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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Golfed While His Tariffs Sent Markets Into Historic Dive; Trump's Historic Tariffs Anger Markets, GOP, Allies, CEOs; Many Of Trump's Loudest Supporters Complain About Tariffs; Barack Obama Breaks His Silence, Calls Out Democrats For Not Standing Up For Progressive Ideals; A Judge Orders Trump To Bring Back Wrongly Deported Man. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired April 04, 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, as market's crater, a defiant Trump says he's not budging on his unprecedented war. Instead, he's going golfing.
Plus, from billionaires to Barstool, MAGA promoters get a wakeup call.
DAVE PORTNOY, FOUNDER, BARSTOOL SPORTS: And everything's in the shitter because of it.
PHILLIP: Also, you may say he's a dreamer, but Barack Obama sings the imagine if he did this song and calls out voices in the crowd.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: They are mute right now.
PHILLIP: And return to sender, a judge orders Trump to bring back the man mistakenly shipped to a mega prison.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In a blink of an eye, our three children lost their father.
PHILLIP: But is it too late?
Live at the table, Van Lathan, Joe Borelli, Jeanette Hoffman, John Fugelsang, and an economic debate.
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's talking about. Donald Trump doesn't give an F. That's what one White House official says about the markets plunging over his trade wars and it appears to be true. As 401(k)s and companies suffered today, Trump and his allies, including many of whom cheered him on in the Rose Garden event, were MIA. The House in recess, and as for Trump himself, he spent the day working on his golf swing, which is interesting considering what he has said about Democratic presidents.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Obama, it was reported today, played 250 rounds of golf.
Everything's executive order because he doesn't have enough time because he is playing so much golf.
Obama ought to get off the golf course and get down there.
I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to go play golf.
He played more golf last year than Tiger Woods.
He plays more golf than people on the PGA tour.
I love golf. I think it's one of the greats, but I don't have time.
If I were in the White House, I don't think I'd ever see Turnberry again. I don't think I'd ever see Doral again.
I'm not going to be playing much golf, believe me. If I win this, I'm not going to be playing much golf.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Unfortunately, since Trump began his economic war, bad news is becoming a trend, the Dow dropping 2,000 points for only the fourth time in history, the NASDAQ in bear market territory. Nations have begun retaliating already. That includes China. But despite all of this, Trump says that he's not budging. He's not changing his policies.
Joining us at the table are our economic experts, CNN Business Editor- at-large Richard Quest, also with us, CNN Global and Economic Analyst Rana Foroohar, also with us, Marc LoPresti, a market strategist.
And Donald Trump is moderating, I think, a debate within his allies and among people in the White House even. Is this a negotiating tactic or is this just a thing that we're doing now? Because the United States of America, we like tariffs now. We didn't for a hundred years, but we do now.
So, in a Truth Social, he says, big businesses are not worried about tariffs because they know they are here to stay. So, are we negotiating or are we just a tariff country now?
MARC LOPRESTI, CEO, AND SENIOR MARKET STRATEGIST, MARKET REBELLION: Donald Trump's always negotiating, Abby. I mean, let's understand. This is his approach. He's been a dealmaker his entire life. It makes for great sound bites to say, this isn't a negotiation, this is what it's going to be. It's tariffs, baby, tariffs. But, of course, it's a negotiation and we've already seen elements of behind the scenes talks, even with China, that are going on notwithstanding as time of the golf course. And I'd like to say on the record, I have not been on the golf course myself since last August.
PHILLIP: Too busy.
LOPRESTI: Too busy. Not in the White House, but too busy.
PHILLIP: Rana, do you buy that?
RANA FOROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYST: I think it's always a negotiation. I agree with that. And you have -- say, it's interesting, you saw, you know, certain retail stocks going up just a little bit today on the news that, oh, you're going to pull back tariffs on Vietnam, or, oh, there's a behind the scenes negotiation with Japan. But I think there's something more fundamental happening.
And I believe Donald Trump has bungled what could have been a reset of the global trading system if we had done it with our allies and really gone after China, gone after the low hanging fruit, had a plan and communicated it. No. Instead we're bringing down the U.S. economy and the global markets and we are undermining trust.
Which of our trading partners, even if he pulls back from tariffs, is going to believe anything he says tomorrow, next week, next month?
[22:05:04]
I think it's going to take a long time to claw back the value that has been destroyed in the last couple days.
RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS EDITOR-AT-LARGE: There is a new sadness, in a sense, a sort of upset by many of us who cover this because there's a realization as the week has gone on that this is totally and absolutely unnecessary. This vandalism, as I called it, this destruction of wealth, was completely unneeded and it was done. With just wanton disregard. You do not have two consecutive days of market falls of 6 percent into bear market territory on the whim of a policy.
Now, put this in perspective. The last time we had two days of 6 percent falls was the pandemic. Strip out the pandemic as being so generous and you are back to 2008. Strip out 2008, and you're almost back to 1987, when I started covering all this stuff.
There was no need for this. This is the point. This is why so many of us are upset about this. There was no need for this to be done in this way. There was a proper way to do tariff or to do trade reform, but bullying, haranguing and then literally hitting them over the head was not the way to do it.
PHILLIP: I've been listening to what they've been saying, because I really want to understand this. And I'm going to take the other position. I think that Donald Trump and Scott Bessent and all of them, they mean it. They mean it because they want to raise a lot of money. And here is what Scott Bessent said to Tucker Carlson in an interview that was released today about just how much money they need to raise through these tariffs.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TUCKER CARLSON, TALK SHOW HOST: Do you have any sense of how much the US government anticipates bringing in from the tariffs announced yesterday?
SCOTT BESSENT, TREASURY SECRETARY: It's going to be a moving tarsier (ph). But could it be anywhere from $300 billion to $600 billion a year, sure.
CARLSON: Okay. So, that's meaningful revenue.
BESSENT: Very meaningful. But what will happen with tariffs over time, the ultimate goal of the tariffs and the president says it all the time, bring your factory here. That's the best solution toward getting away from a tariff wall.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, okay, give your reaction.
FOROOHAR: 300, maybe, but that assumes that the rest of the world is just going to stay stationary and not cut deals with each other. If I were China, I would be in Brussels right now saying to Europe, you know what? Let's go, let's figure this out together. And who is going to trust as an investment coming to the U.S. with a president that's acting like this?
I have actually been for tariffs and reindustrialization in very targeted ways for a long time. I think it's important to have more manufacturing in the states. I think it's important to build ships and ships and all of those things. But you've got to have both the tariff tool used very precisely a real industrial policy at home and stability. We don't have stability. There's no taste test (ph).
PHILLIP: The other part of what he said was that, oh, bring your factories here and then we'll have some workers, but then we'll also have robots and A.I. Workers are not going to be ultimately the beneficiary of any of this, and I think they are acknowledging that.
FOROOHAR: That's right.
VAN LATHAN, PODCAST CO-HOST, HIGHER LEARNING: I'm the average American right here at this table, because you guys are talking and I don't really understand what it is that you guys are saying. Like, seriously, I don't get it. The only thing that a lot of people who have families who carpool, who go to and from the work, who live in the suburbs, who live in the cities, they're just wondering when things are going to get bad. That's what they're wondering, and all of the macroeconomic talk is going over their head.
And, honestly, I feel for them. I feel for them because it doesn't seem like anyone is talking directly to them. They're talking to the markets. They're talking to each other. They're talking to the financial system. But no one's telling somebody, hey, at the end of this summer, when you need to buy school supplies for your kids to go back to school when it's backpack time, like that money will be there and those prices will be stable. No one is talking to them, and I think that's the biggest tragedy in all of it.
QUEST: The truth to be told to them, most people don't want to say. Because we had it today from Jerome Powell, chair of the Fed, for the -- he said there will be higher inflation, there will be slower growth. So, the real sadness tonight is the people at home who are about -- looking to retire in the next year or two and have suddenly seen their retirement funds go down by 20, 30, 40 percent, because they wanted to take advantage of the Magnificent Seven and all of those sort of things. Tonight, they're wondering, how the heck do I actually do it?
This is real life economics, to your point. You're right. The sort of nonsense that we can all go on about --
[22:10:00]
LATHAN: It's not nonsense, I'm just saying --
FOROOHAR: But it's totally true, because you're making a really important point. There is not some kind of 360 plan that has been articulated to America here.
You know, Trump said, well, we're going to have to take a little pain. What does that mean? Who's going to -- who's taking the pain? The average working person will be taking the pain because when inflation hits, those are the people that spend 60 percent of their take home in energy and food, fueling their cars. I mean, we are going to be in a very, very difficult situation coming.
JOE BORELLI, FORMER REPUBLICAN LEADER, NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL: I find it insane that I think we're finally concerned about inflation. That was a word that really didn't exist for many years while Joe Biden was president.
But I want to point out something. Last night, Richard you took it off your shoe, you said it's made in Vietnam. It's going to be 34 percent more expensive next year. Today, the secretary general of Vietnam reached out to President Trump and said, we want to have zero tariffs for both countries, proving to some degree, to some degree that this is a leverage play.
PHILLIP: What does that prove, Joe?
BORELLI: It proved --
PHILLIP: What does that prove? At the end of the conversation the president said, nice talking to you and nothing about, oh, we're going to -- great. We're going to have a deal, lower our tariff.
BORELLI: I'm going to tell you what --
PHILLIP: He said, great conversation. BORELLI: Let's look historically. In 1996, there was a member of Congress who stood on the floor looking at 2 percent tariffs we had on China, 35 percent tariffs they had on us. This woman demanded that we had reciprocal tariffs. You know who that was? Nancy Pelosi. 2008, same thing, a guy stood on the Senate floor lamented --
PHILLIP: These are not reciprocal tariffs.
BORELLI: I'm just saying they lamented the loss of America's workers --
PHILLIP: Israel lowered its tariff barrier to zero. You know what we did? We raised our tariff barrier to 17 percent.
BORELLI: Again, just going back, Democrats have repeatedly said -- I have a list of quotes here, repeatedly said, we should have reciprocal tariffs on different countries and did nothing. There are a party of Cory Bookers. Let's just talk, don't do anything.
QUEST: You talk about Vietnam. I'm so glad you brought up Vietnam. And I'll also bring up Cambodia. The problem with going to zero tariffs with Vietnam and Cambodia, great, first of all, U.S. exports almost next to nothing to those countries. It's negligible. It's less than $500 million. But let's assume you go to zero. The problem with both of those countries is not the nominal tariff rate, 30 percent, 15 percent. It's the nontariff barriers, the government procurement rules, the ownership rules. Everything else that Donald Trump quite rightly said on Wednesday, quite rightly --
BORELLI: You took your shoe off, you said it's going to be 34 percent more expensive because of the tariff.
QUEST: It is.
BORELLI: Today, the secretary general, forgive me, I forget the party name, the president's call, called Donald Trump and said, we want to actually negotiate, that would be favorable. That would be favorable. The problem is Democrats have been promising this. Bernie Sanders used to call free trader right wing conspiracy or something like that, and never did anything about it. Never did anything about it.
FOROOHAR: Oh, I'm sorry, I got to beg to differ, because here's the history. And I'm going to give both sides some credit. Trump won. Bob Lighthizer, the USTR comes in and says, you know what, we got to re- jigger the global trading system. It was a good thing to say. Tariffs on China, fine. Biden keeps those. Then he actually articulates a real industrial policy, says, what do we need most of all in this country? Chips. We brought back the semiconductor industry in 18 months. That's how you do this.
Trump now comes in and he had just -- let me finish. He had an opportunity here actually given the strength of the U.S. economy at this moment to really work with allies and say, this is the time Europe, Canada, Mexico, we're going to go to China and say, here's the new game and here's how it's going to be played. He didn't do that. He is squandering our -- (CROSSTALKS)
LOPRESTI: I have to disagree with that slightly, because that's not giving President Trump any credit for the amount of foreign investment that has been pledged in this very brief time of this administration. It's, for most estimates, between $2 to $3 trillion commitments from SoftBank, from Taiwan semi to bring back -- well, Richard you scoff. Why do you scoff?
QUEST: I do because these are --
LOPRESTI: I take issue with the scoff, sir.
QUEST: These are, of course, valid if it happens.
LOPRESTI: They are. It's no less valid than the --
QUEST: No. Wisconsin. Wisconsin and the factory that was supposed to be built by, I can't remember the company, in 2018, never happened. These are promises being made to appease a president to get him off your back. Let's see how much of that $2 trillion --
PHILLIP: Including some promises breaking plants that were already in the works -- just a second.
LATHAN: There is the guy from Staten Island.
PHILLIP: Including some promises that were made -- that were planned when Joe Biden was president and held off to announce to after they waited to see who won the election.
Businesses are not stupid. They do what they need to do to get in the good graces of Donald Trump. It's not rocket science. One last note, they were supposed to have a deal with China on TikTok. It was supposed to be announced this weekend. That is on hold now. And --
LOPRESTI: Why do you think that is, though, Abby?
PHILLIP: Well, because China says we want you to bring down your tariffs and we're going to hold TikTok hostage until you do.
[22:15:03]
And they're getting their way.
LOPRESTI: But that's to your initial point. It's part of the negotiation.
PHILLIP: I don't think we're on the winning side of that --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: We're not on the winning side of that negotiation. China has all the power.
LATHAN: If chaos is the only thing that you can count on, people will bet on chaos. And when you're betting on chaos, that keeps you tense. It keeps you tight. It doesn't -- you don't move in good faith. You think, hey, this guy changes his mind every single minute, every single hour, and you start to kind of hold onto it.
FOROOHAR: 100 percent correct.
PHILLIP: All right, everybody, we got to leave it there for this conversation, but more ahead. Marc and Rana, thank you very much for joining us. Everyone else stick around.
Up next, Trump's favorite billionaires are taking big hits from all of this, and so are some of Trump's biggest supporters. More special guests are going to join our table.
Plus, Barack Obama and Kamala Harris are speaking out for the very first time in months and they are not holding back on Trump's second term.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Donald Trump's tariff wars are ticking off even some of his loudest supporters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BEN SHAPIRO, CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: His giant tariff policy that he just dropped on the market unilaterally, probably unconstitutionally.
What President Trump is doing should never -- if it was ever delegated by Congress to the executive, that's insane and it probably wasn't. It's not a national emergency that justifies one of the biggest tax increases on American consumers in the history of America.
PORTNOY: Trump has put his tariffs all over the place. I've been trying to understand him. I don't -- like it's more a trade deficit tariff to me, like, hey, we get this much shit from you and you get this much from us. Let's even that up. Let's get some wacky formula and do tariffs. And everything's in the shitter because of it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: But be beyond the rabble-rousers, take a look at the fascinating snapshot in time that's right there on your screen. This is the billionaires index from Bloomberg, which tracks their bottom lines. And three of those people on that list, the top four are in the red. And they all sat front row, by the way, at Trump's inauguration, and they have bowed in many ways to Trump over the last several months.
The fourth in the green you see there, that's Warren Buffet. He wasn't in the front row at all. He's made money over the last year, unlike the other three. He's been no fan of tariffs and he recently called them an act of war. And likely anticipating this Buffet has spent the last year dumping stocks and building cash. So, if anything changes Trump's mind, could it be elites on Mar-a-Lago's patio?
Jeanette Hoffman and John Fugelsang are both -- are all -- Fugelsang, excuse me, are all here with us at the table.
You know, the Portnoy and Shapiro of it all really just shows there's some nervousness happening here. Portnoy is -- he says he still supports Trump. He's going to give him some time, maybe six weeks. But the fundamental thing, and I thought his explanation was pretty good, they made up a random formula. Now, I'm losing money and everything seems like it's going down. That's not a good set of facts for the Trump administration.
JEANETTE HOFFMAN, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Yes. And, you know, look, Dave Portnoy has been pretty honest and pretty candid. And when he agrees with Trump, he says it when he disagrees with Trump, he says that too. But, you know, I am old enough to remember when Republicans were pro-growth, pro-trade, anti-tax, anti-tariff. And it seems like we're upside down right now where Democrats are the ones who are saying, no tariffs, no taxes, and Republicans are the ones who are saying, this is a great idea. Let's, you know, tariff everybody it, it doesn't make sense to me right now.
PHILLIP: It is the upside down.
JOHN FUGELSANG, SIRIUSXM HOST, TELL ME EVERYTHING: Yes and no. In many ways, we're exactly where we were five years ago. There is a gigantic existential threat over us, as was with the beginnings of COVID. We don't know how bad this threat is going to be, how many of us will be hurt. We're all around the world shivering in the shadow of this giant question mark. And the only thing we know for sure is that the American president is not going to tell us the truth day-by-day.
This has been a bloodbath. Jeff Bezos is now middle class, I think. I think Jeff Bezos just moved back into his mother's garage and he's selling books again. I mean --
PHILLIP: He's going to have to sell his little --
HOFFMAN: But you can buy Amazon stock pretty cheap. So, it's like -- think of it as a sale.
FUGELSANG: But in February, they pulled back at the last minute, which made it seem like they were manipulating the market. In March, the first week, they pulled back. You know what I'm talking about, Mr. Quest. They pulled back at the last minute, making it seem like they were manipulating the market.
PHILLIP: They're not going to pull back now. He's saying that they're not going pull back.
QUEST: What I would like to know from our Republican friends here is how much pain are you prepared to take from middle America before -- right, sorry, I'm towering you with the entire premise of the issue, but before you recognize -- whether you recognize it's a terrible mistake or not, how much political pain, never mind economic, is everybody prepared to take? HOFFMAN: Well, if you look at the latest polls, if you look at tariffs, 69 percent of Republicans oppose tariffs. I don't think it's about whether Republicans are going to take it. It's how voters feel.
LATHAN: Well, these politicians fear MAGA.
PHILLIP: Well, okay, well, let me let Joe answer that. Yes.
BORELLI: Look, I think this is something that Trump didn't hide from us, right? If there's one thing that you could say about Donald Trump on the campaign trail is that he promised to do exactly this. He promised to issue tariffs and I recall being on panel similar to this in 2017, 2018, when sort of his first round of tariffs came out in his first administration and there was this prediction of panic and doom and gloom and ten years of stock market, you know, gloom in the future, and then they went so well that Joe Biden kept most of them and then actually added tariffs on Chinese rubber or on Chinese medical supplies, et cetera, et cetera.
[22:25:13]
So, I think a lot of this is just a little bit of genuine pain, right? Richard pointed out if you are, you know, facing your retirement, if you are ready to cash out in your stock, yes, it's not a good day to do that. Trust me, it's not a good day. However, if you're looking at the long-term, this is something that probably will play out. The benefit of American workers.
FUGELSANG: Was paying one of the promises?
BORELLI: No. Look, I mean, there has to be -- changing fundamental.
FUGELSANG: I heard lower prices in day one.
BORELLI: Changing -- the macroeconomic system of our country is going to be painful. That's why most politicians of both parties promised to do it, never actually do it. I think we're seeing the first time someone actually doing it. And, yes, it's going to be some kicks in the shin.
LATHAN: Two things to be to be fair, number one, he didn't run on that. What he ran on was being the economic savior of the United States of America. He didn't run on, listen you guys, things are going to get a little worse, but they'll be better in two or three years. So, a lot of people are waking up to the reality that they're getting a return that they didn't really cast their vote for. That's true.
Secondly, it's interesting with Porto and Shapiro because of what they represent. They actually represent just people because they're not politicians. Like they don't have to wait two years for someone to cast their vote on a referendum on whether or not they'll still be in power. They have to maintain credibility with the people that listen to them day after day after day after day. Which means if those people are feeling pain, they just can't lie to them. Those people who actually in the market choose somebody else to listen to.
PHILLIP: Well, also Portnoy said he lost $7 million.
LATHAN: Right. And, look, I'm not a huge Dave Portnoy fan, but like he keeps it real with his audience.
PHILLIP: Yes. Well the other thing is, I mean, to Joe's point though, I mean, look, Trump, it's a complicated picture. He ran on actually 20 percent tariffs. That was thought to be crazy. Now, the tariffs are actually higher than that. But this was Trump back in 1988, okay, 1988 talking about this very issue
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I'd make our allies, forgetting about the enemies, the enemies you can't talk to so easily. I'd make our allies pay their fair share. We're a debtor nation. Something's going to happen over the next number of years with this country because you can't keep going on losing $200 billion, and yet we let Japan come in and dump everything right into our markets and everything. It's not free trade.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Okay. Two quick things about this, one, Donald Trump is stuck right there, okay? His mindset is right there, and it has not gone anywhere for 30 years. But the other thing is, he was wrong about that. In the last 30 years, we left Japan in the dust. The United States economically did really well, but he's taking the country down this path.
QUEST: They did it through -- the United States did really well through things like the Plaza Accord, the Louvre Accord through the various agreements that the Reagan administration and others put in place, that managed trade and managed that bilateral deficit.
The China tariffs that you are talking about, they were targeted, they were specific, they were directional. By the way, the other two sets of tariffs, the aluminum and steel, and the solar panels, they were an abject disaster.
PHILLIP: Yes, a thousand jobs gained, 75,000 lost. Just steel, that was just steel.
QUEST: Donald Trump has had a myopic obsession with tariffs for as long as I've been covering him. And I'm talking about tunnel vision. And what you are seeing is the fruition of that view.
PHILLIP: Over on Capitol Hill -- just quickly, over on Capitol Hill, they sent -- or Stephen Miller sent himself. I don't know who sent him. But here's how it was received, according to Politico. People in the room described the appearance as bizarre. Miller alluded to the British Empire and prompted Befuddlement. What on Earth was that, one senior leadership aide said, describing the reaction afterwards. He was very arrogant, said the second aide. Miller was lecturing folks while the market was in free fall, said a third. I mean, this is on Capitol Hill, where, in the Senate, they've got four set Republicans already saying we got to put a stop to this. And now a Republican in the House, Don Bacon, is introducing a similar bill. There's going to be a little bit of revolt happening.
FUGELSANG: But it's like they've seen the first three Star Wars movies and they figure out Darth Vader's the bad guy in the last ten minutes of Return to the Jedi. I mean, this is a man who actually outsourced his own manufacturing to China and Mexico to avoid paying a living wage to Americans, but he says he wants manufacturing. This is a man who has hired undocumented immigrants to work on his properties in two different centuries because he did not want to pay an American worker or a living wage, but he really cares about illegal immigration.
I mean, we could do it all night. We can't believe what he actually says. And a lot of conservatives are realizing, we never signed up for this.
HOFFMAN: I think our senators and our members of Congress are going to hear it back home, especially if there's pain for more than a couple weeks. You know, you had the four senators that voted with the Democrats, but you've also had some senators publicly, say, Thom Tillis in North Carolina said, our farmers are one crop away from bankruptcy.
[22:30:03]
They can't withstand pain. You had Senator Kennedy say, okay, he might be right in the long-term, but in the long term, we're all dead. Short-term matters, right?
PHILLIP: Isn't that the truth? The long term is going to be a long, long way from now for so many Americans in the next few months.
Coming up next, Richard Cross, by the way, thank you so much for joining us. Everyone else, stay with us. Coming up next, imagine if Joe Biden or Barack Obama were doing this. The tariffs, bullying law firms, arresting college students. Well, Obama himself imagined that scenario. We'll tell you what he said.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:18]
PHILLIP: Barack Obama breaking his silence and calling out Democrats for not standing up for progressive ideals.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I've noticed this among some wealthier folks who, you know, after George Floyd, they were right there, and a bunch of companies were talking about how they cared about diversity, and they wanted to do this, and they were all for that. And they are mute right now. But what that tells me is it was okay when it was cool and trendy, and when it's not, not so much.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Obama also took time to slam President Trump calling out his treatment of the press, student protesters and bullying law firms. Quote, "Imagine if I had done any of this. It's unimaginable that the same parties that are silent now would have tolerated behavior like this from me or a whole bunch of my predecessors."
I don't know. I -- I can't say he's wrong about that. I -- I mean, frankly, we -- we kind of know because there were times when Obama did things on the press. He investigated a Fox reporter over a leak. He tried -- he tried to not let Fox into, you know, a set of interviews with an official and then actually relented, but got a lot of heat for it. And now those people are silent.
LATHAN: Yeah. I mean, he's 1000 right, but I'm not sure that it matters. What I want to hear from prominent leaders on the left is vision, vision, vision. What vision do you have for the American people who have trusted you as their power brokers?
I get it. It's unfair. It's not right. It's a -- there's a double standard. All of that is true. How are we going to get out of this? Vision, vision, vision. And I think if there's one thing that the left or the Democrats more specifically are failing at right now, it's not about diagnosing the problem.
It's not about looking into the hole. It's about getting shovels to put the dirt back in and tell people how they're going to be able to sleep soundly on that -- on that turf. So, while I agree with the -- the former president -- I agree with President Obama. I just want to hear the Democrats give us the diagnosis for how this is supposed to go.
PHILLIP: Yeah.
HOFFMAN: But what is the vision? Like, I think that's what the problem is. I don't think there's an agreement on what the vision should be for the Democratic Party. I think some people should it should be over here to the left, and some people think the party needs to come back to the center.
FUGELSANG: That's how it's always been for both parties. I mean, the Republican Party has the same civil war, and it's going to get a lot tighter right now. We're still living in the Bernie fan-Hillary fan civil war. But for all the Democratic Party, low poll numbers, their positions are consistently more popular than the Republican Party.
Women's reproductive rights, paid family leave, taxing billionaires, Medicare covering vision, hearing, and dental, decriminalizing cannabis, gun safety legislation on issue after issue. The majority of Americans agree with the Democratic Party platform. So, shame on them if they can't sell it.
HOFFMAN: And then why are the Democrats 21 percent, a historic low at the party?
(CROSSTALK)
FUGELSANG: Well, again, the Republicans aren't that higher either.
BORELLI: Because Van is right. Because Van, I think, pointed out very articulately that the Democratic Party doesn't have any vehicle, meaning a person, to convey their message in any fundamentally, positive, uplifting, and hopeful way. Look, I didn't like President Obama. Not a fan, right? But he was an excellent conveyor of the message of the Democratic Party that people wanted to hear and sought in 2007 and 2008.
There is no one. And, I mean, look, Cory Booker got -- got so much credit for just giving a filibuster. He won an award for speaking the most, right? That is the low bar.
UNKNOWN: Can I tell you something, though?
BORELLI: The Democratic Party is standing right now.
LATHAN: But can I tell you something though? That actually cut through. And the reason why it cut through --I was surprised that it cut through, too.
BORELLI: So, somebody was doing something. Like, somebody.
LATHAN: It -- it cut through because they saw somebody willing to put it on the line for them.
FUGELSANG: They want a fighter.
LATHAN: He stood up there, and he didn't go to the bathroom for 25 hours. He made himself uncomfortable.
BORELLI: God bless.
FUGELSANG: You know? We are witnessing so many business leaders and people on the capitulation weasel train bowing down to a man they despise. People on my SiriusXM show call in every night hungry for someone to be a leader in the Democratic Party or in the movement. And I -- I keep having to remember that this is not how it works. It's great that Barack Obama gave a speech.
Jimmy Carter would have done 10 protests and a hunger strike by now. But at the end of the day, it's going to be the people who lead and eventually a Democrat will sign a law and take --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I'll play a little bit more from Obama because he kind of touches on that. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: Easy during most of our lifetimes to say you are progressive.
[22:40:00]
Or say you are for social justice or say you're for free speech and not have to pay a price for it. And now we're at one of those moments where, you know what, it's -- it's not enough just to say you're for something. You may actually have to do something and possibly sacrifice a little bit.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Yeah. I mean, it's -- it's -- to your point, but I think it's a couple things for Obama and for the Democrats. One, there a lot of performativeness over the last few years probably needs to go by the wayside. But the other thing is that you listed a bunch of issues that are very popular, but Democrats also ignored the other things that are very important to Americans, like the cost of living and physical security.
FUGELSANG: You think the Biden administration to get rid of the cost of living for working class people?
PHILLIP: Yeah.
FUGELSANG: Yeah?
PHILLIP: Yeah.
FUGELSANG: I think --
PHILLIP: I mean --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: The voters --
HOFFMAN: I mean that's why the voters voted for Trump.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Well, let me --
FUGELSANG: What about, I mean, the stimulus, the student loans, the --
PHILLIP: Okay, let me --
LATHAN: Cap on insulin?
PHILLIP: Here's what I would say is the argument that you could make about the Biden administration not understanding the catastrophic effect that inflation would have on the psyche of Americans was that A, they deny that inflation was an issue for a very long time. And B, rather than crafting an economic message, a lot of times, they just didn't want to talk about it.
LATHAN: I -- I think that they denied --
PHILLIP: And that that's an issue. I mean --
LATHAN: I think that they denied --
PHILLIP: I think that they didn't -- if they had a -- economic message, I think that that would have broken through.
LATHAN: Well, I --- I think that they denied that inflation was an issue specific to America.
FUGELSANG: Thank you.
LATHAN: Meaning that inflation here was something very insidious that wasn't happening post-Covid to the rest of the world.
PHILLIP: Yeah, and I get that. But, but as we were talking earlier in the show about these economic arguments that go over people's heads, they don't care what's going on in the rest of the world.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: They want to know -- they want to know how much food costs, why their housing is so expensive, and do they feel safe in their homes?
FUGELSANG: But the reality is that the U.S. has lower post COVID inflation than all of our G7 allies, and the Biden White House wasn't able to sell that reality.
BORELLI: The Democrats failed on, right? Just like you could say the tariffs will have an impact on consumer prices. There's no doubt. People will feel that. Just like the -- the hit to the stock market over the last two days had an impact on people's wallets. They feel that.
The denial that inflation, whether it was higher in Germany or higher in France, nobody gives a shit (ph). If you lived in if you live in New York, if you lived in Alabama, that's what you cared about.
FUGELSANG: Right. It's just the lie that it was Joe Biden's inflation is what stuck. The lie stuck in the campaign.
BORELLI: Joe Biden owned it -- owned it. He didn't come up with a plan as you pointed out. He did come up with a vision. He didn't execute anything.
FUGELSANG: He had lower inflation than all of our --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: We got to leave it there. We got to leave it there. What -- we didn't even -- I mean, that is an issue. That's a big issue, the immigration issue, as well.
Coming up next, more breaking news tonight, tonight. A judge now ordering Trump to get the man that they mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison back to the United States. But is that even possible?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:47:42]
PHILLIP: Breaking tonight, a judge says the Trump administration must bring back a man that they sent to an El Salvador prison over a, quote, "administrative mistake". And now, the Trump administration is appealing that ruling. The judge imposed a deadline of late night Monday to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States. He denies being part of any gang.
And in fact, another immigration judge had said that he could be deported anywhere, but just not El Salvador because of the risks to his life. But the White House is mocking the order, suggesting that the judge contact El Salvador's President because, quote, "We are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction over that country."
This might be the first test of whether the Trump administration is going to abide by a judge's order. And, the lawyer for Garcia is basically saying, look. You guys went to this prison. You came back. You can get somebody in this prison, you can get them out.
BORELLI: Look. We'll see how the appeals go, but -- but I've been of the opinion, and maybe people will call me heartless, and that's fine. The way that this person would have not ended up in an El Salvador prison is if he never came to this country illegally and violated our laws in the first place.
FUGELSANG: He was here legally. He's here legally.
BORELLI: No. He wasn't. He wasn't.
FUGELSANG: He had a temporary protected status.
BORELLI: No, he wasn't.
FUGELSANG: He had temporary protected status.
BORELLI: He was -- they're -- they're not even challenging his right to deport him. They're challenging whether he went to El Salvador.
FUGELSANG: But he was not an illegal.
BORELLI: He was here against the law of the United States.
FUGELSANG: He had temporary protected status.
BORELLI: He was here against the law of the United States.
FUGELSANG: So, that means deportation and rendition to torture? Donald Trump hired --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: One of the reasons that the judge didn't want him sent back to El Salvador --
BORELLI: And I understand. Yes.
PHILLIP: -- is because he had made a claim that his life was reasonably in danger if he were to go back, that he had come to the United States fleeing essentially gang violence. So, that's -- that's the context for why he was here and why he shouldn't have been sent back there. But the administration I mean, I think the interesting thing about
this is how they are responding. The press secretary essentially saying, the -- the judge can go and talk to the president of that country because, you know, he doesn't have jurisdiction over El Salvador.
LATHAN: I'm going to do something -- I'm going to super weepy eyed over America right -- over America right now. Something I never thought that I would do on the show.
[22:50:00]
You know, when you look at the declaration of independence, it says, you know, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
Now, obviously, if you're black like me, there are problems with the document in terms of the way your people were treated and have been treated here for generations. But it's very important to understand that that says men, humans. It doesn't say Americans. It says that they -- that our entire way of life, our entire government is undergirded by a belief in human rights.
Meaning, if you happen to find yourself in America, then you are entitled to treatment that is different than if you find yourself in China or in Russia or in Germany in 1939 or any of those places that we have a specific belief in human rights and the value of a human person, that means that we are not going to send you to a torture chamber without due process. And, we're not going to subvert the rule of law to dehumanize you.
FUGELSANG: Amen.
LATHAN: And that has to mean something. And if it doesn't mean anything, then we lose our entire way of life and who we hope to be at some point, even if we haven't been that person in the past. And I just think everybody who's talking about whether or not this guy is American or not or how he was here or, like, what he means, just sit back and think about who it is that you want to be, and that's not who we want to be.
FUGELSANG: If you're standing on American soil, you're allowed to claim asylum. And the scariest thing is that how can El Salvador ever let this man back? We paid them $20,000 to take him. No one comes out of this place because -- you think El Salvador? And I've been to El Salvador. I've done stand up there because we have troops there because we're still doing the drug war there. The drug war is still in progress.
I played at military bases in El Salvador. They're not going to let this man out to come talk to American media about what conditions are like in there. And this man has a wife and kids. He has an autistic son, and we have renditioned him like it's 20 years ago to a gulag for torture with no plans to get him back.
PHILLIP: Stephen Miller calls the judge a Marxist judge who now thinks she's the president of El Salvador. I -- I mean, I guess I'm not surprised anymore about rhetoric, right? But it just -- it's not really how our system works. If you disagree with the judge, just appeal it like the Trump administration actually did.
HOFFMAN: Well, so what I -- this this whole thing is really unusual to me because they've launched like a P.R. campaign against the specific person saying he's an MS-13 gang member, like for -- for weeks. Like J.D. Vance got involved, the press secretary, and they've really gone hard on him.
But yet, the DOJ attorney who was prosecuting this case basically said, we don't really have anything on him. So, why wouldn't the DOJ attorney in DHS who says he's an MS-13 gang member have done their due diligence?
FUGELSANG: Administrative error. So -- and the DOJ admin said they had made an-- admitted they'd made an administrative error by sending them there. So, it's like the administration is not even talking to each other.
PHILLIP: Yeah, I mean, there's -- there's what's happening out in the public where they can kind of say whatever they want, and then there's what happens in the courtroom where they have to say things to a judge. And that's when really, to your point, the rubber meets the road.
Much more to the story in the coming weeks, I'm sure. We'll keep you posted, everyone else. Thank you for joining us. Coming up next, more on the economic turmoil and what tomorrow means for you when you go to the grocery store. Anthony Scaramucci and Kevin O'Leary will debate. Stand by.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:58:13]
PHILLIP: The comedians of "Have I Got News For You" are back, and they are just trying to figure out how many countries are in the Trump administration's list of the worst trade violators. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROY WOOD JR., COMEDIAN: Question. Does anyone know the name the administration has for the countries that they think are ripping America off the worst?
REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): Countries that just have penguins?
WOOD JR.: Let's hear the name of the countries.
UNKNOWN: The "Dirty 15".
UNKNOWN: The "Dirty 15".
UNKNOWN: The "Dirty 15".
WOOD JR.: Question. How many countries comprise the "Dirty 15" countries?
AMBER RUFFIN, COMEDIAN: Roy, it has to be 15. I don't like it when we're this dumb.
MICHAEL IAN BLACK, COMEDIAN: I'm missing 23.
UNKNOWN: I'm going to say three.
WOOD JR.: Twenty-nine. The administration is not giving any type of clarity. It's like, well, what is the "Dirty 15" Is it 15 percent or is it 15 -- it's like a well, it's a baker's dozen plus two more and then --
RUFFIN: I would like to file a motion that we be known as the "Dirty five".
UNKNOWN: Oh.
KHANNA: I mean, can we be the "Dirty eight"? And then real complicated.
RUFFIN: Yeah. That's better. The "Dirty eight" because there's five of us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: You can catch the all-day episode tomorrow at 9 P.M. on CNN. Thank you very much for watching "NewsNight". We'll see you tomorrow morning at 10 A.M. with our conversation show, "Table for Five". You can also catch me anytime on your favorite social media -- X, Instagram and TikTok. In the meantime, "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
LAURA COATES, CNN ANCHOR: Well, good evening everyone. I'm Laura Coates and tonight, President Trump's tariffs, they are bringing more chaos.
