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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Obama's Blunt Message to Black Men Sparks Fierce Debate; Book Says, Trump's Top General Calls Him A Fascist To The Core; Vance Refuses To Answer Host Five Times In An Interview; "NewsNight" Tackles Political Campaigns Of Democratic And Republican Parties. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired October 11, 2024 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, the weave --
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I thought you'd do a weave like Trump does.
PHILLIP: -- or the ramble?
TRUMP: 1798, this was put there, 1798, that's a long time ago, right?
PHILLIP: Donald Trump confuses Colorado, as one of his former generals brands the GOP nominee a fascist to his core.
Plus, not once, not twice, not thrice, J.D. Vance gets five chances to tell the truth and lies five times about who won the 2020 election.
And a lecture from the former president to black men.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: You just aren't feeling the idea of having a woman as president.
PHILLIP: Does he have a point or did he just insult the voters Kamala Harris needs to win?
Live at the table, a special conversation on Obama's message with Coleman Hughes. Solomon Jones, David Swerdlick and Michael Harriot, and then Leigh McGowan, Marc Lotter and Ben Mankiewicz.
With 24 days to go, Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening and happy Friday to you. I'm Abby Phillip in New York.
Let's get right to what America is talking about, Barack Obama's lecture. Tonight, a divide over if this rings true or if it sows division. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: You're thinking about sitting down or even supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you, because you think that's a sign of strength, because that's what being a man is, putting women down? That's not exciting. That's not -- this shouldn't even be a question. And you all know some of those brothers (ph).
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, we've now gone in this conversation from asking the question, does Harris have a problem with black voters or black men to, is Obama in the wrong here with how he's talking about black men in particular and singling them out in this way?
DAVID SWERDLICK, SENIOR STAFF EDITOR, NEW YORK TIMES OPINION: Yes. Let's start from here. He is still the greatest living retail politician. He's objectively a top 15 president, but even he can swing and miss sometimes. And here, he swung and missed.
Here's what he did. Harris has been very strategic about when and how she's spoken about gender and race. And he stepped on that. And when she hasn't spoken about it, he stepped on that message. And I think also with those comments, and there's more to this, but let me just start with this, is that he forgets, at least in that moment, that she doesn't get the benefit of being a historic first the way he did. She's a historic first woman, if she wins.
PHILLIP: Maybe that's part of the problem, that that's what he's saying. Why doesn't she get the benefit?
MICHAEL HARRIOT, COLUMNIST, THE GRIO: Well, first of all, we have to remember that this is a thing, like Barack Obama has a history of kind of chastising specifically black men. And like the question isn't whether what he said is relevant, right, because there are, you know, a few black men, like there are a few white men who are more conservative than black women and more white men are conservative than white women.
But the point is, does this work, right? And there's no evidence that is true or that it works. And he doesn't do that with -- like you've never heard him say, you know, why don't white women stop being racist and vote for me or Kamala Harris, or they don't talk to Hispanic voters or LGBTQ voters. It's only specifically black men that he takes this tact that doesn't work.
PHILLIP: Why do you think that is?
HARRIOT: Because you know why. Because the most -- the second most loyal, the most progressive group of men on the planet, they don't care about. They assume that they have their vote and they don't have to do anything for it.
And the point of this is that if you don't vote for Kamala Harris and you're a black man, something must be wrong with you.
[22:05:05]
That is the subtext of everything that they're saying.
SOLOMON JONES, AWARD-WINNING COLUMNIST, THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: Well, this is what I would say to this, because I was there when the NABJ interviewed Kamala Harris in Philadelphia. And what Kamala Harris said then was that you ask that question with the assumption that black men are in somebody's pocket. You can't make that assumption, black men are just like any other group. They had their interests and I'm working to get their vote. I don't expect to get it because I am black. I am working to get their vote. And that is what she said.
And so I think we have to focus on what she said about black men and I think we also have to focus on the fact that most black men are going to vote for Kamala Harris anyway. That is the reality. But I think that in talking to black people every day, which I do as a radio host, I've heard some black men say, I'm not voting for her because she is a woman. I have heard that. And I think that is reprehensible. I got to be honest.
PHILLIP: Okay. So, he's heard it. I mean, are we -- when I say, we, I mean the collective we as the country -- afraid to just talk about a thing? Is Obama saying --
HARRIOT: I think if you talk about it, but if you summon Barack Obama to fix a problem, you have to wonder if this fixes a problem. If I, and I am, interested in getting Kamala Harris elected, then I am upset because he hurt the thing, the strategy that she was employing to win.
JONES: Well, I think part of what has to happen, though, is that you have to have that conversation in private. There are some things you talk about in the barbershop when there's no cameras, right? There's some things that you talk about at home. There's some things that are family business. And I think the mistake that Barack Obama made was to take family business in the streets.
COLEMAN HUGHES, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Shaming voters is a terrible idea. It was bad when Hillary Clinton did it with deplorables. It was bad when Mitt Romney did it on the eve of the election. Even if there's a grain of truth to it and there's the occasional radio caller that's going to admit to that sentiment, let's actually look at the fact that Biden was struggling with black voters, and that was a topic of conversation over and over again. So, it's not about sexism.
PHILLIP: Let's take -- I mean, hold on one second. Let me take a look at this. Let's take a look at the numbers, because I think -- just to see what we're talking about here. There's been a progressive decline in overall support among black men, and to a lesser degree, black women for the Democratic nominee. Biden was doing better among black men than Harris appears to be right now, based on some of the better polling that looks at these demographics.
So, I guess the other part of this is, you're talking about keep the business private, you're saying he's messing up the strategy, but the numbers are the numbers, and he's trying to fix a numerical problem that she has, a math problem that she has. SWERDLICK: I agree with most of what you were saying, Solomon. I don't think the problem is that he spoke it out loud. I think the problem is that he singled out black men. In other words, there is a sexism component to this race. There was a sexism component to the Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump race, right? If Trump wins, he will have only ever beaten women. I can't give you a number, but sexism is in the mix here, but it's not black men specifically. I think it's men, not black men. And that I think is where part of where Obama went wrong.
HARRIOT: And I think we also have to look at numbers and actual statistics, right? Because all of those reliable polling has a small demographic of black men. You're talking about most of them poll at most 40, 50 black men, right?
PHILLIP: Well, I don't think in this particular case, just to be clear about what we were looking at there, the exit polls were from the actual elections that we had and then the Pew polling, Pew looks more closely at specific demographics, and they, and they do that in a way that we as a news organization deemed to be a reliable way of looking at this. Not every poll is reliable, but we think this one is.
HARRIOT: And when you remember now, we had the same conversation two years ago about Stacey Abrams. Why won't black men support Stacey Abrams? And after the election was over, we saw the numbers in black men in Georgia, where I live, supported Stacey Abrams at higher rates than they supported Biden. So, we have this narrative, and then you have the truth, and you have this conjecture and this anecdotal evidence.
PHILLIP: But the candidates are speaking with their actions. Kamala Harris next week is sitting down with Charlamagne Tha God to talk to black men. They're being explicit about it. Right, so let me play for you what happened on Charlamagne's show yesterday when they were talking about a call that they'd received from a black man in Florida. This was kind of in the context of the storms, but they played the call. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It don't matter what they is, Democrat, Republican, they all treason, man. They all about money, bro. None of these people care about American people, bro. This shit hurt, bro. This shit hurt, bro. People wake up every day just want to live they life, bro. And you got these (BLEEP) greedy snakes, man.
[22:10:01]
You got these (BLEEP) greedy snakes, call themselves government service people, bro. And they don't give a damn.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And the thing about that call was that, you know, they said it's kind of representative of what they hear often on that show, which is why she's going there. JONES: Well, I think that you have people who are angry. I think that you have people who are planted. I think that you have people who are sent to troll. I think that you have people who are sent with a specific message to deliver to black people. And you see it online. I hear it on the radio. I see it on social media. I see it on our Facebook feed as we're doing our show. And so I think some of that is real and I think some of it is manufactured. I think some of it is performative.
But I do think that there were black men at two ends of the spectrum. There's the old black man that's going to say, well, I'm not going to vote for a woman because the Bible says men should be in charge, right? There's that guy. But then there's the young black man who only gets his news from social media and nowhere else. And so he's not watching us. He's not listening. He's not reading me or Michael. He's not reading David. He's not doing any of that. His news comes from social media. And so he has a specific point of view and is likely to believe conspiracy theories.
The question is, do people who vote, are they on social media or are they on Social Security? I think they're on Social Security.
HARRIOT: I think that the problem is that no one's disputing that this government in this country doesn't treat -- that they treat black men okay or that we don't have a gripe with either party, right, because if you talk to black people privately, they will have to ride with the Democratic Party. The point is how do you fix it and why don't you approach that solution the same way you approach the solution with white people and white women who don't vote Democratic, the white men who don't vote Democrat, the Hispanics who don't vote. Why do you take the specific tact for one demographic and not the entire political strategy that you use for everyone else?
SWERDLICK: I think the answer is what you said a minute ago, which is that Democrats have to get out of the habit of taking the black vote for granted. Yes, Trump got 19 percent of black men, 12 percent of black people last time around, like it's going to be a bigger number this time. Adapt to that. Don't just assume.
HUGHES: I think we're also -- we're talking a lot about race, but in many ways, gender is the key variable here. Because even if you look at white people, the Republican Party has been getting a higher and higher share of the male vote. The parties have become more gendered overall. And it's true of Hispanics.
So, what we're seeing among black people is similar to the trends we're seeing among other races. So, that's the key question is why are the parties getting more gendered?
JONES: Well, I think the A.P. did a poll last month, in the middle of the month, and what they found was that the overwhelming majority of black voters, whether they are male or female, favor Kamala Harris over Donald Trump. They had a positive view of her. They had a negative view of him. And there wasn't much difference between men and women. So, I think that when we're talking about this, we're talking about people who are loud and wrong. I think that's what's happening is that we hear these voices. They're very loud. And we think that there are more of them than there are, and we'll see when the election happens.
PHILLIP: Is it also a part of the story here that, and we've heard this, that there's a frustration that every time Democrats talk to black men, they're always talking about criminal justice reform, they're talking about incarceration, they're talking about those types of issues and not economic issues?
Now, I should, I should be clear, it was also noted that Harris, when she goes on Charlamagne's show, is going to be talking about economic issues. But is that part of the problem just how Democrats talk to black men?
HARRIOT: I don't know very many instances for real that they talk specifically to black men, right?
PHILLIP: Just in general.
HARRIOT: Right. Like when they talk to black people, they highlight those issues, but they don't really talk to black men. They talk at black men.
And the issues that concern us, first of all, we have to realize that we're talking about a very small sliver of the electorate, when we're talking about black men who don't support the Democratic Party. It's a small sliver, right? And why not offer them the same? Like when we talk to white women, we're talking about reproductive rights. We're talking about healthcare. When have you ever heard a politician, for instance, talk about why is it prostate exams non-deductible. We talk about mammograms. We talk about reproductive rights. We talk about black women.
PHILLIP: Do you think that's the way forward? I mean, what are the issues?
HARRIOT: What I'm saying is the issues that affect black men, they don't address them specifically, right? They address either black people or people of color or non-white people, but never specifically black men.
[22:15:00]
PHILLIP: What about Harris' background as a former prosecutor? When she ran in the 2020 cycle in the primary, that was the talk, was that she couldn't be trusted by black men because of that history.
JONES: Yes, I think it was interesting. Because the first time I saw Kamala Harris, she was walking down a street in Philadelphia getting ready to do an event and a black man came to her and said, look, I don't think the criminal justice system is fair and I don't think it's going to be fair and I don't think you're going to change it. And she listened to him and she talked to him. She didn't convince him either way. But what impressed me was that she actually stood there and she listened to him as he was very critical.
And I think that's what it has to be about. I think that, you know, you talk about Democrats talking at black men, well, do Republicans talk to black men or do they talk at us, too? And so I think that the key is that you have someone who's willing to listen. And if you have that, you have a chance.
SWERDLICK: I think you're right, Republicans talk at black men too, but I think Republicans, in many instances, are talking at black men because they're actually talking to white voters, by the way, they talk to black men.
HUGHES: I think it's also possible the black men that are disaffecting from the Democratic Party don't want to be talked to as black men. Talk to me as a voter. Talk to me about the economy. Talk to -- they may be hemorrhaging for the same issues that white male voters are hemorrhaging about, right? We don't even consider that because we assume that they must be a race and gender category or bloc. That might not be the case anymore.
SWERDLICK: And that, to me, where Obama messed up. In other words, he would do better for Harris talking about the fact that when he was president black unemployment went down by about five percentage points, that he produced policies like the Affordable Care Act that are super popular with black voters, instead of saying, why aren't you voting for Kamala Harris?
HARRIOT: Well, it's important to note that Kamala Harris' campaign has been pretty good at targeting these specific demographics. It's just the people around her, in this specific case, Barack Obama, who kind of threw her whole, you know, strategy out the window, because you got to talk to the dude, like he want to chastise us when she hadn't been out there like yelling at the T.V., why you all ain't voting for me, right? It's just Barack Obama swooped in and did his thing, like he always does.
PHILLIP: And when he does it, people are going to listen. It is Barack Obama.
Solomon, David, thank you both very much for joining us tonight. Everyone else stick around.
Coming up next, a damning new remark from Donald Trump's top general who says that the former president is a fascist to the core. More special guests will join the table next.
Plus, Trump's running mate joins him in denying reality five times in a row.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Do you believe he lost the 2020 election?
Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?
I'm going to ask you again, did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, the worst LinkedIn review of a boss maybe ever, and that boss happens to be the president of the United States. The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, talked to Bob Woodward for the journalist's new book and he did not mince words. He said, quote, I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth. But now I realize he's a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country, a fascist to the core.
Leigh McGowan and Mark Lauder joined the table. That's strong even for Mark Milley. If you talk to him, he's a pretty fairly even-keeled person, especially when he's talking to reporters, but he's worried, and that is the context in which Donald Trump is running for re- election. It's not just him. It's a lot of other people who work for him.
MARC LOTTER, FORMER STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN: Yes. I mean, I think it's just a part of the Washington D.C. sickness that they think the American people want to be told what to do by them. The American people will decide who their commander-in- chief is. And as a four star general or as any other commissioned officer, your job is to salute and your job is to offer advice.
PHILLIP: Don't you think it matters what he thinks about Donald Trump's leadership? I mean, he has seen Trump as close up as you possibly could on national security issues, which is, I think a lot of people would argue, the most important thing.
LOTTER: Yes. But over and over again, I mean, you're, you're hearing his opinion, but we're ignoring the fact that he is the only president in this century that no new war started under, that every other one has.
PHILLIP: He's also talking about something different. I mean, one of the things he's talking about is Trump's pledge of retribution, and he's made it repeatedly. Just listen to what he's been saying.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And if you're president again, will you lock people up?
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Well, I'll give you an example. The answer is you have no choice because they're doing it best.
You know, I've been hitting him much differently than I have because I've always respected the office. And then when they indicted me for nothing, I said, now the gloves are off. They do this, they've already done it. But if they want to follow through on this yes, it could certainly happen in reverse. It could certainly happen in reverse.
When this election is over, based on what they've done, I would have every right to go after them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: In his own words.
LEIGH MCGOWAN, SOCIAL MEDIA HOST AND CONTENT CREATOR, POLITICSGIRL: Yes. I think we have to be really honest with ourselves. General Mark Milley is a professional. He knows exactly what he's saying. And as you said, it's not like he's particularly candid with the press. This is the guy that stood beside Donald Trump when Donald Trump was like, can't we just shoot the protesters? And he was like, no.
[22:25:00]
He's like, can't we just shoot them in the knees? And he was like, no. And they ended up putting tear gas on them and they went and did the Bible photo.
When we think about fascism, we have to remember that there are so many signs that are actually happening. There's weaponized nationalism. There's scapegoating of minority groups. There's mythology of a better time, back in the day when we were great. There was obviously the cult of the leader, there's the weaponization of the Justice Department, the cutting down of the free press, right? And now he's talking about locking up political enemies. He's talking about rounding up people and putting them in camps. These are all fascist behaviors.
And the sooner we stop pretending that that isn't a word that could come to America, the better off we are, because this is a real fear that people should have. And if someone like General Mark Milley tells us that this is a real thing, then we need to listen.
HUGHES: I take Mark Milley seriously. But I also take the other people that work for Trump seriously. And a lot of them would not be as dark on Trump. You know, someone like H.R. McMaster, I don't think, would say --
PHILLIP: I mean, a lot of them would be, Coleman. I mean --
HUGHES: H.R. McMaster wouldn't call -- I think he's a populist. He's a populist with some. Very troubling anti-Democratic tendencies, but he is not Hitler. He's not Mussolini.
MCGOWAN: He's talking about good genes and bad genes at this point.
HUGHES: If he were a fascist, he had the opportunity of a lifetime to show us that during COVID by declaring an emergency and doing whatever he wanted, and he didn't do that. MCGOWAN: That was when he was still surrounded by people like General Mark Milley. He was still surrounded by people who could hold back his worst interests. The second version of Trump will not have any of those people.
HUGHES: I think you're right. It's --
MCGOWAN: He will be absolutely surrounded by people that will say, sure, yes, let's shoot the protesters.
HARRIOT: I want to know, you know, what the solution is, right? Like so either he was the person who told us that he was going to have the best people in his cabinet and be surrounded by the best people, and now those best people are saying, yes, he's a fascist. So, was he hiring the wrong people and was not good at filling his cabinet or was he good at filling his cabinet and the people who were the best people think he's a fascist? It's got to be one or the other, right?
PHILLIP: I mean, it certainly --
LOTTER: Well, I would say, look at the results. You had a strong economy, low unemployment, a secured border, no world raging at war. All the failures you have today, you didn't have under Donald Trump.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Marc, we're talking about Trump's character. We're talking about Trump's character in large part, what kind of leader he is.
So, I understand the economic case for Trump and all of that, but on the question of did he hire good people who then after working with him determined that they did not believe that he had the character to be president of the United States or did he just mess up and hire a lot of bad people?
LOTTER: But is not a hypothetical. Donald Trump is not a hypothetical president. He was the president. You can go back and look at his record.
MCGOWAN: He was the president and 40 out of 45 of his cabinet members will not support him. His vice president will not support him. His generals will not support him. He was the president. He was terrible. They're saying we worked as close as we possibly could, and we won't hire him again.
Those of us in the regular world, those of us in regular America who didn't work right next to Donald Trump, we don't know, so we have to trust the people that worked as close as possible to him. And the people who worked as close as possible to him, 80, 90 percent of them are saying, do not hire this man again, he is a danger.
LOTTER: I get it. You've got nothing to run on except fear of Donald Trump.
MCGOWAN: I have lots of things to run on if I was a Democrat. It's not just about fear. It's about saying, this man is a danger. And the people who know him best say so. If you want to talk about what Kamala Harris is running on, that's a completely different conversation. But this man is an absolute danger. The people closest to him are saying, no.
LOTTER: There have been two assassination attempts against this man because of this irresponsible rhetoric about someone being a danger. Can we stop it?
HARRIOT: But he is a danger, Marc.
LOTTER: Can we stop this nonsense.
PHILLIP: Hold on, Michael, because I had a feeling that you would say that, because that comes up every time someone talks about Trump and what he has said he's going to do and what kind of president he might be. But here is Donald Trump just today talking about Kamala Harris.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: My message today is very simple. No person who has inflicted the violence and terror that Kamala Harris has inflicted on this community can ever be allowed to become the president of the United States. We're not going to let it out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Is that irresponsible rhetoric?
LOTTER: No, he's talking about a policy issue. He is talking about her failures,
PHILLIP: He's saying she has inflicted violence and terror.
LOTTER: He's at an immigration event talking about immigration. He's talking about her policies that have allowed all these violent gang members in.
PHILLIP: Okay. Here's another, here's another example. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It's a choice between communism and freedom.
This is communist, this is Marxist, this is fascist.
There's a radical left, Marxist, communist, fascist.
She's a Marxist, she's a fascist.
Comrade Kamala Harris.
Comrade Kamala Harris.
[22:30:00]
If Comrade Kamala Harris gets four more years, you will be living a full blown banana republic ruled by anarchy and a tyranny. They're scum. They're scum. And they want to take down our country. They are absolute garbage.
PHILLIP: What about that?
HUGHES: Both sides use absolutely extreme rhetoric. I would argue that is the bread and butter of a political campaign. And so, let's not play the game where we try to pretend.
MCGOWAN: I'm absolutely exhausted by this, both sides do this thing. This is insane. This is literally insane. You have Kamala Harris up there saying, we can move forward. We can do better. We can have a joyful future. And this guy's saying people are scum and human garbage and immigrants are slitting your throat and we're going to round up people and put them in camps and you're going, "both sides".
HARRIOT: Well, let's say that Coleman is right.
MCGOWAN: That's an impossibility for me.
HARRIOT: And then that both sides are bad, well, who breaks the tie? The people who worked closest with Donald Trump say, don't elect him president. And all of the people who've worked with Kamala Harris or for Kamala Harris are supporting her.
HUGHES: Well, I don't know if that's exactly true.
HARRIOT: So, the rhetoric doesn't concern me as much as what the people who know Donald Trump would say he will do and what we have seen that he has done.
HUGHES: Well, what I think--
HARRIOT: So, I don't care about the crazy thing Donald Trump said, because we kind of know that he is hyperbolic and kind of not smart. But the things that he has done, like that is the question that we are talking about. Not what people say about him, but what people know about him.
LOTTER: And I think, but this is where, and I think from 2015 all the way through today, that's the mistake that people in Washington, D.C., the Acela corridor, media, you name it. The people who count aren't the people who worked for him, aren't the people in Washington, D.C. It's the millions of Americans who will be the deciding vote.
HARRIOT: Well, you know Donald Trump has never won a popular vote in any election in the history.
LOTTER: They will be -- they will be-- that's not how we elect our presidents. But that is the deciding vote.
HARRIOTT: But you're talking about --
LOTTER: The American people have never --
MCGOWAN: No, technically the electoral college decides. LOTTER: A majority of the American people have never said Donald Trump
should be president.
MCGOWAN: If the people decided, then the people would say --
PHILLIP: I know Coleman had something to say.
HUGHES: I think that so often the rhetoric collapses into either he's a fascist or you think he's a greatest president since Abraham Lincoln. The truth is he's not a fascist. He's had plenty of time to prove that he has a fascist ideology. He doesn't.
But he's also very flawed. And this is why it's a legitimate point that so many people that worked for him don't want to see him as president again. And that's not something I think you can easily dismiss.
PHILLIP: All right. Everyone, hang tight for us. Coming up next. See how far J.D. Vance goes in a verbal gymnastics play to please Donald Trump. Plus, four days later, the Democratic ticket still can't seem to answer this pretty simple question.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNKNOWN: Do you think that Biden's done everything right?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:37:26]
PHILLIP: Okay, imagine for a moment that you're watching "Jeopardy". The category is pretty obvious. Obvious things for 200. The clue is Joe Biden won this in November 2020 with 306 electoral college votes. The answer is, what is the 2020 election? Simple, right? Pretty straightforward. Unless, of course, you are J.D. Vance.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, "THE INTERVIEW" HOST: Do you believe he lost the 2020 election?
SEN. J.D. VANCE (R) REPUBLICAN VICE-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I think that Donald Trump and I have both raised a number of issues with the 2020 election.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes or no? Okay. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?
VANCE: Let me ask you a question. Is it okay that big technology companies censored the Hunter Biden laptop story?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm going to ask you again. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?
VANCE: Did big technology companies censor a story that independent studies have suggested would have cost Trump millions of votes?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?
VANCE: And I've answered your question with another question.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: There is no proof, legal or otherwise, that Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election.
VANCE: You're repeating a slogan rather than engaging with what I'm saying.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Why? That's the question. Why?
HARRIOT: Well, so there's two sides of that, right? Because on one hand, it's kind of like asking everybody at this table, is your boss smart? Right? Like, while everybody's watching, like, you know the answer, but you're not going to say it, right? And on the other hand, right, it is a relevant question for a person who could be president to, you know, to affirm that elections work essentially, right? So--
MCGOWAN: It's a deeply relevant question because at this point, what are we doing? Like you said earlier in the show, Trump's running mate has decided to join him in denying reality. And I think that that's the case. It's like, at this point, we have to know if the vice- presidential candidate and the presidential candidate for the Republican Party will say or do anything.
He doesn't believe in the rule of law. He doesn't believe in the peaceful transfer of power. We're going to keep going on about this and we're going to live in sort of a -- alternate reality for all time. We can't do that as a country.
I mean, like you just said, he lost 60 lawsuits with this. He had a Fox News defamation case that paid almost $800 million. There was a special counsel investigation, a congressional inquiry, everyone -- every Republican from Bill Barr to Ivanka said that he knew he lost.
PHILLIP: To J.D. Vance?
MCGOWAN: Yes.
PHILLIP: Okay, so here's J.D. Vance on my birthday, November 2020. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: I mean, I think that when Biden is inaugurated, people will, you know, more or less accept it and it'll be on to the next fight.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:40:04]
PHILLIP: When? Not if. This was November 25th, 2020, long before January 6th, long before all of that. When Joe Biden is elected, he knows the answer to that question. Why not just say it?
LOTTER: It's a trap question. This is all about it.
PHILLIP: It's just a factual question.
LOTTER: No, it's not. It's all about getting the liberal little blog websites out there that are going to flood your Yahoo feed that says J.D. Vance says this, J.D. Vance -- whether he says yes or no, and I'm not, I'm not getting -- it doesn't matter how he answers that question. If he answers yes or no, it is a commercial for Kamala Harris. It's all over the blog --
PHILLIP: So, what?
LOTTER: -- and it's not what is moving the electorate.
PHILLIP: So, so, what --
LOTTER: He's talking about things that are moving the electorate.
PHILLIP: What is it-- what harm does it do to J.D. Vance if there's a headline that says J.D. Vance accepts the results of the 2020 election?
MCGOWAN: Trump is mad at him.
HUGHES: Yes, Trump is mad at him and he's disloyal to Trump, and disloyalty, I think, is -- would be punished not only by Trump, possibly his prospects in the Republican Party, at least in the near term. Now, it would be a ballsy move and I would respect him very much, but I'm not the audience he's trying to please.
PHILLIP: Don't you think, Coleman, that if Donald Trump really, we know he doesn't believe that he won the election because he's admitted it, but if he did really believe that he won the last election, A, wouldn't that call into question, cognitively, what's going on with him? And B, doesn't it call into question J.D. Vance, who does know the truth, but is going along with it?
HUGHES: I think he, absolutely, J.D. Vance knows the truth. If we gave him a truth serum right now, I think he would tell us Trump lost the election. He's deciding to lie in order to be loyal to his boss, which I think, as you pointed out, is a pretty familiar human nature trait.
PHILLIP: All right, speaking of loyalty, speaking of loyalty, let me play a little bit of, on the other side. Tim Walz was asked the same question Kamala Harris was asked about the Joe Biden presidency, and here is how he answered the question.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL STRAHAN, TELEVISION HOST: Do you think that Biden's done everything right?
GOV. TIM WALZ (D) VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Well, look, I don't know if any of us do everything right, but I can tell you he's done everything in the best interest of the American public. So, I mean, Harris was asked this question. She -- it took two tries for her to get to an answer. Is this about loyalty to Biden that they won't acknowledge? Okay, some things went wrong?
MCGOWAN: Well, here's the thing. If denying reality is the loyalty test to be Trump's running mate, then not dissing who his boss is working for right now would be Tim Walz's running mate. But I think those are two completely different questions. One is, did the election go to Joe Biden? That is a yes or no answer. And did this person do everything right? That is a nuanced answer that you couldn't possibly hope to answer.
PHILLIP: Isn't it also an opportunity, though?
HARRIOT: I think it is an opportunity.
MCGOWAN: They're both loyalty tests.
HARRIOT: But I also think we're comparing two different things.
MCGOWAN: Yes.
HARRIOT: Like we're comparing a guy who we know and he knows that this question is the test. It's the litmus test of whether you pledge your fealty to Donald Trump and therefore this idea of MAGA. And you are willing to subvert the reality of the country and the will of the country to please this man, which is why -- but going back to our last segment --
MCGOWAN: We are talking about --
HARRIOT: -- we have all those people who did walk in line during his presidency and then after they got out of office said, yes, he's a fascist. Right. I wish they would have told us that during the time but that's why they didn't.
LOTTER: It's the exact same trap question for J.D. as it is for Tim Walz. If Tim Walz says he messed up the border, okay, well, then he's saying Kamala messed up the border, Biden messed up the border. And the headlines, not in most of the media, but in conservative media, will all be about how about J.D. or Tim Walz admits Kamala messed up or Biden messed up the border or the economy.
HARRIOT: Only one of those candidates had their followers try to kill the vice president. That is a big difference.
LOTTER: I understand you want to keep talking about January 6th, but this is still the same question.
PHILLIP: I take your point that it's-- okay, it's tricky to navigate but his point is that the subject matter for J.D. Vance is actually, A, a knowable thing. It's very clear and obvious and it's a fact. And secondly, it's about a really core thing in this country, which is American democracy.
That does, in fact, matter. Everyone hang on for us coming up next, it was a conspiracy theory until it was true. The mystery behind the death of a prominent leader of the Black Panther Party.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:49:08]
PHILLIP: How do you rank the most significant political films of all time? Well, in some cases, filmmaking is not just about art. It is about life or death. And that is very much the case for the 1971 documentary "The Murder of Fred Hampton".
This is a film that tells the story of Hampton, who was killed in his apartment in December of 1969. And in what the Chicago police said was a raid gone wrong. They said that the Black Panther Party members shot first.
But then the filmmakers went to Hampton's apartment and filmed evidence that contradicted that story. Now, I spoke with TCM host Ben Mankiewicz about this documentary. He hosts the series "Making Change", the most significant political films of all time and he joins me now. Ben, great to see you. This is a tall order that you all set out to do.
[22:50:00]
How did you decide on which films made the cut? And how did you land on this one?
BEN MANKIEWICZ, "TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES" HOST: So, we culled the list from "The New Republic", surveyed a bunch of movie people. I was honored to be asked to vote myself. They said, name the 10 most significant political films ever made. In your mind, I gave them 17. They actually didn't even say 10. They just said name a bunch.
PHILLIP: Yes.
MANKIEWICZ: And then they pulled all those votes together and came up with this list. And you mentioned the word significant. Like they didn't say best. They wanted it to be the movies that were significant. So, I sent in my list. It was very exciting. I care deeply about politics. And then we started reaching out to people to pick on Steven Spielberg's idea, by the way.
He saw the list in the New Republic last summer, and he thought this would be a good piece for TCM. And we reached out to CNN, and we heard very quickly that you were interested. And I was going to ask you. I mean, you're the one. You had a lot of movies to choose from. And you came back right away with the murder of Fred Hampton.
PHILLIP: Well, it's timely, in a way. Because obviously, this is about police narratives and what you can believe and what you don't. But it's also about how this kind of, let's call it collusion between the FBI and the Chicago police and a false narrative wasn't a conspiracy at the time. It turned out to be true.
And I wonder if you think that there is anything about this film that can help us understand the origins of conspiracies about assassinations. There were so many of them in the 1960s. There are conspiracies right now about the assassination attempts against Donald Trump.
MANKIEWICZ: Yes, I mean, I certainly think it can. And by the way, the conversation that Abby and I had for TCM airs tonight at midnight Eastern. So, you can hear me and Abby talk about the movie. You can watch "The Murder of Fred Hampton" at midnight Eastern, at nine o'clock Pacific.
We have conversations before and after the movie. So, there's a lot to learn from this. You know, I worked, I was a journalist, you're a journalist. You know, the narrative that police give you on anything instantly becomes the dominant narrative involving a crime. There is no more powerful authority than having the police tell you how a circumstance, especially a violent crime, something that scares people, went down.
And people were scared of Fred Hampton, right? The powers that be in Chicago were afraid of him, even though, as you see in the documentary, this was a -- this was a gentle man who cared deeply about really important issues.
I also think it's really worth seeing because you'll never see another movie like this. I mean, they were making a movie about Fred Hampton, right? And the Black Panther Party. And then he was murdered in the middle of production.
And the filmmakers went to the crime scene the next day. And they're just there walking around because nobody roped it off because the cops thought, well, they're not going to be an investigation. We've already told you what happened.
PHILLIP: Ben, thank you very much for joining us. And for those of you at home, when you're done watching "NewsNight" tonight, you can watch our conversation on "The Murder of Fred Hampton." Ben Mankiewicz, thank you very much again. We'll be back in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:57:57]
PHILLIP: We're back and it's time for the "NewsNight" cap. You each have 30 seconds to say your piece. Coleman, you're up.
HUGHES: All right. So, the reason why people think progressive far- left activists are crazy is because they act crazy. Just today in London, there was trans activists that went to a conference and released hundreds of crickets into the audience at this LGB conference as a form of protest.
We've seen people throw tomato soup on Van Gogh as if Van Gogh is somehow responsible for rising sea levels. I think if far-left activists who care about these causes want to be taken seriously, they should stop acting so insane.
PHILLIP: I have to say the crickets seem kind of mild. But okay, go ahead.
MCGOWAN: All right, well, yesterday, Elon Musk unveiled his new Optimus robot at the WeRobot conference in Los Angeles. And if this was the Elon Musk of 10 years ago, the one that wanted to give away Tesla patents to make the planet a better place and, you know, do cities with battery power to make high-speed rails, then I would be excited about it.
But I no longer trust the human behind the humanoid. And I just feel like if he has made it with his values in his image, I think we should all be quite terrified of these things that are supposed to now babysit our children.
PHILLIP: All right. God. Okay, Michael.
HARRIOT: Look, I know this is going to shock you, but I'm tired of race baiting. I'm tired of identity politics. I'm tired of one party taking the voters for granted. So, that's why I think it's time for white people to get off the Republican plantation. I mean, just think about it.
The Republican Party is not a conservative party anymore. It's not a religious party anymore. It's not pro-life anymore. They love for you to die of COVID. They don't care about the death penalty. So, it's time since, you know, we lost our dear brother, Frankie Beverly, and you know what happened to Diddy. They're the only white party left. And it's time for them to realize that it's over.
PHILLIP: All right, Marc, go ahead.
LOTTER: So, hats off to the Coast Guard and they rescued a captain who was literally clinging to a cooler in the Gulf of Mexico, 30 miles off of Longboat Key.
[23:00:00]
He went out to fix his boat, got trapped. Boat sank. He literally held on to a cooler.
MCGOWAN: The boat sank.
LOTTER: The boat sank. He held on to a cooler overnight. And the only thing, my hot take is, thank goodness, Rose from "Titanic" wasn't with him, or he may not have been having that.
PHILLIP: He would have gotten kicked right off that cooler. Goodbye. All right, everyone. Thank you very much. Happy Friday to you. Thank you for watching "NewsNight State of the Race." "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
