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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Declares End To Gaza War In Historic Ceasefire Deal; Trump Says, This Is The Historic Dawn Of A New Middle East; Wall Street Journal Reports, Trump Privately Shocked At Lack Of Resistance In Term; Mamdani And James Join Forces; Republicans Proud Of Trump's Iron Fist; Several Airports Refuse To Play A Video Of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem At TSA Security Line. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired October 13, 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, history in the making.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: This is the historic dawn of a new Middle East.
PHILLIP: Can President Trump translate success overseas back here at home?
Plus --
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): We're barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history.
PHILLIP: -- while neither side seems willing to budge, are there signs that Donald Trump is?
Also the path of least resistance, the president is reportedly shocked at how easy his power grabs are, as Barack Obama speaks out against his successor.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: That's not our idea of America.
PHILLIP: And two of MAGA's favorite foils, one indicted the other, a socialist appear together just days after Letitia James is charged.
LETITIA JAMES, NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL: And he, like me, knows what it's like to be attacked.
PHILLIP: Live at the table, Scott Jennings, Cornell West, Caroline Downey, Adam Mockler and Josh Rogin.
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, a truly historic moment in the Middle East. World leaders tonight gathered in Egypt to sign a ceasefire deal in Gaza, a deal that was brokered by President Trump. And with that, all 20 of the living Israeli hostages are home now after more than two years in captivity.
Those are just some of the emotional moments that we saw today, while many Israelis were quick to credit President Trump.
On the other end of this deal was the scene in Gaza after nearly 2,000 Palestinians were released by Israel. 1,700 of them had been held without charges after being detained during the war. 250 were prisoners with most of them convicted for deadly attacks on Israel dating back decades and others convicted of lesser charges.
Still, many of the details of this ceasefire are still pretty unclear. Will it last? Will it be enforced? Will Israel withdraw from Gaza? Will Hamas disarm? And despite all of those questions, Trump marked today as the beginning of lasting peace in the region.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: This is the historic dawn of a new Middle East.
Generations from now, this will be remembered as the moment that everything began to change and change very much for the better. Like the USA right now, it will be the golden age of Israel and the golden age of the Middle East.
This took 3,000 years to get to this point. Can you believe it? And it's going to hold up too. It's going to hold up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And while it's not clear whether the 3,000 years of conflict is really over today, I think it is clear that what Trump was able to do is perhaps the best example of his deal-making style. He was able to bring the parties to the table. He gave the Arab nations the assurances that they need to come to the table. And more importantly, perhaps he pressured Netanyahu by saying essentially, take what you've gotten so far in terms of the military gains and sue for peace.
JOSH ROGIN, LEAD GLOBAL SECURITY ANALYST, THE WASHINGTON POST INTELLIGENCE: Yes. I mean, it's very rare these days that we can all agree that today was a great day for the Israelis, for the Palestinians who are no longer getting bombed every day for the president who achieved this victory. And that's good. We don't have to con condition that. We don't have to qualify that. We can just celebrate that, that these families got their hostages, their family members back as hostages and that the Palestinians can live without fear of getting bombed every day.
Tomorrow, we're going to have to look at what happens next. And I don't think anyone knows. I don't think the Trump 20-point plan is liable to go off as it's written.
[22:05:02]
I don't think the people in the region know. I don't think the Palestinians have assurity that they'll be able to live in peace of security. I don't think the Israelis have assurity that they'll be able to live without the threat of Hamas threatening them.
Today, we can just celebrate. But tomorrow there's a lot of hard work to be done. And I don't think that we can say that this is a pivotal point in Middle East history. What we can say, it was a good day because today the guns went silent. And that's a very good day especially this day and age.
PHILLIP: So, Dr. West, I mean, do you think that -- you know, there's been some back and forth about credit and look, everybody knows Trump likes credit, but is it fair in your mind for more people on the left to actually give him credit for this, to acknowledge that perhaps he was the difference maker in this particular deal?
DR. CORNEL WEST (I), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I look at it from the vantage point of any time there's tears of joy of people having their loved ones return. It could be the Palestinians themselves with 2,000 incarcerated ones returning. It could be the 20 of Israeli. Each one of those tears, Israeli or Palestinian, are precious. That's very important.
I give Trump credit for stopping the war and stopping the genocide. But the problem is, you see, is that Matthew 5:9 says, blessed all the peacemakers. Peacemakers are justice seekers. I'm not convinced that Trump is a justice seeker. He has stopped the war, he stopped the genocide. That's a positive thing, but you can't seek justice unless you look at the world from a vantage point of those who themselves are under occupation. And as long as there's occupation, there's going to be Hamas or Hamas-like resistance. Because every history that we know of people who are under occupation, be they Jews in Poland, or be they Palestinians in Gaza, or be the indigenous people in this country, or black peoples under slavery, there's going to be resistance.
And so the question is, can Brother Trump follow through and be a justice seeker? But, you know, I think --
PHILLIP: Well, we'll see. I mean, I think that's the point that you're making.
WEST: I mean, the gangster approach, the levities, he is going to be much more tied to Netanyahu, who himself has to be accountable for war crimes himself.
PHILLIP: You say you think that he's inclined to not --
WEST: That's my (INAUDIBLE). We shall see. I'm not going to trump Trump. I'm not going to just foreclose his possibilities, but I'm not holding my breath.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. I think Josh is right. We don't know what's going to happen next. I mean, you said the guns were silent. I wish that were totally true. Hamas is going around and executing some Palestinians right now, torturing them in the streets, and apparently they plan to execute more tomorrow. I mean, these are bad people.
ROGIN: I totally agree.
JENNINGS: The idea that they're going to de-radicalize or willingly give up their arms, I'm skeptical of. So, I worry for the Palestinians actually because of what Hamas is now doing to them in inside of Gaza.
But, you know, I've been wearing this pin for two straight years waiting for these hostages to come home, and I've been waiting to take it off, and I'm going to take it off tonight because the 20 people came out, and I met some of the families earlier this year and I've been following their stories quite closely. And I'm going to replace it with an American pen, American flag pen, because, in my opinion, this was a huge victory for the American people led by our president. But it was only through the power and the force of will of the president of the United States that 20 people returned to their families, that we have the beginnings of the possibility of a peaceful era in the Middle East, and that maybe a future can be had by millions upon millions of people in a place where it's sometimes hard to visualize a future.
So, I couldn't be prouder to be an American tonight because without the United States and without our president, this doesn't happen.
WEST: But, Brother Scott, are you concerned about the Palestinians? Can you take that off of the Palestinians and all of their suffering?
JENNINGS: Well, I'm concerned about what's happening to them right now. They're being shot in the street by Hamas.
WEST: Well, they're under occupation. And they just had 20,000 babies killed in 23 months. I mean, do you believe that a hostage on the -- by Palestinians has the same value as a Palestinian incarcerated? I just ask that question.
JENNINGS: I don't regard some of the people that were in prison in Israel to be hostages. These were terrorists that we had to let go in order to get these 20 people back. The 20 living hostages did nothing wrong. Many, as Abby pointed out in her monologue, of the people the Palestinians wanted released are absolute terrorists who killed many, many people.
WEST: The majority have no trial and have had no due process.
JENNINGS: But these 20 people did nothing. The people taken on October the 7th were purely innocent.
PHILLIP: Let me just --
ROGIN: 99 percent of the -- 2 million Palestinians in Gaza are totally innocent and they've been suffering for two years too. And they need humanitarian aid.
[22:10:00] They need medical aid.
JENNINGS: I think they've been suffering for longer than that under Hamas.
ROGIN: But that now they should be able to eat, they should be able to live lives of dignity and prosperity.
PHILLIP: Let me raise one interesting note here. This was a New York Times op-ed that noted that Trump is more flexible on the foreign stage than he is back home, where he is much more unpopular, it seems. It's only in domestic politics that he's been unable to consistently execute the pivot from insulting rivals on social media one day to making important bargains with them the next. And despite all the America first talk, it is only in domestic politics that he's been a true unilateralist, exploring the frontiers of executive power in ways that a future president could reverse as opposed to a situation like the Gaza deal, where the hopes for its durability rest on a Pan-Arab commitment, not just American power. Foreign policy is for grand achievements and the pursuit of the Nobel Prizes. The domestic front is where he hopes to get revenge for years of investigations and prosecutions.
It's an important question about Trump and his style, right? Because I think that it is important to credit him for coming to the table on this deal, but it is curious why he seems unwilling to do that on a whole host of domestic issues, immigration, the shutdown, all kinds of policy priorities that he has here at home.
ADAM MOCKLER, COMMENTATOR, MEIDASTOUCH NETWORK: Trump really values being seen as a peacemaker and credit where credit is due. This ceasefire was amazing to see. I was tearing up at all of the videos of hostages being reunited with their families. I also think it's important to be very accurate about how we're reporting this. The peace deal that has been proposed has not been signed. The peace deal that Israel agrees to, the 20-point peace plan, Hamas is very likely to agree to for a few reasons. First of all, it necessitates the dismantling of all of their military arms. It doesn't seem like they're going down that direction, even though they should. It also necessitates them never returning to power as governance over civilians, and it doesn't seem like they're headed that way either.
So, I just think that Hamas has spent the past 24 hours executing people who dissent, people who are pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian Authority. I think we need to spend more time talking about phase two and the actual peace deal rather than some Nobel Peace Prize when that hasn't even been achieved yet.
CAROLINE DOWNEY, STAFF WRITER, NATIONAL REVIEW: To your actual question, though, Abby, between his foreign policy approach and his domestic policy approach, I don't actually think they're that inconsistent at all. Because when you think about how he approaches domestic policy, especially his election, it was coalition building. He brought together all these disparate factions that seemingly could have never come together. The RFK Jr., make America healthy again. That kind of emerged out of nowhere. Apply that to the foreign policy space. He's bringing in those Arab neighbors in a way that his predecessors could not. He wrangled them together and he said, we're going to stand by Israel. And you guys are sick and tired of this war too. I know you are. You're going to get behind me. You're going to get behind Israel and the Abraham Accords. Maybe we might even expand it. We might even add Saudi Arabia to that mix.
And so you could argue that there's not at all an incompatibility between his styles when it comes to how he, you know, litigates immigration, the campaign --
PHILLIP: I think of the campaign, she's right but definitely not in --
MOCKLER: The way he rules.
ROGIN: I just don't think this foreign policy is consistent at all because, sure, he did coalition building on this, but on the trade war, it's completely unilateral. And on the Russia-Ukraine, it's a completely unilateral policy. So --
MOCKLER: He just realized Russia was a bad guy.
ROGIN: So, it's all over the place. And --
JENNINGS: That's not totally true. I mean, he has strengthened NATO, I mean, getting them to 5 percent on the --
MOCKLER: He bullied Zelenskyy. He's bullied Zelenskyy in the Oval Office too.
DOWNEY: I think we can finally agree now, though, to your point, that it's actually an asset that he's a maverick when it comes to foreign policy because he was an unconventional guy when it came to his deal.
ROGIN: When it breaks right, unpredictability could be fine. But for allies, it's 100 percent bad. And I talk to allies in Asia and Europe all the time, and they're not happy.
DOWNEY: I would actually disagree with that too, because, for example, when it came to the Israeli strike and Qatar and the Hamas leaders, he reprimanded Bibi publicly and I think the --
ROGIN: But Japan can't give him a plane, so they can't get that kind of treatment. Because they're a democracy, so they can't just (INAUDIBLE) Qatari with a plane. So, if you've got a plane, then he can be on your side. If you don't have a plane, you got a tough run.
DOWNEY: And Trump is actually pretty good at gathering (ph).
ROGIN: Corruption is part of game theory --
PHILLIP: One of the things about this particular deal with Trump is that, you know, he was able to recognize that there were diminishing returns to this war. I mean, he very easily could have said to Israel, just keep going until Hamas is eradicated, which nobody knows what that means. But he understood. We got what we could get in on the battlefield. Let's go to diplomacy.
But I think the question that Ross Dafet (ph) is asking here is why not take that approach? Let's just take immigration as an example. The border is closed, right? He has succeeded on that front. Everybody acknowledges that. But rather than taking that win and then saying, okay, now let's remake the immigration system, the actual laws, he's pursued a strategy that is incredibly divisive and is not helping his approval rating.
[22:15:07]
I mean, the way that ICE is conducting itself, the way that his administration is handling that issue, he's not bringing anybody to the table on that issue.
WEST: I think that's true, but I also think one of the continuities of Trump's foreign policy and his domestic policy is he doesn't really have a high regard for constitutional law or rule of law or human rights in any context. So, the relation between means and ends, and this is something Martin King taught us, right, if there's -- you don't have moral means, then whatever in you have is going to be problematic. He has -- he shuts the border down, but he's been violating so many rights of fellow citizens in terms of ICE and sponsoring it. Same is true internationally. When he attacks Iran, that's a violation of national sovereignty. That's a violation of international law.
So, that when it comes to international law, rule of law and Constitution, we --
JENNINGS: Are you still sticking up for Iran's nuclear capacities?
WEST: We're not talking about Iran at all. We're talking about principles. We're talking about --
JENNINGS: You just brought it up.
WEST: Why are you going to reduce me to something like that? We're talking about principles.
JENNINGS: The only reason we were able to --
PHILLIP: Yes, he's talking about international law. And I actually think it's interesting,
WEST: Thank you, Sister Abby. Thank you. Straighten our brother out. Straighten our brother out on this.
PHILLIP: But here's the interesting thing about Trump is that I do think that on the world stage, Trump thinks that there are fewer rules. I mean, international law is a thing in theory, but it's not a thing in his mind.
ROGIN: Yes. He doesn't care about international law. And the thing is that if Ross was right, then this would mean that Trump has a strategy. But I'm telling you, I talked to senior administration officials all the time, there is no strategy, spoiler alert, there's no consistency. And the fact that this worked, which, again, Trump deserves to praise for, should teach Trump that building coalitions is a good thing, but that assumes that he wants to learn that.
JENNINGS: But there was a connection --
ROGIN: And that's not the case.
PHILLIP: Last word, Scott.
JENNINGS: There was a connection between the Iran strike and today. They would never have gotten to this point today if Iran had still been sitting there on the brink of, or having the capacity to launch a nuclear weapon. The only way we got here today was for the head of the terror octopus to be totally cut off, Israel dramatically degraded them. Trump takes out the nuclear facility.
ROGIN: What happens is that Trump decided he could pressure Bibi, and it worked. And everyone's like, well, why didn't you --
(CROSSTALKS)
JENNINGS: He also brought Arab states to the table.
ROGIN: I'm saying that's a separate issue.
JENNINGS: I don't know.
DOWNEY: No, it's not. That's the restoration of peace, strength, doctrine. And that's why Trump --
ROGIN: I get that argument. All I'm saying is what happened this week is that he pressured Bibi and it worked. And if Biden had done that a year ago, it might've worked a year ago. So, credit to Trump for realizing that America actually has the power to pressure both the Arab countries and Israel to do things that are in their shared interest. And that's a good thing. But it has nothing to do with the bombing of Iran, which I agree with Dr. West.
WEST: If you rationalize the moral means --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: We got to leave that conversation there.
JENNINGS: Iran lobby.
WEST: Don't reduce us to that. That's moral issue, Scott.
PHILLIP: Next for us, back here at home, Trump is reportedly shocked at how little resistance he is getting while Barack Obama is schooling institutions for bowing to him.
Plus, in case you forgot, the government is still closed tonight, believe it or not, and the speaker has a grim prediction.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: We're barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, Donald Trump is reportedly shocked at how little resistance he's getting in his second term. The Wall Street Journal reports that the president feels emboldened while top advisers joke that he's ruling lawmakers with an iron fist. In fact, longtime ally Steve Bannon is likening Congress to the Russian assembly whose purpose under Vladimir Putin is largely ceremonial.
Now, Barack Obama agrees. The former president is scolding businesses and universities for not standing up to Trump and for criticizing his values.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: We have blown through, just in the last six months, a whole range of not simply assumptions, but rules and laws and practices that were put in place to ensure that, you know, nobody's above the law and that we don't use the federal government to simply reward our friends and punish our enemies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, I want to start with the Trump part of this, which is what Bannon notes in this piece, which is essentially that he's treating Congress just as like, you know, a ceremonial thing that's there to just like sign off on his policies, and that is kind of how Congress is behaving in this moment. So, I'm not surprised, I guess, I don't know if you are, that Trump feels like he can kind of do whatever he wants in this moment.
DOWNEY: So, I agree that Congress needs to rediscover its agency and actually start acting like Congress, start legislating, end the shutdown, all of that jazz. But I think it would be really silly to accuse Trump of being, again, this like unilateral executive when under the Biden administration, the Obama administrations, they maximize their mandate fully.
[22:25:00]
We remember Obamacare was the hallmark achievement of Obama's term. We forget how extremely controversial, divisive that was at the time.
PHILLIP: That was passed with a super majority in Congress.
DOWNEY: But the point is that he steam -- he pushed it through.
PHILLIP: That was legislative accomplishments that was passed with -- they needed 60 votes to get that done and they got it done in 60 votes.
DOWNEY: Biden --
PHILLIP: I don't think there's anything that they've gotten 60 votes.
MOCKLER: Trump was ruling the executive order.
DOWNEY: If you want to talk about rule by executive order, Biden issued a ton of --
MOCKLER: Donald Trump on his first day issued a historic amount, and since then, he has been subverting Congress. He appointed Elon Musk in a special position, and it seems like they were subverting the power of the purse the entire time.
At the end of the day, Congress has been a stomping -- Donald Trump has been stomping on them, not even paying attention to them. He has absolutely been consolidating power by appointing loyalists into key positions across agencies. And then those agencies -- I mean --
JENNINGS: The president of the United States appointed people who support his agenda to the federal government.
MOCKLER: Are you telling me that you're okay with Donald Trump asking Pam Bondi directly -- it was supposed to be a D.M., and he accidentally posted it. Don't just come on that.
JENNINGS: All presidents appoint their supporters and the people who support their agenda.
MOCKLER: Do they ask their supporters to indict three people and two of those --
(CROSSTALKS)
JENNINGS: They're members of Congress in their party to pass their agenda.
MOCKLER: This is dishonest.
JENNINGS: Whether if you have the party of your -- if your party is in charge in Congress, they look to the president to set the agenda for the party. After all in the elections, people who turn out to vote are typically voting.
MOCKLER: So, Biden never recognized his DOJ, and that's what you're saying? Biden never asked --
JENNINGS: No, he absolutely did.
MOCKLER: When did he ask Merrick Garland?
DOWNEY: You want to talk about lawfare --
MOCKLER: When did he ask Merrick Garland to go after someone? Trump sent a D.M. to Pam Bondi. This is unprecedented. DOWNEY: The Merrick Garland who sent the parental rights memo that basically demonized parents that protested at school board meeting?
MOCKLER: I'm going to ask you a simple question. When did Biden ask him to do that?
DOWNEY: Garland collaborated with Biden to send that memo --
MOCKLER: When did Biden directly ask him to do that?
DOWNEY: Weaponizing the FBI and law enforcement to --
PHILLIP: Biden -- Garland collaborated with Biden?
DOWNEY: With the Biden administration, yes.
PHILLIP: Okay.
MOCKLER: That was their policy.
JENNINGS: I mean, it was the administration's policy.
PHILLIP: I think that Adam's question, and it's a question, I guess, we -- apparently this comes up on the show every other day, is where is the evidence that that was directed by the White House? Where's the evidence that it was directed? And I'm going to broaden it, like not just the president, because you could argue that if you're going to compare apples to apples, the direction needs to come from the president, but from the White House. Where's the evidence of that?
JENNINGS: Where's the evidence they disagreed with it? Is this not his administration policy?
MOCKLER: Disagreeing with it is not a crime.
PHILLIP: That's a totally different --
JENNINGS: Is it not his not policy? Was it not his administration's policy?
PHILLIP: Where is the evidence that it was --
JENNINGS: Where is the evidence that he wasn't happy with his own administration's policy?
PHILLIP: Hold on a second, Scott. I actually think that's a really important point. Because whether it is agreement or disagreement, both of those things would be involving themselves in what's going on at DOJ in a way that most presidents don't and that Donald Trump is. So, whether or not they said do this or don't do that, both of those things would actually be off limits in a world in which DOJ is allowed to pursue -- in which world in which DOJ's allowed to pursue the rule of law.
JENNINGS: If Biden was mad about Merrick Garland going after ordinary parents, he could have put a stop to it. PHILLIP: But, Scott, do you think that the president should be engaged one way or another, saying affirmatively or saying negatively what about what the DOJ is doing?
JENNINGS: I have told you many times, I think it's fine for the president to express opinions about how his administration operates.
MOCKLER: He directly asks --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: I think that this is super important because Adam's making an important point. Trump said, you're not doing your job. In fact, he said something very similar just the other day. I mean, you are not doing your job. He called out three names. Two of those people have been indicted. So, that's more than just expressing an opinion. That was an order.
JENNINGS: It is extraordinarily naive to believe that the Biden department operated as some disembodied floating --
(CROSSTALKS)
DOWNEY: Those are his departments.
PHILLIP: All right, go ahead.
WEST: The problem is, especially, Brother Scott, though, man, if one side is doing something immoral, all you're going to do is point out what the other side did that was immoral?
JENNINGS: What is immoral?
MOCKLER: There's no indication there.
JENNINGS: Tell me what's immoral?
WEST: The violation of constitutional separation of sites and spheres, that if one party is weaponizing, you say the other party is weaponizing.
MOCKLER: I love watching the conservatives on this panel.
WEST: So, we never get beyond any kind of immorality, we just rationalize more immorality, concentration of power, and you end up (INAUDIBLE) sort of fascism. That's how you end up with fascism, no morality, whatsoever.
PHILLIP: You guys have proof of your allegations of weaponization, which I've heard none so far at this table.
DOWNEY: 2013.
WEST: Even if you a weaponization of both, So what? They're both wrong. They're both wrong. PHILLIP: Right, exactly. So, even if you do, you know, wouldn't the correct response be to restore actual rule of law in those institutions as opposed to further weaponizing them?
[22:30:09]
WEST: Absolutely. Absolutely.
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: Are you sure that the people who've been indicted aren't guilty?
(CROSSTALK)
MOCKLER: That's not the point. That is not the point.
PHILLIP: I didn't make any statements about their guilt or innocence.
JENNINGS: But you seem to think it's violation of the rule of law for any jury to have indicted.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: No, Scott, that's not what we're talking about here. We are talking about Donald Trump's role in directing his attorney general about who to prosecute. That's what we're talking about.
JENNINGS: Who then has to go to a grand jury and present evidence and go through the process like everybody else in this country.
MOCKLER: But the first prosecutor Erik Siebert didn't want to do it so Trump forced him out.
JENNINGS: Okay.
MOCKLER: I love watching the conservatives. Listen.
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: The grand jury meant they bought charges.
MOCKLER: I love watching the conservatives on this panel dodge and weep with zero evidence whatsoever of any weaponization. I've asked you this multiple times and you have no evidence. Yet Donald Trump tried to send Pam Bondi a D.M. This should be embarrassing that you are defending the President of the United States as he is directly asking --
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: I'm defending a process of great jurors that existed in this country for a very long time.
(CROSSTALK) PHILLIP: I want to -- I want to just raise this one with you because one of the other things here in this journal story is that the business leaders are saying that they are afraid to speak out about Trump. "I don't think anyone wants to suffer the consequences of any public comment whatsoever that might be interpreted as an excuse to go after them." This is the chief executive of the Partnership for New York City, a business group here in New York. The vibe is Trump is so powerful.
ROGIN: Yeah.
PHILLIP: He's using the White House as a weapon. Business leaders are like, we'd rather just stay out of the fray.
ROGIN: Yeah, not just business leaders. Academic institutions, law firms, think tanks, non-governmental organizations, you name it. The Trump administration has taken an unprecedented policy of extorting these institutions to toe the Trump political line and that is the stuff of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes like Hungary or Saudi Arabia or Turkey, or Russia or China. And that is unprecedented in the American system.
Now, what President Obama was talking about on that Marc Maron podcast was that the institutions that fight back sometimes win. And so, they should try to fight back, although there are big risks in fighting back.
But I face this every day in my reporting for "The Washington Post", that institutions, whether it's an NGO, a human rights organization, whoever is facing the threat of extortion from the Trump administration, they don't want to poke their head up because it's very risky.
They could lose their funding. There are people who could get fired. The people that they're supporting could die, all right? And so, this is very high-stakes stuff and the Trump administration is playing a very cruel game where they threaten the success or even the lives of the people in your organization, their careers, for sure, if you don't toe the political line.
And that is not the way that America has operated for the first 200 some odd years that we were a country. And the question is, is that the new normal? Are we just going to have a system where Trump tells Harvard or Columbia or the law firm of Johnson and Johnson --
PHILLIP: Right.
ROGIN: -- or the human rights watch, that now you agree with everything I say or you lose all your funding, and I ruin your organization.
(CROSSTALK)
DOWNEY: But those are -- but those are taxpayer --
(CROSSTALK) ROGIN: I say that's not good. I say that's a bad thing.
PHILLIP: Yeah.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: We got to go.
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: Didn't we have an election last year?
(CROSSTALK)
MOCKLER: That doesn't justify --
(CROSSTALK)
WEST: That doesn't rationalize--
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: Are we going to add one next year? And we're going to add one the next year?
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: I think the democracy is functioning. We're having a free and fair election.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: All right.
(CROSSTALK)
WEST: You're rationalizing it again. Hitler could have had the majority. So what -- so what is wrong?
(CROSSTALK)
ROGIN: -- not for authoritarianism. There's a difference.
MOCKLER: We've also elected democratically.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Okay. We're not going to make that comparison at the table.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: All right. We are not going to do that at the table tonight.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Next for us, as the shutdown rages on, the Republican Speaker of the House says that faith in government is at an all-time low but his party is in charge of the government. We'll discuss that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:38:35]
PHILLIP: The standoff over how to reopen the government is now in its third week and Speaker Mike Johnson is warning that things are going to get uglier if Democrats don't cave.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R) HOUSE SPEAKER: We're barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history unless Democrats dropped their partisan demands and passed a clean, no strings attached budget to reopen the government and pay our federal workers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, caught in the middle of all of this are more than one million federal workers either furloughed or working without pay. But Johnson maintains that there's just one side to blame.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: I know the Democrats hate to cut spending in any way, in any form. But we are for that because we have to make government for people. If you look at the polling, the people's faith in the federal government is at an all-time low. Why? Because they don't see that it's being done well.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I'm not sure he remembers, but Republicans are in charge of all three branches of government, more or less. And certainly the House, the Senate, and the White House are all in their command. So, who's really to blame?
JENNINGS: Yeah.
ROGIN: I've been doing a lot of reporting this over the last two weeks and what I found is that this shutdown is different than all of the other shutdowns that all of us have seen, for two reasons.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: It feels like it, certainly.
ROGIN: One is because it comes after several rounds of layoffs and rifts and DOGE. So the people inside the federal government have already been traumatized.
[22:40:02]
They're already under siege. Hundreds of thousands have already been fired. And so, now these actual institutions are kind of breaking down. And that's why we're going to see a lot of public services that people depend on really erode over the next couple of weeks. It's going to be really shocking.
And the second thing is that both sides think they're winning. The Democrats think they're winning. The Republicans think they're winning. Trump thinks they're winning. Nobody has an incentive to back down. And that means we're going to be in this for a while. And the American people are happy to blame both sides.
And I blame both sides, too. I think both sides are at fault. But the problem is that once the government is broken, it's a lot harder to fix it. And if you're trying to break it, well, then it's even harder to fix it. So, I think we're --
PHILLIP: The other part of this is that historically, these other shutdowns, there were many, several during Trump's first term. It was very clear that the American public blamed the party that was holding out for the concessions. But in this case, that's not really what's happening.
I mean, I think if you could generously describe this as a somewhat evenly divided public blaming Trump and Republicans, both equally and Dems in Congress, about the same, but really Trump and Republicans in Congress have slightly more of the blame here, which is not typically how this goes for the party that is trying to reopen the government without making a deal.
DOWNEY: It is a stalemate. I think it's about which party has the most tolerance for political pain at the end of the day, because both are going to suffer in their districts across all of these states. But the fact is that the Democrats turned into a circus, which should have been a simple housekeeping measure, which was extending the Biden levels of spending in a clean C.R., and it was clean. It was very clean.
But instead, they decided to die on the hill of extending, making into perpetuity a COVID era subsidy. Are we in COVID guys? We're no longer during the -- it's not the pandemic anymore, right? So, they wanted to extend that and it wasn't even in the original Obamacare law, which raises the question, is the Democrats' purpose here under Obamacare, it was supposedly under the pretense of affordable healthcare, right?
But I think what Democrats really want is a boondoggle. They want a gravy train of Obamacare to just go on forever with no accountability whatsoever. A lot of premiums for patients haven't even gone down. So, have they really even achieved the affordable healthcare that Obamacare promised? I'm not really so sure about that. And they could end this tomorrow by saying, we actually don't want our grab bag of goods. We don't want the laundry list. We're just going to get the C.R. over the finish line and open the government.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I mean, increasingly, you're hearing Republicans saying we need to fix the healthcare part --
(CROSSTALK)
MOCKLER: Yeah. You said that --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: They recognize it's a problem.
MOCKLER: You said that Democrats are dying on this Hill, but a lot of Republicans are climbing up the same right now. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been outspoken about it. Michael -- Mike Johnson got confronted on C-Span the other day by a Republican. I don't know. I know I'm a lot younger than you so I'm closer to like fifth grade Government 101, but this takes compromise. If you have 53 Republicans and you can't get seven democrats to sign on, that means they're not compromising.
There were 13 C.Rs passed under Biden because they let Republicans in the room and they said listen, you guys can talk to us. We'll talk to you. We'll negotiate. In this case, Democrats are essentially being shut out and Donald Trump is posting A.I. memes of Hakeem Jeffries with a sombrero. So, if you want to about a circus --
(CROSSTALK)
DOWNEY: It's a meme war. They both are.
(CROSSTALK)
MOCKLER: -- from the Democrats. Donald Trump is the president. He should have a --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Let me just -- real quick, Scott. Let me play -- this is Trump in 2019 back when -- he was president, okay? So, he was in the White House and he was the one trying to keep the government shut down until he got his border wall. And here's what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We really have no choice but to build a powerful wall or steel barrier. If we don't get a fair deal from Congress, the government will either shut down on February 15th again, or I will use the powers afforded to me under the laws and the Constitution of the United States to address this emergency.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Wasn't the first time, wasn't the last time that it was Trump and Republicans who were saying we won't open the government until we get what we want in terms of concessions. So, the shoe has been on the other foot.
JENNINGS: Yeah, yeah, you know, I don't know what re-litigating a shutdown from six years ago does for us tonight. I do think this. Both parties, I agree, I think they both think they're winning this in some way. And I interviewed Steve Scalise today on my radio show. He didn't sound like this. He thought it was going to come to an end anytime soon.
Both of them have a pretty strong position. I assume at some point they will wind up negotiating this health care deal. I agree with a lot of what you said about, I mean, this is a COVID era program that Democrats are trying to extend.
[22:45:00]
And it does call into question the status of American health care and the insurance system right now. But at some point, you know, these things typically end in some kind of a negotiation. These subsidies don't expire till the end of the year. It's October. They have plenty of time to deal with this.
PHILLIP: So, why not just come to the table right now? I mean, by the time we get to a negotiation, we'll be in November. I mean, we're almost mid-October at this point.
(CROSSTALK)
WEST: And I think one of the problem is, is that the system is so corrupt that both parties -- and as you know, I don't think highly of either one of these parties at all --
UNKNOWN: Same.
WEST: -- whatsoever. But what happens is first, you had a government shutdown before there was a government shutdown which was the firing of all of those workers, disproportionately black sisters, black women, 200,000 who lost their jobs were fired.
Then you've got a moral meltdown and a spiritual breakdown in the country, which has to do with massive distrust, not just with politicians, but with citizens. It's hard to have conversations with each other. So what happens in such a context?
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Everything is shut down. All right. We'll leave it there for this one. Next for us, newly indicted New York Attorney General Letitia James -- that breaks her silence appearing with Zohran Mamdani here in New York. Hear what she had to say. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:50:55]
PHILLIP: Zohran Mamdani is joining forces with one of Trump's long- time political foes as the race for New York City mayor enters its final stretch. Letitia James rallied alongside the Democratic Socialist in her first public appearance since her federal indictment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LETITIA JAMES, NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL: And he, like me, knows what it's like to be attacked, to be called names, to be threatened, to be harassed. And each and every day he wakes up with this fire in my belly -- in his belly, because he wants to build a better New York. And so I'm with Zohran.
(END OF CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, they're joining forces here in the final stretch of this campaign, Dr. West. Does it make sense to you?
WEST: Yeah, it does. She had endorsed him earlier.
PHILLIP: Yeah.
WEST: They worked together earlier. So, they're just being consistent both in terms of friendship as well as political solidarity. So, it makes a lot of sense to me. But as you noted, our time has come. That's brother Jesse Jackson.
PHILLIP: It very much is, yeah.
WEST: Wait till your book comes out.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Well, yeah. I mean, and look, I think Zohran Mamdani running on -- first of all, it's an anti -- it's a strongly anti-Trump platform, which kind of explains why Letitia James is up there. It helps him a lot to run against Trump. But he's also running on economic populism. And that is also, I think, he's framing it as anti- Trump. But that's working for him very well in this campaign.
MOCKLER: Yeah, I think this stunt in particular is a good example of not only the attention economy, but solidarity. So, number one, he's using Letitia James -- not using, but he's doing a speech with her so that he can grab attention so that people understand what's happening. On a second note, it's solidarity between two people in New York who have been relentlessly attacked by Trump and who will continue to be relentlessly attacked.
I mean, Zohran's attacks from Trump are just beginning. And so is James's trial just beginning. So, I think it's a good move to draw attention to the solidarity of these two New Yorkers.
DOWNEY: But I think it's ironic for her to say he's been attacked just like me when she did campaign on lawfare against Trump and eventually, that led to an attempt to try to bankrupt, to try to imprison, and successful --
(CROSSTALK)
MOCKLER: And went through a grand jury as Scott Jennings said.
JENNINGS: And a court throughout the judgment, didn't it?
MOCKLER: They went through a grand jury.
JENNINGS: And a court throughout the judgment -- and excessive. DOWNEY: Yeah.
PHILLIP: Josh?
ROGIN: I'm not a resident of New York. I leave it to the citizens of New York City to choose their own leader. I live in D.C. where we have taxation without any representation. So, I'd like to just say that we should have a -- free D.C. from federal confines and D.C. statehood now, and I'll leave it to the --
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: We gave you the National Guard. Isn't that enough for you?
WEST: Oh, that's not funny. That's not funny at all.
PHILLIP: Just one note. Letitia James saw record fundraising surge in the first 24 hours after her indictment. She raised more than half a million dollars from 24,000 donors. Trump is supercharging her in this moment with this indictment.
JENNINGS: Sure, look, you know, these are Democrats, we're going to campaign together. You know, one's a socialist, one's indicted, together they -- I mean, sounds like the beginning of a wacky buddy comedy to me, but my anticipation is that Mamdani will win --
WEST: No.
JENNINGS: -- in November, and we'll see what happens to James in court. And I think Trump will continue to use both of them as a political foil. They will continue to do the same thing to him and the world spins on.
WEST: Neither one of them is socialist. Brother Zohran is running on a New Deal liberal project the same way Bernie Sanders did.
JENNINGS: He says it. He literally says it.
(CROSSTALK)
DOWNEY: Yeah. His self-defense --
(CROSSTALK)
WEST: People say all kinds of things about themselves that's not true. You probably say things about yourself that's not true.
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: Never.
WEST: He's running? Oh, no? He's not running on a socialist?
JENNINGS: He says that. It's his own label.
WEST: But so what? He's a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. I'm a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Everybody, every member is not a socialist?
DOWNEY: He would like nationalized industries. He would prefer if we nationalized our industries. So, I think that's the --
(CROSSTALK)
WEST: No, he's not nationalizing any industry in New York City.
(CROSSTALK)
DOWNEY: But he wants it though.
PHILLIP: I have to say, since you brought it up, Donald Trump is actively taking stakes in private industries. That's happening right now. So, I mean, one man's, you know, capitalism is another man's socialism.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: All right, everyone, thank you very much for being here. We'll be back in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:59:38]
PHILLIP: Some U.S. airports are refusing to play a video of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem at the TSA security line. They're blaming Democrats for the government shutdown.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KRISTI NOEM, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government, and because of this many of our operations are impacted.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[23:00:03]
PHILLIP: Among those airports not playing it, Seattle Tacoma Airport, citing the video's political nature, Westchester County Airport, citing similar reasons, and Portland, pointing to the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from engaging in political activity.
And thank you very much for watching "NewsNight". You can catch me anytime on your favorite social media on -- X, Instagram, and TikTok. "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
