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CNN Saturday Morning Table for Five. Video Shows Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents Detain Five-Year-Old Boy; Son of Man Detained by ICE for Two Months Dies Due to Chronic Muscular Disease and Absence of His Father as Primary Caregiver; President Trump Backs Down on Threats to Invade Greenland after Claiming Framework for Agreement with Denmark for Increased U.S. Military Presence; Murder Rates in U.S. Show Largest Single Year Drop on Record in 2025 to Lowest Rate in More than a Century; President Trump Threatens to Sue Organizations that Release Polls Unfavorable to Him. Aired 10-11a ET
Aired January 24, 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)
[10:00:28]
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: Today, as more dramatic images surface out of Minneapolis --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are heading to a point that can be very explosive.
PHILLIP: -- is the key to solving a problem recognizing that you have one?
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: They're going to make a mistake, sometimes.
J.D. VANCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENT: You're always going to have mistakes made in law enforcement.
PHILLIP: Plus, he came, he saw, he did not conquer. Donald Trump faces the allies he's been threatening, only to back off his Greenland invasion.
Also, America's murder rate hits the lowest in more than a century. So who gets the credit, Republicans, liberals, or technology?
And if you can't beat the polls, sue them. The president suggests that any outlet not declaring him the greatest deserves a lawsuit.
Here in studio, Van Lathan, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Lance Trover, and Josh Rogin.
It's the weekend. Join the conversation at a "TABLE FOR FIVE".
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Hi everyone. I'm Abby Phillip. Thank you for joining us this Saturday morning.
Could a week of chilling moments be a turning point in Donald Trump's crackdown on America's streets? This image of a five-year-old boy detained by ICE after his father picked him up after school. The head of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, here seen throwing a gas canister into a crowd of protesters. An agent spraying a protester in the face at point blank range with a chemical agent while he was pinned to the ground. Another agent pushing a woman to the to the ground while on her bike. And of course, the aftermath of the shooting death of Renee Good.
As ICE tactics and their behavior gets more violent, the public disapproval for all that they're seeing is growing. Another poll shows that a majority of Americans think that ICE has gone too far. And the White House must be noticing all of this, because after months of defending ICE and pushing back on any criticism of these operations, we now have Donald Trump and J.D. Vance changing their tunes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: I felt horribly when I was told that the young woman who was -- had the tragedy. It's a tragedy. It's a horrible thing.
J.D. VANCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENT: I'm a father of a five-year-old, actually a five year old little boy. And I think to myself, oh my God, this is terrible. How did we arrest a five-year-old? Well, I did a little bit more follow up research.
TRUMP: You know, they're going to make mistakes sometimes. It can happen. We feel terribly.
VANCE: Of course, there have been mistakes made because you're always going to have mistakes made in law enforcement.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now Vance is even backing off one of the more infamous comments that he made recently about the Renee Good shooting. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENT: 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.
No, I didn't say, and I don't think any other official within the Trump administration said that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity. That's absurd.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, while their rhetoric may be softening, ICE's presence on the streets is not. Tensions are very much still high, and now agents are starting a new operation in another state, in Maine, rounding up Somali immigrants.
Alyssa, it seems that the president is at least aware that the polls are not in his favor. "The New York times"-Siena polls 63 percent of Americans disapprove of ICE. Most other demographics disapprove of ICE. The only demographic that approves in the majority are Trump 2024 voters. But I would argue if he's losing 20 percent of his support from 2024, that's also not a good sign.
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, and I think you should also pay attention to some of his more vocal new supporters this last election. Joe Rogan was extremely critical of some of these ICE demonstrations that you've seen, some of these actions, Renee Good's killing. And that matters. These were these sort of low intensity voters that Trump was able to turn out that helped propel him to victory.
And I think that Donald Trump, to what I know of him, always does pay attention to the polls. He may dispute them, but he is aware of where his approvals are. And when you're hovering in the mid to maybe high 30s, you're down to your base at that point. That's not even the majority of the Republican Party that's with you.
And it comes down to something that I try to underscore every time I talk about this issue. Donald Trump did a great job on the border. He secured the border. He did it in a matter of days. He did what the Biden administration refused to for four years.
[10:05:00]
But what he is doing on enforcement in the country is devastatingly unpopular. People do not want to see people who have just lived their lives in their communities torn from their homes, U.S. citizens detained. The imagery that we're seeing just flies in the face of what most Americans want. They want an orderly process. They want the worst of the worst out, but they do not want people just yanked from their homes and U.S. citizens, in fact, detained.
JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, I agree with Alyssa. I think that statistics can obscure a lot of the cruelty in the individual stories. You know, when you have a five-year-old in handcuffs as the public image of your project, you're losing the argument, OK. And there are thousands of those stories. I was on the phone today, all day today with a family of a 62-year-old in ICE detention in north Texas by the name of Maher Tarabishi. And he's been in ICE detention for two months. He was the primary caregiver for his son, Wael, who has a chronic muscular disease and who has been in terrible health since his father has been in detention.
And about two hours before I came on set today, while Wael Tarabishi died, and his family just put out the announcement a few minutes ago. Wow. And he didn't have to die. And he definitely didn't have to die without being able to say goodbye to his father. And even if Maher Tarabishi gets released tomorrow, he'll never see his son again.
And did he deserve that? He never committed a crime. Been in this country for 32 years. Paid his taxes, never missed an immigration appointment, including the appointment that he showed up to where he got scooped up. And that family is devastated and destroyed. And for what? Is that what we want America to be? Is that what we want our country to be for? What's the benefit of that? Shame on them, and shame on us for letting that get, letting all of this get that far.
PHILLIP: Lance, is there any room for compassion here? I mean, I get the -- I understand right that the issue with illegal immigration, the failure of the Biden administration to deal with it, all of that conceded. I'm just asking, because I think Americans will hear stories like that, and there are many of them, many, many, many of them, and they'll say cruelty is not how we want to be represented on the world stage. I think a lot of Americans recoil from that. And I'm just wondering if that's a missing piece somewhere in the White House, maybe because Stephen Miller is so laser focused on eradicating all immigration that he can't see it, but someone else must see that somewhere.
LANCE TROVER, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: I think it's a fair question, but we're largely talking about tactics here. And I heard what you were saying about it, and you were talking about tactics here. But the other number in that "New York Times" poll, which I find very interesting, is 50 percent of the country still wants mass deportations. If you go back to the 2024 election, it hovered around the 60, 65 percent mark. So let's assume, which I think most polling undercounts Trump's support and support on policies, let's assume that's around the 50 to 55 percent mark. It's not that people don't want mass deportations. The country is still very much in favor of mass deportations.
Now, will we have to be talking about --
PHILLIP: I would describe 50 percent as very much --
TROVER: I think you -- I think in the 50 to 60 percent range, that's where it's been for more than a year-and-a-half in this country, or longer, since the Biden open border crisis.
PHILLIP: I just feel like directionally that's not going --
TROVER: Since when does 50 percent of this country agree on anything? It's a majority in this country.
But my point is, clearly people want these deportations to continue. You're asking a question about tactics. I think it's a fair question. And I'm guessing we will see a change in messaging. We're already starting to see it from the vice president.
PHILLIP: I know that I'm asking about tactics.
TROVER: That's exactly what this is about.
PHILLIP: No, I'm asking you, as a person, about prioritization, because I think the big issue with what's been going on is a complete lack of prioritization.
TROVER: Well, we also have a state and cities across the -- some cities who don't want to cooperate with ICE and work with them. I think it would behoove them to work with the federal officials. But we have --
PHILLIP: But what does that have to do -- what does that have to do with picking up somebody at their immigration appointment who is coming in to be presented, you know, to do what he's being asked to do, right? This is a story that we've seen thousands of times. They're being asked to do what they're supposed to do. They're coming in for their appointments. Weve seen people who are in their green card appointments being detained by ICE. They have done everything -- to get a green card appointment, you have done everything.
ROGIN: For years.
PHILLIP: For years. I don't --
ROGIN: That doesn't make us safer.
PHILLIP: That's not tactics. That's prioritization, that's a lack of prioritization.
TROVER: I don't think that's a lack of prioritization. I mean, if we're talking about mass deportations and you are here illegally, I don't -- I mean, I don't know how to put it. I mean, well, if you've come into this country illegally --
VAN LATHAN, PODCAST CO-HOST, "HIGHER LEARNING": So I think there are a couple of things here. Number one, the tactics themselves are downstream from rhetoric. So the way that this was all whipped up, it's Americans were in a situation where they felt economically vulnerable. They felt vulnerable in a lot of different ways coming out of COVID.
[10:10:00]
And they saw the Biden administration not doing anything to address what was going on at the border. Trump was able to sell all the problems of our current culture as being that problem. And when they would speak about undocumented people, they would speak about them with no humanity, as if they weren't people, as if they were something to be excised out of America and then things would get better.
I think some people actually believed that. I think that's what people -- I think some people actually believed that, like, for example, the beef prices are up. Why? Because undocumented people are bringing disease cows over the border with them.
I think now what you're seeing is people that are seeing two things. Number one, they're seeing really, really terrible images of incivility coming out of these neighborhoods. And two, they're seeing their lives not change. So they're both asking the question, did they lie to us about who is to blame for the dysfunction in our country? Number one. And number two, are we prepared to be a papers please society. All the people that you watched Indiana Jones fight like people -- are we are we prepared to do, is that what you want to be? And I think they're saying no to both things. TROVER: You don't deny that we had 12 million people flood into this
border over the course of four years.
LATHAN: Yes, I don't --
TROVER: I mean, it seems -- I hear what you're saying in a sense, but like, that sounds rather simplistic to me. I mean, this country was enraged by this issue. I mean, this was the number two issue --
PHILLIP: Imagine how bad things must have been for that fury that you're describing to have been completely reversed to the point where now there are many moderate Democrats who are saying something that would have been unthinkable four years ago. Let me play what Zohran Mamdani said on "The View" I think just this week. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI, (D) NEW YORK CITY: I am in support of abolishing ICE.
What we see is an entity that has no interest in fulfilling its stated reason to exist. We're seeing a government agency that is supposed to be enforcing some kind of immigration law, but instead what it's doing is terrorizing people no matter their immigration status, no matter the facts of the law, no matter the facts of the case.
And I'm tired of waking up every day and seeing a new image of someone being dragged out of a car, dragged out of their home, dragged out of their life. What we need to see is humanity. And there is a way to care about immigration in this city and in this country with a sense of humanity. What we're seeing from ICE is not it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So he is saying that, but a lot of other people who would not have said it four years ago are saying it. And 56 percent of Americans now say that they believe that the Trump administration is prioritizing deporting people who are not criminals. It seems like the politics of this issue is completely shifting in really interesting ways.
GRIFFIN: It is, but I think it's incredibly complex. And I wasn't surprised that Mamdani gave me that answer. He's obviously a progressive, and that's somebody that I would expect to lean into that. But I've been surprised by some of the other voices that are leaning closer to it, someone like Ruben Gallego, who's been incredibly critical of ICE in Arizona.
I would say two things. I think the Trump administration bears a certain amount of responsibility for the tactics they have told ICE to use. I care about law enforcement. I think the ICE does, in the right scenario, have a totally legitimate law enforcement role. But when you defend something like what we saw on camera with Renee Good, that puts all law enforcement in a more compromising position going forward, and it turns public sentiment against them. I never want to see a scenario where you have Minneapolis police basically up against ICE. That shouldn't be happening in America.
On the flipside, I would caution Democrats, though. Joe Biden won in 2020 when people were saying defund the police, abolish ICE. It took a bit to catch up with them. And that dogged Kamala Harris in the election, because people still go back to that we generally trust law enforcement. We may not like these guys. If you had somebody new come in and clean up some of the maybe less trained people you have in ICE under this administration, there's a world in which you could fix them and popularity would go up. But I think it's very politically fraught on both sides --
LATHAN: Can I point out a difference? Can I point out a difference there in my opinion? There is a complexity, because I even talked to my grandmother and my mom and them down in Baton Rouge when it was, you know, I'm a big defund, whatever, whatever you have, I'll burn it down. So when I'm talking to them, they would tell me, like black ladies would tell me, they would say we need the police. I don't know if you're around here, but we need the police.
The difference is, is there is some relationship to the police that they can point to and say, we need this. This makes our life better. Most Americans don't have that relationship with ICE.
(CROSS TALK)
PHILLIP: -- less so.
LATHAN: And like what they're saying right now is just a lot of ruckus being caused. And they're wondering, like, what are they getting for it? And it's hard to kind of pin down.
PHILLIP: Next for us, Donald Trump goes overseas to insult America's allies, and he backs off on his Greenland threat with a predictable response.
Plus, America's murder rate just dropped to the lowest in more than a century.
[10:15:00]
We'll tell you why, and ask who gets the credit for it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: A fortnight, it's not just one of Taylor Swift's hits. It is also one of Donald Trump's biggest tells. This week after a threatening to invade Greenland, declaring that the United States will own the island, and insulting and isolating Americas allies over that issue, he basically said, never mind.
[10:20:06]
Why? Well, because a deal he reached with NATO that is forever, in his words. But when he was asked about this deal, he gave this response.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Were trying to understand what exactly the concept is here. Is the U.S. going to actually take ownership of --
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: We'll have something in two weeks.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, if that timeline doesn't sound familiar to you, it should.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: We are going to be announcing over the next two weeks numbers and specifics.
We're signing a health care plan within two weeks.
I think so, over the next two, three weeks.
You can ask that question in two weeks.
I'd rather tell you in about two weeks from now.
I can't tell you that, but I'll let you know in about two weeks.
I would say within two weeks or so. Pretty quick.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So even though the president isn't giving details, CNN's reporting suggests that the Danes have agreed to allow the U.S. to build more bases in Greenland, an option that was already available to America. I suspect that the Greenland plan and the health care plan are sitting somewhere in heaven, just waiting to be called down to their duty. This is an offramp that the Europeans are fine with, because it basically lets Trump claim a win in two weeks, and then they don't have to do anything.
ROGIN: I wouldn't say they're fine with it because, you know, the of the United States just threatened to attack a NATO ally, and then traveled to Europe to speak in front of the assembled intelligentsia of the western alliance and basically told them to go screw themselves, and then said that they didn't fight and die in Afghanistan. They didn't fight well enough, although, they actually did.
And then he backed down when he realized that they weren't just going to hand over Greenland, because that's not a thing that countries do. They don't hand over their land because you threaten them. And, by the way, that's what Xi Jinping and Putin do. That's what the dictators do, not the democracies.
And then after all of that, he just said, oh, well, forget it, we'll figure something out, doing long lasting damage to the NATO alliance, teaching all of the Europeans that they can no longer trust the United States, and, by the way, off the Greenlanders who are not going to want those bases after what we just put them through.
So, no, I wouldn't say they're fine with it. I would say that they're relieved that were not going to have a war between NATO and NATO, because that's crazy. But this is not the end, because Trump will do something else crazy that will be intended to harm them sooner rather than later, and they're just going to have to deal with something else. And that's what we're just going to have now in the trans- Atlantic relationship. It's a pretty bad situation.
LATHAN: How much would you trust a friend after they threatened to sleep with your wife? I'm just -- I mean, you know.
PHILLIP: I think I'm getting the analogy.
(LAUGHTER)
LATHAN: It just -- I mean, I'm just saying, it doesn't matter how good of a friend, what you get from the friend. Once the friend goes, hey, man, I'm thinking about sleeping with your wife. Whoa. Now I have to protect myself. It changes the nature of the friendship completely.
The reason why you treat things that are valuable like they are valuable is so that they know that they are valuable. He treated NATO like it was something that is not valuable. The question now remains how they respond. I don't think it will be in the same way it was before.
TROVER: We all agree that Greenland is important for our national security and economic interests, right? That's not debatable here.
ROGIN: It's kind of a straw man because it's irrelevant, you know, because --
TROVER: It isn't irrelevant. It's not irrelevant.
ROGIN: Because --
TROVER: You're telling me Russia and China hovering --
ROGIN: Yes, exactly. Russia and China are not invading Greenland anytime soon because --
TROVER: We're not talking about tomorrow, though.
ROGIN: No, ever.
TROVER: That's my whole point ever. This is forward thinking. I mean, that's my point.
ROGIN: We have an alliance with Greenland.
(CROSS TALK)
ROGIN: We're already obligated to defend --
TROVER: Right, and we don't know the details of how all this is going to shake out. I know that's what everybody seems to think. And he's a very optimistic guy on two weeks, yes, I will give you that. There's more discussions to come, but I just wonder if we accept, at least, the strategic imperative of getting and having more ownership of Greenland.
(CROSS TALK)
ROGIN: No, I don't accept that we should have ownership of Greenland. We're not an expansionist, imperial country in the 21st century. So, no, we cannot accept that we should have ownership of another country because that means occupying that country against the will of the people that live there who own it. OK, so no, we cannot be in the business of owning --
GRIFFIN: And we should agree that arctic security matters. That's something I think we all agree on.
ROGIN: It's just a banal point --
(CROSS TALK)
GRIFFIN: The difference --
ROGIN: No, it's just not relevant to what we're talking about.
GRIFFIN: The difference is that on Monday of this week, before the saber rattling, before insulting our allies, we could have gotten the same deal. A 1951 defense agreement that we have with Denmark would have allowed us to expand our military presence there. Mike Pence visited the bases there. We've got U.S. Air Force, we've got Space Force, about 100 troops in Greenland right now.
If we had gone to Denmark and to Greenland and said, we'd like to put 1,000 U.S. troops there, we'd like to put 5000 because it's in NATO's collective interest in the arctic, they would say, welcome, please do. We did not need this entire ordeal that Trump put everyone through. And it's the classic lead by chaos and then take the victory on the other end.
But I will point out one thing. To the degree that there is a check on Trump's impulses in the second term, it is the stock market.
[10:25:02]
That's what it is. He literally saw the stock market plummet.
LATHAN: That's not good.
ROGIN: That's chilling, though, right?
GRIFFIN: I'm just noting.
LATHAN: But we're talking about stock market, the stock market like checking conquest. like I get -- OK, so look, what we don't want to talk about is that it's actually climate change that is making this whole thing a problem in the first place. GRIFFIN: That's very true.
LATHAN: I know you guys don't believe in that.
(APPLAUSE)
LATHAN: Don't go too deep?
PHILLIP: I think the president is not going to be able to follow you down this road.
LATHAN: But if Greenland were the -- if Greenland were the only ally that Trump talked like this -- he also says that Canada should be the 51st state. So it seems as if what he doesn't care about is relationships the United States has had for a very, very long time, and the way the most powerful man in the world talks to and about --
PHILLIP: So to that point, to that point real quick, let me just make a point. President Trump, just disinvited Canada's prime minister from his from his board of peace. This is a board of peace that's supposed to be about Gaza, but maybe he wants it to overtake the U.N. So instead of Canada, one of our longest allies, he's got a whole bunch of other countries, including several who are whose citizens are banned from entering the United States -- Pakistan, Morocco, Armenia, Kosovo, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan. They're all in his board of peace, but they can't get visas to come to the United States. And Canada is now being treated like what China and Russia ought to be treated.
ROGIN: Yes, it's a rogues' gallery, you know. It's a -- it would be a joke, but it's not funny because to establish something like that where you have to pay $1 billion membership fee, like it's a diplomatic Mar-a-Lago, it's absurd enough. And then to give it responsibility over the lives of 2 million Palestinians is a catastrophe and a harm to those people who really need urgent help in Gaza, and they can't get it because they've got to be ruled by the, you know, the Uzbeki board of peace, which is not like even a real thing.
So it spells disaster for Gazans who the whole thing was supposed to be out in the first place. We should remember, 2 million Gazans can't eat because Trump is demanding $1 billion to join his board of peace. And that's the real issue. And then this thing is going to amount to exactly nothing.
GRIFFIN: I am also just old enough to remember when conservatives did not support the U.N. Human Rights Council because countries like Libya and North Korea and others have sat on it. We said, how could they be enforcers of human rights? And I think to have some of these countries represented on a board of peace is very similar and a bit hypocritical on our part.
PHILLIP: Next for us, a surprisingly good piece of news when it comes to the murder rate in the United States. Both sides, though, are trying to claim credit for it.
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[10:32:12]
PHILLIP: A stunning revelation has America's political sides running to claim credit for it. Last year, murders fell 21 percent in nearly 40 American cities. That is the largest single year drop on record and the lowest murder rate in more than a century. That's according to a report compiled by the Council on Criminal Justice. The drop also extends to other violent crimes, like carjackings and robberies.
Now, experts credit several reasons -- more distance from the pandemic, more surveillance through phones and cameras, even the aging of America. The decrease, though, also began in the Biden administration and continued during Trump's first year.
Now, both sides are trying to claim credit for their policies being the reason why we are here. It is extraordinary that we are seeing low crime in America. And I think that this is one of those things where, fine. If Trump wants to claim credit for the last year, fine. But you also have to acknowledge that it didn't start with him. The historic drops really started before he even entered the Oval Office.
TROVER: Yes, I think -- well, look, that is an accurate statement, but I think it's fine for him to claim credit. Look, unemployment is really low in this country. The economy is looking good. They are deporting criminals, illegal aliens out of this country. And I will tell you, as somebody who lives in Washington, D.C., and has had the National Guard around, things have been a lot better and it's been reported out --
ROGIN: That's nonsense. That is totally -- I live in Washington, D.C. for 28 years.
TROVER: You live in Georgetown. What are you talking about?
ROGIN: No, I live and work in D.C., and seeing a bunch of reservists standing around on corners does exactly zero for the security of D.C. And in fact, I don't like it. I don't like troops on the streets of the town that I live in. It's not --
TROVER: Like, that's fine. You may not like it. But crime is down. It is reported out. It is a fact. Crime is down in Washington --
ROGIN: It was down before the troops got there. So it can't be the troops --
TROVER: It's further down.
ROGIN: And, and --
TROVER: What we're hearing is we're --
ROGIN: -- we're abusing those troops because those are reservists that have lives --
PHILLIP: Let me just add one piece. ROGIN: And we're pulling them from their families to make them stand
in Georgetown.
PHILLIP: Let me add one piece.
ROGIN: Why are all the troops in my Georgetown, in my neighborhood?
PHILLIP: Let me add one piece of context here? Let me add one piece of context here, because I think this is interesting. There, obviously Trump wants to claim credit. He wants to claim credit for everything. But here's what other experts who actually study this stuff say. What has changed nationally is a huge investment by the federal government in prevention in response to the COVID epidemic.
This is according to John Roman, a criminal justice researcher who runs the NORC Center on Public Safety and Justice at the University of Chicago. He credits the American Rescue Plan Act, which was under Biden, for sending billions to local governments to use however they saw fit, investing in education, police, librarians, community centers, social workers, local nonprofits. Local government employment rolls increased almost perfectly inverse to the crime rate. So there is actually more evidence, perhaps, that a decrease of this scope, which was 14 percent in 2024 and is now also historic in 2025.
[10:35:08]
You can't explain that by saying they did a few more federal arrests. You can only explain that by something that was massive enough to hit this country in equal measure.
LATHAN: So there's another reality here. And the reality is, over the past 40 or 50 years, crime in America has gone down tremendously. For everyone that looked up and said, hey, it's 2018, it's 2019. This is the worst it's ever been. You're just wrong. The stats prove you wrong. It had already been happening. Spike during COVID, and things are probably leveling off back to where they were.
But there's something else here that's really interesting, and I have to call this out. Baltimore is making great strides in reducing crime. The mayor of Baltimore is a young black man named Brandon Scott. Now, in order for you to take credit for everything that's going on, what you would have to do is empower some of these young black political figures that are getting their communities right where they are, in Chicago, in Baltimore, in Birmingham, in places like that that are figuring out their crime, right? They're figuring it out because they're doing community-based harm prevention and violence correction, and they're connected to their communities.
Another thing is, in order to take credit for dropping crime, that destroys your blue cities are a pariah and the jungle myth that you have propagated in order to pull political power. There are reasons that the president is being less than forceful about alerting Americans to the fact that they are safer. It doesn't jive with the way he wants to pull power.
PHILLIP: That's interesting. I mean, it does sort of take it politically kind of off the table.
GRIFFIN: And I interviewed Governor Wes Moore of Maryland, and he spoke on the same issue as well.
LATHAN: Fantastic.
GRIFFIN: He's somebody who is very invested in the community, doing community-based solutions. And if we were a serious country that really wanted to tackle this issue that's driven many elections, we would learn from this, because I think that your points make a lot of sense. I think technology does play a role in this. And, well, that's also a fraught discussion around surveillance, there is something to the fact that it's a lot harder to get away with crimes than it was ten years ago.
What I do think is interesting is Trump knows that oftentimes perception is reality for people. The number of family members I have, friends in different parts of the country who are terrified to come to New York City because they think they're going to be shot, killed, stabbed, mugged, or something else, because of just our political discussion around it, what you're going to hear on cable news, that does break through and work. What I would like to hear a lot more of is the success stories, because it is true from local municipalities to some of our major cities, crime has been trending the right way for the last five years.
LATHAN: It's safe in New Orleans. I'm from Baton Rouge. I'm like, crime is down in Baton Rouge, crime is down in New Orleans. Like, this is something that is happening. But there are a lot of reasons why people don't want to --
PHILLIP: And six months ago, the Trump administration was saying that these blue cities were, you know, the worst places in America, when in fact, actually, now that we see the numbers, turns out that was not actually what was happening.
GRIFFIN: But how Dems talk about it matters. Like how you're talking about it makes a lot of sense. I do run into a lot with Democrats where they'll throw stats back at you, but if your local bodega just got shot up, that's going to matter more than what the statistic is in New York. So I think talking about what's actually happening works a lot better.
PHILLIP: All right, next, for us, Donald Trump's obsession with polls is no secret. But now he's got a new tactic. If he doesn't like the numbers, he says he's going to sue. Surprise, surprise. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:43:18]
PHILLIP: Donald Trump, he loves the polls when they're good for him. He hates the polls when they're bad for him. So now, instead of just complaining about them, he is suing, or at least he says he is. "The New York Times"-Siena poll shows nearly 60 percent of Americans disapprove of his performance, and half say that the country is worse off under Trump now. So it's worth noting that those results echo many other polls lately, asking Americans about how they felt about his first year back in office. And "The Times" calls the lawsuit an intimidation tactic.
We have actually, for those who are paying attention, we've seen this before. He tried to sue the Iowa pollster Ann Selzer over her poll. That was, I think, thrown out. But Trump, I don't know, does he want to sue or does he want to start adjusting to the political reality that he's dealing with?
TROVER: Well, I've been doing politics for 20 years. He's far from the first politician to when he gets a bad poll to not like it when you like --
(CROSS TALK)
TROVER: He is not an aberration here.
PHILLIP: They don't like the polls.
TROVER: This runs the spectrum, I will tell you.
I do believe most polls underestimate his support. That's been proven out mostly over time. Typically, his approval is a little higher than what polling shows. His current approval rating, the Real Clear Politics average, is around 42 percent. That's where it was when he got elected. I don't know whether this "New York Times" poll is bad, but apparently it will come out in discovery when they go to court.
(LAUGHTER)
ROGIN: But the issue, the issue is not the accuracy of the poll. It's the use of the power of the most -- and money of the most powerful person in the world to intimidate news organizations by putting their business at risk through lawfare, by abusing the court system --
TROVER: I don't think to --
ROGIN: -- to attack journalism. CBS was, and CBS paid the $16 million lawsuit.
[10:45:00]
And what happened? When they when they interviewed Trump last week, the White House press secretary said, you better air the whole thing or I'm going to sue your off, right? So paying the extortion --
PHILLIP: That gets lost in all --
ROGIN: -- only signs you up for more extortion.
PHILLIP: -- the craziness that's going on in the world.
ROGIN: Like, if you've ever seen the sopranos, you don't pay once. Once you start paying, you've got to keep paying. So it's a moral hazard. So poll accuracy aside, organizations that stand up like "The New York
Times" and fight tend to do better than the ones that roll over and pay the extortion.
LATHAN: I disagree with you about one thing. "Goodfellas" would have been a better example right there.
But shouldn't this not -- OK, everything you said, shouldn't this not be done?
TROVER: Shouldn't what not be done?
LATHAN: Well, shouldn't he not sue? Isn't this bad? This is the thing that I don't understand about the president.
(CROSS TALK)
LATHAN: It's like, we'll say something, and it'll be like, OK. He threatened to go in and take over Greenland. Well, we need Greenland. Well, shouldn't we not do that? Is that OK? Is it OK to be -- to say he probably shouldn't threaten a lawsuit when he doesn't like a poll? Isn't that bad.
TROVER: I'm not here to tell the president what he should and should not do. I mean, he does what he does.
(LAUGHTER)
ROGIN: You're proving his point.
GRIFFIN: But I also think.
ROGIN: We're here literally to give our opinions on policy. This is literally the gig.
TROVER: We have these discussions about the president. A year-and-a- half ago or less, you know, this American public knows exactly who he is and what his --
PHILLIP: Can I ask you a question?
TROVER: -- and what he does and put him back into office.
PHILLIP: Is it bad that Joe Biden didn't pay attention to the border?
TROVER: Is it bad that he didn't pay attention to the border? I mean, I wish he would have paid more attention.
PHILLIP: OK, so let me ask you his question again. Is it bad that Trump is threatening to sue a news organization because he doesn't like their polls?
TROVER: I mean, again, I don't -- that's not the same thing.
(CROSS TALK)
ROGIN: -- pointing out that you're not willing to criticize President Trump in any way.
TROVER: I said again, I don't think "The New York Times" is intimidated by this. The president free to do what he wants like any other American --
GRIFFIN: Well, in reality, we have to underscore, because we all know this being around politics, is the president also has his own internal pollsters who are actually quite good. And I would bank that they're showing him very similar numbers to what "The New York Times" is like. That would be a fascinating thing in discovery.
PHILLIP: I think they are showing him the parts of it that are good for him. I'm not sure that they're really being honest --
GRIFFIN: That's right. In the first term --
PHILLIP: -- about directionally what's happening here, and the scope, because it's I think the issue is actually not his approval rating, the top line, as you mentioned. It's actually what's happening inside the numbers, how people feel about the issues, about the economy, about immigration. That's the part that I don't think that they are really being -- they're not leveling with him.
GRIFFIN: And that's a good point, because I was in meetings in the first term in 2020 when his pollsters sat down with him and warned him about the headwinds he was against very directly to him, very honestly. And I even said after he lost, we shouldn't have been surprised. It basically modeled our internal polling of what we expected in the swing states.
I do agree that there's not a lot of evidence that in the second term, you've got someone there who is like, hey, sir, you're falling behind on every major issue that you ran on. But I do believe those numbers exist with his own pollster.
ROGIN: We have to entertain the possibility that he doesn't care.
PHILLIP: Well, that is true.
ROGIN: And he just wants to game the referees and say whatever facts he makes up in his head.
PHILLIP: That may very well be true.
Next for us, the panel's unpopular opinions, what they are not afraid to say out loud.
Tonight, comedian Andy Richter and influential media journalist Janice Min joined Roy Wood and the crew on "Have I Got News for You." It's at 9:00 p.m. on CNN and the next day on the CNN app.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:53:10]
PHILLIP: We're back, and it's time for your unpopular opinions. You each have 30 seconds to tell us yours. Josh, you're up.
ROGIN: Yes, I think this year's Super Bowl is going to be a real letdown, because last year, the Eagles had the greatest Super Bowl performance in super bowl history. You can't really top that. They're not in it. So I feel like we just have to remember that great Eagles Super Bowl victory, hold it in our hearts, and just understand that this year is just not going to be as good.
PHILLIP: Theres always Bad Bunny.
GRIFFIN: Exactly. Going a totally different direction, I am actually here for Timothee Chalamet talking about how badly he wants an Oscar. When I think of our -- I think of our president talks about wanting a Nobel Peace Prize, we should just we should just normalize saying what you want out loud. And while I fully acknowledge if a woman was as thirsty for it and was like my work was excellent, she'd be heavily criticized. I do kind of love that he's so proud of what he did and is OK to just say it with his full chest.
LATHAN: Well, you just --
GRIFFIN: And "Marty Supreme" was a good movie, so that helps.
LATHAN: You compared him to Trump, so he's not going to do it.
(LAUGHTER)
LATHAN: Ice cream is down. It's whack now. Ice cream sucks. There are too many flavors. There's like too much stuff going on. I was a kid, I was a kid. You had chocolate, vanilla, pistachio. Remember the ice cream that they would put all in the same thing.
PHILLIP: Isn't a rocky road?
LATHAN: Even that's too exotic for me. What they've done with ice cream now, I saw, like, a salmon flavored ICE cream.
PHILLIP: Oh, no, no, no.
LATHAN: All of it is too much.
PHILLIP: I saw protein ICE cream. That seems terrible.
LATHAN: It's whack. Ice cream is in a down phase right now.
TROVER: I saw the Eddie Murphy special on Netflix recently, and I been rewatching some of his movies. And I'm going to go out here and say, I think his best movie might be "Harlem Nights." Yes, I know.
(LAUGHTER)
LATHAN: Wait, wait, wait. You just trying to get in back with the community. That's a take that goes hard in south Baton Rouge.
TROVER: Redd Foxx, right? Arsenio Hall, Richard Pryor, right? It's kind of a handoff of the old school comedians to the new -- [10:55:00]
LATHAN: Robin Harris, Della Reese.
PHILLIP: I am here for this moment of unity. That was a good ending. Thank you, Lance.
And thank you all very much. 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. In the meantime, CNN's coverage continues right now.
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