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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Jimmy Kimmel To Return Tomorrow Night After Backlash; Trump Publicly Demands DOJ Prosecute His Opponents. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired September 22, 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, Disney makes like Elsa and lets it go. Jimmy Kimmel is set to return after boycotts and Broadsides.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Some (BLEEP) be saying, hey, enough, we're not going to bow.
PHILLIP: But will the late night star flex his free speech?
Plus, revenge on demand, Donald Trump publicly tells his DOJ to prosecute his rivals or else.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I hate my opponent and I don't want the best for them.
PHILLIP: Also, the feds shut down an investigation of the border czar involving bribes and bags of cash and MAGA's reaction is a loud shrug.
And --
KAMALA HARRIS, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: We used to compare the strength of our democracy to communist dictators. That's what we're dealing with right now.
PHILLIP: The veep's vengeance. Kamala Harris throws a tea party and dishes the dirt, getting a lot of liberals dirty.
Live at the table, Cornel West, Kevin O'Leary, Ana Navarro and Phil Williams.
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 Philip.
Let's get right to what America's talking about, a whole new world for the kingdom. Disney announcing that Jimmy Kimmel will return to the air tomorrow night after days of backlash over his suspension. The company has been facing heavy criticism after pulling him off the air over what Disney calls ill-timed Charlie Kirk comments but after the Trump administration threatened to punish ABC unless they did something.
Today, 400 celebrities signed a letter comparing it to McCarthyism and some Americans said they canceled their Disney+ subscriptions.
Now, we're told that Kimmel will be addressing the firestorm tomorrow, but Sinclair, one of the big owners of subsidiaries, say it'll preempt the show from the stations that it owns.
Joining us in our fifth seat is Bill Carter, the former New York Times media reporter and author of the War for Late Night.
So, Bill, what do you think is behind Disney bringing him back?
BILL CARTER, FORMER MEDIA REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, I think Disney was pushed into the corner here. They had to make a decision. They were either going to capitulate or they're going to fight. I think they decided -- given all the other circumstances, they had already conceded on the Stephanopoulos issue. They had conceded to Trump and paid off a settlement. And here they were, they had to either decide whether they're going to keep this star that they did like, they do back, or they're going to capitulate and give in.
And I think they had no choice. I don't think Disney had a choice. This was clearly an abuse of power, and they could not give in. Otherwise, it would continue and they could just have to stand up for it, not just because of their -- who they are as a company, but sort of as the principle of it. I really don't think someone like Bob Iger, who has taken his reputation very seriously, the head of Disney, by the way, was going to concede that he ought to now basically say, all right, I'll agree and I'll take away a star who I don't think did anything that seriously wrong.
PHILLIP: Backlash to the backlash to the backlash. I mean, I think at the end of the day, one of the big or original sins of this whole saga is the Trump administration deciding to make it clear to the whole world that they wanted to be involved. I almost imagine if they had not done that. This would've ended completely differently. Kimmel and Disney would've dealt with this behind closed doors. Maybe he would've been suspended for a few days. They would've dealt with the affiliates and we would be moving on. But Disney was forced to respond to the assumption many people have, which is that this was an attempt of the government to chill speech, which, I think, you know, for a lot of Americans, they don't like that.
KEVIN O'LEARY, CHAIRMAN, O'LEARY VENTURES: I've been doing television for a lot of years. The only thing that matters long-term, ratings. Tomorrow night, who's ever writing that monologue for him, he's going to get his best score in decades.
PHILLIP: He probably.
O'LEARY: Everybody in America is going to be tuning in, they're going to score huge ratings, and that's what matters on T.V. Secondly, to consider, I go back to an interview with Johnny Carson, I think it was in the early 80s, when he said, you know. I don't get into politics because why would I want to piss off 50 percent of my audience? And I think all comedians should think about that. They're entertainers and they want to entertain people who had a long day. They want to be lifted up. Here's something funny.
[22:05:00]
They don't want to be dragged down in the toilet of politics.
You know, Michael Jordan said, I want to sell sneakers to Republicans too. I mean, what is this stuff? Entertainers entertain. Why get into this whole thing bipartisan or partisan politics? I think that's the lesson of this Kimmel thing. I think he'll do very well tomorrow night. Long-term ratings will matter for him, like everybody else. But the lesson to everybody is, if you're an entertainer, a musician, entertain, go right down the middle of the road.
ANA NAVARRO, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Kevin, you're a host of Shark Tank. Wouldn't people say the same thing about you? You're -- I mean, you're a show of an -- a host of an entertainment show.
O'LEARY: Have you ever heard me shill for a politician?
NAVARRO: Yes, every night when you come here.
O'LEARY: I shill for policy. I'm a policy wonk. I don't get on stage saying, vote for this man, this woman. I say, here's what their policies do to American entrepreneurs.
NAVARRO: All right, (INAUDIBLE).
O'LEARY: Goodness on you.
PHILLIP: But, Kevin, I mean, you are guest here a lot, and I've heard you strongly criticize Democratic politicians. Maybe you don't shill for one politic.
O'LEARY: No, their policy.
PHILLIP: No. I know, but I've heard you make personal comments about Democratic politicians right here at this table, but to Ana's point, you have free speech rights just like everybody else does. Are they not allowed? You're allowed to do it. Why is nobody -- why his speech is not allowed?
CARTER: Johnny Carson was down the middle, mostly. But if you were president, he made fun of you. He made fun of you if you were president. He did politics, you know, in terms of a joke. If you were president, you were made fun of. And the presidents did not then get their backup and say, we got to stop that. I don't like him doing that because he was Johnny Carson.
NAVARRO: And, listen, one, one of the longest running comedy shows in history, Saturday Night Live, has been making fun of presidents forever of every, you know --
CARTER: You know what, and Abraham Lincoln had political cartoons made about him and he didn't say, close down the newspapers.
NAVARRO: I don't think that --
PHILLIP: And if you were here in the 90s, Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton. I mean, the other thing -- I mean, look, maybe what you're saying is true, but Sinclair, one of the owners of these affiliates, they were planning to air this lengthy Charlie Kirk special in place of Jimmy Kimmel. And guess what? They didn't do it. They backpedaled and they dropped those plans and aired Family Feud instead.
If it was so crystal clear that viewers really wanted more politics, but just right-leaning politics, why did Sinclair back off that?
PHIL WILLIAMS, HOST, RIGHTSIDE RADIO AND JUST RIGHT POLITICS: I don't know that Sinclair backed off of that. In fact, Sinclair has actually made quite a stand by saying, we're not going to be air -- we're preempting Jimmy Kimmel's show tomorrow.
PHILLIP: But they were going to air on Friday a documentary. They said in their whole statement about Jimmy Kimmel. They were like, we're going to air this documentary instead, and then they didn't do it.
WILLIAMS: And I don't have an answer for that, but I can tell you this, that the conversation at the table tonight has not even touched on the fact that what Jimmy Kimmel did was insult an entire half of the nation and a grieving widow, and people who had lost someone that was dear to them, and a voice that was lost to America. And this was not about free speech, about politics. This was about somebody making a horrible decision.
CARTER: What was the insult?
WILLIAMS: It was a horrible decision for him to come out and say that the murder was related -- unrelated to what it really is, a leftist ideology that attacks someone who was a conservative ideology, and everybody knows that. And instead he insulted half --
CARTER: (INAUDIBLE) mean Charlie Kirk?
WILLIAMS: But -- no. But what he did was he insulted half of America that was in the middle of grieving over the loss of someone we revered.
NAVARRO: But can I tell you something --
(CROSSTALKS)
WILLIAMS: You have to also look and say what is the FCC even for?
NAVARRO: But can I say something?
WILLIAMS: The FCC is a licensing body. NAVARRO: Last night, that grieving widow with incredible grace and compassion that I think I wasn't -- I wouldn't be capable of, came out and said that she forgave the killer of the man who killed with her two babies. So, I would say that if you're going to -- you know, if you're going to honor the Kirks, if you're going to honor what they stood for in terms of, and I disagree vehemently with a lot of the things he said, but he stood for free speech. And so I don't understand how the way to honor a man who stood for debate and free speech is to stifle free speech and penalize them. I don't understand how -- we can admire Erika Kirk so gracefully forgiving the man who killed the father of her two babies, and we can't forgive a comedian for (INAUDIBLE) to a joke.
WILLIAMS: Trump is not the one who said, get him off the air. Disney made a business decision. They have a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders, to their affiliate stations and to their advertisers.
PHILLIP: Phil, we were all here when the FCC Chairman went on a podcast and said, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. And here's -- okay, here's -- no. Let's -- all right, hold on. Let's just let just play -- let me play what Rand Paul had to -- I'm going to play what Rand Paul had to say about this because he was asked specifically about Brendan Carr's comments and whether or not that's what the FCC should be doing.
[22:10:01]
Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KRISTEN WELKER, NBC NEWS HOST: Senator, do you believe that Brendan Carr's comments were appropriate?
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): Absolutely inappropriate. Brendan Carr's got no business weighing in on this. But people have to also realize that despicable comments, you have the right to say them, but you don't have the right to employment.
And the FCC was wrong to weigh in. And I'll fight any attempt by the government to get involved with speech.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Right. So, look, it's pretty clear, the FCC doesn't have a role in saying, oh, Jimmy Kimmel, I don't like what you said, we're going to threaten your broadcast license. And sure, ABC has a right to suspend their host, even to fire him. But by putting himself in the middle of that, which he did intentionally, that changed the game in this conversation.
And I really do think it probably changed the game for Disney in terms of how they wanted this to end, in terms of how quickly they needed this to end and bring Jimmy Kimmel back.
DR. CORNEL WEST, AUTHOR, TRUTH MATTERS: No. I think that if we were to start with, again, the moment of forgiveness, Sister Erika, where we had a moment of interruption in a polarized society, and really a spiritually decayed culture in which --
PHILLIP: I think your microphone just slipped into your jacket. All right.
WEST: What I was really saying was --
PHILLIP: All right, I'll give you a moment to just fix your microphone, but I promise I'll come back to you.
NAVARRO: Can I say something as Cornel was fishing for his microphone. I'm very happy that this seems to be getting resolved or it's moving towards a resolution because, you know, we talk a lot about Kimmel, we talk a lot about Colbert. They're going to be okay. But there are hundreds of people that work on those shows. There's over 200 people that work on the Kimmel Show, and these are people that were hurt badly because of COVID and shows being with skeletal crews. These were people that were hurt badly by the writer's strike that hurt so many T.V. shows.
And so, you know, it's not just Kimmel you're hurting. It's a lot of American families.
WEST: What I want to come back, and I appreciate that, brother, no, that when you have a moment of interruption, given the love of money tied to greed, bottom line revenues and eyeballs, and the hatred escalating, deep distrust on both teams, Republicans and Democrats, how do you sustain that kind of moment of interruption? Forgiveness is a form of love. John Coltrane's birthday tomorrow, love is supreme. How do you sustain those moments to push back the forces of hatred, push back the forces of greed, push back the forces of distrust?
And the only way you do it is by more examples, examples in which people are able to say -- I mean, Jimmy Kimmel, for me, you know, I don't spend a lot of time on the brother. I don't think he's the most talented brother either. That's one of the few times I might agree with Brother Trump. He's not the most talented brother. And even that slot itself doesn't have too many people of color. So, I mean, they do what they want to do, but I will defend his right to speak, just like I defend this brother's right to be wrong or right because that's a libertarian issue. That's a libertarian issue.
PHILLIP: And I think that --
NAVARRO: it's an American, Cornel.
WEST: It's a human issue. It's a human -- it's a human issue.
NAVARRO: It is the First Amendment to the Constitution. The First Amendment that was made to the Constitution was about freedom of the press and freedom of speech.
PHILLIP: So, we've dealt -- listen, we dealt with the --
WEST: The Constitution (INAUDIBLE) of slavery -- PHILLIP: I know, but we have dealt with the legalities of it.
WEST: Absolutely. But it's human. I want to keep that as the deeper human. I don't want flag waving. I want love and justice at the center of it.
PHILLIP: But, listen, to your point, right, there's a lot of legalities of it. I think it's super important to talk about what should the role of the government be versus what should the role of a private company be. But then there's Jimmy Kimmel, the comedian, the human being. What should he do? What does he owe the country in this moment when he does come back?
CARTER: Well, I think he's going to come out and say something conciliatory. He's not going to apologize in a formal way. And he's certainly not going to give the -- at the insistence of the Sinclair people, to give it a donation. I think that's kind of over the top. And he's a very strong-minded guy. Jimmy. I know him well, and he's a very good guy. He offered a very heartfelt comment to the family before any of this happened, by the way.
So, I expect him to be very strong because that he didn't bend here. This is an interesting thing. I think he would've been on the air already if he just came on and abjectly apologized. I don't think he's going to do that. I think he's going to try to clarify this and say -- and I think he thinks that he didn't say anything that was the sickest conduct possible, which is the way the FCC guy said it. I think he was -- by the way, he didn't know about the actual case, the prosecution case on Monday. So, he was making comment irrespective of that. And he's not the kind of person who would ever attack or demean a person after this kind of tragedy. So, I think that's misrepresenting him.
I understand people are heard about it. I understand that, but I would not expect Jimmy Kimmel to be, you know, prostrate with apology.
[22:15:03]
That's not his style.
PHILLIP: Well, we'll all be watching tomorrow night.
O'LEARY: I want him to entertain. Entertain.
PHILLIP: Listen, we will all be entertained.
NAVARRO: A lot of people say the same thing about you.
PHILLIP: Bill Carter, Bill, thank you very much. We appreciate you being here. Everyone else stay with us.
Next, President Trump is now doing the very thing he baselessly accused Joe Biden of doing, telling the DOJ to prosecute his rivals. Another special guest is going to be with us at the table.
Plus, the border czar responds tonight to the DOJ shutting down a probe investigating whether he allegedly took a bag of cash at a cava no less, and he doesn't outright deny it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, there's no sense in hiding it. President Trump essentially sending a D.M. to Pam Bondo, but the entire world saw it. He urged the attorney general to prosecute his enemies literally. On a Truth Social, Trump told Bondi that he sees people saying, what about Comey, Adam Shifty Schiff, Letitia? They're all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done. Then he said that they can't delay any longer. It's killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice and indicted me five times over nothing. Justice must be served now. Three exclamation points on that one.
It's the very thing that Trump and his fellow Republicans have railed against for years.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The vicious, violent and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end.
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): The weaponization of government.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got to stop the weaponization.
SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC): Stop the weaponization of government.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Partisan weaponization of the Justice Department will end.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stop the weaponization of government.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The weaponization of government.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., HHS SECRETARY: I want to end the weaponization of government.
REP. STEVE SCALISE (R-LA): This Republican majority is going to continue to go and look into the weaponization of government.
TRUMP: Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Joining us in the fifth seat is Nick Akerman, former assistant special Watergate prosecutor. Nick, never again until today.
NICK AKERMAN, FORMER ASSISTANT SPECIAL WATERGATE PROSECUTOR: Until now.
PHILLIP: I guess.
AKERMAN: That's right. PHILLIP: But I also wonder with this explicit message being sent out for the whole world to see, does that complicate things if they do, in fact, try to prosecute these people? Because, I mean, Trump has basically said he wants them to be prosecuted because he wants retribution.
AKERMAN: Well, he's got a lot of problems there. First of all, they have to have evidence. You can't just indict somebody and hope that you can somehow convict them. You have to have evidence. Look at the Lisa Cook situation, for example. I mean, they just took two applications where some bureaucrat probably checked off some items, making it look like she was claiming that this was her primary residence. They never bothered to go behind those documents. They never bothered to look at all of the applications that were submitted along with that situation. And it shows -- I mean, it was one of the news services that pulled that out that shows that she was totally candid in what she said.
I prosecuted these kinds of cases before. You have to have real evidence. You can't make this up. You can't do it for political reasons. A jury is not going to convict beyond a reasonable doubt. And that's why you've had prosecutors resigning. The fellow in Eastern District resigned because he was being asked to do something on which there was no evidence.
PHILLIP: Yes. I think --
NAVARRO: Don't you think that that John Bolton, whose house was raided the other day by the FBI supposedly over an investigation related to classified material or something, is very happy about this tweet? And if he, in fact, gets indicted and taken to trial, we're going to see this tweet as part of his defense?
AKERMAN: Well, of course, we're going to see that because the kind of publicity. I mean, look what Pam Bondi did with Garcia, Abrego Garcia. They came up with this case that was based on a bunch of illegal aliens who were going to be sent off to El Salvador in order to keep from going to El Salvador. They made up these stories about Abrego Garcia. Their credibility is like about zero. The district court found that they had zero credibility. And this is the kind of evidence that once you get to a trial, first of all, you get a pretrial argument and then you're going to win in front of a jury and Trump is going to look terrible.
PHILLIP: So, Phil, how does Trump justify claiming that he's not going to weaponize the DOJ and then he literally explicitly asks for the DOJ to be weaponized, and then on top of that, actually fires somebody who he had just hired because that person said there weren't the facts to support this case? How does he justify that?
WILLIAMS: There's several layers here. I mean, the first thing you got to look at is the question of who he's got in place is a big deal. Right now, the Democrats have stalled the confirmations of almost every U.S. attorney nomination in the entire United States.
PHILLIP: Not this one. WILLIAMS: There's only 93 available.
PHILLIP: This guy was confirmed.
WILLIAMS: and that guy was confirmed, but he was one of the few.
PHILLIP: And then fired.
WILLIAMS: And one of the very few, and he chose to step down. But the reality is what you've got right now is a situation where the DOJ is hampered. And the whole call in that text, that tweet, which was then recanted within an hour, and you all are not even talking about the one where he came out and said, I do like Pam Bondi, she's doing a great job, was the reality is he's saying we need to act.
PHILLIP: Hold on a second.
[22:25:00]
But hold on. The -- maybe the DOJ is short staffed (ph). It doesn't really matter because the one guy who was responsible for all three of these cases looked at the facts and said, we don't have enough evidence here. And then Trump, you know, maybe after there was a huge amount of blowback from this incredibly political tweet, says, oh, I have confidence in Pam Bondi, but then appointed somebody who he had also said he believes is actually going to do what he wants her to do, I don't know that exonerates him.
WILLIAMS: You make it sound like Trump's actually subject to blowback. I don't think he really cares about blowback.
PHILLIP: So, then why did he walk it back?
WILLIAMS: Because he realized what he had said might've sounded different than what he had.
PHILLIP: So, that sounds like blowback.
WILLIAMS: So, he came back and he said-- he changed his own tweet. So, I don't know why that would be blowback. I mean, if you come back in and you change your own tweet, what is that blowback?
PHILLIP: I mean, it sounds like he's responding to people saying, this is crazy. and he backtracks.
(CROSSTALKS)
WILLIAMS: He expressed confidence on his own person. That's the key.
PHILLIP: He only backtracked in the sense of he writes in a message that he's fine with Pam Bondi, which is really not the issue here. The issue here is whether he wants the U.S. attorney to prosecute people based on his desire versus what the law says. That's what the issue is, not Pam Bondi. I don't frankly care how he feels about Pam Bondi, but that's not the issue here.
WILLIAMS: But it was the issue.
WEST: Can I just say a quick word? Because I think, for me, no legal order can survive with massive revenge and retribution. Once your culture breaks down into -- with distrust, and it's overwhelmed by revenge and retribution, all the litigious activity in the world, not going to reconstitute the kind of civic virtue that's required for citizens to relate to each other as citizens.
O'LEARY: I love what you're saying, but let me (INAUDIBLE) out, this is good news for all of us. What you're describing is the acts of a banana republic, okay? That's what they do in places like Venezuela and absolute countries where you can't attract capital anymore. America this week attracted more capital from around the world than it ever has, and I take a lot of solace in that. Because if they really thought we were a banana republic and this stuff had any traction, this stuff is all crapola.
PHILLIP: Hold on a second.
(CROSSTALKS)
NAVARRO: I spent my childhood in one of those, as you call them, banana republics, the country of Nicaragua.
O'LEARY: And look where you are now.
NAVARRO: Okay. But let me say this, Kevin.
O'LEARY: Why did you leave?
NAVARRO: Because I fled a dictatorship. And the thing that Donald Trump is doing in this --
O'LEARY: Here you are.
NAVARRO: The things that Donald Trump is doing in this country are awfully reminiscent to the things that Nicolas Maduro is doing in Venezuela.
O'LEARY: Well, that's where you came from now?
NAVARRO: No. I'm going to defend democracy in the United States, because this is my country. But I can tell you that stifling debate, that going after the media, that going after your opponents, that weaponizing government, that enriching your own family, those are all things that --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Hold on a second.
WILLIAMS: Where were you on the antitrust against Google and visa? Where were you on the --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Antitrust is part part of the law. That's actually a legal representation of the law.
(CROSSTALKS)
WEST: But I'm going to respond to my dear brother here because you primarily have the criteria of markets and money and ways in which capital is moving.
O'LEARY: Essence of America, my friend.
WEST: There has been fascists societies that have high capital. If all Americans are just money capital, then we are definitely in deep trouble.
O'LEARY: It doesn't work without money.
WEST: Well, of course, that's one factor, but that can't be the major one. You don't worship a golden calf until you can preserve a decent democratic --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Hold on a second, guys. Guys, one at a time.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Everybody, hold on a second, one at a time. Go ahead.
AKERMAN: What Trump has done is he has deeply corrupted the Department of Justice. It no longer depends on the evidence. He's brought in people. He's required cases to be brought that have absolutely nothing behind them. He files lawsuits that have nothing behind them. He sued The New York Times last week. The complaint was so bad, that the judge threw it out before The New York Times lawyers even had a chance to work for it.
O'LEARY: The system works.
AKERMAN: It works to an extent. But the problem with the legal system is it's slow. And he can make that Department of Justice move quickly. For example, what he did with Abrego Garcia, he put in a trumped up case because he didn't like the fact that the guy came back. And he essentially got evidence in there to --
PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, Kevin, I have a couple of quibbles with you, but one, let me let this read for you. This is a story on cnn.com just today. CEOs are growing alarmed, even if they're publicly staying quiet to avoid the wrath of the White House.
[22:30:01]
Business leaders are quite alarmed and private about the state of democracy in the United States, according to Jeff Sonnenfeld at Yale.
But secondly, I mean, look, it's pretty easy to get on Trump's good side. You say you're going to bring a bunch of cash into the United States, you flatter him. I mean, I think business leaders, domestically and internationally, see the game. They're like, okay, we'll play the game. But that's not to say that the game is the way that this democracy ought to operate.
O'LEARY: You know, it's --
PHILLIP: I don't know that -- I don't know that Americans want a democracy that is pay to play.
O'LEARY: Wait a second. Great CEOs of which there are many in America, evidenced by the fact that 52 cents of every dollar on earth comes here to invest in those same companies. S and P 500 plus the millions of companies that are private, 5 to 500 employees. We are the essence of the largest economy on earth. That's what we have.
What they really care about is their customers, their employees, and their investors. They know that the President of the United States, whoever it is, and the current Congress, and the senators, they're rotating. They rotate through every four to eight years. What they care about is making sure their businesses, and this is why America has worked for 200 years.
They keep their eye on the prize. Customers, employees, shareholders. It's the only economy that has survived every attack, including every administration. I don't care whether it's blue red or blue.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I'm not disagreeing with that. I agree with you that that's like the basic premise, right? But I also think that it's also very clear that these businesses are taking Trump as he operates, whether they like it or not, whether they think it's democratic or not. And they're saying, okay, this is how he operates. He needs us to donate to this pet project or that pet project. He needs us to flatter him in this way or that way. And we're going to do it because that's good for our shareholders in the near term.
O'LEARY: Reagan, Clinton, they all did the same thing.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: But I also think that it could very well be --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Yeah, I mean, look, but it could very well be that those same companies are concerned about long-term what this means for the United States.
O'LEARY: That's long-term in politics.
PHILLIP: Well, long-term is a legal --
(CROSSTALK)
O'LEARY: Four years.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: -- environment and a regulatory environment that is subject to the whims of one person rather than rules and regulations that everybody plays by.
(CROSSTALK)
UNKNOWN: But it's not.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: That's the issue.
UNKNOWN: Department of Justice --
AKERMAN: -- years for them to get out of this. I mean, there are people that have left that have been there, people that were -- built up expertise over 20, 30 years that have been chased out of there that have quit. They quit over the Eric Adams situation. They quit over what happened with the corruption, the Epstein, the Comey --
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: The firing of Comey.
AKERMAN: It's just the whole ethos around the Department of Justice, where I came from. I had been there for over 10 years. It was a whole different story. You go in, it's not political. You just take the evidence where it leads you, and without fear or favor, you prosecute your cases. It's not happening that way. The judges don't trust the department anymore. They don't trust what the lawyers say.
(CROSSTALK)
WEST: The death of the trust I'm talking about. This is distrust.
(CROSSTALK)
AKERMAN: And this is -- this is going to take years for us to dig out. And the same goes to the state department. The same goes for the EPA but we are in a huge world of hurt right now.
PHILLIP: All right, Nick Akerman, thank you very much. Next, speaking of investigations, the DOJ shut down a bribery probe involving one of their border czars and a big pile of cash. Hear what Tom Homan is saying about that tonight.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:38:18]
PHILLIP: Tonight, the border czar is responding to reports that he accepted a bag of cash from undercover FBI agents. According to "The New York Times", Tom Homan was caught on tape taking $50,000 in cash from the agents in exchange for helping to win federal contracts in the second Trump administration. Now, the White House says that Homan never accepted the cash, and that
FBI director Kash Patel investigated the matter himself and found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing. So, here's how Homan and the White House responded.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TOM HOMAN, WHITE HOUSE BORDER CASE: I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal. And there's hit piece after hit piece after hit piece. There's a hit piece on me every two weeks. But keep coming, because you know what? Tom Holman isn't going anywhere. Tom Holman isn't shutting up.
KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This was another example of the weaponization of the Biden Department of Justice against one of President Trump's strongest and most vocal supporters in the midst of a presidential campaign. You had FBI agents going undercover to try and entrap one of the President's top allies and supporters, someone who they knew very well would be taking a government position months later.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NAVARRO: I'm inherently suspicious of anybody that refers to themselves in the third person.
PHILLIP: That is true. I think that's a red flag, as they say. But look, part of this is also about how this is being digested in MAGA world. I mean, you heard the White House press secretary there. She says he didn't accept the cash. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. There's a tape. They could simply release that tape. Megan Kelly says she doesn't care. "We don't care. Don't bother Tom Homan. He's a national treasure."
UNKNOWN: Oh, this is ridiculous.
PHILLIP: I mean, why would she not care?
WILLIAMS: There's no reason for -- Make America Great Again world.
[22:40:00]
You know, I would say, first of all, this is low-end tabloid journalism when you're going to cite six unnamed sources to discredit a federal official like this.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Do you think that the investigation was real?
WILLIAMS: Do I think it was real?
PHILLIP: Yeah.
WILIAMS: No, I don't think it was real.
PHILLIP: So, you --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: So, you -- wait, hold on. Hold on. Let me just be clear.
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: But I think --
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: Hang on a second.
PHILLIP: Phil, yeah.
WILLIAMS: You have no grand jury indictment. You have no smoking gun --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: But the White House is not even denying that there was an investigation. Kash Patel acknowledges that there was an investigation that they closed.
WILLIAMS: And we're spending an entire segment talking about six unnamed sources talking about a thing that had no indictment, had no smoking gun, and had no charges.
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: Because they -- because they shut down the investigation.
(CROSSTALK)
UNKNOWN: They buried it. They buried it.
NAVARRO: How could there be an indictment when they shut it down?
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: Well, you had -- you had a Biden-era lawfare going on that could have rushed it forward if they wanted to and they didn't.
(CROSSTALK)
AKERMAN: They did the same thing with the Epstein case. They just hid everything. They're hiding this. All they have to do is to give--
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: And that's an assumption.
(CROSSTALK)
AKERMAN: -- the tape. All they have to do is just give the tape to the public, and the public can decide for themselves. (CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: Listen. I think Bob Menendez is sitting in a prison in Pennsylvania thinking to himself, damn, maybe it should have been cash instead of gold bars and that would have been better.
PHILLIP: If there's a tape, there's a tape. I mean, that would be -- that would be problematic.
O'LEARY: $50,000 in '50s is a really big bag.
PHILLIP: That's a really big bag.
O'LEARY: Is there any video tape in it?
PHILLIP: There are big, the Kava bags.
O'LEARY: Even if it's Huntsky's, it's a big bag.
PHILLIP: Have you been to Kava? Have you been to Kava? They have really big bags. And put a lot of money in those really big bags.
O'LEARY: Where's the tape?
PHILLIP: Listen. There's --
(CROSSTALK)
O'LEARY: -- walking around with a garbage bag full of money.
PHILLIP: Yeah, I mean, look, I -- listen. I think all of this is alleged. There's a lot of layers to this. All of this is alleged. That's the first thing. The second thing is that actually, him accepting that giant bag of cash, not in and of itself illegal. Now, if he had actually given contracts in exchange for the bags, that would be illegal. But we may never know because to your point, when Trump came into office, it seemed that what happened at DOJ was that this whole investigation just got frozen.
AKERMAN: Well, not only that. They got rid of the indictment against Eric Adams who stole $100 million from the city of New York, took bribes from the country of Turkey --
PHILLIP: Allegedly.
AKERMAN: -- and only so they could use him and his resources for this immigration problem that Trump dreamed up.
(CROSSTALK)
AKERMAN: It's the same thing right here with the Trump dream.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Go ahead, Cornel. WEST: But this is symptomatic of something that has to do, for me, with the fact that if you've got team Trump or team Republicans who will never make their own team members accountable, and you got team Democrats who weaponize against Republicans -- weapons Republicans, weaponize against Democrats. He just slide down to slippery hold the chaos as it is.
And Trump made it very clear. His response to Sister Erica was what? She says, love in the face of hate. What did he say? I can't agree but he's very honest. You know Trump -- he's an honest gangster and he says that I hate those people coming at me, and I'm going to hate in such a way that I will promote certain revenge. It's a-- either you stop it on both sides. Because Trump's had a whole lot of hatred coming at him. There's no doubt about that.
(CROSSTALK)
WEST: If all he's going to do is just fill out more hate, then in the end --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: It's worth noting that, for many years as many -- as you know at home, that the Republicans and Trump accused the Biden family of bribery. They accused them of corruption. Just take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEVIN MCCARTHY (R) FORMER HOUSE SECRETARY: Even a trusted FBI informant has alleged a bribe to the Biden family.
REP. NANCY MACE (R) SOUTH CAROLINA: We already know the President took bribes from Burisma. I also want to add betraying your country is treason.
REP. JAMES COMER (R-KY), CHAIRMAN OF THE HOUSE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: Every day this bribery scandal becomes more credible.
SEAN HANNITY, "HANNITY" HOST: What do call that?
REP. JIM JORDAN (R) OHIO: You call it bribery.
REP. TIM BURCHETT (R-TN): They keep saying show me the evidence and we've shown them the evidence. I don't know what else you need other than a -- President Biden coming on the news saying, hey, I'm a crook, I took this money, I took these bribes. I mean, what else do they need?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NAVARRO: A few things. First of all --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Let me just click on some -- on a factual point because I don't want people to listen to that and think, oh, clear-cut bribery. The informant that they are talking about here was charged with lying about Biden's role in Ukraine businesses undercutting the GOP impeachment inquiry. That informant testified. Another GOP whistleblower, Devin Archer, testified he had no knowledge of alleged Biden bribery.
UNKNOWN: So, this is all BS.
PHILLIP: That's, I mean, you can call it that, but I'm just saying, very clearly, they were ready to put Biden in the gulag over this.
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: But what I think is very significant about the video you just showed is that it was all Congress people, right? There was people in Congress. And look, I think, so let's --
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: Let me finish my point, Kevin. It's worth noting that when Tom Homan allegedly took this money, he was not in office. But I also think it's worth for transparency purposes.
[22:45:00]
And so, that the American people have some degree of trust under institutions for those same Congress people that were making those statements in those videos to want and seek a congressional hearing so that he can go and explain what happened and the American people can hear it.
O'LEARY: Let me point something out here. Any institution that issues 50,000 cash from a teller window has to report it. You can't say that's for yard sale change, okay? So, let's go find out where the 50K came from. You cannot take 50Kout of a bank --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: No, no. Okay.
(CROSSTALK)
AKERMAN: No, it's the government that took it out.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: It's the government that has -- yeah.
(CROSSTALK)
O'LEARY: So the government took 50,000 in a Fort Knox? Is that what happened?
(CROSSTALK)
O'LEARY: In a really big garbage bag.
(CROSSTALK)
AKERMAN: It's not a big garbage bag.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Let me just, just so we're not confused. These are undercover government agents and they've gotten a tip in an unrelated case that Tom Homan was interested in taking bribes for contracts. So, they went to Tom Homan. He took the money. So, that's the allegation here but the government can take out $50,000 whenever they want.
(CROSSTALK)
O'LEARY: Is there any video on this?
PHILLIP: But you heard, Phil, last word to you.
WILLIAMS: Yeah.
PHILLIP: I mean, why were Republicans so eager to claim, without actually any evidence that Biden had accepted bribes? But they don't even want to know if there's a tape of Tom Homan doing something that at best would be highly unethical.
WILLIAMS: So, first of all, everybody seems to forget here at the table that there's a video of Joe Biden talking about the undue influence he exerted upon Burisma and upon the government of Ukraine while he was sitting vice president.
PHILLIP: In exchange for --
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: In exchange for letting his son off.
PHILLIP: In exchange for?
WILLIAMS: Influence.
PHILLIP: In exchange for money or something material?
WILLIAMS: Hidling (ph) influence is what we're talking about. Hidling (ph) influence after they had been enriching his son and the investigation is on-going.
PHILLIP: No, no. Phil, I'm talking about cash money, okay? That's what I'm talking about.
WILLIAMS: I'm talking about a Biden statement on film, Abby.
PHILLIP: I'm talking -- I'm asking you, do you have evidence that Joe Biden --
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: I have a Biden film. (CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: - accepted cash in exchange -- Phil, do you have evidence that Joe Biden accepted cash in exchange for official acts? Do you have evidence that he did that?
WILLIAMS: There is evidence that he influenced the nation of Ukraine --
PHILLIP: But that's not my -- okay, that's not the question I'm asking you.
WILLIAMS: -- for his son who was receiving millions and millions of dollars --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: That is not the question I'm asking you.
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: And that's absolutely the question you're asking me.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Do you have evidence that Joe Biden took cash in exchange for favors?
WILLIAMS: I am giving you exactly what you're asking, Abby. If we were to court a law, I'd say the same thing.
PHILLIP: What?
WILLIAMS: You've got a Biden influence, exerting on his son, getting millions of dollars and then letting the investigation go.
PHILLIP: So, if I'm hearing --
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: Why is that so hard to connect the dots --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Hold on, hold on. I'm asking you a pretty simple question, okay?
WILLIAMS: And I gave you a very answer.
PHILLIP: Bribery, in this case, the allegation is that Joe Biden accepted money in exchange for official acts, you have to actually prove that he accepted money. Did he accept money or not?
WILLIAMS: I just told you he exerted influence on favor of his son and the whole family benefited from it. We all know that.
(CROSSTALK)
UNKNOWN: -- You're missing the issue.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: The whole family benefited from it. We don't have to have evidence because everybody just benefited. Okay.
AKERMAN: Why didn't the FBI that was conducting a legitimate investigation of Tom Homan, why didn't that investigation go any further and why did it get buried by the Trump administration? And why don't they release that tape? Why don't they release the Epstein files? They're just hiding --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I'm just curious about why they don't care.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Why don't they care?
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: I'm just here chuckling at the idea that --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I mean, at the very least, maybe we should care.
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: The Trump family -- how the Trump family and the in-laws have benefited from the presidency of Donald Trump, you got a straight face when you say that about Hunter Biden. I mean, that was like -- that was like pocket change in comparison to the money, the billions that have benefited the Trump family.
PHILLIP: Listen, I don't think that anybody is --
(CROSSTALK)
O'LEARY: I want to go back to the garbage bag of cash. I'm intrigued.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I just think that at the end of the day, I don't think that this is about, okay, one okay and one is not. But I do think that it's very clear that the Trump administration was not that interested in whether it was a problem or not.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: And that seems problematic. Yeah.
(CROSSTALK) AKERMAN: It's worse than that. They covered it up. They stopped the investigation. This wasn't an investigation that was started by a bunch of politicians. This was started by internal FBI agents whose job it is to investigate corruption.
NAVARRO: And let's not --
AKERMAN: They weren't focused -- they were not focused on Homan. They were not focused on the Trump administration and they came about it.
PHILLIP: And they actually told -- they told the Trump administration about this investigation before they came into office, so they weren't hiding it. And that seems kind of --
NAVARRO: And let's remember that Joe Biden did not stop the investigation and the indictment of his own son, did not stop DOJ from prosecuting his own son.
(CROSSTALK)
WEST: The corruption in both camps, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. All this end up blind and toothless.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: We are going to leave it at that. Everyone, thank you very much for being here. You've got piles of cash, you can give it to Kevin O'Leary. Next for us, Kamala Harris speaks out in her first interview since criticizing Joe Biden and the Democrats. Hear what she's saying now.
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[22:54:46]
PHILLIP: New tonight, former Vice President Kamala Harris is responding to criticism of her calling Joe Biden reckless for his decision to run again.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS (D) FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: So, when I write this, it's because I realize that I have and had a certain responsibility that I should have followed through on.
[22:55:10]
Which is, and so when I talk about the recklessness, as much as anything I'm talking about myself. Where my head was at, at the time is that it would be completely, it would come off as being completely self-serving.
RACHEL MADDOW, "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" HOST: If you said to President Biden that you did not think he should run again.
HARRIS: Yeah, or even that he should question whether it's a good idea.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Her new book about the failed presidential run is out this week and we'll be back in a moment.
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[23:00:17]
PHILLIP: Thank you for watching "NewsNight". You can catch me anytime on your favorite social media -- X, Instagram and TikTok. "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
