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CNN Saturday Morning Table for Five. President Trump Blames Federal Government Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policies for Commercial Plane and Military Helicopter Midair Collision Near Washington D.C.; Elon Musk's Possible Influence in Trump Administration Examined; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard Face Tough Questions at Senate Confirmation Hearings for Their Nominations to Trump Administration; Paramount Settling Lawsuit with Donald Trump over Editing of Televised Interview with Kamala Harris; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Says Democrats Aroused after Trump Administration's Order of Freezing of Federal Grants and Loans Rescinded. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired February 01, 2025 - 10:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

[10:00:28]

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR, INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY: This morning, the crisis president.

DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: The put a big push to put diversity into the FAA's Program.

PHILLIP: Before investigations even begin, Donald Trump jumps to baseless conclusions with baseless claims and baseless blame. And his cabinet plays along.

SEAN DUFFY, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: The president's leadership has been remarkable.

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Thank you for your leadership and courage on that, sir.

PHILLIP: Plus, the big freeze, the big purge, the big DOGE -- is the X man running the government?

Also, are Republican senators willing to hand over the nation's health?

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY NOMINEE: No, I never said that.

PHILLIP: The nation's intelligence.

TULSI GABBARD, NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR NOMINEE: Senator, I'm offended by the question. PHILLIP: And the nations feds.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You've got two minutes.

PHILLIP: To MAGA disciples.

And Democrats turn frisky.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, (D-NY) SENATE MINORITY LEADER: People are aroused.

PHILLIP: As a lost party hits a new low.

Here in studio, Kara Swisher, Melik Abdul, Joanna Coles, and Solomon Jones. It's the weekend. Join the conversation at the "TABLE FOR FIVE".

(END VIDEO TAPE)

PHILLIP: Good morning, I'm Abby Phillip in New York. In Donald Trump's second week on the job, America has once again been reminded of how he copes with a crisis. He suddenly becomes a pundit. It wasn't four hours after the nation's deadliest plane crash in nearly a quarter century when the president started ruminating about blame, questioning the competence of the tower and military pilots. Then, 14 hours after the crash, he took to the White House podium with a different and clearer message about who he thinks is at fault.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first. The FAA's diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing. A group within the FAA, another story, determined that the workforce was too white, that they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately. This was in the Obama administration, but they actually came out with a directive, too white. And we want the people that are competent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: When journalists questioned those claims, or simply just asked for any evidence at all, he insulted them. It's illustrative of how he handles crises just in general. Take this month alone, when a terrorist drove a car through the crowds in New Orleans, Trump immediately responded by blaming the border crisis. But the attacker was an Army veteran, an American radicalized by ISIS. When the fires exploded in Los Angeles, MAGA rushed to blame DEI, and the president spent days insulting and threatening California leaders.

And if you want to look back even further, perhaps the most clear example was his handling of the COVID crisis. He spent weeks reading from the same playbook of blame and insults when America needed a steady hand. And in this case, when families are still grieving, when some of the people that he's blaming, by the way, are lying in the Potomac River, this is where he starts. And it is about deflection, because it's not really about addressing anything that has to do with this issue. It's about flogging this DEI hobby horse.

SOLOMON JONES, AWARD-WINNING COLUMNIST, "THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER": Yes, it's odd to me and sad to me to see someone who's supposed to be providing leadership and comfort to the country, placing blame before the investigation even begins. So you know no facts. Bodies are still in the river, and you're saying that DEI is to blame. First, you talk about someone else who was president, what, eight years ago saying that the administration at FAA was too white. And then you say we need competent people. So let me get this straight. If they're not white, they're not competent. It is insulting. It is useless. And it is hurtful to the families of these people who don't know where their loved ones are at this point. That's not leadership. It hurts.

PHILLIP: I want to play something for you from a friend of the show here, Van Lathan. He was talking about this on his podcast, and I thought this was a very interesting way of putting it. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[10:05:00]

VAN LATHAN, PODCAST CO-HOST, "HIGHER LEARNING": We make light. We just, and we say that DEI is the new n-word.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:

LATHAN: It's not the new n-word. It's worse than the n-word. The term DEI right now has become the worst slur in American history. DEI is placing the blame of all of society's ills at the feet of these people. There is a religious allegiance to the white male orthodoxy that this propping up of this DEI, anti-DEI agenda is beholden to.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Your thoughts?

MELIK ABDUL, MEMBER, BLACK AMERICANS FOR TRUMP COALITION: So there was a collective and when I mention these, there's a group of what I call the woke right, who love this type of stuff. Everybody else, meaning the people who are really interested in not their personal benefit, how it benefits them in the form of social capital, but who's interested in Donald Trump being successful, saw at the end of last week, we had the executive orders where he was able to talk about ending DEI. OK, great. So that means that the next week we're really going to get into the meat and potatoes.

At the end of this week, we are talking about DEI, not because we have to, because it was a decision that Donald Trump makes. And there was a collective, down, down, down, around everybody around Donald Trump, because you said it right when you pointed out COVID. It reminds us of what happened during COVID. It reminds us of what just happened during the campaign when they were eating the dogs and eating the cats. It wasn't true. Why are you talking about this? It makes it difficult for us to defend him. KARA SWISHER, PODCAST HOST, "PIVOT" AND "ON": But, it's sort of like

trying to -- it was the whole debate over whether Elon Musk did a nazi salute or not. It just, we're sitting here debating that, when what's clear is what you see with your eyes, as Josh Johnson said, you can see with your eyes what was happening.

And I think it's actually a strategy of doing this, which is, as you said, not just deflect, but create conversation around something that is not interesting to everybody except the base and gets the media all exercised about it. And so that's all we're talking about. We're not talking about the failures of what happened in that crash. We're not talking about some of these crazy executive orders. We're not talking about all kinds of manner of things.

And it's actually, I hate to say this, but it's a very smart thing to do when you want to create chaos, and chaos is the point. And to think he's just doing it off the top of his head, I think they're planning the whole thing.

PHILLIP: Yes, it is a convenient distraction. I mean, and you're right.

SWISHER: From RFK, Tulsi Gabbard.

PHILLIP: It's both things to me. It's not just a distraction from the real issues that might prompt serious questions about, OK, who's staffing the transportation safety administration, all these other agencies that he's in charge of now? But also, we can't ignore the divisiveness of it, the way in which it literally is villainizing and putting a target on the back of women, of black people, of Hispanic people, of gay people, trans people. That's happening, too.

JOANNA COLES, CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER, "THE DAILY BEAST": Except there's a phrase in politics which is, it's all fun and games until planes start falling out of the sky. And actually, although I totally agree with you that this is a storm over here to draw attention to one of the great arrows in his quiver, which is DEI, and he's playing politics with this, actually, what people want to be able to do is fly safely. And this is, you know, he's staffed up with central casting from reality television, but reality television isn't real. It's all manufactured. The drama, the conflict, it's all manufactured. And here you have a real crisis. And who does he put out? Sean Duffy, whose only apparent qualification to be transport secretary is that he was on a show called "Road Rules," where he where he sheared sheep.

PHILLIP: Can we talk about that?

COLES: But this is serious stuff.

PHILLIP: The number of --

COLES: Planes fall out of the skies, people don't like you anymore.

PHILLIP: The number of white men that Donald Trump has nominated to positions in our government who, by objective standards, do not have the qualifications to do their job, should be, if you care about meritocracy, something that we are able to talk about.

JONES: I call it the "Wizard of Oz' strategy, where it's don't look at the man behind the curtain, right? Look at what I'm saying, believe what I'm saying. Only what I'm saying is the truth. He's defining reality. Before the investigation even begins, he starts talking about it's DEI, it's black people, its gay people. It's people who aren't like me. It's everybody but me when I'm in charge. I mean, it's bizarre when you really think about it.

Then when you think about the people that he's put in these positions, Pete Hegseth who has these allegations of sexual assault and allegations of drunkenness, allegations of running these nonprofits into the ground, RFK Jr., who's an anti-vaxxer to run the Department of Health.

[10:10:13]

And the only time he puts someone in charge who actually knows what they're doing and has actually been in a position where they've been at the top of the agency, is after these planes fall out of the sky,he then puts an FAA veteran in charge of the FAA.

PHILLIP: You know what's sad? You know, the helicopter crew that Trump has repeatedly blamed before any investigation has happened, we don't know yet all the causes, because it won't just be one thing. One of the families doesn't want that person's name released. And it seems, based on their statement, that that third person who was in the on the helicopter was a woman, because they are looking for a scapegoat who is a woman or a black person or whatever. Like they're looking for people.

ABDUL: There are people on the right who, again, I call it the woke right, on the right who are, were literally saying that I think the male pilot had 1,000 hours. The female, this phantom female pilot, had 500 hours of training time. They don't know anything about what the requirements are. They don't know how long that person had been in service. Donald Trump appealing to these people in his second week, when we're not talking about the economy, we're not talking about any of that. We're talking about DEI, and he had no evidence. And people are out there defending it.

I'm not going to get on television to defend it. I want Donald Trump to know, you are making it hard for us who are not looking for a payout or some sort of association, or the social media influence behind supporting Donald Trump or any politician, we want to support you because we believe in what you're doing. And when you get out here and do this stuff around DEI, knowing that this this support that he's gotten from black people, this uptick, it's not permanent, meaning that you --

JONES: I don't see how you can support him. I have to be honest. I don't see how you can make excuses for him.

(CROSS TALK)

JONES: I don't see how you can try to explain it. I don't. ABDUL: I get it.

PHILLIP: This is Donald Trump. You know that, right? Like, this is not like a show. This is actually who Donald Trump is.

SWISHER: In technology terms, it's called this is, this is a feature, not a bug. It's not everyone's like, oh, can you believe he did that? Then, can you believe he did that? I don't believe it when he does something sensible. That's where I am. I'm like, oh, look above. He's doing something that's sensible.

And so this particular activity is something -- and he's quite good at it because he uses social media. He uses the way narratives go today, which are very fast. Narratives go very fast. So it's already entered the picture. I wonder if it was an incompetent woman. I wonder if it was an incompetent person of color. It's already in people's brains, even those who are not in the MAGA movement, and therefore that's what informs the conversation.

PHILLIP: All right, everyone, stick around. Coming up next, is Elon Musk running Donald Trump's government? We'll discuss the clues he's been dropping.

Plus, why a couple of Trump's most beloved picks might be in some serious jeopardy after a pretty rough week on Capitol Hill. And that includes RFK Jr.

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[10:17:55]

PHILLIP: Welcome back. He is the world's richest man, the Trump whisperer. And now it appears he is the shot-caller for the entire government. Consider this. President Trump is offering buyouts to all federal employees, all 2 million of them. He communicated it via email in the same way, with the same title, as Elon Musk did when he purchased Twitter.

Also this week, the highest ranking career official at the Treasury Department is quitting after a clash with Musk over access to sensitive payment systems. Now, this follows the FAA chief resigning after Musk told him to resign after they clashed over SpaceX oversight. And the question I have for someone, anyone, who gave them the power? And who and who are all of these people? I mean, I don't know. Shouldn't we know?

SWISHER: I know who they are. They're all workers of Elon Musk, either at Tesla or SpaceX, and there are people who have worked with him throughout many years. They started off in various and sundry jobs, but they're all his crew. He's got a crew. It's almost like a, you know, like any crew you'd see in a movie, like they move from thing to thing. And they did that. They moved into Twitter and did this. And right now, what they're trying to do is essentially be the genius bar for the country right now. We're going to fix all your systems. Now, a lot of our I.T. systems need fixing, but they need to be done

legally and safely. One of the big dangers is, is hacking by foreign governments, et cetera. But you've got a private citizen who was not elected with his fingers in the in the I.T. system of this government.

PHILLIP: Huge privacy concerns.

SWISHER: Not just privacy.

PHILLIP: Yes. Well, yes, I mean, in addition to what you just said about hacking, but I also think they're one of the things that they're doing is trying to overtake H.R. so that they can manage all of the entire governments 2 million workforce out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

SWISHER: No, no, they're doing it from the headquarters of Twitter from D.C.

PHILLIP: From the headquarters of Twitter. So there's that. But there are real privacy concerns for all of these employees. But also, let's talk about this payment system at the Treasury Department. From what I have read in the reporting, "The Washington Post" is reporting this, there are only a handful, maybe a little bit more, of career employees who manage the system.

[10:20:02]

This is the system where the government of the country pays out money for all kinds of different things. It's extremely sensitive, and I don't know who, Congress didn't give DOGE any power.

SWISHER: You can control who gets paid, too. It's not about just the privacy. It's that if he could decide California shouldn't get paid or we're going to make cuts here, what are they going to do about it? Deny government could hold back federal funds.

PHILLIP: It's a very serious thing.

COLES: Also, the question is, what is Elon doing here? Why does he want to be involved in this? I think the sort of merging of tech and government is actually very exciting. I think it's exciting having Elon involved, but just not doing this. Elon should be given enormous, real structural problems like homelessness. Apply your enormous brain and brilliant creativity, and I love your description of the genius bar, to something like homelessness, where he might be able to make a difference. We don't need him fiddling around in the minutia of government.

SWISHER: He's doing it for power, Joanna.

COLES: He's doing it for government contracts.

SWISHER: No, he's doing it for government power at this point. It's beyond contract.

COLES: Well, sort of the same thing. But actually, it is incredible to finally bring tech into the White House.

SWISHER: Not like this.

(CROSS TALK)

PHILLIP: I also don't think, I don't think it's about, I mean, I don't think it's about fixing the payment system, OK. I think it's about them wanting to be able to say, you get paid, and you don't get paid. You get paid and you don't get paid. The problem is there is a government in this country that decides who gets paid and who doesn't.

JONES: You want to be in charge of the data. That's what that is. That's what his business is at Twitter. When you don't pay anything for something, you're the product. So when we use Twitter, we're the product, right? And so imagine being in charge of the data of everybody who gets paid. No, imagine being rich enough that you can get the guy who's really running the Treasury Department out because you want the data, and he doesn't want you to have it. I mean, he's that rich and that powerful, and nobody elected him. I think that's the scary part.

ABDUL: And I wrote in the Washington examiner, the problem with Elon Musk is that he's an unelected billionaire bureaucrat, and he's not responsible for anything that an elected official is responsible for. And that is --

COLES: But billionaire bureaucrats have frequently been involved, often behind the scenes in government.

ABDUL: But not to the extent --

COLES: No, what's interesting here about this is the way that Trump is running it like a TV show. And actually, we have a bit more transparency. We know that Elon is doing this. Is he inept?

SWISHER: No, no, we don't, because --

(CROSS TALK)

JONES: I don't think Elon is genuine in this at all.

(CROSS TALK)

JONES: If he was genuine, he would he would want to solve homelessness, right. You said he should he should apply his genius to homelessness. Well, you have to care about homelessness to want to solve it. I think he only cares about data and power.

PHILLIP: Go ahead, Kara. Let me just say, he's using signal for communications. Our government should have transparent.

COLES: Everybody I know in the media is using signals.

SWISHER: Yes, but our government doesn't do that.

PHILLIP: Joanna, that's actually a violation of federal laws and regulations.

SWISHER: That's if you're running your business. That's if you're --

(CROSS TALK)

PHILLIP: Do I need to remind us about the email scandal that consumed Washington forever because of a private email server? I mean.

SWISHER: He could do whatever he wants.

PHILLIP: Government employees shouldn't be doing --

SWISHER: Years from now, we're going to have to hire white hat hackers to figure out what he got into. And he knows that Donald Trump has no interest in the details, and therefore he can do whatever he wants.

Now, I'm a James Bond fan, but this feels a little like that. Like, why is he getting access to systems and then using nontransparent communications to talk about what he's doing? If everything is above board, why are they using signal? Why is he taking control of this when people object? Why isn't it going through a process where we can all see what's happening? None of it is because Donald Trump doesn't care.

JONES: All I would say is that billionaire businessmen have been involved in politics forever, and we've never known who they were.

SWISHER: Not like this.

JONES: No, because they were frequently secret --

SWISHER: But not with access to government data. It's beyond belief that this is happening.

ABDUL: The data is worth more than anything. And that's what this is about.

PHILLIP: It would be one thing, it would be one thing if DOGE were as it was sort of described, that they would be giving all these recommendations.

ABDUL: With Vivek Ramaswamy.

PHILLIP: -- about what.

(CROSS TALK)

PHILLIP: They've already left one, left one of the cofounders behind. But what's really it seems is happening is that there are all these people who we don't know if they actually work for the government, really. We don't know if they've passed conflict of interest or financial disclosures or anything like that. We don't really know.

SWISHER: They haven't.

PHILLIP: Yes. And many of them probably haven't.

SWISHER: One of them and they're husband and wife team.

PHILLIP: They're involved in everything it seems that is happening right now at the federal level.

We've got to go for this one. But stick around. We're not going anywhere just yet.

Coming up next, he is interviewing to be in charge of Americas health system, and she wants to be in charge of America's secrets. But even Republicans are hesitant about both of them, to give them the keys to those two departments. We'll discuss that.

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[10:29:29]

PHILLIP: Welcome back. The MAGA cabinet may be hitting a wall after a nailbiter vote to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who denied sexual assault allegations and drinking problems. Three of Trump's other embattled nominees testified this week before Congress, and two of them appear to be in jeopardy about their stances and views. They flopped, they flipped, they dodged. And RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard left their hearings without full-throated support from key Republican swing votes that they will need in order to get their jobs. There are still plenty of people putting money on them being confirmed, but there are some real questions.

[10:30:07]

Let me just play Bill Cassidy here. He's talking about RFK Jr.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BILL CASSIDY, (R-LA): My concern is that if there's any false note, any undermining of a mama's trust in vaccines, another person will die from a vaccine preventable disease. And that is why I've been struggling with your nomination.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: He's a doctor. So in a way, this makes sense. But a lot of things don't usually make sense in Trump-land, which is where we are.

COLES: Well, he did a beautiful questioning of RFK Jr., much better, I thought, than Bernie Sanders, who got all red in the face and started sort of spittle flying absolutely everywhere. I thought Cassidy did a forensic job of taking his arguments apart one by one. We know he's a terrible influence on the science of medicine and of vaccines, and it's extraordinary that he's been nominated.

But I think the biggest critic was his cousin, Caroline Kennedy, who never says anything about being a Kennedy, but who released a video on Instagram saying that, he had a life of cheating, of lying, of having second chances given to him. And this is what he's done with it. PHILLIP: She called him a predator.

COLES: She called him a predator. And she talked about how he put live mice and birds into a Magimix to create his own smoothie for his falcons.

PHILLIP: I don't even know what that was about.

SWISHER: Yes, that was the nice part.

COLES: I'm waiting for him to start marketing it as a health drink.

PHILLIP: Tulsi Gabbard, I mean, she's also facing some resistance for a whole host of reasons. In some ways, I almost think it's easier for Republicans on these two because they both were Democrats at a certain point. So it's like they can just blame it on that. And that might be the case.

ABDUL: So I think with RFK, to be honest, I was more impressed with RFK after his hearing than, and at fact, with Tulsi Gabbard as well. I think some of the attacks on RFK are just absolutely ridiculous. At the end of the day, regardless of what RFK's position is on the vaccine or anything, Donald Trump is president of the United States, and he has to follow Donald Trump's agenda. And it was Donald Trump who got us Operation Warp Speed at the time that people like Kamala Harris were saying that she wouldn't trust --

PHILLIP: Donald Trump has also said that he thinks that vaccines cause autism, which is completely false. I mean, so the person in that position, I think it's right that lawmakers should say, do you believe in settled science or not?

SWISHER: This is another example of lack of details, not interested in the details. And I think he, RFK will do, he's an advocate. He is someone -- and that's a nice way of putting it. He's religious about this in some way. And so he will do what it takes while he's in there to create destruction, which will lead to the deaths of thousands and thousands of people unnecessarily, unproven science. And so that's the difficulty is Donald Trump may be president, but he's not paying attention to the details. He's not paying attention to Elon. He's not paying attention over here and here and here. And so I think if it got him into too much trouble, he might pay attention. But RFK could do an enormous amount of damage in that short time.

JONES: Thats right. And the reason that RFK is there is not because of his medical knowledge. I mean, let's be clear. He's an anti-vaxxer. He's somebody who is going to cause harm, as someone in that position of power. But he's there because he flipped when Donald Trump wanted him to flip. He's there because he gave his support to Donald Trump during the campaign. He's there as a political favor. Imagine putting somebody in charge of the health of our children as a political favor. This is crazy, but this is where we are.

PHILLIP: All right, everyone, hold on. Coming up next, Paramount is now in talks to settle a Trump lawsuit over editing a CBS interview, which is a standard television news practice. It's been done to Donald Trump as well. Is this the cost of doing business now in Trump's America?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:38:35]

PHILLIP: Welcome back. Is the cost of doing business in the Trump era, the cost of the hit to the First Amendment? You might remember Donald Trump sued CBS over its "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris. He claimed that the network doctored one of her answers after a promo clip of the actual interview showed a different answer. Of course, that is not doctoring. It's editing, which has been a standard editorial practice for decades. One legal expert called the lawsuit ridiculous junk. But now Paramount, which owns CBS, is in settlement talks with Trump. Why? Well, likely because they want the government to approve its merger with Skydance. Is this a sellout for a sale? They would not be alone in a quid pro quo here.

SWISHER: Yes, yes, it is. Yes, it is. And it's the same thing with the with the Meta lawsuit that they settled. They took Donald Trump off the platform. They're allowed to do that. He did break their rules in place at the time, so they were well within their rules to do it. But they decided that they needed just to get him on their side. And so they just let him win a lawsuit he never would have won. The same thing, I think, in a different way with ABC. You'll probably see it with Twitter. You'll probably see it with any of these lawsuits, because that's the cost of doing business. And it's good for shareholders to do that. It's not good for the First Amendment.

PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, the cost to these companies, Meta, it's $25 million. That's like a rounding error for them. ABC-Disney, $15 million. Paramount, it's going to be significantly less than, what was it, the $10 billion Trump was asking for.

[10:40:00]

And Kara is right, they probably will continue with these lawsuits because everybody understands that you just settle, and you might get what you want on some other issue and keep Trump happy.

JONES: I think that's the problem, because what that says is that they're assuming that he's going to use the levers of government against them if they don't do what he wants. They're assuming that this government corruption is going to work against them if they don't do what he wants. So it's essentially a payoff to Donald Trump so that they get what they want on the back end under the assumption that this guy is corrupt and he's going to hurt us if we don't.

PHILLIP: Did you see this report? This is from "The Wall Street Journal". I think it's pretty extraordinary. The FCC, which is now run by a Trump loyalist, is requesting that "60 Minutes" interview as well as part of the review of the Skydance merger. But they're not just requesting what aired. They're requesting all of the footage, the outtakes, the commercial breaks, all of it. And there's explicitly linking it to a deal on a completely different subject.

COLES: Yes, I mean, look, this is clearly going to be a tactic that, again, this is nothing new. Donald Trump has always sued people. He's always done this to people. Anybody he's in business with, you know, a contractor who comes to fix something on the Mar-a-Lago lawn will get sent a lawsuit.

And the problem is, as we know, and as a European, I still find this extraordinary, lawsuits are incredibly distracting for people. They're expensive, they're distracting, they take executives' time. So you can see the pressure to settle, because these companies have other things to do. But, as Kara says, it's terrible for the First Amendment.

ABDUL: But as someone who watched media companies during the Trump years and even the time when he wasn't in office go after Donald Trump, cover him unfairly, this doesn't necessarily upset me. Like this is something --

PHILLIP: You've got to be more specific about that. What is the unfair coverage?

ABDUL: Well, the unfair coverage of Donald Trump when it comes to, for instance, the Facebook suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop, how media, 51 intelligence officials, this narrative that 51 intelligence officials said that the Hunter Biden laptop had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. Media, there's a media out there that continue to push that narrative even after --

PHILLIP: Those 51 intelligence analysts have First Amendment rights just like you do.

ABDUL: Sure, they absolutely do.

PHILLIP: And they can say what they want.

ABDUL: But the media pushed it, and it was a lie. It was a lie.

JONES: How many lies does Donald Trump push?

ABDUL: He's probably very -- probably --

JONES: No less than 30,000 in his first term.

SWISHER: Here's the thing, unfair -- the people that go on and on about the First Amendment are the first people to quash the First Amendment. The media made a mistake there, and that's very different.

ABDUL: They made several mistakes about Donald Trump.

SWISHER: Yes, but it's still not in this -- yes, but it's not actionable in the same way. You cannot like the man and be able to say it and not be sued over it. In the case of Facebook, they did nothing wrong. Exactly, nothing.

ABDUL: I'm not inclined to believe that all of these media companies, with their lawyers, are just saying, you know what, we're just going to quash this in order because we want something, because that's kind of acting like a lobbyist. Now, we do know that lobbyists exist to get their jobs done. SWISHER: But that's why they're doing it.

ABDUL: If they're doing it, these are media companies.

PHILLIP: They are owned by larger corporations.

SWISHER: Or in the case of Paramount, Shari Redstone wants her payout.

PHILLIP: She'll get billions in this sale if it's approved.

SWISHER: Billions of dollars, so she gives Donald Trump money, that is what it is. He now has a cudgel. If it was a regular time he wasn't president, he's lose every single one of these lawsuits.

ABDUL: See, I don't think the motives are as --

PHILLIP: We've got to go there. Everyone stay with me.

Coming up next, this Trump era has Democrats twisting in the wind now. A new poll is showing their lowest approval rating ever. But according to Senator Schumer, people are aroused. We'll discuss that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:48:25]

PHILLIP: Just 12 days into the second Trump presidency, Democrats appear to be lost. The so-called resistance seems to lack any direction, any leader. And the polls confirm that Americans agree. Quinnipiac shows record low approvals for the party at 31 percent. That is far lower than their rival, the Republicans, 43 percent. And this week, liberals celebrated and took credit when Trump backpedaled on this blanket freeze of federal spending. But that was largely thanks to the courts and, frankly, regular people crying foul. Now, that fact, though, did not stop Minority Leader Chuck Schumer from taking an awkward victory lap.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, (D-NY) SENATE MINORITY LEADER: Donald Trump, with his cruel policy, has aroused the American people. And what we're saying is, go to your local official, your local congressman or your local senator, and have them get to the president. But the roots of democracy are deep. People are aroused. I haven't seen people so aroused in a very, very long time in terms of going, trying to get this done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(CROSS TALK)

JONES: So I'm a writer, and words have shades of meaning.

(LAUGHTER)

JONES: And "aroused" is the wrong word there. Especially to keep saying it over and over and over again.

(CROSS TALK)

SWISHER: I think he was aroused. I think he was aroused. I feel the former editor of "Cosmopolitan" has to take this one.

COLES: Well, I'm saying I think he was clearly channeling his own arousal, because he suddenly had the spotlight back on him. I mean, he's disappeared, like all the Democrats have disappeared.

Actually, if I were the Democrats right now, I think I would be sitting this one out, too.

[10:50:01]

I'm not sure they actually have to leap in front of Trump. I think they just need to let him do his thing for a bit and then begin to step up for the midterms.

PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, I actually think that's a pretty reasonable argument, because what really are they going to do? But it also just seems that even that articulation of let's not get in the mix, is not happening, right. The leadership has been kind of like, we're figuring it out. They're putting out press conferences a day late, all that type of thing.

SWISHER: I do think people do expect them at least to step up on some level. Just sitting it out is not a great thing to do either, because then it shows -- I know don't get in the way when someone's tripping down the stairs. That's the theory, right? I do think people do want leadership, no matter what, from their side or their team, even if they're losing. And it's an opportunity to show that you have new, fresh ideas.

(CROSS TALK)

ABDUL: To think that you did something wrong. These are the same people. Chuck Schumer, many of them led us to believe that Joe Biden was basically a triathlete, that he was strong and he was assertive. We heard all of these stories about Joe Biden's strength. And then came what, the June debate, where we saw a diminished Joe Biden. What you saw from Chuck Schumer is a refusal to acknowledge why you lost. And they're still grappling with the win of Donald Trump, and they can't explain it beyond still racism and sexism.

JONES: I think you're relitigating a campaign that's over. Let's talk about now. Right now.

ABDUL: Why is he doing it now?

JONES: Wait a minute. Right now, Donald Trump is putting out executive orders that look to me like an attack on black people.

ABDUL: And how is that?

JONES: That includes you and me and all of us, no matter what. ABDUL: How is Schumer --

JONES: Excuse me, no matter what our political bent is, it looks like an attack on us. When they talk about DEI, they're talking about us. That's who they're talking about. And so --

ABDUL: What does that have to do with the Democratic Party? What is the Democratic Party's response to that?

JONES: If you'd allow me to finish, I'll tell you. So when he's doing these attacks through these executive orders, I think what the Democratic Party has to do is very simple. Just take every executive order to court, challenge every one of them. That's what they have to do. This is about what Donald Trump is doing now, not about what happened six months ago, nine months ago, whatever. This is about right now, and this is about acting on behalf of their constituents.

ABDUL: Taking Donald Trump to court won't help Democrats.

SWISHER: What is the fresh, aggressive Democratic Party? And it does not include the very aroused Chuck Schumer.

(LAUGHTER)

PHILLIP: Fresh blood, where are they?

COLES: Michael Bennet, who did a questioning of RFK. Yes, he's the senator from Colorado. He was fantastic --

SWISHER: But there should be new, fresh ideas from all over the country of aggression and speaking back and talking -- AOC, we just were talking about in the break, very effective in a lot of her things. You feel even Elizabeth Warren has been a little re-energized. But you need new characters to take this on. And I don't mean --

PHILLIP: People who have also a faster reflex.

(CROSS TALK)

PHILLIP: Because we're in a beyond a 24-hour news cycle kind of environment here when it comes to Donald Trump. So folks need to get a little bit faster.

Everyone, hang on. Coming up next, the panel is going to give us their unpopular opinions, what they're not afraid to say out loud.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:58:08]

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

ABDUL: Republicans, lay off federal government workers. If you go and look at the OMB memo, I think it was the fall of last year, they point out that at least, I think, 60 percent of federal government workers work in office full time. This six percent number that they keep referring to was taken from a survey that has since been updated to reflect the fact that it was a nonscientific survey of self-selecting, self-identified federal government employees. So we need to change our talking point.

PHILLIP: Amen on that one.

SWISHER: That's absolutely true. That's a very good fact.

With all this hubbub around Elon Musk getting his fingers into the data of the United States government, one of the things that has to be clear is there is a real problem with countries like China, Iran, North Korea, and others getting, and Russia getting into our data. Exposing our data in any way or creating any kind of chaos around U.S. government data is very dangerous. And so it's going to be one of the unforeseen circumstances in an already difficult situation with these countries already deep within so many of our infrastructure systems. It's something to really pay attention to.

PHILLIP: Yes.

JONES: So Donald Trump has a grudge against the Philadelphia Eagles. And as a Philadelphian, he doesn't like us. We don't care. Right? And so it goes back to 2017 when we won the Super Bowl. He invited us to the White House. Some Eagles didn't want to go, so he rescinded the invitation. Well, the Eagles are going to change all of that this year, going back to the Super Bowl, unlike some people's teams. They're going back to the Super Bowl, and they are going to force Donald Trump to invite him to the White House.

PHILLIP: You know, Solomon, if I see you up on one of those poles, I'm going to call the cops on you myself.

(LAUGHTER)

PHILLIP: Go ahead, Joanna.

COLES: I know that people don't like watching people on television eating food, but I think this is a Saturday breakfast show, and actually, there should be eggs and croissants and coffee on the table.

PHILLIP: Noted.

JONES: Fresh bagels.

COLES: We would all benefit.

PHILLIP: Yes, noted. I will let that be known to the powers that be.

Thank you very much, everyone at the table. And thank you for watching "TABLE FOR FIVE". You can catch me every weeknight at 10:00 p.m. eastern at our News Night roundtable. But in the meantime, CNN's coverage continues right now.