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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip

New York Times Reports, Explosive Clash Between Musk, Cabinet in Meeting; Trump Touts Jobs Report That Adviser Called Biden Data; Trump Again Injects Confusion, Teasing New Tariffs on Canada; Pentagon Works To Purge DEI Content Across Every Military Branch; "Have I Got News For You" Comedians Have Fun With How Democrats Protested Congressman Al Green's Censure. Aired 10-11p ET

Aired March 07, 2025 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[22:00:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST (voice over): Tonight, if you break it, you don't buy it. Donald Trump wants Biden to own all the bad about the economy. But what happens when the data says things aren't awful?

Plus, Elon Musk versus the world, new reporting reveals how the tech billionaire found himself fighting a room full of cabinet secretaries.

Also, the Pentagon scrubs so called DEI content from its archives, stumbling into erasing history.

And are liberals chasing the likes too hard? A list Democrats give interviews to MAGA media.

Live at the table, Joe Borelli, Van Jones, Nina Turner, Melik Abdul and Sara Fischer.

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, wearing out his welcome. Tonight, the inside story of how Elon Musk is eroding any and all goodwill with the president's men. The dramatic account is coming from The New York Times tonight, and details what the paper calls, quote, simmering anger at the billionaire and Donald Trump's efforts to put Musk in a box.

The meeting pitted Musk against Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Musk, at one point, told Rubio, you have fired nobody. Rubio then accused Musk of lying, quote, What about the more than 1,500 State Department officials who took early retirement buyouts? Didn't they count as layoffs, he asked, sarcastically, whether Musk also wanted him to rehire those people just so that he could make a show of firing them again. Now, Trump was asked about those tensions today, and he said, well, what tensions?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: No clash. I was there. You're just a troublemaker.

Elon gets along great with Marco, and they're both doing a fantastic job. There is no clash.

REPORTER: Who has more authority, Elon Musk or your cabinet secretaries?

TRUMP: Any other questions?

REPORTER: Sir, just on the cabinet meeting, you said Musk will play an advisory role, DOGE will play --

TRUMP: We're talking about FIFA. Thank you very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Trump, never one to dodge a question these days is clearly dodging that one. I mean, the cracks are starting to show. And when we know that, not just because of this report, but Trump himself publicly said that he basically told his cabinet secretaries they're in charge, not Elon.

VAN JONES, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, look, I mean, first of all, there is a grassroots revolt because of the reckless, destructive, illegal, unconstitutional behavior of Elon Musk and his 19-year-old posse of laptop, you know, wielding young people. Republicans can't even have town hall meetings because constituents are mad Social Security forms aren't being honored, people on suicide watch, they can't get their phone calls returned. So, this is not working out well at the grassroots level in red states and red districts. And so, there's a blowback.

Also, nobody joins the cabinet to have no power. Nobody joins the cabinet to not have control of their own staff. And so when you have somebody with a weird T-shirt and a baseball cap firing your people for you, at some point, that wears thin.

PHILLIP: Yes. And I think the other thing is, Elon has demonstrated and his team that they don't actually know how the government works, which is why a lot of these mistakes. One thing that really struck out at me, okay, so remember all the talk about what was going on at the FAA. Well, it turns out that, according to The New York Times, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, said that the young staffers of Mr. Musk's team were trying to lay off air traffic controllers. What am I supposed to do, he asked. I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers? At another point, Musk insisted that the people were hired under diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and they were working in control room towers. Mr. Duffy pushed back on that. This is directly contradictory to what Elon Musk said just this week, saying DOGE has pushed to hire, not fire air traffic controllers, not according to Sean Duffy.

JOE BORELLI, FORMER REPUBLICAN LEADER, NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL: Ultimately, the president is the arbiter of the executive branch policy and the president has made it clear and the secretary, Duffy, made it clear that they're going to continue hiring FAA air traffic controllers, not firing them.

[22:05:03]

But bigger picture, the idea of rivalries and little, you know, shouting matches amongst executives in the executive branch is not unique to this administration. It's not unique to any governor or any mayor in any part of this country or foreign leaders. That's the norm.

And I was actually with a cabinet member over the weekend, last weekend, and I talked to him about the relationships on the cabinet. And he actually shocked me. He said, you know, before going into this administration, I prescribed the idea of the team of rivals. I read the book and I thought this is the way things are. And he said, having about two dozen people who are swimming in the same direction, who generally like each other and all respect the person who is the boss, the president, and the agenda that he's setting, he said it's a great work environment. He says they're going to rock and roll. And I think so far we've seen it.

PHILLIP: I don't think that's really responsive to what's happening in the actual cabinet, though, because it's not really a dispute with Trump. It sounds like it's a dispute with Elon Musk. I mean, for example, you know, maybe they support Trump's agenda, but the idea of firing air traffic controllers when there's a shortage of air traffic controllers just doesn't pass the common sense test.

SARA FISCHER, CNN MEDIA ANALYST: Where I think everyone's aligned in the Republican Party and in the cabinet is everybody wants the government to be more efficient. Everyone thinks that cuts probably are warranted. It's the way that you're going to go about them that's really frustrating. I think that was the tension between Marco Rubio and Elon Musk.

You know, the State Department is supposed to have jurisdiction over USAID. I don't think they want an entire agency shut down immediately without even being able to go in and assess, okay, what are the key parts that we're going to have to keep, what are the contracts that if we were to cut now, we'd actually lose money because we've already paid them out. We didn't do any of that work. DOGE is not doing that work. I think that's where there's a lot of frustration from these cabinet officials.

I also think we're starting to see Some of those cracks in ways that are subtle. So, for example, Elon Musk and DOGE asking everyone in the federal government to reply to an email saying, what have you done this week? It was noticeable to me that some cabinet officials said, you don't have to respond to that email. So, this blow up fight is not coming out of nowhere. I think there's been tensions building up over the past few weeks over this.

MELIK ABDUL, RADIO HOST, AND GOP POLITICAL STRATEGIST: And I think that's a very fair point. And you know, Criticisms of Elon Musk are well known, and I know some people don't like that. But Elon Musk, some of the things that he's done, and, Van, you actually made a good point because he doesn't know how government works, and I'm not exactly sure Elon cares how government works because he wants to do his own thing.

But when you think about what happened over the past couple of weeks where Elon Musk, and now we know that it was his decision to have OMB sent out the memo saying, send us five things that you did last week, that was Elon Musk thing. And we did see some cabinet officials, in fact, I think the majority of them said, no, don't respond to it at all. But then when he got into the meeting, and this is why I tell people it's one thing to support the work of DOGE, but it's another thing to focus on the distraction that Elon Musk often come, that he often is, when it comes to Donald Trump.

So, he got in the cabinet meeting and it was Elon Musk who said, well, okay, well, we really just sending this out because we just want to post-check. Well, there are ways to figure out if people are at the other end because the accusation is that there's nobody working at the other end of that email. There's ways to find out per agency. I'm sure most of us know there's a thing called read receipts. Like there's a way to find out if people are actually there.

PHILLIP: I also think that, you know, what this great reporting does, as much great reporting does, is it takes -- it raises the hood, right, of what's happening here. Because here's what happened at the Oval Office -- in the Oval Office just a few days ago what Trump said was going on with Elon and his cabinet.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Anybody unhappy with Elon? If you are, we'll throw him out of here. Is anybody unhappy? They have a lot of respect for Elon that he's doing this. And some disagree a little bit, but I will tell you, for the most part, I think everyone's not only happy, they're thrilled.

ELON MUSK, CEO, TESLA AND SPACEX: President Trump put together, I think, the best cabinet ever, literally. So -- and I do not give false praise.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: You can't, it's not.

FMR. STATE SEN. NINA TURNER (D-OH): I mean, for President Trump, it's the best cabinet ever. You cannot serve two masters. You can't serve multiple masters, and so even though cabinets are known to have a rivalry, what they are not known to have is DOGE. This is the disconnect. And none of the cabinet members want to be powerless, to Van's point. So, the president thrives off of this chaos. I believe he likes it this way, very much so. PHILLIP: Well, I mean, that was one of the interesting things about the report. I mean, Trump -- this dispute between Elon and Rubio was happening in front of Trump. And Trump was just like this, looking from one person to the next.

[22:10:01]

I mean, I've seen him do that in meetings. We've all seen that.

And I think he does like it to a degree, but it sounds like even he recognizes that he had to referee this a little bit.

JONES: Look, here's what I know. By the time you get stuff dribbling out in the press inside the administration, it's a whole bunch of stuff going on, okay? So, please understand, if we're getting this reporting, this means, behind the scenes, it's a whole lot of stuff.

And I agree with you, there's back and forth. But ordinarily, you don't have to fight for your basic authority when you work in the federal government. And, in fact, as you well know, people even below you are fighting to make sure that they have their authority respected.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to be Duffy with planes flying all over the United States might fall out of the sky any second and have somebody else, not me, trying to pull people off of my line in terms of the air traffic controllers being fired.

And the other thing I'm concerned about is, every time they want to do something, they want to blame DEI. So, I guess what they're doing is they're firing all the black, brown, and female air traffic controllers as if those people don't know what they're doing. But if you know anything about air traffic control, that's who the air traffic controllers often are.

And so you have a combination of a kind of a DEI, anti-DEI, covered up racism and sexism that I'm worried about, and then just rank incompetence. You can't just willy-nilly throw people out of these positions and expect to have no negative consequences.

BORELLI: To be clear. How do you see it? Black air traffic controllers, white air traffic controllers, no air traffic controllers were fired. So, look, I think that's just a point that has to be made and repeated a hundred times over and over again, they weren't fired.

That said, we talked about who likes DOGE, and you said the president likes it, he likes some of the scrapping. The American people, I think, like DOGE for the most part.

JONES: In concept.

BORELLI: In concept, right? But it is something that these cabinet secretaries do have to grapple with because even if there is some jurisdictional disputes that they'd like to have obviously more power over their own agencies, they have to be cognizant that the American public is behind the idea of DOGE. TURNER: They're not behind all of this stuff. President Trump ran on populism.

JONES: Thank you.

TURNER: He said, I got a framework for healthcare. Where's the framework? They didn't run for him to allow Elon Musk to reign over all of the United States government. They did not elect him for that. And what we are seeing at those town halls is that the everyday people of this country are saying, wait a minute, you firing veterans? Wait a minute. We didn't hire -- we hired you. You said you go drive down the cost of eggs and you said you were going to do something about inflation, Mr. President. So, while you're signing all those executive orders to do all kinds of stuff we didn't ask you to do, we need you to focus on this right here.

Efficiency is one thing. Combing through and making sure that government is working properly is one thing, but government is designed for service to people. And right now it is not serving people in a way that people need to be served. And so that's why you see the upheaval at the town halls. You have Republicans telling other Republicans, don't hold town halls. We don't want to hear what the everyday people have to say.

PHILLIP: I mean, it's always, until you realize that it's real people. But, Sara, real quick, I mean, one notable thing about this meeting, Elon Musk showed up apparently in a suit and tie, not his signature tech support T-shirt for a reason, but also his company, Tesla, is under a lot of pressure right now. The stock price has dropped about half since Trump took power in January. People are wondering when he's going to get back to running his actual company.

FISCHER: Yes. And, remember, shareholders sued because he was not paying enough attention to Tesla when he went to do the Twitter takeover, saying that we want a full-time CEO here.

I think the other concern about these cuts, by the way, often Elon Musk looks to his private sector companies as an example of what he can bring to the government. First of all, the scale is so ridiculously off. If you look at a company like Twitter, before he took it and became X, he cut from 7,500 people to a down 1,500. There's almost 3 million people who work for the federal government. So, it's not exactly a copy paste strategy.

But second, as you're saying with Tesla, no human, despite Elon Musk and other efforts can defy the laws of time. You know, he's still one person who is being tasked with trying to reimagine the federal government while running multiple companies, some public companies, there's no way there isn't going to be backlash towards that.

Now, Tesla is facing external factors that don't have to do with Elon's presence, but him not being full-time does not help the situation.

PHILLIP: Yes, it certainly does not. Everyone stand by for us.

Coming up next, whose economy is it again? Trump takes credit for good news that his adviser blamed on Joe Biden.

Plus, the Pentagon is now getting involved in partisan fights trolling Democrats over a video and also purging images of war heroes all in the name of DEI.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:15:00]

PHILLIP: Tonight, a classic lesson in spin. Donald Trump is taking credit for a better than expected jobs report today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We're going to talk about how good some of these numbers are, way ahead of schedule. These are private sector manufacturing jobs. So, we gained all of those jobs, 10,000 jobs, and we barely started yet.

These numbers really reflect a lot of things that took place since November 5th.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Even after his cabinet spent the week warning everyone that the numbers would be bad and that the person to blame would be Joe Biden.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOWARD LUTNICK, COMMERCE SECRETARY: The president spoke about it last night.

[22:20:01]

He said Biden left him a pile of poop.

You're looking at data that's Biden data. Do not try to besmirch my President Trump with Biden's nonsense.

LARRY KUDLOW, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: The February jobs number that's coming out Friday could be flat, even negative.

I got people on the left who are blaming Trump. How can you blame Trump when he wasn't president when these seeds were planted?

BROOKE ROLLINS, SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE: Well, you couldn't be more right about that because we've only been here 30 plus days. You can't turn an entire economy around in 30 days.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Let the blame game begin, Nina.

TURNER: This is not President Trump's first trip to the rodeo. People need to understand that. He's been in office before. And so people were suffering while he was in office. They certainly were suffering when President Biden was in office. And they are still suffering today. This is our ninth year of having either President Biden or President Trump. So, President Trump cannot just totally divorce himself from what is happening in the economy. It's very much his economy.

What he needs to do is focus on working class people, like he said he was going to do when he ran as a populist. But it was a faux populist, and stop trying to give away all, everything, the whole store to the ultra wealthy in this country. But it is very much his economy. It's seamless.

JONES: You know, I am concerned about something that you're saying. I see it very similarly. To be generous to the Trump base at their best, there were times it felt like an authentic working class revolt, against, you know, liberal, elitism, inflation, since the border wasn't secure. I didn't like the tone and tenor of it, but I understood the pain at the bottom of that stuff. And you were very outspoken about that.

But it seems like to me that there's something else that's happening now in D.C. It feels like it's a revolution of rich people, for rich people, on behalf of rich people. They got all these billionaires in the cabinet. I don't see a lot of working folks in the cabinet. They have the richest person in the world who seems to be running everything. And then when he brings in all these kids, he's not bringing in working class kids. He's bringing in, you know, super geek kids and those are the people jacking in their laptops and trying to fire everybody.

And I'm like, wait a minute, at what point is the Trump base going to start saying, has this working person's movement been hijacked by billionaires, and at what point are you going to do something about the price of eggs? At what point are you going to do something that actually affects working people? Chasing after transgender people and throwing veterans out of work, where is the populism in this populist president?

PHILLIP: You know, I mean, the part of the picture here is what's going to happen when he actually makes good on tariffs. Maybe he will, maybe he won't. He went back to the -- he gave them a one-month reprieve and then today said, well, we're going to slap 250 percent tariffs on Canada maybe tomorrow. And, you know, I'm hearing some Democrats saying, okay, don't be reflexively against tariffs because that's a working class policy. But it's also true that willy-nilly tariffs will hurt Americans.

FISCHER: Well, it's the inconsistency of the policies that's actually the biggest issue. So, if you talk to economists about where we are today, in terms of the jobs report that just came out, it's when you don't have a consistent set of policies where businesses not know how to react to that. And so that's why you see sometimes hiring gets put on hold, people don't know what to do because they don't know what they're going to have to respond to.

The most classic example has been this week with the automakers, who have said, we need more clarity on how you're going to do this. We're American automakers, but we obviously rely on other countries to be able to produce cars. What is this -- how is this going to affect us?

BORELLI: That's part of the problem. The American automakers were the ones that spent the past 20 years actually offshoring jobs to Mexico and Canada, whereas foreign companies, Hyundai Motor Group, Kia, BMW, they've all been opening up plans here and they're not actually concerned.

But just to stay with the jobs number, I want to talk about the manufacturing numbers. There was 11,000 manufacturing jobs got. Over Biden's last year, there was 111,000 jobs lost in manufacturing. That's 9,000 a month every single month, consistently down, down, down. If these aren't Trump's numbers, then what did Joe Biden do in his last seconds in office that actually changed the manufacturing jobs?

PHILLIP: He doesn't decide whether they're Trump's good numbers or Trump's bad numbers.

JONES: I'm going to run a test right now to see how --

BORELLI: I was testing you first.

JONES: No, I don't know and you're smarter than I am about those numbers, but I'm testing your heart and not your head. If the numbers were bad, would you be claiming them as Trump's numbers?

BORELLI: Some of them.

TURNER: That's part of the problem right there.

BORELLI: No. Here's the problem. So, when you talk about tariffs, there are good things and bad things about tariffs.

JONES: No. The jobs -- if this month's job numbers were negative 600,000, would you be claiming those were Trump, or would you be dumping them on Biden?

BORELLI: I'm saying there are policy points that you can point to with respect to manufacturing, right, vis-a-vis tariffs, that people have tried to onshore jobs.

[22:25:05]

That's reflected in that report. I would estimate, if Scott Bessent and Donald Trump could every month get 10,000 federal jobs reduced in the jobs report, federal employment down by about 10,000, and manufacturing jobs up by 10, 000, I think they would make that deal today. I think the MAGA base would love that, and I think that would serve American population.

PHILLIP: Hold on. Let me just for one point of clarity, are you suggesting that announcements that were made in the last several weeks were responsible for 10,000 jobs are showing up on a jobs report where the numbers cut off at February 12th? That's what you're saying? BORELLI: Some of it. Look --

PHILLIP: Because I don't think that's a very reasonable -- I mean, I don't want people to be confused because I think that the announcements have been made. But the idea that the announcements have led to instantaneous job growth is not true.

BORELLI: It's a small percentage of overall manufacturing jobs. I think companies since President Trump got elected, since the talk of tariffs happened, since the general idea of and the premises and the policies of the last administration are -- you know, the past is prologue. I think a lot of companies actually made efforts to onshore jobs that weren't here.

PHILLIP: While Biden was president?

BORELLI: Again, what did Joe Biden --

ABDUL: So, I'll say this. So, I'll say this. So, this is part of the game. And just so the audience at home knows, if you've paid attention to politics for any period of time, there is no administration that takes blame for bad numbers. That just doesn't work. That's right. I remember when Donald Trump got in office, then Barack Obama was out saying, thanks Obama. But Obama was saying, and throughout Trump's administration, when we did have some good economic progress, people were still crediting Barack Obama. So, they were saying, well, this is because of Barack Obama. So, of course, Donald Trump is not going to say anything negative about or be a sponge for anything negative. That's just what happens in politics.

The point that you made about the tariffs, though, because I'm not someone who fully understands that, and so I've been trying to get clarity from the administration on what it means. So, they've said that it may be some short-term, you know, pain. I don't know what that means. And the science of that, as what you were talking about, because the Biden administration, they did keep Trump's tariffs on China. So, we do know that tariffs -- it is a strategy there. I don't necessarily understand it, but the Trump administration probably, as we go into these summer months, they need to be more transparent in talking to people about what it is with these tariffs, like the real things that's going to happen with these tariffs.

PHILLIP: Look, I mean, there is going to be pain, because, I mean, you have tariffs that are targeted and tariffs that are not. And when you just slap 25 percent tariffs on two --

JONES: On everything.

PHILLIP: Everything, from two trading partners where you yourself negotiated a trading deal with them. Not to say the merits of USMCA is Trump's deal, but that is going to have an impact in the near term and perhaps in the long-term.

TURNER: And can we live in the short-term pain that you brought up? Short-term pain for whom? Big mama and big papa can't afford short- term pain. Over 60 percent of the American people are saying they live paycheck to paycheck. 50 percent of people in 2024, either 2023, said that they couldn't pay their rent or having a hard time paying rent or mortgage. So, short-term is -- to have a cavalier attitude about short-term pain of the everyday people in this country is what is being missed.

And so I don't care which administration it is. Can somebody just do something for big mama and big papa in the hoods all over this country, rural, suburban --

PHILLIP: That's what Americans are asking. I mean, they voted one party out to do something about this, so they're waiting to see what Trump will do.

Coming up next for us, the Pentagon removes thousands of images of war heroes and historic moments all in the name of wokeness.

Plus, the Defense Department, which is normally not political, is now wading into partisan food fights on the daily. We'll discuss.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:33:38]

PHILLIP: Tonight, content not found, as the Pentagon works to purge DEI content across every branch of the military, tens of thousands of photographs and online posts have been marked for deletion. According to the "Associated Press", images and posts flagged included references to a World War II Medal of Honor recipient.

Thousands of posts that commemorate black, Hispanic and women's history also removed. And photographs like this one of the Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The plane was named after the pilot's mother. You may be wondering, what was so controversial about that picture that it needed to be taken down?

Well, according to the "A.P.", a review of the database also underscores the confusion that has swirled among agencies about what to remove following Trump's order. In some cases, photos seem to be flagged for removal simply because their file included the word gay. Yes, really. And that includes service members with that last name and an image of the B-29 aircraft, the Enola Gay. I mean --

JONES: Lord, lord, lord. Look.

PHILLIP: I would laugh, except that it's like crazy.

JONES: But it's terrible. And the thing is, and I don't even think we should use their language. Their language is, oh, we're doing it because of DEI. No, you are removing black people, gay people and women from America's government's websites.

[22:35:00]

That's wrong. That's wrong. In what world? Is that appropriate? If we said after Obama got in, we're going to take down all the pictures of the white boys, people would say, are you crazy? Are you smoking something? That's terrible. It's anti-American.

So, you could say anything is anti-woke, anti-DEI, anti, whatever you want to. But if the end result is people are being erased because the color of their skin, that is racist. It is wrong. And I would expect Republicans to stand up and say, would you guys knock it off? We want high standards. We don't want history or race. We want high standards. We don't want people removed just because they're black or female or brown. That's wrong.

FISCHER: Well, I think it's the craziest part about all this is we've got a serious pending issue with Taiwan. There's concerns with Ukraine and Russia. We have, as you were mentioning, planes falling out of the sky at the FAA. Why is this the priority right now? Even if that is what you think is the priority, the average everyday American, I think, is really struggling with the price of eggs economy.

BORELLI: But to your point, clearly, mistakes were made with the pictures. That's just stupid. Erasing history, erasing a picture of someone who honorably served the country should not have a period in the story.

But like, yeah, we have problems with Taiwan, we have problems in Ukraine, obviously. So you know, the Army was doing climate literacy classes. They were putting hybrid tactical vehicles implicit by their own with that.

FISCHER: Do you have an issue though -- do you have an issue like that, then --

PHILLIP: Okay, talk about the climate literacy. Hold on.

BORELLI: This is the broader DEI thing.

PHILLIP: Let's talk about climate literacy, Joe.

BORELLI: And none of those things were actually making our operational readiness better.

PHILLIP: Like, climate has been a part of the Pentagon's strategic plan.

JONES: Has to be.

PHILLIP: Since the 1990s.

JONES: Has to be.

PHILLIP: Since the late 1980s when George H.W. Bush was president. This is not some kind of fad. The reason the Pentagon is concerned about climate is because they understand that drought, that famine causes conflict that they have to resolve.

JONES: Absolutely.

PHILLIP: That is part of the military planning. This is, it is, it is just an, it's an insult to people's intelligence. JONES: And they can't pass --

PHILLIP: Think passed just the buzzwords on this stuff.

TURNER: They can't even pass an audit. I mean, seven audits.

JONES: With the Pentagon.

TURNER: The Pentagon cannot pass an audit. Those are the things they should be focused on. And DEI is just sub for the N-word. It's just another word for black. They are taking this country backwards to a time where the history of black people were not -- was not told, and other people, too. And so, we got to reckon with this.

President Trump ran to be the president as all presidents do, of all people. He enjoyed a larger share. Let me just center black people right now. He enjoyed a larger share of the black vote than Republicans usually get. I'm old enough to remember during Black History Month he was there celebrating black history.

And then on his watch, he allows people to run roughshod and use DEI in a way that is debilitating, that is dehumanizing, that is wrong and he should put a stop to it and stop listening to the people telling him that something is wrong with diversity, equity and inclusion.

PHILLIP: Before you jump in, I just want to show some of the other images that were deleted. I mean, I think there's a big question here about why are they so fixated on pictures of people of color. But just, I mean, incredibly innocuous stuff of people who are serving or served.

TURNER: That's right.

ABDUL: So, I think that, that obviously I agree. The whole picture thing, and we've seen even before the Tuskegee Airmen, when they said that they were going to remove that from the curriculum, then they had to put it back in there. This is something that they did need to do.

And I've said before, when it comes to conservatives, many people on the right, in their response to DEI, where they just go too far. So, instead of focusing on those things, those DEI things, like, you know, if you're against, you know, transgender, you know, men, biological men serving and, you know, competing against women.

Or, like Lockheed Martin, if you're against a company saying that we need to make sure that we have these white male awareness training, which is what Lockheed Martin did, those are some of the negative things about DEI.

I think casting everything, though, as DEI, I don't think that everything, even problems within the government. And I think we also have to be careful, the people who are more supportive of DEI. And accepting this notion that it really is just about black people.

I don't think it's just about black people. I think it is this -- because we've seen whether it's women, whether it's gays, whether it's any of these type of groups, these groups have been impacted. But as far as the federal government, I don't think it's the federal government's job to teach black history. I think you learned that before you get to the federal government.

FISCHER: Were they teaching black history though?

TURNER: No, they were not.

(CROSSTALK)

FISCHER: They had pictures on their website. Like this is my thing. Like people want to know.

ABDUL: That's what I'm saying. So what are black people doing?

(CROSSTALK)

UNKNOWN: It's just depending on $100 million on them.

ABDUL: So what are black people doing?

FISCHER: What does that have to do with pictures, though?

BORELLI: What does that have to do with the operational readiness?

FISCHER: What does that have to do with pictures? You want to take pictures?

BORELLI: The picture's stupid. The picture's dumb.

FISCHER: Yes, dumb. We all agree on that. Dumb.

[22:40:00]

BORELLI: But $100 million on certain trainings that part of the DEI spent.

UNKNOWN: I can explain that.

FISCHER: Then go after that. Why are you taking down the pictures? It's a waste of time.

BORELLI: They should go after that. Thank you. If you --if you --

FISCHER: I'm not saying that they should. I'm just saying it's like --

TURNER: You are not black or of color, then you would say, why does anybody need to be taught implicit bias? We live it every single day.

BORELLI: I don't think I need to be told --

TURNER: There needs to be --

BORELLI: I'm actually offended that you're saying that.

TURNER: No, don't be offended. Don't be offended. People have to understand that we live in America where we are all socialized a certain type of way. And unless we deconstruct our construction, we are all told that somehow black is less than. It is just natural in this country. It doesn't have to be that way moving forward. But that is just the way it is.

Your point, wait, don't all do respect me because that means you're going the opposite way. Your point about DEI and centering blackness, the whole notion of how other marginalized groups suffer, that's why I say it's black. When it's woke, it's black. BLM, it's black.

It is a slick way for them to then not necessarily deal with the N- word, not necessarily to deal with blackness, but they're doing it through DEI, and then every other marginalized group is then hurt by it.

BORELLI: But just give me one word on this. I don't mean this in any disrespect whatsoever, but the way you spoke down to me as though I have some bias is why the Democrats lost the election.

TURNER: No, I didn't speak to that.

BORELLI: And this is to your point that you said earlier, maybe it was during the break, that -- that, you know, Trump was able to pick culture groups and not racial groups and speak to them properly.

JONES: Here's what -- here's what I hear you're saying and here's where I actually agree with Nina. I do think that the way that it's being heard is we're basically saying all straight white dudes suck, all straight white dudes are terrible and therefore you need to be scolded. And when you hear it that way, anybody would naturally object.

If that's what's being heard, that is not the intention. The intention is we want our military to be able to -- of course we want to be able to work well together. And they have done these different tests where it turns out that because of some stuff that Nina's talking about, that what people have been shown, that sometimes people will not respect, I say, a black female superior officer at the same level. And that could get somebody killed.

And so, I think what they were trying to do was deal with actual problems that they were having. And then people on the outside say, well, hold on a second. That seems like that crap you work shopped, I had my corporate job, which I hated, so now I'm going to take that out of the military. But you may actually be reducing combat readiness, and that's a conversation we want to be able to have, honestly, but we're not able to.

And I think it's putting our soldiers at risk. We have the most diverse fighting force in the history of the world. If you want to put some attention to make sure that folks know how to work together, I don't think it's bad for America. You might see it differently, but I don't.

BORELLI: The diversity with the lowercase d, I think, is a wonderful part of our military. The enlisted ranks are a majority -- minority institution. But I think Secretary Hegseth said it best. It is the unity of the military, not the diversity that actually makes it the most combat-ready force in the world.

TURNER: But this same military had to be forced. I mean, black people have fought in every war in this country. But in terms of desegregating the armed forces itself, had to be forced to do it, to do away with segregated units. This country had to be forced to do it. And that is the understanding.

BORELLI: You're right, but I'm not responsible. And that's why have to (inaudible) this way.

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIP: We have to go here. But I just want to, Joe, one thing that you said that I just want you to consider that people disagree on. The idea that the diversity of the military is not a strength. Pete Hegseth did say that. But remember that in a military where you had people of color serving, but where there was discrimination in the ranks, that is not a strong military, okay?

And I think that is the crux of the problem, that you don't have unity unless you insist on it, unless you insist on equal treatment within the ranks of the military. And that starts by addressing biases that exist because we are human beings and nobody is exempt from biases of all different kinds.

BORELLI: Well, I didn't wake up and have any bias about anyone here.

PHILLIP: Listen, you're not a robot. You're a human being. You exist in the world. We all have biases and references. It's not to say anybody is racist or sexist, but we come from a place and acknowledging that is just the first step to preventing it from influencing how you deal with other people. That's the jargon.

BORELLI: Well, we --

PHILLIP: We got to go, we got to go. We could have another hour-long conversation on the topic. But coming up next, we're seeing more liberal stars throwing olive branches over to MAGA figures. But the question is, where is the line in terms of their past rhetoric?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:49:24]

PHILLIP: Tonight, Democrats are talking to people that they aren't used to talking to talking to. But are liberals wasting their minutes and maybe their credibility by speaking with big names in MAGA media, especially when you look at some of the things that they have said, like this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KID ROCK, MUSIC LEGEND: Ilhan Omar's going to walk out? I mean, come on, just, you know, collect your things from your office, put a basket on your head and walk back to where you came from. That's what I would say.

CANDACE OWENS, RIGHT-WING COMMENTATOR: Do you think it's normal, by the way, that basically, every person who speaks about Israel has to basically say a statement that's like, you know, I don't want to get killed.

[22:50:00]

I just want to be clear. Anything happens to me, blame the Zionists. Like 1000 percent blame the Zionists.

CHARLIE KIRK, CONSERVATIVE ACTIVIST: Pray Trump wins or else things are going to get really bad. They're going to get even worse. There will be hundreds of thousands of Haitians brought into Alabama and they will become your masters.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: And that's not even, to be honest, the half of it. Look, I -- this show is about speaking across difference, we do it every single day. But the question I have is about stuff like this. So let's play what happened when Stephen A. brought Candace Owens onto his show.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN A. SMITH, ESPN HOST: -- will about her? She's smart as a whip, highly intelligent, very articulate and doesn't play. There will be times in the future where hopefully, she and I can get together and butt heads over one issue or another. But this interview wasn't the time for that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Okay, I'm fine with talking to people. But Candace Owens has said some incredibly anti-Semitic things very recently, like weeks ago, months ago. Why praise her? To try to get MAGA eyeballs?

JONES: You know, I think that people are trying to adjust to a different reality. I don't know what the right thing or wrong thing to do is, but here's what I'm observing. I think there's a long time that we thought that we in the mainstream media were the mainstream. But numerically, we may be the fringe now.

This MAGA sphere, the Manosphere, all these podcasters, these Twitch streamers, they've got people on the platforms, I don't know, it's called Twitch and Rumble and Roblox. It sounds like somebody's in the hospital with symptoms and they're getting 14 million streams.

And so there's, I think some people are looking and saying maybe this fringe media is becoming in some ways a new mainstream, and the mainstream is a new fringe. And so, I think that people are trying to figure out what to do and how to navigate.

I, like you, try to talk to everybody, work across certain lines. Those are not figures that I would want to be associated with, but I do think there's something happening in America where the isolation of progressives, the isolation of the liberal establishment has not helped us very much. And maybe some people are trying some new experiments.

PHILLIP: Gavin Newsom talking to Charlie Kirk. Kid Rock says he's going to bring Bill Maher to the White House. Again, I mean, you're seeing this sort of olive branch reaching over, but it also feels a little bit like --

JONES: Scary.

PHILLIP: No, no, just like they're trying to cling to something that is popular in the moment.

ABDUL: I'm much more ascetic on this. I think this is all about clicks, engagement forming. We all should applaud anyone who's willing to talk to someone from the other -- on the other side. I think that anybody who's willing to talk to, I mean, talk to Candace, talk to Charlie, talk to all of them.

But I think that what's happening now, whether it's Stephen A. Smith, whether it's what, Charlamagne the God, you know, people are trying to tap into a space. And like the podcasting space, people are really trying to tap into this. I don't think that there is any type of real, for instance, Stephen A. Smith, intellectual curiosity and talking to Candace Owens.

I've had my issues with Candace Owens, but, you know, people are different. If I'm talking to Candace Owens, unlike Stephen A. Smith, I'm not going to wait till the next interview. I'm going to get all of these things that I've had a -- you know that I've had an issue with Candace Owens.

I'm going to talk about it on that day, because otherwise, you're just kind of letting her, and Charlie Kirk, the guy who literally just said, Charlie Kirk, the guy who last fall said that, well, you know what? When I see a black pilot now, I -- going to automatically think that they're unqualified. This is the same Charlie Kirk. So, one thing to platform him, but I think this is all for clicks.

PHILLIP: We got to go, but I will just note that tonight he described Newsom as inauthentic, essentially. He said it was purely, this is Charlie Kirk, he's describing his conversation with Gavin Newsom. He said it was purely transactional. So, I'm not sure.

JONES: After the Governor --

ABDUL: Hey, there you go? Is anyone surprised though? Has anyone been surprised though? Have you seen Gavin Newsom?

UNKNOWN: Oh my God.

JONES: That's my guy. Don't talk about getting it. I love getting it.

PHILLIP: That's for another day, my friends. Everyone, thank you very much for joining us. News in just tonight, officials have revealed the cause of the mysterious deaths of Gene Hackman and his wife. We'll have much more on that ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:59:16]

PHILLIP: The comedians of "Have I Got News for You" are having fun with how the Democrats chose to protest Congressman Al Green's censure this week. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROY WOOD JR., COMEDIAN: Here's Mike Johnson dropping the hammer.

MIKE JOHNSON (R) SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF CONGRESS: The House has resolved that Representative Al Green be censured.

WOOD: After the vote, Democrats sang a Negro spiritual to support their colleagues.

AMBER RUFFIN, COMEDIAN: Roy, I will flip this whole desk. I swear to Christ.

WOOD, JR.: Bonus question.

RUFFIN: Roy.

WOOD JR.: Which Negro spiritual did they sing?

UNKNOWN: No way. No way.

WOOD, JR.: Hit it.

[23:00:03]

MICHAEL IAN BLACK, COMEDIAN: And then went into bass! How low can you go? What a brother-no. once again back in the -- it was very surprising, but it was beautifully executed.

WOOD, JR.: What silver rights '90s C and C Music Factory crossover did you just do?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: You can catch the all new episode tomorrow at 9 P.M. on CNN. And thank you very much for watching "NewsNight". We'll see you tomorrow morning, 10 A.M. with our conversation show, "Table for Five". "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.