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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip

Harris Breaks Silence, Urges Democrats To Stay In The Fight; Former Obama Chief Of Staff Says, Democrats Need To Tap Into Americans' Anger; Trump Sues Top Iowa Pollster, Des Moines Register; "NewsNight" Discusses Violent Shootings Killing Innocent People; Companies Publicly End Their DEI Programs; NASA Delays Launch Of SpaceX Crew 10. Aired 10-11p ET

Aired December 17, 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 HOST (voice over): Tonight, Kamala Harris breaks her silence to tell liberals --

KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We must stay in the fight.

PHILLIP: -- while Rahm Emanuel tells them it's time to get angry.

Plus, as Donald Trump tries chilling the press, the man who used to do the chilling joins us to lift the curtain on the real strategy.

Also, is DEI dead? Not so fast. It may just be getting a new name.

Live at the table, Scott Jennings, Ashley Allison, Gail Huff Brown, Julie Roginsky, and Solomon Jones.

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 Philip in New York.

Let's get right to what America is talking about, breaking her silence. Vice President Kamala Harris emerging tonight, six weeks after her loss to Donald Trump, and she has a message for liberals, Democrats, and those who voted for her.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Folks who have said to me that they're not sure whether they have the strength, much less the desire to stay in the fight. But let me be very clear, no one can walk away. No one can walk away. We must stay in the fight, every one of us.

(END VIDEO CLIP) PHILLIP: That is not the only medicine that is being prescribed to Democrats right now. Former Obama chief of staff and the current ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, is diagnosing what led to Trump's win, and what the Democrats need to do to regain power.

In a Washington Post op-ed, he argues that Americans see a system that is rigged in favor of the powerful, and Trump seized on that. He seized on that feeling that has been brewing for more than two decades. Emanuel says that voters were primed after the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis, two calamitous events that virtually no one was held responsible for.

And on Iraq, Emanuel writes, the conflict was perpetrated by people who now sit on corporate boards and hold chairs at prestigious universities. So much for justice. And on the financial crisis, he says, it was a mistake not to apply Old Testament justice to the bankers during the Obama administration, as some called for at the time.

Everyone is with us here in the studio. So, Rahm Emanuel has three parts to this. He says, the goal for Democrats ought to be to reveal that Trump isn't a populist, he's a plutocrat. Don't hide from crime, immigration, homelessness, fentanyl crisis. Get better, more authentic candidates for the midterms.

That honestly all sounds fairly sensible to me. But one of the interesting things is that on the financial crisis, I mean, he was there. So a little bit of a self-examination happening there.

JULIE ROGINSKY, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, you know, I never thought Rahm Emanuel would be the kind of guy to self-examine, but I'm happy to see that he's doing it. He's like my spirit animal. I've been preaching this for the last, I don't know, how many years, which is that Democrats need to start talking to normal people in normal English. They need to start getting with the program and understanding that we can't continue to communicate like we're these elitists sitting atop a mountain.

And most importantly, we need to understand that there's deep, deep, deep anger in this country that Trump channeled. And that anger goes back at least 25 years, if not longer, to being lied into the Iraq war, to the financial crisis where nobody was held accountable who got us into this crisis, but a lot of people lost their life savings.

If you're a 25 year old person right now, your entire life, you've been living under people who essentially lied you into war, lied you into financial crises, and nobody faced the consequences. And what people voted for in November is a disruptor, which is what Trump is. Democrats could be that disruptor. And Democrats need to start acting like they need to disrupt the status quo as opposed to leaning into a world that no longer exists. We'll never go back to the, you know, old world phenomenon that Democrats want to go back to. It's over.

PHILLIP: You haven't ceded a lot of ground on this stuff to Republicans. I mean, Obama ran as an anti-war candidate. I mean, I talked about this a lot in this cycle. It was so interesting to see Democrats embracing Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney, ceding the ground on this idea of peace, of wanting to stay out of wars.

[22:05:02]

And Trump took that and ran with it.

SOLOMON JONES, AWARD-WINNING COLUMNIST, THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: I think one of the things that has to happen with Democrats is they have to discover what their principles are. Decide what you stand for and stand on it and stop going every which way that the wind blows. That's what Rahm Emanuel is talking about. Oh, there's anger. We need to seize on the anger. We need to stop talking in these high minded ways. No, you need to figure out what your principles are, stand on that and run on that. Otherwise, people will see it for what it is. It's phony.

And so I think that the message would be interesting if it came from somebody other than Rahm Emanuel, who's saying you need to get away from like, you know, lifetime politicians when he's a lifetime politician. He's been working in politics since the Clinton administration, and now he's telling Democrats that they need to do something different. It sounds disingenuous to me.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, he did work for two of the most successful people. Democrats, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and they exuded authenticity. His third bullet is the correct bullet.

PHILLIP: Right.

JENNINGS: If your messengers are incorrect, then it doesn't really matter what the first two bullets are. It's that authenticity. And then what's the first clip we played tonight? Kamala Harris, who popped out and she saw our shadow, so we'll get four more years of word salads. If this is the road Democrats want to continue to go down, people who are going to use cliches, pablum and sort of just word salad answers to really important questions that everyday people have, they will continue to lose. However, if they take his advice and get authentic candidates who may sometimes say things that are a little contradictory or maybe it's a little raw, people will forgive your warts and your contradictions if they think you're being real. I think he's on to something.

PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, there's something to that. I mean, when you think about the candidates who have really captured the imagination, even on the Democratic side, Obama's one of them, but Bernie Sanders is another, AOC is another. I mean, what they have in common is a degree of authenticity, at least, to their followers

GAIL HUFF BROWN (R), FORMER NEW HAMPSHIRE CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: I think one of the difficult things though about listening to Kamala Harris coming out today six weeks later is just it's a little too late. It's too little too late. I mean, here we are six weeks later and President Trump, as he comes in has a mandate. And that mandate obviously is that people want to come together. I think instead of looking at this as it's now a time to fight and be angry, I think maybe it's a time to govern. Maybe it's a time for both sides to look at what they can do together and find some consensus and find some places that they can work together. They're going to have to work together over the next four years. I mean, that's the reality.

ROGINSKY: Republicans never did, I'm sorry. Republicans never ever did that. The entirety --

JENNINGS: That's not true.

ROGINSKY: I'm sorry.

JENNINGS: Joe Biden signed a number of bipartisan rules on the law.

ROGINSKY: Okay, Scott. Well, your friend Mitch McConnell, Barack Obama --

JENNINNGS: He voted for several --

ROGINSKY: You friend, Mitch McConnell, when Barack Obama got elected, said --

JENNINGS: During the Biden administration, did they or did they not --

(CROSSTALKS)

PHILLIP: I think that Scott is right about that. I mean, the first two years of the Biden administration, they were touting working with the other side of the aisle.

ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. I think that --

(CROSSTALKS)

PHILLIP: -- to respond to the economic situation in the country.

ALLISON: I hear everything everyone is saying. I think that Democrats lost this cycle. This is the first time in the four years we've been working together. You've actually been able to say that. So, to say a blanket, Democrats are losing, they lost in 2024, they did not lose in 2023, and they did not lose in 2022, and they did not lose in 2020.

I also think that we do this thing where we bucket everybody together that did not vote for Donald Trump as if everybody wants the same thing. If you actually go back to when Build Back Better was the policy that the Biden administration wanted to do, where they wanted to do things that progressives, like Pramila Jayapal was trying to hold the line that would actually improve the quality of working people's lives, those are the principles that Democrats actually stood on, but there were moderates, like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, that would actually not let Democrats deliver for us.

So, I think there are policies that resonate with the American people. I do think that we did not communicate to the -- we lost, so we did not communicate properly. But I also want to say I think that Kamala Harris is doing the right thing and telling people -- I know we think there was a mandate, but she lost by 200,000 so votes across a lot of states. That is not millions of people saying they do not want Kamala Harris to be president. I think what she needs to do is she needs to say, you don't -- when you lose, you don't storm the Capitol. You don't throw in your talent, say, I'm going to be a brat and not work with other people. You say, I believe in this country and I'm going to keep working. And that's, I think, why it was important that she continues to speak the way she did tonight.

PHILLIP: So, one of the interesting things the Pod Saves guys were talking about President Biden and really making this observation that Biden has been pretty absent.

[22:10:01]

I mean, we saw Vice President Harris, but here's what they had to say about where Joe Biden's been.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JON FAVREAU, HOST, POD SAVE AMERICA: It was more or less a standard presidential policy announcement, the main difference being Trump isn't president yet. A fact that's getting easier and easier to forget as Joe Biden seems to be disappearing from the public stage as his term comes to an end.

JON LOVETT, HOST, POD SAVE AMERICA: I guess what I'm more concerned about is less like am I seeing Joe Biden enough. Maybe he's right that people don't want to hear from him. It's more like, do I feel confident right now that Joe Biden behind the scenes is thinking of every single way he can try to future-proof the White House.

Do I think Joe Biden himself is like at command being -- thinking about this? Like right now, I don't. I just honestly don't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JENNINGS: These guys, by the way, coming to this conclusion here in December, as Joe Biden is going out the door, when the rest of America came to this conclusion months and months and months and months ago is the funniest thing I've heard today. I mean, honestly.

PHILLIP: Can I also just say, I mean, I think the other point that Jon Lovett is making here is that, again, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris ran on Donald Trump being an existential threat to the existence of this country. He is not governing that way right now with the last few weeks that he has left. That's very telling.

ROGINSKY: I agree. And I don't understand why, and I wish he would. Or if he's not, at least the people around him should be thinking about these things. You need to proof -- democracy-proof, for lack of a better word, this coming administration. I mean, Donald Trump stands for everything that Joe Biden does not stand for. And if Democrats are true to their values, they will do everything they can, with the power that they have right now, which is limited, to prevent Donald Trump from doing the things that he's already announced that he's going to do.

JONES: Well, there's that word again, values, right? It comes down to principles. What do you stand for and what are you willing to do in order to make what you stand for? The reality right now, I think that Joe Biden is doing what a president normally does in his last month. He's issuing pardons. He's doing commutations. He's doing the things that you normally do. You get ready for the transition. You kind of back off a little bit.

I think the thing that's different is that Donald Trump is really trying to act like he's president already. And so it's not that Biden's doing anything different. I think that Trump is doing something different.

BROWN: Biden is on vacation right now in Delaware. I mean, I don't know what he's doing as president right now.

ALLISON: I actually worked at the White House to turn the lights off for Obama. And I do hear what you're saying, like I think people want him to do many more executive orders. I think the reason -- I'm not saying I agree with it one way or the other, but I think the reason why they're not is because they know they will be overturned immediately.

And I will say, when we -- you know, after Donald Trump won, we knew we were already going to be leaving, so we already had things in place that we were doing for our transition. But I know that there are people working there doing things that I think on the beginning in the last 20 days of his presidency, some things will still continue to get (INAUDIBLE).

JENNINGS: Are you arguing for administrative sabotage? I mean, is that what you're saying?

ROGINSKY: No, that's not at all what I'm arguing.

JENNINGS: You're saying they should proof -- you should somehow proof the government, the will of the people?

ROGINSKY: I -- no. Oh, I'm sorry, you want to talk about the will of the people? You want to go back four years? Because we could talk about -- what I'm saying, Scott -- no, thank you for putting those words in my mouth. That's not at all what I'm saying.

JENNINGS: You said proof.

ROGINSKY: What I'm saying is that we have a statement of values. I think you're absolutely onto something. There's a statement of values that we stand for as Democrats. And those executive orders will be overturned. But I think it is important to signal a statement of values. It is important to signal what you oppose. You oppose -- it's a lot of these anti-democratic, small D, tax that this incoming president is taking. And so if you really believe that and you've campaigned on it for the last four years, you need to have a statement of values that you put out there.

To your point, Scott, actually, if you want to talk about what Joe Biden believes or doesn't believe, Joe Biden does believe in the peaceful transfer of power, something -- well, you know what? Even to a fascist -- if that's what the American people voted for, even to a fascist, if that's what the American people support. JONES: You said it, Scott.

ROGINSKY: I never said it.

PHILLIP: Are Donald Trump's recent lawsuits threats of a bigger, more aggressive strategy to deal with the media? We've got a special guest who's joining us at the table with some unique insights into this issue.

Plus, police are trying to verify the writings from multiple shooters to search for motives. Do they need to be made public? We're going to debate that with an expert.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:15:00]

PHILLIP: Tonight, Donald Trump is following through on his threat to pursue more lawsuits targeting the press. He's suing veteran Iowa Pollster Ann Seltzer and the state's top paper, the Des Moines Register, along with its parent company, Gannett.

Now, the reason is a poll which showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading in the Hawkeye State just days before the election.

Now, here's how Trump described it at his press conference on Monday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: Their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster, who got me right all the time, and then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by three or four points and it became the biggest story all over the world because I was going to win Iowa by 20 points. She brought it from way up, walked away, which it was, and it turned out to be in the election, too, by the way. It was a win by many, many points. That was the Des Moines Register. And it was their parent, and in my opinion, it was fraud, and it was election interference.

She knows what she was doing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[22:20:00]

PHILLIP: Joining us in our fifth seat is Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer. He's also the host of the YouTube channel, The Michael Cohen Show.

Michael, you have a unique perspective on this, because for a while, you were the guy doing a lot of this work for Donald Trump. Trump may not be the best client, but he certainly is good for the employment rate of the legal industry. He has a lot of lawyers and he uses them. So, tell us more about what kinds of things you did when it came to using the threat of legal action to change narratives, especially around the press. MICHAEL COHEN, HOST, YOUTUBE CHANNEL'S THE MICHAEL COHEN SHOW: So, I stand in a unique position because not only did I sue individuals or at least threaten lawsuits against individuals if they would write or claim to be writing a story which is defamatory, demeaning, or disparaging to Mr. Trump. I was also sued by Mr. Trump, as you may remember, for $500 million in the Southern District of New York.

The playbook that Donald is doing right now, it's not new. It's what we did at the Trump Organization, where I would reach out to someone like a Des Moines Register, and I would express to them, I don't believe that this is, number one, legitimate. I believe it's a false story, and I truly believed it was a false story. And that if, in fact, you go ahead with it, we will, and my client has advised me, to file and institute a lawsuit against you for defamation.

I would say of every story that you may have seen, 70 percent never made it to the block. And the reason why is because I would do the research on the company and see basically what their profit margin was. And based upon that, I know that Mr. Trump, who is a billionaire and gave me full discretion within which to institute lawsuits and to follow through with them, we would do that.

And I used to use the New York Times case as an example of may have cost Mr. Trump $1 million, but it cost them 5.

PHILLIP: This is the Times case that he lost.

COHEN: Yes.

PHILLIP: Eventually.

COHEN: Now, he may have lost the case, but he actually won because of the precedent we were able to set. If you have an extra $3, $3, $5 million, which I know you don't, because I would do research on the company and find that they had what a circulation of $30,000 for the month, I could figure out relatively quickly what their profit margin was. And you want to take your profit margin, you want to give it to your lawyers, that's no problem. But understand the second that we file that lawsuit, we take it to trial.

PHILLIP: It's not -- I mean, it's not economically, to your point, viable for a lot of these small papers and such.

Michael I got to read this statement from the Trump campaign responding to you being on the show. Steven Cheung, the communications director, says, Michael Cohen is an admitted liar, thief, perjurer, and convicted felon. He has zero credibility and clearly suffers from a debilitating case of severe Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his brain. So, we're reading that statement.

But what you're talking about is not actually anything that's surprising, because Trump himself has said -- I mean, he literally said what you just said, which is the strategy is, I, Donald Trump, have enough money to just take this thing to court, whether I win or lose. It's disruptive to the journalists, it's disruptive to the news organization, it costs them a ton of money. And he's right about that. COHEN: Abby, it's more than just that. Not only does Donald Trump have money, he has money with the RNC, he has money with his super PACs, and his money has money. Look at all of the tech billionaires that are around him now. There is an indefinite amount of money.

And I believe wholeheartedly that the Des Moines Register, very much like ABC, Disney, is going to capitulate. And I believe that Donald Trump has actually figured out a way how to change the way that media deals with issues, whether it's --

PHILLIP: Are you worried at all about this, Scott, just where it could go, not just the Donald Trump of it all? But, I mean, if he's creating precedent, it's for everybody.

JENNINGS: Well, when you introduced Michael, you used the word narratives, you know? And I think one of the reasons Republicans are cheering on this muscular attitude from Trump and pushing back against some of this is because Republicans feel like constantly media organizations, especially in the throes of campaigns, work overtime to create false narratives that may shape the contours of the election.

Look what happened. When this poll came out in Iowa, the entire English-speaking world was talking about the gold standard pollster and Harris has this momentum. And, ultimately, what we were told was complete garbage. And if you talked to pollsters at the time, they would have told you this is not real.

[22:25:00]

This methodology is not good anymore. But that's not what people chose to run with because it fit what most people in the press wanted the narrative to be. So, he's pushing back on that.

I frankly have a problem with it. And if they capitulate, it's because they don't want to go through the discovery and what that might show.

PHILLIP: You're a practitioner, Scott. I mean, it's a bad, it's a bad poll. A bad poll is a bad poll.

JENNINGS: It's worse than a bad poll.

PHILLIP: Trump Campaign Pollster Tony Fabrizio at the time called it an outlier. That's a thing in the polling business. It was an outlier. And if you remember correctly, Donald Trump won the last election. So, narrative be damned, he won.

ALLISON: Yes. I mean, this is why I'm always skeptical of polls regardless. Like you and I would talk every day about the election, and we do rely on polls as indicators but not determinators of what is going to happen in an election. I think that that poll was allowed to be run. And whether you believed it or not, you have your own free will and volition to decide.

I don't think anyone -- it would have been, I think, negligent to not talk about it, and then it would have ended up being the case that maybe the poll was closer to reality. I just think that like to say that someone put out a poll that didn't say, because I'm putting this out now, you have to vote, it was a data point. And to be sued over it, it feels -- and I will just -- look, I just think like let's call a spade. Like the poll was wrong. Many of the polls are wrong. They've been wrong for many cycles. But it's not like this is the only thing that has been said in the news from either side that is not true.

COHEN: I hate to say it, but Scott is actually right about this one. I hate to say it because Scott and I very rarely agree on anything. He's right about this in the fact that sloppy journalism, sloppy polling. And what they did -- look, I was the recipient of more than a hundred lies. And I understand what Trump is doing in terms of changing the way defamation cases are brought in this country.

You may remember the allegations I was in Prague, never been to Prague. I was in Czechoslovakia. I paid $10 million to Kompromats. I have a house next to Putin in Sochi. None of this is true. On top of that, there was another one that came out as an example where I allegedly was paid $400,000 by Poroshenko to create a meeting between him and Donald Trump during the president. That is also not true.

PHILLIP: So, do you think it should be easier? You believe it should be easier to sue me?

COHEN: No. I think that media has to do their job. They have to actually -- they need to get the facts right.

ROGINSKY: But wait a second. But wait.

COHEN: Because you were wrong and that poll was wrong.

ALLISON: It was wrong. But guess what else was wrong? All the polls of 2022. And none of those polls are --

JENNINGS: They weren't wrong. They weren't --

ALLISON: You were wrong in 2022, Scott, because you said there was going to be a red wave.

JENNINGS: I never said that, A. I always -- I never said that.

ALLISON: Twitter, do your thing, run the clips, because people said that there was going to be a red wave and there wasn't.

And so when you make predictions, which is what we get paid to do, is to read the tea leaves and determine, it is not something that should rise to the occasion of litigation.

ROGINSKY: You know what, Scott, how many campaigns have you done? I've done a hundred, a million, and probably you have two, right? Every time you get a bad poll, are you supposed to sue the pollster now? Come on.

JENNINGS: It's not about the poll. It's not about the poll. But look what happened. It came out from a person who has a lot of credibility. Virtually every single panel I was on for the last week of the campaign led with, well, look at this poll. And so it wasn't the poll. It's the second third and fourth order narrative.

ROGINSKY: Listen --

JENNINGS: It's just speech.

PHILLIP: So what? So what?

JENNINGS: It's free speech?

PHILLIP: What about -- Scott, I mean, what about free speech? I mean, I thought that this was the Republican Party of say what you want, let's debate it in the public square, like let's have the conversation. Now, it's let's only have the conversation if you're a hundred percent, you know, prescient and correct in that moment. It was a bad poll. It was a wrong poll. We just -- the media discussed it. So what?

ROGINSKY: Do you know what I'm so tired of, Scott? The number one cable news network, Fox News, the number one paper by circulation, The Wall Street Journal, the number three paper by circulation, The New York Post, number one person on the radio, Sean Hannity, the number one person on the podcast, Joe Rogan, all of these people are Trump supporters. What media are you talking about that's anti-Trump?

JENNINGS: You're not familiar with the anti-Trump media?

ROGINSKY: You're not familiar with the fact that you guys control everything, from podcasts?

JENNINGS: I mean, of all the things I've heard you say out here, that might be the nuttiest. Believe me, there's plenty of anti-Trump media.

(CROSSTALKS)

ROGINSKY: Scott, what I'm basically trying to say is that you guys have taken over the airwaves. You guys have taken over the radio airwaves. You guys have taken over podcasts. You guys have taken over pretty much. I mean, and now you're sitting here complaining because all you guys do is whine and complain. Our entire raison d'etre is have grievances. You don't actually think about leading. You just think about having grievances against the media.

[22:30:00]

BROWN: I'd like to add a grievance, if I could.

ROGINSKY: I could keep going here.

BROWN: Just another grievance is that Republicans are frustrated. They feel as though the media has been out against them.

Some of that is social media, some of that is influencers, some of that is just false narratives. And I think that this poll was just sort of the final straw. And people felt like it was somehow deliberate, that there was a deliberate attempt. COHEN: That's the word of the day, deliberate. What happens when it

was deliberate? That's the whole point that Donald Trump is trying to explore right now. What happens when that deliberate fake poll comes out and does actually alter. Now, by the way, you forgot about X, you forgot about Truth Social, and so on.

HUFF BROWN: Thank you. Yes.

COHEN: But what happens when it is deliberate? And that's why I believe that ABC ended up folding because they did not want discovery to take place. There's no other reason, as far as I'm concerned, as to why they did it.

ROGINSKY: They folded because they wanted to suck up to Donald Trump.

PHILLIP: We got to go. Michael Cohen, thank you for joining us. Everyone else, hang tight. Coming up next, police say that they are looking into potential writings from a school shooter in Wisconsin, and it's all raising the question, should those words be kept a secret or could revealing them help stop another tragedy? We're going to discuss that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:35:45]

PHILLIP: Tonight, authorities are looking into some online posts from the 15-year-old student who opened fire at a school in Madison, Wisconsin, killing a teacher and a student. And today, we learn the suspect in the shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO has now been indicted on multiple counts, including murder in the first degree and murder in the second degree as a crime of terrorism.

Now, if you remember, when he was arrested, police said he was carrying a document where he expressed, quote, "ill will toward corporate America". The moment begs a question. How much of a spotlight should be on these writings or posts of these suspected shooters?

Joining us now in our fifth seat is clinical psychologist Jeff Gardere. Dr. Gardere, it's such an interesting question, and we've been grappling with this as a country as we've been dealing with all these shootings now for decades. What do you say? Should we see what Luigi Mangione wrote and what this other school shooter wrote as well?

JEFF GARDERE, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: I think it's essential for us to have that kind of information. That's how we build information. That's how we get a database.

When we looked at what Klebold and Harris had written in their journals from the Columbine shootings, that built a lot of information as to what we look for, not just as FBI profilers and psychologists, but also as parents. What are the warning signs that something may be going on with a child or with our own child?

I think the issue becomes when it goes on to social media and it may be glorified, you don't have a clinical analysis, it's not put in the proper context, and people are worshipping it or may follow it, then that becomes a major issue. But it's certainly. Abby, a knife that cuts both ways.

PHILLIP: Yes.

GARDERE: Great information, but those who may be attracted to those writings, as even Mangione was with the Unabomber. That then becomes another major issue.

PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, does anyone think that they should not be seen by people? They should be kept under wraps intentionally by authorities and law enforcement?

HUFF BROWN: Here's what I think, and as a journalist for more than 30 years, obviously as a journalist you want all that information, and I agree. Of course, parents and counselors and teachers, they all want to find out what happened. But I think that by releasing the actual writings, it encourages more of that type of behavior.

I would rather see a synopsis, a professional come out and talk about this was the motive, this is what, you know, we saw, these are some of the concerns that she had, et cetera, so that we know some of those things, but I don't think we should see the actual writings. I think that that is just --

ALLISON: I think timing matters.

GARDERE: Yes, even with Klebold and Harris, when they released what they wrote in their journals, there were certain things that were redacted and certain things that were just so disturbing --

ALLISON: Yes.

GARDERE: -- and they felt that would be something that can affect someone who may have had a mental instability or who may have been isolated, looking for something to do that they actually did not allow those things to happen.

ALLISON: I think timing matters. I remember being in high school during Columbine and we were fragile, right? It was the first time it really had happened and we weren't really sure, and there was no social media, right? So, the spread of the information was much more controlled and contained and factual.

And so, right now we don't even know if the writings from the person who did the shooting in Madison are actually from the shooter. So, I think we just have to be really careful.

I think timing matters. I totally agree with you in terms of like solving the crime, indicators, if it's used for the betterment of societal good, I think it's important. But I think we live in this overly sensationalized world that we don't sometimes disseminate information that can cause more harm without having greater good.

JENNINGS: I think you make a great point about the dissemination tools today. Back in the Columbine days, you know, it just wasn't as easy for it to be disseminated if it wasn't coming from news outlets. Today, I wonder, even if you did have a system-wide or societal-wide idea of suppressing this, could you even do it?

[22:40:01]

ALLISON: Right.

JENNINGS: Because, you know, the tools and the people exist today.

PHILLIP: It'll be somewhere.

ALLISON: Somewhere.

JENNINGS: Exactly.

PHILLIP: I mean --

JENNINGS: Does that then enhance the allure of it somehow?

GARDERE: -- now the forbidden fruit --

JENNINGS: So, for me transparency, I tend to tilt towards transparency because of the issue you just raised. If you --suppression then leads people to be attracted to that.

ROGINSKY: And to your point, Scott, I mean, one thing I think is interesting is he wasn't even alive -- Mangione -- when the Unabomber was doing his work and yet he's still inspired by it. And so, to me, it's like --

PHILLIP: I was going to show -- the Unabomber is -- this was an actual manifesto because it was tens of thousands of words long. It was printed in "The New York Times" and I believe "The Washington Post" as well, because of threats that the Unabomber made. But it was so different because the -- printing the manifesto actually led to his capture. He was still at large at that time.

ROGINSKY: You know, I would say this. It's the question about do you allow Mein Kampf, for example, to be disseminated, right? Hitler's book.

GARDERE: Yes.

PHILLIP: Yes.

ROGINSKY: And it inspires some really bad actors, but it's also really, I mean, I read it and I didn't become a neo-Nazi because if you study history, it's a primary source of information. And I think if you are somebody like you who studies the psychology of these -- of these people, these shooters, then I think it's important to have an analysis of their mindset.

GARDERE: And from what we know now from the database of what these shootings are about, we know that there are certain people who shouldn't have those sorts of writings. We know that there are youth who may be at risk, that we don't want to see that or have them study that because they may just be too vulnerable at this point in their lives.

PHILLIP: I think the worst thing would be to take the writings of a deranged mind and try to make it seem sensible to somebody who, to your point, is at risk. I mean, that is, I think, what the risk is for all of us as we try to prevent these things from happening. Dr. Jeff Gardere, thank you very much for joining us.

GARDERE: Thank you.

PHILLIP: Everyone else, sit tight. Coming up next, as some companies publicly end their DEI programs, does that mean the whole concept of DEI in the workplace is now dying, too? CNN has a new analysis that shows their death may be greatly exaggerated. We'll discuss next.

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[22:46:47]

PHILLIP: Is diversity, equity and inclusion in corporate America dead? Looking at some recent headlines, you might say that it is, with companies like Walmart, John Deere, and others saying that they're ditching their DEI efforts. But despite the public rollbacks, a CNN analysis shows DEI actually isn't going anywhere. It's just changing.

Solomon is back with us. A lot of these companies are changing how they talk about it, but they're still engaging in the practices. And the reason why is because there's a lot of research that says that it helps companies make more money, it helps them perform better than their competitors. They're just trying to stay away from the public blowback, it seems.

JONES: Well, I mean, let's not pretend that corporate America doesn't have a problem with race, doesn't have a problem with diversity. They do. But I think the color they care the most about is green.

And so, the first thing that happened with DEI was you had the George Floyd protests. You had a lot of pressure, both nationally and internationally, for companies to really commit to doing something about what was happening with race and racism in America. And now you have the blowback from that. That always happens.

We see it historically that whenever there are advances where race and other matters of diversity are concerned, there are always blowback. And so, they're looking at the money. That's all they care about. Now, the pressure is coming from the right before the pressure was coming from the left. If it comes from the left again, they'll move back to where they were.

PHILLIP: And some of the performative stuff in the post George Floyd era, we could all live without, to be honest. I mean, I don't really need to see Coca-Cola's whatever, you know, just using that as a random example. But some of these corporations were just trying to virtual signal while doing nothing actually about what's going on within their companies. ALLISON: Yes, I think the question is, do you want diversity, equity,

and inclusion? That's the first question, it's kind of like a chart, and then if it's no, then okay, then the conversation ends, and if it's yes, then it's like, how do you actually get there?

From 2020, even in that year, many companies did, again, symbolic postings on their websites. But to do real DEI work takes -- the intervention is not just one office with one person who does a webinar once a year during Black History Month or Women's History Month.

You really have to evaluate your practices, your protocols, and really make a long-term commitment. It takes time to change some of the practices that work. And you have to decide you want to do it.

Now, I do think the analysis may say it's not going away, but we do know after the Supreme Court affirmative action decision, beyond just higher education institutions, many corporations, many other institutions started to look at that as a signal that they could start rolling their DEI practices.

And to add the cultural component on top of it, it is not as if some people of a certain political party have not even used the word DEI as a trope, as a term of slander. And so, the question is, like, what is the real intention behind your work you do?

ROGINSKY: Well, you know, I think you raise an excellent point, actually. I know something about this, because my non-profit, Lift Our Voices, focuses on this. And I can tell you, you're absolutely right.

[22:45:00]

You have a tremendous number of companies that have these great ads where they're talking about their diversity, equity, inclusion, work, but the work doesn't actually exist.

And what they do is they silence their workers with forced arbitration and NDAs on the first day of work, which means that if you are racially discriminated against, the very same companies, and I know who they are, you're watching these commercials where they're constantly having the African American husband with the Asian wife and they're talking about how, you know, they're all about inclusion.

In reality, what they're doing is they're telling their African American workers or their female workers or their gay or lesbian workers, keep your mouth shut because you have an arbitration clause or an NDA and you can't talk about what's going on at this company.

And so, you know, the hypocrisy I could do without. And actually, we're launching in January a corporate rating system that would be able to tell you which of these companies silenced their workers.

I think that is the key to making sure that you have a diverse workforce, because by doing these silencing mechanisms, they're driving out the very people they pretend to want to enfranchise, because it's people of color and women who are mostly affected by them, and they're being driven out of the workforce, out of their chosen careers, because of these silencing mechanisms. I think it is crucial to get rid of those.

PHILLIP: Ashley also mentioned higher education. I mean, we did get some signals about what's been going on in higher education at Harvard. Harvard Law, they saw a huge decline in black and Hispanic students. They enrolled 19 first-year black students, three percent of the class, the lowest number since the 1960s.

The school also saw a steep decline for Hispanic students, just 39 students a fall from 63 back in 2023. So, there's been a clear decline as a result of -- this is the affirmative action ruling from the Supreme Court.

JENNINGS: Well, I mean, I think some universities were using these policies to discriminate against Asian students and other kinds of students. So, you know, pick your discrimination.

Who do you want to be discriminated against? Wouldn't the fair way to do it be to say, we're going to look at everybody's test scores, we're going to look at everybody's applications and we're going to do an agnostic of race, and we're going to let the most talented and the most accomplished students come to our universities.

You mentioned the Supreme Court ruling, by the way, on affirmative action, which I do believe was a seminal moment because it reminded me when it happened that a vast majority of Americans do not want affirmative action. They do not believe in these forced racial preferences. And even a majority of African Americans agreed with the ruling at the time.

And so, when some people, you know, often accuse Republicans are on the right, but I think a lot of Americans all across the spectrum look at this and say, I want to rise and fall based on my own talent and my own hard work. I don't want to rise and fall based on the pressures being put on me by people who don't much work I'm putting in.

JONES: Let's talk about fairness because I think when you when you talk about fairness in education and bringing people in according to their grades and according to their test scores, first you have to fairly fund the schools that they come from. In Pennsylvania we just had a ruling that said that our schools are unfairly funded according to poverty, right?

And so, it's not just race, it's poverty, as well. And so, there are some white school districts that aren't getting the money that they're supposed to get. There are some black school districts that aren't getting the money that they're supposed to get. And I'm defining them that way because our schools are still segregated. Even after Brown versus the Board of Education. Separate is not equal. It's just not.

PHILLIP: I was just reading a headline from "The New York Times" today about a lawsuit against a bunch of elite schools, Georgetown, Penn, and MIT. And guess what the preferences are for people whose mommies and daddies have a lot of money and they just got a ticket into the school. I just don't get, where's the outrage about that? That's been going on in this country for hundreds of years.

JENNINGS: I don't agree with that either.

PHILLIP: Where's the outrage? Why are we only focused on race when this is affirmative action?

ALLISON: But I do have something to say about what you just said.

HUFF BROWN: No, I just wanted to say that I think that the whole issue of DEI became much more prevalent when there were issues in the military. I think a lot of people were very put off by some of the contradictions, concerned that our soldiers weren't really ready for their missions. And were more concerned about DEI or more concerned about their pronouns that they used.

And this was, I think, part of what really set off a lot of Republicans and conservatives that you know, they started to look into DEI initiatives and are they working and what do they really mean?

ALLISON: I think one of the things about the affirmative action decision that is a misconception is that there is this belief of what is the merit-based system, if you're just looking at grades. But what actually adds to the quality of the discussion in a classroom at a higher education institution?

Diversity of lifestyle also is something that you don't want everyone to come from the same walk of life. You don't want everyone to have the same ideology. That is not the rigor of, but I also will say --

PHILLIP: And you may also not want them to have the same test scores, too.

ALLISON: That's right, but you also, I also will say, I understand when the decision, I don't know the source that you put it.

[22:55:00]

But we do know in affirmative action that white women have actually been the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action. And even though the lawsuit was brought and it was brought with Asian American plaintiffs, their numbers have also decreased. So, they are also seeing backlash from that.

PHILLIP: All right, we got it. We do have to go, Scott, unfortunately. Everyone, thank you very much for that discussion. Coming up next, the suspect in the shooting death of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, now faces charges, including first degree murder, as an act of terrorism. Much more on that AHEAD.

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[23:00:07]

PHILLIP: Tonight, the two astronauts stuck on the International Space Station will have to wait until at least March now to return to Earth. NASA has once again delayed the launch of SpaceX Crew 10, which was set to dock with the ISS in February and bring them home. Those astronauts went to space in June and they were only supposed to stay for a week, but now they are stuck.

Thank you for watching "NewsNight". "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.