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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Markets Plunge Again as Trump Raises China Tariff to 145%; Supreme Court Sides with Wrongly Deported Migrant; Kristi Noem Mocked for Rifle-Holding Photo-Op; Abby Phillip Interviews Chris Whipple. Aired 11p-12a ET
Aired April 10, 2025 - 23:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[23:00:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR AND SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Tonight, the honeymoon is over again. Investors who were happy with the tariff pause are unhappy that they have no idea where the economy is headed as the president's policies blow any way the wind goes. Plus, a fully loaded photo op invites the internet to question if a Trump Cabinet official skipped her firearm safety course.
Live at the table, Chris Sununu, Ashley Allison, Batya Ungar-Sargon, Neera Tanden, and Richard Quest. Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other. But here, they do.
Good evening. I'm Abby Phillip in New York. Let's get right to what America is talking about. The market seesaw. Tonight, the president may be picking rose petals, asking if the markets love his tariffs or if they love them not. Wednesday brought the flowers, a lamb-like April day for investors, historic gains across all three indices. Today, though, brought metaphorical rain and real pain, a sell off slaughter for the Dow and the Nasdaq.
But it is the continued persistent pressure of the markets gone wild going to give this president any pause about his policy prescriptions of tariffs, tariffs, and more tariffs. Well, survey says no.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We had a big day yesterday. There'll always be transition, difficulty. But, we had a -- in history, it was the biggest day in history. The markets. So, we're very -- very happy with the way the country is running. We're trying to get the world to treat us fairly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: But is the president's confidence based on specifics or anything on more than just vibes? Ask the White House, and it also seems that the answer to that question is no.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNKNOWN: We want to see countries coming into the White House signing deals. When will that happen? And which countries?
KEVIN HASSETT, DIRECTOR, WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: Yeah, well, I'm not going to name the countries yet, but I could tell you that we've already got offers on the table for more than 15 countries.
HOWARD LUTNICK, UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF COMMERCE: We have so many countries to talk to. It's -- it's incredible. They have come with offers that they never, ever, ever would have come with.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: All right. Well, are we going to start seeing these deals or not, I think, is the question that Fox was so anxiously asking --
(LAUGHTER)
-- the White House because that's what the markets want to know. They recognize that in 90 days, they're going to be right back where they started, which is why today was not at all like how yesterday ended up being.
RICHARD QUEST, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR AND BUSINESS EDITOR-AT-LARGE: No, and I think there's great progress being made because the focus of attention now is on the deals. And we're not talking, by the way, of reducing a headline number down X percent on this. We're talking about basically these. Props for you, Abby. The foreign trade barriers.
And each country knows exactly what the United States hates about their industrial and trade policy. South Korea knows it, hate rules on procurement and rules on emissions and things like that. Australia knows it.
PHILLIP: Richard, pick up your microphone. We lost it in the -- in the flurry of papers.
QUEST: Oh, good Lord. Don't worry. I'm large enough to hear me without it. There you go. South Korea would like that. Australia, for example, knows that. The country states South Korea's regulations on car emissions. Vietnam, it's all about procurement, government procurement, price controls, all things. Australia, it's about imported apples and pears with pests. So, when they sit down and face each other, all the U.S. says is, like, get rid of that, get rid of that, get rid of that.
NEERA TANDEN, POLITICAL CONSULTANT, DEMOCRATIC THINK TANK, PRESIDENT AND CEO OF THE CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: I think you are kind of more confident than maybe some of the people negotiating.
(LAUGHTER)
So, wouldn't be so sure --
QUEST: But that's --
TANDEN: -- but that's exactly what will happen.
CHRIS SUNUNU, FORMER NEW HAMPSHIRE GOVERNOR: They -- he got rid of Navarro. We were going to be okay.
(LAUGHTER)
PHILLIP: I mean --
QUEST: That's -- that's what it's about now.
PHILLIP: I get that.
TANDEN: Maybe. Let's hope.
PHILLIP: In the meantime, though --
SUNUNU: Yeah.
PHILLIP: -- I think the question is, why on earth didn't they just say to these countries, hey -- hey, guys, we're serious about this. If you don't come to the table in the next 30 days, this is what's going to happen. We want these deals.
They didn't actually say that. And now, they're doing it after the markets are literally flipping out and starting to say, we're not so sure that the United States of America is a safe haven for our money anymore.
[23:05:05]
BATYA UNGAR-SARGON, AUTHOR: Here's the way I think they're thinking about it. It feels like the direction they're heading in is that what Trump basically wants is for our allies to consume a lot more of our products and for China to produce a lot less of what we consume.
And so, I think what he's going for is a kind of soft global embargo on China. And the way that he went about doing that is he basically picked up a baseball bat and said to the entire global elites, that's a really nice stock market you've got, it would be a shame if anything happened to it.
And the reason that I think that that was effective is -- I mean, Lutnick is saying that they could never have gotten such good deals if that pressure that you're actually describing wasn't there. But I think that that was more designed for domestic audience.
And the reason that I think that is this: I've been thinking a lot about the 10 million Americans who lost their homes in the 2008 financial crisis, and how President Obama's first act in office was to give $700 billion to the banks that caused it, including $30 billion in bonuses to the crooks who organized it.
And I'm thinking about how those very Americans saw a president pick Wall Street over Main Street. And what they saw this whole week was a president willing to go out there and fight for the forgotten men and women of this heartland and take on the entire international global order --
(CROSSTALK) PHILLIP: Hold on.
TANDEN: I got to say, the thing here is -- I don't know. Lots of people in the heartland have 401Ks.
ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: That's right.
TANDEN: They have jobs where they work for a company that is thinking of now laying them off because the supply chain is impossible. The idea that he's taking on the global elite when he's offering a giant tax cut to the billionaires, I'm sorry, makes very little sense.
SUNUNU: That's exactly --
TANDEN: He's not a fighter. No, he's not. He's giving them a message -- he's giving them a message --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Go ahead, Richard.
TANDEN: And also, just costs are going up.
QUEST: I love the way the right and the left, at some point, will both claim Wall Street versus Main Street.
PHILLIP: Well, I think she's literally some -- somewhere between the right and the left.
QUEST: But the point is it's the same thing. Wall Street is Main Street and Main Street is Wall Street. And they affect each other at different points in different ways. Companies -- John Deere sells to China. Therefore, if China's tariffs are screwed, John Deere gets screwed. You can't divorce it. It's not that straightforward.
And by the way, we bailed out the banks back in 2008, not because we wanted to, because we had to, because if we hadn't bailed out the banks, the whole thing would have come crashing down. So, let's not have any halcyon view about that.
ALLISON: And I'll just say, a lot of Democrats did not like the bailout of the banks that Obama did. Okay?
PHILLIP: The idea that no one --
UNGAR-SARGON: -- fine point.
PHILLIP: The idea that no one paid any consequences for --
(CROSSTALK)
-- for the last recession is absolutely ridiculous. Right? So, she's right about that. The problem, though, is that -- what Richard is pointing out and what -- what -- what you're pointing out, which is Americans are going to bear the brunt --
TANDEN: Yes.
PHILLIP: -- of what is happening on Wallstreet.
TANDEN: -- is going to pay for these tariffs.
PHILLIP: Companies, small businesses, they're -- they are right now -- Trump is talking about transition. They have been given no time to transition. They are looking at their inventories and saying, we're out of goods, we got to get more from China, it's going to cost us two times what it cost us a week ago.
SUNUNU: Look, there's no doubt the transition is going to be bumpy. But I think what you're pointing out is so true. Trump matches strength with uncertainty. That's a negotiation tactic.
And you brought up a very good point. Well, why do we have to go through this route? Because for 20 years, no one else had. Countries weren't coming and saying, hey, let's talk about renegotiating something.
You had -- he had to put the gauntlet down and say, you're all in this kind of together in terms of what we're going to renegotiate. We're not just going to pick on this country and this country. We're going to renegotiate, frankly, with the sole purpose of putting China in a box.
And let me tell you, China is in trouble right now, and they know it.
(CROSSTALK)
ALLISON: -- messaging other Republicans. I just -- like, let's just call a spade a spade. The last five days, there has not been alignment in the Trump administration on what the actual plan is on these tariffs. It has been -- so, like, to uncertainty, strength --
SUNUNU: So, the market crashed harder and the countries came to the table faster.
TANDEN: I don't think messaging --
PHILLIP: So, what I think about the uncertainty is that the uncertainty might actually be the reality of the situation where they don't -- not even --
ALLISON: They don't know.
PHILLIP: -- Trump knows where this is going.
TANDEN: Here's the problem -- here's the problem with this whole strategy, which is the people he's taking hostage with his negotiating is not, like, really necessarily other countries. It's the pocketbooks of the American people who are going to pay more. Even with the 70 countries. There are a bunch of countries that tariffs are on now. Ten percent across the globe.
[23:10:00] As I said, China, Mexico, and Canada.
SUNUNU: Twenty-five percent.
TANDEN: What -- exactly. What did Canada do? Lots of trade there. We're going to all pay more.
SUNUNU: With a massive trade deficit on a lot of different products --
TANDEN: The trade deficit -- the trade deficit --
SUNUNU: Absolutely.
QUEST: Come on, Chris. Come on. Let's not have this --
TANDEN: That's a ridiculous thing.
SUNUNU: Go ask the dairy farmers of New Hampshire. They have to pay 200% of a tariff going into Canada.
QUEST: The USMCA -- the USMCA negotiated --
TANDEN: By Donald Trump.
QUEST: Well, on the back of NAFTA, has created this phenomenal free trade zone, which has some imperfections, but is by far and away created huge wealth for all three countries.
And by the way, this idea that you could -- you know, he -- they had -- the Howard Lutnick thing, they had to do it this way. It's a wonderful truism that we can never destroy.
SUNUNU: Is China putting -- is China putting manufacturing in factories in Mexico to get into --
UNGAR-SARGON: So, Mexico and Canada, because of the USMCA, are a sort of backdoor into the American economy. Right? Because what happened was China just started building car manufacturing plants in Mexico to avoid the tariffs. So, what's the answer to that? Trump's answer is very clear. Mexico and Canada have to match our tariffs on China. Otherwise, there's no point in doing that. What's your answer to that?
TANDEN: Who negotiated USMCA? Who negotiated?
UNGAR-SARGON: I think it's --
SUNUNU: And then there was a backdoor loophole.
(CROSSTALK)
UNGAR-SARGON: -- back door loophole --
TANDER: -- was wrong.
QUEST: It's the same backdoor loophole -- it's the same backdoor loophole that the European Union has with the UK and Southern Ireland and the Irish Republic. It's -- it's a well-known strategy. You put in place protections against it, which they did not properly do.
SUNUNU: So, they're doing it now.
(CROSSTALK)
So, you're agreeing that it should work.
(CROSSTALK)
QUEST: If you perceive that to be a weakness, fine. But in the same process, don't destroy the -- the triple market that has been created.
ALLISON: There was just a different way to do this. There just was. I'm not saying what --
SUNUNU: Nobody did. But nobody did.
(CROSSTALK)
ALLISON: -- Donald Trump. I'm just saying -- no, no, no. I'm not even saying -- I'm -- I'm literally just saying the hatchet that he took to the market without feeling like there was a plan, the strident where -- I mean, Karoline Leavitt, we are doing this, we aren't doing this, and then the next day, like, you guys don't understand the art of the deal.
No, honey. You don't. Okay? Because that was not a deal that he was making. He saw the stock market was plummeting, and he -- his allies, the people who helped fund his campaign were, like, Donald Trump, you are ruining this economy.
So, what you were just saying might be true. But that didn't mean he had to take that hatchet to people's 401K, to the markets, to the economy. There was a different way to do it.
And I think and I said this in the last segment, I -- you may be true, this may be right. I think if he would have really directed and targeted his approach towards China, there would have been a path for some bipartisan agreement. But the reckless approach, there is no place to really agree with that because it caused harm. And, again, it feels like -- it's just like this pain -- again, where's the --
SUNUNU: Do you think he knew the market was going to drop to 10, 12%?
QUEST: The moment you throw the 51st state -- Chris, the moment you throw the 51st state in, and you throw Greenland in, and you throw all those truly offensive pieces of behavior, then you start to weaken your arguments.
PHILLIP: Can I ask you a question, though?
UNGAR-SARGON: Yes.
PHILLIP: Donald Trump seems obsessed with this sort of retro view of American manufacturing. He can just turn the clock back. He can turn off the tariffs on the rest of the world. And then all of a sudden, like magic, what will pop up are factories where, I guess, according to Howard Lutnick, Americans are going to be putting little tiny screws into iPhones and making good, you know, six- figure incomes to sustain their families.
The truth is that is not going to happen. And why won't Donald Trump tell the American people the truth about what the future holds, which is robotics and AI, and that some of these things, we really should not be manufacturing here?
UNGAR-SARGON: It's a very important question. He has already gotten a trillion dollars in manufacturing committed, so it is already working. And he says there's more coming. But even that number in two months is a pretty big achievement --
TANDEN: Where's the company coming from?
SUNUNU: Overseas.
TANDEN: Could you go through some examples? Because Stellantis just said they're closing --
SUNUNU: Fifty billion dollars in Louisiana --
TANDEN: Microsoft just -- Microsoft just announced that they were closing a variety of plants just in the last week.
UNGAR-SARGON: I just want to address this question first because I think it's a really important point. We actually probably all agree that there are certain things that, for our national security, we absolutely have to be manufactured.
QUEST: Yeah.
PHILLIP: Okay, everybody agrees on that.
UNGAR-SARGON: Pharmaceuticals, chips --
PHILLIP: Chips --
UNGAR-SARGON: Steel, aluminum, microchips. Steel and aluminum, Trump slapped 25% tariffs on China on them in his first term. And the price went up for about four months.
[23:15:00]
And then it came right back down because we have a very healthy free market economy within America. And the average steelworker who works, by the way, in the south, so these are in right to work state, these are not union jobs, makes $88,000 a year. This is why manufacturing is so --
(CROSSTALK)
UNGAR-SARGON: So, we all acknowledge that this manufacturing has to be done here.
PHILLIP: I get that. But the -- those targeted -- I mean, even if you -- I'm not going to pass judgement on the Trump 1.0 tariffs. It's complex. Right? But even if that were the case, those are much more targeted than what he is trying to do right now.
And what he is trying to do right now is, like, slap tariffs on toys coming out of Vietnam.
TANDEN: Yes. Absolutely.
PHILLIP: And what he is trying to do right now is, like, slap tariffs on toys coming out of Vietnam as if that is, like, the future of American manufacturing when it's not. And those things are not as important for our national security. All they do is raise prices on everyday Americans. I think that's the part that I'm not understanding.
UNGAR-SARGON: Well, right now, there's only a 10% tariff on Vietnam because that's the standard across the -- the -- for 90 days.
PHILLIP: For ninety days. But I'm talking about what he announced on the so- called Liberation Day.
UNGAR-SARGON: But they have said they're going to drop their tariffs to zero. So, the thing about Trump is he loves tariffs because he thinks they do a lot of things. They protect our national security, they re-shore manufacturing, they raise revenues.
PHILLIP: But tariffs do not re-shore manufacturing.
(CROSSTALK)
Tariffs by themselves -- Tariffs by themselves do not re-shore --
(CROSSTALK)
They have to also do other things to encourage manufacturing in the country.
SUNUNU: The original tariff on China during his first term, $30 billion new steel plants in Arkansas.
QUEST: I know.
SUNUNU: State-of-the-art steel mills being built in Arkansas.
QUEST: Look at them -- look at them as --
PHILLIP: A thousand -- a thousand steel jobs were created. Seventy- five thousand jobs that rely on steel --
SUNUNU: Yeah.
PHILLIP: -- were lost. Those are the facts.
TANDEN: Yes. Absolutely. That is a fact.
QUEST: The Peterson Institute has well and truly documented steel tariffs, solar panel tariffs, all of them from the first administration. And yes, there were certain gains, important gains. There were also heavy losses. And there's a reason. No country does this in this particular way because historically, it hasn't worked. The country doing the general tariffing always loses in the end.
UNGAR-SARGON: This is why Donald Trump won, because people sit around saying the things we all agree should happen are impossible.
PHILLIP: Donald Trump won. Go ahead. Continue.
UNGAR-SARGON: I'm just saying, like, we all agree that the goal is win.
PHILLIP: Yes, reelection.
UNGAR-SARGON: We all agree that targeting tax are good. We all want to re-shore manufacturing --
ALLISON: But he didn't do targeted tariffs.
UNGAR-SARGON: And then you sit around and everyone says, but it's impossible to do this stuff. That's why he didn't do it in a targeted way. Because nice people who are very organized and do things very carefully do not take on the entire country and the entire --
QUEST: (INAUDIBLE) --
UNGAR-SARGON: -- Wall Street on behalf of the forgotten working class of this country.
QUEST: Oh, will we please --
ALLISON: He is not doing this for the working class.
QUEST: -- stop this forgotten working class?
UNGAR-SARGON: We will not, sir. We will not, sir.
QUEST: I'll tell you why. Because everything is --
SUNUNU: Only forgotten by the Democrats.
QUEST: Nonsense. Everybody in some shape or form, you know, is part of a working class, either historically today or whatever. And every one of us, in some shape or form, lives in an economic environment where we are aware of what is happening in our own areas.
But this idea that somehow it's Wall Street versus Main Street, Main Street doesn't care about Wall Street, Wall Street just wants --
(CROSSTALK)
TANDEN: Let me just say -- PHILLIP: I mean --
TANDEN: She asked for me.
PHILLIP: Okay. Go ahead.
TANDEN: I think the challenge of this is that -- I think we all have to be clear. I am very focused on middle class families and the cost squeeze they face, and the challenge between incomes and costs.
And I just think you should acknowledge that when you're asking middle class families to pay $4,400 a year from just the tariffs that we have in place now, that you are asking a lot when incomes aren't going up.
And that I just think it should be clear to everybody in America that these tariffs are going to hit Main Street. They are going to hit the south, the north, the east, the west, because we are all going to pay more.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: -- actually quite patient. Go ahead.
SUNUNU: Trump has made it very clear it is not the strategy to keep these tariffs in -- in perpetuity. He's using them as leverage to drive the better deals, to make sure the loopholes are closed, whether it's in Mexico or Vietnam, which abuses it terribly. He's forcing everybody at the table. He's saying that we're all -- and the first ones you're going to see will be Vietnam, India, Japan, Australia --
ALLISON: I just -- I just have to say --
QUEST: Ten percent -- 10% tariff stays. You want to put -- do you want to put that on drink? Ten percent --
SUNUNU: On which -- on which one?
QUEST: No --
TANDEN: That's what's happening right now.
[23:20:01]
QUEST: The 10% --
SUNUNU: What you're really betting is how many countries will negotiate out of it over the next 90 days.
TANDEN: I just have to say, I don't think --
ALLISON: Working people want wagers on their lives like this. This is the point.
PHILLIP: Well, I think this is really important. Right? Donald Trump is going to say he's going to strike a bunch of deals with these countries. Richard is suggesting. Am I right? That you think that at the end of the day, regardless of what the deal is, the minimum tariff on the whole globe is probably going to be close to 10%.
QUEST: I think that you may get certain exceptions on free trade areas, isolated cases.
But Donald Trump, philosophically and historically, loves tariffs. And if he can get a general 95, 98% tariff of 10% across the globe, he will consider that to be a tremendous --
SUNUNU: You're expecting free trade across the world?
QUEST: No, no, no.
(CROSSTALK)
QUEST: He has set a new flow. He has set a new flow.
ALLISON: I just have to -- I have to say something about this working-class thing. As someone who has worked for Democrats and who has voted as a Democrat, I acknowledge that this past election, we were not listening to voters saying that things were too expensive, even though the data was saying that things were too expensive. And I find it very interesting that just five months later and only two months into this term, that doesn't seem to be the message that Republicans are hearing.
It -- it just feels so distant from the critique on Democrats to then say, just suffer a little pain, you can endure your 401K. That is not --
SUNUNU: It's a good point, but inflation actually hasn't moved yet. Inflation is skyrocketing today. People are feeling it.
ALLISON: They are? The Americans still don't feel like inflation is too high.
SUNUNU: Not on tariffs.
ALLISON: It doesn't matter. What I'm saying -- what I'm saying is the totality of the experience. Their lives -- they don't feel like their lives are any better today than they were on November 5th when they decided the Democrats weren't delivering the deal. And what they're being told now is that just endure a little bit more. That's not what Donald Trump said on the campaign trail.
PHILLIP: Price increases --
ALLISON: And that feels disconnected from the critique of our party.
PHILLIP: Price increases and shortages could be on the horizon, which is very real for many Americans. And actually, I think, in some ways, the shortages might be more significant than -- than the price increases.
I -- I want to play actually something that Batya said over the weekend on Fox News that I think is an interesting part of this conversation. Let's play it.
UNGAR-SARGON: Oh, no.
(LAUGHTER)
UNGAR-SARGON: It's not just the destruction of the economic vitality of the working class, but there has been a spiritual decimation that has come along with that. A crisis in masculinity because we shipped jobs that gave men who work with their hands for a living and rely on brawn and physicality off to other countries to build up their middle class.
UNKNOWN: Yeah.
UNGAR-SARGON: So, Donald Trump is basically saying no more to this and to the crisis in masculinity, which is, of course, why young men feel so attracted to what he's offering.
UNKNOWN: Yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SUNUNU: I rebuilt my own floors by myself this year. I just want to --
(LAUGHTER)
I felt very -- I felt very masculine about that myself.
PHILLIP: There's no crisis of manufacturing in the Sununu household. It is an interesting theory, though. And I think there's some truth to it, that this actually declining portion of society, they're looking at what their fathers had and what their grandfathers had, and they're saying, we can't have that anymore and it's not fair. Those people are being asked to move into an economy that perhaps they're not educated enough to move into.
But I guess my question is, is the rest of the economy worth sacrificing for that some 8% of the American economy, which is where we are in terms of manufacturing?
UNGAR-SARGON: So, for the last 60 years, our economy has been an upward funnel of wealth from the working class, the middle class, which in the 70s was the largest share of the wealth, was in middle. And today, the top 10% control over 60% of the GDP. Not the top 1%, not the billionaires, the top 10% controls over 60% of the GDP.
The working class has been left behind from the immense prosperity that this country generated, which is why GDP as a measure for success is not a good measure because it measures the aggregate.
So, for example, when you have a sort of decriminalization of illegal border crossing that we had over the last five years, a policy that allows millions of people to come in and start working, they are then undercutting the wages of working-class Americans.
Now, the GDP will go up by leaps and bounds because low wage slave labor, it makes rich people much richer. But it really hurts the heartland. It hurts young men. Seven million young men are not in the workforce. You cannot have a society like that where some people are getting so unbelievably wealthy --
ALLISON: But some of those jobs are never going to come back --
QUEST: You're right. You're absolutely too right. And it was the failure.
[23:24:58]
We failed in the first (INAUDIBLE) revolution when we told people that there would be reskilling. We failed in the industrial -- the second industrial revolution. We are failing again in the AI industrial revolution. We are not putting enough money into reskilling, reequipping, retraining.
There's going to be -- you know, the blue-collar worker that lost out in the 90s and (INAUDIBLE). And now, it's the low -- if you're, like, white-collar worker that's losing out, and we are about to repeat exactly the same mistakes --
PHILLIP: I think that is a failure of our politics, though, to actually --
QUEST: Completely.
PHILLIP: -- solve the real problem, which is that we are just abandoning people and not actually trading them to -- for the actual economy that we exist in.
I mean, I don't understand why it keeps getting -- it keeps getting kicked to the markets when really what it is, we don't care to invest in schools, we don't care to train workers, we don't care to do any of the things that would actually get these folks ready for --
(CROSSTALK)
QUEST: -- the government. Isn't it -- we all want to do it, but it's very expensive and it's very difficult.
PHILLIP: To train people?
SUNUNU: So, what you do is, if I may, in New Hampshire, for example, we partnered with those manufacturers, and they made the investments to build the schools. But the problem was getting the students, and you have an entire culture and generation that was told, you don't want to be a plumber, you don't want to be a manufacturer. And so that culture of America where we put that aside and denigrated it to our own detriment is huge, and breaking through that is really --
PHILLIP: So, how do tariffs fix that problem?
TANDEN: See -- I have to see. This is --
PHILLIP: Right? I don't really much --
(CROSSTALK)
SUNUNU: I'm sure it is the long-term manufacturing jobs.
TANDEN: You and I, like, he and I can agree on career technical education and ensuring that our high schools are training people for opportunities that are not just college. I do think that's really critical.
I also just think we have to be clear that when you -- one of the reasons why for 20 years people weren't doing these mass crazy tariffs or very large tariffs is, again, because I think middle class people look at both incomes and costs. We saw that over the last four years. People are hyper-focused on costs and prices.
And we had a great --- we had a good inflation report today. But every economist is saying, as is Jerome Powell, these tariffs will be inflationary. They will raise prices. So, I say to you, it is absolutely --
UNGAR-SARGON: I want to answer that. I want to answer that.
(CROSSTALK)
ALLISON: To your point about men working with their hands, some of those jobs are just never coming back because they're done -- they're done with robots, and the robot's hands do that. And so, like, no matter how much we try to -- and so we have to figure out what we're doing with those men and women who just will never have those jobs again.
I agree that there was a push in my generation, go to college, go to college, get all the student loan debt, you know, all of it. Right? It's about choice. Right? It's about being like you can be a plumber or you can be a doctor. It's just not saying one part of the community has to be a plumber when everyone else can be a doctor.
And we don't do that across the board. We put people based on their socioeconomic, in the zip code they're -- they're born into, and we used to funnel them in.
So, in an overcorrection, we were, like, nobody be a plumber. And so, those -- so, it's both. I think that there -- if there was the courage to actually really get innovative, think about it.
TANDEN: Absolutely.
ALLISON: But I just -- I mean, I say this all the time. I just -- when I go home every time to Youngstown, Ohio and I look at those factories, those -- it's just -- Youngstown is never going to be what my -- when my mom grew up in Youngstown unless we get creative and we innovate.
The steel mills that were -- I don't know if they're ever going to be back like they were. But it doesn't mean Youngstown doesn't get to be revitalized. And do we have the courage to do it? PHILLIP: Those same young men, they -- they're consumers in this economy, too. They have to buy things. They have to -- they have to buy the stuff for their kids back to school, backpacks, the toys and all of that stuff. They are going to get hit by this before, long before any of those kinds of jobs return.
UNGAR-SARGON: The problem is you can't consume your way to the American dream.
PHILLIP: I get it.
UNGAR-SARGON: We all agree on what -- I think, probably, what the American dream is. You know, home ownership. Health care is a big thing that the Republicans have no answer to. I fully admit that. Retirement and an education for your kids. And these things have just become astronomically expensive, especially if you're lower middle class, working class.
The problem is that what we did was we made college the gatekeeper of the American dream, but our economy is already overproducing college grads by 50%.
QUEST: Yeah.
UNGAR-SARGON: So, half of college grads -- actually, I think that would make it 100%. Sorry. English major. Half of college grads are working in jobs that don't require college degree. Meaning, if we say --
ALLISON: With debt, then they can't pay back, and then their salaries don't match to that.
UNGAR-SARGON: We have to --
QUEST: What's your solution?
UNGAR-SARGON: Vocational training, tariffs, reshoring --
ALLISON: I agree --
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: You had everybody --
(LAUGHTER)
[23:30:00]
(CROSSTALK)
-- and then you've got tariffs.
(CROSSTALK)
TANDEN: -- young men. You are seeing in some of the polling, the people who are most concerned about the tariffs are young people.
PHILLIP: Okay. We do have to --
SUNUNU: Hey, Abby --
PHILLIP: Great conversation, guys.
SUNUNU: We get smart.
PHILLIP: All right.
(LAUGHTER)
SUNUNU: We get smart.
PHILLIP: All right. Badge of approval. Richard Quest, thank you very much for joining us. Everyone else, hang on. Coming up next, more breaking news tonight. In a surprise, a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court says that Trump must work to return a wrongfully deported man. Plus, Homeland Security Chief Kristi Noem is mocked even by MAGA for another photo op. This one, she's armed in it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Breaking news. A Russian-American who was released in a prisoner swap this morning is now back on American soil. Ksenia Karelina arriving at Joint Base Andrews tonight. She departed that plane running down and smiling. She ran to her awaiting fiance. The couple hugged for several minutes.
Karelina served 15 months of a 12-year sentence in a Russian prison for treason. She donated $50 to an American charity supporting Ukraine. Karelina was released in a prisoner exchange for a dual Russian-German citizen, who was being held in the U.S. on charges, including smuggling, wire fraud, and money laundering.
Also greeting her on the tarmac were several members of the Trump administration.
[23:35:01]
Welcome home to her. Those are always great moments when we can get them as a nation.
We have a lot more news tonight, though. Tonight, that Supreme Court is giving Trump now a direct order. He says -- the justices say that the Trump administration is now required to try to facilitate getting this Maryland man back to the United States from El Salvador after the Trump administration deported him in error. The high court did not give a deadline for that repatriation.
Brad Todd is back with us at the table. A little surprising that SCOTUS would so quickly come into this conversation, but very clearly say they've got to bring this man back.
And it's also, I think, just part of a lot of questions about the Trump administration really testing the boundaries of what they can do without any sort of judicial oversight, without any sort of due process, in an effort to just get their numbers up.
BRAD TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, they do have judicial oversight. That's why they've -- this has been going through the courts, and that's why the courts have ruled. This is what judicial oversight looks like.
PHILLIP: I agree. Yeah.
TODD: You know, immigration --
PHILLIP: (INAUDIBLE) was only that they claimed that they didn't have --
TODD: Well, they fight hard. They're fighting hard in court. Joe Biden fought hard to get his unconstitutional Student Loan Relief Act held up, too. Barack Obama with clean -- his clean power plan, that was a debacle. He fought hard in court for that.
That's what presidents do when they test the limits of where their executive power is. They fight to see how far they can go. It's nothing new. We could argue that that's part of the beauty of the system. Federal courts do that.
PHILLIP: I agree. Listen, I totally agree. The Trump administration has -- I think -- I do think that they are testing. They -- they have been claiming that the courts don't have the jurisdiction to even look -- look over some of these decisions. That's why they wanted to use the Alien Enemies Act.
But the -- the courts -- the Supreme Court is starting to weigh in here. And in some cases, not in the way that MAGA likes.
SUNUNU: Uh-hmm.
PHILLIP: But in a way that, I think, seems pretty clearly designed --
SUNUNU: The Supreme Court is the final arbitrator.
PHILLIP: -- to maintain separation of powers, which is that, yeah, the courts do get to look over this.
SUNUNU: The best thing the Trump administration could do right now is absolutely just follow what the court said, to show that there is a division of power --
UNKNOWN: Amen.
SUNUNU: -- that there is a checks and balances in the system.
UNKNOWN: Agree.
SUNUNU: And for this one individual, it would appear, so far, that this was (INAUDIBLE) moment for the administration, and they got to get him back. I'm actually fascinated when this dude -- this guy comes back. He's going to be the only guy that has ever --
PHILLIP: That has ever come back.
SUNUNU: -- prison. And he is going -- I mean, wait and see what the story --
PHILLIP: Some of the stories --
SUNUNU: And who is going to -- by the way, El Salvador -- Trump can't let him out of jail. Only El Salvador can do that. So, it's going to be a little bit of finagling, but my sense --
TODD: Presumably, they have a little leverage over El Salvador.
PHILLIP: I was just about to say, I don't -- I don't know that El Salvador is holding on for that.
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: This polarization, though, goes both ways. You notice that Democrats don't cheer when the Supreme Court rules against Donald Trump. They just only cheer -- they only jeer when it rules for him.
PHILLIP: Like you said --
TANDEN: -- Republicans --
PHILLIP: That's the political system that works.
TANDEN: -- when the Supreme Court ruled against a world for Joe Biden. I mean, like, I'm sorry, that just seems a little ludicrous. I don't think you have to cheer or jeer when people are just basically -- the Supreme Court is basically establishing due process rights for people who are lawfully here. This person is lawfully here.
It used to be Republicans supported the rule of law, and so would have thought it was outrageous that the government would have the power to take people who have -- who are legally here and stick them in a gulag.
And I agree with the governor who says that the president should follow the law. We have agreement on that. He should follow the Supreme Court.
TODD: So, the judge has ruled that they he could be deported to any country but El Salvador. Are you going to support his deportation to another country?
TANDEN: I don't -- I don't think --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: That is not quite what is happening in this case. But I want to --
TODD: There was -- there was a -- ALLISON: I think --
PHILLIP: The judge did not rule on whether he could be deported or not.
TODD: He said he couldn't be deported to El Salvador.
PHILLIP: Could not be deported to El Salvador.
TODD: Right. So, he's eligible for deportation somewhere else. Are Democrats --
TANDEN: He should not be deported. He's legal here.
PHILLIP: He had legal protection and it was going through the -- I want to -- I just want to play one thing because Donald Trump just threw another grenade into the immigration conversation today. He -- he just came out of nowhere, and this is what he said about who he thinks should be deported and who should not.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We're also going to work with farmers that if they have strong recommendations for their farms, for certain people, we're going to let them stay in for a while and work with the farmers, and then come back and go through a process, a legal process. But we have to take care of our farmers, hotels and, you know, various -- various places where they're -- where they need the people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So -- so hold on. Amnesty for farm workers and hotel workers because he --
SUNUNU: I don't think he's talking amnesty. I think he's talking moving them into, like, the --
PHILLIP: Okay. And hotel -- and hotel workers, which he knows a lot about because as a hotelier, he employs a lot of immigrants.
SUNUNU: Yeah.
PHILLIP: Yeah, he employs a lot of immigrants. So, my -- my question and issue with this is not that those people are not deserving, but that there are many industries where immigrants are essential.
[23:40:04]
Homecare workers, for example. You know, childcare. What about those people? Do any of them get a word with this president or is it just on a whim?
ALLISON: Well, I think when one of his donors tells them that they care about those workers, they'll start to -- he'll start to care about them also. I -- just a couple things. Donald Trump won the election. I do not agree with Donald Trump's immigration policy, but because we have a democracy, he gets to set his immigration policy and then Congress gets to pass laws. Doesn't mean I have to like it. We need to organize better to make sure that people whose immigration laws I don't like don't win.
But due process is not an issue of Democrats and Republicans. It's an American issue. And that is what I am taking issue with the way this administration is applying the immigration laws. And it is a very slippery slope when we start to pick and choose who we want to have due process.
The second thing is Donald Trump run on deporting people. And when I was asking the question and often said before November 5th that I believe Donald Trump wanted to deport all immigrants, I will say -- I was being told I was acting crazy. But many times, people were saying, well, if you are an immigrant in this country without papers, you are a criminal.
And that was not the message before November 5th, which is why I do believe a lot of Latinos actually voted for him because if they -- they thought that we -- because I think we all can agree we do not want violent criminals in our country. They should be deported, and violent criminals actually should go to jail if they are American citizens also.
The final thing, we sat on this very show many, many times and said that deporting workers, immigrants are an important part of our country's fabric in farm working and in industries that would begin to collapse. The reason why he's having to make this exception is because they are vital workers in our economy. They are -- they contribute to us. They -- they might not have come here legally and they are seeking pathways. Many of them are on visas.
And Donald Trump is realizing that, that he might have, again, swung that pendulum a bit too far for industries that probably are calling the White House and their senator, their Republican senator, saying, wait a minute, those farmers in red states like Florida --
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: -- Ashley Allison on one thing here --
PHILLIP: Yeah.
TODD: -- if I can. So, due -- you're right on due process. It's essential in court of the American system and everybody is entitled to due process rights. We should -- we should all agree on that.
Second thing we ought to agree on is that Donald Trump's success in dropping illegal crossings is living proof that Joe Biden's policy was the problem. We've changed hardly anything except the posture of the person at the top. We've gone from 38,000 people a month crossing illegally at southwestern border to eight. Would you agree, Neera, that this is better? TANDEN: Look, just to get the numbers --
TODD: That's month over month.
TANDEN: No, no, no.
TODD: It's February to February.
TANDEN: Right. In June, the president, President Biden, and I'm willing to say we did this too late. We should have done it earlier. But he issued an executive action. Our numbers collapsed to 1,500, 1,200, 800. They are lower now. But, really, just by hundreds --
TODD: With the threat of the fee (ph) at the ballot box.
PHILLIP: All right --
TANDEN: I think --
(CROSSTALK)
SUNUNU: -- Congress can do it. Nobody -- everyone on this network and others said --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Okay, last few moments in this segment for something that is very important. Kristi Noem, our Homeland Security secretary, has been out and about at the border and all over the country, wearing a lot of different garb costumes and such, holding a gun there, you see her in the middle. This is rubbing some people the wrong way, including some MAGA people. Let's quickly play Megyn Kelly responding to how she has been dressing herself up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MEGYN KELLY, CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR: Can we talk about Kristy Noem and these ridiculous photo ops? I -- why is -- why, why does she have to keep doing this? Just there -- she's doing a great job. Like, her actual performance as DHS secretary, in my view, anyway, has been amazing. Just stop trying to glamorize the mission and put yourself in the middle of it as you cosplay ICE agent, which you're not. I can't stand these photo ops, you guys. I think they diminish ICE. They diminish -- diminish DHS, CPB. She's not an agent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Okay. Batya, the photo ops, though, are the point. She's doing it because she thinks that the president will like it.
UNGAR-SARGON: But I -- I think she's wrong. I mean, I think she just -- maybe she's enjoying the attention. I -- I -- I agree with Megyn Kelly. I find it very, very cringe and especially because the immigration question is very serious. And the question of who is getting deported and who isn't is very serious and very important to the American people. When Tom Homan said -- SUNUNU: Don't say a thing. They're talking about what a woman looks like.
(LAUGHTER)
Keep your mouth shut. There's no wind (ph).
TODD: I'm going to tell you --
SUNUNU: You stay silent.
[23:45:00]
TODD: I'm going to tell you --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I got to correct the record. We are not -- Let me just be very clear. We are not talking about what she looks like.
SUNUNU: She's a lovely woman. She looks lovely. I'm moving on.
PHILLIP: We are not talking about what she looks like. We are -- we are talking about her holding a gun and in the view of some people, holding a gun practically to the head of the guy right next to her.
SUNUNU: The way she's holding that firearm, I'm starting to believe she didn't actually shoot that dog (ph).
(LAUGHTER)
There's no way. There's no way that was all made up.
PHILLIP: Everybody, on that note, thank you very much for joining us. Coming up, candid new revelations about Trump in the Oval Office and how close Joe Biden came to say -- to staying in that race. A special guest is going to join us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Tonight, a spotlight on the iron lady of Trump's Cabinet, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SUSIE WILES, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: I just wanted to make sure you know that this Cabinet, I think, pretty uniquely collaborates and cooperates and works together to accomplish all that you've -- you've asked them to do. I think they -- they deserve a lot of credit for that.
TRUMP: It's true.
[23:50:00]
You're doing a great job. WILES: Thank you, sir.
TRUMP: The chief, chief of staff. You're doing a great job.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: That's Wiles's running point at a Cabinet meeting earlier today. And it is just part of her attempt to put her imprint on this administration. And it's still some discipline in the habitually haywire Trump orbit.
So, if you're asking how exactly she is doing that and if she's doing that, a new behind the scenes book from Chris Whipple offers an answer. She draws on her experience dealing with difficult men, namely her own father.
Here's the excerpt. Quote -- "Wiles, 59, a veteran GOP operative, knew how to deal with difficult men. Her father, the network sportscaster Pat Summerall, had been an alcoholic, and Wiles had staged family interventions to get him into treatment."
Joining us now is Chris Whipple. He's the author of that book. Chris, this is fascinating because I think people have, for a long time, wondered, first of all, how Susie Wiles got caught up in all this Trump stuff, and secondly, how she has managed to survive and navigate a principal who doesn't like constraints being placed on him. I mean, is she even putting constraints on him?
CHRIS WHIPPLE, AUTHOR: Well, that's a great question. And, of course, you know, I know something about White House chiefs of staff, having written about them before. The most important responsibility of a White House chief is to tell the president what he doesn't want to hear, which is exponentially more difficult with Donald Trump than others.
But she has a certain kind of magic with Trump, and I write about it in "Uncharted," my book. It goes all the way back again to her experience with her father, I think. She knows how to deal with difficult men. She has this uncanny ability to impose some discipline on the chaos of Donald Trump.
And, as White House chief, look -- I mean, we're seeing lots of chaotic policy. But the Trump 2.0 White House is very different from the Trump 1.0 version. It is no longer a kind of battlefield of backstabbing and kneecapping and leaking, and that's really because of Susie Wiles. She has imposed some discipline there. I've -- I've spoken to her about --
PHILLIP: Yeah.
WHIPPLE: -- whether she challenged the president on his decisions, and she insists that she has and she does. She has lost plenty of battles. And as she puts it, tie goes to the president.
PHILLIP: There was some quote earlier about the clown car and whether or not she'd be able to keep those other folks out of the president's ear. I think maybe that's a TBD or a --
WHIPPLE: Yeah. Well, you got to wonder what Laura Loomer was doing in the Oval Office just for openers. Right?
PHILLIP: Exactly. A very good question. Some of the most juicy elements of this book, though, are about the Biden administration and this -- the lead up to his exit from the race. First of all, you talked about Ron Klain just in the opening of the book and his astonishment at Joe Biden's condition going into that debate.
It says here, Klain was startled. He had never seen him so exhausted and out of it. Biden was unaware of what was happening in his own campaign. Halfway through the session, the president excused himself and went off to sit by the pool.
You know, Ron Klain has issued several statements suggesting that the way that this was characterized by another news outlet, "The Guardian," was misleading perhaps. And he said, my point was that he was exhausted from travel and sick and overly focused on foreign affairs and detached from domestic politics.
What's your sense of what really was causing it, though? I mean --
WHIPPLE: Yeah.
PHILLIP: -- is it just a detachment and a focus on else -- on something else or a president who was moving into his elder years and could not handle the --
WHIPPLE: No. It's -- it's a -- it's a stunning story and you -- and you won't read it anywhere else. I really had this exclusively and nobody was more surprised than I when Ron Klain described it in vivid detail, this period of five or six days at Camp David before this ill- fated debate where Joe Biden was completely out of it in terms of understanding the back and forth between the Biden campaign and the Trump campaign.
He was -- in addition to what you just quoted from the book, he was obsessed with foreign leaders. He kept talking about Olaf Scholz and Emanuel Macron and how much they thought -- how much they love Biden. And they say I'm doing a great job. I must be a great president.
At one point, Joe Biden says to Klain, I've got an idea. And Klain says, what? He says, if I look perplexed during the debate, people will think Trump is an idiot, to which Klain replied, sir, if you look perplexed, people are going to think you're perplexed. And that's our problem in this race.
PHILLIP: What do you think is going on there? I mean, was Joe Biden just too -- too far gone?
WHIPPLE: Well, that's the stunning thing.
[23:55:00]
And this is really a mystery at the heart of this book. And I really hope readers will pick it up and judge for themselves. But during this whole period, the president's inner circle, in effect, were in this kind of fog of delusion and denial, including Ron Klain, in my opinion.
Ron was a really savvy, very capable White House chief of staff. But how can you explain the two Ron Klains, the politically savvy Ron Klain who witnessed Joe Biden's ill, you know, wobbly preparation for that debate and the Ron Klain three weeks later who was still fighting --
PHILLIP: Yeah.
WHIPPLE: -- right down to the wire to keep the president as the nominee.
PHILLIP: Why --
WHIPPLE: It is hard to reconcile.
PHILLIP: It's -- you're right that Obama didn't go directly to Biden about any of this --
WHIPPLE: Yeah.
PHILLIP: -- his concerns about Biden's fitness, and Biden was upset about that, perhaps rightfully so. Why didn't Obama go straight to his former VP?
WHIPPLE: Again, the final hours, final days, I think I've reported this in in really intimate detail, one of Joe Biden's best friends told me that the thing that really bothered Joe Biden more than anything, it wasn't the fact that George Clooney wrote that devastating op-ed, that --
PHILLIP: Yeah.
WHIPPLE: -- people suggested he was put up to by Barack Obama, it was the fact that Barack Obama never called him to say, hey, Joe, are you sure you're up to this?
PHILLIP: Yeah.
WHIPPLE: And one reason may be speculative on my part, but it may be that Biden felt that if he called him, it would simply get Biden's backup.
PHILLIP: Yeah. Yeah. Chris Whipple, thank you for joining us. This book is "Uncharted," a New York Times bestseller. You can pick it up right now. And thank you very much for watching "NewsNight." You can catch me any time on your favorite social media platforms X, Instagram, and TikTok. CNN's coverage continues next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
