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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Changes Tune on Promise to Lower Grocery Prices; U.S. Northeast on Edge Over Mysterious Drone Sightings; Politicians Frustrated by Inaction from Feds on Drones. Drones Seen But Their Origin Remains Unknown; Fetterman Meets Hegseth; WNBA Player Caitlin Clark Says Upsets Conservatives With A Statement On Having White Privilege. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired December 12, 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 VIDEO CLIP)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight the president elect turns a campaign promise on groceries --
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: the groceries and we're going to get it all down. It's going to be done.
PHILLIP: -- into a governing question mark, as Trump brings in a new bromance with Wall Street.
Plus, what is he up to? A Pennsylvania Democrat joins Truth Social and suddenly sounds like a Pennsylvania Republican.
Also, the truth is out there. Republicans press for answers about drones in the New Jersey sky --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Another drone.
PHILLIP: -- while pushing fear of a foreign plot.
And true or woke? Caitlin Clark invites conservative fury by saying she benefited from white privilege on the road to stardom.
Live at the table, Bakari Sellers, Jeff Bartos, Catherine Rampell and Scott Jennings.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening. I'm Abby Phillip in New York.
Let's get right to what America is talking about. What Donald Trump said then, and what he says now. Tonight, the president elect says that he can't control what you pay at the supermarket. Here is the exchange from a new interview with Time Magazine. Trump was asked this question. If prices of groceries don't come down, will your presidency be a failure? And here's how he responded. Quote, I don't think so. Look, they got them up. I'd like to bring them down. It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know it's very hard, but I think that they will.
Now, that is not nearly what he said on the campaign trail about the same issue.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We're going to get the energy down, we're going to get the food prices down.
But prices will come down, you just watch. They'll come down and they'll come down fast. Not only with insurance, with everything.
So, vote Trump and your incomes will soar, your net worth will skyrocket. Your energy costs and grocery prices will come tumbling down.
We will end inflation and make America affordable again. It's not affordable.
Prices will come down and come down dramatically and come down fast.
Bacon is through the roof. They're all through the roof, the milk, everything is bad. And we're going to straighten it out. We're going to bring prices way down. And we're going to get it done fast.
Together, we will deliver low taxes, low regulations, low energy costs, low interest rates, low inflation, so that everyone can afford groceries, a car, and a home, common sense.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: You can call it election hyperbole, but, Catherine, what he's saying now is probably a lot closer to the truth.
CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN ECONOMICS COMMENTATOR: Yes. As many of us have been saying for months, in fact, years, you cannot get the price level down unless you have something horrible happen, like a Great Depression, which is when the last time we had significant deflation.
I think this was relatively obvious that it was coming and it was bad faith throughout the entire election for Trump to claim otherwise there, there was no plan. There is no plan. There is not going to be a plan to get prices down.
Grocery price inflation, which is about the growth rate of prices, actually already is down a lot. It's only about 1.5 percent. But that's different from getting the price level down, you know, getting prices to go back to what they were like pre-pandemic.
And, you know, he just lied throughout the campaign and everybody who supported him and who was a surrogate for him was lying too that he was going to do this. So, I'm glad he finally admitted it.
PHILLIP: Diagnose the problem, but the solutions are obviously more complicated. And, you know, grocery prices, as Catherine was talking about, up 22 percent since Trump left office. That's a fact. It's bad. But he's now acknowledging that even now that he's going to be in the White House, those prices are probably not going to come down. He did not tell the American people that. And he falsely claimed that he could wave a magic wand and everything was just going to drop dramatically, people were going to be back in 2019 again.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, one of the things he focused on heavily in the campaign was energy. I do think he can bring energy prices down. I think there's a lot of executive branch and policy that he can implement and also work with the Congress to take the shackles off of American energy. That would bring prices down. And energy is a huge input to all kinds of things that we buy and all kinds of manufacturing that we do. So, I think that's one area where he can have a dramatic impact.
I just also have to say for everybody who's going to sit out here tonight and complain about the campaign rhetoric, it was the Democrats who denied that they had anything to do with inflation for four years and tried to tell everybody during the election that, hey, you're imagining things.
[22:05:08]
Prices aren't really high. This is all in your imagination. And the American people soundly rejected that.
I wouldn't mistake why Trump won the election. There was anger at Biden and Harris for their policies that caused inflation. And, of course, Trump is saying, I would like to bring prices down during the election. But the real anger in the electorate was and will remain with the administration that oversaw the huge inflation in the first place.
RAMPELL: Except that all of the things that Trump is promising now in his economic agenda will make inflation worse.
JENNINGS: Cheaper energy?
RAMPELL: First of all, oil production is at an all-time high. We are producing more oil per day in this country than any country has in history.
JENNINGS: I think energy producers would tell you the government has put a boot on its --
RAMPELL: Trump's own donors in the fossil fuel industry.
PHILLIP: Isn't she right about that, that we are producing more oil now than even when Trump was in office? That's a fact.
JENNINGS: It's about more than just oil production. There's all sorts of -- RAMPELL: We're also producing record high levels of natural gas. We're producing record high levels --
JENNINGS: I know your favorite past time is to come out here and talk over me, but just please --
RAMPELL: I care about the facts. I care about the facts.
JENNINGS: The reality is, if you talk to anybody --
BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: They know each other?
RAMPELL: He says things that are wrong.
PHILLIP: Hang on for a second.
JENNINGS: No, it's fine. Go ahead. No, look, I play this game every time we come out here. The legitimate answer is he's going to do stuff on energy. He's going to take regulatory shackles off of the energy producers. If you talk to anybody in the energy business who produces, refines, deals with pipelines, this administration, Democrats in Congress, have put shackles on what they do.
RAMPELL: Then why is record energy production on a record high?
JENNINGS: If you take the shackles off, the prices will go down.
RAMPELL: No.
PHILLIP: I guess what I'm wondering is why won't you answer the point that she's making, which is that if it's so bad, why is energy production high now, higher than it was under Trump? And on top of that is -- Trump was asked a very simple question. If you promise the American people that you'd bring prices down and then you fail to do that, is that not a problem? Is that something that the American people will judge him on?
JENNINGS: If he bring energy prices down and if he takes -- if he keeps -- if he extends the tax cuts and he generally implements an economic climate in which incomes can rise and certain things do come down, and he tells the American people the truth about what he's doing the entire time, I think, politically, it will be okay.
RAMPELL: We started at groceries.
JEFF BARTOS, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISER, PENNYSLVANIA: Yes, I was going to say, there are other things at play here, too, which is real wage growth under the first Trump administration was the best we'd seen in 50 years. And so he has a track record and he knows the playbook and he can play that again. Working families did better, even than higher income families did under the first Trump administration, and they will again under the second Trump administration. So, that's one.
And then when you zoom out, a trillion dollars worth of goods have been held up by the Houthis moving through the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal. That will stop about 12:01 on January 20th, that nonsense of the Houthis holding up global traffic. The president talked about it in that same statement, which I don't think your team cut the rest of it. He talked about the supply chain issues, and supply chain issues are a real issue.
RAMPELL: They're going to get worse.
SELLERS: All right. Can we level set just for a moment? All right, Donald Trump lied. That's first. And let's just articulate exactly --
RAMPELL: That is absolutely true.
SELLERS: Let me just clearly state what he lied about, just so we're on the same page here. All right, during the campaign, Donald Trump said that he was going to bring prices down. Today, he simply said, you know what, those prices, particularly grocery prices, are not going to come down. I don't know if you have children, but if you do, if your children tell you -- okay, they tell one thing on one day, and then they come back and tell you that's not what's going to happen, that is considered a lie. That's first.
The second thing is, just from a very, very 50,000-foot view, one of the things we know is Scott was actually 50 percent correct and that Democrats did not do a good job in telling our story. We did not do a good job of addressing the pain that Americans felt. We said that thing -- one of the mistakes we made throughout Biden's campaign was saying, or excuse me, Biden's presidency was saying that inflation was transitory. Like those things were not accurate because there are people who were out there feeling the pain of the price of eggs, feeling the pain of the price of whiting, like my dad at Piggly Wiggly, those things were real.
What Scott was not accurate about, which kind of happens around the table sometimes, although I know you want to be --
JENNINGS: Don't touch me.
SELLERS: I can't touch you?
PHILLIP: All right. Everyone, keep your hands to myself at the table.
SELLERS: All right. But one of the things Scott was not accurate about, there was a reason why we have inflation in the first place. This is not Joe Biden's policy.
JENNINGS: Yes it is.
SELLERS: This is -- it's actually,
BARTOS: Of course it is.
SELLERS: It's actually -- no, of course, it's not. Because, you know what, do you know what -- why did we put -- why did you -- but why did that happen? But why did that happen? So, let's be honest.
BARTOS: Because he was paying off the green lobby that helped put him in office.
[22:10:02]
SELLERS: No, the reason it happened is because --
RAMPELL: Can we talk about what --
SELLERS: The reason it happened is because we had a once in a hundred year pandemic. And you know what happened, though, across the globe?
BARTOS: Which we're coming out of.
SELLERS: You know what happened across the globe? You had inflation rise across the globe. You know who addressed that issue? Joe Biden addressed that issue. And you know who is the reason why we have the inflation that we have? And one of the things that Scott was again right about is Democrats didn't label it what it was. That's Trumpflation.
BARTOS: The Dems have been making this argument for 18 months, which is that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were the least bad of the bad world leaders. That was effectively their argument.
RAMPELL: Instead of re-litigating all of this, and actually I kind of disagree with everyone here, I think Biden's the bad stuff, but there were also a lot of other things that happened. I would love to talk about what Trump plans to do about this, and how not only will he fail at his promise at bringing grocery prices down, he will probably drive them up higher for a number of reasons. One of which is that he wants to deport most of our farm labor force.
Not only the people who are here who are without authorization, people who are undocumented, but actually we have a lot of workers here who are on visas, temporary, basically seasonal agricultural visas who are here legally, a visa program he wants to end. He wants to deport lots of people from other parts. processing system, people who work in the packing plants again, people who here legally and who are not here legally.
Beyond that, he wants to raise tariffs on the food that we bring in from other countries. We get 90 percent of our avocados from Mexico and something like two-thirds of our fresh tomatoes. These things will drive prices up, you know? So, it's not only a matter of, it's hard to get them back down, it's easy to get them up higher.
BARTOS: We had four years of President Trump and we had the best economy in our lifetimes.
RAMPELL: That's not true.
BARTOS: And we had four years of Joe Biden, we had a terrible economy.
SELLERS: No. Because we can go back -- look, you can go to George Bush 1, left a terrible economy. Bill Clinton fixed it. You can go to George Bush 2. What are we laughing about? I mean, everybody know -- this is not -- we you can talk about any economic indicator from job growth, to job creation, to wage growth.
BARTOS: Are we going to count the bounce back jobs?
SELLERS: But you can --
PHILLIP: Once again, I'm going to ask you to respond directly to the facts that she put on the table, which is explain to me how Trump -- a key pillar of Trump's economic policy are tariffs. Let's just start there. Explain to me that, how that helps average working people who are going to the grocery store and they want to know why the price of their avocados is doubling.
BARTOS: Well, of course, as, I mean, the president and his entire team have talked about during the campaign and since the transition started, these are all negotiating postures, right? Tariffs are an opportunity to say to Canada, to say to Mexico, to say to China, to say of all our partners in the E.U., you can't put a 100 percent tariff on our cars or we're going to start putting a tariff on your cars. Mexico, if you allow Chinese vehicles to come in under the USMCA, and you try to do that, we're going to put tariffs on your vehicles. Canada, if you don't shut your border down, we're going to put tariffs.
The president will sit and negotiate with all of these, as he did during his first term. There's a record here.
PHILLIP: He's also promised that tariffs are going to be a way to raise money to pay for things. So, it cannot be both. He's talked about across the board tariffs. He said that they would be used to pay for things. So, there are going to be tariffs.
BARTOS: Yes.
PHILLIP: It's not just going to be a negotiation. There are going to be tariffs.
JENNINGS: What's it worth to anybody to actually get these other countries, especially Mexico, to get their attention on immigration and drugs and everything else? What's it worth? For you, you're not willing to pay a quarter more for an avocado to fix this.
RAMPELL: We already have the cooperation of the Mexican government. You refuse to acknowledge it.
JENNINGS: After Trump made his threat, he called up real quick.
RAMPELL: No. A year ago, the Mexican government invested more --
BARTOS: I'm just going to say that that --
PHILLIP: All right, hold on one second.
RAMPELL: A year ago, the Mexican government deployed a lot more resources to their own southern border and have intercepted migrants on their way. Why are you shaking your head? This is the absolute truth. This is why -- JENNINGS: It's a mess.
RAMPELL: That's why border crossings are down 75 percent. They're about what they were when Trump was in office.
JENNINGS: It's a mess.
RAMPELL: I don't care if you say it's a mess.
BARTOS: How many people came in over the last four years?
RAMPELL: Mexico was cooperating.
PHILLIP: Let me just stop here.
RAMPELL: Punishing our own consumers is not going to help Mexico cooperate.
JENNINGS: Avocado toast, it's a huge problem. We have to fix this.
PHILLIP: Scott, I want us to address the facts that are on the table, right? Okay? So, first of all, your question is a good one. What is it to the American people to pay more to address the border issue? Why isn't Trump transparent about that? Why won't he tell the American people, you know what, we want to address the immigration issue, so deportations are going to cost you more, tariffs are going to cost you more? Why isn't he transparent about that?
JENNINGS: Good question. I think there's a legitimate dispute about the dystopian fan fiction about, you know, what the havoc that deportations is going to cause. I don't remember a massive spike in grocery prices during the Obama administration when they sent, what, 5-plus million people out of the country.
SELLERS: That's not what they're talking about with this, Scott.
[22:15:00]
JENNINGS: And so I think it's a lot of fear mongering, to be candid with you.
PHILLIP: If Trump deports what Obama deported, he would be failing by his own metric.
SELLERS: Correct. That's not what he's saying.
JENNINGS: No. But the argument today is that if he does any kind of deportations, even the 1.6 millino people who already deportation orders --
RAMPELL: No, that's not the argument.
JENNINGS: -- they're just like, oh my God --
SELLERS: That's not the argument. The argument that I have is that, okay, if you want to deport individuals who committed a crime, I don't think you're going to have anybody who raises a hand and say, you should --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Let's all talk one at a time.
SELLERS: So, just one second here, okay? So, that actually is sound policy. But when you talk about people, like Tom Homan, saying we're going to keep families together by not only deporting those individuals who are of legal status, but those individuals who are of illegal status as well so we can keep a family together, you're talking about deporting not just 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 million people. They're talking about deporting dozens of millions of individuals from this country. That has a drastic impact on our labor force. And if you don't acknowledge that then your head is in the sand.
RAMPELL: And if you look at what Trump did in his first term, he did the opposite of prioritizing the criminals. I don't know why this has been sort of memory hold. If you look at his actual record, he got rid of Biden's executive order directing ICE to prioritize criminals. And as a result, Trump released more criminals, more convicted criminals into the interior of the United States because he was busy filling up his prisons, his jails, his ICE detention centers, with asylum seekers.
That's what we're talking about here. When you de-prioritize the criminals, that means you're prioritizing everyone else.
JENNINGS: They're going to prioritize the people that have deportation orders.
RAMPELL: They didn't last time.
JENNINGS: They're going to prioritize the criminals. And I think the message is pretty clear. If you've come here and broken our laws and you're wreaking havoc on communities, you're gone.
SELLERS: That's not everybody. That's not it though.
PHILLIP: So, explain to me how you get to the rest of it, because those individuals that you're talking about doesn't get you anywhere close to what Trump has said he would do in terms of deportations, not close. So, where's the rest of --
JENNINGS: Well, I think that's where you start and I don't know how long it will take to do that, but I think the American people would judge that to be a great place to start and a good goal to have right out of the gate.
PHILLIP: I guess what I'm saying, Scott, I'm not actually -- look, I think Trump ran on what he ran on. But I think the question, we started this conversation about honesty or lack thereof. If Trump had told the American people what he told them today, that would have been honest and true. If he tells the American people, you're going to have to pay more for your avocados, you're going to have to pay more for whatever, because --
RAMPELL: Everything you buy at Walmart.
PHILLIP: Everything you buy at Walmart, because deportations are important and because negotiating and forcing these other countries to be right on trade is important, that would be a different conversation. But that's not what he is saying.
BARTOS: And real wage growth. Let's not forget real wage growth.
PHILLIP: But, Jeff, that is not what he is saying. He is not being honest --
BARTOS: But wages have grown more.
PHILLIP: That prices might -- because of his policies, prices might go up.
SELLERS: But wages have grown more in Biden than they did under Trump. But they have grown more, Abby, because he keeps throwing these --
JENNINGS: Wages are up 22 percent.
PHILLIP: Hold on, Scott.
SELLERS: Wages are actually up more under Joe Biden than they were under Donald Trump.
BARTOS: Real wages. Not wages as measured with inflation, right? You have to exceed inflation, otherwise you can't keep up. Wages are up 15 percent and inflation's up 22 percent.
SELLERS: I completely understand the economics of it. But is the answer to the question yes or no? Are wages up more than they were under Donald Trump?
BARTOS: I'm looking at real wages, which is what all that matters to families. I'm not an economist. I know Catherine is, I'm not an economist, but I'm looking at real wages.
JENNINGS: This -- I think --
SELLERS: The answer was yes.
JENNINGS: I think Democrats are underestimating the anger about the immigration system, the anger about the border, the crisis that it is, and what Americans are willing to do to fix it. And I think there may actually be some elasticity in the American people on accepting certain short-term issues here, economic issues, if it means this can be solved.
PHILLIP: You know what? Might be right about that. But, you know who I don't think agrees with you? Donald Trump. Otherwise he would tell the American people the truth. And he hasn't done it.
SELLERS: I actually don't think Scott is right about that because I think that the American public literally voted because 75 percent of them thought their lives, particularly their pocketbooks were better off four years ago than they were today. This wasn't an indictment on Donald Trump. This wasn't, excuse me, an indictment on Kamala Harris. This was simply saying that our economic situation was better then than it is now. And their memory hold may be the best word.
JENNINGS: She was in office. So, wasn't it an indictment of Harris and their policies?
SELLERS: We can talk about campaign tactics and strategies.
JENNINGS: People compared two presidencies, they picked one they liked better.
PHILLIP: We got to go.
SELLERS: Or maybe they forgot.
PHILLIP: We got much more ahead. Everyone, stick around for me.
Coming up next, why can't the U.S. figure out who is behind these mysterious drones that are apparently scaring a lot of Americans in New Jersey? There is anger tonight at the federal government about it. We have a special guest joining us in our fifth seat for that.
Plus, conservatives are angry at Caitlin Clark for citing her white privilege. Now, the basketball star is hitting back. We'll debate that.
[22:20:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Tonight, what's happening in New Jersey isn't staying in New Jersey. It's just freaking a lot of people out. People have been looking up and reporting sightings of an unusually high number of drones in the skies. Some have been over critical infrastructure. Others have been near military installations.
Lawmakers don't have a good explanation for what's going on. Some of them have no explanations at all. But the White House says it's nothing to be worried about.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KIRBY, WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL SECURITY COMMUNICATIONS ADVISER: We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or a public safety threat or have a foreign nexus.
[22:25:03]
We have not been able to, and neither have state or local law enforcement authorities, corroborate any of the reported visual sightings.
To the contrary, upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: John Miller joins us in our fifth seat at the table. He's CNN's Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst. John, I've got a lot of questions for you.
JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Hit me.
PHILLIP: Let me start with, let me just start with the basics here. This has been going on for a while. And you just heard John Kirby there say they have not been able to corroborate any of the reported sightings. How is that possible?
MILLER: Well, I don't know how that's possible because, you know, there are credible, sane people and videos of things that are hovering in the sky, which wouldn't be manned aircraft or, you know, small planes. They can't stop and stay. You've got the New Jersey State Police, who had two of their helicopters literally stake out the offshore place where they thought they might be coming in from over the water. They've chased two of them and said, you know, they turned off their lights, they went low, and they basically disappeared into the darkness.
So, the idea that, and let me just also say for the record, you know, they had 110 mayors in New Jersey, they had a briefing for them yesterday where they went over what they know, which was little, and what they don't know, which was a lot. But all of these mayors have people at home in their towns who have been seeing this, videotaping it, reporting it, calling the police, and they're a little bit put off by the federal posture that there's nothing to see here and people are probably wrong.
PHILLIP: How is it that they can then say that it's not a threat?
MILLER: Well, so that's interesting. Now, John Kirby never lies, but what he said is -- and I listened to him many times carefully, he said, we have no evidence that they're a threat to national security or that they are a threat to public safety, and we can't corroborate. Now, that means that they have no evidence that they're not, because when you press them on, well, what is it all, they're like, we don't know.
So, I think some of this is politicians being politicians, which is to try and calm the, you know, War of the World's, you know, Orson Welles, drones attacking New Jersey.
RAMPELL: Which took place in New Jersey.
MILLER: Which did. So, you know, we're in the right storyline. I think some of this is just to tamp this down, because, I think, and this is a political judgment, you remember when we had these slow- moving Chinese balloon floating ever so slowly across the United States at a very high altitude, you know, it immediately became political, and there was lots of calls, we need to shoot it down, we need to do this, we needed to do that. So, I think they're trying to keep the pressure at bay.
PHILLIP: Okay. Well, that's fine. I think we're going from point A to point B pretty quickly. There are people saying that this is Iran, this is China, et cetera. There's also no evidence of that either.
JENNINGS: Yes. I don't know. I'm very confused by this. I mean, if you pick up your phone right now and you type drones into X, there's all -- as John said, there's all kinds of very credible people and regular people posting videos of things they're seeing in the sky over their house right now. And I just -- to easily dismiss it, I think, is -- maybe they're trying to tamp it down, but there has to be some acknowledgement that people are seeing something.
PHILLIP: I mean, I don't know if they're acknowledging that, which is --
SELLERS: But to the same point, if you type drones into X, you'll also see people with blue checks saying that it is, you know, Bashar al-Assad is actually riding a drone over here finding asylum, and it's Iran or China or whatever. And so there's a lot of misinformation.
PHILLIP: Let me -- okay, let me just play one thing, because I just -- to your point. All right, so, this is Congressman Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, I guess, I'll call it speculation, speculating about what this is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JEFF VAN DREW (R-NJ): Iran launched a mothership probably about a month ago that contains these drones. That mothership is off -- I'm going to tell you the deal. It's off the East Coast of the United States of America.
These drones should be shot down.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BARTOS: There was something interesting on that chyron there, right? You just see it said the governor was a no show for the briefing. The governor of New Jersey was on the chyron there when Congressman Van Drew was speaking.
I think it would go a long way. Americans are concerned that the president has more or less been absent since July 21st with occasional appearances and pardons and falling asleep and stuff and travel. He needs to speak. The governor of New Jersey should speak. And they should quiet people's concerns. I think that the best way to deal with this is by the leaders coming out and speaking.
PHILLIP: And if he does that, will it matter? Because it sounds like this has already become partisan, Republicans have already decided that Iran is behind it.
[22:30:00]
JENNINGS: I don't think that's true. PHILLIP: I mean, I'm wondering.
JENNINGS: I don't think it's partisan. People just want to know.
PHILLIP: The legit question I'm asking is, if President Biden were to come out and say, we don't know what these things are. Do you really think that that is going to calm the speculation?
JEFF BARTOS, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISER, PENNSYLVANIA: I think if the president came out and said that and then kept people informed, you know, they could do briefings on it. They could put information out on X like they did with his I'm not running again letter. However, they want to communicate it would mean more to see president speaking than Admiral Kirby.
PHILLIP: Is there an Iranian mothership off the coast the east coast fly drones?
JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: I'd doubt that but let's -- let's play the game we're going to -- we're going to go through the suspects, right? So, Russia -- their drones are tied up right now. They're fighting a pitched war and they're losing all their drones and they're buying them as fast as they can.
From where? From Iran, which is now on a back foot that is tied up with Israel and strikes on their radar defenses, and drones are maybe all they have left that they can fly towards them. So, they're busy, which then brings us to China.
Now, my experience in the intelligence community was that China was foot forward on collection of intelligence, especially defense intelligence, especially on the U.S. soil, that they were clangy, you know, they were noisy, you could hear them coming, but they were relentless.
Yesterday, they unsealed charges against a Chinese national in Santa Barbara County for flying a drone over the Brandenburg Space Force base, collecting intelligence and brought federal charges he's being held.
So, when you look at that in context, could it be China? Which then gets us -- it's heading back to the mothership, which is if it is China you can operate them from China but they have to fuel, charge, store, stay somewhere. So, you know, if it's not the mothership, is there a secret intelligence warehouse in Passaic, New Jersey that we haven't uncovered?
JENNINGS: I mean, do we not have like a whole --
PHILLIP: I'm not -- I'm not laughing at the possibility. I just think --
JENNINGS: Do we not have like a whole branch of the military that couldn't fly around over there and shoot some of these things down? Let's find out.
PHILLIP: Well, I think --
MILLER: It was called the SEC.
BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: And they're not flying around down south
MILLER: We got to get -- we got to get back to it is not illegal to fly a drone at night in New Jersey.
PHILLIP: Exactly.
MILLER: And if you shoot them down, it's going to land on somebody. So, it's complicated.
PHILLIP: Yes, it is complicated.
JENNINGS: My advice is --
SELLERS: And they're big, too, right?
MILLER: And they're big.
PHILLIP: I also think, I mean and we should, you know, give at least some credence to what's being said in the statement which John Kirby read, there are some of these things that are being cited that people think are drones that are not drones. We know that to be true.
MILLER: Yes, yes.
PHILLIP: People see things in the sky. They think that they are something and that they're not.
MILLER: But can everybody be wrong?
PHILLIP: We don't know what they are and hopefully, we will find out. John Miller, thank you very much for joining us. Everyone else, stick with me. Coming up next, here's a question that some Democrats are asking tonight. What is going on with Senator John Fetterman? And why is he sounding a little bit like a Republican? We'll discuss.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:37:23]
PHILLIP: Tonight, John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania senator whose specialty was triggering conservatives, is now doing a bunch of things that are getting applause lines from MAGA conservatives, saying he's a hard yes for Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik as ambassador to the U.N. , saying he's very open to supporting Trump's cabinet picks, posting on Truth Social that he wants Donald Trump to get a pardon and becoming the first Democrat to meet with Donald Trump's controversial pick to head up the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PENNSYLVANIA): We agreed that the Steelers were going to win. We had a conversation. And that's part of the process. And that's the thing. I'm going to follow the process. I'm going to listen to what my colleagues on the other side continue to say and how they evaluate. And that's just part of the process.
UNKNOWN: Are you considering voting for it?
FETTERMAN: So, it's just like it's a conversation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, you know, let's give him points for bipartisanship. It just doesn't happen that often. But I also know he knows how to read an electoral map.
BARTOS: Yes, he knows the state.
PHILLIP: Yes.
BARTOS: So, yes, John and I competed against each other in 2018. And we've been friends for, I guess, what, almost seven years now. I think it really boils down to common sense and moral clarity. Since October 7th, he's been a voice of moral clarity on supporting the U.S.'s relationship and combating anti-Semitism.
And it's just common sense. Not only he represents the biggest swing state in the nation, Donald Trump just carried that state. John knows Pennsylvania really, really well. I can tell you I competed against him. He did a good job. He knows the state. He knows the voters. And I think I would disagree with him hard, by the way, that the Eagles are going to win this week, not the Steelers.
But I think he's showing what the Senate used to be. And Scott knows this very well from your time working with Mitch McConnell. Like before Harry Reid blew up the filibuster, the Senate was designed to be a place where people came together and solved big problems and maybe --
PHILLIP: - I'm not sure that was the beginning of the Senate's problems.
BARTOS: Maybe --
SELLERS: think, first of all, he's one of the greatest Senate leaders we've ever had.
JENNINGS: I agree. Republicans agree.
SELLERS: We'll take it. But one of the things I will say is that he's part of the Democratic coalition. And one of the things that drives me nuts is when you have these purists who want to be Democrats and simply say that this person is canceled because of X, Y, and Z.
I wish more Democrats had the fight of John Fetterman because at least he understands media, he understands platforms and we're not going to agree on everything. And John Fetterman -- but that's really not what it should be, right? But the purity test that we have in the Democratic Party, John Fetterman is the antithesis to that.
[22:40:00]
And I think that -- I think that he actually is helping the brand out. And I don't mind him, I mean, look, I don't think he should vote for Pete Hegseth but I don't mind him meeting -- I mean, that's a part of advice and consent. And before you get to that point, before you get to an answer, you should actually -- I'm opining from my seat here in New York. He's a member of the United States Senate. He should meet with him. And so, I don't have any issues with him.
PHILLIP: He also had a note to his colleagues, which is to say, don't freak out about everything that Donald Trump does. And that also might be good advice.
CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN ECONOMICS COMMENTATOR: Yes, I think it's important to have priorities and to care about, you know, what policy decisions Trump is making or Trump's eventual appointees are making that have actual impacts on people and not to get all bent out of sorts about every Truth Social post or what have you.
JENNINGS: I've admired him very much. I didn't expect much out of him honestly, but his stance particularly on Israel, he withstands a lot of pressure on that and he has been absolutely a rock and full of moral clarity on why we should stand with Israel. I've admired him very much.
PHILLIP: All right everyone, we do have to go here. Coming up next, women's basketball star Caitlin Clark is facing conservative backlash. It comes after she says that she has benefited from white privilege. We have another special guest joining us in our fifth seat to discuss that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:45:43]
PHILLIP: Tonight, a completely predictable plot line. Conservatives are upset with an athlete for saying something that they don't like. Caitlin Clark, she is "Times" Athlete of the Year and she told the magazine that she benefited from white privilege on her way to fame in the WNBA. That's a league where most players are black.
Podcaster Megyn Kelly, heard that and lost it. She said, quote, "She's on the knee, all but apologizing for being white and getting attention. Kelly wrote on X, "The self-flagellation, the oh, please, pay attention to black players who are really the ones you want to celebrate. Condescending, fake, transparent, sad." Clark responded to those comments today. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CAITLIN CLARK, WNBA PLAYER: I know there's been so many amazing black women that have been in this league and continuing to uplift them I think is very important and that's something I'm very aware of. And like I said, I try to just be real and authentic and, you know, share my truth and I think that's very easy for me. Like, I'm very comfortable in my own skin and that's kind of been how it is my entire life.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Joining us at the table is CNN contributor Cari Champion. She is the host of "The Cari Champion Show" on Prime Video. She might also be our Caitlin Clark correspondent.
CARI CHAMPION, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, yes, I think so.
PHILLIP: I'm going to get to Scott Jennings' sigh in just a moment.
CHAMPION: Yes.
PHILLIP: But Cari, you know, what I don't understand about this, Caitlin Clark never asked to be this avatar of race, right? And basically, that is what she is saying, I didn't ask for this. Why are you making me this person and now, people are mad about that?
CHAMPION: Yes and you know, it's really interesting because since she came into the league, we have to talk about the attention that she has received. She's a phenomenal player. I've never seen anybody shoot the ball the way she shoots the ball in the WNBA. I'm just being honest. She, early on, in her collegiate career reminded me of Steph Curry and that's where all this attention came from.
But before she entered a league that started in 1997, there were the Lisa Leslie's and the Don Staley's and the Cheryl Swoops of it all who really built this league and they weren't getting the attention because, let's face it, the league was built in a way in which it wasn't mainstream. And all she's simply saying is that I want to respect those who come before me.
Now, conservatives do one of two things that I am so fascinated with, especially when it comes to her. Either they whine or they bully. So, now, it's time to do both. They're bullying her when she decides to just like a post about Taylor Swift's post about Taylor Swift endorsing Kamala Harris. They, they, like saying go vote. And then they unfollow her in droves.
And then she says, you know what, I am so grateful for all this money I make. I'm making more money. than most of these women will ever see in their lifetime because I am a great player, but I'm also someone that they are using as their message person, that they are using me as a conduit to get their message out.
And she says, no, I don't want any of that. I'm grateful. And hopefully I can shine some attention on Bakari because no one's paying attention to Bakari. And so, I'm going to give Bakari some attention because you know what? Thank you for keeping this league alive, Bakari. Everything that you've done has really got to the point where I can be here and benefit in this moment.
And Megyn Kelly, since she's on a knee apologizing because she's white, she's acknowledging the reverse DEI that no one wants to talk about. She has a privilege. She has been in this league for so, what, a year? And she makes more money than the people who built this league? And she understands there's a reason, not because she shoots the ball well.
Yes, that also helps. But there's another reason, Scott. There's a reason that says, I'm white and it's a privilege and people love me. And I'm okay with that. But I want to also acknowledge everyone else. Why is she being bullied?
PHILLIP: Why is that wrong?
CHAMPION: Why is she being bullied for acknowledging something that's smart, truth and factual?
JENNINGS: Well, a couple things. Number one, you know, whether you're an athlete or anyone else, if I hear you use the phrase my truth, I immediately then discount everything else you say. Because there isn't my truth or your truth, there's just the truth. And when you start using phrases like that, it tells me that --
CHAMPION: That's not true.
JENNINGS: -- your brain has been captured by something that I don't really respect.
CHAMPION: That's not true.
JENNINGS: Number two.
CHAMPION: That's not true.
JENNINGS: Number two, the attention the league got this year was amazing and it was all because of her. She is an amazing player. The arenas were full when she played in them. The TV ratings were up when she was on television. That's undeniable. But you know the league still lost like $40 million this year.
[22:50:01]
CHAMPION: Sure.
JENNINGS: And it's never made money. And to me, when you're talking about having -- respecting people who built some -- what do they build? A league that loses money every year? She has the capacity to be possibly --
CHAMPION: What do you mean what did they build? What did they build?
JENNINGS: What kind of a business that they build?
CHAMPION: They have a business model that has allowed women who have never had a professional sport here in America -- in the United States of America to play. They kept it alive. That's what she's built.
SELLERS: This is the problem with the conversation about race in this country that we've never tackled because it's two things fundamentally wrong with what Scott said. The first is, when you say things like my truth, right, and you just tune that out. My truth is just vastly different than yours. It's not just the truth.
In fact, one of the things I would like to just help you understand is that the definition of white supremacy, do you know what the definition of white supremacy is? It's when you feel like equality is oppression.
CHAMPION: Correct.
SELLERS: And for some reason, for some reason, it gets so entangled because people just simply want equality and you feel like that's taking away something from you. I'm not there saying that anybody at the table is a white supremacist, but what I am trying to do is at least educate you on what the truth is.
And so, we both come from different -- we want the same America for our children, but we come from different places. We don't necessarily want equality, some of us just want equity, right? And all I'm saying about Caitlin Clark is --
JENNINGS: That's a different statement.
SELLERS: All I'm saying about -- all I'm saying about -- it's not a different statement. all I'm saying about Caitlin Clark, all I'm saying about Caitlin Clark is this. I have a bias against Caitlin Clark, innately.
CHAMPION: Yes, you have said it.
SELLERS: Just enabling. And I wanted to be extremely clear because I'm a South Carolina Gamecocks fan and she took away one championship. But I also recognize that Caitlin Clark knows something that this is the second point. The first point was my truth. The second point is, Scott, you cannot denigrate.
You cannot simply say that Don Staley and Lisa Leslie and Charles Swoops and all these women who do something insanely better than all of us at this table did not build anything that you can't respect. Yet the league wasn't built in a way that would make money. That's not what it is.
CHAMPION: That's not what it was for.
SELLERS: But these ladies gave their all, the suburbs of the world. I mean, we don't even talk about the-
CHAMPION: You can go down the list.
SELLERS: You can go down the list. And so, that's my only point,
CHAMPION: But I just -- OK --
SELLERS: -- and hoping that you're able to understand that.
CHAMPION: But, Scott, you're saying -- JENNINGS: They're great basketball players.
CHAMPION: OK, but Scott, you're saying --
CHAMPION: But Scott, it's disrespectful for you to say, what have they built? There are little children right now, little girls at home, hoping that they can play in what they call the WNBA. And the reason why it's still up and still running, whether it's losing money or not, is because of these black women who are in this. And so, no, stop it.
JENNINGS: Who pays for it?
PHILLIP: Guys, one at a time please.
SELLERS: I was in Dickie's arena on Sunday because I travel, follow my Gamecocks basketball. Something fascinating happened.
CHAMPION: Tell us.
SELLERS: Dickie's arena -- TCU, right? Haley Van Lyft, they averaged two, 3000 people a game.
CHAMPION: Yes.
SELLERS: the gamecocks came to town with Don Staley. We had 9000 people in Dickie's arena and you know who benefits from that? The concession workers. The city ex-center. After the game, hundreds of people around there just to shake Dawn Staley's hand.
What you have to understand and we have to get out of this is there's a level of empathy that we have to have, an understanding that we have to have and we have to just stop being so abrasive, caught in these social media moments when we're talking about issues --
PHILLIP: Yes. This is exactly what I was about to say, which is that, listen, Jeff and Scott, my dear colleagues, you don't have to defend this.
CHAMPION: You don't.
PHILLIP: OK?
CHAMPION: You could just say it's good.
PHILLIP: It doesn't have to be --
JENNINGS: Defend what?
PHILLIP: You know, the idea that Caitlin Clark should be denigrated for simply saying that she entered a league that other players who came before her were Black helped build. There's nothing controversial about that and it doesn't need to be --
RAMPELL: It feels so bland. It's like bland and gracious.
PHILLIP: Why are people attacking her for that? I don't understand. RAMPELL: I don't know. I feel like it says more about the people who
are getting offended by it than her.
JENNINGS: I think they're just disappointed that she appears to have been captured by the wolf mob.
RAMPELL: -- by being gracious and saying --
PHILLIP: You don't -- you don't like the way -- hold on a second.
UNKNOWN: It's the white privilege.
PHILLIP: Hold on one second.
SELLERS: Let him articulate this because I want to hear. I want to learn something.
JENNINGS: I feel, I feel a little bad for her because she's going to learn that it will never be enough. No matter how much of the phrasing, no matter how much of the groveling you do, it will never be enough for the people in that league that hate her guts.
PHILLIP: Why do you assume that she is trying to pander? Isn't it also --
JENNINGS: Because I hear the language. It's the language of the pandering.
PHILLIP: Scott, listen. Let's get off the internet for one second. Everybody, right? This is not a conversation about wokeness, about my truth about all that stuff, OK? I know that these are buzzwords on the internet. This is a young woman who says -- who was working in a league where she has colleagues. She said something about her place in that league. Why do you think automatically that it can't possibly be genuine? I don't understand.
CHAMPION: So, it's the equivalent of me saying, you know why I wanted to be a journalist? Because I saw Barbara Walters on television. Because I saw someone that I really admired and I liked the way she stood up for herself.
[22:55:00]
It's the equivalent of me saying, you know who else I like and go down a list of women who don't look like me, who do exactly what I do now, who gave me the dream, who gave me the opportunity. No one's -- no one's offended by that statement, because I am talking about the work ethic, I'm talking about the quality of what they do, and I'm talking about the ability to see the dream, and it is possible.
She grew up watching Maya Moore, who happens to be black. And she said, when I saw Maya Moore, my dad would drive me an hour away to see Maya Moore play, I was like, is this a real thing? Can I live in this world? It's no different.
JENNINGS: Well, it's a good question. When I hear the phrase white privilege, sports is the one place where nobody on the field has any privilege at all. She doesn't get extra points when she shoots because she's white. She gets the same number of points as anybody else.
Sports is the great equalizer and it just felt like to a lot of people that she was groveling for no reason because she is an amazing player who deserves all the accolades she's getting right now for doing what she's doing for women's basketball.
PHILLIP: All right, we really got to everyone. Thank you very, very much for that conversation. We'll be back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
