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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Ex-Trump Lawyer Says, Constitution Not Adequate For His Evil; Trump, Pentagon, FBI Pounce On Senators In Illegal Orders Video; Rivalries, Criticism Rattle Trump Second Term: Is MAGA Cracking?; Judge Accuses ICE Agents Of Lying; James Carville Appeals To Democrats To Ditch Woke Politics And Harness Economic Rage. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired November 28, 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 HOST (voice over): Tonight, he defended Donald Trump inside the White House. Now, he says the Constitution isn't strong enough to handle this president.
TY COBB, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE LAWYER: Trump's abuses of power are unprecedented.
PHILLIP: Plus, is MAGA cracking? Shock resignations, bitter rivalries and media clashes foreshadow life after Trump.
TUCKER CARLONS, HOST, THE TUCKER CARLSON SHOW: On the Republican Party, I'm going to have to oppose it because they're just -- I hate them too much.
PHILLIP: Also, are ICE agents telling the truth about their operations on America's streets? A judge and video suggests they're not.
And James Carville says he's finally figured out the way forward for liberals, rage against the machine.
Live at the table, Scott Jennings, Bakari Sellers, Katie Miller and Nayyera Haq.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening, I'm Abby Philip in Washington.
Let's get right to what America's talking about. Is the United States Constitution equipped to handle Donald Trump? Well, his former White House lawyer says it's not even close. Take this week, for example, we are still seeing boat strikes against alleged cartels in the Caribbean, actions that have sparked military resignations and allies refusing to be a part of something that they think is potentially illegal. And, secondly, when half a dozen senators warned that military members
should not follow illegal orders, the president floated their executions and the Pentagon threatened Mark Kelly with a court martial. And, third, Trump's revenge tour, it hit an embarrassing setback as cases against James Comey and Letitia James were both dismissed in part due to the ham-fisted rush to charge his foes.
Here's Ty Cobb, Trump's former White House lawyer, about all of that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COBB: And the Constitution really is not adequate to deal with a president as evil as Trump as somebody who whose desire to accumulate and abuse power.
The main concerns always are his resort to violence and authoritarianism.
Never before in American history, I don't think, have most Americans been as concerned about their president and his, you know, demented narcissism leading him toward revenge and violence.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: All right. So, Scott, I'll let you respond to that because, I mean, obviously, he feels strongly, but it's also in the context of Trump just coming off of a threat that these lawmakers should be tried for treason, and then he endorsed the idea that they could be hung for their alleged crimes. So, there is a lot of retribution and violence coming from the president.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, he's plenty mad about that video that they put out raising the idea that he's issued illegal orders. And in the days that follow, they went on television and were asked directly what illegal orders, and nobody could name any. And one of them that's supposed to be the smart moderate, Elissa Slotkin, started citing Hollywood movies as the rationale for the video.
So, it seems pretty crazy to me that Democrats would raise the prospect of illegal orders and not be able to name any. Venezuela, look, there's a lot of differences of opinion out there.
And on Comey and James, it wasn't about the merits of the case, it was about the appointment of the prosecutor, which is a different thing.
But beyond all of that, my rebuttal to this is that the U.S. Constitution has been serving us quite well for 250 years, and there are remedies for everything in the Constitution, but the number one remedy for any political issue in America is called an election. And we just had one in November, and I think there's certain people that haven't gotten over it.
BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I actually agree with Scott's conclusion. I mean, I don't think that the Constitution is not built for Donald Trump. I do think elections happen. Elections have consequences. I mean, I was just looking at a Pew poll recently talking about how Hispanic voters are now having buyer's remorse. You see, Aidan Ross, you see a litany of young voters, young, particularly white male voters who were saying, this is not what I voted for. So, yes, I mean, let's not give Trump too much credit for the havoc that he's causing.
If we go to the specific examples that you named, is it unconstitutional to nuke those individuals who are traveling the Caribbean? The answer is definitely yes.
[22:05:00]
Are those United States senators who are doing their job, are they protected by the First Amendment? Yes. And the Uniform Code of Military Justice? Yes.
And then I just -- I would love for my Republicans and conservatives at the table, there's no question if you have to put Mark Kelly's military record up against bone spur, I mean, Donald Trump, I mean, there's no question who admirably served our country and the other person's Donald Trump.
The problem Democrats have, we have, is that we have to make that argument to the American public. And why I love Donald Trump going on these tangents is because he can't fix -- nobody in a White House can fix the problems at hand. Affordability is the number one issue in this country, and they are tripping over themselves doing all this other stuff in the American public, they realize it.
NAYYERA HAQ, ASSISTANT DEAN, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY'S MAXWELL SCHOOL: Well, I served in the Pentagon under Secretary Robert Gates, who was a Republican in a Democratic administration. And that was something that we used to do back then and actually have bipartisanship throughout an administration. And that was the clearest example I had working with our men and women in the Armed Forces was this idea of principle and values. And we even had conversations about how to make sure that war was the last resort.
And Secretary Gates was famous for saying that if we don't do enough on the diplomacy and the human rights and the development side, then, yes, you will have to buy me more ammunition. That is what he said to the Senate and to leaders who are ultimately responsible for declarations of war and interventions.
Now, I'll blame Congress for this. You can't complain about not having power when you've given it all away, right? That's -- and that's happened on the national security side of giving more and more war powers and authority to the president and not having it sit with Congress.
PHILLIP: Well, let me play a little bit more from Ty Cobb because he addressed that very thing also in that interview. Listen,
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COBB: Trump has neutered Congress. Actually, they've probably neutered themselves through their carious and greed. But they have, you know, ceded basically all control to the president and he dictates everything Mike Johnson does.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I mean, the co-equal branches of government that are supposed to be functioning right now, what Ty Cobb is arguing, what a lot of people would argue is that it's not really functioning quite that way. And even now, I mean, you know, we've talked about this a bit, but Republicans in Congress are also feeling like they are being treated like carpet as opposed to like a co-equal branch of government.
So, is the Constitution really functioning the way it's supposed to be in this moment?
KATIE MILLER, HOST, THE KATIE MILLER PODCAST: When Democrats shut down the government for a period of almost two months, what do you expect will happen when you grind things to a halt and one party holds another party hostage over something that didn't even end up happening in the end?
I want to go back to something that Bakari said. He said that those orders that were given of the drug boats in Venezuela were illegal. Can you cite those statutes, please?
SELLERS: Yes, because it's actually called the due process clause of the United States of America. Because can you point to one of those boats that actually had drugs on them? Do you know that? Do you know about the Trinidadians who were killed innocently, who were just fishermen? Can you actually kill those fishermen without due process?
So, the answer to the question is, yes, I can cite the Constitution, just as Scott did.
MILLER: If you go and say that those were members of Al-Qaeda or ISIS coming to our shores with enough drugs or enough ammunition to kill a thousand, a hundred thousand Americans, wouldn't you expect our commander-in-chief to take action to stop that?
That's what's happening here.
SELLERS: Prove that.
MILLER: That's what's happening here. That is what's happened. By the way, that's what happens in every war zone, where you go to our Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia go there. Let's talk about it.
SELLERS: Which -- give me one name of one individual that you can compare to Al-Qaeda coming through that had enough fentanyl to kill all these Americans? Can you name one?
MILLER: let's go to what these drug boats are talking about, which is that we are actively ensuring that the war on drugs that we've been like doing for 50 years, which has not worked one single day --
SELLERS: It hasn't been so successful. Yes, we can agree on that. MILLER: Right, it hasn't been successful. So, why didn't you want our country to try something different? You talked about elections and why they're important. In 2024, President Trump won and beat Kamala Harris under stopping the war on drugs, under stopping the entrance of illegal drugs into our country, under stopping the surge of illegal immigration into our country, and that's exactly what this --
SELLERS: Can I just put a fine point on this?
PHILLIP: Yes, go ahead.
SELLERS: Just -- I mean, just really quickly, I think that my point maybe differs from yours, which is fine, but I believe that individuals deserve some modicum of due process. And I think that that is something that's enshrined in our Constitution. If you have some facts that you wanted to tell the audience tonight about the individuals that you know that were brought in, that were bringing in, and maybe if we arrested them, maybe if we actually saw what was going on, maybe if there wasn't an ulterior motive.
Because what I do know, and I think you know this as well, that there were innocent Trinidadians who were just on a fishing boat who died as a result of that. I know that there are military members that swore an oath to this country who now have a problem with that. So, my --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: I mean, we also know that the United States did have some of these people in custody, and rather than actually try them, which we have done in the past, we let them go. We also don't know -- they've never said explicitly what drugs are being carried on these boats, but the fentanyl, we know, is not coming from Venezuela.
SELLERS: It's not --
PHILLIP: But the issue here is about the legality and about what happens when there is a system that doesn't contemplate whether things are legal or not.
[22:10:05]
And the British seem to think that there might be things in our actions in the Caribbean that are illegal. We've had a top military officer resign from his post, retired years early. So, there are some indications here that people are not comfortable with the legality of what's going on here, at least in this instance.
HAQ: And I'll say, this is, like many other things the Trump administration, is doing is blowing a massive hole through what were already gaps in the system. I mean, even in the Obama administration, the George Bush administration, going back to the start of the war on terror, people were uncomfortable with how wide open, if you said, this is -- we're going to designate this a terrorist organization, that now gives us war powers that don't have to go through Congress, and we're allowed to use drone strikes and we're allowed to use rendition. These are serious, ethical questions the military has been wrestling with for 20-plus years.
On top of that, the United States, because of its power, has been able to get away with and keep itself out of things like the U.N. legal systems, about the Rome Statute or any of the criminal court stuff, which is, again, the U.S. protecting itself ultimately in Iraq, Afghanistan, and what may now be Venezuela, the United States has done a great job of making sure that other countries are not able to hold the U.S. accountable.
PHILLIP: All right. We're going to leave it there for that conversation.
Next for us, does all the MAGA infighting foreshadow the battle for the post-Trump era?
Plus, James Carville is telling liberals there's only one way to pull them from the abyss, getting angry. We'll debate that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:15:00]
PHILLIP: One of the most fascinating storylines of Donald Trump's second term are these questions about whether his hold on MAGA is loosening. Some of the president's staunchest supporters have taken issue with his foreign deals, his military strikes, his ballrooms, the economy, and, of course, the Epstein files.
And now there is a clear battle for whatever MAGA looks like after Trump, and there will be an after Trump. Marjorie Taylor Greene abruptly resigning after the president called her a traitor. And there are warnings that even more Republicans will follow over the way the White House has been treating them lately.
It's also prevalent in MAGA media most recently over Tucker Carlson's interview with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, which Trump later defended. And Carlson doesn't mince words about the party itself.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: And the Republican Party, which is almost to the point where it's just useless, then I'm going to have to oppose it because they're just -- I hate them too much, but because they're such betrayers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, that in interview with Nick Fuentes is not just about Nick Fuentes, it's also about Tucker Carlson. And maybe Tucker is trying to create more of a wedge in MAGA, but it's clear that people are looking for the next messenger for Trump after Trump. Who do you think it's going to be?
MILLER: I think President Trump has made it very clear he'd like to see J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio. There are many people who can speak eloquently to what the MAGA base is about, which is growing our economy, stopping illegal immigration, putting Americans first, which is what make America great again, means is Americans first and Americans doing what we can do to grow and live in the best country in the world.
But I want to go back to Marjorie Taylor Greene for a second. Just because she left the party isn't indicative of some larger MAGA revolt and President Trump's grasp on the MAGA movement. She's someone who blew up his phone multiple times a day acting like she was the center of the universe and main character syndrome, when in reality, President Trump's job is not member maintenance and dealing with a specific member of Congress. He is the leader of the free world who has a lot more on his plate than returning Marjorie Taylor Greene's calls back every five minutes.
PHILLIP: But it's not just her, right? I mean, there are also other Republicans. Here's a quote, and Punchbowl, a senior House Republican says, the entire White House team has treated all members like garbage, all. The arrogance of this White House team is off-putting to members who are run roughshod and threatened.
And some of them are anticipating that this is going to be a tough midterm. Some of them are going to call it quits for all kinds of different reasons. It's coming up when it comes to healthcare. They don't want to vote on the plan that's coming out of the White House. There's a lot going on here that's not just Marjorie Taylor Greene.
HAQ: And part of it is the disconnect between having heard President Trump, for example, and the Biden administration calling for the release of the Epstein files, which, yes, Biden could have released them too. But then now that he's in the position to do that, we're not seeing any of that happen. It's --
JENNINGS: He just signed it into law.
HAQ: It's this -- right. But they're not being released.
JENNINGS: He just signed it into law.
HAQ: So, the challenge that I see is that when someone like Marjorie Taylor --
PHILLIP: Well, we'll see if it gets released. They have 30 days, yes.
HAQ: Yes. Well, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was so leaning in hard on the MAGA movement, everything from Epstein files, to the disconnect between working class and elites and every conspiracy theory you could possibly find, and she was leaning in hard to lose her is a suggestion that you're losing many other people who were part of that movement, when you have people who work in the FBI threatening to resign because they feel that this core MAGA issue was mishandled, that's a challenge in your coalition.
[22:20:12]
Now, what we don't hear is President Trump saying, like Tucker Carlson saying that he wants to either take over the entire Republican Party, reshape it in his image. So what is the message forum this president that now brings this coalition back together now that it's fracturing?
JENNINGS: So, can we just go to the data, CNN's own data, from our own Data Analyst Harry Enten. President Trump has an 87 percent approval rating among Republicans, which is higher than Barack Obama's approval rating among Democrats at this point in his term, higher than where George W. Bush was in his term. He is the strongest for his own party, strongest president at this point in his second term in the modern era. That's number one.
Number two, Marjorie Taylor Greene, I think, had a falling out with the president over politics. He showed her a poll that said she couldn't win statewide in Georgia. She got mad. She got mad. And, by the way, she stands with a group of isolationists who just happened to disagree with the president over, say, taking away Iran's nuclear weapons and some other issues. That's fine. He's the president, she's not.
And if you want to talk about whether the president has a hold on his party or whether he is a lame duck, I'll just submit that when he withdrew his endorsement of Greene, she lasted a week and then had to resign from Congress. But that's not weakness. That is strength.
PHILLIP: Let me ask you a couple things about that, Scott. Because, first of all, I think you understand that a lot of Trump's MAGA base is not just people who are registered Republicans. A lot of them are people who are new to the system. And I think that many of those -- the problem for Republicans, just like it was this past November when they lost, was that getting those people to come back out of the woodwork is part of the issue. They come out for Trump. They don't come out for anyone else.
But the second thing, you know, I do wonder if this issue of the isolationism that Marjorie Taylor Greene and maybe the Tucker Carlson espouse is part of the problem here because Trump attracted them into the party because he kind of seemed isolation at times. But now everybody's wondering is that really what he is? I mean, I think some of the ideological confusion is part of the story here for Trump.
HAQ: It's very hard to see how you can give $40 billion to Argentina --
JENNINGS: We didn't give them --
HAQ: -- to Argentina for their soybean farmers and then say that Europe is a problem and they're not doing enough, and that Ukraine, you know, everything should resolve itself magically.
PHILLIP: I don't think it's Marjorie Taylor Greene's fault that she thought that Trump was an isolationist.
JENNINGS: No. Actually, it is.
PHILLIP: I think part of the problem is that Trump's America first vision for politics is whatever Trump wants.
JENNINGS: No. PHILLIP: And all of those other people, there are -- but, Scott, there are isolationists in the MAGA tent. What happens to them? Do they just go away? So, they just go away?
JENNINGS: Look, here's the deal. A lot of people tried to ascribe their own personal views to Trump, and they tried to, I guess, influence them into their own personal views or make their personal views stick to him. He is actually, on the issue of Iran, shown extreme moral clarity about this for decades. He has always said they cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. In his first term, he fired cruise missiles into Syria. We took out Soleimani. Trump has never been an isolationist. And anybody walking around in 2025 who thinks that he is is being willfully blind or just stupid.
He has been for smart engagement. He's not for adventurism, but he's been for smart engagement since he came on the national stage.
PHILLIP: So, Steve Bannon said to Axios, Trump knows his movement space better than anyone, but a lot of his base feels that he's spending too much time on Palestine and not enough on East Palestine, Ohio.
SELLERS: So, listen, the fact is that Donald Trump doesn't have politics, and I'm tired of people ascribing a politic to Donald Trump. He has interests and most of those interests revolve around himself. And I think people realize that Donald Trump is very transactional. And at the end of the day, the transactions that Donald Trump makes usually benefit in some way his worldview himself, his family, his politic. That's first and foremost.
And the thing that bothers me the most is that people think, for example, that MAGA -- I know you mentioned Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance. It's -- MAGA is like -- I mean, it is Ticketmaster. It's non- transferrable. If J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio think they're about to inherit the MAGA base, there's nothing about J.D. Vance --
PHILLIP: Can I just --
SELLERS: and let me just -- let me put a bow on this one, one more thing. Because what they don't realize is that even a part of this MAGA base, the fact that we're even mentioning Nick Fuentes, he's 4'11", he's misogynistic and he's anti-Semitic, but yet he's somebody who has the pulse of the Republican base right now? They need to excise him.
JENNINGS: That's absolutely false.
MILLER: Nick does not have the pulse of the Republican base. It's what Democrats want to say to divide the Republican base when that isn't true.
But I want to go back something really quick.
SELLERS: Tucker Carlson was just bowing in front of him.
PHILLIP: Can I also just add -- MILLER: Tucker Carlson hosted him on his show. He did not bow, nor did he kneel to Nick Fuentes.
PHILLIP: You mentioned J.D. Vance, and he also did not denounce Tucker for hosting Nick Fuentes.
[22:25:05]
SELLERS: Correct. I mean, what are we talking about?
PHILLIP: So, what does it say that Vance didn't feel like part of what -- if he wants to lead the Republican Party, part of what he has to do is to police the boundaries of what's acceptable and what's not. And not say, hey, Tucker, unacceptable, don't do that?
MILLER: It's not up to you or myself to police speech in our country.
PHILLIP: I mean, shouldn't it be up to J.D. Vance to say, this is not part of our movement?
SELLERS: Are you okay with Nick Fuentes?
MILLER: Here we go. I'm a Jew. Do you want to go there? And let's say this.
SELLERS: Yes, I just asked the question. It was yes or no?
MILLER: Yes. I'm okay --
SELLERS: Are you okay with Nick Fuentes?
MILLER: If Nick Fuentes wants to be able to speak freely in our country, he has every right to do so. Do I agree with his views? Do I think that they should be --
SELLERS: I'm just asking a yes or no question.
MILLER: Absolutely not.
PHILLIP: Hold on.
MILLER: By the way, I really want to go back to this for one second.
PHILLIP: This isn't about whether he can speak freely. It's about whether someone like Tucker Carlson, who is a very powerful force in the conservative movement. He is --
MILLER: You host people on your show all the time who call my husband and myself a Nazi.
PHILLIP: Hold on. I don't --
MILLER: So, how is that any different from Tucker Carlson going on --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: He's actually --
SELLERS: He's anti-Semitic. He's anti-Semite.
PHILLIP: -- A Hitler admirer. Nick Fuentes is actually a Hitler admirer.
SELLERS: But he literally is not a good human being.
PHILLIP: That is a different thing, by the way, that --
MILLER: Excuse me, you have Jennifer Welch on your show very often and you've never pushed back as she has called my husband a white nationalist.
PHILLIP: Hold on.
MILLER: That is no different than Nick Fuentes going on Tucker Carlson's show. It's not and you should admit it.
PHILLIP: Well, hold on. Wait, hold on. How is it anything similar? It's not remotely similar at all. Nick Fuentes sits around and says that he likes Hitler. How is that similar to --
JENNINGS: What does Hitler had to do with it? What does she have to do with it?
PHILLIP: Hold on.
JENNINGS: She has nothing to do with it.
PHILLIP: Hold on.
JENNINGS: Literally nothing,
PHILLIP: Scott, Katie is the person who just said to me that it is comparable to say that Nick Fuentes, who is literally a neo-Nazi, is the same as somebody, a liberal who has an opinion, who is not a neo- Nazi --
JENNINGS: A hateful opinion.
PHILLIP: They are not --
MILLER: A hateful opinion.
PHILLIP: -- the same.
MILLER: How do you want -- excuse me, let's go back one more time. Nick Fuentes can espouse an opinion on Tucker's show.
PHILLIP: It is not the same thing.
MILLER: And he didn't push back, the same way you didn't say push back when someone called someone in my family a Nazi. It's not different, Abby.
PHILLIP: Hold on a second.
MILLER: It's not.
PHILLIP: If someone comes on this show and says, I love Hitler and I admire what he did, they would never -- first of all, I would never invite them on the show and they would never be invited back. So, those two things are not --
MILLER: But yet you've gone on Jennifer Welch's podcast. It's the same thing. It's the same thing.
PHILLIP: They are not the same thing, okay?
But, Katie -- but hold on, Katie. Do you believe that Jennifer Welch has a right to say something negative about your husband?
MILLER: The same way Nick Fuentes has the right to say what he wants to say.
PHILLIP: So, you think -- do you think that it's okay -- hold on. Do you think it is okay for Jennifer Welch, is she allowed to say something negative about your husband?
MILLER: Absolutely. And it's your job as a moderator to push back.
PHILLIP: Okay. So, that's the first thing.
MILLER: It's the same way you're asking Tucker Carlson to push back against Nick Fuentes.
PHILLIP: But hold on, Nick Fuentes --
MILLER: Is it not different?
PHILLIP: Nick Fuentes is espousing -- he's not describing someone else as a Nazi. He is saying, I admire Nazis. You don't think that's a different thing?
MILLER: Do you believe my husband's Nazi? The last one your show --
PHILLIP: But do you think that that's -- do you think those things are different or not?
SELLERS: I don't think anybody around this table believes --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: You are making a comparison of two things that are not in any way the same. I acknowledge that you that -- and, listen, when people --
MILLER: It happened more than once, Abby.
PHILLIP: But hold on.
MILLER: At one point, it's a common occurrence. PHILLIP: When people say their opinions, I don't endorse them but I also am not responsible for their opinions.
MILLER: So, doesn't that apply to Tuck Carlson?
PHILLIP: That is different from a person themselves describing themselves as a hatemonger.
MILLER: Is Tucker Carlson responsible for Nick Fuentes' opinions?
PHILLIP: So -- but hold on a second. I am also not a Republican Party official or a Democrat Party official.
MILLER: Neither does Tucker Carlson.
PHILLIP: So, I'm asking you about you as a Republican and who you think is the leader of your party, right? And I'm asking --
MILLER: Right, that's President Donald J. Trump.
PHILLIP: And I'm asking your opinion, your opinion, okay, if you think that J.D. Vance is that person, do you think that he should be sitting at a table and nodding along with Nick Fuentes, yes or no?
MILLER: I don't believe J.D. Vance has ever sat and nodded along with Nick Fuentes. And that would be Tucker Carlson.
PHILLIP: Do you think it is okay for J.D. Vance to think it's okay for Tucker Carlson to sit and nod along with --
MILLER: I think it's okay for Tucker Carlson to have Nick Fuentes on the show, the same way you have people on your show who has had similar views.
PHILLIP: Hold on, that's all I asked you. And we can just leave it at that. Because at the end of the day, that is what the Republican Party has to decide. Do they care whether or not someone who has a loud voice of their party is bringing on somebody who is encouraging neo- Nazism?
JENNINGS: Wait.
PHILLIP: And if you think that that is okay --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: We have to leave it at that.
Next for us, when it comes to the raids and confrontations on America's streets, are ICE agents telling the whole story? A judge is accusing them of straight up lying. We'll discuss that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:30:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Are ICE agents telling the truth about their raids on America's streets? Well, no one can deny the chaos that we've seen unfold in the videos, but one judge is denying the validity of the accounts in Chicago.
In one incident, a Border Patrol official says that he was hit in the head with a rock. The judge says footage showed that the only object that came near him was a tear gas canister the protesters threw back. In another, an agent reported that he told a crowd to back away before they were gassed and gave them a lot of time to comply with that order.
[22:35:02]
But footage shows that they didn't allow that time at all and threw the gas canister anyway. Agents also claim that a woman threw her bike at them, but video shows that an agent threw the bike and deployed gas. The list in this scathing review of incidents goes on and on, from misidentifying people to inciting protesters.
The context here is that we have these incidents unfolding, and there is a lot of pushback in places that maybe you wouldn't even anticipate. In middle-class neighborhoods, in suburban neighborhoods, just regular people who are kind of growing disturbed by what they're seeing on the streets.
NAYYERA HAQ, FORMER WHITE HOUSE SR. DIRECTOR: Yes, I've heard from many folks who are, were Trump supporters, voted for Trump both times, who's like, well, this is not what I voted for. And what they're referring to specifically are families being torn apart, kids being, having their parents picked up and taken away from in front of schools, from having restaurant workers and other folks who are hardworking but undocumented being disappeared from their community. I think the rhetoric and the reality are now crashing together.
When you talk about illegals and violence versus the people that are in a community that have been working there and building relationships, there is a massive disconnect. And on top of that, we already have a criminal justice system that has not been fully transparent.
And if it hadn't been for a brave young woman who took 13 minutes of video, the initial police report would never have even mentioned that someone like George Floyd was killed by a police officer. Like, that's on top of what we've already had as a challenge in our justice system.
PHILLIP: So to add to what the judge described there in that case, there's also another, there's a case here where the judge says, the court also notes that in at least one instance, an agent asked ChatGPT to compile a narrative for a report based off of a brief sentence about an encounter in several images.
To the extent that agents used ChatGPT to create their use of force reports, this further undermines their credibility and may explain the inaccuracy of these reports, Scott. ChatGPT, really? SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SR. POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, I don't know. I mean, I'm obviously not familiar with every single report that's filed and the hundreds of thousands of interactions that are happening.
I would like to go back, though, and I'm interested in your two-time Trump voting friends who are apparently phone banking you that are surprised that he is interested in enforcing our immigration laws. Because it is literally what he's been running on since he started in 2015.
If you voted for Donald Trump two or three times and you're unsure about why he's deporting people, I dispute it. I'm just sorry.
HAQ: So Scott, we are on totally the same page about this, because as we know, folks like Bakari and I were like, you do realize what this means. This is not only people who have been convicted of court of murder. This means anybody who is undocumented.
And I sat here the day after the election with a former Trump spokesperson who said, oh no, the violent people, the convicted criminals, they will go first. That was here on CNN a year ago. Over and over again, people were being gaslit about literally what was
coming out of the President's mouth.
KATIE MILLER, HOST, "THE KATIE MILLER PODCAST": President Trump had said, and I want to go back to this, he has completed every single one of his platform points at the RNC convention last summer. And if anyone is surprised the actions President Trump has taken, they've literally had a bag over their head for the last 10 years.
Wait, I want to finish this. I was President Trump's immigration spokesperson in the first term. I have been saying this on the record since we shut down the government to build the wall back in 2018. We are removing every single illegal alien that's in this country. And I would say a majority of those who have been removed have had serious violent crimes.
BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: That's not true.
MILLER: Today in "The New Yorker."
PHILLIP: That's not true.
SELLERS: I hope you weren't a spokesperson saying that.
PHILLIP: That is actually not true.
SELLERS: That's false.
MILLER: Today in "The New Yorker."
HAQ: Remarkably false.
MILLER: Today in "The New Yorker."
PHILLIP: Based on DHS's own data, a majority of the people that they've detained have not had violent criminal records.
MILLER: That had been removed.
PHILLIP: They have not.
SELLERS: And up until last year, if I'm not mistaken, because you've fact-checked me on this before, but up until last year.
MILLER: The media consistently will put up these sob stories. Today was the latest in "The New Yorker" about someone who was convicted of murder, possession of a violent firearms, among other crimes. Making this person out to be a sympathetic person who was deported three times who kept coming back to our country.
PHILLIP: A majority of the people who have been detained have not had violent criminal records or really any criminal records at all. And over half of Americans think that deportation, the deportation process thus far in the Trump administration has been mostly unfair. That's 53 percent. And then 51 percent say that ISIS tactics have gone too far.
JENNINGS: Whoa. 35 and 12 is 47, that's very close. 51 and 47 is a very close number, Abby.
PHILLIP: Okay. Yes, but I can also, it's also math, 51 is a larger number than 47. And it's down from seven.
JENNINGS: I'm just saying, you're making this sound like everybody's upset about it. It's pretty much a 50-50 issue and that's fine, but some people think he has a going for it.
PHILLIP: Scott, just a second.
[22:40:00]
53 percent say, let me just say it again, 53 percent say that the process for deporting people has been mostly unfair. My point is only that--
JENNINGS: It's unfair that it takes so long to get--
PHILLIP: Scott, can you let me--
MILLER: Scott, if you have a final order--
JENNINGS: I'm going to answer it that way.
HAQ: Can we let the host of the show talk?
PHILLIP: My point is that, what Nayeera is talking about, which is that there are some people who were fine with Trump saying he was going to get violent criminals out, all of that. And they did not believe, because I remember you were sitting at my table saying that, oh, Trump is going to start with murderers and criminals and they're not going to really be able to get to all the other people because it's going to take too much time.
That also didn't happen because there has been indiscriminate arresting of people of all different stripes.
SELLERS: And I think--
PHILLIP: A lot of people in the middle who were okay with some form of deportation of violent criminals are now looking at that.
SELLERS: I think that's-
PHILLIP: And they're thinking that things have gone too far.
SELLERS: I think that what Katie and Scott fail to realize sometimes in their analysis is that most of America understands that immigrants are part of the fabric of our country. And they're the people who make our country go.
They're not just the people we look down on in some condescending fashion.
MILLER: Is that like the Somalians in Minnesota?
SELLERS: I was just going to finish my thought. They're not people who are just people who do our lawns, they're not people who are just people who clean up hotels, they're not just illegals who come up here and commit violent crimes.
But they're actually a part of the fabric. They know our families. We see them at the grocery stores, et cetera.
And what we're seeing right now with-- That was funny you said Somalians. I mean that's a way to authorize a whole group of people.
But what we're seeing right now is individuals who come into our communities armed. National guardsmen.
You saw them in Chicago raining down, ripping away children. The imagery is a problem that the Trump administration has not necessarily dealt with. They don't know how to deal with it because they're going in with reckless abandon.
True. Anybody who thought that Donald Trump wasn't going to do this--
HAQ: Yes.
SELLERS: -- it was living under a rock. But the fact is I don't think one, having them on American soil is constitutional. And two, this is not going to fix our immigration problem.
PHILLIP: So let me just make a note. Former Republican governor of North Carolina says the "Republicans had the upper hand on immigration as long as they were going after criminals and the gangs. But I think that they're losing the upper hand on that issue because of the apparent disjointed implementation of arrests. From a P.R. and political standpoint, for the first time, immigration may have a negative impact on my party."
So just something to leave you with as we move on.
JENNINGS: Just for the record, that's Pat McCrory. Not exactly a spokesperson for the current iteration of the Republican Party. Just for the record.
PHILLIP: North Carolina is the purple state and that's why I think it still matters. Next for us. When it comes to the Democrats' sickness, James Carville says that he's got the remedy: anger, pure anger. We'll discuss next.
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[22:45:00]
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PHILLIP: The liberal who coined the phrase, "It's the economy, stupid," is now doubling down 30 years later. But this time he wants to add a dose of anger.
James Carville writes in "The Times," "It is abundantly clear, even to me, that the Democratic Party must now run on the most populist economic platform since the Great Depression. It's time for the Democrats to embrace a sweeping, aggressive, unvarnished, unapologetic, and altogether unmistakable platform of pure economic rage. This is our only way out of the abyss."
So, is he right?
Well, we saw the bromance of two men who channeled that rage in two wins, even if their methods could not be more different. I mean, well, it's time for trying.
SELLERS: First of all -- let's time out.
Part of the biggest problem Democrats have is our messengers. Not necessarily our message, but James Carville can go sit down somewhere, probably about 20 years ago. And I think even James should recognize that there is a seat for him somewhere.
There is no one out there who is listening to what James Carville has to say.
PHILLIP: But on the merits of what he is saying, is he right or wrong?
SELLERS: He is very right. And the fascinating part about his--
PHILLIP: Did everybody else catch that?
HAQ: Let me grab this.
SELLERS: I don't hate James Carville. First of all, he's an LSU fan, but that's neither here nor there. Let me finish this.
HAQ: James and I share a podcast company, so I'll put that out there as full disclosure. SELLERS: He's okay on this point.
HAQ: On this point, and even though he threw Woke under the bus along the way, fine, that is something, ironically, that even Marjorie Taylor Greene was blowing up the phone about, saying you've got to focus on health care, the stuff that hits people's pocketbooks. And the emotion, we don't need policy robots who will explain another 10- point plan.
You need somebody who literally can say, why is food costing so much? And yes, I understand White House, you're telling me economic indicators are great, but I'm not feeling it yet in my pocketbook.
PHILLIP: Go ahead, Bakari.
SELLERS: Thank you.
But what's happening right now is something that Democrats didn't pay attention to enough leading up to 2024, and Republicans are doing the same thing. The Trump White House is just as guilty as the Biden White House for this one particular reason.
There were people who were saying that crime was a problem, and Democrats would say, well, violent crime is decreasing, because it was. But voters were like, no, we don't feel that. We were saying that the inflation is plateauing because economic indicators are saying, but now Republicans are saying the same thing.
Donald Trump doesn't believe in affordability, but Trump White House is aloof when it comes to actually talking about things that matter in people's pockets. And so that's why I say that James Carville is not the best messenger, but his message, I mean, is right.
[23:50:02]
PHILLIP: It's kind of a miracle. He's breaking with himself.
SELLERS: Exactly.
PHILLIP: I mean, as he points out, he is of the Clinton era of centrism, and also, frankly, globalism. And I think that what he is pointing to is the fact that Democrats spent many of those years embracing all the things that Trump then ran against, and that's why they're in the position that they're in.
MILLER: James is 10 years too late on knowing that's where-- But I want to say this one more time.
What he's saying is nice, but where Democrat candidates are currently running, you have a candidate in Nashville running for Congress who says she hates Nashville. You have a candidate running in California who throws mashed potatoes at her husband.
You talk about that we should have this populist message among the Democratic Party, if the candidates that are being run outside of Mamdani in New York are not populist at all. SELLERS: So respectfully, you have Helena Moreno, who just won the
mayor of New Orleans. You have Abigail Spanberger, who won in Virginia. You have Mikey Sherrill, who won in New Jersey.
We actually took back and controlled all three levels of government in Virginia, we actually won the mayor of Pittsburgh, we won the mayor of Detroit. So there were a couple of weeks ago where I would just say that you're flat out wrong because the voters actually proved that Democrats ran up and down the table. There are not many races you can point to, Republicans won because we focused on this issue.
HAQ: And here's what's, I think, important about those data points is that none of those people looked and talked exactly the same, but they had a very consistent, deeply local economic message. They took whatever happened in Congress, whether it was health care, whether it was affordability, and they connected it deeply local ways.
PHILLIP: So here's the opening for Democrats. I'll just read the headline of this Times piece. Trump falls short of his populist rhetoric, and they point to his tax breaks for corporations, his efforts to strip workers of legal protections, his desire to cozy up with corporations as an opening for Democrats, frankly, because Trump ran as a populist, but he's governing not so much as a populist.
JENNINGS: So Democrats are complaining about tax breaks for corporations at the same time saying they want to get rid of the tariffs, which they also argue are taxed. I don't understand.
PHILLIP: Tariffs are a tax on consumers. Tariffs are also a tax on consumers.
And if they weren't a tax on consumers, then the Trump administration wouldn't be rolling them back so they could lower the price of coffee. So that's the part. That's why that makes sense.
JENNINGS: If Democrats want to join us in reducing all corporate taxes, whether it's on tariff or just corporate tax breaks, I think that would be an amazing thing.
PHILLIP: No, I don't think that's what populism is. Populism is supposed to be about the average worker, and that's what Trump ran on in 2016. But I think the question is, is he governing that way? And if Democrats are able to address that, could they have an opportunity?
JENNINGS: Well, he would argue, and look, I think the first term, he has spent a lot of time on foreign affairs, and he's had a fair record of success on it. They did pass their domestic policy agenda.
You know, an election year is for him to get back out. We have the best salesman in the party in the White House, and so he's going to have to go out and draw the line between why our brand of economic populism or our economic theories are better than the socialism that's running rampant in the Democratic Party. I have no doubt that he'll do that.
But look, this has been true for time immemorial. How people feel about the economy in any given election is determinative for the party in power, and that'll be true in '26, '28, '30, '32, and for here on out. But I think he's actually got an emerging story to tell.
It may not be a quick fix, but the trajectory of this country, getting lectured by Democrats about affordability who just took prices to the moon, it's paramount.
PHILLIP: I mean next for us, the panel's going to give us their Nightcap's Black Friday edition. We'll be right back.
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[22:55:00]
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PHILLIP: We are back, and it's time for the News Nightcap. It is Black Friday, so we're wondering, what would our table be willing to wait in line and risk the absolute chaos and madness for?
You each have 30 seconds to say your piece. Katie, you're first.
MILLER: I wouldn't go anywhere without my Starlink. I have many kits in the car, on the go. You'd always need your Wi-Fi.
Mine is always a Starlink.
PHILLIP: You could have a kit. Okay, go ahead.
HAQ: I don't need Black Friday because I have Costco, and Costco is year-round.
PHILLIP: Costco does Black Friday, too.
HAQ: Costco is every day. It has, I mean, there's $115 Lululemon pants I could get, or there's an $8 dupe at Costco that I could get. And yes, absolutely, I will shill for Costco professionally if you would like as well.
PHILLIP: Note to Costco. Okay.
SELLERS: No, Latasha Brown, Black Voters Matter, we are not buying it. They're launching a movement this Black Friday and going forward about stores that are contributing to things like Donald Trump's inauguration and all of these things which we feel like, or the library, which we feel like are not necessarily conducive to the policies that would move people forward. And so this weekend, black folk are flexing their buying power and saying we are not buying it.
[23:00:02]
PHILLIP: All right, Scott.
JENNINGS: I need a cloning machine. I would stand in line. I have been running all over this country. I've been to the West Coast, I've been to Florida, I've been to --
I've been all over, and I just, I don't have enough hours in the day right now. I am as busy as I could possibly be.
SELLERS: Oh, my God, Scott.
JENNINGS: I need three or four.
SELLERS: You also should stand in line for some humility for that one.
JENNINGS: I need three or four. I'm busy. I need three or four sections.
PHILLIP: I'm here to tell you, you've got the same number of hours as Beyonce, so you've got to work harder.
JENNINGS: I need more time.
PHILLIP: All right. Thank you for watching "NewsNight." "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
