 percent of federal government jobs are outside of the DMV area. They actually are not inside of the DMV area.

But when he did move some of them out, you did see resignations then as well, because the people that were used to working in and around the DMV were not prepared to move to a state like Kansas or to other states, but you could very likely see more of that this time around,

COATES: You know, it's interesting because people are looking at Department of Justice, Shelby, we're thinking about career prosecutors who might want to change their positions in some way, but the State Department might (INAUDIBLE) for a little bit of a loop but there's also this promise that Trump is making that people are going to be very, very happy tomorrow, he says, about January 6th, some of the people who were rioting, teasing his supporters. They'll be very happy with the pardons.

[23:10:01]

What do you know? SHELBY TALCOTT, POLITICS REPORTER, SEMAFOR: Yes, this has been a really interesting shift for Donald Trump because remember right after the riot, he came out and he denounced it, and then he really didn't like to talk about it for a long time, but there were people on the outside supporters of the January 6th rioters who slowly advocated for them over the past two years, and that is how Donald Trump shifted his position, and now we're seeing a lot of support for some of these January 6th rioters who have been convicted.

And when I was out on the campaign trail over the last two years, and I talked to Republicans, a lot of them were really serious about that. He's right when he says that people are going to be happy, because I talked to supporters -- I mean, listen, are Republicans who absolutely are not going to be happy about this? Yes. But the MAGA base as a whole likes this news.

URBAN: I think it depends -- I just would say this, I think it depends what it's going to look like, right, the pardons are going to look like, right? You know, you saw J.D. Vance on one of the shows saying, look, if you beat a police officer, right, you're not going to get pardoned. You're not going to get pardoned. But the people who were -- you know, look, there was an east front story to the Capitol and a west front story to the Capitol, right? A lot of these folks -- the bike rack was moved, the police officers stepped aside, they walked around, took some pictures in the Capitol, right, they were prosecuted, right? And he said -- and J.D. said, you shouldn't be treated like a, you know, narco terrorists for that. People who beat police officers should not be part of it.

COATES: How will he make that nuanced enough, Bakari, though?

SELLERS: I mean, it's just like that. I mean, right now, I mean, he can actually take a page from Joe Biden's book. Because right now, Joe Biden, in the past two weeks, they have been going through pardons and applications. I mean, overnight, I expect some pardons from the president of the United States in the morning. I mean, if people act like he's not president anymore, he'll still be president until noon. I expect many more pardons in the morning from Joe Biden. But, basically, you go down and you analyze.

I mean, presidents have a wide swath of pardon power and you can very well look at what somebody has been charged with, look at the underlying facts and put them in one category. And as soon as you see assault or assault on a federal office or a peace officer or a police officer, then you can place those people aside. I think that, you know, if he wants to pardon the J6 rioters or hostages or village people or whatever we want to call them, people who were tourists or whatever they want to characterize them as, so be it. I mean, that's his prerogative. But if you pardon someone who actually put their hands on a police officer, 140 officers were hurt that day, we should all as Americans have a line in the sand, whether or not he does it or not, I don't know.

BARRON-LOPEZ: There was about 600 rioters that were charged with assault of a police officer. So, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot of them that were charged with that. So, what are the others that are left?

URBAN: There's 1,600 charges, right? So, 1,600 people were charged. That leaves a thousand. You could pardon presumably tomorrow.

COATES: Part of the math and part of the narrative has been that prosecutors overcharged or incorrectly charged. They have claimed based on the wide scope of people. And so I could easily see there being some statements to that effect.

I want to just go to look ahead for tomorrow though as well and the theme. We know pardons are coming. We know this is going to be part of the conversation, but also the theme overall of the message. I mean, so we had earlier the tone of his 2017 inaugural address was of American carnage. But then Trump, the officials are saying that it'll actually be a more upbeat tone this time around, and here's what former Trump Adviser Steve Bannon actually said about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm hearing he's not. I'm hearing this is a very different tone.

STEVE BANNON, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: No, you bring the country together unify the country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What does Steve Bannon think of that?

BANNON: I think it's very appropriate for this. I think President Trump will go through how we got here, where we're going, what his plan is to lead us and to bring us together.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TALCOTT: I think that what Bannon is saying is interesting because at its core, when you look at this election compared to 2017, the vibes are very different, right? There is a Democratic Party that doesn't have a clear leader right now. The resistance, so to speak, is sort of deflated. MAGA supporters, Trump supporters are no longer worried about being Trump supporters.

And Donald Trump has also brought in this interesting coalition that in 2017, you would have never thought that Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. and Marco Rubio were all going to potentially be working together under the same administration. So, yes, I think that all of those things put together, the vibes are a little bit more positive.

COATES: And he has a trifecta in Washington, D.C. right now as well. A lot to go on. Everyone stand by.

Still ahead, the great TikTok outage of 2025, did you survive it okay, about 12 hours? Well, it's back up now and running on the platform. And Donald Trump, they say, is the one to thank. So, what actually happened? And could Trump's new plan actually make things a little trickier for everyone? We'll discuss, next.

[23:15:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COATES: Well, tonight, the clock is resetting for TikTok. It's alive for now and President-elect Trump is taking credit for reviving it for the 170 million Americans who use it. Trump says he'll sign an executive order to delay the federal ban for 90 days. He wants to find a buyer and possibly nationalize the app.

Why would he do that after he tried to ban the app during his first term in office?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: And I went on TikTok. Can you believe what I'll do to win an election? And we went on TikTok and Republicans have never won the young vote, the youth vote.

[23:20:02]

They win a lot of votes, but they never won the youth vote. We won the youth vote by 36 points. So, I like TikTok.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COATES: Remember, the ban began over national security concerns. But TikTok has handled this, frankly, in a pretty shrewd way. When the app went dark last night, it posted this message, thanking Trump for working to find a solution. When TikTok returned today, it shared messages praising Trump for helping keep the app available. This isn't just impacting TikTok. The ban hits any app owned by ByteDance, that includes the popular video editing platform, CapCut. That's still down tonight.

Here's to discuss what's next, CNN Media Analyst and Axios Senior Media Reporter Sara Fischer. Sara, good to see you.

Listen, Trump said he's going to delay enforcement of the band for 90 days. So then what happens after that? And if anyone steps up to make an offer, and they tell them it's not for sale, then what?

SARA FISCHER, CNN MEDIA ANALYST: We're just kicking the can down the road here, Laura, because the problem is selling an app like this requires, one, approval from China. Obviously, TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company, and they've indicated countless times that they do not want to sell this asset to a U.S. company.

And then, two, even if U.S. buyers were to emerge in really serious ways, we're talking about a lot of money here. It's hard to value the U.S. arm of TikTok in part because we don't fully understand how it's integrated with other countries, engineering and design teams. But estimates vary anywhere between $20 billion and $100 billion. If you look at the most serious buyer, Frank McCourt, he says he's only gotten about $20 billion worth of commitment.

So, essentially, Laura, I'm pretty bearish on the idea that we're going to be able to get a buyer, get the approval from China, even after these 90 days. And what would happen then? The law would still stand likely, unless Donald Trump can give continued assurances to the app stores and to the cloud providers, like Oracle, that they're not going to be penalized. I imagine that they're going to go into the same type of situation that they did yesterday and shutting the app down.

COATES: And, by the way, the second it went down, it probably increased their value kind of like being outside in New York and it's not raining and they charge you a dollar for an umbrella, then a raindrop hits, it's $50 all of a sudden. Now it's down. People missed it. They use that as leverage.

Trump says he wants a joint venture, by the way, where the U.S. owns 50 percent of TikTok. Is that even feasible that the U.S. government could partially own TikTok?

FISCHER: Well, I mean, a U.S. company could partially own it. And I should note that ByteDance, the parent company, is owned by a lot of U.S. investment companies. There are tons of investors, private companies from all over the world that invest in ByteDance. So, I don't think that's off the table. But the government co-owning this with a private Chinese company, there's absolutely no way that the CCP would allow something like that.

And so I just think that this whole idea of trying to kick this down the can puts creators, it puts users in a very tough place because none of this is a sustainable solution. And, by the way, even if Donald Trump were to kick this down the can in his whole presidency, the next president could come in and they could reverse his E.O. and we're back to a law banning TikTok.

COATES: And, of course, these companies and the app providers are trying to figure out whether they'll actually be penalized in the meantime.

And Trump also, by the way, launched his Trump cryptocurrency Friday night. At one point, speaking of value, it was valued at more than $72 billion, but has now fallen in trading today. How much money is Trump making off this, and does it raise any potential conflicts of interest if he's going to promote pro-crypto policies?

FISCHER: A lot of money, Laura. But the good thing to note here is that this is just money on paper. As soon as he were to try to sell his position, very similar to what the Truth Social stock, the value of this thing would absolutely crater. This is what we call sort of meme coins. They are based off of the popularity of an idea, but there's no sound financial, you know, grounding to make sure that this value stands.

But Donald Trump, this is how he's creating all of his wealth and value these days. It's not from, you know, earnings from profitable businesses, it's from floating Truth Social stock and now meme coins. On paper, he looks very rich. It's a little different in real life.

COATES: Sara Fischer, it always is. Thank you so much. My panel is back with me along with now David Sanger, a CNN political and national security analyst and White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times.

And one note, David Urban recently consulted for ByteDance, but he no longer does. David, let me go to you, Sanger. Trump once tried -- Sanger. Trump once tried to ban this app talking about national security. Now there's a proposal for kind of a 50-50 deal. What's possible here?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, lots of things are possible, Laura, but the question is, what problem are we trying to solve for? The problem that we're trying to solve is that the algorithm, which watches what you're selecting on TikTok, and then recommends other things to you, including news and so forth.

[23:25:05]

That is written not by TikTok in the United States, but by ByteDance, the parent company in China, and China's got rules that say it can never be exported. So, in other words, we can't see behind the closed veil here about what's going into the algorithm.

Now, President Trump, President-elect Trump, came out today with this idea first in a Truth Social post and then at his rally where he says, I know we're going to have a 50-50 co-ownership here. It's got all the problems you just discussed, right? He didn't make it clear whether it would be the government or not, but he did say during the rally, and we don't pay a cent for our 50 percent share, our contribution to this comes from approving this thing to be in the United States, so basically saying to ByteDance, without our approval, it's worthless.

COATES: What if likely that ByteDance would actually agree to that? I mean, that's a heck of a raw deal for them.

SANGER: Yes. It's going to seem like it's sort of a gun to their head a bit to go do it. But then the second part comes, which is, okay, so where's the algorithm written? Who gets to see how that's done? And the president hasn't spoken to that. So, he's told us about the deal. He said, we'll make a lot of money from it. He hasn't addressed the central national security problem.

SELLERS: Let me just outline three quick points about this. But the first is this started under President Trump's first administration. Let's not forget that, that that's where this ball began rolling. And you actually have a bill that passed the United States House, the United States Senate, was signed into law, and then unanimously solidified by our United States Supreme Court. An executive order, whenever it's signed tomorrow or whenever, cannot usurp that, cannot undo that. And so that's first.

The second thing is, which is more concerning for a company like Oracle, I want to know who's making these decisions, but if there's any liability on the part of ByteDance or TikTok for something such as human trafficking or anything else, a Democratic attorney general now can sue those companies who are violating the United States law. They opened themselves up to a great bit of liability. And if anybody's watching that out there, just call me and we can figure this thing out.

And last but not least, just briefly, this is how asinine this is. Republicans and Donald Trump want to nationalize TikTok but defund NPR and PBS. In what world does that make sense?

URBAN: There's a lot to unpack there. So, let's start with the basics. As David said, what problem are you trying to solve for? And the problem is the algorithm really is that it's kind of the secret sauce here. And there's --

COATES: I thought it was national security. That's the point.

URBAN: That's the point, the algorithm, national security part, right? So, lots of things we can talk about here, you know, we should talk about salt typhoon on this network until, you know, we can't talk about it anymore before we talk about TikTok, I think the things that occurred there, but let's just stick to TikTok.

The committee on foreign investment in the U.S. has been working on this for now, eight years, there's been a proposal for them in front of them, but they've had, they've worked through it, Trump administration officials, the Biden administration officials, which really brings everything on shore, radical transparency, the ways to look at the algorithm, right, things that no other company would do that the TikTok had bent over backwards, working with the committee on foreign investment in the U.S. to accomplish.

So, a lot of those things have been solved for right? Your point about Oracle, and David knows as well, and maybe the rest of the viewers know this as well. Oracle is one of the most trusted providers of cloud service and other services to the U.S. government, incredibly complex arrangements with the FBI, NSA.

I think that the name Oracle comes from their first contract, Project Oracle, with the CIA, if I'm not mistaken, David, is that correct? Yes. So, they are incredibly trusted partner with U.S. government. They would never put their reputation on the line if they were doing something that was unseemly, or we're going to favor the CCP over the United States.

You look at Larry Ellison and Safra Catz who are, you know, the leaders of Oracle, they're incredibly patriotic, great individuals, they would never compromise that. So, there is a solution here, right?

COATES: Hold on a second. My point -- my question -- I want to bring you into this, Laura, because I value your opinion on this topic, especially there is the nuance he tells you as you're talking about, the minutiae, then there's the political aspect of it and how this is viewed.

URBAN: Well, there's politics of it, right, which is completely different than the reality.

COATES: Hold on, let me finish my point, and that's true. Laura, Elon Musk, who has been at the right side, the right hand side of Trump, is a little perturbed by a lot of this. He is highlighting what he sees as a hypocrisy because TikTok can operate in the United States but X can't operate in China.

Given their relationship, and, of course, this is a win for Trump, obviously, people are happy, he's on the stage with them as well, J.D. Vance was not, would this relationship potentially jeopardize the ability to have a staying power of that win for Trump?

[23:30:08]

BARRON-LOPEZ: The staying power of TikTok?

COATES: TikTok, if Musk is opposed to this current deal?

BARRON-LOPEZ: I mean, look, like David may know this better than I do. I mean, I think that clearly Elon Musk being in the room, having Trump's ear could potentially influence him one way or the other. And he is potentially going to have an office in the White House. That's at least what's expected. So, yes, that could influence him to end up flip-flopping again because he was for banning TikTok, now isn't for banning TikTok and he said it out loud, you know, because politically he feels as though TikTok benefits him and that it helped him in the last election. And it did.

I mean, look, yes, young -- Donald Trump was able to reach young voters in a way that Democrats were not and really utilize this new media information ecosystem in a way that the Democratic Party didn't at all. So, it certainly --

URBAN: The most interesting proposal, and David might agree to this, would be if the United States just passed the same law that exists in China, that if you want to participate in business in China, you have to have a J.V. with a Chinese company. The reverse is not true here. So, if we went to Tencent and Alibaba and Xian (ph) and others, Temu and others, and said if you want to do business The United States, you need to have a J.V. here, wow, that'd be a great deal of leverage you'd have over Chinese companies.

SANGER: The other piece of this is, as you point out before, China severely restricts American companies that want to cooperate. It'd be really interesting to say, yes, we can work something out for TikTok. And by the way, Google's back in China and any Chinese citizen can go get this. Microsoft would be back in, in full. You know, Apple could do all of it, not just building the iPhone, but actually all the information distribution that goes on an iPhone. Chinese are not going to go along with this along the way.

I find it somewhat remarkable that President Trump, who rightly raised all of the national security issues in his first term, did, brought up none of those tonight.

URBAN: Interestingly, who's going to be -- just on this, because it's such a big fact, the vice premier of China is going to be at the inauguration tomorrow, historical precedent being set there, never occurred in the history of the United States before. It's a big deal.

COATES: History is being made all sorts of places. So, we'll see how this all unfolds. Everyone, stand by. Still ahead, resistance or a rebirth, how Democrats are thinking about the new Trump error as a new poll puts their party on notice.

Plus, President Biden's final day in office, what he says he now regrets and what it means for his party now in search of a new direction.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[23:35:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: We must hold on to hope. We must stay engaged. We must always keep the faith in a better day to come. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not kidding.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COATES: President Biden spending his final full day in office today in the state that saved his political career, South Carolina. Tomorrow, he heads to the Capitol where it's under in the same limo, mind you, as President-elect Trump for the inauguration, planning to continue to the presidential tradition of leaving Trump a letter, something Trump did four years ago for Biden, despite never acknowledging his election loss.

But as Biden rides off into the proverbial sunset, tonight, his ally, Congressman Jim Clyburn, is revealing what the president wishes he had done differently.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM CLYBURN (D-SC): He has only one regret that he expressed to me. And that was the fact that he did not spend enough time on the politics of it. He thought that what he did was the right thing to do and they were great, but he didn't explain it to the American people often enough and the consequences of that, he regrets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COATES: My panel is back with me. Laura, what do you make of that statement? Is it an admission of perhaps not having done enough retail politics or something else?

BARRON-LOPEZ: I think it's a bit of that. But also, you know, I mean, throughout the campaign, even before President Biden decided he was going to run again, there were so many Democrats that were warning, one, that the American public didn't know what he had passed. They weren't aware of all the aspects of the infrastructure bill. They weren't aware of the Medicare drug price negotiation, which on its own, allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices is incredibly popular. Again, those won't take effect until 2026 and 2027. But the American public didn't credit the president for any of that. There was that issue, but then there was also the issue that Democrats out in the field and working for different candidates said was that the messenger himself, was President Biden himself. And I think that, you know, obviously Democrats are going to run through the tape over and over again of whether or not it could have ended up differently if he had decided not to run. But there was always an issue with him as the messenger, and that was something that a number of Democrats were aware of in 2023, in early 2023.

COATES: South Carolina, what do you think?

SELLERS: No. I think, first and foremost, one of the things I realized, I guess the race was November 5th or 6th one, I don't know when it was, but the next morning, I realized pretty quickly that no Democrat was going to win this race and it's very difficult. We saw this and you probably are more astute on this than I am, but we saw this in the 70-some odd elections around the world that we saw things like inflation, the rise in prices, migration.

[23:40:01]

But when two thirds to 75 percent of people say that they were better off four years ago than they were today, you're going to see that shift away from incumbency, which we saw around the world.

Democrats have a fundamental problem, though, that we haven't been able to shake, and it's going to be that much more difficult this go- round, which is that we are not in the -- and Congressman Clyburn hit the nail on the head, we are not good communicators. We do not articulate the things we've done well. The best example of that is not Joe Biden. The best example of that is actually one of the greatest political orators we've had in recent modern history, which is Barack Obama.

I give you the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. No one knew what was in that. No one knew how powerful it was until Republicans tried to take it away from you. That is when we started to hear people talk about keeping your insurance until you're 26 and blah, blah, blah. But no one knew what was in it because Democrats failed to go out and do the retail politics to sell that.

COATES: The question is why? If that's the case, why? I've heard communication a lot.

SELLERS: Because it requires us to get out of -- it requires us to get out of our ivory towers and go down and shake hands and meet people where they are. The reason it's going to be that much more difficult now Is because, you know, you have Republicans who not only have a Fox News juggernaut, but now they also control all the Sinclair media. Now they also control The Washington Post and the L.A. Times.

Now they control Twitter and social media, I.G. You see Mark Zuckerberg kowtowing towards the president of the United States. And so it's going to be much more difficult to actually message because we lost that battle. We thought we were prepared with Pod Save America and all those guys going up against the pod sphere of Joe Rogan, and we just got demolished.

COATES: How do you see it?

URBAN: Well, I was going to say, for you to say that the Republicans had an advantage in the media, right, and the mainstream media over the past four years, it's just --

SELLERS: That's not what I was saying.

URBAN: Okay. I'm just --

SELLERS: No. And you can articulate whatever you want to talk about at the past. I'm talking about today. You have Jeff Bezos chipping (ph) The Washington Post --

URBAN: Well, because I think people -- because they're trying to, they're selling what people want to buy, right?

Let's push rewind on President Biden. I think when history goes back, you're going to -- you know, Joe Biden ran. If you remember the election in '20, it was a completely different world. Biden was running as kind of a bridge to the future. I'm a one term president. I'm here. I'm your avuncular uncle, the person you like, Joe from Scranton. You remember me from the Senate. I'm a good guy everyone likes. I'm going to run, moderate, bring our country together, and then I'm going to pass the torch to somebody else.

And then as soon as he got in there, something happened. He unzipped the suit and out popped like the love child of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, right, and governed far left, hard left. America's a center, right country, so alienated tons of people. And then somewhere along the way became non compos mentis, right?

And if Joe Biden would have announced the beginning, hey, I'm not running for election, given Democrats an opportunity to have a kind of a contested primary, get a really good, solid candidate, I think you'd had a different -- you'd had a chance. I'm not saying you'd win the election, but you'd have a much better chance. And you'd have a much -- because you have a bench. But now the bench is -- it's kind of stagnated, and the Democrats are wandering in the wilderness looking for a spokesperson.

COATES: David, how do you see it?

SANGER: So, no one would ever confuse him with being the great communicator out here, obviously, and particularly in the past year to year-and-a-half, at the time, he most needed to be able to advertise the number of jobs that were created, the successes in infrastructure work, the seeds he planted, to use the phrase that he used himself the other day, he was the least capable one of being able to go do it.

Second, he never really gave an explanation about why he was running for a second term. As David suggested, he was supposed to be a transition candidate. He came to believe that he was a transformative president. History might show him as that, but he never explained why it was that he wasn't acting as the bridge. And when he finally had to go do it, it was obviously a bit too late and the party wasn't ready for that moment.

SELLERS: The blessing of all of this, though, is that the Democratic Party, contrary to the obituaries that mainstream media are now writing, is not dead. You still have Gretchen Whitmore. You still have Josh Shapiro. You still have Wes Moore. I mean, you have -- and we're not even talking about the mayors, such as Frank Scott in Little Rock or Chokwe Lumumba or, Randall Woodfin or Andre Dickens, et cetera, et cetera. So, I think the future is bright. We just have to be able to see it for the clouds.

COATES: Well, we will see. Everyone, thank you so much for being here tonight on the eve of the second inauguration.

Up next, the reunification seen around the world, three Israeli hostages finally brought home as the ceasefire deal brings new hope to the others who are still waiting. The mother of two children who are awaiting for the return of their father joins me next.

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COATES: Tonight, tears of joy and relief as three Israeli women return home more than 470 days since Hamas invaded Israel and took them hostage in Gaza. Romi Gonen is 24 years old, Doron Steinbrecher is 31, and Emily Damari, a dual British-Israeli citizen, is 28. They are the first of 33 to be released by Hamas and its allies over the next six weeks.

As of tonight, there are still around 90 Israelis held in captivity, more than 30 of whom are confirmed to be dead. As part of this long- awaited ceasefire deal, Israel says 90 Palestinian prisoners have been freed so far. They are expected to release nearly 2,000 more over these six weeks.

What happens beyond then? There are two more phases for the ceasefire agreement to be expected. Each will require additional negotiations to bring all of the remaining hostages home. And there is no guaranteed end of the war, the region feeling a sense of trepidation over this very fragile agreement.

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Well, my next guest's mother and niece were killed on October 7th, 2023. She's also the mother of two children herself, Sahar and Erez, who were kidnapped on that terrible day and released in November, 2023. But their father, her ex-husband, Ofer Kalderon, is one of the many hostages still held in captivity.

Hadas Calderon joins me now. Hadas, thank you so much for joining. I can't help but wonder what you must be feeling watching some of the hostages finally being released.

HADAS KALDERON, MOTHER AND NIECE WERE MURDERED IN OCT. 7 ATTACK: Yes, it's amazing moment really. For me, it's like -- it's looked like a miracle and it takes me back to that moment that I got back my children. And, you know, it's very complicated because it's like a big, big joy and happiness but also a lot of fears and worries that this will keep on. And then we must remember that we have to bring all of them back, all the hostages. And --

COATES: Yes, including, I know, your ex-husband, Ofer.

KALDERON: Yes, Ofer is still there. The father of my children is still there. And we have to wait, you know, because this will take time. This deal is like --

COATES: Fragile.

KALDERON: It's a tough deal. I mean, it's good. You know, it's not perfect. I'm happy with this deal, but it's a tough deal. It's tough. It's not easy. We have to wait.

And, first, I'm very happy to see yesterday that the hostages, the women who came back look okay and they stand on their feet. And it gives me hope. It gives me hope. And I want to say thank you, thank you, Trump, because Trump is a game changer. He made it happen. Otherwise, I think they would still be there. And I really, really thank him. And I want him to make sure it's nobody disturbed and nobody interfere -- destroy this deal. I mean, we must make sure, and I want him to take care, that we get the first kidnap until the last one, all the 97 kidnaps. They must come back to their life, to their children, to their family, to their freedom.

COATES: Hadas, do you know anything about your ex-husband Ofer's release? Do you know if he would be included in a release soon or what his condition is right now? Have you been told anything?

KALDERON: No, just that he's included in the list.

COATES: Okay.

KALDERON: You know, he's supposed to get out this level probably in a few weeks. But we don't know anything else. We don't have any information or details about him now for a long time ago. So, we just have to keep very strong our hope.

COATES: You know, I remember -- of course. I remember when talking to you and the joy of knowing your children were home. But I also remember you and I, mother to mother, talked about what it must be like and what the next steps will be once they came home. Do you have any insight into what life might be like for those who have been returned home but were held for so long? What's the life going to be like for them?

KALDERON: Listen, you know, my children came back after 52 days. These people, this hostage come after 15 months. It's almost one year-and-a- half underground, in the caves. You know, it's really different. They're probably going to come back very different person, not healthy.

I think if I look at my children they have, they still, until now, one year after, they still have a lot of fears. [23:55:04]

They don't trust anyone. They don't trust the world, you know, and they're afraid of a lot, and they still think they can be kidnapped again. It's not easy. It's going -- yes, it's going to take time. So, I don't want even to think about these people who come now after such a long period. Wow, it's going to be longer. You know, they will get cured, but it will take time.

COATES: Hadas, we'll be thinking of you and your family.

KALDERON: Thank you very much. Thank you.

COATES: Thank you so much for watching. Our special live coverage of the inauguration of Donald Trump continues with Omar Jimenez in just a moment.

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