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CNN Saturday Morning Table for Five. President Trump Draws Controversy for Pardoning January 6th Rioters Charged with Violent Crimes Including against Capitol Police Officers; Tech Billionaires Set to Play Prominent Role in Trump Administration; President Trump Revokes Security Details for Three of His Former Administration Officials Despite Potential Threats to Their Lives; Pete Hegseth Confirmed as Defense Secretary by Narrow Vote in U.S. Senate after Three Republican Senators Vote against His Nomination; Some Call for Democrats to Find Charismatic Political Leader to Effect Cultural Comeback for Party. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired January 25, 2025 - 10:00   ET

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


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[10:00:41]

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, back the blue, law and order, blue lives matter, unless you like me.

DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: Some of those people with the police, true. But they were very minor incidents.

PHILLIP: Plus, revenge of the nerds.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're back.

PHILLIP: They used to stand with liberals. Now they're standing with MAGA and sitting in power.

Also, when it comes to religion.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared.

PHILLIP: Now is the right choosy on chapter and verse?

And where is the Democrats' Ronald Reagan, as hearts and minds are changing lanes?

Here in the studio, Kara Swisher, Bill Stepien, Wendell Pierce, and S.E. Cupp. It's the weekend. Join the conversation at a "TABLE FOR FIVE".

(END VIDEO TAPE)

PHILLIP: Good morning. I'm Abby Phillip in New York. Let's get right to what America is talking about. The Trump rollercoaster, and what a rollercoaster it's been. It's been

a wild week for the new president, and it's a sequel of returns. And while the flood the zone strategy was on full display this week, one move rose far above the others -- the release and the pardons of all of the January 6th criminals. Just two weeks ago, his own vice president insisted the violent ones would not get free passes and set free. But with a sharpie, they are now all roaming, literally, the halls of Congress, most notably, those militia leaders convicted of masterminding violence and those who attacked and bloodied officers, attacks the president then downplayed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: Some of those people with the police, true. But they were very minor incidents, OK. You know, they get built up by that couple of fake guys that are on CNN all the time.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: Nobody watches.

TRUMP: They were very minor incidents.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: You know, some of those criminals are already threatening officers and prosecutors. Others, they listen to that, and they feel emboldened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE LANG, GRANTED CLEMENCY BY PRESIDENT TRUMP: In history, it will be remembered when a free man stood up against tyranny. It is no longer the age where we have to hide in America. We are back, the patriots. We don't have to crawl in the back corners of Facebook and Instagram being censored. We've got X, we've got Trump, we've got Musk, we've got the dream team. We're back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: For years, Republicans claimed that they're the party of law and order, the protector of police, but now backing the blue is buckling.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL FANONE, FORMER D.C. METROPOLITAN POLICE OFFICER: Rest assured, I have been betrayed by my country, and I have been betrayed by those that supported Donald Trump.

This is what I say to Stewart Rhodes, go -- yourself. You're a liar.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: One of the most interesting things I see about Trump talking about this this week is that he doesn't seem to actually know all that much about who he pardoned and why. He said what he said there, but he was asked specifically by a reporter earlier this week about one of the very violent people who he pardoned. And he was like, well, I don't know, maybe there's a commutation. Maybe we're looking another time at this. Do you get the sense that he understands what happened here?

S.E. CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Are you implying that Trump didn't actually consider this very carefully?

PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, either that or he doesn't care.

CUPP: I mean, listen, so much of what Trump is doing and has done is performative. It's for a reaction. It's for a fan base, and not always for a policy. You know, I interviewed and talked to hundreds of voters over the course of this election. Not one, including all the ones who said they were going to vote for Donald Trump, said, I'm voting for him so that he can pardon the Jan-6 insurrectionists. That's not why he was sent there. So this is performative for that rabid fan base, and because he said he was going to.

But it's just so head-spinning and disorienting as a Republican and movement conservative for so many years. I remember years ago I was called for jury duty in New York City. It was an assault on a cop case. And as part of voir dire, they asked your political affiliation. I said, Republican. They said, so you're law and order, right? I said yes. So I was dismissed.

[10:05:01]

That is how intertwined law and order was with the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

You had a horde of people in the name of Donald Trump assaulting police officers with no consequences now, now that Donald Trump has said that was fine, you did it for me. It's bizarre and crazy.

KARA SWISHER, PODCAST HOST, "PIVOT" AND "ON": It depends on whose law and whose order, right? I mean, That's what's happening here. And what's interesting is he referenced Musk and others who were calling for these kind of violent things, and they say them and, then they leap offline. One of the things I noticed, he says, we don't have to be back in Facebook or wherever. And That's where it did all start. A lot of these people were marginalized to the darker recesses of these, these online, and that's how they met and organized.

PHILLIP: And then now they --

SWISHER: Especially the right. The right was zeroed out of mainstream media, absolutely. And then they built radio and then FOX News. And the Internet was critical to that. I did early interviews with Ralph Reed and others because they couldn't go elsewhere. And that's where they sort of festered and stayed under. And then now they've come out and organized. And that's the real frightening thing.

WENDELL PIERCE, ACTOR, CBS, "ELSBETH": And I agree with S.E. to say that it's performative, but he does know what he's doing, because at the same time as he pardons everyone, he understands that a lot of the people were violent, and he knows that. He did take that into consideration. And that tied into the conjunction with lifting all the Secret Service protection from the people that he has put on his enemy list, right. He is saying very clearly, hey, I am going to forgive you for your violence. And if you decide to be violent for a political reason against these people on my enemy list, I'm going to take away protection from them. And I think that is a very, very clear directive from him. It's not, it's not tongue in cheek, or it's not something that he doesn't understand and know what's happening. I think it's very --

PHILLIP: Bill, do you think that he also, part of this, when, let's say, let's put ourselves in Donald Trump's head for a second, whatever that looks like. But does he think maybe that if he didn't pardon everybody, he would then have to acknowledge that it was a really bad day, that there were really violent people, that there were people like Stewart Rhodes who were charged and convicted of organizing a violent armed militia. Does he think that if he acknowledges that, it's game over?

BILL STEPIEN, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE POLITICAL DIRECTOR: I don't know, I think trying to get in Donald Trump's head is a dangerous game to play. But I would invite all of us, I'd invite anyone watching, go through his four memos, his 12 proclamations, his 26 executive orders, the 78 revocations of Biden's policies. What in there, name one thing that is inconsistent with anything he said on the campaign trail. I've said it before, I'm surprised anyone is surprised. I think the surprise is performative.

CUPP: Listen, he said he was going to do a lot of this. In fairness, a lot of other people around him said he wasn't, said he was not going to pardon the violent offenders from January 6th, including his own vice president. So there was some vagary about it, which I'm sure was intentional. But, listen, we're -- now we're going to investigate January 6th, when all the resistance of investigating January 6th, I mean, it's just so annoying.

And listen, this will work for some time. But like I said, those voters I talked to that put him in office, voted for him for three reasons -- the economy, crime, and immigration, period. They didn't vote for overturning the 14th Amendment. They didn't vote for invading Greenland. They didn't vote for taking the Panama Canal. None of that mattered to them.

So all of this other junk will work for some time. But come midterms, if he hasn't delivered on those core three things, I think you're going to see some very disappointed first time Trump voters, first time Republican voters, independent voters, moderate voters who said, I've had enough of Biden. I'm going to take a chance on.

STEPIEN: That's a good point. The clock is, the clock is ticking.

CUPP: It's already ticking.

STEPIEN: One term, right, midterms, Republicans will lose the House.

CUPP: They'll come quickly.

STEPIEN: We have months here.

PHILLIP: Are you saying that declaring today --

STEPIEN: Look at the margins, look at history. I mean --

SWISHER: One of the things, you have to do, I think the problem he may have here is if something happens. I know some of these people who are terrified, judges, prosecutors, I've heard from their families. They're very worried about some level of violence. Remember Comet Ping Pong? I actually was just over there for dinner the other night. If it leaps off the off these threads and into something real, there's a real problem for him.

PHILLIP: So, one of the guys, one of the guys that was let off on a pardon, known as the QAnon Shaman, he posted this thing on social media. One line of it, "Now I'm going to go buy some mother-effing guns," which apparently is now his right because he doesn't have a charge.

PIERCE: He's not a felon.

[10:10:00]

PHILLIP: He's not a felon.

SWISHER: He wasn't particularly violent, though, interestingly enough.

PHILLIP: Right. But my point is that the reason he's emphasizing that is because it wasn't just like a commutation and you've paid your dues. It's been for all of these people wiped clean. And maybe he wasn't violent, but there were other people who were armed and violent. It's wiped clean.

PIERCE: They have been given carte blanche to go out, knowing that it will be rationalized, their violence will be rationalized, it will be forgiven. There's immunity. There's an immunity. There's a sense of, it is now normalized. If you have a political point of view, you can exercise your right of violence to get that point of view over and across.

PHILLIP: So we will see what happens over the next four years. Everyone else stick around.

Coming up next, they are getting a front row seat to power. But will MAGA's love affair with big tech survive the D.C. drama?

Plus, more retribution from President Trump as he pulls Secret Service details from some of his former officials despite the threats, the real threats that are on their lives. Stay with us.

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[10:15:44]

PHILLIP: They came, they saw. Will they conquer? The nation's most infamous billionaires are getting a front row seat to Donald Trump's inauguration, closer even than Trump's own cabinet. Elon Musk even has an office in the White House. But will this relationship end in bliss or divorce? The world's richest man has already irked the White House by shading Trump's A.I. technology announcement with a tech rival, and one adviser told "Politico" that Trump finds himself in a rare position. He has no leverage over Musk. Why? Because the X-man has zero fs to give.

Kara, you know these men --

SWISHER: Very well.

PHILLIP: -- and their egos very, very well. How do you think this is going to end?

SWISHER: Probably badly, and yet not. They'll do -- you know, they recognize how inexpensive it is to buy their way into politics. And as politics started to encroach on them with regulation, of which there are none, they decided to employ their money and their means. And their first person really was Peter Thiel, who went out and spent very little money to get J.D. Vance into the Senate, I think $25 million, something like that, very inexpensive for these people. And so once they realize that, they're going to do it, and they have to figure out which of the presidential candidates would allow that to happen.

Now, Democrats were tight with tech people for a long time, but it wasn't this. It wasn't this expectation. Maybe get on a defense counsel or, you know, this and that, or an invitation to the White House, but not this proximity. So it will end, I think, badly in some ways for Trump because he cannot control them, and they cannot be controlled.

PHILLIP: I mean, Bill, you've worked in the White House before. What would your life be like if Elon Musk were sitting in, like, the outer Oval and just was doing whatever he wanted?

(LAUGHTER)

PHILLIP: Theres no outer corner in the Oval, where he could just --

STEPIEN: I'm not cool enough, I'm not cool enough to spend time in Silicon Valley like you are. But I imagine it's very much like a campaign feel, right, of rolling, freewheeling --

SWISHER: I was going to nursery school, but OK.

STEPIEN: A lot of like, stand up desks, right? Pizza at midnight in headquarters. A White House is very different, right? It's very structured. For it to succeed, you need unity and discipline. Not everyone, actually, few people from a campaign can actually make the transition to a White House. This is a very structured, rigid environment. It's the most formal workplace I think that's ever existed. I could see why someone from a campaign or Silicon Valley would have a hard time with that transition. I think we're seeing that here. SWISHER: He wasn't in the room for that announcement, and they kept

him out on purpose. The companies did not want him there wandering around.

PHILLIP: And we know Elon would not have behaved himself.

I mean, what do you make of this? I mean, as you called yourself, a movement conservative. I mean, I know conservatives have always been friendly with business, but I wonder this idea of whole industries just kind of buying their way into the good graces of government, what's that slant -

CUPP: Well, I'm calling this, I'm calling this particular one the plu-tech-cracy, because that's what this is. This is power and money and tech all wrapped into one. And I'm very concerned about the cronyism and the conflicts of interest, because the relationship between government and technology is so important right now as we are in this sort of nascent period of A.I. evolution and everything that that's going to bring, good and bad. This could go very well for America and civilization, or it could go very badly. And I'm worried that these relationships and the money and the politics is going to pollute science, and vice versa, the other way around, that tech is going to pollute politics, if it isn't polluted enough already. But this is a very important time for tech.

PHILLIP: Tech is like any other -- I think we still talk about tech as if it's this little baby.

CUPP: Oh, it is not.

PHILLIP: No. It's actually the most powerful industry now. Second, maybe, to oil and gas in the whole world.

SWISHER: First. The top ten valued companies are tech companies.

PHILLIP: So they are not a little baby that needs to be coddled. And so this idea that you can't engage with them like you engage with any other industry, which is to say they have to -- there's oversight, there is regulation, there are guardrails against them taking over the whole thing.

[10:20:02]

PIERCE: The fact that he, co-president Musk, is in the Oval Office and in the West Wing and has that protection of the executive privilege of us not having the clarity of transparency that will happen and that cronyism that she was speaking of is going to go to a level that we've never seen before. And I think when it falls apart, ultimately, it's going to be where the money is.

SWISHER: One of the things, to be clear is, I think Steve Bannon is right. I can't believe these words are coming out of my mouth, but I think he is.

(LAUGHTER) SWISHER: They don't care about anything. They don't have values. They don't have conservative values. What I was joking the other day, Mark Zuckerberg, if Kamala Harris had won, Mark Zuckerberg would be asking us to call him they/them. Just I'm telling you, they just would. They have no values. Below, there's a lot of Democrats in tech, but the top ones have no -- libertarian light would be what I might describe them as.

STEPIEN: I think we have to go easy on the on the outrage that we hear, right? Literally from the beginning of tech, they were with the Democrats. Clinton in 16 got 97 percent of donations from Silicon Valley. Biden got even more than Clinton got. So, to me, part of me wonders like what took so long? Think about it, these are outside establishment types. They're innovators. They're bros who wear the annoying vest to work every day. A lot of qualities.

SWISHER: The below people were, but the higher ones would play both sides all the time.

STEPIEN: Yes, I could see that. I could see that. But the money certainly flowed only in one direction.

PHILLIP: Yes, that's true. Yes.

Everyone hang tight. Coming up next, the revenge presidency has already begun. President Trump already dismissing government employees and punishing some of his own former officials. And the methods are getting pretty creative.

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[10:26:20]

PHILLIP: If revenge is usually a dish best served cold, for President Trump, it's best served quick. In his first few days in office, he's already revoked security details for three of his former lieutenants despite the threat on their lives. He's removed DEI employees, DOJ officials, State Department diplomats, even the commander of the Coast Guard. Now this despite declarations from some of his allies on the trail.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: I don't care about the revenge thing. I know they usually, usually use the word "revenge." Will there be revenge? My revenge will be success.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: Focus on those that want people to believe that you want retribution, that you will use the system of justice to go after your political enemies.

TRUMP: So, number one, they're wrong. It has to stop, because otherwise we're not going to have a country.

MARCO RUBIO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Donald Trump has been the one that's been very clear that his vengeance is going to be by winning and making America great again, not going after his political opponents.

SEN. J.D. VANCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is not a vengeful guy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(LAUGHTER)

PHILLIP: I don't even know what to say. I mean, I actually thought, you know, during the campaign when I talked to Ben Carson about this, he was fighting with me about whether Trump had actually said he wanted revenge. I was like, Dr. Carson, he did. But why not just own it? To your point, Trump ran on this stuff. He ran on it. Just own it. Why try to obfuscate?

STEPIEN: Some degree of this happens in every administration. I've worked for a governor, governors, a president. This happens, right? So to the winner goes the spoils. They react differently to success. He's saying and doing the quiet part a little more out loud and via X, right. But this is, this maybe to a little bit of an extreme, but some degree of this happens every turnover, every four years. It just happens.

CUPP: It happens in that they, like, appoint their own judges. It doesn't happen that they, like, actively go out and punish people for no other reason than they were political opponents. Anthony Fauci did nothing to Donald Trump personally. In fact, he was hired by Donald Trump. This is punitive.

PHILLIP: The things that they attack him about, the things that -- this is what I don't get. Donald Trump was right there when they said, Anthony Fauci included, that we need to have, quote-unquote, lockdowns. Trump was there. That was his administration. Those were his policies. The reason that John Bolton has a security detail is because John Bolton was the face of Donald Trump's policy to kill Soleimani. That's why he has a security detail. That's why Iran wants to kill him.

SWISHER: Wow, loyalty, hypocrisy. What a shock with this guy. Like he said it, he said it a lot that he was going to take revenge. He talks in those -- he's a television person. I often look at him when I was watching, say, that panoply of billionaires, it was all for television. You know, here's the people I own. Here's that. And he does speak in those ways, almost like his show. I mean, as the only person on this panel, I think, who has watched every "Apprentice," you can see a lot of how he behaves doing that.

But except this is dead serious, as opposed to silliness. I think John Bolton's in danger. I think Mike Pompeo is in danger. Doing this is -- these judges are in danger. I think he thinks he lives in a television show in a weird way. But this has actual impact. And again, if it does, things do change a little bit.

PHILLIP: So he was asked about the danger that these folks are in. And here's what he had to say today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: When you work for the government, at some point, your security detail comes off. And you can't have them forever. They can hire their own security. They all made a lot of money. Fauci made a lot of money. They all did.

[10:30:00]

So if they, you know, felt that strongly, I think that certainly I would not take responsibility.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: I wonder what's happening on the back end, because, I mean, the federal government, especially the Iranian threats, they are monitoring those for a lot of people. And I would, if I were John Bolton and I were Mike Pompeo, I would be worried about whether my own government cared about whether or not a state actor was targeting me.

PIERCE: Absolutely. I just can't believe that that the president has a sense of a of normalcy when it comes to having empathy for the men that he worked with, knowing that they are really in danger, even though he may have a difference of opinion with them, he may hate them, without knowing that their lives are in danger. He's doing that, and he's going to feign a lack of knowledge and feign any sort of recognition of that danger. That means he's going to be complicit in that.

And I think that's a real flaw in his character, that if something would happen, God forbid, he would say, it's not me, right? He would qualify it and rationalize why he took the details away and say, it's not me. And that's a part of his propaganda. He will always have an excuse. I think we're waiting for that moment where the people that are loyal to him, his base, will see that flaw in him. But they won't. He will always have an excuse and say someone else is responsible. I'm not responsible. And it didn't happen because of me, knowing that he's pouring fuel on the fire.

CUPP: And I just wonder what will the -- you've said twice now, and I want you to be right, that if there is violence, that will be a problem for him. I don't, I don't know, I don't see how, because we had violence. We had attacks on health care workers and election workers and Paul Pelosi, an actual attack.

PIERCE: And he watched it. January 6th. He watched the violence on television.

CUPP: January 6th being the biggest example of it. And there weren't any political consequences.

SWISHER: He is someone who things don't stick to. They just don't.

CUPP: Yes, right.

SWISHER: It's really unusual, and in a lot of ways, a once in a lifetime politician where that happens. CUPP: For sure.

SWISHER: And I think the difficulty is, is there anything that could happen? And he said it himself walking down Fifth Avenue, I could shoot someone. He does intuitively understand that appeal.

The second thing is he always says things that make a little bit of sense, where he says, I think when MBS, the head of Saudi Arabia, chopped up that journalist, he said, well, you know, we're not that good either. And you're like, I don't believe we did that.

PHILLIP: It's really the art of saying actually some things that people think ring a little bit true.

SWISHER: Exactly.

PHILLIP: Applying them at the government level in a way that has never been done before, never.

Is it now culturally uncool to be a Democrat? That question was posted this week as the liberals search for their way forward. We'll debate.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:37:48]

AMARA WALKER, CNN ANCHOR: We will return to "TABLE FOR FIVE" with Abby Phillip in just a moment. But first, we are following breaking news on Capitol Hill. Pete Hegseth is now the secretary of defense after being sworn in just moments ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY NOMINEE: I, Pete Hegseth --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- do solemnly swear --

HEGSETH: -- do solemnly swear --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States --

HEGSETH: -- that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- against all enemies, foreign and domestic -

HEGSETH: -- against all enemies, foreign and domestic --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same --

HEGSETH: -- that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- that I take this obligation freely --

HEGSETH: -- that I take this obligation freely --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion --

HEGSETH: -- without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- and that I will well and faithfully discharge --

HEGSETH: -- and that I will well and faithfully discharge --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- the duties of the office on which I am about to enter --

HEGSETH: -- the duties of the office of which I am about to enter --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- so help you God.

HEGSETH: -- so help me God.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congratulations, Mr. Secretary.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALKER: Well, the vote to confirm Hegseth came down to the wire, 51 to 50, with Vice President J.D. Vance there casting the tiebreaking vote.

We're joined now by CNN senior White House reporter Kevin Liptak and CNN Capitol Hill reporter Annie Grayer. Annie, let's start with you and go back to last night, because this was a very narrow confirmation for Hegseth with three Republicans opposing him. Tell us more about how it all went down.

ANNIE GRAYER, CNN REPORTER: It was a nailbiter vote that came down to the wire. Because Republicans have such a narrow majority in the Senate, they could only lose three Republican senators, and they did, which is what required Vice President Vance to come in and break the tie at the last minute.

Now, two of those senators, Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, had said that they plan to vote no ahead of the vote. So that wasn't a huge surprise there. But the big surprise of the night was that Mitch McConnell, the former Senate majority leader, voted against Hegseth's nomination. I want to read for you McConnell's statement after that vote. McConnell said, quote, "Effective management of nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world is a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interests.

[10:40:11]

Mr. Hegseth has failed as yet to demonstrate that he will pass this test."

Now, it is no secret that the relationship between McConnell and Trump has been a has been a frail one. And this is just the latest example of the tensions between those two. Hegseth's nomination process, though, was riddled with controversies. He was accused of sexual misconduct against women. He was accused of excessive drinking and mismanagement of the monies of his businesses. But he denied all of those allegations.

And the Trump camp, the Trump team and the president himself stood behind Hegseth this whole time. So the fact that Senate Republicans delivered Trump his Senate -- his pick for defense secretary is a huge win for the president as he tries to build out his cabinet quickly.

WALKER: Annie Grayer, thank you for that. Let's bring in CNN's senior White House reporter, Kevin Liptak. And Kevin, as we've been seeing some of Trump's key cabinet positions are moving forward. He now has a secretary of defense. He has a secretary of state. More votes happening this morning. Talk about how this sets the Trump administration up to try to achieve some of his key priorities in the first 100 days.

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, because in a lot of ways, these nominations and confirmations, these were the easy part. Now, the hard work of governing really begins. And particularly for someone like Pete Hegseth who is entering this job, this massive responsibility of running the Pentagon, 1.3 million people, a budget of almost $1 trillion, at a moment of great global instability, now will be the moment to really put his experience to the test.

And that is true across the cabinet. Whether you're talking about Marco Rubio at the State Department or Governor Kristi Noem at the Department of Homeland Security, who we do expect to be confirmed later today, now is the moment for them to come into these agencies and really sort of execute President Trump's agenda. Certainly, we've seen the president try and use his executive authority to, sort of, it's largest bounds over his first week in office, really exploring how far he can go with his pen.

But in order for a lot of those actions to actually take effect and to have an actual effect on policy, it will require work by these cabinet agencies to take these orders and put them into effect. And so that will be, I think, the next step in President Trump's attempts to shape the federal government to his will, whether it's policy or whether it's personnel. Now, it will be the responsibility of these selections to really carry that out.

And I think this is where the experience will really come in. That was one of the big questions about Pete Hegseth. Does he have the requirements necessary to execute this enormous job? And that is true sort of across the president's cabinet selections. And now this will be really a moment to see whether they can do the job that they were selected to do, that President Trump selected to do to his liking as well. And that will be something to watch over the next several weeks.

PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, it was a tough confirmation process for him. But as you say, now the tough part begins, the tough part of governing. Kevin Liptak, Annie Grayer, thank you both for your reporting.

And "TABLE FOR FIVE" with Abby Phillip continues after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:48:15]

PHILLIP: Here's a provocative question for you. Is it now uncool to be a Democrat? Meghan McCain thinks so after she says that she's been socially ostracized for being a Republican her entire life. And op-ed takes it a step further, arguing that the right is winning hearts and minds. A major reason, because MAGA has recognized the crucial importance of new technologies in shaping politics and culture. It's an interesting argument. Actually, can I just say, for the record, the conservatives at the table, are the ones that are most skeptical about this. Is that right?

CUPP: Yes.

STEPIEN: Democrats are still cooler. Dress better, dress better, have better hair, go to cooler parties, still cooler.

CUPP: I don't think the cool is the thing. And you know, Meghan is my very best friend, so, full disclosure. I get her point, because we've talked about this, but it's not an issue of cool. I think that Biden, what Democrats needed after Trump was a Reagan, a character, and a personality who was not only going to transform the Democratic Party, but America and the world for generations to come. Instead, they got a Carter in Biden, someone who inspired nobody, who in fact, repelled longtime Democrats who said, I've had enough. This is -- we have lost the way. We have lost our point.

And now they risk another 12 years of Republicans in charge. Democrats need a renaissance. And to do that, they'll need some introspection and to take some responsibility from some of their policy waywardness. But they need to find their Reagan and become inspiring again --

(CROSS TALK)

SWISHER: They had their Reagan. They had Barack Obama, the ultimate cool, right? The ultimate --

CUPP: I'm not talking about cool, though. I'm talking about someone who can inspire a generation to come to the party.

(CROSS TALK)

[10:50:01]

SWISHER: He leads the cultural -- but there is a cultural vanguard to doing that, right?

PHILLIP: But there was an expiration date on that, I think is part of the issue. And Trump has threatened, I think this is the question, he threatens to eclipse it. I mean, this is, "The Wall Street Journal" on Sunday, "How MAGA is taking back the culture." This is a quote from a student at ASU, Arizona State, "Every time I walk on campus, I see a few MAGA hats. That's definitely new." He said, "It's really become intertwined in our pop culture. It's really showing that conservatism is cool now. This isa a 19-year-old.

STEPIEN: I think Republicans are less afraid.

PHILLIP: That's right.

STEPIEN: Right. Stallone, Gibson, Jon Voight, shout out "Varsity Blues." Like them coming out as official or unofficial ambassadors to Hollywood, like, that didn't happen 10 years.

PHILLIP: They didn't come out. He appointed them. They didn't even know.

STEPIEN: And I think it's a very good thing --

PHILLIP: Let me take it to the person from Hollywood. I feel like, I actually don't think that that's like a sign that they're cool, because those guys have been -- first of all, they're in another generation.

STEPIEN: Less afraid.

PHILLIP: And they've been in Trump's --

SWISHER: Striking a blow against ageism. But go ahead.

PIERCE: I think we have we have revisionist history, because there is a point in this campaign when the Democrats raised $1 billion, where Kamala Harris.

PHILLIP: That was like three months ago.

PIERCE: Right, where people were going, where people were going across with in the middle of the campaign, where we felt in 100 days no other campaign could have done what we did. And the Republicans were feeling that as well. We lost the campaign. We should not feel as though we've lost our principles and our way. Of course, when someone wins, there's going to be sort of popular movement and everybody's going to be attached to it, and then ultimately they're going to realize what they have, what has happened. Now we have a responsibility as Democrats to tap into that coolness again and remember that. But --

CUPP: Coolness doesn't pay the bills, though. People want their bills paid.

PIERCE: Absolutely. And we'll be asking that question after all those tariffs are put on.

PHILLIP: Thats right. I think that may very well be -- that's such an important point. It may very well be the lesson of the last election is that you can't rely on cool to know who is going to get more votes. Everyone, stay with me. Coming up next, the panel's unpopular

opinions, what they're not afraid to say out loud.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:57:02]

PHILLIP: We're back, and it's time for your unpopular opinions. You each have 30s to tell us yours. Wendell, you're first.

PIERCE: OK, this is going to be very unpopular in my community in Hollywood. I do not believe that you should be getting a nomination for the Academy Award if your performance was enhanced by A.I.

CUPP: What about CGI?

PHILLIP: OK, when you say A.I., are we talking about, like, their physical performance? Like, like, you know, stunts and stuff? Or are you talking about vocal performance?

PIERCE: Obviously it's going to be helped by CGI and A.I. when it comes to different visual things. But the idea of changing my voice and my behavior, acting is the study of human behavior. And so I was very disappointed after finding -- after seeing "The Brutalist," that the accent was enhanced by A.I., especially an actor who struggles with getting an accent.

(LAUGHTER)

PHILLIP: Right. S.E.?

CUPP: Well, I'm also on the Oscars, which I love. I'm that rare conservative, I love Hollywood, I love movies, I love the Oscars. Cancel the Oscars this year, not because of the fires, but because if you want people to watch the Oscars, you need to nominate movies that people have seen. And there are so few movies nominated this year that, like, a lot of people have seen. If you want it to be a performance not just for the Academy, make the performance for us. Otherwise, hold the Oscars in your own living room.

PHILLIP: It also feels kind of elitist when they're like, well, this is a good movie. You guys just don't know.

CUPP: Kind of?

PIERCE: And it's really easy to fix.

PHILLIP: Yes. All right, Bill?

STEPIEN: I'm sticking closer to home. We're here in New York and closer to politics. Eric Adams has been a bad mayor. That's a very popular opinion. But he is not dead yet despite what the polls tell us. He had a very good week. Five days in a row, no shootings in the city, first time in 30 years. It's a big deal in New York, not Topeka, but here. ICE rolled into town, crackdowns, bad guys rounded up. The better of a job ICE does, the more of a chance Eric Adams has. Not dead yet.

PHILLIP: OK. All right.

SWISHER: Close to dead, medium dead?

All right, even though I'm the one who actually predicted this crack up between Elon and the president, which, you see him misbehaving, because he always misbehaves. This is what he does. I do think it will go on longer than you think, their closeness, because of the money that Elon has to deploy against enemies of Donald Trump or people he wants to keep in line. And so being that rich allows him the kind of space that you might not get with Trump. And so in this case, Elon does have the upper hand and will be able to stay in there, despite the fact that other billionaires will try to make incursions. And so it's going to last a little bit longer, because both are tolerant of shamelessness and forgiveness for heinous behavior.

PHILLIP: And I think Trump appreciates the power of X in the media landscape.

Everyone, thank you very much. And you can catch Wendell in the hit CBS series "Elsbeth" and in Starz Network's "Raising Kanan" starting March 7th.

Thank you very much for watching "TABLE FOR FIVE". You can catch me every weeknight, 10;00 p.m. eastern, with our news night roundtable. But in the meantime, CNN's coverage continues right now.