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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
How President Trump Uses the Government, As He Promised; Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) Meets With Mistakenly Deported Man; Supreme Court to Hear Arguments Over Birthright Citizenship. Police: Two Dead, Six Injured In Mass Shooting On FSU Campus; Trump On Fed Chair: "If I Want Him Out, He'll Be Out Of There"; Trump sees "Very Good Deal" After Hitting China With Tariffs; Aired 10-11p ET
Aired April 17, 2025 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, do as Donald Trump says, or else. The president who complained about the government being weaponized against him --
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT ELECT: Turning the law itself into a weapon for partisan persecution.
PHILLIP: -- turns the government into ammo to help his allies and punish his perceived enemies.
Plus, shock and alarm. A judge accuses the Trump administration of lawlessness and warns of a virus spreading in American government.
Also, anatomy of a tragedy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's just chaos.
PHILLIP: A gunman turns Florida State's campus --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shots rang out, you know, like is there construction going on?
PHILLIP: -- into a firing range.
And the president wants the Fed to play limbo with tariffs and says he can throw the chairman overboard if Jerome Powell doesn't lower the rates.
Live at the table, Ashley Allison, Scott Jennings. Batya Ungar-Sargon, Jemele Hill and Roy Wood Jr.
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's weapon of choice. Tonight, the president is a potter and the government is his clay, and he's shaping it how he chooses depending on whether he wants to help or hurt.
Now, if that sounds a little off to you that your taxpayer dollars shouldn't fund crusades targeting people, well, it might be because candidate Trump and his allies warned about weaponizing government at every turn.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It's called weaponization.
The radical left Democrats are turning the law itself into a weapon for partisan persecution. It's persecution,
But we have a weaponized Department of Justice and weaponized FBI, including, of course, the raid on Mar-a-Lago.
We must not criminalize dissent or demonize political disagreement.
Pandora's Box is open and that means that I can do it too, and I don't want to do it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: But now that Donald Trump has the power to weaponize government, he is doing it. He's doling out punishment and presidential favors and equal turns. Take what he's doing at the Department of Education, for example. That agency is asking schools to recommit to following the administration's guidelines and threatening to withhold public school funding if they don't. Or look at what's happening at the IRS, where plans are being drawn up to rescind Harvard's tax-exempt status, where DOGE is tapping into taxpayer data for immigration crackdowns, and where Trump's people are asking the agency to take a second look at the MyPillow CEO and Trump ally Mike Lindell's audit.
The Justice Department is another arrow in Trump's quiver. They signed pardons for January 6th rioters, including those who had criminal records, and they are now tasked with considering a Trump demand to prosecute and jail members of the January 6th committee.
Then there is the list of media organizations that Trump is punishing, by starving some of them of access others of money that they need to cover the news, the A.P., PBS, NPR, CBS and NBC, so a lot there.
I think the main thing here, though, is that the ferry people who complained about weaponization are silent, now that Trump is openly signing executive orders saying, investigate this person, take away this tax-exempt status because I don't like this entity. How is that not weaponization, Scott?
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I totally disagree with the characterization of it. I think Trump supporters and the people who put him in office would say that he's not turning the government into a weapon. He's turning it into a shield. He's shielding the American people from illegal immigration. He's shielding the American people from having their tax dollars used for ridiculous purposes. All of these things that you mentioned, you may call them weaponization, but a lot of people would say, we need a shield against a lot of these bad actors and bad institutions.
PHILLIP: Well, you didn't address any of the things that I actually did bring up. I mean, he's saying to American universities you need to admit a certain number of conservatives. Yes.
JENNINGS: Yes, I'll address the universities.
PHILLIP: Or you'll lose your tax-exempt status. He's saying that he is -- he signed an executive order in the White House saying, investigate two individuals who told the truth about the last election and criticized me publicly.
[22:05:01]
That is weaponization.
JENNINGS: Regarding the universities, first of all, he's creating, I think, a shield for the Jewish students on campus who have been the victim of horrible anti-Semitism. And he's saying to these universities, you cannot simply screen out all viewpoints that don't adhere to your anti-western civilization worldview.
PHILLIP: Absolutely, no one is doing that.
JENNINGS: Absolutely, they are.
PHILLIP: No one is -- no, they're not.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: What evidence do you have that they're screaming --
JENNINGS: I mean, I've been on a college campus recently and I can certainly use my eyes and ears. These are hotbeds of anti-American and anti-western civilization activity, and everybody knows it.
JEMELE HILL, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Based off what?
JENNINGS: And there's no dissent on these campuses. Everyone's afraid.
HILL: Now MAGA wants DEI?
JENNINGS: Everyone's afraid.
HILL: Now, they want to be included. Like now, they want affirmative action for them. Like that's cool now?
JENNINGS: So, you admit that you want universities to exclude everyone with the radical left?
HILL: No, because there's no proof that they're actually being excluded.
JENNINGS: There's not?
HILL: No, there isn't.
JENNINGS: 96 percent of contributions from Harvard faculty went to Democrats. What else you got?
HILL: Okay. So, you talking about contribution. I'm talking about --
JENNINGS: I'm talking about what people's political viewpoints are.
HILL: Who's on campus? Who is teaching people? So, if they were such a weapon --
JENNINGS: Yes, I know. I used to teach there. Believe me. I know.
HILL: Okay. So, clearly, you used to teach there, right?
JENNINGS: Yes. I was treated like an exotic zoo animal. Trust me.
HILL: Oh, I'm sure.
JENNINGS: The faculty is not conservative. Believe me.
HILL: Oh, okay. So, at Harvard, I just imagine all of these conservative politicians that go there, they go there because they don't feel welcome. They just go there to go there?
JENNINGS: If you're trying to come on here tonight and argue that Harvard is a hotbed of conservatism --
HILL: I'm not.
JENNINGS: Lord have mercy.
HILL: I'm just saying that they're not. So, are we going to do the same thing at Baylor? Are we going to do the same thing at Liberty? Are we going to invite more liberal thoughts to those universities?
JENNINGS: I think of public universities or any university taking public funds is violating the civil rights of Jewish students or actively screening out conservatives and conservative viewpoints. We need to have a conversation.
ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Or what about discriminating against people of color? Can we like keep the -- because I agree that Jewish students should be safe. I agree with that. I think that I become a better debater and a smarter person when I actually get to have discourse with people like you that I don't all mostly agree with on the political views, but I also get a seat at the table and I don't get to be discriminated against, and black people and brown people and queer people also don't. So, if we're going to protect one class, can we agree to protect all classes?
JENNINGS: What university is doing that? I agree, but what university is doing that?
ALLISON: I just want to know what is it --
JENNINGS: What class of people right now on American campuses is being -- is facing the kind of pushback that Jewish students are anywhere, anywhere?
ALLISON: Well, we do know. We do know since the affirmative action decision that came down about 18 months ago, that the number of people of color who have been admitted to institutions have decreased because that's a policy that actually insures --
JENNINGS: Do you include Asian students in the people of color.
ALLISON: Yes, their numbers are down too.
PHILLIP: Let me just -- one of the reasons that I think this has become the topic du jour this week is because I think we've seen a lot of people who are normally pretty levelheaded about this stuff, raising the alarm. Let me play what Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, said this week about her fear of what's going on now and of retaliation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): We are all afraid, okay? What a statement.
I am oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real, and that's not right.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: You know, you kind of have to let it play out because you can hear it in her voice, what she's talking about.
Here's Karl Rove as well. He says, there's way too much retribution. He's talking about the Trump tenure, thus far. Most of the president's revenge attempts will end badly for him. Republicans could rue the day that they set a new justification for retaliation from Democrats.
BATYA UNGAR-SARGON, AUTHOR, SECOND CLASS,, HOW THE ELITES BETRAYED AMERICA'S WORKING MEN AND WOMEN: I look at who Trump has, you know, targeted, right, who he's taken on in the last two months. I see Wall Street. I see Harvard, the most elite institution in America. I see gang bangers. And I see a man who may or may not be part of MS-13, but whose wife has accused him multiple times of beating her up, including while she was holding her child.
And I see those people as the enemies of Trump that he has successfully attacked. We just had the Passover Seder, and there's a song in Passover called Dayenu, which means it would've been enough. And that's kind of how I feel about this list. Like it would have been enough if Trump had only taken on Wall Street, it would've been enough if he had only taken on the gang bangers, it would've been enough if he had only started re-shoring manufacturing, if he had only gotten rid of this guy who beat his woman, his wife up, which, by the way, is a deportable offense. And yet he's done all of these things.
And I think most Americans look at that and they say, not that he's weaponizing things, but that he is fighting our fights for us. CNN this morning had a poll. 56 percent of Americans want every single illegal alien deported, 11 million illegal aliens deported, 56 percent.
[22:10:06]
It's up from 38 percent in 2016.
Trump is winning this and he's winning it because people feel like he's fighting for them. The real emergency is that the American people are getting what they want.
PHILLIP: I think you're making an interesting point that if Trump had focused on just those things, maybe everybody would've said it was enough, but actually he's doing a lot of other things too.
HILL: Do you think that American people care about Harvard, like they care --
UNGAR-SARGON: Oh, yes.
JENNINGS: Deeply.
HILL: But why?
UNGAR-SARGON: They hate Harvard.
HILL: Yes. They hate it because they hate -- it's funny because they admire wealth at the same time they hate it. That's what's hilarious about that.
UNGAR-SARGON: Harvard has a $60 billion dollars endowment and they're threatening to kill animals because we won't give them $2 billion.
PHILLIP: But this is not about Harvard.
(CROSSTALKS)
HILL: It really is.
(CROSSTALKS)
UNGAR-SARGON: It's -- I'm just saying -- no. I'm just saying like the idea, I think the big picture here, and I think this is why there's so much alarm among some of these people that I just mentioned, is that it's not just about this one institution. It's using the one institution as a vehicle to attack the idea of higher education that is not beholden to political interest. HILL: And it's also about the National African-American Museum. It's about so many other things. It's like it's never enough for them. It's like it can't just stop with, okay, I want to do this one thing. It's always a test case. It's always a how far can I get? Because if I can get far enough, then I know I can come after the HBCUs.
ROY WOOD JR. CNN HOST: And stop talking about slavery.
HILL: Exactly.
WOOD: And paint over the Black Lives Matter.
HILL: Thank you. They know it's always another line to go. So, it's like, yes.
UNGAR-SARGON: But which thing we bring up? You guys keep saying it's not about that. It's not about that. It's not about that.
HILL: Because they're all test cases to do something else worse.
PHILLIP: I'm not -- actually not trying to suggest that the idea is to dodge the Harvard issue, but it's to look more broadly at what the ideological objective is. If it were just about Harvard as an institution, he would stop there. But it's clearly not just about Harvard as an institution.
WOOD: And it's also --
PHILLIP: It's about institutions in general.
WOOD: And it's also clearly about specific people. Like if you got somebody that goes to the Capitol and punch a police officer, and I got video of you punching a police officer and then we form a committee to find you guilty of punching the police officer, and then you let the police officer punch her go free, and then the person in the committee might have to go to jail themselves. You can't tell me that's based on policy and making America great again. It's not. That is something personal and vindictive.
When you're going after a dude who went broke selling them damn pillows up and down the television down, that's you hooking up your homeboy. Stop acting like this is about --
PHILLIP: We didn't even bring up Mel Gibson who got off on a gun charge for a domestic violence. I mean --
UNGAR-SARGON: I like that one.
ALLISON: About the institution as a Big 10 girl, go, Buckeyes, national champions, they just --
WOOD: You just had to do that because you're looking at me.
ALLISON: I had to.
HILL: I went to Michigan State this weekend. We both had Michigan. That's the good part.
ALLISON: Let me have my year, okay. But what you just recently saw, the Big 10 formed an alliance because they -- like we know what happens when people try and do overreach. It starts with one. And maybe you feel comfortable with 1, but 1 becomes 3 and three becomes 12. And then and then there is no line anymore.
So, the Big 10, which Ohio is in a red state and Iowa and all these places that are pretty conservative areas, they have formed an alliance and they will say if they come after one, they come after all because they do see Harvard as a test case.
So, it's not about, yes, I don't think that people should just be able to cross into our country. I understand that most of Americans are with Donald Trump right now on immigration. But what I'm saying is it wasn't enough for him. He is going beyond your list of three. There are so many people that he is targeting, like January 6th folks or like Chris Krebs, yes, that is beyond the three of enough.
PHILLIP: Let me just read what the Circuit Court of Appeals said. This is a judge who was appointed by Ronald Reagan. He said, if today the executive claims the right to deport without due process in disregard of court orders, what assurances will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? What assurances shall there be that the executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?
So, the questions are being asked not just by Democrats but also by conservatives, by judges who are worried about where this goes next. It's politically expedient right now for you, but the principle, I think, is what people are questioning.
JENNINGS: Two things. One, you said it's about institutions more broadly. I agree with you. I think the question you got to ask next is do these institutions deserve it? I mean, I think the reason that Americans have such low levels of trusted institutions right now is because no one has ever stopped to check them on, you know, why they've had falling trust levels in the first place. And Trump is coming along and asking uncomfortable questions about a number of institutions.
Regarding the statement about due process, I just have a fundamental disagreement about the people who were claiming there's no due process in the case of Garcia, even if you grant, and I do that, he did have a withholding not to go to El Salvador.
[22:15:03]
He went to immigration courts twice. He had a deportation order. He was in the country illegally. This man has had due process. And if they bring him back, they're going to have to send him somewhere else. I just disagree with that statement.
PHILLIP: All right. Well, we have much more ahead. We're going to talk more about this ahead, as the Trump administration takes on the judicial branch and just how much it can check and balance.
Plus, breaking tonight, two are dead and five are injured in a mass shooting at Florida State University's campus. The suspect is apparently the son of a sheriff's deputy. We'll discuss that case next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, proof of life. Kilmar Abeigo Garcia was mistakenly deported from the United States and is now detained in El Salvador. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen made the trek to the Central American nation to try to get a face-to-face with Abrego Garcia. Now, that meeting has in fact happened. Van Hollen posted a picture of him sitting with Abrego Garcia at a table along with this message. I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight, I had that chance. I've called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update on my return.
That image is very interesting because a lot of people truthfully questioned what kind of shape he was in and why the administration was fighting so hard to keep him in El Salvador. Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, also tweeted this that I find fascinating. He says, Abrego Garcia miraculously risen from the death camps and torture now sipping margaritas with Senator Van Hollen in a tropical paradise of El Salvador. I mean --
HILL: That was the first thing I noticed. I was like, are they at a continental breakfast? Like what is -- I'm not even trying to be funny.
UNGAR-SARGON: I know.
PHILLIP: I mean, it's true.
HILL: The very first thing I noticed was like that was not what I expected.
PHILLIP: But, I mean, but let's be trans real about what's happening here. I mean, this is propaganda because the other propaganda of the whole situation is that this is a hellhole. They were literally telling us the other day that it was a hellhole. You know who called it a gulag? The vice president of the United States, J.D. Vance. So, I don't know. Whose word do you take?
JENNINGS: I see these pictures tonight, and I think, boy, the party of women is really covering itself in glory tonight. I mean, I don't understand why the American left falls in love with the worst people. You've got a gang banging, human trafficking, wife beating illegal alien, and a United States senator in a ludicrous display of energy is in El Salvador having my ties and yancy (ph). I do not get it. I do not understand why the left takes on the heroes people --
PHILLIP: I think the other -- part of this --
JENNINGS: I don't get it.
PHILLIP: I think, look -- I'm not --
HILL: Is there allegedly in there somewhere? I'm just wondering.
JENNINGS: He's a Democratic United States senator, is he not?
PHILLIP: I don't think this is an issue of we know everything we need to know about this individual, right. But I do think that the idea that the administration continues to call him a terrorist and a gang banger, knowing full well that those things are very much in dispute, is part of the story, and separately from that, as we just were talking about, the circuit court, judge says it doesn't matter. He was sent to another country to be put in a prison that let me just play for you because I think it's a good encapsulation of what this prison is. This is what Ezra Klein said -- so you can see the pictures there, but you can -- let me just play what Ezra Klein has said about why this prison and sending people there is so significant for democracy and the rule of law.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EZRA KLEIN, COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: The emergency is here. The crisis is now.
Maybe not to you, not yet, but to others, to real people whose names we know, whose stories we know. The president of the United States is disappearing people to an El Salvadoran prison for terrorists.
It is a prison that does not intend to release its inhabitants back out into the world. It is a prison where the only way out, in the words of El Salvador's justice minister, is in a coffin.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: The El Salvadorians said that, that the only way out of this prison is in a coffin. I mean, when you do that, you should know pretty surely that the person you're sending there deserves to be imprisoned for life until death. I don't know.
WOOD: half of the people that they've sent there have no arrest record. So, to be comfortable with the fact that those people that that is potentially the rest of their lives, you can't be cool with that. Like that's not how you're supposed to adjudicate punishment in this country. If he is all of the things that you say he is, then let it all play out properly in the American court system, and then if you want to send them there. But I think half of the people that they're deporting, you're better off literally putting them on a raft and pushing them out into the ocean than sending them to that place.
HILL: And I didn't realize the law was only for perfect people. I didn't realize that's how we did things here. I'm not talking about people who commit actual crimes that we can prove. But if we're always putting this up against some purity test to say that like, hey, because we think you might have done this, and, again, I realize you're levying se serious charges, but like the law is not supposed to be about a purity test. It's about to be -- it's supposed to be about what can you actually prove that someone has done?
JENNINGS: I actually am not even all that worried about all the things that we have found out in the wake of the investigations into this guy. What I'm worried about is that -- and I'm going to grant you, he has a withholding order and he should not have gone to El Salvador.
HILL: And they admit it, it was a mistake.
JENNINGS: But even if you grant that, he has an adjudicated deportation order, and you have Democrat public officials falling all over themselves trying to get him back here without thinking through the next step, which is he is literally going to be deported somewhere else.
[22:25:02]
WOOD: Fine, but not to a prison.
JENNINGS: But my suspicion is when they bring him back, they're going to try to keep him here. That's the next part of the game.
WOOD: You deport him.
PHILLIP: I want to go on --
HILL: (INAUDIBLE) on degrees of things, right? There's a different punishment for a speeding ticket versus a different punishment for something else. So, you're saying that what he has done, which is, okay --
JENNINGS: Come to the country illegally.
HILL: Okay. So, he deserves to be in an El Salvadoran prison.
JENNINGS: He deserves to be deported.
HILL: Okay, that's fine. No one is debating that.
WOOD: But to a prison cell?
PHILLIP: Radical agreements, Scott Jennings. Look, one other thing --
JENNINGS: We're changing hearts and minds one at a time.
PHILLIP: Well, no. I mean, listen, I think the dispute is not over whether or not after a process he should be deported, the dispute is whether he should be sent to a prison for the rest of his life, that where he has no rights.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear this birthright citizenship case. This is going to be maybe the biggest test of whether the courts are going to play -- what kind of role the courts are going to play in this Trump era? What do you make of that?
UNGAR-SARGON: Well, if I could just briefly about the Garcia case, he did have due process. Everything we know about him is documented because he did go through the court systems. He was stopped for trafficking. His wife did file these domestic violence charges against him. He was arrested with MS-13 members with a roll of cash that had the eyes and the ears and the mouths of the president's erase, which is an MS-13 markings. This is all non-disputed.
WOOD: Nothing -- you're talking about --
ALLISON: But your process doesn't stop halfway.
UNGAR-SARGON: But I'm saying he, he already got his due process and he got a deportation order.
ALLISON: No. The process somehow isn't finished because the judge told them not to do it. So, due process doesn't stop when you like the outcome. It's a whole process. So, that's why we have a --
UNGAR-SARGON: But I think that's what you guys are doing. Like when they side with the criminals, it's due process. And when they side against the criminals, suddenly they didn't get due process.
ALLISON: No. I've been giving this a lot of thought because I want to actually make sure that things that I come up here and argue I actually believe in.
And so I was thinking, I was like, am I just against this because Donald Trump is saying it? I'm not.
UNGAR-SARGON: I really admire that.
ALLISON: I'm not. But the thing that makes me better than the criminal is that I treat them with humanity and dignity despite of what they have done, and that when their judgment is placed on, then they have to live with it.
But I cannot assign judgment to people because I don't like something. We have a system of law, and I would hope that the same due process that I received, that everyone's received, that's what makes our country --
UNGAR-SARGON: I will not, because you are an American citizen, you get more due process.
ALLISON: No, but that is what makes our country wonderful.
UNGAR-SARGON: You got a higher standard.
ALLISON: It's because it's for people in this land.
UNGAR-SARGON: There is no slippery slope except the one the Democrats are trying to --
PHILLIP: Batya, I think you are right. Hold on. You're actually right to a degree that in this particular instance, he is going through an immigration process. But even in that process, which is largely administrative, it's not a jury situation, it's not as lengthy and as detailed, the standard is not beyond a reasonable doubt, it's a preponderance of evidence, even by that standard, they did not, according to several judges, give him that process. So, they didn't even give him a truncated process.
UNGAR-SARGON: They sent him to the wrong country. But in any other country he could be sent to, they could put him in prison and they probably will because he is a wife-beater and that's where he belongs.
PHILLIP: Look, I think that whatever he has done --
WOOD: For the rest of his life?
PHILLIP: If he wants to -- if they end up going through the process and deporting him, I don't think -- I mean, as you heard here, there's a lot of agreement that that would actually be totally fine, but the courts are basically saying you stopped the process before he had been able to adjudicate his rights. That's not me saying that, that's what the courts have said.
And the similar thing is happening with the Alien Enemies --
JENNINGS: When did he enter the country? 2011?
PHILLIP: He entered the country -- actually, that's a good question that you should ask. He entered the country around 2011.
JENNINGS: Okay.
PHILLIP: But in 2019, which was when Donald Trump J. Trump was president of the United States, that's when he was found with those MS-13 gang members. He was arrested at the same time that they were. That's when he got his stay. That's when he was put in a process where he was checking in with ICE every year. That was under Trump. Trump could have deported him in 2019 and didn't.
JENNINGS: Broad timeline, the average American looking at this case, a lot of conflicting information. Okay, I believe some, I don't believe what -- an illegal alien came here in 2011, and somehow, in 2025, he's still here after having been through the court system, after having been arrested with lots of people in his car, after having all this evidence?
PHILLIP: Why didn't Donald Trump deport him?
JENNINGS: He just did, and now everybody's mad about it. How did an illegal alien take advantage of our system for 14 years and not get --
PHILLIP: Why didn't Donald Trump deport him in 2019?
JENNINGS: That's how the average -- and now he's gone and who's having a meltdown?
[22:30:00]
Chris Van Hollen. ALLISON: It's not -- I -- it's -- it literally is not the fact that of all the things that you say. I don't like the things that all of those things that you're alleging are true. I do not like it. It's not as somebody I would support as a good person to beat your wife. I don't think that is a good thing.
And when you compile that with the language and the behavior of this administration, when they say, I will deport an American citizen to your point that I should receive more due process because I am an American citizen.
What happens when they don't follow the law then? So that's the slippery slope of the law that people -- what we're trying to have an intervention is.
If it's OK on this, it might be OK on that. And then your three becomes 12 and your 12 becomes, and then it is never enough.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: All right. We got a-- we got a --
JEMELE HILL, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: And we cling out so many examples of American citizens --
PHILLIP: Leave it there.
HILL: -- being targeted. Targeted.
PHILLIP: Coming up next, a deadly mass shooting at Florida State University. Officials are now confirming that the suspected gunman is the son of a sheriff's deputy. We'll have more on that, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:40]
PHILLIP: Tonight, a tragedy in Tallahassee, a government -- a gunman terrorized Florida State's campus, killing two people and enduring others. Police are still investigating what happened here, but the authorities have confirmed one in critical -- one critical and chilling fact about this alleged shooter that he was the son of a local sheriff's deputy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WALT MCNEIL, LEON COUNTY, FLORIDA SHERIFF: The alleged shooter was also a longstanding member of the Leon County Sheriff's Office, Citizen Advisory or Youth Advisory Council. So he has been steep in the Leon County Sheriff's Office family, engaged in a number of training programs that we have. So it's not a surprise to us that he had access to weapons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Joining us in the fifth seat of our table is John Miller. He's CNN's chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst.
John Miller, let's talk about the weapons here. What do we know about that and how this shooter got access to them?
JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, we know that there was what we believe is a shotgun found on the scene, another weapon found in the car. But after firing the shotgun initially, it appears that the weapon he used to injure and kill most of the people who are victims here was a handgun, which was the former service weapon of his mother, who is a, as the sheriff said, a deputy sheriff and a school resource officer for part of her career --
PHILLIP: Wow.
MILLER: -- where she was dedicated literally to protecting children from things like this. So the idea that that weapon which was once used to protect students would be turned on them by her son is hard to wrap your head around.
PHILLIP: That is so disturbing. I mean, I think it also raises a lot of questions about once again, I mean, we've been here with so many of these shootings, access to this weapon. We've actually seen in some cases parents being held responsible for leaving their weapons unattended and put -- allowing them to become in the hands of people, young people who then do these types of issues.
MILLER: I mean, when you look at the horrific case in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, where you know, you had the children, the first graders in their classrooms gunned down, that was a weapon that the mother obtained for the son because it was something he wanted to do, which was to learn to shoot.
He took that weapon from her, killed her before going to the school. Remember the just now we're talking a little more than a year ago, the Apalachee High School shooting, that was a gun that was gifted to the shooter by his father that he had access to.
And, of course, the Michigan case where the parents were both prosecuted for giving a gun to a child as a gift who they knew was extraordinarily troubled at the time that he had access to it.
This is different. He's not a minor. Florida law says that that has to be stored safe if there's someone under 16. And he probably had gun training, gun safety training and all that, given his mom's job and being part of the Sheriff's Youth Council.
But it still raises the question, do you know -- look, in most of these shootings, the gun comes from the home, whether it's protected or not.
And do you know what your child's state of mind is? and can weapons be around?
PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, there are so many unanswered questions, but this shooter, another rare thing, the shooter is alive and was taken away from the scene alive. So it's possible that we may get more answers. We do know he pled the fifth upon his arrest.
John Miller, thank you very much for bringing that to us. CNN is going to have much more on this shooting in the next hour on "LAURA COATES LIVE." Stay tuned for that.
Up next for us, President Trump is doubling down on his push to oust Fed Chair Jerome Powell with members of his own administration now on damage control. A special guest is going to join us at the table to tell us what could come, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:40:19]
PHILLIP: Tonight, tell us how you really feel. President Trump going after Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, today. After the Fed Chair issued a stark warning on the economic potential consequences of these Trump tariffs.
It first started early this morning. Trump taking to Truth Social accusing Powell of being too late and wrong on rate cuts, adding his termination, quote, cannot come fast enough. The market not taking kindly to those comments with the Dow opening lower for the day, less than an hour after the opening bell.
Damage control came next from the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. "POLITICO" reported that Bessent has been privately urging caution to Trump on these attacks, warning that any attempt to fire Powell will risk destabilizing financial markets.
[22:45:05]
But predictably, Trump's seemingly paying those worries absolutely no mind. He's doubling down on his earlier attacks in the Oval Office just this afternoon.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've said that the termination of Jerome Powell cannot come fast enough. He says he won't leave, even if you ask him to.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Oh, he'll leave, if I ask him to. He'll be out of there. But I don't think he's -- I don't think --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you believe (INAUDIBLE) trying to do that?
TRUMP: I don't think he's doing the job. He's too late, always too late. A little slow. And I'm not happy with him. I let him know it. And if I want him out, he'll be out of there real fast, believe me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Can you guess what happened next? Well, as you can imagine, those comments stoking further fear and volatility in the market. The Dow finishing the day down by more than 500 points.
Joining us in our fifth seat at the table now is Charlotte Howard. She is "The Economist's" executive editor.
Charlotte, explain it to us like we are five. Why would the markets be so upset that Trump is trying to meddle in the Fed yet again?
CHARLOTTE HOWARD, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, THE ECONOMIST: I think that it's worth taking a step back first and just noting the extraordinary horror with which many investors have watched Trump take these actions over the past few weeks.
There's not a president in history who has unilaterally tried to remake the American economy so quickly in such dramatic fashion going all the way back to the last really big moment of tariffs in 1930. That was an act of Congress, right? It was the president with Congress that passed the Smoot-Hawley Act.
Now, you have Donald Trump, on his own, exerting his authority through the act of tariffs in composing tariffs in an extremely dramatic fashion, right?
So there's been this question, what would restrain the president? So you have Congress not restraining the president. There are some lawsuits on tariffs that might eventually restrain the president, but maybe not. They may be unsuccessful.
But the president does not control, does not have authority over the Fed. The Fed is independent. This is a law of nature that investors depend on the way they depend on gravity. And so the idea that he would overturn that, in addition to everything else, is so fundamentally destabilizing, would be so fundamentally destabilizing to how investors view the health, you know, reliability of the functioning of the American market.
PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, Batya, this is like part and parcel of Trump, right? Like you don't get the tariffs without also getting the destabilizing attacks on the Fed. And the combination of the two could be disastrous, even if you believe just in the tariff part.
BATYA UNGAR-SARGON, AMERICAN JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: Yes. But it's kind of weird that Jerome Powell is out there opining on the tariffs. Like his job is to help stabilize the economy.
PHILLIP: I don't think that's weird at all.
UNGAR-SARGON: It seems like he's not doing it because --
(CROSSTALK)
UNGAR-SARGON: Why would that be weird?
PHILLIP: Why is that weird?
UNGAR-SARGON: Why is that weird?
PHILLIP: Yes.
UNGAR-SARGON: Because you would expect that a president who has a really good idea about how to restore the middle class and restore the dignity of the working class should have the support of the people who are, you know, have the power to help him enact that.
PHILLIP: Jerome Powell is the head of the Fed and has a mandate to keep inflation low and employment high. So if there are, you know, macroeconomic things that are happening in the economy that make it very difficult for him to do that, you don't think he's going to comment?
UNGAR-SARGON: Do you know what would have really helped? What would be a really good idea right now to help bring down inflation and make sure that things keep running smoothly? It's dropping interest rates. Why doesn't he do that?
PHILLIP: Why doesn't he do that?
(CROSSTALK)
HOWARD: So interest rates, if you were to drop interest rates, you would stoke inflation.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.
UNGAR-SARGON: You would give the business community a little bit of support to get them through what is going to be a difficult time as we reorganize the economy in order to restore dignity to the world --
HILL: You know what else? If you didn't wildly put tariffs in place that don't make any sense, that would probably help more.
UNGAR-SARGON: Where do you think the tariffs don't make sense?
HILL: China. I mean, the big one.
UNGAR-SARGON: China?
HILL: Does not make any sense.
UNGAR-SARGON: Doesn't make sense to have tariffs on China?
HILL: No. It doesn't make sense to have this level of tariffs on China. That entire --
UNGAR-SARGON: On China?
JENNINGS: What level do you prefer?
HILL: Well, not 145 percent.
JENNINGS: Give me a number.
HILL: Again, not 145 percent.
JENNINGS: About 144.
HILL: Again, how about 275? JENNINGS: You seem to be very definitive that this number is wrong.
HILL: No. Because the economy is telling me that it's wrong.
PHILLIP: What level -- what level of tariff, Scott, do you think that the U.S. economy can sustain long term on China?
JENNINGS: On China?
PHILLIP: Yes.
JENNINGS: I would -- I want whatever it takes to isolate them.
PHILLIP: I'm going to do a couple more. What's the number, Scott?
JENNINGS: I hope it's this one. But if it has to be a bit --
PHILLIP: What's the number? Do you think it's 145 percent? You think that the economy will be good and fine in the long haul and --
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: I think the -- I think the economy will be good and fine. And our national and economic security will be better when we decouple from China and we're not dependent upon our biggest enemy in the world for all of this stuff.
(CROSSTALK)
We need to isolate them. We need to isolate them and that's what he's doing.
HOWARD: I'd like to know what a policy might be that would effectively isolate China and I would argue that it's not at all what the Trump administration has been pursuing, right?
[22:50:05]
So if you wanted to effectively isolate China, so let's say you wanted to start a big trade war. You would actually beef up your trade alliances with partners, with friendly nations, with Europe --
JENNINGS: I agree.
(CROSSTALK)
HOWARD: -- Canada, with Mexico, which is the opposite of what --
JENNINGS: Well --
HOWARD: -- Donald Trump has pursued.
JENNINGS: I agree with you, but they've got, how many countries now in there making trade deals right now and they're going to be rolling those out.
(CROSSTALK)
So -- and so I think if you let this play out over a series of weeks, you might get your wish, which is stronger trade and fairer trade relationships with everybody else in the world. And they have to make a choice.
Do I want to get in bed with the communists? Or do I want to stick with the Americans? And I think they will stick with the Americans.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But they aren't talking to China right now, so.
HOWARD: You'll -- you are seeing leaders hedging their bets.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
HOWARD: Leaders of foreign nations hedging their bets because they no longer trust America as a reliable trading partner.
JENNINGS: Do you think they trust China more than America?
UNGAR-SARGON: They no longer trust America to be the patsies of the world. And that is actually a good thing. They never would have agreed to do a global embargo on China, the type that Trump is pursuing, if he hadn't taken an axe to that, you know, the whole system --
PHILLIP: I think it's unclear, though, whether or not that what you're saying is actually happening now because right now, we're in the war with China, OK? And we don't have allies in that war.
And Trump is saying, well, I hope in the next 90 days we'll get something on the board. That's a pretty big hope.
UNGAR-SARGON: It's actually not because we are the better trading partner. All of these countries actually --
PHILLIP: Combining when he strike these deals before.
UNGAR-SARGON: -- rely on our markets.
ALLISON: Do you think they feel like we're the better trading partner in the way they just didn't treat it?
UNGAR-SARGON: Because they never would. I didn't really think they would come to the table. Do you think the E.U. would have come to the table?
ALLISON: But, Batya, do you think that -- do you think that they actually feel like we're the better trading partner after the last 10 days?
UNGAR-SARGON: It's not about -- it's not about feeling. Our market is what they -- nobody exists without the American consumer. Like -- and everybody knows that.
PHILLIP: I'm going to give Charlotte --
ALLISON: Well --
PHILLIP: I'm going to give Charlotte the last word here.
HOWARD: I would say there are two things. One is that it's not all America or all China. But you see now the balance of power shifting such that America is becoming less relied upon, less trusted, and that allies won't turn entirely away from America, of course not. They're not going to -- you know, Europe is not going to get in bed solely with China, but they're going to reduce their dependence on the United States because they no longer feel America to be reliable.
I also would say that tariffs from the Trump administration, you know, they're a tool to raise revenue, supposedly, they're a tool to bring manufacturing back, supposedly, to isolate China.
It's like a Swiss army knife of policies. When you dissect each and every one of those policies, it's not like a knife, it's like a noodle. It doesn't really work in any of the areas that they have laid out.
PHILLIP: All right. We got to leave it there. I'm sorry, Batya. We got to go. Charlotte Howard, thank you very much for joining us. Everyone else, stay with us.
Up next, the panel is going to give us their nightcaps. They'll tell us what unusual place they'd hold an event inspired by the Rams' draft day choice.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:55:28]
PHILLIP: We're back and it's time for the news nightcap Rams' draft edition. The NFL draft is next week and the LA Rams release this teaser video to announce they're going to have their draft headquarters at LAFD Air Operations. They're doing it to honor the Los Angeles first responders.
So now you each have 30 seconds to tell us what unusual place you would want to hold an event. Scott.
JENNINGS: Well, normally, big political fundraisers are held at big donor's houses or in restaurants and fancy places in Washington, but it strikes me that we need to throw a big fundraiser for Senator Van Hollen and the rest of the Democrats at the CECOT prison down in El Salvador because they've never had more energy for anything in their lives than these illegal immigrants.
And so I think we ought to take all the Democrat donors down there and raise all the money and show them exactly what they're investing in.
PHILLIP: I'm seeing some unconvinced looks from the side of the table. Ashley.
JENNINGS: And I'll write the first check.
PHILLIP: Ashley, go ahead.
ALLISON: OK. So I would find like the dopest private plane, massive, largest private plane and put all my friends on it and we would fly it around the whole world on New Year's Eve and it would be a nonstop 24- hour party, because every time zone we would just celebrate the night.
Now we wouldn't -- we would probably run out of gas, but some things --
PHILLIP: I could see about a thousand problems with that. But that sounds pretty cool. Roy.
ROY WOOD JR. AMERICAN COMEDIAN AND ACTOR: I want to run out of baseball stadium for a party, just me and my home boys and some folks. Just 30 people baseball stadium maybe Wrigley during a regular season game. Just like with Charlie Sheen when Charlie Sheen bought out the whole outfield to kind of try and catch your home run back in the day. Yes, that's what I want to do.
PHILLIP: That's -- I could --
WOOD JR.: I think I got that kind of money because I'm CNN.
ALLISON: Right. I got no private jet money either.
PHILLIP: You know what, Roy --
WOOD JR.: I bet I could do in my stadium.
PHILLIP: I believe in you.
JENNINGS: I got some.
PHILLIP: You're a czar (ph). You're a czar.
ALLISON: Donate to him. Not the --
HILL: All right. Now even though if Elon Musk has one haters, me, and if he has zero, I'm dead. One thing is for sure is that he -- well, he said about we'll be on Mars in five years. So I think it would be dope to have a sporting event on Mars. I could think of no better one than the -- than UFC. They could fight each other and fight gravity at the same time.
That would be awesome but you're going to be (INAUDIBLE)
PHILLIP: That is very creative.
HILL: OK. Make some alien. I like that.
(CROSSTALK)
UNGAR-SARGON: It's Passover. It was last week and it's finishing up. It's eight days. It's going to end up at the end of this weekend. And I always thought it would be really cool to host a Passover Seder kind of like in the shadow of the pyramids or that big sphinx where the whole story happened, you know, like, we're still here. We're still doing it.
PHILLIP: Wait, that's --
UNGAR-SARGON: I think that --
PHILLIP: That would be a very cool idea. I mean, honestly, any event in the shadows of the pyramids will probably be really cool. So, yes, I'm all for it.
Everyone, thank you very much. Don't forget, you can catch Roy on a new episode of "Have I Got News For You" this Saturday at 9:00 P.M. only on CNN.
Thank you so much for watching NEWSNIGHT. You can catch me anytime on your favorite social media, X, Instagram and TikTok.
"LAURA COATES LIVE" starts right now.
