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CNN Saturday Morning Table for Five. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Shoots and Kills Woman in Car in Minneapolis, Claiming Self-Defense; Minneapolis Mayor and Other Officials Tell ICE Agents to Leave Minneapolis in Wake of Shooting; President Trump Suggest Use of Military Force for U.S. to Take Over Greenland Whether Citizens of Greenland Want It or Not; Trump Administration Targeting Democratic Led U.S. States for Fraud Investigations; Vice President J.D. Vance Suggests Minnesota Governor Tim Walz Participated in State's Fraud Schemes; Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly Suggests Three Branches of U.S. Government No Longer Co-Equal. Aired 10-11a ET.
Aired January 10, 2026 - 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)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: Today, inflection point.
MAYOR JACOB FREY, MINNEAPOLIS: To ICE -- get the out of Minneapolis.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You need to get the hell out of our community.
PHILLIP: American cities demand ICE leave their streets after an agent shoots and kills a U.S. citizen in her car.
Plus, the America first president considers taking a NATO ally by force and rebuilding another country indefinitely.
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: We're in charge. We're going to run it.
PHILLIP: And he says the only thing stopping him is his own morality.
Also, selective fraud.
J.D. VANCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENT: The American people have been defrauded in a very nationwide way.
PHILLIP: The same administration making a habit of pardoning fraudsters targets them in blue states.
And, is the Trump era forcing the founding fathers to roll over in their graves?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Senator, we have three equal branches of government here. What is the role of ICE.
SEN. MARK KELLY, (D-AZ): Equal? We were. PHILLIP: Here in studio, Lydia Moynihan, Ashley Allison, Hal Lambert,
and John Fugelsang.
It's the weekend. Join the conversation at a "TABLE FOR FIVE".
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Hi everyone. I'm Abby Phillip.
It was inevitable. For months, the Trump administration had sent waves of ICE agents and border officers to American cities, mostly blue ones, in their mass deportation efforts, which means more and more tense interactions with the public, raising the risk of a confrontation or worse.
Which brings us to exactly what happened in Minneapolis this week. An ICE agent shot and killed a woman in her car, and before the investigation even began, the White House called it domestic terror. Witnesses and Minnesota officials called it murder. Now, by now, you've seen the many, many video angles of what happened here, and whether you think the shooting was justified, the Trump administration wants you to think two things. The first -- it doesn't matter
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENT: The precedent here is very simple. You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action. That's a federal issue. That guy is protected by absolute immunity.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: The second thing, obey or die.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. WESLEY HUNT, (R-TX): The bottom line is this. When a federal officer gives you instructions, you abide by them, and then you get to keep your life. And her death is tragic, but at the end of the day, it was completely avoidable if she would have simply followed the commands of the ICE agents.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, the tragedy in Minneapolis is providing a framework for this administration not to reflect on the fraying relationship between law enforcement and the public, but to take an even harder line, just as they're preparing to send even more agents into American streets.
And as we think about where we go from here, I do think that that is the most scary part of this whole thing, is that rather than asking the question, is this really sustainable? Not just the horrible shooting this week, but scenes of ICE officers outside of a high school in confrontations with high school students and administrators, scenes of federal officers using chemical irritants as crowd control on an almost daily basis. Can we continue like this as a country? And will the Trump administration do anything to tamp down the tensions right now?
ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, there's been no indication that they will do anything to tamp down the temperature rising. In fact, it feels like at times they're trying to turn it up so that they can go in and overreach in their authority even more.
I have thought a lot about the humanity of all the individuals, but definitely the woman who has lost her life. This is not the only ICE shooting that has happened in the last couple of weeks in this country. Its the one that's getting the most coverage right now. But I want -- I just was like, you know what? Let me make sure I factcheck myself.
[10:05:00]
I went online today and I read, what is ICE supposed to do. And the sole purpose of ICE is to detain and deport people who are here in this country illegally. This woman was a United States citizen. There were so many ways to engage with her. Even if you did not like what she was doing, there were so many different ways. They are beyond their remit at this point, and they are not being -- they are being given the permission by the president to act in such a way. And it is not tenable. And the only way it will start is if we have to stop looking at this as Democrat and Republican, but as like people, and saying, we don't want to live in a country with so much hate and anger and rage.
HAL LAMBERT, POINT BRIDGE CAPITAL FOUNDER AND CEO: Look, I can't disagree more. The temperatures being ratcheted up by the Democrat elected officials in these states and cities. I mean, we just saw a video of it. Get out, get out. You know what that reminds me of, very much so? The videos we've all seen during the civil rights era when they were doing desegregation, and you had governors and you had mobs of people saying, we're not going to desegregate. And you had to have Eisenhower send in, and the 101st Airborne and National Guard into Arkansas. You had Robert -- excuse me, John Kennedy sending 30,000 troops into Mississippi, all because of this exact thing. They didn't want to follow the law. Those state governors and those state officials didn't want to follow the law and they wanted mob rule. That's what's happening in the states right now, is they want these, they want these mobs out there.
PHILLIP: -- the actual substance of what those incidents were about matters like. I mean, the civil rights confrontations that you were talking about involved citizens and local officials burning churches where children were in, throwing rocks at those kids as they were trying to go to school. Those -- yes. I mean, that's a very specific thing. I think we can have a conversation about the rhetoric of local officials and also of the federal government who calls protesters domestic terrorists on a regular basis. But I also think that from a substantive perspective, the people who are protesting in this moment, you might disagree with how they are doing it. They are not trying to burn people, churches. They are not trying to -- they are not trying to prevent children from going to school.
LYDIA MOYNIHAN, CORRESPONDENT, "NEW YORK POST": They are throwing bricks.
LAMBERT: They are. They're being called nazis. By the way, they're being called nazis by the elected officials. They're being called nazis.
PHILLIP: All I'm saying is that there is a huge gulf between the type of protest, the purpose of the protest right now, and the purpose of the defiance in the 1960s. I think it's ridiculous, frankly, to make that comparison at all. But --
JOHN FUGELSANG, SIRIUSXM HOST, "TELL ME EVERYTHING": What we're witnessing now is not conservative. It is not sustainable. It is deeply against the Old and New Testament. And it is not sane. There's a lot of folks out there terrified tonight because they've heard rightwing people warn them about jackbooted government thugs taking away your liberties and killing you for years, and now we're actually witnessing it on camera. People need to realize and take a step back.
The very fact -- the amount of lies that Donald Trump and Secretary Noem and Vice President Vance have already told, the amount of demonstrably false and deeply stupid lies, guarantees that history will register this as a government cover up after the shooting of an American citizen.
MOYNIHAN: I think context matters here, because ICE has literally and figuratively been under assault this entire year. You look at an 8,000 percent rise in death threats, a 1,300 percent rise in assaults. This week in New York, you have people saying, "Save a life, kill an ice." Calls to hang Kristi Noem. There has been so much anger and vitriol directed against ICE officers, and Democratic officials, rather than say, let's be safe, let's take it a notch down, have fanned the flames.
And we've seen that again this week. Tim Walz is saying, oh, this is a civil war moment. You need to rise up, encouraging people to put themselves in danger. And Abby, you said it in your opening. This was inevitable as a result of this.
FUGELSANG: A woman was murdered and they are trying to blame the victim and blame the people who are outraged by the murder.
MOYNIHAN: It is actually against the law to obstruct law enforcement --
LAMBERT: And she tried to kill him with her car.
FUGELSANG: If she wanted to ram him, she would have.
LAMBERT: She tried.
LAMBERT: If she wanted to, she would have. There's enough people that watched the video and see which way she was turning.
PHILLIP: Let me play.
FUGELSANG: It was illegal for him to shoot into the car. He's violating DHS rules, and you all don't care.
MOYNIHAN: Can I just say here, Tom Homan -- I think we should all take a page from Tom Homan's book. He was clear. We need to let the investigation play out. In the interim --
FUGELSANG: Maybe the president should hear that. Maybe the governor should hear that.
MOYNIHAN: -- why are we seeing more Democratic officials fan the flames? I want everyone to be safe. And in order for that to happen, you need to cool the temperature and say -- you need to encourage people, don't try and hit ICE officers --
ALLISON: Nobody. Nobody -- stop, stop. Nobody has said hit an ICE officer with their car. It was an incident that happened. Let the investigation play out. I've watched -- I have my, I have -- right. But no one is saying hit ICE officers with your cars.
MOYNIHAN: You've heard people to rise up. Put yourself in --
ALLISON: Rise up. Words matter. Rise up mean you can go to the streets. Guess what? That's in the Constitution. That's what our founding fathers did. They rose up against the --
LAMBERT: They're not protestors. These aren't protesters.
ALLISON: Yes they are!
MOYNIHAN: -- trying to obstruct --
LAMBERT: Yes, she was an agitator.
MOYNIHAN: -- go to the ballot box.
ALLISON: How about we tell ICE to take down the temperatures, and not to ransack children?
PHILLIP: Hold on a second.
ALLISON: No.
MOYNIHAN: -- the immigration laws.
PHILLIP: But let's just -- I mean, look, I actually think it's probably fair to say, you know, Jacob Frey, Tim Walz, they're in positions of authority in the state. If they want to, if they want a fair investigation to go forward, they should refrain on making conclusive statements. Just in the same way, though, that the president and vice president and DHS secretary should also refrain from making definitive statements. Can we all agree on that?
ALLISON: Yes. But I do think the mayor is --
PHILLIP: Hal?
LAMBERT: Well, I don't think it's -- I don't think it's inappropriate when you have a video to comment on the video, I just --
ALLISON: It actually is, it actually is if there are federal investigations.
LAMBERT: President Trump is not on the jury.
PHILLIP: But why are you so offended that the mayor is angry that one of his citizens were killed, but you're not offended that there's judgment being passed prior to an investigation by all the powers that be in the federal government?
LAMBERT: Well, you're opening question had to do with ratcheting down tensions. And what I'm saying is that they have no intention of ratcheting down tensions when you look at what Mayor Frey and --
PHILLIP: Neither, apparently, does it seem that the president, the vice president, they don't have any intentions --
LAMBERT: Of not enforcing the law?
PHILLIP: DHS --
LAMBERT: Yes, they're going to enforce the law.
PHILLIP: Even before Jacob Frey opened his mouth, DHS described her as a domestic terrorist.
LAMBERT: Yes.
PHILLIP: A domestic terrorist.
LAMBERT: The woman that was killed? Yes.
ALLISON: Let me ask you this.
LAMBERT: There's been reports -- I'm not saying she's a domestic terrorist. I don't know, but there are reports that she was training and also organizing --
PHILLIP: She's not a domestic --
LAMBERT: -- the whole ICE.
PHILLIP: She's a domestic terrorist.
LAMBERT: Well, I'm not saying that, OK? You're asking me what someone else said.
FUGELSANG: You heard something on the Internet.
PHILLIP: That was the official statement from DHS.
Look, I did want to play this because this came out --
LAMBERT: But when you try to kill an officer, a federal officer.
FUGELSANG: She did not try to kill an officer.
PHILLIP: I just want to -- I just want to. This is relevant, OK? I want to play, this is the latest video. This is the video that was actually being recorded by the officer who pulled the trigger. And I just want to play it just because I think it does show us a little bit about what the interaction was, which I think bears on this conversation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thats fine. Dude, I'm not mad at you. Show your face. I'm not mad. That's OK. We don't change our plates every morning. Just so you know. It'll be the same plate when you come talk to us later. That's fine. U.S. citizen, former disabled veteran. You want to come at us? You want to come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy. Go ahead.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get out the car. Get out of the -- car. Get out of the car!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- bitch.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So this has become a bit of a Rorschach test, but the part that I just want us to look at is the actual interaction between Renee Good and the officer. She's got both hands visible. She's smiling at them. She's speaking to them in a calm tone. Again, the characterization of her as some intent-to-kill terrorist, that seems very discordant with what we just saw.
ALLISON: It's not just she's speaking them at a calm tone. The words matter. "I'm not mad at you, dude. I'm not mad." And we jump from "I'm not mad at you, dude," to I'm going to kill you like. That's a that's a massive jump in seconds.
MOYNIHAN: I think it's important to know ICE officers have been hurt and killed by people ramming cars into them. This exact officer earlier this year was hospitalized because --
ALLISON: Then he maybe should not have been on the job because he was still suffering from trauma.
LAMBERT: Maybe she shouldn't have blocked the road with her car.
MOYNIHAN: Officers have a right to act in self-defense. The investigation will continue.
ALLISON: Officers do not have a right to --
MOYNIHAN: Act in self-defense.
ALLISON: No, officers -- let me talk. Officers do not have a right to assert pressure or authority on somebody because of a past incident that they have been inflicted upon. If that was the case, every time you ran into an officer who had a fight with his wife, he could cuss you out. That's not the world we live in, OK? They have to be able to have discernment. They have to be -- and if he has just within months had been driven by -- drugged by a car, he probably still should have been in evaluation. He still should have been --
MOYNIHAN: Can a car kill somebody. If a car runs into somebody, can it kill someone?
FUGELSANG: This is the situation where right wing people are going to justify this murder, just as they justified the murders of people in fishing boats off the coast of Venezuela.
PHILLIP: All right, we've got to leave it there.
Next for us, Donald Trump says that his global power is only limited by his own morality as he threatens to take Greenland, possibly by force.
Plus, as Mark Kelly is targeted by the Trump administration for speaking out, the three senator -- the senator says the three branches of government are no longer equal anymore. We'll discuss.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:18:57]
PHILLIP: Just 10 days into the new year, Donald Trump seems to be channeling his inner Leonardo DiCaprio in declaring himself the king of the world. First, of course, the brazen raid and capture of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. And while the plan for the aftermath is vague at best, we do know he wants the oil.
Second, he's threatened to do the same thing to other nations, from Colombia to Cuba. And third, his declaration that he's considering military force to take over Greenland because his adviser puts it, the U.S. is entitled to own the NATO ally.
And finally, if it's not clear yet, Trump says that the only thing limiting his powers on the world stage is, quote, his own morality. And to top it all off, he says the U.S. doesn't need international law.
That is a whole lot of the Don-roe Doctrine, as he would put it. Where does that leave us if the president doesn't think that he's accountable to anyone but himself, Lydia?
MOYNIHAN: Well, in regards to the morality quote, I mean, the founding fathers were very clear. There is no liberty without virtue.
[10:20:03]
But look, what he's saying is pretty in line with what the Monroe Doctrine has stated for hundreds of years, that we have a responsibility and the ability to have sovereignty in this hemisphere. So I don't think that anything he's done has been out of line with the Monroe Doctrine that's governed foreign policy for hundreds of years now in the U.S.
PHILLIP: I think the founding fathers would also agree that the president, in particular, is supposed to be accountable to the people, not to himself.
FUGELSANG: He's supposed to be. He's supposed to be accountable to the Congress as well. Young people who missed out on previous authoritarian presidencies this week got to experience Kent State and war for oil in their own lifetime. The invasion of Venezuela was built on lies, and the irony here is that Donald Trump has been the only one all week to tell the truth about it. Are you hearing about fentanyl and cocaine anymore? They're admitting it's all about the oil. We are stealing the natural resources. We will be there for years, and presumably they are expecting to deploy American troops or those charming private contractors to guard the oil industry with our tax dollars while they steal the resources of a country that never attacked us.
But it was awfully cute hearing Republicans pretend they were anti-war for 10 years after Iraq blew up in their faces. This is amoral, and it's not going to make him look good in the history books.
MOYNIHAN: If you want to talk about protests, I would love to talk about the protests in Iran, which I think were encouraged --
FUGELSANG: Yes, inspiring.
MOYNIHAN: -- and inspiring as a result of what Trump has said. He's tweeted that he wants to support them. And I would say in the wake of the Venezuela attack, there were reports about the ayatollah making plans to leave Iran.
FUGELSANG: Yes.
MOYNIHAN: Because he knows that when the U.S. is strong and the most powerful country in the world, the world is a better and a more peaceful place.
FUGELSANG: I want you to realize that the Iranian people are protesting the extreme conservative, authoritarian, religious government they have and don't want.
MOYNIHAN: Are you liking Iran and the government there?
FUGELSANG: I'm going to tell you that the --
MOYNIHAN: -- to the government in the U.S.?
FUGELSANG: The fundamentalists of all the world's great religions are the ones ruining all the world's great religions. The extreme conservative Muslim --
MOYNIHAN: You really think, you really think --
LAMBERT: You say President Trump --
FUGELSANG: I certainly know it. Yes, the extreme.
MOYNIHAN: Fifty-one people have gotten killed in Iran this week.
FUGELSANG: The liberal and moderate Christians, Jews, and Muslims around the world are getting along just fine right now and getting no airtime for it. It is the extreme conservative fundamentalists of all the world's religions that are causing all the violence, oppressing all the women, being mean to all the gay folks, and having authoritarian rule that makes a mockery of --
LAMBERT: I think we've gotten sidetracked.
(CROSS TALK)
PHILLIP: You were going to say, you were going to jump in.
FUGELSANG: I liken Sharia law to Scalia law. Yes, I do.
LAMBERT: -- back to the topic, which is not religious doctrine. Look, if we want to talk about Greenland, let's get back to Greenland. Look, we took over Greenland during World War II.
FUGELSANG: To help them.
LAMBERT: To help them? No.
FUGELSANG: Not strip their resources.
LAMBERT: It wasn't to help them. It was to help us.
MOYNIHAN: The nazis.
LAMBERT: The nazis were going to take it. It's to defend the land, because we needed that as a base of operation, OK. The Monroe Doctrine --
FUGELSANG: So we're allowed to take their resources.
LAMBERT: It's not about taking it, but the Monroe Doctrine, as was clearly stated, is we have preference in this hemisphere to do things --
PHILLIP: But it doesn't.
LAMBERT: It's not about --
FUGELSANG: To pillage.
LAMBERT: It's not about pillage. What is there to pillage in Greenland?
PHILLIP: Hold on a second. The Monroe Doctrine --
LAMBERT: Why do you think they want Greenland?
PHILLIP: The Monroe Doctrine opposes foreign -- LAMBERT: We want Greenland because we need it as defense of the
arctic.
PHILLIP: Hold on a sec. The Monroe Doctrine -- I think we're kind of getting tied up here. It opposes foreign incursions, even in our own hemisphere. It doesn't say we can just run around and take over whatever governments or countries we want. That's actually not at all what the Monroe Doctrine says.
LAMBERT: And the incursions are happening right off the coast of Greenland with Russian subs. Look, Denmark can't defend anything. We all know that, right? They cannot defend Greenland if they needed to. We're NATO.
PHILLIP: I do want to play, real quick. Let me just play what Donald Trump said on Friday. Let me just play what Donald Trump said on Friday about what he wants to do with Greenland.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: I'm not talking about money for Greenland yet. I might talk about that. But right now we are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not, because if we don't do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland. And we're not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor.
I would like to make a deal, you know, the easy way. But if we don't do it the easy way, we're going to do it the hard way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FUGELSANG: Violence.
PHILLIP: "Whether they like it or not" is extremely important here, OK. A defense of Greenland. Nobody's saying that if Greenland is under attack, we can't defend it as a NATO ally. We would actually be obligated to. What he is talking about is taking it, whether they like it or not.
ALLISON: Yes, I believe Trump at his word, because when he says something, he actually does it. The problem is what he's saying is problematic and is not aligned with our founding fathers. We, our country was to get out of a monarchy. We did not want to be governed by the king. We have a democracy because we don't want kings. We want the people.
[10:25:00]
The person that Donald Trump is responsible and accountable to are the people who voted. He is even accountable to me because I'm a citizen of this country, even though I've never voted for him. He is not -- I don't want Donald Trump's morality to be the thing that decides. Do I hope he has morals? Yes. Have I seen him to date? No. You cannot say whether they like it or not. That is not the way you will be able to be safe as a nation, because let me tell you something. We might have one strike today, but when you treat people a certain way -- I'm not saying the Venezuelan people are not happy that Maduro is gone, but if the conditions in Venezuela do not improve and in fact get worse, they will blame the United States. And they will hate the United States. And what happens when people hate you? They begin to attack you.
So actually, as an issue of national security, we should be moving with a little more precision, a little more certainty, a little bit more of a plan, and a little bit more truth that says it's not about the fentanyl and that it's about the oil.
The final thing I'll say is, Americans, this election in which you elected Donald Trump, you elected him because of the economy. If they have money to buy Greenland, why do they not have money to help you buy health care, to help you buy groceries, to help first generation people go to college, to help you buy a home for folks who have never owned a home? Where is it? Because he's not talking about that. People's lives aren't getting better here, but he wants to go be the king of the world.
PHILLIP: All right, we've got to leave it there.
Next for us, the United States loses billions of dollars on fraud every year. But who gets punished and who gets a pass is becoming very much a bigger political issue in the Trump administration. We'll discuss that selective outrage next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:31:08]
PHILLIP: Taxpayer fraud is no doubt a big problem in America. A watchdog group estimates that the government loses hundreds of billions of dollars every year. But in the Trump era, fraud seems to fall only on political lines. After a massive bust involving the Somali community in Minnesota, the right has gone all in on villainizing the entire state. In fact, it's partly why there's so much ICE presence in Minnesota and Minneapolis this week. It's also why the vice president announced a new DOJ position that he says will solely focus on fraud.
And the president suspended billions of dollars of social services in five blue states, even though fraud is, obviously, rampant in all states, red and blue. But Donald Trump's tough talk on fraud is contradicted by his actions. He has pardoned many fraudsters, from George Santos to a crypto king, and some of these pardons mean that the victims of these frauds will not get any restitution. In fact, the Justice Department is backing away from prosecuting white collar crime altogether, including bribery and money laundering.
So, as with everything, whether its FEMA funds or the funds for highways, partisanship rules the day in this case when we know fraud is a problem, fraud is a problem across the board. But Trump is pardoning some fraudsters and then going after blue states.
LAMBERT: Well, look, I think if there's Republicans committing fraud, which I'm sure there are out there --
PHILLIP: He's pardoning them.
LAMBERT: -- they should be prosecuted. Well, Biden pardoned more people than in the history of pardons. So we don't need to get into pardon game with his autopen.
PHILLIP: That's actually not true.
LAMBERT: -- with his autopen thousands of --
PHILLIP: Trump pardoned over 1,600 people. So he actually holds the record --
LAMBERT: No, Biden pardoned more than that.
MOYNIHAN: It was 9,000, at least.
LAMBERT: It was 9,000, 10,000. If you count commutations, I guess is what you're --
PHILLIP: I'm talking about pardons. Trump pardoned, he's only been president the second time for one year.
LAMBERT: At least Trump knows who he's pardoning. Biden didn't even know who he was pardoning.
FUGELSANG: And again, if I may point out, Donald Trump -- I'm sorry. Go ahead.
LAMBERT: I was just going to say, look, if there's fraud being committed by Republicans, they should be prosecuted. I don't think anyone disagrees with that. But you're talking about prosecuting blue states. I mean, look, if Republicans are in the child care fraud game and the nursing home fraud game go, go after them.
PHILLIP: You don't think that there are. You really think that there's no fraud going on in red states?
LAMBERT: No, I'm saying -- no, but Minnesota is ground zero because of the report that came out, because of the 23-year-old that did the job of all the media companies.
PHILLIP: Because of the fraud that the Biden administration prosecuted.
LAMBERT: No, that was ongoing, massive fraud, billions of dollars.
FUGELSANG: But it's hard to cover it up when you're also prosecuting it.
PHILLIP: Of the indictments the DOJ, the Trump DOJ is touting, more than half of them came under Biden.
FUGELSANG: If I may, Donald Trump himself --
MOYNIHAN: The Biden DOJ did begin investigating. I think there's more work to continue doing. PHILLIP: Of course there is. Of course there is.
MOYNIHAN: Donald Trump paid $26 million in fines for education fraud, $2 million for charity fraud. He was guilty in a court of law for tax fraud and insurance fraud. And he had cops beaten for a lie for a false elector fraud. People who defend Donald Trump blindly are not people who care about fraud. What he's doing here is racializing fraud to blame the people who were victimized. This is not a welfare scandal. This is private contractor fraud, because the government outsourced services to private entities but didn't want to spend the money for oversight. And now we're all paying the price for it. And they are blaming, and they are blaming innocent people of color for what private contractors did, because that's how he signals to the base.
PHILLIP: You know, actually, can I just ask, because I actually think that's a really interesting point that I haven't heard a lot of people make, because the actual victims of this fraud are probably actually Somali families.
MOYNIHAN: I think --
LAMBERT: I don't know about that.
MOYNIHAN: Victims are taxpayers.
LAMBERT: Taxpayers lost --
ALLISON: Somalis are taxpayers.
LAMBERT: They're actually --
ALLISON: Yes, they are.
(CROSS TALK)
LAMBERT: And 80 percent are on welfare.
FUGELSANG: They pay state, local, and sales tax.
LAMBERT: And they get it all back with their welfare payments. They're not --
FUGELSANG: They don't get it all back.
ALLISON: Wow.
[10:35:01]
PHILLIP: Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. But Hal, are you suggesting that all across America, white people, black people, Somali -- people of Somali heritage, because many of them are Americans, you don't consider them to be taxpayers if they receive benefits from the government?
LAMBERT: Are they net taxpayers? PHILLIP: I'm just asking you, do you think that they are --
LAMBERT: They get more back?
PHILLIP: Do you think that they are taxpayers with the rights of citizens everywhere if they receive government benefits?
LAMBERT: Obviously, they have rights as citizens if they're citizens. But what I'm saying is that, you know, we harp on corporations that aren't paying taxes and say they're not taxpayers. If you have a private citizen who takes more back from the government than they put in, that's not a taxpayer.
PHILLIP: You realize that?
LAMBERT: That's not a taxpayer.
FUGELSANG: No, that's a billionaire.
PHILLIP: But hold on. I just want to I think that if you -- if we were having this conversation about white people in Appalachia.
LAMBERT: I'm not bringing up race.
PHILLIP: No, I'm just saying we were just talking about Somalis. But if were talking about white people in Appalachia, the people that J.D. Vance wrote about in his book "Hillbilly Elegy," would you say that --
ALLISON: They aren't taxpayers?
PHILLIP: They're just takers.
ALLISON: Not a taxpayer.
PHILLIP: They are not taxpayers. They are parasites on the government?
LAMBERT: I'm just said if they were taking more money back from the government than their paying, they're not taxpayers.
ALLISON: Was Mima a taxpayer? Was Mima a taxpayer?
LAMBERT: They're not.
(CROSS TALK)
PHILLIP: Let me play what J.D. Vance. He has really upped his rhetoric on the whole state of Minnesota. But here's what he said about Tim Walz, the governor, and accusing him of participating.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you comment on his rhetoric and Mayor Jacob Frey, and whether they want to see unrest in Minneapolis?
J.D. VANCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENT: Well, that's very tough rhetoric from a guy who just quit because his fraudulent activities have been uncovered. Look, Tim Walz is a joke. His entire administration has been a joke. The idea that he's some sort of freedom fighter, he's not. He's a guy who has enabled fraud and maybe, in fact, has participated in fraud.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I mean, look, I just wonder, he's the vice president of the United States. Is proof even on the table before you make a statement like that?
ALLISON: Whenever I watch, I'm like, he really wanted Karoline Leavitt's job. He wanted to be the press secretary, not the VP, because he wanted to go out it. Look, I feel like there are just some basic principles that we have lost. Fraud is bad. Fraud shouldn't happen. There's -- every state should be accountable, red states and blue states.
And that's not happening right here. Like Donald Trump is saying, I'm cutting -- he literally out of his mouth would say I'm cutting blue states off from FEMA if they don't vote for me. I'm cutting blue states off because I -- no proof that there may be fraud, but I'm just cutting them off because they're a blue state. That's wrong too.
FUGELSANG: Exactly.
ALLISON: It's just. It's not that hard. It's not that complicated. It's like, if Joe Biden did it, it's wrong too. Like where are people's common sense these days? Where's the morals these days? Where's just like basic right or wrong. We've lost it. We've lost it because all we care about is, like, I got to win this debate. Fraud is wrong, right? Yes. Don't we teach our children that in first grade? It's basic.
PHILLIP: It's a legitimate -- this issue in Minnesota is a very legitimate problem. It is a very legitimate failure of the government to investigate. But I also think that when we -- let's zoom out, right, the hundreds of billions of dollars that occur in fraud all across this country, there is no evidence that there is a blue bias to that fraud. So, I mean, can we be confident that that's how this is going to be investigated?
FUGELSANG: If you're gutting the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau, you are protecting fraud. He has no problem with wealthy white people who are donors who commit fraud. They buy a pardon. But we have to remember, Donald Trump launched his political career with a racist lie about the first black president not being one of us. Trump and Vance got into the office last year with a racist lie that innocent, legal Haitian migrants were illegals stealing and eating pets. And even after it was proven it was a lie, they kept on spreading it.
And now they're spreading this lie about the Somali immigrants. Grifters stole from these Somali people, and they are trying to blame the victims, not the grifters themselves.
PHILLIP: All right, next for us, are the three branches of government still coequal as the Constitution says they ought to be? Well, one of the president's biggest critics says that that's all over. We'll discuss.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:43:44]
PHILLIP: It's the cornerstone of the American Constitution. The three branches of government are designed to keep power in check and balanced. But one of the Trump administrations most outspoken critics says MAGA has destroyed that idea.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Senator, we have three equal branches of government here. What is the role of Congress?
SEN. MARK KELLY, (D-AZ): Equal? We were. I think Republicans in Congress have ceded their constitutional power, their authority to this White House. Very few of them will stand up to this president. We're the Article One branch of government, and we are supposed to be providing oversight responsibility.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, it's worth noting that when five Republican senators joined Democrats this week to keep Trump's Venezuela actions in check, the president lashed out and demanded that they never win an election again.
Hal, do you think that the way that things have been operating, but particularly Congress, has been acting like a coequal branch of government so far this year?
LAMBERT: Well, I mean, they just did what you said. So they voted to, you know, take away President Trumps right to be able to do that in Venezuela. So obviously they're doing that.
But I would just say this about Senator Kelly. You know, he's former military. He's getting a pension, OK, which means he's still under the uniform military code of conduct, which means you can't be seditious. And sedition is when you --
[10:45:05]
FUGELSANG: He's not being sedition.
LAMBERT: Excuse me? When you tell people to ignore orders.
FUGELSANG: He didn't say that.
LAMBERT: He did. He did.
FUGELSANG: Illegal.
LAMBERT: He said if there were illegal order. Well, what's in an -- you don't get to determine what's an illegal order. Should those guys not have gone into Venezuela?
FUGELSANG: They should --
LAMBERT: Is that what you're saying?
FUGELSANG: He's saying that you are allowed to ignore an illegal order.
LAMBERT: Answer that question. You claim Venezuela was illegal. You said at the beginning of the show. So should they all ignore those orders?
FUGELSANG: It's up to individual conscience, sir. But Pete Hegseth.
LAMBERT: Oh, so that's the way our military works now.
FUGELSANG: Pete Hegseth is trying really hard to make Senator Kelly the next president. But Pete Hegseth's actions will be taught to future military cadets about what not to do, because cadets are taught that, yes, it is legal to turn down an illegal order.
PHILLIP: Well, look, I think to Hal's point, to Hal's point, there is a chain of command where its determined whether an order is legal or illegal. So someone is making a determination about that, and it may not be, you know, the private or some somebody at the lower end of the spectrum. But I also would argue that, I mean, to your point, Pete Hegseth made the same statement that Mark Kelly did.
FUGELSANG: Indeed.
PHILLIP: A couple years ago, before he was in Trump's corner.
FUGELSANG: He's on tape.
PHILLIP: He's on tape saying it. So why would he not be subject to the military code of justice for making that statement if it is, in fact, seditious?
LAMBERT: I haven't seen that statement, but I would --
PHILLIP: He said the same thing Mark Kelly did.
LAMBERT: That people should ignore orders?
PHILLIP: Yes, that it's --
FUGELSANG: Illegal orders.
LAMBERT: -- part of their training and their obligation to ignore illegal orders.
LAMBERT: Well, I would just say this. Then, if you think that Pete Hegseth should be, you're saying he should be prosecuted?
PHILLIP: I'm just saying, if you are going to prosecute Mark Kelly, you would have to subject Pete Hegseth to the same rules. LAMBERT: OK. Well, I think that Senator Kelly has done quite a bit.
He said it many, many times, and he's come out publicly that the military should be ignoring the orders of the chief --
ALLISON: It's just --
LAMBERT: The president of the United States.
ALLISON: I don't know you very well, man. But I just, yes, it's like, the tape. Run the tape, run the tape. And like, it's like we can see it. We can hear it with our own eyes. It's like, do your eyes not work the same way my eyes work. Do your ears work? But it's like, OK, so if we pull it up in the next break and you see it, can we say --
FUGELSANG: So you agree that it's sedition?
PHILLIP: Well, look.
LAMBERT: I agree that Hegseth is not going to be the good guy in this story.
ALLISON: I'm saying if you're saying it's sedition for Kelly, can you say it -- and Pete Hegseth said the same thing, shouldn't it be sedition for them, or are there two set of laws? And so if there are, then maybe our democracy is unstable.
And the bigger point is what Kelly was saying is that the co-equal branches of government -- and he was talking about Congress, but I think also not just in a partisan way. Most Americans actually think that the Supreme Court is one of the weakest branches of our government, the judicial branch, because of how it was stacked, the court was stacked, and how some of the appointments were made and some of the decisions it has made decisions on. So I think it's not just a Democratic senator, Democratic congressman is saying it. People, public opinion is saying this is not --
FUGELSANG: Can we also say, though, with a compliant Congress, the court system and the judicial branch is the only kind of guardrail we do have left?
PHILLIP: Well, I will say that that Hal is right. This vote this week on the war powers was one of the few times that we've seen in the second Trump term Republicans in numbers bucking Trump, and many of them doing it because they're not willing to kind of do the same thing that we did over the last 20 plus years in the Middle East. And Trump doesn't seem to understand where that's coming from, even though he himself ran on that anti-war sentiment when he ran in 2008.
MOYNIHAN: I think people should vote their conscience. I think it's funny, I speak with a lot of Republicans who are frustrated that they feel Congress doesn't do a whole lot besides vote for these, you know, random laws condemning socialism or what have you. I think, frankly, a lot of voters would like to see this Congress in particular do more than simply just pass basically one flagship piece of legislation.
FUGELSANG: They're understandably concerned as well, because they know that Donald Trump will not be helping them in the midterms in 11 months. They know what happened in 2018 and 2022, and they know --
MOYNIHAN: So you think Donald Trump can't help people in the midterms?
FUGELSANG: I don't think he will. I don't think he cares about anyone but himself. And I think that they know with Epstein not going away now, now we're going to own Venezuela and prices are what they are. They are terrified --
PHILLIP: We're starting to see a lot more of this happening, whether its on health care or --
FUGELSANG: They'll be Marge Greens breaking away.
PHILLIP: -- because yes, as you point out, the midterms are coming up, and people are worried, especially on the right.
Next, for us, the panel's unpopular opinions, what they are not afraid to say out loud.
But first, a quick programing note for you. We watched them fall in love. Now see how Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's upcoming nuptials could shake up the billion-dollar wedding industry.
[10:50:00]
"I Do, The Taylor and Travis Era," now streaming on the CNN app.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: We're back, and it's time for your unpopular opinions. Lydia, you're up.
MOYNIHAN: I think dry January needs to be canceled. January is the worst month because it's like, you have all the winter. None of the Christmas joy. And on top of that, you're going to layer on no alcohol. Like, if you're going to have a dry month, which seems unnecessary to me, let's do February, which is the shortest month. But I don't --
ALLISON: Fair enough. I can't argue with that.
FUGELSANG: No, I'm going to steal yours. I love it.
PHILLIP: Go ahead, John.
[10:55:00]
FUGELSANG: Yes. Look, folks, here's the deal. It's very important that you ignore your cats and blow them off and let them know how that feels. OK, that's my unpopular opinion. Every now and then, not all the time. But, you know, you can be a little indifferent now and then and give them a sense of what it's like.
ALLISON: OK, so I believe you can leave your Christmas tree up as long as you need to if you don't have time to take it down. Like everyone is like, it has to come down on January 1st. It's like, it's not your home. My Christmas tree is still up. It's not decorated, but I haven't had time to take it down. And so it is what it is. Is it bothering you? Did you even know?
PHILLIP: No. I literally just took mine down yesterday.
ALLISON: It doesn't matter.
PHILLIP: When I had time.
ALLISON: People are like -- one time. I left it up till March because I just wanted to.
FUGELSANG: I know a guy on 95th street keeps it up all year long. You can see it --
ALLISON: And let and let him live his life.
MOYNIHAN: There are 12 days of Christmas. It goes past --
ALLISON: There are 12 months of Christmas.
(LAUGHTER)
PHILLIP: Go ahead, Hal.
LAMBERT: I think we need a new game called ice golf. I mean, half the country can't play golf in the winter. And when we, you know, have Greenland become part of the United States, Trump can open a resort in Greenland and have ice golf in Greenland.
PHILLIP: Wait, is that a thing?
LAMBERT: Sure. Why not?
PHILLIP: Ice golf?
Everyone, thank you very much. Thank you 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 on TikTok. But in the meantime, CNN's coverage continues right now.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
