Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Live Event/Special
CNN Saturday Morning Table for Five. U.S. Supreme Court Rules against Nationwide Injunctions by Lower Courts against Presidential Policies; Trump Administration Pushes Back against Media and Reporting that U.S. Attack on Iranian Nuclear Facilities Unsuccessful; Self- Described Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani Wins Democratic Primary in New York City Mayoral Race; Donald Trump Jr. States President Trump Hasn't Won Nobel Peace Prize while Former President Barack Obama Has Due to Affirmative Action. Aired 10-11a ET.
Aired June 28, 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 CLIP)
[10:00:40]
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, a nuclear response.
PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: How about we celebrate that? How about we talk about how special America is?
PHILLIP: Flirts with propaganda as the state demands the media report what it wants.
Plus, as Donald Trump remains obsessed with a Nobel Peace Prize.
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: I should have gotten it four or five times.
PHILLIP: Don Junior says it's racist that Barack Obama got one and his dad hasn't.
Also, he's being called a Marxist, a communist, a silver spooner, but is a New York socialist the future of the Democratic Party?
Here in studio, Scott Jennings, Cari Champion, Mike Leon, and Harry Enten.
It's the weekend. Join the conversation at the "TABLE FOR FIVE".
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Good morning. I'm Abby Phillip from New York.
Donald Trump just became much more powerful, and the American presidency has possibly changed forever. The Supremes limiting the ability of the federal judge to pause Trump's executive orders in a huge, huge win for his agenda. While the court didn't rule on the constitutionality of Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship, the justices left a path open for that to happen. Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the decision a travesty for the rule of law, and the man it impacts calls it a big one.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with these numerous policies and those that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis, including birthright citizenship, ending sanctuary city funding, suspending refugee resettlement, freezing unnecessary funding, stopping federal taxpayers from paying for transgender surgeries, and numerous other priorities of the American people. We have so many of them. I have a whole list.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: The nationwide injunction is officially dead, and the court taking an opportunity here to do something that a lot of conservatives perhaps have wanted for a while. But as we've discussed plenty of times, the nationwide injunction has been sort of the bane of the existence of Democrat and Republican presidents. It's just that now this court has actually done it.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, they've finally done something about it. Friday was a great day for Donald Trump. The market ended at all time highs. He's breaking peace agreements in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon. And then the court really clears the way for him to enact the agenda on which he ran.
I was trying to sort out my feelings on this matter, and I came up with a quote from a very smart lawyer, and I just want to quote it because I think she was right when she said it. It just can't be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in it's tracks. Justice Elena Kagan in 2022 said that, of course, when we had a Democratic president. Now, she voted against the decision on Friday. Just goes to show you that some of these folks really are hacks.
But as you correctly said, this has been the bane of existence of presidents, and I'm glad they went ahead and fixed it, because it's not right that one of these individual district court judges can act like a king or a monarch and stop the elected president from acting.
PHILLIP: The hackery, the hackery is definitely bipartisan, because I am old enough to remember just a mere couple of years ago when a judge in one little town in Texas issued a nationwide injunction on abortion, and Republicans, including one Stephen Miller, praised it. So this has been, you know, a little hypocrisy on both sides for quite some time.
HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICS WRITER AND ANALYST: I don't ever want to hear another word from conservatives out there in the media or conservatives in the blogosphere or Twitter-sphere that Donald Trump did not deliver a conservative court for them. I mean, my goodness gracious, the court that Donald Trump delivered for conservatives over the past few years, I mean, they got the big white whale. Finally, they reined it in Roe V Wade. Now, of course, we're potentially setting ourselves up potentially to end birthright citizenship. Amy Coney Barrett, right? We're talking about her. All these things. Oh, she's a liberal. She ain't a liberal.
PHILLIP: Yes, Trump was complaining, has been, according to the reporting, complaining about her in private. Now he praised her.
ENTEN: A lot of six-three decisions.
JENNINGS: She's back in the good graces.
ENTEN: She's back in the good graces.
(LAUGHTER)
PHILLIP: That brings up such an interesting point, because, you know, at the White House today, Trump praising the justices, thanking them for issuing a ruling that he liked is unusual, right?
[10:05:08]
Like the court is a co-equal branch, but it's a separate branch. They don't work for him. They're actually not supposed to rule for him because he appointed them, but he praised them as if that's what the expectation was, because he put her there, in particular, Amy Coney Barrett.
CARI CHAMPION, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, earlier, I like what you said. If we're being fair, this has been an issue, the bane of existence for many presidents, many different administrations this has been an issue.
What Sotomayor said today was, she said, no right is safe no longer. That's what concerns me. At the end of the day, I always try to break it down and make it seem like, what does this mean for my family, my friends? How does this mean -- what does this mean for people that I work with and work beside?
And I don't necessarily know that we got more safe today, or we are more protected, or that we are going to do anything to live up to the promise of this country has given to so many of its citizens. And to me, as we look around and everyone talks about Trump in a very dismissive way, how he wants to be king, today, of course, the king is here and he is saying, I am king and you are listening to what I am doing and what I want. And unfortunately for me, it's a sad day. It's an unfortunate day.
PHILLIP: So here's a little bit more from Sonia Sotomayor's dissent. She said "Today the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship." And Scott, I mean, I wonder about that. If a Democratic president in four years says, you know what? Well, let's block the right to bear arms or to have semi-automatic weapons, and Republicans want the courts to stop that nationwide, the answer is going to be no.
JENNINGS: Well, ultimately, these big questions will be decided by the Supreme Court. I mean, that's ultimately what's going to happen here is big questions will be decided by the Supreme Court. That's where it ought to be. And what had been happening, of course, was individual district court judges issuing nationwide injunctions. And Kagan said in 2022, you know, it would take years for these things to go through a normal process. I mean, what she was saying at the time is effectively these individual judges can tie up an administration. Look, elections have consequences. And if people run on things, they ought to be allowed to enact them.
PHILLIP: Just on the sort of counterfactual, the possibility of, let's say it is an order, an executive order that says we're going to ban gun ownership in this country, which is blatantly unconstitutional. You would be OK with a process that says that a judge can only stop that in one state. The rest of the country, it can be banned for an indefinite amount of time until it works through the legal system, something so blatantly unconstitutional?
MIKE LEON, DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY, FREE AND EQUAL ELECTIONS FOUNDATION: But that's exactly what Sotomayor said in oral arguments, like, if that's the exact scenario that she gave about an executive order of a Democratic president coming to get guns, and unfortunately, here we are where we still are against partisan lines.
But I want to go back to what you just said, Scott, though, because you just said in your answer that you wrote down there in that great book that nobody can read, it looks like pharmacist handwriting. But you just said this will take years.
JENNINGS: I didn't say it. Elena Kagan said it.
LEON: No, no, no. OK, even better, because it will take years for things to get to the Supreme Court. So then no one -- right. But then no one will get the relief. That was the whole -- I encourage people to go listen to the oral arguments. It was all about providing relief.
PHILLIP: I mean, OK, so on that point, I mean, I read the I read the ruling today, and it was very clear that they this decision was made based on a textualist approach to, a, the law and the constitution. And they really sidestepped the question that was actually talked about a lot in the oral arguments, which was about what if you're born to an immigrant parent in Connecticut and then you go to Texas and suddenly you're not a citizen? They did not address it at all. So that is going to get litigated down the road very soon.
CHAMPION: I'm curious as to why not. Why do that approach? I'm just really curious. I don't -- I'm not giving an answer. I'm really curious as to why they did not decide to answer that now?
LEON: The lawyers I've talked to are not named Elie Honig have all said that they're going to do it in October. And the Supreme Court is going to weigh that issue.
ENTEN: I'll just say this in closing, which is midterms are often bad for the incumbent president's party, right. Now you've got the Democrats who might not just be able to run against the incumbent president, but against the Supreme Court as well. And while they did not necessarily solve the issue of birthright citizenship today, I can tell you that in the polling data, it certainly suggests that the American people believe that birthright citizenship is enshrined in the Constitution. And so I think Democrats, at least from a political angle, should be salivating at the idea that they can run both against the court and against the president, and on issues that the American people are with them on.
PHILLIP: That's a mic drop of a final statement from you. Harry Enten, thank you very much.
Coming up next, the administration's reaction to the impact of the Iran strikes takes a surreal and angry turn. We'll discuss.
[10:10:00]
Plus, a socialist's shocking win in New York is raising the question, are the extremes taking over American politics?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: One week ago tonight, Donald Trump attacked Iran with the stated goal of keeping them from getting a nuclear weapon. But since then, the story has become less about the result and more about his response. By using words like "obliterate" and "destroy," the president's description contradicts, at least for now, an early assessment by his own administration and intelligence community.
[10:15:07]
And knowing his base and the majority of Americans disapproved of the strikes in Iran, Trump and his allies are going to great lengths to shield him from any scrutiny and to paint the operation as nothing less than historic and final. So when the media simply reported that there is an early assessment, they went, well, nuclear, telling the press how to report and what to report, attacking journalists, and using the military as a shield against tough questions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history. You, the press corps, because you cheer against Trump so hard. It's like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump, because you want him not to be successful so bad. How many stories have been written about how hard it is to, I don't know, fly a plane for 36 hours? How about we celebrate that? How about we talk about how special America is, that only we have these capabilities?
How about we take a beat, recognize first the success of our warriors, hold them up, tell their stories, celebrate that, wave an American flag, be proud of what we accomplished. Because Americans are responding to him as commander in chief, the press corps doesn't want to write about him, or bring us to the to the topic of the moment, the highly successful strikes in Iran.
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: I just hope you can give them the respect they deserve, because they came home to fake news. And like, oh gee, there was hardly any damage. The things are decimated. Yes, here we go. Wait till you hear this question.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, sir.
TRUMP: You should really say how great our soldiers and our warriors are. You know what? You should be praising those people instead of trying to find some -- by getting me, by trying to go and get me, you're hurting those people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Essentially, report what we want or face our wrath. Elise Labott is at the table with us now. She is the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign relations and host of "Cosmopolitics" on Substack. Elise, that press conference, all of it, several of them over this past week were extraordinary, not because a president was angry about the press reporting something, but because of the tone of, why don't you say what I want you to say? And you're disloyal. You're un-American for not reporting what the White House tells you to.
ELISE LABOTT, EDWARD R. MURROW PRESS FELLOW, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well, that's the thing. And I mean, obviously we don't do that. You know, when they say, why don't you praise them? That's not what the media does. We're not there to praise. But at the same time, I do think there is an element of instead of, you know, they're focusing on he said it was obliterated and it's not obliterated.
The truth of the matter is there was a lot of damage done, and we're getting a lot of -- we're just getting distracted by all of this. And I mean, look, Pete Hegseth, he was talking to an audience of one. OK? So let's just leave that right there.
Second of all, you know, why don't we listen to what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I think he was very measured. He wasn't overly, you know, flowery in his language. Nuclear experts are saying, listen, there was significant damage done. There's still a lot left. David Albright of the Institute for International Security and Science, who is kind of one of the best nuclear experts in the country, says that, you know, a lot of the facilities, there was a lot of damage done to the plutonium facility, to their conversion facility. But, as we know, the stockpile of uranium is still there. There are a lot of centrifuges. The scientists are still there. So it wasn't a pinprick. And I think that's what the administration is trying to say. You're saying it was a pinprick. It was not a pinprick, but the program is not destroyed. So it's a little bit of both.
PHILLIP: Yes. It's nuanced. That is how these things are.
LEON: How you interpret it, and I'm not looking at you, Scott, the proverbial you.
LABOTT: How one interprets it.
LEON: Yes, how one interprets it is not how one should cover it. Those are two different things. And we're covering it the way it should be covered. And I hate that he's been -- I'm a little bit upset about this because I happen to know her personally. Like I said, I hate that Pete Hegseth singled her out in this thing.
PHILLIP: He's been upset about her.
LEON: He should not be targeting journalists.
PHILLIP: But to the point of who's reporting about how the mission was carried out and about who did it, she did it. She reported that. She was one of the first to report some of those details about the extraordinary nature of this operation.
CHAMPION: I think I take issue with Pete going after one, and everyone, but going after reporters in general and saying, you're the worst. What type of response is that? He says to --
LABOTT: Well, tomorrow there's going to be another worst.
CHAMPION: One second. And so the reality to me is, is that I do believe that we should be aware of what is happening in real time. You mentioned this earlier. If we're not saying what they want to hear, then we, i.e., the press is the problem.
[10:20:00]
When he's up there calling people names, saying they're the worst, bullying people because they're not saying what he wants to hear, that is an intentional way to make people feel like they should be silenced. To me, that is the issue.
LABOTT: Or get in line.
CHAMPION: Or get in line. And that is the problem right now for me. It's not about how were reporting on it. I think the American people have enough information to understand. Yes, it wasn't a pinprick, but some damage was done, but there's still more to be done. Obliterate, fine. I don't necessarily -- you say what you want to. We know this is a president who will say whatever comes to his mind when he feels like it. We'll fact check that later, and then we'll deal with it. That's how it seems to me. But what is happening? This bullying is nonsense,
LEON: I agree.
CHAMPION: Nonsense.
LEON: You have a look on your face. I need --
JENNINGS: Yes, I have a slightly different take, of course. I think a concerted effort was undertaken to make this mission look like a failure. I think they have a point. This was a low confidence report, which was omitted when it was first reported. We didn't use the word "low confidence."
LABOTT: Talking about what low confidence means.
JENNINGS: It was a low -- it was a, it was a preliminary report. And it was sent -- it was done by the government, put on a system, I guess sent over to Congress somehow. And now the White House thinks that some Democratic members of Congress leaked it or characterized it in a leak in a way to try to make it seem like the mission was a failure to hurt Donald Trump politically. So I think they have a point about why they're upset.
And what have we learned since? Israel says these things were decimated. The IAEA thinks they were decimated. Even Iran says massive damage was done to our nuclear sites. I do think that when it comes to Donald Trump, often the position of covering him is, this must be disproved. And when it comes to Democratic presidents, the position is we'll take it at face value.
PHILLIP: On the issue of who wants to make this look bad, I mean, that's your opinion. I think that's fine. But the reality is, when Trump says the Iran nuclear program has been eliminated, he basically said it's done, it's ended, there's a real legitimate question about whether that's a factual statement. And just this week, he was asked, what would you -- what are you going to do if Iran is able to enrich uranium again? And he said, well, we'll bomb them again. Does that sound like a nuclear program that he thinks is completely gone?
So, I mean, clearly there is a factual question here about whether or not the threat has been eliminated. And even Republican senators like Lindsey Graham have acknowledged, and others, the threat has not been eliminated. And that is something that American people need to know and understand.
JENNINGS: The threat, the threat has not been eliminated yet, and it will never be eliminated as long as these butchers are in charge of Iran. I mean, that is a true story. As long as they're in power, even if we have obliterated what they currently have, which I believe we have done that, they will always be seeking to bring about the end of the world with a nuclear weapon. And so as long as they're in charge, I suspect they will always be --
LABOTT: The president --
PHILLIP: The last word, Elise.
LABOTT: The president has a couple of choices here as a result. I think we need to be talking about what's next here. He has a couple of choices. He could accept that he didn't damage everything and make a negotiation with Iran, which is not going to be all of, giving away all their stockpiles, never enriching again. It might mean getting some nuclear inspectors in there. He might have to go to regime change, or he might have to hit again. And so these are the choices that the president has right now. I think whether it was obliterated or whether it wasn't, we know that there's more work to do. And I think we need to focus on that right now.
PHILLIP: All right, Elise, thank you very much for joining us and for being here.
Coming up next, New York City's Democrats have chosen a socialist to run in the mayoral election, which begs the question, are the extremes of both parties now taking over? We'll debate.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:28:11]
PHILLIP: The political question of the week, are the extremes taking over American politics? After a decade of MAGA, we are witnessing what looks like the liberal version of the Tea Party movement. AOC and Bernie Sanders are attracting tens of thousands at events across America, with a populist, anti-establishment message. And in Gotham, a stunning upset. A self-described Democratic Socialist beat Andrew Cuomo in the primary for New York City mayor.
On the right, Zohran Mamdani is already being called a Marxist, a communist, and is being hit with Islamophobic attacks. And on the left, the party's leaders are stopping short of endorsing him, which AOC says is a mistake.
Harry Enten is at the table with us now. Harry, you were with us on primary night this week.
ENTEN: I remember it.
PHILLIP: And just for a second here, I think we need to reflect on the Andrew Cuomo of it all. And what do you think this says about what Democratic voters in this city said about the strategy of running someone like him for mayor, who resigned in disgrace not so long ago?
ENTEN: I mean, look, Andrew Cuomo, as you mentioned, resigned in disgrace. He was someone who throughout the primary process was basically running on name recognition, thinking back to the good old days of Andrew Cuomo, at least in the minds of Democratic voters, the type of guy who, of course, gave those COVID press conferences, but was always weak on the favorable scale. And I always thought that there was a possibility that there would be someone who would come up and challenge him for the nomination.
Now, if you were to tell me that it was going to be the Democratic Socialist, I might have said, wait a minute, I don't think that's necessarily going to be the case. So I think it's important to note that, look, Mamdani ran an excellent campaign, excellent. You know, foot's on the ground, great social media strategy. But I don't think you can look at him without also acknowledging that his main opponent was a flawed individual.
[10:30:01]
That being said, look, we are at a point now in Democratic Party politics in which the electorate, both in New York City and nationwide, is fed up. We spoke about it on Tuesday night. We're talking about 62 percent of Democrats nationwide who say they want to replace their party leadership. We are talking about a record percentage of Democrats nationwide who disapprove of their party leaders in Congress. None of this is happening in a vacuum. What happened in New York City, while the idea of necessarily electing a Democratic Socialist may not hold true in the rest of the country, the idea of throwing out the bums, as the Democratic voters view it, that is absolutely true. CHAMPION: No, he's right. What he's saying right now makes perfect
sense in a lot of ways. I think to me, this election, not necessarily, to me it's an indictment on how people are feeling. And if voters are like, I'm tired of picking between the lesser of two evils. Let's try something better. Let's try something different. I think it's really disappointing that Democratic Party isn't supporting him in the way in which I feel like they should. But I think nationwide people are, to your point, Harry, fed up, and getting smart about who they decide to choose.
And social media plays a huge role. I saw Eric Adams today on social media trying his best to be relevant, trying his best to talk about streaming as if someone just invented it. And he was like, you know, and we'll see what happens, and maybe -- and I was like, he's so out of touch. And I know why he thinks he needs to go to streaming and be a part of this. But you're telling the people -- I will tell you, my neighbors. I don't vote in New York. I'm not from here. I'm from California.
ENTEN: Sorry.
CHAMPION: Thank you.
(LAUGHTER)
CHAMPION: Our neighbors are saying, who should I vote for? What do you think about Cuomo? I just really don't want to vote for him. I'm really, I'm not into it. He was fine during COVID, but he's so flawed. I don't really want to vote for him. People were really deciding between the lesser of two evils. And I think this is promise.
LEON: It's funny that Abby started this with Gotham City, because Batman was a billionaire, Bruce Wayne, and the Joker, and Bane. I'm making a joke, but the movie references this about giving it back to the people and taking power away from the billionaires, right?
I'm going to read you a tweet here from Spencer Hockman, who is a venture capitalist. He said, you want to know why Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump keep winning and Andrew Cuomo and Hillary Clinton keep losing? It's because real income hasn't grown in this country for over 50 years. And he cites Federal Reserve economic data that points to the 1980s, because I know there's a data guy sitting next to me, and the score was 335 for adjusted dollars. Now it's at 348. Over a 40 -- what is it, 46, 45 year period? That is terrible. That means people's salaries are not rising.
And what happens is, back to that tweet, we start to hear some of these wild proposals, that when you drill into them, policy perspective, we talked about this, the grocery store idea, how is that going to be implemented? How is that going to rupture capitalism for small business owners that own bodegas and things like that, it's just new. And people want to hear that and they try it out. Just like MAGA was new and people hear that and they want to try it out. We keep looking at this. Those are the answers.
PHILLIP: There was an analysis in "Gothamist" that found that Mamdani won 30 percent of the primary election districts that Trump won in the 2024 general election, and garnered over 35,000 votes in districts that went to Trump. So Trump has always touted doing better in New York than any Republican in quite some time. And there is something about Mamdani and even his out there proposals that actually kind of rings like Trumpism. When people were like, he was like, no taxes on tips, no taxes on all this other stuff. Everybody was like, that's not really going to happen. He's just saying that. People expected him to do it, and now he's trying to do it. And I do think that Trumpism has basically made a lot of voters think, why the heck not?
JENNINGS: I mean, he wants to empty the jails of violent criminals. He wants to defund the police. He says violence is an artificial construct. And he would like to tax you based on your race.
PHILLIP: Just to be clear --
JENNINGS: These are not mainstream political thoughts.
PHILLIP: Trump pardoned 1,600 people who stormed the Capitol. So when we talk about outlandish things when it comes to law and order, Donald Trump has --
JENNINGS: If you want New York City to be overrun by these criminals, Go ahead.
CHAMPION: Oh, my gosh.
PHILLIP: No, I'm just saying, Scott, my point is only that, like --
JENNINGS: He's running on it, not me. I'm just reporting it.
PHILLIP: My point is only that when Trump does, when he pushes the envelope on economic policy, on things like pardons, you can't be surprised when voters are like, well, if they're going to do that on the right, then why can't we do it on the left?
CHAMPION: The same on the left, that's exactly what we should tax.
JENNINGS: Do you think we should tax people based on their race?
CHAMPION: No, but I definitely don't think --
JENNINGS: That's what he's running on.
CHAMPION: -- 1,600 people should have been pardoned on January 6th. That's exactly -- so you tell me the difference. You tell me the difference.
JENNINGS: You guys, you guys get your January 6th stuff. I'll wait. We'll wait.
LEON: Where in his campaign he said he's taxing people based on race? I saw a tax on people to make over $1 million.
JENNINGS: He said he wants to shift the tax burden to white neighborhoods. LEON: He did say that?
ENTEN: It's on his website. It's there.
JENNINGS: It's there and it's bad. And I just don't think you can compare some of these things that he has said to what Trump has done.
[10:35:01]
Trump is running on basic mainstream Republican conservative stuff. This is completely outside the mainstream of America.
PHILLIP: Let me give you another example. Trump wants to withhold disaster relief funding from blue states. Cool with you?
JENNINGS: That's not true.
CHAMPION: He literally.
PHILLIP: He said that?
CHAMPION: What are you talking about?
PHILLIP: He actually said that. And actually tried to do it as president.
So I'm just -- look, my only point is, is that, is that when, when, when politicians push the envelope, as Trump is the most successful politician to push the envelope in virtually every arena of political life.
CHAMPION: Correct.
PHILLIP: This is what we talk about when we say the extremes on both sides --
JENNINGS: You're saying.
PHILLIP: The voters are basically saying, why not.
CHAMPION: Why not?
PHILLIP: Why not?
CHAMPION: That's it.
PHILLIP: And when they say why not on the right, it looks like Donald Trump. When they say why not on the left, it looks like Zohran Mamdani.
CHAMPION: Why is it so different? Why does this bother you? I don't understand, she said. That's a really good point. Two extremes. What is this --
JENNINGS: Why does it bother me that New York City might be run by a radical socialist? CHAMPION: Why do you not see the policy connection?
JENNINGS: Why doesn't it bother you?
CHAMPION: Why don't you not see the policy connection?
JENNINGS: I don't even live here and it bothers me.
CHAMPION: Why do you not see the policy connection?
JENNINGS: Because --
CHAMPION: Because you're saying these are not two extremes. Donald Trump is not an extreme, as he is an extreme as well. You're saying that?
JENNINGS: I don't think Donald Trump is an extremist. He won the national popular vote.
CHAMPION: Oh gosh, you always say that. The same line.
ENTEN: I'll say this. I think the door is open, the door is wide open for extremes on both, in both ends of the political spectrum. The unfavorable ratings that Democrats have of Republicans are at or near an all-time high. The unfavorable ratings that Republicans have of Democrats are at or near an all-time high. And more than that, we have more Democrats identifying as liberal than ever before according to Gallup. More Republicans identifying as conservative, I believe, ever according to Gallup. And so the barn door is wide open for folks on either end of the political spectrum, things that we would have dismissed 30 years ago as gobbledygook, they can now go and be openly --
PHILLIP: It is a new era. I mean, a lot of people are talking about moderation being in the middle, but voters are kind of saying something different in some cases, in some cases, not in all, of course.
Coming up next for us, President Trump really wants that Nobel Peace Prize. And Don Junior thinks that there is a reason that he doesn't have one, but President Obama does -- affirmative action. We'll discuss.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[10:42:03]
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: I should have gotten it four or five times. They won't give me a Nobel Peace Prize because they only give it to liberals.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: It's safe to say that Donald Trump has prize envy. He thinks he deserves one, whether it's for his role in in the Israel-Iran conflict or India versus Pakistan. And while he's been nominated before, many times, actually, it was Barack Obama who won in a controversial decision during the first few months of his presidency.
But while the president thinks that it's because he's a Republican, his son thinks it's because of his race. Don Junior says, quote, "Affirmative action is when Barack Obama gets the Nobel Peace Prize instead of Donald Trump." For the record, even Barack Obama was like, why did you give this to me?
LEON: Why did I win?
JENNINGS: But he was more than happy to accept it, wasn't he?
LEON: But by the way, by the way, real quick, Ferrari is not giving me my car yet. I don't know why Ferrari hasn't delivered me my car.
PHILLIP: You deserve it.
LEON: I deserve that Ferrari.
CHAMPION: Hell yes, you deserve that Ferrari.
LEON: Look, this is a this is a classic example of, like, kind of like both things can be true at the same time. Like, the Nobel Peace Prize, we're not on a Nobel Peace Prize committee. Obama, like you said, shouldn't have gotten it. He got it for peace and diplomacy, I think, was some of the criteria that they mentioned. And we had deployed troops later on in Afghanistan and Iraq. Stuff didn't end until 2010 with our troop deployment.
PHILLIP: Yes, he had barely been president.
LEON: He had barely been president, and there was a conflict in Gaza that was happening in 2009 that had just ended as he was coming into office. So, like, why did he win it?
Also, Donald Trump, fyi, if you want to win the award, how about you do establish peace in the region? You did not broker peace between India and Pakistan.
JENNINGS: He did.
LEON: We don't we don't know that that's going to happen.
JENNINGS: What about the Abraham Accords?
LEON: The Abraham Accords was --
JENNINGS: They're expanding them right now.
LEON: OK, let me know when they're expanded and then we'll come back to it when it happens. I can't give somebody something based on a hypothetical.
JENNINGS: What about the peace in Rwanda. LEON: On Rwanda, tell me about what he did in Rwanda.
JENNINGS: They had a 30-year conflict over there. They had him in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon. I mean, they should have --
PHILLIP: All right, well, his application --
(LAUGHTER)
LEON: OK. That's what I'm saying. There's a difference between applying for something --
JENNINGS: And now he's helping Israel and Iran settle this thing after a couple of weeks. I mean, Barack Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. He should not have accepted it. But I will remind you all what he did after he got it. He dropped tens of thousands of bombs on several other countries. He ordered thousands of drone strikes, including on an American citizen, vaporizing people. This was probably the biggest non peace president of our lifetime. And yet he's got his trophy. He got his trophy because he won an election.
LEON: Yes, we agree he shouldn't have gotten it. The question is was she is asking.
CHAMPION: Do you think it was affirmative action? I'm asking.
JENNINGS: I don't know why they gave it to him.
CHAMPION: Do you think it was affirmative action?
LEON: But the question is affirmative action. That's what Donald Trump Jr. is saying.
JENNINGS: I don't know what that means in this context. I think they gave it to him because they love the idea of Barack Obama without thinking about the actual Barack Obama, who turned out to be a complete and total warmonger.
LEON: So it's not affirmative action, then.
CHAMPION: You wouldn't say that.
LEON: So you would agree with us it's not -- we are agreeing with you.
JENNINGS: It was a political decision they made.
LEON: OK, so we can say -- we agree. We agree.
[10:45:01]
PHILLIP: I think that one of the things with Trump, first of all, his applications, plural, are pending. But one of the reasons that I think it's just unclear is he likes to claim victory before things are done. You know?
LEON: Fully done.
PHILLIP: Fully done. And I think it's important to know, is there going to be -- he said he would end the war in Ukraine. Not ended. War in Gaza, not ended. This cease fire between Israel and Iran, we have been here before as a planet. And it doesn't necessarily hold. So there's a lot that's unknown, even though I know that he wants credit for it. I understand why he wants credit for it, but it's just not done.
JENNINGS: But you would admit there was nothing known when they gave it to Obama. We know plenty about Trump, right?
PHILLIP: I don't think anybody disagrees with you.
JENNINGS: So you admit then his resume today is stronger than Obama's in 09?
CHAMPION: No, that's not what we admit.
LEON: No, because --
JENNINGS: Why is that not true?
LEON: Obama wasn't president for a first term. Trump was already --
JENNINGS: So he had done nothing.
LEON: So they didn't have the same resume.
ENTEN: One had a resume. I mean, you know, at least you can like or dislike Donald Trump and what his record is, but at least you can make a judgment off of it. I think the thing that perturbed a lot of folks and perturbed a lot of the American people, if you look back in the polling and say, even then, even when Obama's approval rating was sky high at the beginning of his presidency, the majority of Americans didn't think he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. And it's stuff like that that I think -- right.
JENNINGS: But he accepted it.
ENTEN: Yes, look --
CHAMPION: And he's not petitioning.
JENNINGS: The noble, the noble thing to have done would have been to have turned it down.
CHAMPION: But to your point, the job is not finished. In sports, they always say that, may Kobe Bryant rest in peace, job's not done. A foreign minister from Rwanda has told CNN, he said he's committed to supporting this ongoing negotiation, but warned that ending the conflict will depend on political will and good faith. And he doesn't know if that is true, referring to the DRC's government. It's not done. It's not done.
JENNINGS: You didn't watch, you didn't watch the news yesterday. They literally announced it in the Oval Office.
CHAMPION: Let me ask you a question.
JENNINGS: Literally, in the Oval Office Friday afternoon.
CHAMPION: Can I say something. You said something earlier, you said, and you kind of agree with Pete when he says there's something about the media where they feel like they want to disprove Donald Trump. Is that what you said? Something to that effect.
JENNINGS: It happens every day.
CHAMPION: And you think that's what they want to do, right? You think the media is going in to say he's lying and he's not telling the truth? Do you believe that wholeheartedly.
JENNINGS: Correct, that is the standing disposition?
CHAMPION: Do you believe that he tells the truth?
JENNINGS: Yes, I do.
LEON: Every time.
CHAMPION: You think, you think, you think --
LEON: All presidents?
CHAMPION: You think the president tells the truth, this current president tells the truth often?
JENNINGS: Yes, I do.
CHAMPION: OK, I also think that to our point that we haven't established, he does announce things before it's too soon.
JENNINGS: They literally had the countries in there.
CHAMPION: The program is --
JENNINGS: I feel like you should watch the news before you come out here.
CHAMPION: I feel like you should stop trying to defend him just to defend. I think you should stop trying to say --
(CROSS TALK)
PHILLIP: We got to leave, we got to leave it there.
JENNINGS: Your hand is very close to my face.
PHILLIP: Hold on a second, Harry. We have to leave it there. But look, listen, Trump is petitioning for this. We'll see if the Nobel Prize committee agrees with him. There's still plenty of time to find out about how some of these conflicts get resolved. But next for us, the panel's unpopular opinions, what they are not
afraid to say out loud.
But first, a programing note for you. Fareed Zakaria looks at the fragile state of relations between the United States and Iran after those strikes on nuclear facilities. Don't miss "The United States Versus Iran, A Fareed Zakaria Special" tonight at 9:00 p.m. eastern, only right here on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:53:07]
PHILLIP: We're back, and it's time for your unpopular opinions. You each have 30s seconds to tell us yours. Mike, you're up.
LEON: All right, listen to me, those of you that use LinkedIn, the number one, the world's number one business connecting platform. For those of you that post out there, I have a job that's open. Hit me up if you know somebody that's interested. And we hit you up because we know and we have people that are interested and you don't answer back. I now deem it time for all of us to mark that as spam. I want you to go forward, mark it as spam. Why do -- every one of us has our phone right here at our table. We have the app on the phone. Weve all seen the direct messages. We see it, we see it. You can answer, start answering. People, start using LinkedIn better folks, please.
PHILLIP: There's a lot of spam on LinkedIn.
LEON: Yes, there's going to be a lot more.
ENTEN: America, I have an unpopular opinion for you. After this heat wave in the northeastern United States, I am looking for a ban on the season known as summer. I am sick of summer. As a child, I enjoyed summer very much, but now that I have to work it, I no longer enjoy summer. It just means I'm that much closer to football season. I want the air conditioning on. I want the kids back in school. Get them off of the streets. I am sick of seeing them. Ban summer forever.
PHILLIP: Who hurt you, Harry? God. OK, Cari.
CHAMPION: Red Lobster, apparently it's out from bankruptcy. It's honoring its constituents.
PHILLIP: I thought you were going to say something bad about it.
CHAMPION: No, no, no, no, no, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say the community has honored Red Lobster and it's cheddar biscuits and that everyone should join in. You, too, are a cheddar biscuit fan for decades. They have a new menu, a new CEO. Very unpopular opinion, I see nothing but big things for Red Lobster. They're going to make a huge comeback, and I feel that this will be our fine dining moment. I love Red Lobster and --
LEON: Seafood lover in you?
CHAMPION: The seafood lover in me loves it. Thank you. Commercial. Give me the commercial. Yes, yes. All the things.
[10:55:00]
PHILLIP: Scott?
JENNINGS: So Fourth of July is coming, which is a holiday I love. However, we do something on this holiday and every single one of you knows it's disgusting. This hot dog eating contest where these people sit on the platform and dunk these hot dogs in the water and shove it down their disgusting gullets.
(LAUGHTER)
JENNINGS: This absolutely is outrageous. And it's one of these things in America, we have a few of them, where it's like, we all have to pretend like, oh, hey, this is so fun and cool. It's not. It's disgusting. And I think we need to get rid of it.
PHILLIP: I've seen it. I've seen it in real life. I've seen it in real life and I would agree with you on that one.
CHAMPION: It is awful, awful.
PHILLIP: All right, everybody, thank you very much. And thanks for watching "TABLE FOR FIVE". You can catch me every weeknight at 10:00 p.m. eastern with our Newsnight Roundtable and anytime on your favorite social media, X, Instagram, and TikTok. But in the meantime, CNN's coverage continues right now.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
