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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Upends Generations of U.S. Policy With Ukraine Slam; Trump Likens Himself to Royalty, Long Live the King; Appeals Court Says, Judge Can't End Birthright Citizenship. Eleven Year Old Girl Bullied by ICE Threats, Dies by Suicide. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired February 19, 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 ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, Donald Trump puts pettiness and Putin before all else. With a Truth Social smear, the American president turns his back on the west, turns Volodymyr Zelenskyy into a villain, and turns Ukraine's existence into a question mark.
Plus, a federal fiefdom, Donald Trump tramples on more government safeguards meant to protect you, while missing the irony in declaring, long live the king.
And DOGE dividends.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: 20 percent of the Doge savings to American citizens.
PHILLIP: The President says maybe to putting his name on more checks to American families.
Live at the table, Mitch Landrieu, Abel Maldonado, Ana Navarro and Bryan Lanza.
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. The ground shifting underneath the world's feet. Tonight, 230 words and a score of lies from the leader of the free world may ultimately end with Ukraine not free but living under Moscow's hammer and sickle. Donald Trump today sang the same song as Russian state T.V., telling the story that the Kremlin has been telling for years, that Ukraine started the war, that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a dictator, that Ukraine's government is filled with thieves, and that the U.S. should stay an ocean away from the battlefield.
It's a sudden and sharp breakup of an alliance that happened in generations. And the rant, it's very much official U.S. policy now. The vice president not so politely warned Kyiv not to say anything if they don't have anything nice to say about Trump.
And as Putin's army fires guns on Ukrainian soil, consider this Trump pointing a diplomatic gun at Zelenskyy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: A dictator without elections. Zelenskyy better move fast or he's not going to have a country left. Got to move, got to move fast, because that war is going in the wrong direction.
In the meantime, we're successfully negotiating an end to the war with Russia, something I'll admit that only Trump is going to be able to do in the Trump administration. We're going to be able to do it. I think Putin even admitted that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Joining us in our fifth seat at the table is Bobby Ghosh. He's a senior editor at Bloomberg. Bobby, this does not seem to bode well for Ukraine and what Zelenskyy might want. And part of it is what Trump is saying there, which is the clock is ticking and he's not suggesting anything about the U.S.'s role in preventing Russia from just taking over Ukraine.
BOBBY GHOSH, SENIOR EDITOR, BLOOMBERG: This has been a long time coming. It can't be a great surprise to the Ukrainians. They had been hoping against hope that it would come to this point, but anybody who's been following Trump closely for more than a year, in fact, for several years, would've seen this coming.
It is a wakeup call moment for Europe because this is their moment of truth, just as much as it is Ukraine's. The Europeans have been depending on the U.S. to lead the effort to protect Ukraine. And now the United States, through its president, is saying that that's not a role that we want to play anymore.
We can we can sort of go down the rabbit hole of the specifics of what Trump is saying that Zelenskyy only has 4 percent support. Actually, that's not true. He has 57 percent, and his support has gone up since last year. If there were an election today, he would very likely win. It's hard to hold an election in a country when you're in the middle of the war.
But that is very often the case with the president, that that kind of stuff is mostly the distraction. The real meat of this and the substance of what we've been hearing for a while now is that Trump wants the United States to have no more role in protecting Ukraine. And that is the thing that will most concern the Ukrainians and Zelenskyy.
I think Zelenskyy will -- he's a practiced politician. He's very good at messaging. He has a fairly decent sense of Trump and Trump's personality. I think he will brush off the actual name calling. But what he can't brush off is the fact that the United States is no longer backing him.
PHILLIP: Well, the name calling is -- it would be one thing if it were just name calling, but it's also in service of a narrative that Russia has been pushing. He called him a dictator, which is not true. It's just false.
BRYAN LANZA, PARTNER, MERCURCY PUBLIC AFFAIRS: Listen, I think it's pretty clear President Trump wants elections, and he sees -- he wants elections in Ukraine.
[22:05:02]
PHILLIP: But you understand why there aren't elections in Ukraine.
LANZA: Yes. Listen, I understand why Ukraine is saying there aren't elections, but let's have some historical data to the point. You had elections in Afghanistan in the middle of a civil war. You had elections in Iraq. You currently have elections in Libya right now. You have the Libyan government with Russia influencing there having elections.
PHILLIP: As just a point of fact --
LANZA: So, point of fact --
PHILLIP: -- Ukraine has a Constitution.
LANZA: Constitutions can be changed.
PHILLIP: Okay. So, you want -- okay, let me just lay out the facts. Ukraine has a Constitution. Its Constitution establishes martial law. Ukraine is under martial law because Russia is bombing them.
LANZA: Correct.
PHILLIP: That Constitution allows them to postpone elections until after the fighting has ended. That's been reaffirmed by the Parliament of Ukraine multiple times. So, you're saying Zelenskyy changed the Constitution to create elections in a country that is being bombed every day?
LANZA: What I'm saying is President Trump wants elections and he's going to put the burden on Ukraine to make sure elections happen. Ukraine has the ability. Parliament has the ability. Nobody's arguing this. They have the ability to change their Constitution. Whether they choose to do it or not, that's their decision. But President Trump's saying the threshold for me to get further engaged for me to sort of bring the peace that I want to stop the fighting to take place, he feels elections need to take place.
PHILLIP: Why?
LANZA: Why do what?
PHILLIP: Why is he so insistent on elections in Ukraine but not insistent on free elections in Russia, for example? LANZA: I mean, listen, his point of view with elections in Ukraine and what he has said before is, it's very hard to negotiate with somebody across the table who doesn't want any type of peace. You've had Zelenskyy --
PHILLIP: But he wants Zelenskyy out.
LANZA: I think it's pretty clear at this point, right?
PHILLIP: The point is that --
LANZA: I think Zelenskyy has expired at this point.
PHILLIP: He's got, as Bobby said, 54 percent approval.
LANZA: Hold on, I want to talk about that approval.
FMR. LT. GOV. ABEL MALDONADO (R-CA): I don't think he wants Zelenskyy out. I think what he wants is the war to end. He wants a ceasefire. He wants an agreement. He wants the killing of all these folks to just stop.
PHILLIP: I think everybody wants that.
MALDONADO: And I think President Zelenskyy should know that if you say something derogative about President Trump, he's going to come back and hit you. You're going to do it, because he fights back every single time, Abby. So, that's what happened today. He was upset. He went back at Zelenskyy. He made it very clear. I want this war to end.
ANA NAVARRO, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Let me tell you some of the things that I find incredibly ironic and frankly painful to see. It's painful to see so many Republicans who I remember wearing yellow and blue lapel pins, who I remember standing up and applauding for Zelenskyy when he spoke at the joint session of Congress, who I remember saying they stood with Ukraine, now try to bend themselves into pretzel shapes to try to find some sort of excuse for why this is happening.
It's ironic that Trump said those things and called Zelenskyy a dictator, which he is not, in Miami, where there are so many exiles from actual dictatorships, like Cuba, like Nicaragua, like Venezuela, Maduro, with whom Trump just negotiated, okay, to get the -- to send back immigrants and to do all sorts of things, legitimized Maduro, who actually lost an election. The U.S. has been supporting, the U.S. under Biden has been supporting the opposition, the duly elected opposition in --
LANZA: But also under Trump.
NAVARRO: Okay, well what did he just do two weeks ago? He sent his emissary there, Rick Grenell, to negotiate with whom they call President Maduro, legitimizing a man who lost the elections in Venezuela, who has been terrorizing the opposition.
So, this is not about elections. This is about Donald Trump giving Putin what he wants, giving Putin the win.
GHOSH: Also, by the way, I mean, the Ukrainians are not -- there's not a big groundswell of Ukrainians demanding elections. We've seen in Ukraine's fairly recent past that when they want a president gone, they're very good at getting rid of their leaders. They're very good at protesting and making their voices heard.
LANZA: But they can't protest today.
PHILLIP: Hold on.
LANZA: Let's be clear. Ukrainians can't protest today.
GHOSH: Why not?
LANZA: Martial law prevents the protests from taking place. Martial law prevents free press.
GHOSH: They were perfectly happy to protest when there were government soldiers beating down on them.
LANZA: But let's be clear what martial law dictates right now. We're covering ourselves with martial law saying we can't do any of these things because of martial law. Martial law in Ukraine says you can't protest. Martial law says you can't criticize the government. Martial law means no free speech exists. Martial law means the media doesn't exist in a fair way.
GHOSH: You're misrepresenting what the protest means.
LANZA: So, let's be clear what martial law means in Ukraine.
GHOSH: If you simply follow the laws, you're not really protesting. And Ukrainians have braved far greater threats than martial law to get rid of their previous president.
MITCH LANDRIEU, FORMER CO-CHAIR, HARRIS-WALZ 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: Bryan invited us to think about history. We should actually think about history. 70 years ago, 80 years ago, we actually had World War II. I stood on the beaches of Normandy and looked at those shores and remembered all those young men from the greatest generation trying to protect freedom and freedom is under assault across the country.
I'm just curious. I mean, anybody can end a war by surrender and appeasement. The question should be why is Trump surrendering American values to Vladimir Putin, who, not by my assertion, is an enemy.
[22:10:00]
Why don't you listen to Senator John Kennedy, one of our friends from Louisiana, one of the most conservative Republican senators? Listen to Mitch McConnell. Listen to the great senator from Mississippi. You know, all of them are warning us that this is an encroachment, that if we allow this to pass, NATO is then going to be threatened, and then we're going to be faced with the same things. But let me tell you something, it's really easy to tear something down. It's hard to build it back up. And once you lose democracy, once you lose the underpinnings of that, when you try to get it back, so why is President Trump trying to appease and surrender to Vladimir Putin, who we know, because we can see, and we can hear, and we can think, he started this war. He's the one that took land. He's the one, by force and by power, has said, and I'm not going to stop until somebody stops me, and he wants to give Ukraine to him. Somebody should ask the question why. Is that in our best interest?
PHILLIP: Yes, that is a very good question. I mean, Bryan, I see you nodding as he was talking about the fact that Vladimir Putin started this war. Trump did not say that. He said quite the opposite. He blamed Ukraine for starting the war. He's using Vladimir Putin's language saying that, you know, Zelenskyy is a dictator. Why is he capitulating so much to Putin when he's trying to convince the world that this is a grand negotiation? It seems like he's giving away the store.
LANZA: No. Listen, I think it's important to step back and see, you know, what President Trump sees going on in the world. I think he's made it his number one priority is to challenge China, right? And you can't challenge China without having, you know, some type of resolution in Europe. What does that resolution mean? Let's look what Kissinger talked about, you know, 50 years ago with the opening of China, 40 years ago, 10 years ago. The only way to ever challenge China is you need to have Russia on your side.
LANDRIEU: You don't think he's sending a signal to China that you can go eat Taiwan tomorrow? I'm not going to be there. We're not -- I'm going to go to Gaza with 12,000 troops. But, you know, why don't you go ahead and eat -- you can have -- you know, Russia took Crimea and I surrendered and I tried to appease them. Go ahead, China, take Taiwan because we're not going over there.
LANZA: No one's taken anything when he's been in office. I can tell you that. As long as President Trump is in office, no one's taking it from Ukraine.
LANDRIEU: So, you believe that story that Donald Trump, when he was president, they didn't have any conflicts. They actually had 60 conflicts going on around the world when he was president, and lots of Americans that will fall would get hurt.
PHILLIP: Russia maybe doesn't have to take anything, but, Bobby, it sure seems that Trump is offering at least part of Ukraine.
GHOSH: Well, for a man who prides himself with negotiations, this is very surprising. If you start your negotiating position by sort of taking one side of the table, this does not seem like a particularly good way to negotiate.
By the way, that's not how he negotiated when he was a real estate tycoon. That's not the way he used to conduct negotiations. And playing hardball with your friends and allies while playing softball, for want of a better expression, with your enemies, people who are behaving like your enemies, I don't know any rule book on negotiations, including the one he wrote, that recommends that as a course of action.
NAVARRO: How do we even have a legitimate negotiation when Ukraine is not invited to the table?
GHOSH: It's also that, all the Europeans come.
MALDONADO: But he said it, they are going to be invited on. I just, he was going to start on this. He was going to move over this, then get all three people --
NAVARRO: Whether you admit it or not, this long post that he made today are the talking points of the Kremlin. And, look, what I will say to you is, though, Donald Trump has been signaling all this through the campaign that he was going to do this. And I think there were Republicans who support Ukraine and who see the encroachment and the danger that Russia represents who thought maybe he won't do it, this is just bluster, like with so many things. What I want to know is where are those Republicans today. Where is Lindsey Graham? Marco Rubio, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, was sitting there used to be very much a supporter of Ukraine and an opponent of Vladimir Putin.
PHILLIP: On the question of who started the war, Trump's own Defense Department, the head of the Defense Department, when he was working for Fox News, he was willing to acknowledge that it was Russia. And, to your point, Lindsey Graham spoke with Zelenskyy, and he offered support for him. So, there is some pushback, but not nearly as much as, you know, you would expect, given what people have been saying on Capitol Hill.
Bobby Ghosh, thank you very much for joining us. Everyone else, stick around.
Coming up next, Donald Trump refers to himself as a king, and he's moving quickly to expand his power. Another special guest is going to join us at our table.
Plus, breaking news, the president's fight against birthright citizenship is now going to the Supreme Court after an appeals court just rejected his argument. Stand by.
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[22:15:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, the king and all of us. Donald Trump is happy to troll by decreeing long live the king on Truth Social, but that actually belies what he is governing by, which is by decree. The latest example came just last night when he signed an executive order that erases an important line that the White House and agencies and Congress had intentionally made independent. They did that so that some agencies, like, for example, the SCC and the FTC, could act in the best interest of Americans, even when it doesn't necessarily align with what the president wants politically. Now, this is all part of a serious attempt to surreptitiously change the very core of how government operates and take the most maximalist view of executive power.
So, if you want to simplify it, just listen to this. This is the White House staff secretary, Will Scharf, telling you what this is all about.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WILL SCHARF, WHITE HOUSE STAFF SECRETARY: Only the president or the attorney general can speak for the United States when stating an opinion as to what the law is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Robert Ray is joining us at the table. He was counsel to President Trump during the first impeachment trial. Robert, is that correct?
[22:20:00]
ROBERT RAY, FORMER INDEPENDENT COUNSEL: You know, in large measure, it is. I mean, traditionally, both parties, when you need an authoritative voice on what the law is within the executive branch, you go to the Department of Justice, and, specifically, you go to the Office of Legal Counsel. They represent, along with the solicitor general, who represents the Justice Department in court, that is the executive branch's view about what the law is.
PHILLIP: So, then why do they bother going to court at all then if they are the final arbiters?
RAY: Well, there are things that still have to be litigated. One of the issues that we're going to be dealing with, I imagine rather quickly, is how independent these independent agencies really are.
Now, since 1935, you know, there's a view that the FTC and the other ones that you rattled off have a certain measure of independence that the president can't touch. There's a reasonable legal disagreement about whether or not the Supreme Court case that established that in 1935, Humphrey's executor is still good law. And the Supreme Court has cast significant doubt about that as recently as 2020 when it took on the Consumer Financial Bureau -- Protection Bureau. And it is now clear the acting solicitor general has said that the United States government, the Justice Department, will no longer defend the constitutionality of Humphrey's executive.
PHILLIP: So, let me pose the same thing to Mitch here on this question.
LANDRIEU: I understand the narrow legal response to the question of does the president get to say what the law is in the executive branch of government. But we're in the United States of America. And since we're talking about history, we had a revolution. The reason we had a revolution was because we did not want a king. And so if anybody in America is confused, we don't do kings here. That's not what we do.
The president now is not only testing the expansion of presidential authority, which many presidents -- he's basically saying I am unbound. And his vice president the other day said, we don't really even have to listen to the courts. There's this thing called separation of powers. There's this thing called judicial review. And there is this thing called checks and balances that, for Democrats and Republicans alike, if we want to keep this democracy, we have to make sure that we stay in that.
The president has said, I'm running, I want to maintain power, I want to go after my enemies, and I want to help my friends. That's basically everything Donald Trump is doing right now.
NAVARRO: There was an SNL skit a few weeks ago with Lin Manuel Miranda reviving his Hamilton character where he was basically rapping about exactly what you were just saying that we didn't have a king and then the Donald Trump character came in as a king. I think that's where he got the idea. Frankly, I think he's much more of a court jester and Elon Musk is the king. But, you know, he's acting as an authoritarian.
This also serves to troll us and get us distracted so that we're not talking about the bird flu experts that were mistakenly fired at USDA, so that we're not talking about the nuclear sciences that were mistakenly fired, you know, earlier this week, so that we're not talking about the park ranger who doesn't know how he's going to feed his family that got fired. All these arbitrary things that are being done --
PHILLIP: One of the other things is that the courts, just to be clear, do not agree with this idea that they get to be the final arbiter. Just tonight, the appeals court, the Ninth Circuit said they're going to keep the block on Trump's challenge to birthright citizenship. It's going to remain on hold and it's going to go to a hearing.
RAY: Big surprise that the Ninth Circuit ruled against the president.
PHILLIP: Okay. The Ninth Circuit just -- okay -- is made up -- listen --
LANDRIEU: As well as shocking you as a judge in Texas.
RAY: So, it's going to the Supreme Court, hello?
PHILLIP: Hang on, Robert. The Ninth Circuit is made up of a Trump appointee, a Jimmy Carter appointee, and a George W. Bush appointee.
RAY: Okay.
PHILLIP: Just so people understand --
RAY: It's something in the water, though.
PHILLIP: It's just -- it is yet another example that the courts are stepping in.
LANDRIEU: Well, to a certain -- so, listen, I was a chief executive. I was the mayor of New Orleans for eight years. And I remember saying, you know, I'm the head of this branch of government. I want to do X. And a lot of times, the city attorney came in and said, Mr. Mayor, you know, I represent the city. I'm not your personal lawyer. This is what the law says. This is what the Supreme Court says. And as a lawyer, as an officer of the court, you know there're certain arguments that you can make with inbounds. But if you go and misstate the law to an appellate court, to a Supreme Court, you have an obligation to say that's really just outside of the bounds of what we are.
PHILLIP: I mean, isn't that just common sense, Bryan? Shouldn't it be the case that the law says what it says and that, you know, faithful public servants should go to their bosses and say, Mr. President, I know you want to do this, but here's what the law says? And that happened in the first Trump administration. Why are they suggesting that to do that would be some form of insubordination?
LANZA: Because the final rule in this is not the law. Actually, it's the Constitution. The Constitution, you know, plays a guiding light in this and, you know, the Congress makes up laws and the Supreme Court decides, you know, whether those laws are within bounds of the Constitution.
RAY: You got a lot of lower court judges saying, well, it's absolutely clear that the 14th Amendment authorizes birthright citizenship.
[22:25:06]
I'm not so sure about that. And the Supreme Court is going to be the final word. And even if you disagree with me about that, we have to travel down this road first.
NAVARRO: Yes. But to your question, that's what happened in part 1, there was a lot of cabinet secretaries, starting with Jeff Sessions, who ended up getting fired immediately by Trump when they told him no. And so this time he has managed to surround himself with people who will not tell him no.
PHILLIP: Just to get us back to where we started, okay? What you said I think is absolutely correct. This is going to go through the court system. But what Trump and his staff secretary and apparently Emil Bove, he said this to one of the prosecutors who refused to drop the case against Eric Adams here in New York City, your oath to uphold the Constitution does not permit you to substitute your policy judgment for that of the president or senior leadership of the Justice Department.
I mean, either the law is the law or it's just subject to whatever the president thinks at any given day?
MALDONADO: Abby, President Trump got elected. He got a mandate. He won all swing states, he feels that all these agencies should follow the will of where his law -- he wants -- PHILLIP: What role does the law play in all of that?
MALDONADO: He's testing it. He's going to test it every single day.
PHILLIP: Okay. That is fundamentally going to be the question of the next four years if whether or not --
RAY: And if you disagree on a policy issue, and you think your oath requires it, you resign.
PHILLIP: There's a question here about whether or not there is a role for the law when a president politically, for political reasons, decides he wants to do something.
LANDRIEU: Can I ask Robert, does it bother you at all, as an officer of the court, which I am as well, that the prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, who were Republicans and conservatives and highly regarded lawyers --
PHILLIP: And some in New York as well and in D.C.
LANDRIEU: -- worked for Supreme Court justices, their consciences were so bothered by this, that they said, as lawyers, we don't think that we can do that? That should give lawyers pause for a minute. It's not that the president doesn't have the power.
RAY: And, apparently, there are 900 former federal prosecutors who agree with them. And my answer to that is, great, you don't agree with it, you think it violates your oath, go ahead, resign.
(CROSSTALKS)
RAY: It doesn't bother me, no.
PHILLIP: If you were in that position, would you have dropped the charges at Trump's request? And it seems like what they got was cooperation from Eric Adams on unrelated issues as it relates to immigration. Would you have done that? Would you have gone before the court?
RAY: I don't know who was making the decision with regard to that, but you know, the president says it wasn't his decision. I don't know who's decision it was.
PHILLIP: I'm just asking.
RAY: Maybe it was Bove's decision.
PHILLIP: If you had been ordered by your bosses at the Justice Department to drop the charges and the circumstances were what they are, which is that the Trump administration says, well, we had a deal with this guy, the charges are going away and now he's going to cooperate with us, you would go before a judge and say?
RAY: I don't know about the deal part because --
PHILLIP: You would stand in front of a judge and say, Your Honor, this is the truth?
RAY: The bottom line is every prosecutor knows, despite what they say, it takes two signatures to make a prosecution happen. One is from the foreperson of the grand jury, and the other is the prosecutor. If the prosecution, the Justice Department, decides that it doesn't want to proceed with the case, that's --
PHILLIP: Okay, but that's not a yes.
RAY: The answer is, you don't proceed with the case.
PHILLIP: I think it's very telling.
RAY: And the public has no right to a prosecution.
PHILLIP: I mean, if you thought that this was a legitimate, right, if you thought this was a constitutional exercise and not a political one, why wouldn't you just say yes? If you were asked to do it by your superiors that was within the law, wouldn't you just say yes?
RAY: I don't find that -- I don't find anything that I'm aware of here, and I don't know all the facts, but I don't find anything that I'm aware of here that would constitute a violation of my oath to carry out an order from the Justice Department to withdraw this prosecution without prejudice.
PHILLIP: So, you would do it?
RAY: So, the answer is if it's a direction from the Justice Department, I either do it or I would resign.
PHILLIP: Okay, well a lot of people chose to resign.
RAY: There are people who chose to resign.
LANDRIUE: If you're aware of the quid pro quo. If you read media ways (ph), I'll drop it if you do what I want as it relates to a public policy.
RAY: People throw around quid pro quo all the time at the first sight of an appearance of like, you know, of impropriety. They didn't -- they're not completely axing the prosecution. They're withdrawing it without prejudice.
Again, the public does not have a right to a prosecution. You can dream on that you think that you do. But if the Justice Department decides that it doesn't want to prosecute it for any reason, that's the end of it.
PHILLIP: It's all fun and games until you have to go in front of a judge and say it. And that's why Emil Bove was the one who ended up having to do it.
RAY: And I give him credit for doing that.
PHILLIP: Robert Ray, thank you very much. RAY: And if I were the decision-maker, I'd be doing the same thing. I'd be before that judge. Yes.
PHILLIP: He would have no choice. Everyone else, thank you. Hang on for us.
Coming up next, a tragedy that says so much about what is happening in the country today. An 11-year-old girl reportedly died by suicide after her classmates taunted that her family would be deported and she'd be left alone.
[22:30:08]
Another special guest is going to join us at the table to discuss this terrible story.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Remember this name, Jocelyn Rojo Carranza. She was only 11 years old. She loved three brothers and sisters.
She played French horn, she danced, she sang. She did cartwheels, or at least she tried to do as best as she could at 11 years old. She made TikTok videos.
She counted down the days until movie night on Fridays. She got her nails done with her grandma. She was in the sixth grade.
And it's there at school where Carranza was bullied.
[22:35:07]
And it's because of what happened there that we are talking in the past tense tonight about her. The bullies allegedly targeted Carranza over her family's immigration status, turning the threat of ICE agents knocking on her door into a menacing taunt.
She took her own life, and her mother, Maribella, found her in their Texas home. Again, Jocelyn was only 11 years old.
Joining us at the table is Maria Santana. She is an anchor and correspondent for CNN en Espanol.
Maria, I want to talk to you about this case in just a second, but Ana, I see you there, and it's painful story--
ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I haven't been able to stop thinking about this little girl the whole day. And look, when I did the CNN documentary on the Latino vote, I remember sitting down with a young man named Emmanuel, who told me exactly this story, who told me that when Trump became president in 2016, he was in high school, and he got called a dirty wetback.
And he told me this through tears. And he had not been able to tell his mother. She was hearing it for the first time as he was telling me. And this is happening all over America because of what has been
unleashed, because of the portrayal of Latinos in particular, and immigrants as criminals and as bad people.
The TPS holders, the Venezuelans, as if they're all part of Tren de Aragua. They don't even know how to say Tren de Aragua, so now they call it TDA. There are kids being bullied.
There are kids being targeted. And there are kids who are terrified that their parents, U.S. citizen kids, terrified today that their parents are going to be taken away, that they're going to go home and the home is going to be empty. And so that is what has been unleashed on America.
PHILLIP: And we don't know all the details here about what happened. We don't even know her parents' immigration status, but that's almost -- it's almost like beside the point. I mean.
MARIA SANTANA, CNN EN ESPANOL ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: And I mean, at this point, will her mom go on T.V. and say, yes, I am undocumented, knowing what's happening to people when they go on T.V. and then they get picked up by ICE. But yeah, this is still under investigation. It's being investigated by the school police.
And what the mom told CNN is that the girl committed suicide after she was being relentlessly bullied and taunted at school about the family's immigration status.
Kids saying to her, we're going to call ICE. They're going to come to your house. We're going to pick up your parents. You're going to stay alone.
And the worst part about it is that she says that she didn't even know that this was happening. The girl was getting counseling at school where she was reporting the bullying. The school apparently was aware of it, but she said that she only learned about it from investigators.
So she's saying, you know, maybe I could have done something. I didn't notice any signs in my daughter that she was going through this situation.
But if the school had said to me, you know, she's being bullied about this, maybe she could have done something. And that's what's even more heartbreaking about this story.
There was a funeral for her today where even her schoolmates showed up and she was just remembered as a happy, joyous girl.
PHILLIP: This is every parent's nightmare, just on a human level. But we're just at a moment where we have to talk about this because there are 4.4 million American children, U.S. citizen children, who are born with an undocumented parent.
And what happens to them?
ABEL MALDONADO (R), FORMER CALIFORNIA LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, AND TRUMP SUPPORTER: It's sad, to be honest, Abby. It's horrible to have an 11- year-old girl suicide herself over bullying. Bullying is real.
And obviously, you know, they didn't catch it in time or she didn't report it on time, or I don't know what it was. But the fact of the matter here is we have a system that's broken and people are making fun of someone's parents and caused her to kill herself.
That is horrible. Nobody wants that.
PHILLIP: There's something happening. I just want to show this because I think, and I'll let you jump in.
The other part of this is that, obviously, deportations happen every day in this country under Democratic and Republican administrations. People who break the law who are criminals should be sent back or deported or jailed or whatever it is.
But there's something happening also with this administration making light of the whole situation. This was a Valentine's Day post from the White House official account: "Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally and we'll deport you."
And then another post on social media saying ASMR, this is sort of like social media slang for kind of like a sensory experience of illegal alien deportation flight. That's what the caption was.
And the operative image here is the chains. You see them there.
[22:39:56]
So look, again, it's not a question of should criminals be deported, but the idea of kind of celebrating this as something that is almost like a, with a thrill down your spine, I think there's human behavior behind this.
NAVARRO: These little girls' parents were not criminals.
SANTANA: No.
PHILLIP: Yes.
SANTANA: And there's a level of dehumanization and cruelty built into all of this that I think trickles down to average Americans where they're not feeling empathy for 11-year-old girls when they're relentlessly bullying them. And it's almost become a thing where threatening to call ICE on people is like a game to just further victimize these communities that are already living in paralyzing fear and anxiety.
And we've seen cases like this happening just in the last few days of a pizza shop manager being fired for threatening to call ICE on his own customers, a teacher who made posts about encouraging people to report his undocumented students.
And that's having an effect. When you talk about policy and numbers of arrests of deportations, there's people behind that, there's families behind that, and there's a real psychological and emotional effect there that we also have to talk about.
MITCH LANDRIEU (D), FORMER CO-CHAIRMAN, HARRIS-WALZ 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INFRASTRUCTURE COORDINATOR UNDER BIDEN ADMINISTRATION, FORMER MAYOR OF NEW ORLEANS AND FORMER LOUISIANA LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: What is so painful about this is that this was as predictable as it is tragic. This didn't happen by accident. I mean, when you have the leader of the free world who is now saying that I'm a king, basically using every ounce of his breath and deputizing people to call people that don't look like us, rapists, robbers, murderers, or they're criminals.
And are they violent criminals? Are they part of gangs? Are they just mom and dads that came over here or that have been here before? Is it really any surprise that they're getting vilified in the communities that they live in?
I promise you that there are little girls and boys that are in that corner of their bedrooms wondering whether or not ICE is going to break into the house and take their mom and dad away. And when Tom Holman, who's running this whole operation, sits in these seats and you say to him, Tom, can you please help me work through this?
Let's say I'm the mayor of New Orleans. I want to help you get rid of all the violent criminals. You want to get rid of somebody that's violent on my street? I'm 100 percent in, let's go get them.
But are you going to go take grandma and grandpa and Tia? And you're going to, well, you know, I'm just going to say if they're kind of around, you know, they're going to go. That sends shockwaves.
And so what I'd say, look, we have a broken immigration system. It's been broken for a long time. Ronald Reagan actually gave the best speech about this on the last speech that he gave at his presidency.
Donald Trump's got the pen. If he's so powerful and he's so tough and he's so smart, why doesn't he just ink out an immigration proposal that, by the way, we wanted to pass a couple of years ago that he said, we don't want to do this. We can be tough and smart.
Americans, but Americans don't want to be cruel. And you're seeing the consequence of a cruelty now that's going to have disastrous effects for kids.
BRYAN LANZA, PARTNER, MERCURY PUBLIC AFFAIRS, AND SR. ADVISER, TRUMP 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: Yes, first of all, it's very, very tragic. I mean, I have a young child, two young kids, and you always live in the fear of the outside influences, how they're going to affect them.
And so as parents, me and my wife, we constantly think about that. And so we obviously hurt for the family what they go through.
But listen, I have a Mexican mom. I have a Bolivian dad. I grew up in East Los Angeles. We've always lived under the fear of La Migra coming to our neighborhoods.
That has always been, that wasn't, that was during Reagan. That was during Clinton. That was during Bush.
That has always been there.
LANDRIEU: Sure.
LANZA: So I think we sort of weaken our argument when we just try to tie it to Trump directly.
LANDRIEU: Well, but you haven't had a president, you have not had a president like Trump use the language that he's used as aggressively as he's used it amongst, you can name every one of those presidents, you're right, Bush, Reagan, and all of them spoke in different ways.
MALDONADO: And none of them got more Latino votes than Donald J. Trump did either.
LANDRIEU: That's true. But that doesn't make it right.
MALDONADO: I haven't got more votes than Donald J. Trump.
LANDRIEU: That doesn't make it less cruel.
PHILLIP: We don't have a lot of time, but Brian, what you just said, it struck me because you grew up understanding what that sense was like --
LANZA: Everyday.
PHILLIP: -- and the lack of differentiation between hardworking immigrants, maybe some of them are undocumented, but they're not criminals, and people who are. What do you think about the lack of distinction that is being made between those groups of people right now?
LANZA: You know, listen, I think where we are today, you know, like Abel and I, we grew up in almost the same neighborhood. And where we are today is the workers. The people who are coming here now are much different than the immigrants, the illegal immigrants that came in the 2000s, that came in the 90s.
You know, they were sort of more of family unification, you know, they came in for the hard work. The ones that are coming now, you know, some of them are hard workers, but the pace that they've come in has become a problem.
They've become a problem with the Latino community. Abel's right, you know, Latino vote did really well with the Republican Party for the first time.
Because President Trump is addressing these things, there are those people who come to this country who play by the rules, who wait in line. My father waited in line. Your father worked the fields till he was able to get his visa.
There's a process that worked, and I think the frustration that Republicans have is that just because, you know, Donald Trump, you know, said we need to build a wall, something, by the way, Hillary has said too, we need to build a barrier.
Now we have this adverse reaction to everything Trump gets out. You guys lose credibility.
NAVARRO: No other president has relished in the cruelty and been as vocal about it. There's always been a level of compassion shown, Republicans and Democrats.
[22:45:05]
George W. Bush was the compassionate conservative. Donald Trump is showing absolutely no compassion. He is showing no distinction. He is relishing in the cruelty, as is the people that he has delegated to do this.
And they are, and part of it is precisely with the purpose of instilling fear in the immigrant community so that they leave of their own accord. And I'll tell you this, I know a hell of a lot of Venezuelans in Miami right now who are really regretting their vote for Trump because he is lifting temporary protective status of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who fled Maduro, who is an oppressive dictator, the guy that Donald Trump was just like.
LANDRIEU: I have great respect for both of their histories, and I think they're right.
I think the Democrats relate to this issue. I think the country now understands we've got to secure our border and the things that we have to do better that we haven't done across the last five presidents.
But you can't, but you can't, yes, in both parties.
MALDONADO: Both parties have done a poor job.
LANDRIEU: What I find really unbelievable about this Trump thing that we're in, this haze that we're in about Donald Trump is somehow that he's like Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Barack Obama, or any other president. This guy is a degree different.
He is much better at being bad than he was, and he doesn't want any restrictions on him. And he's got a dark heart. And when you lose the language and you're that powerful and that penetrates down to the ground, these kids are hearing things in the school, the ones that are doing the bullying.
Where do you think they're getting that from?
SANTANA: You just have to look at the --
PHILLIP: Just to underscore what you're saying, I mean, I just want to, for one second, put the politics to the side.
When the messages that filter down to children, they are distilled down to their core essence, which is that you look like this, your mother speaks Spanish, you are going to be deported.
And that's what we're talking about here.
SANTANA: Right. Yes. I mean, I've seen cases even in my daughter's school where kids are asking, is ICE going to come in? Are they going to, you know, take any of my friends? There was a very sad post that I saw of a child who wrote a letter to his friend in school and said, I think he was from El Salvador, and he said, you know, if you're reading this letter, this means that I've been deported and you will probably never see me again.
I mean, just the sadness of it, and it is, there's a cruelty that we haven't seen with another president. Just when the Secretary of State puts out an ad that says, if you come to this country later, we will hunt you down.
I mean, those words are powerful, hunt you down.
NAVARRO: The Secretary of State, by the way, whose parents came here as economic immigrants from Cuba.
PHILLIP: And just to note that the Trump administration has also halted legal aid for migrant children, which would leave some of them, very young children in some cases, to navigate this legal labyrinth alone. I'm not sure why that makes any sense.
MALDONADO: Abby, the system is broken. The immigration system is completely broken, and both political parties over the last 25 years, as Ana stated, when George Bush came in, none of them have tried to fix it.
And in my heart, I feel like they use it like a political football. This party uses it for them, and we're hurt, Abby.
PHILLIP: And I think that, look, if Trump is serious about fixing it, we should see a bill. We should see a bill, because that's the only way to really fix it.
Maria, thank you very much for joining us. We'll be back in a moment.
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[22:50:00]
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PHILLIP: We are back, and it's time for the News Nightcap, fake snow edition.
Visitors to a snow village in China discovered that it was actually covered in cotton and bedsheets. In a social media apology, the snow village said, unusually warm weather left them no choice but to trick everyone, apparently.
You each have 30 seconds now to tell us what is actually not as great as it seems like this snow village.
LANDRIEU: Well, that's the same like having snow in New Orleans, which we had the other day after 130 years, but running through the airport, being starving, grabbing a bag of Doritos, and open it up, and like, there are two in there.
And you're like, what are you talking about? Shrinkflation, exactly.
PHILLIP: Yes, that's no good.
LANZA: Mine is the drumstick, ice cream. If you look at the drumstick, it's no longer ice cream anymore. It says dessert flavor, a frozen dessert, but they've taken ice cream out of ice cream, so ice cream's not what it seems anymore.
And I'm pretty devastated, but apparently this has been on social media, TikTok for several years, and I just read about it last week.
Artificial stuff. It doesn't even melt anymore. The drumsticks don't even melt anymore.
You should read it. The label's quite frightening.
PHILLIP: All right.
MALDONADO: Abby, Abby, I wrote some stuff down. Mine's fancy pet products.
I mean, we have a lot of animals on the farm, and now you see cashmere dog beds. You see Gucci pet carriers. You see fancy tree towers for kitty cats.
PHILLIP: You're sitting next to the wrong person.
MALDONADO: Chewy, yes. You see Chewy Vuitton dog toys. And it all sounds great, but my dog, they choose, they still nibble on the couch. They still choose a box over the tree tower.
And at the end of the day, they choose a chair instead of their thing. It's what it is.
PHILLIP: Yes, my dog prefers the couch to any dog bed I have ever given him. He's not interested.
Go ahead, Ana.
NAVARRO: I'm sorry, Abby. I'm just not in the mood after that conversation about Jocelyn Carranza to segue into a lighthearted topic. It's something that's really weighing on me because I live in Miami, a community that is going through incredible pain right now.
So I'm going to use my time to urge parents to reassure their kids, to urge parents to teach their kids not to bully others because of where they may come from or where their parents may have come from, to ask teachers to make sure that schools are safe spaces.
[22:55:08]
And that our children can go to school without fear of being bullied literally to death.
PHILLIP: Yes, I really appreciate that message, Ana. And I think we all agree with it. Thank you so much.
And everyone, thank you for watching. We've got much more on our breaking news. An appeals court has rejected President Trump's birthright citizenship fight, which means that it is heading likely to the Supreme Court. "Laura Coates Live" is next.
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