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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Thousands of Flights Canceled and Delayed as Shutdown Drags on; Trump Fights Judge's Order for Government to Fully Fund SNAP Benefits; Trump Insists Prices are Down, We Have No Inflation. Trump Says There Is No Inflation; Hegseth Says "FAFO" In His Remarks. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired November 07, 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, shutdown frustration is sky high.
REPORTER: Would you be open to getting a backup ticket?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You got to have backup money. I don't have that.
PHILLIP: SNAP recipients are on the edge. Government workers don't have a paycheck. Are lawmakers any closer to reaching a deal?
Plus, prices are up, layoffs are skyrocketing, consumer confidence hits a three-year low. But a defiant Trump says the Democrats' affordability argument is a con job.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: The reason I don't want to talk about affordability is because everybody knows that it's far less expensive under Trump than it was under Sleepy Joe Biden.
And Rosie the Riveter would like a word. The Labor Department unveils a new campaign celebrating the American worker, at least the white male American worker. What about the other two thirds of the workforce?
Live at the table, Jim Schultz, Nayeera Haq, James Fishback, and Tiffany Cross.
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, and we are back at the test kitchen at the Food Network, our sister company, for Fall Fridays. We're going to catch up with that crowd a little later in the show.
But, first, let's get right to what America is talking about, and it is the breaking news tonight. Chaos at the airports, missed paychecks and uncertainty over food stamps, it is day 38 of the government shut down saga and things just went from bad to worse after the FAA's decision to slash flights at the nation's busiest.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Would you be open to getting a backup ticket?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You had to have backup money. I don't have that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's absurd. I think it's a complete failure of government.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People are really hurting out here, and it's not just the traveling public, but it's affecting the whole economy, and you people are to blame.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Major airlines have already grounded hundreds of planes for tomorrow after cuts today triggered thousands of delays in cancelations. Now, in the meantime, millions of Americans are living in limbo as President Trump escalates his fight over food stamps in the courts. He's trying to get out of fully funding those November benefits. And just a short time ago, the Supreme Court let him pause full payments for now, but a temporary pause is still a pause for those who need to feed their families.
So, what are the chances that we'll see a resolution anytime soon? Well, Chuck Schumer says that the ball is now in Republican's court.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Democrats are offering a very simple compromise.
Leader Thune just needs to add a clean one year extension of the ACA tax credits to the C.R. so that we can immediately address rising healthcare costs. That's not a negotiation. It's an extension of current law.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: To which the majority leader responded by saying that is a non-starter.
Senate lawmakers will return to session tomorrow and Trump is urging them to stay in Washington until a deal is reached while the president himself jetted off to his Mar-a-Lago vacation home.
Joining us in our fifth seat at the table is Natasha Sarin. This fight over the food stamps is happening right now, and the court, the Supreme Court basically said, we'll hold off on forcing you to make those payments while the lower court decides. But the optics for the American people is that the Trump administration is fighting all the way to the Supreme Court to not pay food stamps. That seems like a bad narrative, politically speaking. NAYEERA HAQ, ASSISTANT DEAN, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY'S MAXWELL SCHOOL: Let's also get some data out there. Average family of four at the poverty, federal poverty level is $40,000, right? So, you already are working poor to then need this extra government assistance. And what the government has been giving these families comes out to about $6 a day per person. So, this is a drop in the bucket compared to the defense budget, compared to, you know, in the private sector, the trillion dollars a year that Elon Musk is going to make. And it makes a very big difference in American families.
And these programs have changed America, I would say, for the better, given that this is the type of program that got the United States out of the Great Depression, made sure that the excesses of the gilded age didn't stick around, and that's kind of where we're back at right now with these types of events.
PHILLIP: So, the public is saying a pox on both of their houses in terms of the polling, but at the same time, again, they're hearing Trump and the administration saying, we'll figure out funding for all these other priorities, but on food stamps, they are absolutely refusing to find $9 billion, which is a relatively small amount of money in the scope of the budget to fund it?
[22:05:21]
I think both things can be true at the same time. And I wonder if you think that this is a mistake to fight over this one issue on food stamps.
JAMES FISHBACK, CEO, AZORIA: Well, Abby, I think it's a mistake to sit here and say that the food stamp program makes Americans better off. In 2000, there were only 17 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are 42 million of them, 4 million of whom are refugees, are migrants in this country where they have TPS or refugee status. It doesn't matter. I don't think it's a good measure of the economy that more and more Americans rely on the government.
What I think President Trump wants to do is build an economy where everyone can earn a dignified market wage. They don't have to rely on the government to feed their family.
TIFFANY CROSS, AUTHOR, SAY IT LOUDER: But they're not doing that. Can I just say I have personal experience with the SNAP program. People in my immediate family get it. There's a huge misconception that people don't work and they get them. There's also this horrible talking point that we are giving food stamps to people who are here undocumented migrants, which is also not true. Four out of five households who receive food stamp benefits have an older person, someone with a disability or a child.
Now, imagine this, the Supreme Court is saying Trump can pause this. So, if he is winning, who's losing are hungry children? Also, I will tell you, the people in my family who get food stamp benefits, I subsidize, they get such little money. There are all kind of things you can't buy, cleaning products. Think about everything you use on a daily basis if you don't have income. You're saying if people -- they should make a livable wage, they'd be able to buy that. Well, they can't do that.
And if we're looking at inflation where people are spending over $200 more a month on groceries, thanks to his horrible immigration policies, thanks to his tariffs, then how are people supposed to do that? There are college graduates getting these benefits who are going hungry right now who can't feed their children. The only answer --
HAQ: Here's the thing. This is not by accident. This is part of very clearly written out in Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation, cutting summer feeding programs, because apparently feeding hungry children in the summer is not a great idea. That wouldn't boost the economy.
PHILLIP: Let James respond.
FISHBACK: Well, I want to agree with Tiffany 100 percent. I grew up. For a short period of time on the food stamp program as well, so I can sympathize with that.
The truth of the matter is we have to have an honest conversation. We are all for, I think, at this table, a safety net. But the safety net cannot become a safety couch, a safety jacuzzi, and then a safety Temperpudic.
HAQ: These are the talking points from the Reagan administration of that safety --
CROSS: Who is living in a safety jacuzzi right now if they're hungry?
PHILLIP: I mean, James I take that that is an argument that -- a conversation that needs to be had. But in the moment, the conversation actually that we're having is not about whether food stamps should exist. It's about whether people who are currently on the program should get the funding that -- for food that they're allotted under the law. So, that other conversation is for another time. The question is right now, you know, people are on this program, as Tiffany said the statistic bear out children, elderly people and people with disabilities are predominantly the recipients of food stamps.
The president is making a statement himself that he does not think that this should be funded. And I wonder on the -- not just from a political perspective, but just from a human perspective, when that message gets out to regular people who are Americans, many of them his own voters, that just seems really callous.
JIM SCHULTZ, CNN LEGAL CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, I think there's probably a bunch of SNAP recipients that were voters for Donald Trump. My home state of Pennsylvania saw Josh Shapiro put another $5 million into the budget, thrown another $5 million up to cover this stopgap measure. It's really legal issue. I mean, you just saw Justice Jackson come and stay that order from the lower court so that the circuit court could evaluate it.
And it really is -- you know, can a court compel the federal government to go to the mattresses, if you will, when the money hasn't been appropriated yet? So, it's really a fundamental question about appropriations versus -- the fundamental question about appropriations versus this whole policy debate that we're having at the stable about SNAP benefits.
NATASHA SARIN, PRESIDENT, THE BUDGET LAB AT YALE: I just want to say that this is the first disruption of SNAP benefits in the program's 61-year history. And so as like a human --
SCHULTZ: Also the longest shutdown in government history.
SARIN: Many of us are parents of young children, the idea that parents are going to sleep tonight not knowing whether or not they're going to be able to feed their children tomorrow, and maybe making decisions not to eat their own meals in order to do that, that's a horrible thing to be happening in the richest country in the world. And I just think we should just all acknowledge that.
SCHULTZ: So, pass a clean bill and I think the problem is solved.
SARIN: As an economist, what I can tell you is that these consequences of the longest government shutdown in history are going to reverberate on these kids who are going to learn less well school because they're not being able to get nutrition that they need and whose parents are going to be under distress of not being able to provide for them.
So, I just think we should grapple with what some of the choices that policymakers are making from the perspective of their likely economic impact, which we're already starting to see.
[22:10:03]
SCHULTZ: So, the Democrats just stop holding the government hostage?
CROSS: It's not. No. There is a deal on the table right now that Republicans can accept. They won't do that because they don't want to extend one year of subsidies to make sure that people have affordable healthcare.
So, you are going to have people who are deciding, do I spend $500 to go to a doctor, or do I buy groceries? And those same people are the people you guys are saying are living in a safety Jacuzzi. And some of these people are your voters. More than half the people in the marketplace live in Republican Congressional districts.
A part of me feels like you're getting the government you voted for, but the human in me can see the humanity in these people more so than I've seen other people be able to extend and say they don't deserve to be without healthcare, and that's a serious issue.
FISHBACK: Agreed. Tiffany, but let's just be completely honest. For everyone at home listening right now, you deserve to know the full context. The full context is this. These Obamacare subsidies were created by Joe Biden in March of 2021 with the American Rescue Plan. The Democrats pushed them through on an emergency basis. And as we know, Jim, there's nothing more permanent in Washington, D.C., than a temporary emergency measure. This is not about affordable healthcare. This is about dealing with the pandemic at the time.
(CROSSTALKS)
HAQ: You had Marjorie Taylor Greene acknowledging that Republicans have lost the narrative on talking about healthcare. Across the board, the number one issue that undecided voters, all voters of all stripes care about is healthcare. And I will say, as someone who served in the Obama administration, tell you that Obamacare increased accessibility. It did not increase affordability. So, there is a problem with the program.
(CROSSTALKS)
HAQ: You have people now, you have a Congress in place that a majority Republican Congress that has decided to make the message, choose between healthcare and hunger. That is a terrible mesesage.
PHILLIP: One second. The American people, we've asked them in some polling that's been ongoing. It's pretty much evenly split about whether or not they think that the subsidies should be extended, and that seems about where the country is on this. There are a lot of Americans who do want them to be extended.
But when you compare it to 2019 when Donald Trump and Republicans shut down the government over a border wall, 71 percent of Americans at that time said that the government should be reopened without funding the border wall. So, in other words, this healthcare issue is a lot more potent than the border wall issue, which, by the way, Republicans shut the government down over this issue, and it's because Americans are actually facing extreme increases in their healthcare costs.
And we can argue about whether Obamacare is good or bad, but that is just a fact that everybody acknowledges and Republicans acknowledge will need to be dealt with. I don't know that it works to say to the American people, we need to be -- we need to win on the principle of this, when at the end of the day, you all also understand that you're probably going to have to fix this problem one way or another.
SCHULTZ: 100 percent have to fix the problem, increases up to 80 percent on premiums, that needs to be fixed. And there's no question that this was meant to be a temporary measure. Democrats couldn't get the votes to make it a permanent measure when they passed the first time. But now it's in both of their courts. The Democrats are holding this hostage over this one particular issue that Republicans have come to the table and said, we'll fix it, but pass a clean bill and we'll fix it.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: But some of the issue is a lack of trust because this is an administration that has just taken money from the budget and decided to slash it after Congress has appropriated it. So, if you're a Democrat, it is kind of hard to say --
SCHULTZ: But look where they started. It was a total money grab from the beginning. Now, we're all the way down to just this one single issue of extending it for a year so that we can have this fight a year from now and figure it out. (CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Nobody has clean hands in this, okay? Republicans have passed tax cuts that are temporary. And then when they're set to expire, they have then said that we can't possibly let them expire because then people would experience cost increase, taxes increases. Nobody's hands are clean here on that, in that sort of budgetary --
FISHBACK: Of course. But think of it this way. Growing up, my mom always cooked dinner. My mom and dad would fight about healthcare all the time, about what plan we were going to have for our family. If we came home one night and my mom said, I'm not going to cook dinner, I'm not going to feed the kids tonight until we can agree on a healthcare plan for our family for the next year, would that be okay? Of course not. So, listen --
PHILLIP: But you'd have to ask your mom.
(CROSSTALKS)
FISHBACK: No. But, Tiffany, with all due respect, just hold on a second, John Thune, who I'm no fan of, I'm no fan of this country club Republican-style that's rejected the middle class for far too long, what John Thune has said is reopen the government and then let's have a --
PHILLIP: But, James, were you here in 2019 --
FISHBACK: I was alive, yes.
PHILLIP: -- when Republicans shut down the government and said, we are not going to -- when the president actually said, I am not going to fund the government until I get my border wall?
[22:15:05]
Were you here when that happened?
FISHBACK: I was.
PHILLIP: So, then do you remember that this actual tactic of shutting down the government in order to get a negotiation on an ancillary issue is one that has been with us for some time?
FISHBACK: I agree.
PHILLIP: And that Republicans have repeatedly used to shut down the government during a Republican administration?
FISHBACK: I am not going to be a defender of the do nothing Republicans or the know nothing Democrats. Congress has a record low approval rating for a reason. Americans at home are doing all the right things. They're working harder than ever and they can't get by. But the truth is, the government shut is the responsibility of Democrats at this moment in time.
CROSS: How? There's a deal on the table.
FISHBACK: The deal on the table --
PHILLIP: Let me let you get a word in and then we're going to go to break.
SARIN: As an advocate of doing things for the working class, I'm just kind of stupefied about how thus far this evening you have advocated in favor of not providing food benefits to hungry children, allowing premiums to go up to double for many Americans in this country.
FISHBACK: Double compared to when?
SARIN: Double compared to the life that they are experiencing right now. And, honestly, this is --
FISHBACK: Double compared to the emergency --
SARIN: Can I just say one thing, James? This is a president that just won an election in 2024 because the American people were frustrated that the cost that they were experiencing every day when they went to the grocery store were too high. The idea that, in response to that election, you want to enact the most inflationary policies in our lifetimes with these tariffs --
FISHBACK: Joe Biden, inflation was 5.9 percent over those four years. Since President Trump took office, headlines --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: All right. We're going to hit pause on this because we have a lot more to discuss on the economy. The president says any talk of economic trouble is a con job by the Democrats, but the majority of Americans say that they are seeing prices going up. We're going to debate the hotly contested affordability question, next.
Plus, the defense secretary is ramping up weapons production to war footing, but at the same time, he's showing some career brass the door. We'll debate that strategy, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, affordability seems to be the buzzword of the moment. Democrats have been riding high on their sweeping election wins this week, which were largely a referendum on the economy and, of course, affordability. But President Trump thinks that they were all running on a lie.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: If you look at affordability, which they campaigned on, they lied because they talked about, oh, prices are up. No. Prices are down under the Trump administration and they're down substantially. We did a great job on groceries and affordability. The only problem is the fake news. You people don't want to report it.
They said, oh, I don't want to talk about affordability. The reason I don't want to talk about affordability is because everybody knows that it's far less expensive under Trump than it was under Sleepy Joe Biden.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: But the numbers don't lie. Grocery prices are not lower. They are up since August and up since Trump's inauguration. And compared to last September, cost of food has increased 2.7 percent.
How about specific groceries, like coffee, which many people are just saying, meat, baked goods, fruits, vegetables, they all cost more. Beef is the only item that Trump has admitted to getting more expensive. And today, he announced that he is asking the Justice Department to investigate meat packing companies for, quote, illicit collusion, price fixing and price manipulation.
Maybe Trump is thinking in downplaying these grocery prices is that Americans aren't feeling it. Well, that is not true either. A recent poll found 62 percent of Americans say that the cost of food is going up while only 7 percent say that it is going down.
And, Natasha, I want you to break this down for me because this week -- first of all, there are two things happening. We've been in a government shutdown, so we don't have actually a great employment picture in the country, but what we do know is this. 153,000 jobs were cut last month. This is according to a report by Challenger, Gray and Christmas, but that's 175 percent increase compared to last year, a million layoffs so far this year, which is a 65 percent increase year- over-year.
So, it feels like there are things happening in the economy that are not positive and people are starting to whisper about belt tightening. What are you seeing?
SARIN: So, there are two pieces of this that are really quite challenging. One, you're already getting at Abby, which is, and it's not just with respect to the labor market, with respect to inflation as well, we do not have private sector data that allows us to form a full picture of what's happening in the economy as a result of this shutdown. And so what we can do is rely on the folks at Challenger who are putting out data that says that we are in the worst place from a picture of announced layoffs at this point that we have been in the last two decades. And we are -- if you look at the data that we were getting before the shutdown, we knew that the labor market was starting to cool. Youth unemployment was at its highest rate in the last decade.
That's actually not all together that surprising. It's kind of a result of the policies that this administration has pursued because my colleagues and I at The Budget Lab at Yale, we've been estimating the impact of these tariffs that this administration has put forth. We're at about an 18 percent tariff rate. That means the economy's going to shrink by about 0.4 percent, orices are going to go up by about $2,000, and we're going to lose about 400,000 jobs, and that all is what we are starting to see.
HAQ: And the irony about all of this is that this is exactly what the Trump administration and frankly many of those who wanted to see Biden step aside were arguing that the argument of, oh, all the numbers are great, everything looks good, nothing to see here, you're fine, you're fine, didn't work.
[22:25:04]
You can't tell people to deny their own reality by citing some fake numbers.
PHILLIP: But even on top of that, okay, so Trump today and he's accusing, you know, these beef meat packing companies of collusion. I remember a year ago when Kamala Harris was campaigning on price gouging. Here's what she was saying at the time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Four big corporations control more than half of the markets in beef, pork, and poultry.
Without meaningful competition, farmers and ranchers don't get to choose who they sell to, or to put another way, our farmers and ranchers have to pay whatever these four big companies say they have to pay by and large. But that's only half of it. These companies can use their position as middlemen to overcharge grocery stores and ultimately families.
KAMALA HARRIS, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: I will work to pass the first ever federal ban on price gauging on food.
I'm not going to apologize for the fact that we need to actually deal with accountability when these -- not all, in fact, most don't, but when companies are taking advantage of the desperation and the need of the American people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Again, Republicans ridiculed her for that and Trump is using a very similar playbook. And I don't want to get into the --
SCHULTZ: This is between price controls and price gouging and --
PHILLIP: But what I'm talking about is what Trump is saying, which is what Biden was saying, which is that there are a few companies that can set the prices and they set the prices for the entire marketplace, essentially.
Look, you can argue about the good or the bad of that, but the bottom line is that that entire strategy of just dealing with sort of individual industries and not dealing with the broader consumer sentiment is one of the reasons that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris lost the last election, and Trump is doing the same thing now.
SCHULTZ: No, I don't agree with any of that, right? There shouldn't be price controls, shouldn't be taken on sing singular industries, but I do believe that, look, we've had 3.8 percent GDP growth. We've had, you know, inflation -- the rate of inflation's been cut virtually in half since the Biden administration versus the Trump administration. We've seen that cut in half. So, this --
PHILLIP: But you've acknowledged that inflation has (INAUDIBLE) since Trump came into office, correct?
SCHULTZ: We've taken snapshots of -- you know, snapshots in time of where the economy is. And then, you know, what happens is there is hysteria over some of these things, right? And you get -- you have folks that are overreacting to some of these things and a reaction to it, you know, that, quite frankly, isn't justified. And, you know, when -- and we have a shutdown right now that's impacting the hearts and minds of everybody in this country.
PHILLIP: What do you think?
SCHULTZ: So, of course, people are not --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Yes. What do you think is -- what do you think people are overreacting?
SCHULTZ: So, I think, look, if inflation is coming down, which it has come down, the average inflation rate has come down --
PHILLIP: Hold on.
SCHULTZ: Prices have not come down.
PHILLIP: Hold on a second. Yes.
SCHULTZ: But average inflation rate has --
PHILLIP: But my -- the point on the inflation piece, as it relates to Trump, is that inflation was trending downward and now it's trending back up. That is part of the problem that, yes, inflation is lower than it was, you know, during the peak of inflation but the trajectory is the wrong trajectory. That's the problem.
(CROSSTALKS)
HAQ: But the growth doesn't translate to people's pocketbooks only matters to a very particular class of American society. So, as Tiffany said, you're paying $200 more for groceries. I can personally vouch for the fact that my kids are obsessed with honey crisp apples and they used to be $2.19 a pound and now they're at least $4. Like this is reality.
CROSS: How much people were spending for Halloween candy this year? And you just -- first of all, we just saw Trump lie. We need to acknowledge this man is a liar, a toddler from the Oval Office calling Sleepy Joe Biden, lying about numbers is ridiculous, and I wish people who are defending him could acknowledge, yes, that is a lie. Secondly, people are spending over $200 more at the grocery store. You showed the data yourself. At that time, in September of 2024, we should remember, that was when Trump was running around the country screaming about inflation being out of control. This is a result, as you said, of his policies. When you deport millions, or deport or disappear millions of law abiding undocumented migrants who do the work, when 70 percent of your workforce doesn't come up, 70 percent of your crops don't get picked and they die. That is going to drive up the cost of food. When you impose senseless tariffs, if you get an avocado for Mexico at a 17 percent tariff, guess what, giant public Safeway, they're going to pass that cost along to you. Inflation is a real thing.
For people who think the economy means the market. That's one thing for people who know the economy is what I'm spending every month and I'm seeing my debt to income ratio reversed, it is not a good feeling.
[22:30:00]
SARIN: And, Jim, I just want to say two things about this sort of data that you were presenting. The first is that we -- last year at this time, projected that we'd see GDP growth in this country this year of around 2.7 percent. We've seen GDP growth in the first half of the year at about 1.5 percent. A lot of that is coming, in fact, from A.I. investments, not a lot of it is coming from this administration's economic policies.
And the second thing that's just really important to say, Abby's totally right, inflation was trending downwards, but these tariffs are the most inflationary policies of our lifetimes. And their impacts are just starting to show up in durable goods that are high tariff rates.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Natasha Sarin, thank you very much for joining us. We have to leave it there. Coming up next, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says that the Pentagon is now on a wartime footing in case countries quote, "FAFO", but he's also reportedly sidelining high-ranking brass. We'll discuss. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:33]
PHILLIP: Tonight, the Pentagon is preparing America for battle. Pete Hegseth says the Defense Department is changing how it buys military weapons. And the faster the agency can get it done, the better.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: We're not just buying something. We're solving life and death problems for our war fighters. We're not building for peacetime. We are pivoting the Pentagon and our industrial base to a wartime footing. Building for victory. Shoot our adversaries. FAFO.
(END VIDEO CLIP) PHILLIP: At the same time, "The New York Times" reports that Hegseth has now fired or sidelined at least two dozen top military brass over the last nine months. Both of these things are happening at the same time at an aggressive pace.
And when I look at the military firings that have happened, a lot of them are -- seem to be related to the fact that maybe this person worked for Mark Milley, not the fact that they have the skills, that they have the experience, that they have the expertise to do their jobs. And for a kind of, you know, anti, sort of woke meritocracy that this is supposed to be, that seems to be quite the opposite.
JAMES FISHBACK, CEO, AZORIA: Well, Abby, I don't know that we can, we have all the information to decide exactly what happened with these fire rings. Two things can be true. You work for Mark Milley and you also happen to not have the credentials to align with this particular policy of the Department of War.
Let's zoom out for little bit. What the Secretary of War and President Trump have done is taken direct attacks to these drug traffickers that are trying to bring poison into our country. Every single day, 200 people die of an overdose. And for once, our President cares enough, enough to take these people out and actually create shock and awe deterrence that says, we're not going to let people on the streets of Philadelphia and Kensington and my home state of Florida die of this poison.
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: You actually believe that? Eighty percent of fentanyl comes across the border from American citizens. So, these random killings and target practice in the Caribbean that he's doing, is not doing anything --
(CROSSTALK)
FISHBACK: When you say they're random, do you think they're fishermen or --
CROSS: We don't know. There have been reported evidence that he has killed people who we don't know the details about why they were killed. People have said these are just civilians and that is also why -- that --
(CROSSTALK)
FISHBACK: They were civilian drug traffickers. That's right.
CROSS: But you don't have any proof of that. There was no process of that.
FISHBACK: I trust the Pentagon's judgment and their intelligence.
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: Well then, well then, that's not a smart thing to do to trust the Pentagon because this is what happens when you put a TV talking head in charge of the most powerful military in the world that was put there by Cadet Jonesburg --
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: Pete Hegseth is firing people --
FISHBACK: Tiffany, let me ask you. If you knew they had drugs, if you knew they had drugs, would you bomb them? Yes or no? If you knew they had drugs, why not?
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: No. Because somebody who has -- because somebody who has drugs they don't deserve to get killed. That is not what we should do.
(CROSSTALK)
FISHBACK: Those drugs are going to kill people. Those drugs are going to kill -- of course. Those drugs would come into our country and kill people.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Hold on a second, guys.
CROSS: We are not judge, jury, and executioners in this country.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Hold on a second.
(CROSSTALK)
FISHBACK: Yes, we are. If you're going to come and execute our people, we are going to blow you to smithereens.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Hold on a second.
CROSS: This is a problem. He is firing people over their political loyalty.
FISHBACK: We don't know that, Tiffany. We don't know that.
CROSS: Based on, well, I may have a little more logic than you do, but we do.
(CROSSTALK)
FISHBACK: Mark Milley walked in -- Mark Milley said white rage -- he complained about January 6th, it was an insurrection --
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: White rage -- and so that's why he was fired because he -- because he dared to speak out for DEI.
(CROSSTALK)
FISHBACK: If you are holding toxic ideology that is divisive to the United States military you should get out the Pentagon.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Hold on, hold on a second.
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: That is not how we --
(CROSSTALK)
NAYYERA HAQ, FORMER WH SENIOR DIRECTOR: As somebody who's actually worked at the Pentagon in senior positions, I was privileged to work among a group of people who signed up to defend their country, who when they showed up at the Pentagon were at the top point of their career after being colonels and military bases around the country, working with people and families.
And they showed up and they called themselves purple suitors, not because of red or blue, because they didn't even say or acknowledge that their affiliation to their home institution, the Navy versus the Army, they said that the spirit of defending America mattered more. One of the best principles we have had that have made America successful compared to countries in the developing world, to other autocracies, is the fact that we have had civilian oversight over the military, but also respect for the military chain of command.
So, the idea of simply coming in and getting rid of bunch of people in senior positions who have worked their entire careers under Republicans and Democrats both, and saying that because you served under the person you were told to serve under, we no longer trust you. At a time when we have record low recruitment, yes, the Secretary of War is focusing on all of the wrong challenges we have right now.
[22:40:03]
PHILLIP: I mean, I do think that the military actually has had a long and proven system of promoting within their ranks based on expertise. And they've been doing that. And the United States has still remained the strongest military in the world. And this idea that you sort of just cut people off at the top and replace them with people who haven't really, you know, gotten their stripes, I don't understand how that makes us safer as a country -- or more more prepared.
JIM SCHULTZ, FORMER TRUMP WH LAWYER: Elections have consequences. It's well within the province of Secretary Hegseth to make these decisions as to who's going to be at top and the leaders in our --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Yeah, but that can't be the answer. The answer to everything can't be that it's okay that they did it because they can.
(CROSSTALK)
UNKNOWN: Because they're allowed to do it.
(CROSSTALK)
SCHULTZ: Whether it's the right policy decision or not is going to remain to be seen.
PHILLIP: Is that really -- but I mean, that's kind of what I -- but I mean, that's what I'm asking you is whether it's the right policy decision. Because I do --
(CROSSTALK)
SCHULTZ: I don't know.
PHILLIP: I do think that the idea that just because he cannot -- he can do it doesn't mean that it's the right thing to do. And you know --
(CROSSTALK)
SCHULTZ: But you know the philosophy of the people that are at the top. You don't the philosophy of the people that he's putting in there. You don't understand --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: But imagine -- but listen. Imagine, you are -- imagine --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: You worked your entire life in the military.
(CROSSTALK)
SCHULTZ: You're just criticizing the --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: And you're working under the person who is appointed not by you but appointed by a political figure as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. And because you happen to work under that person, your career gets ended. I mean again, how is that a merit-based decision? Is that not --
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: -- was not criticism. She was introducing facts. Something that you all seem to be allergic to. You just said it's okay to just murder people if we think they have drugs.
(CROSSTALK)
FISHBACK: No, Tiffany. Yes, I want to murder people who want to murder us.
CROSS: That is ridiculous. That is absolutely ridiculous.
SCHULTZ: But Tiffany, if they've been deemed a terrorist organization --
(CROSSTALK)
SCHULTZ: -- incredible intelligence --
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: No, no. That is not true. Not for all these killings that we've seen in the Caribbean. And we are seeing in every book that you see a rise of autocracy, in every documentary you see about it. This is exactly how it happens.
(CROSSTALK)
SCHULTZ: Every documentary?
CROSS: Yes.
SCHULTZ: That is not the intelligence that we're getting from the intelligence community?
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: Yes, but also more --
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: This is how autocracy rise and we have millionaires and billionaires donating $130 million to the military over this shutdown. That is how you turn militaries into mercenaries. And you see the Secretary of Defense firing people because of their political loyalties. They think that their job is to live in service to the President, Donald Trump, and not in service to America.
(CROSSTALK)
SCHULTZ: Or is it leadership philosophies? I think that remains to be seen.
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: Ten years from now, I hope this fades as well and you can look back at it and you can look back at it and look yourselves in the mirror and be okay, that you supported the rise of tyranny in this country.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: All right, we're going to leave it there. We're just out of time for this conversation. But next, the Labor Department is selling their vision of America's workforce and it looks mostly white and male. We'll discuss. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:47:31]
PHILLIP: Tonight, the Labor Department is facing scrutiny over a social media campaign with illustrations that appear to be A.I.- generated. Since Trump took office, the Department's accounts have posted images mimicking the style of Norman Rockwell or perhaps New Deal America. But, even surface-level review of these posts reveals something a little curious.
Despite the fact that the American labor force is diverse and as diverse as the nation, almost all of these images, for whatever reason, feature white men. They're blonde, they've got sharp jaw lines, many of them have blue eyes. And the Labor Department argues that the pattern first reported in "The Washington Post" isn't in fact a pattern. Quote, "The Washington Post" is manufacturing outrage that doesn't exist," a spokesperson says. "Twisting social media posts celebrating American workers and the American dream into a race story is absurd.'
I mean, I don't know. I think "The Washington Post" is right to point out that every single image that they posted has been of a white man. And that doesn't really make sense because this is not a country of only white men. Period.
CROSS: The irony is that, yeah, 20 percent of the workforce is Latino, 13 percent of the workforce is black. And now thanks to this President, we're getting close to 400,000 black women who are out of work. So, I think that these images are very parallel to the message that he intends to send to the people who continue to go out and blindly support him and his anti-DEI racist policies. So, it's right on track.
SCHULTZ: Part of our strengths as a country is our diversity, our, you know, black, brown, women, men, workforce, all the way across the board. This is just kind of silly, right? If we're going to talk about apprenticeship programs and the good things the Department of Labor is doing, you know, pushing apprenticeship programs, doing away with this idea that you need a college degree for every job. You know, you're seeing Republicans and Democrats embracing that alike. That impacts all Americans and it should be reflective in the advertising, as well.
HAQ: I think part of it is their desire to be who they think is the online audience for Trump supporters of Labor Department, right, young white men keep coming up in conversation.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: It is a very online kind of step away from the A.I.-type of situation.
HAQ: But the irony is that they chose Norman Rockwell as the person's image you know the style of art to copy is that Norman Rockwell, his -- one of his most famous paintings was about Ruby Bridges as a young black girl, walking to school for the first time and he said the sin we all live with.
[22:50:03]
He also, you know, did the Rosie the Riveter power image. He also did JFK's Peace Corps. So, Norman Rockwell, his family --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: His family has a statement out. It says, "If Norman Rockwell were alive today, he would be devastated to see that his own work has been marshaled for the cause of persecution toward immigrant communities and people of color." And they're also referring to DHS's use of Rockwell-inspired imagery.
In addition to that, this is just a sampling of some of the other DHS images that have been posted lately. One of them, I guess, is Arnold Schwarzenegger, which I'm not really sure how that works. A lot of this stuff, this one on the far right of the USCIS hat guy, I mean, that's an internet meme. I mean, look. These are government agencies. And actually, when I look at the people who work at DHS, they are actually all races and genders and all kinds of stuff.
CROSS: And labor secretary is Latino.
PHILLIP: Yeah, but I mean, but I'm talking about even the people who are carrying out the immigration agenda, they're black, they're Latino, they're Asian, they're women. And yet the imagery is showing something entirely different.
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: -- celebrate diverse people carrying out a racist policy. I think there's --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: My only point is that the advertising --
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: But I think they're taking those jobs, Abby, not because they have an ideological relationship to them, probably because they're desperate for money and work.
PHILLIP: Maybe. It doesn't -- my only point is that they are trying to gear recruitment at DHS toward white people, it seems. And that is not actually what it looks like when we actually look at --
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: The imagery is also, you were saying Norman Rockwell, it's also very similar. You can look at the pictures yourself. Google it at home, please. It's also very similar to Stalin in 1950s. A lot of this imagery is.
FISHBACK: Well, I couldn't disagree more. We're talking about memes. We should be talking about the actual jobs.
PHILLIP: I actually agree with you. That's exactly what we're saying. That's exactly what we're talking about. Yeah.
(CROSSTALK)
FISHBACK: But Abby, but listen. Let's just focus on something for a second. Seventy percent of college grads right now are not working a full-time job in their field of study. Amazon just laid off 30,000 Americans and then went and hired 10,000 more H-1Bs predominantly from the country of India. We have to get honest about our labor market policy.
And what I want to see from President Trump is exactly what Governor DeSantis did in my state of Florida this past week. Pull the plug on the H-1B program. Let's focus less on memes and all of this diversity woke nonsense on the internet.
Let's actually give white men and black men all over this country, rural and urban, a real shot at this labor market. When you have a labor market that is rigged against Americans in favor of foreigners through H-1B OPT programs, that is far more important than internet memes on the DHS website.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Listen, you're right about the overt focus on internet memes, I think that's exactly what this conversation is about, is that this is an administration that seems to be really fixated on this type of stuff. And I am wondering, what is their plan to bring down the black unemployment rate, which has skyrocketed in just in the last year under Trump, the black female unemployment rate, the Hispanic unemployment rate. I mean, these are all Americans. So what is the plan?
FISHBACK: Stop importing jobs. Stop importing jobs, end the H-1B.
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: But there are 400,000 manufacturing jobs available right now that we cannot build. So, this idea that somehow if he's importing jobs that's what's driving unemployment, that's just not true. Then what's the problem right now? Why can't we fill these 400,000 manufacturing jobs?
(CROSSTALK)
HAQ: Part of the economy that is --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: All right. We could continue this conversation for a lot longer. You know, I love a good economic conversation. But coming up, Chef Liza has a nightcap for us. Don't go anywhere everyone.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [22:58:28]
PHILLIP: This week is the season finale of "Have I Got News for You" and Roy Wood Jr. and his friends learn about some unusual Election Day issues.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROY WOOD JR, "HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU", COMEDIAN: Tuesday saw record voter turnout across the country with voters excited to cast ballots in places from New York to New Jersey and Maine and Georgia, Kansas and Kentucky. Question, why was the enthusiasm for the Kentucky elections so unusual?
AMBER RUFFIN, "HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU", COMEDIAN: Because of all that fried chicken.
WOOD: The excitement around the Kentucky elections was unusual because there weren't any elections in Kentucky on Tuesday. On the morning of Election Day, the Kentucky Secretary of State tweeted, quote, "We're getting calls about polls being closed. They are closed because we do not have elections today. Kentucky votes next year. You cannot vote today in Kentucky for the mayor of New York City or the governor of Virginia. Sorry.'
JENNY HAGEL, COMEDIAN: That's what happens when your whole state is just full of bourbon.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: The episode airs tomorrow at 9 P.M. right here on CNN. And of course, Chef Liza Zeneski is here, the supervising culinary producer at the Food Network. She's going to tell us about this delicious plate that we're eating. What do we have here?
LIZA ZENESKI, THE FOOD NETWORK CULINARY: So, tonight we have miso- glazed black cod, and I'm serving it with some roasted potatoes and bok choy. I love this one because for such a light dish, it's very comforting. It's got those sweet, savory, umami flavors for that buttery, flaky fish. And yeah, I feel like bok choy and roasted potatoes go perfect with it.
PHILLIP: I love this. It is warm and cozy even in the late -- are we still in fall? Late fall? Scan the Q.R. code for the miso glazed cod recipe. It is delicious, trust me. And thank you very much for watching "NewsNight". You can catch our roundtable show, "Table For Five". It's tomorrow morning at 10 A.M. Eastern right here on CNN. And Laura Coates takes over right now.
(APPLAUSE)
