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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump and MAGA Allies Celebrating Firings Despite Chaos, Loss; Sources Say, 50,000-Plus Pentagon Workers at Risk of Firing; Trump Marks Black History Month Amid His War on Diversity. President Trump Says He Should Not Be Blamed For New Warning Signs About the Economy; V.P. Vance Talks About Masculinity In An Interview. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired February 20, 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, the right cheers on DOGE.
JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS HOST: DOGE is a blessing from the heavens above.
PHILLIP: Until Doge comes for them.
WATTERS: We just need to be a little bit less callous.
PHILLIP: Plus, red flashing lights on the fate of the economy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Dow is down more than 600 points.
PHILLIP: As MAGA moves the goal post.
J.D. VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: It's going to take some time to fix.
PHILLIP: Also, the president marks black history as his administration erases its mud and considers erasing it from schools.
LINDA MCMAHON, EDUCATION SECRETARY NOMINEE: I'd like to get back to you on that.
PHILLIP: And sounds like a new cologne.
VANCE: What is the essence of masculinity?
PHILLIP: But MAGA is producing a new man show for America.
Live at the table, Julie Roginsky, Abel Maldonado, Jemele Hill, T.W. Arrighi, and Solomon Jones.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening. I'm Abby Phillip in New York.
Let's get right to what America is talking about, DOGE remorse. Tonight, President Trump and his MAGA allies are treating their firings inside the government like a game, a show, even. They are creating memes, throwing celebrations, and the man in charge is using props to dance on professional graves.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELON MUSK, DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY: This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy, chainsaw.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Everything's fine. Even if you agree with shrinking the government or rooting out wasteful spending, it's safe to say that this process has been utter chaos with zero oversight and very little care, and we're talking about people's lives here. Tonight alone, thousands of IRS employees have been fired, and sources are describing emotional scenes playing out in the workplaces across the country, employees are crying, managers are crying, and many are angry, kicking chairs and throwing books over how they are being treated. All of this during the busiest time of the year for the agency.
Now, at the Defense Department, we're hearing 50,000 people are at risk of being fired next, 50,000. But listen to one champion of DOGE who suddenly changes his tune when the cuts hit home.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: He just found out he's probably going to get laid off. He's going to get DOGEd.
This guy's not a DEI consultant. This guy's not a climate consultant. You know, this guy is a veteran. We just need to be a little bit less callous with the way, Harold, we talk about DOGEing people, okay? I just want to -- I want that to sink in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're arguing with yourself.
WATTERS: No, I am not guilty of that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're guilty with yourself.
WATTERS: I finally found one person I knew that got DOGEd and it hit me in the heart.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Well, that same guy lecturing on being less callous has been the king of callousness for weeks.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Thousands of bureaucrats woke up today to a big, you're fired.
DOGE is dishing out spankings like daddy daycare.
It's like going to your grandparent's house throwing out their VCR and their stacks of tapes, just downloading Netflix for them. Here, Grandpa, you just hit this button here and press select.
Even the holiday weekend couldn't slow DOGE down.
There was a huge exodus over at the National Archives for snickety librarians were getting DOGEd silly. The Dewey decimal systems nex.
DOGE is a blessing from the heavens above.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: DOGE for the but not for me, Julie? I mean, it's not just him. It's pretty widespread at this point.
JULIE ROGINSKY, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Did the leopard Jesse Watters' face? By the way, he's kind of in a precarious time slot there over Fox. So, his previous two predecessors got fired. So, I wouldn't be celebrating people getting fired if I were him because it's probably going to come for him next.
But, look, this is always the case for people who celebrated Donald Trump until it hit home, right? All of a sudden these farmers in Kansas who are celebrating Donald Trump's election now realize that their food is not being sold because of USAID being shut down. All of these people who are celebrating the fact that he's cutting people over at the CDC or he's cutting people at NIH.
[22:05:00]
Well, guess what, there's a measles outbreak in Texas that's affecting their children, and they're worried about that now. There's a bird flu, an avian flu that's affecting their livestock and them, because it's transferring over to people. That's being affected. And, by the way, nobody's around to care for it anymore because RFK Jr. just laid off a bunch of people over at CDC.
So, this is not -- you know, they don't discriminate against Democrats or Republicans. I don't know who people thought that Elon Musk was coming for, whether they thought if you had a -- it's not like the angel of death passing over you in Passover if you have a little mezuzah on your doorstep. It's coming for everybody. They don't discriminate between people who are MAGA and people who are not MAGA. And ultimately, the leopard is going to eat their face, and Jesse Watters found that out.
PHILLIP: And this perception is that the federal employees are all in D.C. and D.C. is, you know, Kamala Harris country. But they're actually all over the country. And, you know, we've seen it in the headlines over the last couple of weeks. Republican senators and Congress people, they're hitting the panic button now. Just the latest, literally today, an Ohio representative said that the executive orders are getting out of control. Katie Britt is worried about cuts to parts of the government that affect her state. I was just watching a town hall in Georgia where a Republican congressman in a deep red district was getting raked over the coals because of CDC cuts, which are affecting his constituents. So, it's hitting home.
T.W. ARRIGHI, VICE PRESIDENT, PUSH DIGITAL GROUP: No, no doubt. In fact I got some unfortunate news yesterday that a dear friend of mine lost his job due to the cuts. And so I know what it's like growing up in an entrepreneurial family, and my dad struggling in this little small business where everyone's a family, and the unfortunate circumstance he had to let someone go, it pained him greatly for that. So, I don't want to minimize it.
And I think in all of our political discourse, we should never be so callous as to be mean. But I also think you can say that the only way to shrink government, unfortunately, is to let people go. And it has been made clear that this is a top priority of the president. And if every time one area of the government is cut, there's obviously going to be a story attached to it. So, I think it's a self-perpetuating issue.
And you brought up something interesting about the people that are cut in important departments. I agree, there have been some, and they've had to go back and forth. And I think DOGE, for a communications tip, should be more transparent about exactly what they're cutting and be more forthright.
PHILLIP: Or maybe they should know what they're cutting. I mean, I think that, to your point, everybody understands cuts are -- in fact, actually a lot of Americans agree with cuts, right? It's not the cuts necessarily in and of themselves, it's where they're happening and the indiscriminate nature of them. I mean, you pointed out they had to go back. But we're talking about nuclear weapons staff, V.A. crisis hotline staff, CDC staff working in critical jobs, people at the Department of Agriculture trying to stop this bird flu that's causing my eggs to be $12 a dozen. These are all people they've had to rehire.
ARRIGHI: I agree. And there have also been a lot of assumptions jumped to about the jobs that people had at that nuclear agency or at the FAA and others. So, the left has to also be a little, pump the brakes on that front.
But I want to say, look, this whole started with a voluntary effort to give people a nine months severance package to leave, quit if they weren't fully on board and find another job. I think that's actually quite generous in the world I live in.
ROGINSKY: But not legal.
JEMLE HILL, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Yes, exactly.
ROGINSKY: But it's not legal.
ARRIGHI: Well, we'll soon find that out, but that's still being debated. ROGINSKY: There's a law that says you can't give somebody more than $25,000 worth of severance, and, clearly, that's a lot less than if you're getting nine months or ten months worth of severance. So, it's not legal. It's not a question of we'll find out. The law is the law. Whether Donald Trump wants to flout it is a different story. Whether Elon Musk is too doped up on ketamine to even know what the law is based on -- don't, ah, if he talks about it. I'm not disparaging him. He actually says how much he loves ketamine. You can see from that shot that, you know I'm, not making it up.
But the bottom line is he doesn't even know what he's doing. These are people who don't even care about the law. They don't even know the law exists.
SOLOMON JONES, AWARD-WINNING COLUMNIST, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: I think the key thing that you said just now, though, was people we're talking about people in Philadelphia today, where I'm from 400 people lost their jobs at the IRS. These are real people in a city where the poverty rate is right around 20 percent. And so when you talk about these federal workers, you're talking about human beings.
I think that Trump and Elon Musk are dehumanizing these people to the point where they're memes. For people to talk about on the news like they're just numbers or they're just, you know, things or barriers to get in the way of his agenda, no, these are people with real families with real bills to pay and you're firing them for nothing.
HILL: And not only that. I mean, we have to realize too that like with the narrative that they've been able to paint successfully to some degree that people who are federal workers are these elitist bureaucrats that are out of touch with the real Americans and that they deserve this. And that's why there's been that level of callousness.
Now, for Jesse Watters, of all people to realize that this was going to somehow impact his life, and considering what his entire narrative has been about this people, I'm sorry.
[22:10:06]
And even with the case of the farmers, this was all laid out. So, there's a part of me that doesn't have a whole lot of sympathy because this game plan was in place from the beginning.
And when you let people who are unelected -- I didn't vote for Elon Musk to be the president. I didn't. I didn't vote for Donald Trump either. But the whole point is that you have an unelected bureaucrat who doesn't know anything about how our federal government coming in there and just deciding like, oh, I don't understand this, let's just cut it. The way that he's doing it is what is annoying and pissing people off. Like, again, we're all -- none of us want fraud and waste and all kinds of things, but this is such a playbook that we've seen historically, convince the people there's a lot of fraud and waste and that only the billionaires and only these oligarchs can fix it. And then they will go along with it because they don't know any better, because they think that everything is a conspiracy theory, and that's what we're seeing play out in real time.
FMR. LT. GOV. ABEL MALDONADO (R-CA): But if you look at how it's going about, obviously, the chainsaw was -- it's a gimmick that came from Argentina.
HILL: Yes. But that's heartless, right?
MALDONADO: Yes. But wait a second. You know, we have a $36 trillion deficit. The people that know how to run the government that have been running the government caused the $36 trillion deficit.
(CROSSTALKS)
JONES: And they want to raise the debt even more. That's them.
MALDONADO: There's three ways to balance the budget. There's only three ways. You either cut, you have revenues, or you borrow.
ROGINSKY: Who's balancing the budget?
MALDONADO: The government's been borrowing forever. We have a 36 -- we're going broke.
ROGINSKY: Are you pretending that Donald Trump is going to balance the budget? He's not even talking about balancing the budget.
PHILLIP: I don't think we're even in the universe. Because what they're talking about is, to your point, raising the debt ceiling, but also adding more spending. And then they're talking about little itty, bitty, you know -- let's say it's $55 billion dollars in DOGE cuts. It's not even in the ballpark of what would be necessary to pay for the spending. So, that is not happening. It is not being balanced.
MALDONADO: Any business, any small business that has a deficit that isn't prepared to make some cuts and lay people off, it's not going to survive.
PHILLIP: Those cuts are not happening.
MALDONADO: And America's not going to survive.
PHILLIP: To Jemele's point though, one other thing, this is on a different topic, on Ukraine. Donald Trump ran on all of this stuff. And here is Nikki Haley, who endorsed him. She's upset about what he's been doing on Ukraine. She says, these are classic Russian talking points, exactly what Putin wants. She said that today.
She endorsed Donald Trump. She spoke at the RNC on his behalf.
HILL: So, again, I don't care. It's not like this is the first time that he's said his talking points. It's not. And so, to me, the level of political cowardice now is just at an all-time high. Oh, so now, after the election, you have something to say. You have plenty of opportunities to stop this. Now, all these Republicans talking in secret about how much -- how scared they are, that's why I have zero sympathy for them. You knew what was coming. You were on board with it until you weren't. So, I don't care.
ROGINSKY: And I will go a step further. They, all these people who are now apoplectic about Ukraine, starting with the Senate sajority leader, put Pete Hegseth in there, put Tulsi Gabbard in there, who either she's a useful idiot or just an outright Russian asset, who knows, but she's clearly what?
ARRIGHI: She's an American veteran.
ROGINSKY: So -- and I thank her for her service. But does it mean that she
(CROSSTALKS)
ARRIGHI: Foreign asset with no evidence.
ROGINSKY: I said either she's a useful idiot to the Russians or somebody's putting these talking points at -- being a useful idiot means that she doesn't understand that she's parroting Russian talking points. 24/7, her own staff admitted that she parrots Russian talking points. So, I don't care that she's a veteran, so is Pete Hegseth. They're betraying Ukraine. They're responsible for this, along with Donald Trump.
ARRIGHI: There are very -- there's plenty of disagreement in our party over Ukraine. That isn't new.
MALDONADO: 100 percent.
ARRIGHI: Yes, that is not -- but that is not grounds enough for most Republicans to have voted the other party, okay? When we talk about government spending and cutting government --
(CROSSTALKS)
ARRIGHI: Oh, by the way, we have bureaucrats all throughout our country who people didn't vote for.
JONES: Let me ask this question. Because Pete Hegseth put out a memo saying that he wanted cuts across the Defense Department 8 percent every year for the next five years. I've never heard a Republican say, I want to cut defense in my life. So, they want to cut defense. Is that betraying the American people? Is that betraying the Republican Party and the values of the Republican Party?
ARRIGHI: I would add an asterisk to that because there is plenty of waste. The Defense Department hasn't passed it out in seven years. That's not new. There's plenty of waste in it. I think it is a good exercise to look at waste in all departments, but I do think, obviously, when we talk national defense, it's more than just the missiles and bombs.
PHILLIP: All right. You and Bernie Sanders will shake hands on that point.
Coming up next, an awkward moment at the White House when President Trump marks Black History Month while his administration erases Black History Month.
[22:15:02]
Plus, why is Wall Street suddenly freaking out? The flashing alarms and the president changing his tune on the fix.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Tonight, Donald Trump's presidency turns one month old. And when it comes to diversity, his administration has done pretty much everything to kill it inside the government. They've turned DEI into a curse word and use it to justify the firings and to end entire departments. The soon to be education secretary questioned whether black history will continue to be taught in schools. And agencies have completely erased identity months, including, you guessed it, Black History Month.
[22:20:00]
In fact, Trump's transportation secretary calls them a distraction.
So, it's pretty awkward when Donald Trump then holds an event marking Black History Month at the White House.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: We pay tribute to the generations of black legends, champions, warriors, and patriots who help drive our country forward to greatness and you really are great people.
Under the executive order, I signed last month this new, beautiful outdoor statue park, the garden will predominantly feature incredible women, like Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks.
We pay tribute to these heroes and to so many others, but not simply because they're black heroes, but also because they are truly American heroes who inspire all of us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, this month, you know, featured this president blaming DEI for a horrible plane crash. I also wonder whether, you know, Department of Defense employees would be reprimanded for attending that event. Apparently, it is literally prohibited at the DOD to mark Black History Month right now.
HILL: Well, I mean, I did see some of the footage from people posting from that event, and it was great because it let me know all the people I need to stay away from. But what I would say is that, you know, he also mentioned at the same time that there were going to be statues of Kobe Bryant and Muhammad Ali. So, it just seems a little hypocritical that you would be doing everything in your power to sort of outlaw the teachings of what, say, a Muhammad Ali stood for. Like are you going to tell people that he stood against war, that he stood against these very progressive civil rights issues? That doesn't seem to be the part of it. And what I noticed there from that clip is that he had to read letter by letter about what these people -- what these great Americans have done in terms of progress for our country, because it's not something he's familiar with and not something that is natural for him.
So, I consider this to be an insult, a slap in the face, and, frankly, all the people that attended this, look, I guess God bless you if you've never been to the White House and maybe you looked at it as some kind of great experience, but everything this president has stood for and done in the last decade or so has been a complete rejection of what black history is.
PHILLIP: Abel, how do you square what Jemele is saying there, that this White House, this administration has spent so much time, especially in the last month, denigrating diversity as even a concept? And, actually, let me just go ahead and play this, because I think it's instructive to hear exactly what they have been saying. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I think the single dumbest phrase in military history. Is our diversity, is our strength.
SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): My son is in a public school. He takes a class called African-American History. If you're running an African- American History class, could you perhaps be in violation of this corridor, of this executive order?
MCMAHON: I'm not quite certain, and I'd like to look into it further and get back to you on that.
SEAN DUFFY, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: You can have DEI in water coolers and universities, I disagree with that, but lives aren't impacted with DEI at universities. It is impacted here.
I just want the best and the brightest keeping Americans safe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Okay. So, you say that, and then you throw Black History Month event, and people are supposed to then say, well, it all doesn't matter. He really does care about the history of this country, which includes people. It's Black History Month today and this month, but it could be Hispanic history month, women's history month, all these diverse people.
MALDONADO: Absolutely.
PHILLIP: What are Americans supposed to think?
MALDONADO: I mean, look, President Trump is not a traditional politician. I mean, he never has been. He never will be. So, today, when we saw the celebration in the White House, I thought that was a beautiful ceremony. I thought it was packed house there. I mean, Tiger Woods, I can go on and on of all the people that were there. He made it very clear today, Abby. He said black Americans are legends. I'm going to put some statues up, Kobe Bryant.
PHILLIP: But he's governing in exactly the opposite way.
MALDONADO: I think what he's trying to do is, on one end, he knows he's got a huge deficit. He's trying to make cuts and move the business -- this big government forward.
PHILLIP: I'm not talking about the cuts. I'm talking about the denigration of people based on this idea of DEI. They tried to blame a plane crash on diversity.
MALDONADO: Yes, I don't actually agree with that, to be very sincere with you. I think he looks at DEI more of let's put that aside and let's do everything on merit. He's made it very clear. He's talked about merit all along. So, I really think, Abby, that what happened today was a beautiful thing.
JONES: Yes, I don't. I think he's trying to gaslight us. I mean, come on, man. You have got to be kidding.
MALDONADO: So, he didn't have today, he would be --
JONES: He's trying to gaslight us.
First, he said he doesn't want anybody in government to celebrate Black History Month.
[22:25:00]
And then he says, okay, I'm going to put on an event about Black History Month and I'm going to be the speaker. There aren't any black people, you know, really saying anything about what's happening with him. He tried to use DEI as literally a racial slur against us as if black people are benefiting from anything in this country and getting anything we're not qualified for and don't have to work twice as hard for.
Black people have to live in the real world. When the cops come, we're scared because we might not come out of it alive. We walk into a store, if they let us in, we're followed around. We don't get loans when we have the same credit score as everybody else because we're black. We have to live in the real world. You can't gaslight us. We know reality when we see it. This is not real. This is a joke. That's what that is.
MALDONADO: Tiger Woods was speaking at the podium today.
JONES: Tiger Woods said he's Cablinasian.
HILL: Right. I thought he would be there for Cablinasian history month.
PHILLIP: So, you know, one of the things, also, apparently the Defense Department is getting ready to make some cuts. We talked about it earlier. One of the cuts rumored to be happening is of C.Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, shockingly a black man. This is not surprising to me because I know the conversation in MAGA world about that, but the idea that maybe one of the first acts of the new defense secretary would be to ask the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who is a black man, who a Republican senator just today said has done a very good job and would be -- he would be surprised to hear if he were eliminated in some of these cuts. Kevin Cramer said a month ago that he knows C.Q. Brown pretty well. They've had disagreements, but he thinks he's doing a great job. Why would this even be a conversation?
ARRIGHI: Well, I think Hegseth has sort of changed his tune on it a bit. They seem to be working together in the early onset. Right after his confirmation, he gave him a vote of approval out loud to the press corps. So, we'll see what happens. I'm not going to jump to a conclusion on that.
And also I hope that even if we -- that if we have political disagreements with somebody in history, a figure of history, we can still recognize their greatness. And I think that's very important. So, I was glad to see Donald Trump highlight, yes, great athletes, but, yes, Rosa Parks, yes, Frederick Douglass. I think that's great.
And we can have the debate over DEI, and I think I can go in a million different directions. I think when it comes to the celebration of black history, I think the president's signal today was he doesn't want to see it erased from our conversation in our country.
HILL: But that's not what his actions say because, Abby, you can correct me if I'm wrong here.
PHILLIP: I just said it. Look, the government, his government --
HILL: Didn't he promise to pull funding from institutions that teach?
PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, we have the headline.
HILL: So, like, if he believes in black history, why is he threatening to pull funding from the institutions that are doing --
PHILLIP: They're giving schools a deadline to end DEI programs or risk losing federal money. We just talked about that.
ARRIGHI: That's not dealing with black history.
PHILLIP: Okay. Yes. Well, let me tell you about Black History Month, okay? Black History Month is banned at the Defense Department. It's banned at the Transportation Department. DOD schools are reportedly experiencing books being pulled off of the shelves if they deal with issues of diversity, if they deal with issues of just people being different from one of the red hair, having freckles.
JONES: One of the first things that he did in terms of his executive orders was to sign one that did away with a rule that banned discrimination and federal contracting. It was a 40-year-old rule that one of the first executive orders he signed was to get rid of that. ARRIGHI: I know people, however, last four years under Biden get their federal contracts axed, because they were sent notices without them even knowing they were coming, that their companies weren't diverse enough, so they lost the contract mid contract.
So, there -- it's always going to be --
JONES: How do you tell people you can now discriminate against people when that was a -- well, that's what he did. He signed an executive order doing away with a 40-year-old rule that said you cannot discriminate in federal contracting.
ARRIGHI: Look, I --
JONES: How do you explain that?
ARRIGHI: Look, I do not -- all I can say is the last four years, we saw people losing their contracts for, quote/unquote, lack of diversity without any benchmarks or knowledge set of what that ought to look like. People ought to be given that information.
PHILLIP: Those are two --
ARRIGHI: Well, no, but they work different ways, right?
PHILLIP: But you would agree that those are two different sets of problems, that nondiscrimination laws are designed to protect people from being punished for, you know, their race, their gender, their ethnicity, whatever it is? What's the opposition to that? I mean, that actually should, theoretically, also protect white people, too.
ARRIGHI: You should never be judged by the immutable characteristics of yourself. And I think the point for the president has been throughout this entire campaign, and J.D. Vance has also made this a huge point, right, that it has -- that identity politics has really become the center of politics for the left and we are only judging people based on how they look and not about the person.
JEMELE HILL, "THE ATLANTIC" CONTRIBUTING WRITER: But they are the ones always trafficking in identity politics.
ARRIGHI: Yeah, that's jargon.
HILL: That's right. They're the ones always doing it.
ARRIGHI: The reality is, he's --
JULIE ROGINSKY, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: But here's how -- here's how it works in practice, right? This is, and you know this is how it works in practice. If you are an African American in a high role anywhere in this government, MAGA thinks you're there purely because of the color of your skin, not because of the mirror that you got there on, right? That is the case. It is the case. Consistently, you've heard that rhetoric privately. You know you've heard that rhetoric.
ARRIGHI: I have not heard that rhetoric.
ROGINSKY: Oh really? Well, I have. You know from all the years that I hung out with MAGA people, believe me I have. And the answer was always, oh so-and-so is only there because of her skin color. So-and- so is only there because she's a woman.
So-and-so is only there because they need a token gay guy, consistently, as opposed to looking at people and saying maybe so-and- so is there because she's qualified or he's qualified. And that's how it should work.
But there's reverse discrimination happening now where people are getting pushed out purely because of the color of their skin, because they're automatically sued to be DEI candidates as opposed to the most qualified person in the room.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: All right, guys. Coming up next, alarm bells from Walmart send a chill up Wall Street's spine as President Trump is shifting his promises on fixing the economy. Not now, but maybe later. Another special guest is going to join us in our fifth seat. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:51]
PHILLIP: New warning signs tonight about the economy and President Trump's message is don't blame me. Markets were falling today after Walmart warned that inflation and tariffs could slow down sales for the year. But when it comes to easing those concerns, the administration is not only focusing on blame, but they're also now moving the goalposts.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: So when I win, I will immediately bring prices down starting on day one. Starting on day one, We will end inflation and make America affordable again. Prices will come down and come down dramatically and come down fast. Prices could go up somewhat short term, but prices will also go down.
J. D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Consumers are going to see lower prices at the pump and at the grocery store, but it's going to take a little bit of time. Rome wasn't built in a day.
TRUMP: I've been here for three weeks. I have had nothing to do with inflation. This was caused by Biden. I had four years of virtually no inflation.
KEVIN HASSETT, DIRECTOR OF U.S. NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: We're still going to see some memory of Biden's inflation. It's not going to go away in a month.
(END VIDEO CLIP) PHILLIP: Joining us in our fifth seat at the table is CNN Global Economics Analyst Rana Foroohar. She's also a global business columnist and associate editor at the "Financial Times". Rana, here we go again. They're doing this again. We have a new poll at CNN that shows 52 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of his job, and 49 percent don't see tariffs as positive. They also don't think that he's focused enough on prices, which are going up.
RANA FOROOHAR, AUTHOR, "MAKERS AND TAKERS": They're going up. And you know, to be fair, they were going up before he came into office but some of the policies he's putting forward, tariffs cracking down on migration which you can like that or not but one of the reasons that labor, inflation wasn't higher in the last few years is because the U.S. has a lot of migration. Geopolitical strife, a sense of uncertainty, you know.
I mean, yes, businesses are happy with the idea of tax cuts and deregulation but I'm hearing from more and more businesses that are like, what's going on at the regulatory agencies? There's chaos, there are cuts.
PHILLIP: But do they even exist?
FOROOHAR: Do they exist? How are we -- are we going to be able to get the permit that we need for this or that investment? So, that level of uncertainty is making people very anxious.
PHILLIP: Yeah, lots of weird scuttlebutt, to be honest, going around this week. You got Howard Lutnick saying he wants to get rid of the IRS. You've got them talking about a DOGE check, which, last I checked, I don't know, maybe might add to inflation. Really, what is the plan and why are they not actually executing on it?
ARRIGHI: Well, I find it funny that we're taking -- I'm going to get inflation down on day one as like a serious thing that he was like actually, come on. Donald Trump exaggerating a claim? Of course he does that.
PHILLIP: I'm not trying to -- we don't think he's going to have a magic wand, right? The president does not control inflation.
ARRIGHI: Right.
PHILLIP: But I would have thought maybe on day one he would have done what he did -- like what he did on all these other issues and say here is the plan, here is how I'm going to attack this issue in all of these different areas. That didn't happen.
ARRIGHI: What I -- what I have -- what I find fascinating, DOGE cuts bad. Tax cuts -- bad. DOGE rebates of our squandered tax money -- bad. Tariffs -- bad. So he -- he's been doing a bunch of stuff. He's making moves on energy and energy production. Those are all factors in the economy.
And I might want to mention that we can have the debate over tariffs all we want. That's fine. But tariffs are anti-inflationary by nature, with the strengthening of the dollar.
FOROOHAR: Not so sure about that.
ARRIGHI: -- with the strengthening of the dollar. Scott Bessent has made that -- Scott Bessent has made that a pillar of half his reasoning.
FOROOHAR: Listen, historically, first of all, tariffs are a blunt instrument, right? And, you know, I have not been anti-tariff. I do think there's a place for tariffs when you're talking about very specific things, very specific practices.
But when you're talking about blanket tariffs that affect complex supply chains where there are tons of inputs and outputs, it is really hard to say, and the proof will be in the pudding. But it's really hard to say that they're going to be anti-inflationary. Most people think that they're going to raise inflation. Most companies think that.
PHILLIP: I want to play, actually, because you brought up the DOGE checks. Let's play what Kaitlan Collins asked Kevin Hassett about this at the White House today.
[22:40:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNKNOWN: Is there a concern as you're thinking through this that they could be inflationary?
KEVIN HASSETT, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: Oh, absolutely not because imagine if we don't spend government money and we give it back to people, then the -- you know -- if they spend it all then you're even. But they're probably going to save a lot of it in which case you're reducing inflation.
And also, when the government spends a lot, that's what creates inflation. We learned that from Joe Biden. And so if we reduce government spending then that's, you know, reduces inflation. And if you give people money, then they're going to save a bunch of it. And when they save it then that also reduces demand and reduces inflation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I'm going to leave this to -- I'm not an economist, but that doesn't make any sense.
FOROOHAR: There was a lot there. Listen, it depends, I mean --
PHILLIP: That doesn't make sense.
FOROOHAR: Yeah, there's a couple things here. For starters, it pains me because the Trump administration is always saying, oh, Biden created inflation. One of the reasons he created inflation is with stimulus. Well, stimulus checks went out to individuals --
PHILLIP: He gave people checks.
FOROOHAR: and they did spend some of it. Now whether you spend or save depends on what kind of an economic environment you're going to be in. And right now, some economists are worried about inflation, others are worried about recession. So, we're in a very odd moment right now. It's going to be difficult to predict what this kind of a --
PHILLIP: And people are tapping into their savings now.
FOROOHAR: Yes.
PHILLIP: Because things are getting so expensive.
ABEL MALDONADO (R) FORMER CALIFORNIA LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, TRUMP SUPPORTER: So, let's ask the American people, Abby, what they think about getting a $5000 DOGE check? Every household. I think people would be very excited about that.
PHILLIP: Nobody's going to turn down money, right?
MALDONADO: Right.
PHILLIP: But the question is, is that going to help or hurt the inflationary picture in this country?
MALDONADO: Well, it seems that they're cutting government. There's going to be a savings in the cuts. And part of that savings, in my mind, should go toward the debt because we want to lower the debt. But let's get $5000 and give it to --
PHILLIP: Do you know how much money -- do you know how much money they would have to cut in order to get to $5000?
MALDONADO: I don't have the exact number.
PHILLIP: $2 trillion. They're not even close. They are not even a --
MALDONADO: For $5000?
PHILLIP: Yeah.
FOROOHAR: And also --
PHILLIP: This is a big country. We're not close to that.
FOROOHAR: You know, Republican deficit hawks really want this money to go on paying down debt and deficit.
MALDONADO: Right.
FOROOHAR: And you know, I think, actually, I think that that would be a better use for it at the moment rather than handing out a check in part because investors abroad are really worried about the U.S. debt and deficit picture and that raises interest rates right there, raises inflation. PHILLIP: Yeah, all right, Rana, thank you very much for joining us.
FOROOHAR: Thank you.
PHILLIP: Everyone else, hold on. Coming up next, it's a question that has haunted philosophers for centuries. What does it mean to be a man? We just heard Vice President Vance's answer. We'll debate that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:46:45]
PHILLIP: Tonight, is this a man's world? Vice President J.D. Vance says no, not right now, but he and President Trump want to change that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: I think that our culture sends a message to young men that you should suppress every masculine urge. You should -- you should try to cast aside your family. You should try to suppress what makes you a young man in the first place.
And I think that my message to young men is don't allow this broken culture to send you a message that you're a bad person because you're a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends, or because you're competitive.
Our cultural message is, I think that it wants to turn everybody in -- whether male or female, into androgynous idiots. I think about what is the essence of masculinity? You could answer this in so many different ways. But when I think about me and my guy friends, we really like to tell jokes to one another. Like, we like to laugh.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Solomon is back with us. So all this is about being able to tell jokes?
HILL: I'm going to let the man handle this one.
PHILLIP: Tell us what we're missing here.
SOLOMON JONES, RADIO HOST, "WURD": Well, I think we're missing a lot because I think that masculinity is power, but I think it's power under control. I think it's -- it's knowing who you are and not having to brag about it. I think it's -- it's being able to take what you want, but having the discipline to actually ask for it.
I think it's being able to relate -- relate to women in a way where you understand what they want, but you have enough discipline and wisdom to kind of stand back and let them figure it out for themselves. I think that masculinity is a work in progress. It's not -- it doesn't have any one definition.
When he talks about telling jokes, I'm wondering telling jokes about what? Telling jokes about who?
PHILLIP: That's what I'm wondering.
JONES: What are you talking about?
PHILLIP: And let me play this other part of what he said, because I think it also fills out the picture of where he thinks Trump fits into this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: I think this is why young men in particular are so, you know, they're so inspired by President Trump is because he doesn't allow the media to tell him he can't make a joke or he can't have an original thought. President Trump just says what's on his mind. That's a damn good thing and it's a good example to set for young men in American culture.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I mean, I think you would agree that Trump also insults people in childish ways and doesn't take jokes well. I mean, these are also things that Trump does. I mean, is that the role model that he's putting on the table?
MALDONADO: I think President Trump likes to exaggerate on a lot of things. I mean, we've seen it all along. But you have a situation here where you look at the campaign, the young vote was huge for Donald J. Trump. It was huge. And what caused that? And it's what J.D.'s talking about. This situation like where did Donald Trump go? He went to UFC fights. He had Hulk Hogan with him. I can go on and on and on.
HILL: Yeah, a paragon of masculinity is Hulk Hogan.
MALDONADO: All these things -- all these things which brought in the young vote to Donald J. Trump.
HILL: You mean the young male vote as a whole.
MALDONADO: Young, male vote I'm sorry.
HILL: Okay.
PHILLIP: Young male vote.
ROGINSKY: Trump -- Trump, to be clear, Trump lost young voters.
MALDONADO: He what?
ROGINSKY: He lost young voters.
[22:50:00]
ARRIGHI: Yes, we made massive gains among them.
PHILLIP: Yeah, we have the numbers. He did better among young male voters --
MALDONADO: Absolutely.
PHILLIP: -- to Jemele's point, against Harris than he did against Biden. So, that was the change.
ARRIGHI: Yeah. Look, being a man is being rugged, resilient, reliable in my mind, okay? But I think that, and I was just saying this earlier, that, and I think John Fetterman's also echoed this point, that the left really tried to define what bro culture is and foisted upon young men.
If you read "Barstool Sports", you're evil. If you got a kick out of those Coors Light ads from the '90s with the cheerleaders and the twins, you're a misogynist. If you do drink beers with your friends and you do tell stupid jokes or say some stupid story, you know, then you feel that way permanently.
There is sort of no grace to the "boys will be boys" mentality. There are limits, of course, well, you know that. But I don't think there's ever, there's been so much more, less grace being shown toward what it means to be the sort of perimeter things of what it means to be a man in today's world.
HILL: Like I don't want to speak for you all because I'm clearly a woman. But like, it seems like when accountability is introduced, that's when we get this entire lecture about what it means to be a man. See, the problem with "Barstool", as you mentioned, maybe it was the rape jokes. Maybe it was all those kinds of things that that was the thing that people were a little bit disgusted by.
And it seems like every time I hear somebody say cancel culture or they're not letting me be a man, I always wonder what is it that you really want to say? What is it that you're being held back from saying that you think is so poignant that you can't say? What is the joke that is so damn funny that you need to tell people --
ARRIGHI: If you saw that and I'm sure it's similar -- maybe -- I don't know how frequent you guys are on Instagram. But if you saw the memes that are sent around into friend groups, they're just inappropriate. I couldn't show them anything. That's what I'm talking about. And by the way --
HILL: I don't care about those kinds of things. I like this idea that we're trying to limit male expression or that there is some kind of, you know, force that's saying like, oh, you guys can't hang out with your friends.
Look, my husband, I see how they hang out. Like, I don't really care about those things. But I think what he's defining there is that -- is something a little bit more nefarious because as soon as there was a limit put on what other people wouldn't accept in terms of what certain men were saying, then all of a sudden it was like, oh, you're limiting my expression.
MALDONADO: I just think you shouldn't bully people. I mean, you should --
HILL: That's all people are saying. Just don't be a jerk.
PHILLIP: All right, guys --
JONES: You could be powerful without doing that. And I think that certain people are trying to define their power by how they can treat other people and them be powerless to do anything about it.
ROGINSKY: I bet you just don't joke about grabbing women by the genitalia and say that it's locker room talk. We all agree maybe that's not being a joke.
ARIGHI: And we shouldn't joke about killing the president.
ROGINSKY: Who's joking about that?
PHILLIP: All right. Coming up next, the panel is going to give us their nightcaps. They're going to tell us their favorite epic rivalry. And Microsoft founder Bill Gates joins Anderson Cooper for a special one-on-one. Don't miss "The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper". It airs Sunday, 8 P.M. Eastern, right here on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:57:54]
PHILLIP: We are back and it's time for the "NewsNight" cap "Face off" edition with everyone talking about the USA-Canada match-up tonight. You each have 30 seconds to tell us what is your favorite epic mash up? You're first, T.W.
ARRIGHI: Thank you. Well, I don't need to see any football games to know Tom Brady's "The Goat". I don't need to see any countries fight, knowing that we won two world wars. But what I would like to see, I was watching Hamilton the other day.
And you know, Aaron Burr never had to defend his dueling title after putting down Alexander Hamilton. So, I want him to face off against the best dueling president we've ever had, Andrew Jackson. And let's have A.I. figure that out.
PHILLIP: The accent came out for that one.
HILL: I know, right? I love it.
ARRIGHI: Oops.
HILL: It sold that one out. Okay, so speaking of Andrew Jackson, Kyle Hamilton, a safety with the Baltimore Ravens, he proposed an amazing idea over Twitter, or amazing question rather, which is he wanted to know, he said, "Not trying to be political but if all 45 presidents were in a Royal Rumble, who would win?"
And for those who not familiar with the Royal Rumble, it is professional wrestling. And basically you have 30 or so wrestlers get into a ring and whoever's the last person standing, who wins. My pick, your guy Andrew Jackson, because he's, look, I mean, a terrible human being but insane enough to win this.
PHILLIP: He's a brawler.
HILL: He's a brawler. Like, yo, degenerate gambler, he has all the traits of somebody who would win something like this. Sneaky good pick. But I think that Abe Lincoln would be a favorite among a lot of people with the height and the wrestling experience.
PHILLIP: Okay, all right, everybody look that up at home. All right, go ahead, Solomon.
JONES: All right, so my epic match up is on a t-shirt I have at home. Philly versus everybody. I don't know if you all know. We just won the Super Bowl. I just, you know, just in case you didn't hear.
ROGINSKY: Did you miss the polls?
JONES: No, I don't clown the polls. I'm a little too old for that. I let the young guys do that. But that's my favorite epic match up. You know, you want fights. We got Frasier, we got Rocky. You want tough, we got Kensington. You want winners, we got Nets.
PHILLIP: All right, Julie.
ROGINSKY: All right, I'm going to be quick. My husband and I never fight about anything except this one thing, Rolling Stones versus The Who. The answer is clearly, clearly, The Who. My husband might divorce me for saying that because he completely disagrees, but it's so obvious it's not even a match up --
[23:00:04]
HILL: I'm with the husband.
PHILLIP: All, right, go ahead, Abel.
MALDONADO: My epic answer, Abby, would be Arnold Schwarzenegger, who I was Lieutenant Governor with, and Hulk Hogan. Just imagine that. Six-foot seven, 300-pound. Arnold Schwarzenegger, 28-inch arms going at it. That would be epic. I'm taking Arnold Schwarzenegger --
PHILLIP: Me, too.
MALDONADO: -- absolutely.
PHILLIP: Okay, everybody, thank you very much. Thank you for watching "NewsNight". "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
