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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Planning Large-Scale Raids Starting Tuesday Morning; Trump's Inauguration Moves Indoors Due To Frigid Temps; Trump Names Stallone, Gibson, Voight As Hollywood Envoys; NYT: Schumer Urged Biden Not To Run In Emotional Meeting; Bill Gates Visits Trump At Mar-a- Lago. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired January 17, 2025 - 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, you won't find these on Ticketmaster. The inauguration moves inside, leaving all of Washington scrambling to see the start of a second Trump era.
And a Donald Trump decree. The president-elect is now planning to start his first full day in office by sending ICE agents into a major American city.
Plus, influencers press the panic button. The Supreme Court revokes TikTok's green card. Will Donald Trump save it?
Also, they like him, they really like him, or at least they're pretending to. A Democratic mayor and a billionaire tech giant play nice with the president-elect.
Live at the Table, Chuck Rocha, Gale Huff Brown, Pete Seat, Keith Boykin, and Toure.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Good evening. I'm Abby Philip in New York.
Let's get right to what America is talking about, breaking news tonight about Donald Trump's plans, ICE in your city. The president- elect wants to keep a promise to begin deporting criminal immigrants on his first full day in his second term.
New CNN reporting tonight outlines those details. It says that the ICE blitz is going to feature targeted sweeps. They will happen in cities like Washington, D.C., Chicago, and in Denver.
What's the headline grabbing takeaway of all of this in addition to a rollback of the Biden era border policies, amped up travel restrictions, and Pentagon resources going to the southern border? Tonight, the front man for the Trump immigration crackdown, Tom Homan, who you probably know by now, he gave a sneak peek of this to Fox News just now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS HOST: Am I blowing your cover when I announce that there's going to be a big raid in Chicago on Tuesday? Or do you want people to know, maybe they can self-deport?
TOM HOMAN, INCOMING BORDER CZAR: There's going to be a big raid all across the country. You know, Chicago is just one of many places. We got 24 field offices across the country. On Tuesday, you're going to expect ICE is ICE is finally going to go out and do their job. We're going to take the handcuffs off ICE and let them go arrest criminal aliens. That's what's going to happen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Joining our fifth seat is Toure, the host of Rap Latte on YouTube. This is what we expected to happen for the Trump administration's first start. But now we have some details. They're going to go for a big bang in these big cities. Chuck, what do you make of this?
CHUCK ROCHA, PODCAST CO-HOST, THE LATINO VOTE: You know, this is what Trump ran on. He ran on scared politics. I think it's important to center this conversation to talk about immigration some, and that the last full month of the Biden administration here in December was the lowest crossing at the border since 2020 when Donald Trump was president.
Do I agree that if there's bad people here that have committed major crimes, they should be kicked out of this country? Absolutely. But 68 percent of all the Latinos in America know somebody that's undocumented. And for all you folks at home, that's the folks who's picking your salad and milking your cows.
On CNN tonight, in South Dakota, a farmer came on this show and talked about how he had voted for Donald Trump and didn't really think Donald Trump was going to deport the men and women who are milking his cows, milk's going to go up. Buckle up.
PHILLIP: Well, I want to -- you know, I mean, you made a point here about criminals, because I think they've been pretty clear for logistical reasons that they are going to start with the -- let's -- figuratively speaking, the lowest hanging fruit, the easiest thing for them to accomplish. Are you, Keith, concerned about a plan that involves rounding up people who are already adjudicated as criminals, maybe they have deportation orders, maybe they have final orders of deportation, and saying, we're finally going to get you and deport you as a court has adjudicated?
KEITH BOYKIN, FORMER CLINTON WHITE HOUSE AIDE: Well, the devil's in the detail, and I don't really know where the details are. It seems like there's a lot of puff right now, and a lot of scare tactics, they want people to be afraid about this. I just don't understand how they have the infrastructure to be able to pull this off on Tuesday. I mean, Tom Homan himself was saying, we need 100,000 detention beds in order to be able to do this, and we have like 20,000 or 40,000 something like that. You're talking about doubling the number of detention beds in order to be able to keep these people in some sort of space before you can deport them. How are they going to possibly do this?
So, I think a lot of what is going on right now is they want people to be scared so that Trump can come in and pretend like he's doing something.
[22:05:01]
We're going to have a lot of executive orders signed in the next few days, and we're going to think there's something happening, but I don't really think he's going to be able to do as much as he wants to do, but it will be dangerous, but not as quickly as he wants it to be.
GAIL HUFF BROWN (R), FORMER U.S. CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE, NEW HAMPSHIRE: I think, though, that what's important to remember is that a lot of the policies that were put in place by the Biden administration are going to be taken away so that hopefully we go back to the Trump way it was, the stay in Mexico policy. I mean, we had a week-and-a-half ago in Boston, we had a situation where an illegal was in a housing unit with over a million dollars worth of fentanyl, an AK-47 and weapons, and these are the type of people that they want to get rid of. These are the people -- I mean, there are going to be plenty of people.
BOYKIN: I mean, we have American citizens in the United States who are committing acts of terrorism, who are committing murders and crimes. In fact, American citizens, natural born American citizens, are more likely to commit those crimes than people who come here as immigrants.
BROWN: Then they have to face the court as well.
BOYKIN: It's easy to pick out a case and cherry pick this and say, this is the problem that we're all facing because this one person did this one horrible thing. And we can all agree that's a horrible thing, but that's not how you make policy. You don't make policy because of anecdotal evidence. You make policy based on facts and statistics and data.
TOURE, SUBSTACK, CULTURE FRIES BY TOURE: Yes. And the fact remains that the overwhelming number of immigrants here are law abiding people who are paying taxes, who are following the law. And this sort of notion of like we must remove all of them as rapidly as possible, and that's the problem with America, that's a really dangerous way to look at it.
PHILLIP: Well, they're not going to be able to remove all of them. Almost everybody acknowledges that. And so are we going to see a bunch of activity on Tuesday, and then it's going to taper off when people turn to other issues that come up? Because to get to even a million is going to take quite a long time. It could take the entire year, let alone 11 million. That's probably not going to happen.
PETE SEAT, FORMER WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMAN, PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: You'll see activity. I don't know about a lot of activity. But for anyone who thinks that Donald Trump is bluster and bluff on this issue. He ran on it. He didn't run on scare tactics. He ran on what was either the top issue or the second top issue among the American people for the entirety of the campaign.
And so you're going to see him deliver on his promise. It will be a promise made, promise kept to start moving forward on that. But I will say, I think it is a fair criticism that expectations have not been appropriately set. I think that Donald Trump, Tom Homan, the entire team needs to do a better job explaining precisely what we will see and when, because there are some folks on my side of the aisle, Republicans, who are going to expect everything to get fixed in six months and there are others who will expect absolutely nothing will happen. Government is government. It's going to be messy. It's not going to be easy, and they need to be honest about that.
PHILLIP: What are we in for in terms of the legal environment? I mean, I remember almost like it was yesterday, that week, that first week of the first Trump administration, when people were at airports, there was mass confusion both inside and outside of the United States, there were court cases being adjudicated in the middle of the night, all kinds of things like that. It was actual pure chaos.
ROCHA: I remember that, that was going back to the Muslim ban, and a lot of the Stuff that was putting in, let me live this in real life. Both of my business partners are immigrants. They've both been in this country over 20 years, one of them under DACA, the temporary service for kids who have come, and the other under TPS from El Salvador, both went to their entire school in America, both graduated with honors, both of them now are business partners with me and make more money than a U.S. congressman and don't know the certainty of what their lives will be.
Have they broke the law? No. But if they stay past March when one of their TPS expires, then they have, quote/unquote, broke the law, to your points, about devils in the details So, real people are living this and I have a very good life and folks around me have a good life. Think about the people who are just trying to make it every day and the uncertainty in their life.
TOURE: So, I'm sorry if this had been an issue that both sides in Congress have been actually trying to fix for years, I could understand this. But this has been a problem that especially Republicans have lifted up and not wanted a solution so they could continue running on it. And this is like the ultimate I'm going to seem tough on crime moment. And it is going to be quite frightening for a lot of Americans to watch these sort of raids. This is not the sort of America that a lot of people want.
PHILLIP: So, let me throw something out for you, Keith, because --
BROWN: I don't know that raids is the right --
PHILLIP: No, literally raids. I mean, that's what the reporting is, that they're going to be conducting raids, which wouldn't be -- just to be clear, this is not new, right? Raids, immigration raids happen all the time. They happened in the last Trump administration.
But, Keith, just from a politics perspective, for Democrats, I mean, there are some who say, let's not have a hair on fire moment for every single thing. If on this first day, they do as they say, they go after criminals, should Democrats pitch a fight about that?
[22:10:01]
BOYKIN: Well, I'm of the belief that Democrats should fight back on every issue where there's disagreement and agree where there is agreement. But I also understand that this is not very popular. Mass deportations don't poll well. Look at all the polls. Nobody wants this. I don't know if the Republican base wants it, but the majority of the American people, the independents, Democrats, and others don't want this. So, let them go ahead and do it in some ways, and he's going to find out just how quickly --
PHILLIP: The counterpoint to that is that Donald Trump ran explicitly on mass deportations.
(CROSSTALKS)
TOURE: -- (INAUDIBLE), which he's already said he's not going to do.
PHILLIP: Look, I'm just saying, Trump did not shy away from the fact that he wanted -- he said he wanted to put immigrants in camps, okay? And Americans said they voted for him.
BOYKIN: Go back to what you're saying and what Pete was saying earlier about Trump makes these promises and follows through on them. Donald Trump spent all of 2015 and 2016 promising to do what? He was going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. And everybody was all hyped up about that. Where's that damn wall? Where's the money from Mexico?
SEAT: Yes, and it was a pretty smart negotiation tactic to get Mexico to start doing more on their side of the border. You're just blind to it because you don't want to admit it, Keith.
BOYKIN: But this is the problem.
SEAT: That works, that works. He has a different style of doing the job, a very different style.
BOYKIN: So, you're admitting that it's all bluffing. But the problem is though, Abby, is that Donald Trump can say whatever. It doesn't matter if it's true or false because Pete is going to come here and agree with it and say that he did exactly what he said. And Gail, right, is going to come and say that he did exactly what he said he did, because the Trump people believe whatever Donald Trump says.
SEAT: And you're going to disagree with everything.
BOYKIN: Because I believe in facts.
SEAT: Your hair can't go on fire, because you don't have any hair, but -- BOYKIN: Because I believe in facts. That's the first factual thing he said.
SEAT: And the fact is that Mexico did step it up, not enough but they did.
BOYKIN: They did not pay for a wall. They did not pay for a wall, just like Donald Trump did not win the election, even though Pam Bondi won't admit that. I mean, there's certain basic facts that we have to agree with, you know, like the fact that Donald Trump did not have the largest inauguration in American history, but people keep saying these things, and people keep believing them in the Trump world.
TOURE: But people are coming here because there's economic problems in Mexico. It's not that some political situation where Mexico is sending. That's not really --
PHILLIP: It's actually -- I mean, and it's not even really Mexico that is the crux of the issue anymore, even. I mean, it's the Central American countries for the most part. It's time now. We will see whether Trump actually does what he is going to do. There'll be no more guessing about it. It'll happen in just a couple of days.
Everyone, stick around, coming up next, some Democrats are mocking Trump's inauguration, moving indoors due to the frigid temperatures in Washington.
Plus, what Snoop Dogg and Nelly performing says about the culture and whether it's turning to embrace Trump.
And explosive new reporting that says Biden's inner circle knew about his decline far earlier than previously thought, and also who gave him the candid feedback.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:15:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, the weather, it's cold, it's windy, and people are bundling up. They're de-icing their cars. Everything you can say about at the water cooler, or to use an elevator small talk, well, you can say it right now. That's partly because the inauguration's in a couple of days and the president-elect is now telling the country that that is the reason why the inauguration is going to go indoors. It's going to be the smallest since 1985, when Trump was a real estate mogul and a part-time owner of a B league football team.
The president-elect says that this is all about protecting people. That's his obligation to spare thousands of people and most of official Washington from this brutal cold. And while plenty of people dislike the cold, the forecast is downright balmy compared to some of the other inaugurations. Just for historical comparison, 1961, when the wind chill hit seven degrees, or not even so far back, 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated on a relatively warm day in the 20s.
So, this all leads to questions about what this is really about, what Donald Trump says it's about? Or is it about crowd size? I don't know. I mean, I kind of think it's going to be cold.
BROWN: We know it's going to be cold.
PHILLIP: Just to be clear, I'm just going to be real, I was supposed to be outside for the inauguration. We will now probably be inside. It's cold to be outside.
ROCHA: You're happy about this.
BROWN: It is cold.
ROCHA: Good for you.
PHILLIP: It's good for me. It's good for -- you know, thousands of people will be out there.
ROCHA: As an old boy from Texas who hadn't been around a lot of cold, in '08, I was there for the Obamas.
PHILLIP: Were you cold?
ROCHA: And I was colder than I've ever been in my entire life. And I bought a hat, a bigger hat than this that had some rabbit fur in it. For all of you liberals out there, I'm a Democrat. I'm sure it was synthetic fur, but it was -- had to be warm and I was there all day long. And it was cold.
Now, look, Donald Trump is supposed to be the tough man. All of his people are supposed to be tough and I've seen bare-chested men at the Buffalo Bills games out there drinking beer and being crazy, and that's who I thought the Donald Trump, no disrespect to my friends here, I thought that's who the voters were and they would love this to be outside the cold.
PHILLIP: I'm worried about the folks on Capitol Hill, some of whom are, you know, up there in age. It's cold.
ROCHA: You're talking about the U.S. Senate?
BROWN: It's not that cold.
PHILLIP: I'm talking about, you know, the Senate, the House.
SEAT: And the thousands who are attending this, for those of us who have been to an inauguration.
BOYKIN: Thousands.
SEAT: For those of us who have been to an inauguration, you have to get there hours in advance. You have to go through security, and there's different checkpoints, and then you're standing there. Like I've been to Times Square on New Year's Eve, and it was the worst night of my life, because you have to get there like 18 million hours in advance and you just stand there, there's nowhere to go to the restroom.
[22:20:04]
It stinks. I'd rather watch it on T.V. But I think that this is the smart call. It's the right call.
I do feel bad -- I have a lot of friends who've already made their way to D.C. for this weekend.
PHILLIP: They won't be able to see anything.
SEAT: And I feel so bad for them, once in a lifetime opportunity that they won't have to see a swearing in. I hope they get to do it another time.
TOURE: I just feel good for the country that we don't have to deal with another four years of hearing about this crowd size and that it was the biggest ever.
PHILLIP: Probably.
TOURE: That part's so ridiculous.
PHILLIP: Yes, probably.
ROCHA: We have to cancel two of these shows, by the way, because we were going to talk about it, I am sure.
PHILLIP: I mean, just -- can we put up the comparisons of all the other inaugurations? I mean, I looked at the forecast. It's going to be somewhere between maybe a Kennedy and an Obama perhaps, so pretty cold.
ROCHA: And we mentioned that John Kennedy didn't wear a coat when he got sworn in for his.
PHILLIP: He didn't. But I will say, during Obama's inauguration, people were hospitalized because it was extremely --
SEAT: And we've all heard of William Henry Harrison.
BOYKIN: Right.
BROWN: Yes, who actually died of pneumonia.
ROCHA: I went to school in East Texas.
SEAT: Read a history book, Chuck.
ROCHA: No, we don't have history in Texas, in Houston.
TOURE: I thought you were saying that people were hospitalized because a black man was becoming president.
SEAT: No.
BROWN: Come on. PHILLIP: Okay, some more recent pop culture history, present day history, okay, Snoop and Nelly are going to be at this thing. And I think it really does beg the question whether the culture is starting to thaw to Donald Trump. I mean, are they?
BROWN: About time.
TOURE: I don't know. I don't think so. We definitely saw a lot of people, Sexyy Red, others say, he sent me a check, so I'm good with him, the stimulus check. And I understand that there is that crew of people who are like the stimi check came, I like him now.
Snoop and Nelly, in particular, are apolitical people and apolitical artists, like you see Snoop with Martha Stewart, he's like, I fly over, I want everyone to like me. I think this is more about capitalism than politics. Somebody said, Snoop, it's the crypto ball, we got 250 for you, or 150 for one night, come do ten songs, six songs, whatever, yes, I'm there homie, Nelly, the same thing.
PHILLIP: But there a lot of rappers who have sided with Donald Trump for all kinds of -- he pardoned several of them.
BOYKIN: Yes, he was giving away pardons.
PHILLIP: Yes, I mean --
BOYKIN: He was giving away pardons to people, and that's why they were endorsing him.
PHILLIP: But, I mean, what's going on there? What is it about these particular --
TOURE: I mean, these are not the intellectuals of hip hop. These are not the -- except for Kanye, these are typically not political people at all. Like they're -- like I said, there's some in the hood, there's this notion of he's tough, he gave us money, right? They're not.
PHILLIP: I was reminded also, I mean, back in the 80s, you know, Donald Trump was, you know, at the boxing matches. He was with Don King. I mean, he was in a different place in the culture. He went into the 90s as the subject of rap songs. And just -- you know, Gail, I know that you're not a rap expert, but --
BROWN: I am definitely not.
PHILLIP: Not a rap expert, but something happened in this election maybe where because of his victory, all the business people were like, you know what? Trump is no longer politically toxic, and some of these folks are making the exact same calculation on the music side as well.
BROWN: They are doing exactly that and it is an honor. It's an honor to be able to sing at an inauguration. It's an honor to be able to sing at one of the balls. It's an honor. I have a daughter who's a singer and she was on American Idol, one of the finalists.
PHILLIP: Yes, that's right. I remember that. BROWN: And she was asked to sing at a convention and she lost so many friends and so many fans because she agreed to sing.
PHILLIP: Wow.
BROWN: And I just think it's time for entertainers to get out of politics and entertain.
PHILLIP: Well, they're getting into politics.
TOURE: Wow, shut up and dribble. Wow. I didn't think we were going to go there.
PHILLIP: Well, Keith, I mean, what would you say, I mean, if Snoop were sitting right here at this table, what would you tell him?
BOYKIN: Well, I had a disagreement with Snoop, I think, a year or two ago. Something -- he endorsed Rick Caruso. He was supporting Rick Caruso, the mayor of Los Angeles, who I disagree with, and I stated that publicly as well.
But, you know, I think that a lot of these rappers are not the intellectuals in the community, as Toure was pointing out, but it's also a dishonor to the black community. I mean, if you look at Donald Trump, the man who refused to rent to black people in the 1970s, who tried to lead a lynch mob against five black and brown kids in the 1980s for the Central Park case, who refused to allow black casino workers to have a prominent place in his casinos in Atlantic City in the 1990s, who spent 5.5 years lying about Barack Obama's birth certificate in the 2000s, who came into office and then attacked black people, like Colin Kaepernick, who attacked Ruby Freeman, and her daughter, Shaye Moss, for simply doing their jobs in Fulton County election workers, you dishonor those people when you go and perform for this man, this man who has done nothing but dishonor black people.
[22:25:06]
And just even last year, just last year, he was calling Haitian immigrants, accusing them of eating cats and dogs. This is not somebody that black people should be associated with and pretending to normalize. We should be challenging him. And it dishonors the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. whose birthday we honor on Monday to celebrate this man.
PHILLIP: You brought up L.A. Trump is trying to get into Hollywood too. He announced this surprise ambassadorship to -- joint ambassadorship to Hollywood, Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone. It's quite a crowd.
SEAT: Yes, that was my first question. Have you ever had an ambassador to a domestic location?
PHILLIP: You know what? It was news to me. It was also apparently news to Mel Gibson. He didn't know that this was happening. What is he even talking about here? What is he trying to do? SEAT: Well, first off, John Voight saved the Declaration of Independence, so he can do anything. Have you not seen National Treasure? Come on, people. Watch a movie. Anyway --
ROCHA: I don't know history, but I watch movies. That was a good one.
SEAT: Look, I do think it's interesting, and I tie it to what we talked about last night with the L.A. Olympics. I think Trump is trying to make a play for California, which is fascinating. He is spending a lot of time focused on the state. He went to Coachella on the campaign trail. But when he talks about Hollywood specifically and a lot of production going overseas, there's a lot of production that's moving domestically as well. You look at Georgia, where they have incredible incentives and a lot of movies are filmed there. My home state of Indiana just passed a tax incentive bill so these shows, T.V. shows and movies that are set in Indiana can actually be filmed in Indiana.
And so why do you want to move? I know Hollywood is where the glitz and the glamour, but there are some great places across this country where you can film as well. So, seeing the balance of that is going to be interesting.
BOYKIN: Aren't you contradicting yourself? You're saying that he's making a play for California but he's encouraging people to go to other places.
SEAT: No, I didn't say he was encouraging other people.
PHILLIP: I don't know about Trump's political future in California but he does seem to -- as he often does, he wants these elites to like him.
BROWN: this is a multimillion dollar.
PHILLIP: He wants the boxers, you know, the MMA fighters, the podcasters, the movie stars. He wants everybody to like him.
ROCHA: He does want them to like him. And I call that group of fellows, the Expendables 5, because their average age is 79. Most of those folks have lived before the internet was created. And that's who he's popular with. And I give it to him, old action stars, and I'm here for it. I may not read a history book, but you want to see an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, I can quote every lie, but that's who he knows, and he does want to be liked.
And because Democrats have had the luxury of having all the A-list stars for a long time, I've been doing this for a long time, he, when he does get a few folks who like him, he's like, I'm making all of you ambassadors, ain't none of you smart enough to be overseas, but you can all go to Hollywood.
PHILLIP: Hollywood, instead of going overseas. Toure, last word.
TOURE: No, I mean, you know, he doesn't want to be liked by everyone. He wants to be liked by tough guys. That's why he goes to the Army- Navy game, the MMA match, the -- Mel Gibson, of all people, of all people in Hollywood.
PHILLIP: He's a MAGA star. He's already a MAGA star. All these guys are.
TOURE: Yes. But, I mean, Mel Gibson's particular history and this is the person you're going to make the ambassador to Hollywood?
PHILLIP: Well, I guess I'm not surprised because it's Donald Trump. But everyone stick around.
Coming up next, new reporting about the president's decline while in office and who asked him to step aside.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:33:08]
PHILLIP: At the very end of Joe Biden's presidency, we are just now learning about the very end of Joe Biden's presidential campaign.
"The New York Times" is detailing how Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, was trying to persuade Biden not to run. Schumer's case was that Biden was looking right on past the warning signs that would have made him a historical pariah. And undone 50 years of democratic progress, not to mention his own legacy, Schumer told Biden directly that his pollsters knew he would lose. Biden told Schumer, slightly off-color rejoinder, that you've got bigger balls than anyone I've ever met.
That's probably true, because there were a lot of people who did not want to do what Schumer did. They didn't want to go, you know, to Delaware and sit in front of the president and say, Mr. President, it's time to go.
BROWN: But Schumer doesn't do anything without Obama and Pelosi. It's the three of them. He got picked to do the dirty work, but there's no question that the three of them were in connection on this decision.
And it's sad because I think everybody saw the decline. I mean, certainly, a lot of people didn't see it until the debate, but prior to that, you know, if you watched any of the press conferences, it was sad, it was sad to see the decline that he was taking.
SEAT: But not only did they not want to tell him the reality, but they were shielding the American people.
HUFF BROWN: Yes.
SEAT: They were deceiving us and trying to obscure the reality of what was actually happening. And it was premeditated. The only time we did some under the cloak of darkness stuff in the George W. Bush White House is when he went to Iraq and Afghanistan to visit troops. And they were doing this every single day in the White House. PHILLIP: Let me just read -- let me read the reporting from "The New York Times" about what you're talking about. It says, the Biden's family in inner circle recognized his physical frailty to a greater degree than they have publicly acknowledged. They then cooperated, according to interviews with more than two dozen aides, allies, lawmakers and donors, to manage -- manage his decline.
[22:35:08]
BOYKIN: I'll say this, we know more about Joe Biden's health than we do about what happened to Donald Trump when he was shot, what happened to Donald Trump when he got COVID, where Donald Trump's medical records when he was president, which were never released, from his doctors who were quacks. We don't know anything about that president's health. And historically, we don't know anything about most presidents' health until recently.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Hold on a second. Keith, you hold on a second, too. I mean, I want to get back to the original point because that might take me (ph) right, stipulate it.
BOYKIN: I'm just responding to Pete, not about --
PHILLIP: Take it out to this. But I do -- I do want to ask you. I mean, you're a Democrat. You wanted to win this election. Wouldn't you have liked to hear from Joe Biden, hey, I'm going to take a step back, or from people close to him, hey, Mr. President, this is not the right decision for you? Wouldn't you have liked that conversation to have happened earlier?
BOYKIN: Well, I mean, as you may know, I didn't want Joe Biden to run in the first place. I was opposed to him running in 2020. I was on CNN every week practically saying he was too old. We didn't need any more old, white men running the Democratic Party.
But once he ran and he won, he was actually a very consequential and effective president in many ways. I mean, he passed an infrastructure bill. He negotiated our way through.
TOURE: Keith --
BOYKIN: I'm sorry.
TOURE: Keith, we're on the same side.
BOYKIN: I understand.
TOURE: You're not answering the question. And this is -- this is -- this is a huge mistake that the Biden team made.
BOYKIN: No, no, no.
TOURE: That people around him knew that he was not well, and they did not say anything. And they have endangered the country, not just the party, but the country, and not making it clear, I'm sorry, grandpa is too old to drive. And somebody needed to say something. And there are people in that administration who knew and clearly worked to keep us from knowing. And this could be a historic mistake for the country.
BOYKIN: What did you not know? You could see him. I mean, I could see in 2020 that he was too old, in my opinion, to be the candidate for president. What -- what -- of course, he's an 82-year-old man. You expect him to move like he's a 50-year-old, a 60-year-old?
PHILLIP: It's an extraordinary amount of humor.
BOYKIN: I mean, it's not on you (ph). Why are you shocked about this?
PHILLIP: It's at a time when, if you're a Democrat, Democrats were telling the country, this is an existential election. This is an election that is about the future of the country, maybe the future of the world.
It is incredible to then know that the person, maybe that you work for, that you love, you've been allied with for many years, cannot do it. Joe Biden couldn't even say for sure in an interview a couple of weeks ago that he would be able to carry out a four-year term.
ROCHA: This is not new in politics. And it galls me, and this whole article galled me. And I've been doing campaigns for 38 years. I worked on 16 congressional races and three Senate races. And I think about all those kids that are out there busting their tails every day for him or Kamala Harris or a congressional candidate X, Y or Z when if he would have done -- quote, unquote -- "the right thing."
I'm not going to say what (INAUDIBLE), what it wasn't, but we can all see what we saw. We all watch that debate. The thing that protects Democrats, let me just pull back the curtain for all of you all, is that we have an industrial consultant complex that does this with lots of people because we don't want outside people coming in and telling the real smart people who've run everything forever that they're not smart and that it was time for grandpa to not drive anymore. This is not new and this is what has caused us election after election after election.
SEAT: There's a difference with a city council candidate or even a congressman --
TOURE: Yeah.
SEAT: -- and the president of the United States.
TOURE: Yeah.
SEAT: And what was mentioned is absolutely accurate. This was a disaster, potential catastrophic disaster for the country. And I'm glad you brought up that USA Today article --
TOURE: I'm glad you think that this is a catastrophe. SEAT: -- where in one -- where in one breath Joe Biden said he would have won reelection, and in the next said, oh, well, I don't think -- essentially said, I don't think I would have served the term.
PHILLIP: Well, I mean --
SEAT: He was willing to do that to the country for himself.
PHILLIP: Yeah, I mean, look, he is -- he and maybe his family are the only people who think he would have beaten Donald Trump. The idea that he would even say that at this point is shocking to a lot of people.
BOYKIN: I guess I'm the only one at this table who thinks this. I just don't understand, like, why is this a shock to anybody? Everybody could see that Joe Biden was an old man.
PHILLIP: I think the question --
BOYKIN: It's not like anybody was hiding this from the American public.
(CROSSTALK)
We could see every time he spoke for the past four years. He was not --
(CROSSTALK)
SEAT: He shouldn't have been at the resolute desk.
BOYKIN: You get a choice to whether to vote for him.
PHILLIP: Keith, the White House --
HUFF BROWN: So, who was running the country?
BOYKIN: He was running the country.
HUFF BROWN: Who was running the country?
BOYKIN: Who was the one who passed the infrastructure bill and passed the Chips Act?
PHILLIP: Keith, the White House said that Joe Biden was at the top of his game. They said that Joe Biden was just --
BOYKIN: White House always say that stuff.
PHILLIP: I get it.
BOYKIN: Nobody believes that.
PHILLIP: The White House, his allies, I mean, even the people who later, after they saw him at the debate, like Nancy Pelosi, they told people that everything was fine. So, the idea that everybody was acknowledging that Joe Biden had lost his sight is not the case. BOYKIN: I thought he was clearly too old five years ago when he first ran for president.
[22:40:01]
I don't know how I expected him to get any better in terms of his age. But he actually -- my point, and I wasn't just trying to deflect, he actually accomplished more than I expected him to accomplish despite that.
ROCHA: I think he can be right, and everybody else can be right at the same time. I'm not going to argue that he wasn't a wonderful president in the things that he got accomplished, but also then step back and go, I got my --
BOYKIN: I wish he had done that.
PHILLIP: You know -- you know what the thing is about -- about politics is that you can accomplish a lot, but if you can't bring people along with you, if you can't lead, you can't communicate adequately, you can't be out in the country, it's all for naught. And I think that's exactly what Democrats experience.
BOYKIN: And that's a relatively modern phenomenon. If you go back historically, that's not the way presidents govern. I mean, Franklin Roosevelt was in a wheelchair with polio and the American people didn't know it.
PHILLIP: Yeah, but he had fireside talks and talked to the American people every week.
BOYKIN: Yeah, yeah, this is true.
PHILLIP: I mean, that was -- he was a communicator. That is literally what he did.
BOYKIN: But, I mean, before, if you go back before then, we didn't always know about the health of American presidents. That's my point.
TOURE: Literally talking about --
SEAT: This is 20205.
TOURE: -- the man was not mentally able to do the job, to continue on, and the other people around him knew that.
BOYKIN: I completely disagree with that. I completely disagree. He is a functioning, intelligent man who -- he's not at the top of his game. He wasn't at the top of his game five years ago. But the idea that he's somehow incapable of being a mentally functioning adult or being able to have conversations or being able to make important decisions is just completely false.
HUFF BROWN: No, in that interview, they said he couldn't make it.
TOURE: Are you looking at the interviews? BOYKIN: I'm telling you what -- I'm telling you what you can see when you talk to the man.
TOURE: (INAUDIBLE) "60 Minutes" when they said, how's your mental focus, and he couldn't answer the question?
BOYKIN: He's clearly --
PHILLIP: There were so many signs, but one thing -- I mean, look, we're talking about history.
BOYKIN: You guys have higher expectations about --
PHILLIP: I think -- I think we can all agree, the presidency in 2024 is the hardest job in the world. It's also the hardest version of the presidency that there has ever been. And so, this is not the same United States presidency as even in Franklin Roosevelt's day and it requires a lot even from young people.
Everyone, stay with me. Coming up next, the New York City mayor, Eric Adams, also Bill Gates, they are the latest to head down to Mar-a- Lago. Is the pilgrimage to visit Donald Trump mandatory now for politicians who need anything in modern day? Our panel will debate that.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:45:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: King's Court or the Winter White House, whatever you want to call it, Mar-a-Lago is now the place where politicians, billionaires, pretty much anybody who needs a presidential favor is going. The latest to make the voyage is New York City's mayor, Eric Adams. The agenda, according to the mayor's office, is to focus on improving New Yorkers' lives, of course. And there was nothing about the federal indictment that Adams is currently facing.
Also heading down to the Winter White House is billionaire, gazillionaire, whatever you want to call him, Bill Gates. Bill Gates talked to "The Wall Street Journal" about this dinner, and listen to what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL GATES, CO-FOUNDER, MICROSOFT: I had a chance to go have a long and actually quite intriguing dinner with him. We touched on a lot of things. It was over three hours, to my surprise. It was just he and I, his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and the person who helps manage things for me, Larry Cohen. So, the four of us sat there. It was quite wide-ranging.
You know, global health is the area that I work in, and such amazing things have happened and can happen there. I felt like he was energized and looking forward to helping to drive innovation. You know, I was frankly impressed with how well he showed a lot of interest in the issues I brought up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUFF BROWN: Okay, I hear snickering beside me.
TOURE: You're got to be kidding me. This is one of the smartest people in the country who reads like 20 books a year, right? His mind has changed America. And he's impressed by his conversation with this man who doesn't read, who doesn't have a deep thought in his body? Like, oh, please.
HUFF BROWN: Not fair. Not fair. And you know what? I'm happy that people are going down and they're starting to get to work. Otherwise, they have to wait until the 20th to get things started. I mean, people have to get started on these things. People are going down, they're getting a chance to go face-to-face and talk about what the regulations might be, what their businesses are. This is what happens.
SEAT: It's not just getting to work, though.
HUFF BROWN: This is how it works.
SEAT: It's understanding a wide swath of this country. A lot of these folks, like Bill Gates, they've lived in their little elite bubbles, they've had filtered information about Donald Trump coming to them, and I think they had misperceptions. And they're doing something quite profound, sitting down and actually talking to the man. How incredible is that? And listening to him and having a conversation. And it's not just Donald Trump. We should do that with any of our politicians and elected officials.
TOURE: You know why we're talking to him? Because he's vindictive, because everything in his political life revolves around himself. And if you don't kiss the ring, then you are next on the chopping block.
HUFF BROWN: Have you ever met him? Have you ever sat down and had a conversation with him?
TOURE: I have met him, and I have talked to him, yes.
HUFF BROWN: And had a conversation with him?
TOURE: Yeah.
HUFF BROWN: Okay. And your conversation with him, did it change your opinion at all?
TOURE: No.
HUFF BROWN: No. Okay.
ROCHA: I want to give my friend, Pete, a little history lesson that the --
SEAT: I thought you didn't do history.
ROCHA: That's why I'm giving it to you now.
(CROSSTALK)
I'm validating myself like Donald Trump. The Winter White House is in Key West and it was put together by President Trump. I know (INAUDIBLE) some of you all. When he was down there in Key West, it was a place of solitude for him to gather his thoughts, and that's why he created it. Plus, it's really nice in Key West in the summertime. Donald Trump is the opposite. And it is really historic, what we're seeing. And I'm not against anybody going and having a conversation with Donald Trump. But you're exactly right.
[22:50:00]
It's like folks know that if they want to get in, they got to go see him and have the conversation.
PHILLIP: I read something really interesting, comparing what Trump is doing to, you know, a tradition in the Middle East and the Arab world called majlis, where that you go in the sitting room and everybody, you know, pays their respects.
Elliott Abrams, who used to work for Donald Trump actually, says that Mar-a-Lago does resemble modern royal majlis in many ways. there's a royal family. There is adulation of the rulers. People bring claims, grievances and pleadings, and they seek jobs and favors.
You know, that's exactly the kind of environment that Trump is creating, which is not typical for the United States of America where we have a government that's not really supposed to be revolving around one man.
BOYKIN: That's exactly right. We don't have monarchs in our country. We don't have people you have to go to kiss the ring in order to get things done. And that's what's so sad about this, Pete. It's not that you can't have a meeting with the president-elect. You should do that. People should do that.
He's meeting with billionaires because that's the people who he wants to represent. He's meeting with people who have favors to get from him, business request to get from him. He's not meeting to actually address the concerns. I assume he's not meeting to address the concerns that he was running on. That's what's so disturbing.
And people who run businesses shouldn't have to go to kiss the ring of the president of the United States in order to get things done. I remember, I used to work on CNBC, and they used to complain all the time about Obama and the nanny state and the government coming in and making all these rules on businesses, let businesses be businesses. And now, apparently, they don't care. They don't mind if the president is intervening in the business affairs. They don't mind if all the things are happening because it's happening by Donald Trump.
I think there's an inconsistency in the way the Republicans and conservatives have been approaching this. SEAT: Well, the consistency is no matter what Donald Trump does, you're going to hate it. People go down to Mar-a-Lago, kiss the ring, kiss the ring. If no one went to Mar-a-Lago, he's irrelevant, no one likes him.
BOYKIN: No.
SEAT: That's exactly how you would respond. Be honest.
BOYKIN: Actually, no, because, well, first of all, one of the great things that Donald Trump did was to help develop the vaccine for COVID. And he doesn't talk about it much because his base doesn't like it. And I give him great credit for that.
SEAT: I'm going to get a clip of this later.
BOYKIN: Yeah, I do, because I didn't trust it at first, but I'm happy to give him credit for the things that he does. But, you know, I think that this is -- we can't just normalize everything Trump does and come up with some excuse for why it's okay because these things have never happened before. We've never had somebody --
SEAT: People haven't gone to meet with president-elects?
HUFF BROWN: Of course, they have.
BOYKIN: No, no, no.
SEAT: No one met with Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton?
PHILLIP: Last word, Keith. We have to go.
BOYKIN: We've never had a situation with this. Corruption (INAUDIBLE) is a requirement in order to get things done for business.
PHILLIP: All right, everyone, hold on. Coming up next, our panel is going to give us their nightcaps, including a prediction from Monday's post-inauguration downloads.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:55:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: We are back and it is time for the news nightcap. You each have 30 seconds to say your piece. Pete, you're up.
SEAT: To the Biden staff leaving the White House, the Northwest gate for the final time, you're officially part of the, I used to work at the White House club. We don't have Air Force One, M&Ms, nor do we give West Wing tours, but we are right where we're supposed to be when our service concludes.
As my former boss, the late Tony Snow once wrote, you'll be right back where the other people are, on the sidewalk, gawking at that grand, glorious, mysterious place where Lincoln walks at night and our highest hopes and dreams reside. Thanks for your service.
PHILLIP: That's nice. Keith?
BOYKIN: Nice. In August 1966, a Gallup poll showed that only 63% of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On Monday, we celebrate his national holiday, his birthday. And I say this because the arc of the moral universe is long, as Dr. King said, but it bends toward justice. This is a moment for us to remember that even though we may be down and out now, we have an opportunity to redeem ourselves as a country.
PHILLIP: All right --
ROCHA: Beautiful.
HUFF BROWN: Very nice.
TOURE: With the TikTok ban looming, I followed thousands of my fellow TikTokers and went over to RedNote. That is China's actual version of TikTok where we give our information directly to the Chinese government. It's digital tourism. It's trolling America. We learned some interesting things. They are lovely people, they are gracious, they are super welcoming to us TikTok refugees.
And I heard two amazing quotes from Chinese users of RedNote. One of them said, why do you guys eat like you have free health care? And they also said --
(LAUGHTER)
-- one of them said, do you --
(LAUGHTER)
-- do you really have to pay for an ambulance or is that just propaganda our government told us?
PHILLIP: Wow, they are -- they are really trolling.
HUFF BROWN: All right, here is my prediction, that Monday night, instead of people downloading video of the oath, obviously, Trump taking the oath, I think more people are going to be downloading him dancing to YMCA because they just can't help it.
PHILLIP: And the Village People will be performing at some point in these festivities as well.
HUFF BROWN: That's right.
PHILLIP: So, I hear. Chuck?
ROCHA: My plea is for all of you out there to take care of our wild spaces. I was honored with my beautiful wife, Ebony, to be able to go to Ecuador and the Galapagos over the break. And it's really refreshing to see wild places. And I got to thinking about what we do as humans, and we're really good at messing up lots of beautiful things. Think about what you love in your life and what is wild, what's wonderful.
[23:00:00]
The Galapagos is still wild and wonderful. I was honored I got to go there. Let's take care of our wild spaces.
PHILLIP: All right, everybody, go outside. Thank you very much. Thank you for watching "NewsNight." We'll see you tomorrow, tomorrow morning, 10 a.m. Eastern Time with a conversation show right here at the table for five. Don't miss it. Thanks for watching. Have a great weekend. "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
