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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Hegseth Shifts Responsibility For Double-Tap Strike On Boat; Democrats Accuse Trump Admin Of War Crimes After Boat Bombings; Trump Pardons Drug Kingpin Despite Targeting Alleged Drug Boats; White House Releases Trump MRI Details; Trump And GOP Prevent Disaster In TN Race. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired December 01, 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, damning new accusations about Donald Trump's boat bombings and who ordered the kills.
SEN. ANGUS KING (I-ME): That's a stone-cold war crime.
PHILLIP: Plus, while the president strikes alleged drug boats, he pardons one of the world's most notorious drug kingpins responsible for cocaine into America.
Also, blockage.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Do you know? I have no idea what they analyzed.
PHILLIP: Does the letter about Trump's mysterious MRI open or shut down questions about his health?
And Christianity, country music and bachelorettes, Republicans try to avert disaster in a race that shouldn't be close.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The whole world is watching.
PHILLIP: Live at the table, Cornel West, Batya Ungar-Sargon, Hilary Rosen and Lydia Moynihan.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening. I'm Abby Phillip in New York.
Let's get right to what America's talking about, war crimes and whether Pete Hegseth committed one. The Pentagon strikes on alleged boats in the Caribbean, they are raising serious alarms from both sides of the aisle tonight, despite a debate about whether the administration has the authority to even strike the boats. 22 of them have been sunk, more than 80 people killed in those strikes. And now the reports seem to indicate that one of those strikes left no survivors and a follow-up strike or a double tap was ordered to kill everyone on board that craft.
Both Republicans and Democrats are arguing that, at best, a second strike is illegal, and, at worst, it's a war crime.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. DON BACON (R-NE): If it was as if the article said that is a violation of the law of war, when people want to surrender, you don't kill them.
SEN. TIM KAINE (D-VA): If that reporting is true, it's a clear violation of DOD's own laws of war, as well as international law. So, this rises to the level of a war crime.
REP. MIKE TURNER (R-OH): Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious, and I agree that that would be an illegal act.
KING: If the facts are as have been alleged, that there was a second strike specifically to kill the survivors in the water, that's a stone-cold war crime. It's also murder.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: The White House and the Pentagon have denied a Washington Post report that claimed that Hegseth gave an order to, quote, kill everybody. And tonight, Hegseth and the White House are shifting responsibility to Admiral Mitch Bradley. He's the commander of U.S. Special Operations.
Now, Hegseth says that he stands by that admiral's combat decisions while the White House calls them lawful.
Joining us in our fifth seat tonight is Margaret Donovan. She's a former Army JAG. Margaret, I want to start with you because there is this dispute about who gave the order. First of all, what do you make of the fact that tonight they seem to be pointing the finger pretty directly at this admiral and naming him both at the White House podium and Pete Hegseth in this tweet in his defense, but really saying that he's responsible for this?
MARGARET DONOVAN, FORMER ARMY JAG: I think that is a great indication of an administration who knows that something has gone terribly wrong here. I think that people are finally recognizing, and that's why you see we did that intro with all of these different leaders and lawmakers saying that this is a stone-cold war crime.
This is so basic to everybody who has served in the military and who has trained on the law of war and the law of armed conflict that it is a war crime, that it's no surprise that the administration will be trying to shift the blame.
I think that the choice to sort of pin this on Admiral Bradley is an interesting one, but not unexpected because Secretary Hegseth is not somebody who has exactly leadership qualities, right? He's actually largely unqualified to be in that position. And so, of course, his natural instinct would likely be to say something's gone wrong, let me find somebody to blame this on.
Now, that's not to absolve Admiral Bradley of anything. If the facts really have played out the way that it is being reported, he absolutely had a duty not to follow an unlawful order, if it was Secretary Hegseth's order.
PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, Batya, this kind of puts the whole unlawful order thing in a different context because now there's a real question about whether there was an unlawful order and who gave it.
BATYA UNGAR-SARGON, NEWSNATION HOST, BATYA!: Well, first of all, the story has been massively misreported.
[22:05:00]
So, you have actual headlines saying that Hegseth gave the order for the second hit. That wasn't in the initial Washington Post article, which claimed that following, by hearsay, somebody claimed to have heard Hegseth say, we have to kill everybody, therefore the admiral gave the second hit. So, I just want to clear that up. I think that's why Hegseth wrote the tweet, is to just correct the record.
But what I don't understand is it is the secretary of state's right to determine who is a terrorist and who isn't. The secretary of state answers to the executive branch. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has determined that these boats are carrying terrorists, which makes the attacks on them legal. And the only question is whether that boat was disabled or whether it was destroyed. If it was destroyed, how were there still live people clinging to it? And if it was only disabled, let me just finish the point, then it was still a threat, meaning it was still a legitimate target. So, I'm very confused.
And, by the way, I've spoken to a lot of veterans today who are also very confused by all of this bipartisan outrage. I don't get it.
PHILLIP: Well, look, good thing we have a military lawyer at the table.
DONOVAN: So, can I just respond with two things here? First, I would say, to your point about, you know, who gave this order, what The Washington Post article said, I think that's precisely why we need the Senate and the House to do what they're supposed to do, have oversight, have investigation.
UNGAR-SARGON: I totally agree.
DONOVAN: Let's figure it out.
UNGAR-SARGON: I want more information as well, completely.
DONOVAN: And, second, on the point of the secretary of state making it something a designated terrorist organization, that actually does not enable you to lethally target somebody. Naming somebody on the secretary of state's list of foreign terrorist organizations actually only does, I mean, serious things. You can sanction people who are members of DTOs or FTOs. You can ban them from immigrating to the United States. You can actually criminally prosecute people who give them support, material support to terrorism. But it does not enable you to lethally target them.
Yes, many DTOs and FTOs end up being organizations that we target abroad, but that's subject to Congressional authorization and the laws of armed conflict when we see them abroad.
UNGAR-SARGON: So, you are in a dispute with the administration about that, which is totally fine.
DONOVAN: Precisely.
UNGAR-SARGON: yes. Okay. So -- but I am not, I think that they have that authority. So, they have not been challenged yet in any significant way, neither by Congress, nor by --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, I'll let you get in, but, I mean, I don't want us to lose the point here. The question is actually not whether or not this was a legitimate target. I think there's dispute about that, but that's not what we're disputing. The question is whether it is legal, according to our rules of engagement and the laws of armed conflict that we abide by, to strike a target a second time when the target doesn't appear to pose a threat or is surrendering. That is the part that I think is in dispute.
And that's not a question of whether they were terrorists or not. Even if they were terrorists, that might very well be illegal.
HILARY ROSEN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: You know, I think we should take a step back because the only reason we know about this is because, obviously, somebody involved in that operation was uncomfortable with what was happening. And that's how The Washington Post found out about it. Somebody leaked this to a reporter.
People are not happy with Hegseth's leadership at the department. People are not happy with some of the things that the military is being ordered to do, whether it's the SEAL team, whether it's CENTCOM, whether it's -- and I think that we have to pay attention to the fact that this isn't coming from some random reporter who was on the boat with them. This is coming from an internal source who is unhappy with the leadership of the administration.
PHILLIP: To that point, The Washington Post had a story tonight that this is a, quote, from a military official. This is protect Pete bullshit, that source said. One official said of Leavitt's statements, it's throwing us, the service members, under the bus.
ROSEN: I think it's going to be hard for this guy to --
PHILLIP: So, there's clearly not just the whatever happened in that strike, but the cleanup from the White House is causing a lot of consternation. LYDIA MOYNIHAN, CORRESPONDENT, NEW YORK POST: Yes. Well, one thing I would note is every lawmaker you played started their thought by saying, if this is true. And the fact of the matter is there is a lot in dispute tonight. We don't know the answers to everything. And Batya raised an important point that there is a difference between disabling a boat and destroying it. If it was only disabled under the law of war, actually, they would've potentially been able to make that a military target.
But I think a couple important points to make here more generally is, you know, it's interesting to hear the media talking about this breathlessly for hours and hours when, you know, Biden or Obama drone strikes. The only thing that needed to happen was John Kirby would go on T.V. and say, oh, we, we made a mistake. We're learning from it. And nobody batted an eye. And yet now this has become the biggest story --
PHILLIP: I mean, it's actually not true that no one batted an eye at Obama's highly controversial drone strikes. That's the first thing.
DONOVAN: No. And, in fact, in the al-Awlaki strike, which was probably one of his most controversial, the legal opinion supporting that strike was fully disclosed at some point.
[22:10:06]
And I think that's what needs to happen here. And we need to see the legal opinions for the airstrike --
MOYNIHAN: But I think bigger story, though, is the average Trump voter looks at this, and they think, why is the media breathlessly covering narco-terrorists and drug traffickers when the average American looks at this and thinks, oh, Donald Trump is actually protecting the border.
PHILLIP: Well, what I would say to the average Trump voter is that, you know, we have rules of engagement in the world that are not there to protect narco-terrorists. They're there to protect American soldiers in combat. And so it's super important for people who I'm sure a lot of Trump supporters who have loved ones who are going out in armed conflicts to know that when they are engaged by an enemy, that that enemy, if they are not adhering to rules of war, are held responsible for those violations. And that if they are adhering to rules of war, if they are struck in an attack and then they survived, there are rules about what happens to them. They don't get just assassinated on the battlefield if they weren't taken out in the initial strike.
So, that's why it matters. It matters to Trump voters. It matters to Biden voters. It also matters to the United States' credibility in the world because this isn't just -- look, I mean, we don't even know who these people were. We don't know what drugs they were carrying. It's not about that. It's about whether or not we operate by any rules at all.
CORNEL WEST (I), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Absolutely, and I think that's the real challenge here because it's an irony, if not hypocrisy, to see both White House and Congress of both parties all of a sudden full of this moral energy. When international law has been stripped and disregarded, human rights have been stripped and disregarded, we could talk about that in regard to Gaza war crimes, what I consider genocide, but we can debate that, right, but same is true with executors. We just had the Prince of Saudi Arabia treated like a king. You got crimes against humanity taking place every day. Same is true in the history of United States vis-a-vis Latin America, the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. We have intervened in 31 of the 33 countries down there.
So, you can imagine what they think of us, military coups against democratic regimes, Guatemala, (INAUDIBLE), Brazil, we can go on and on. So, it's an irony to see all of a sudden, both of these parties saying, we've got this moral authority concerned about what is a war crime and what isn't. Okay, let's debate that. But the larger context is the war of crimes have been shot through the history of the country.
DONOVAN: But, Abby --
PHILLIP: Let me give Margaret a quick moment to respond and we'll continue to --
DONOVAN: I hear you. I will say, I think it's encouraging that there is outrage over this. I think because there was -- the muddies -- the waters were intentionally muddied in terms of the legal authority were striking in the first place. And so the fact that we see something so brazen, firing on shipwrecked survivors of an initial strike, and that is agreed across the board to be illegal, I think it's encouraging that we can at least have bipartisan support --
WEST: If it's in morality, in the name morality and not partisanship.
DONOVAN: Sure, absolutely.
WEST: The same as this partisanship, you lose any --
DONOVAN: Absolutely. But I think that what's happening and why the rules of engagement, as Abby was just saying, are so important to the American military that we can show that we uphold them is because we need allies. We need allies, if we are going to war, even if we're going to war with Venezuela, we can't go in there alone. We need people who are going to come in with us and they understand that the United States will follow the rules of engagement. We've already seen in the Caribbean that the United Kingdom and the Dutch have stopped sharing intelligence with us. And so we rarely go into conflicts by ourselves. We need allies, and our allies want to look to us and understand that we will follow the rules of engagement if they fight alongside us.
PHILLIP: We are going to hit pause on this and continue after the break, because another -- while this Trump strike controversy is going on, he's also pardoning a drug kingpin who sent cocaine into America.
Plus, the president tried to deflect on his mysterious MRI. So, the White House has now released a letter from his doctor. But does it actually answer the questions that we have about his health?
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:15:00]
PHILLIP: For an administration supposedly hell bent on cracking down on illegal drugs, why did the president promise to pardon one of the world's most notorious drug kingpins? The pardonee is this man, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez. Trump made his announcement just days before the presidential election in Honduras saying that Hernandez had been treated very harshly and unfairly.
Just last year, an American jury convicted Hernandez of drug trafficking. He was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison. Now, according to DOJ, Hernandez conspired to move more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. In exchange, Hernandez received millions of dollars in bribes that he used to fuel his rise in Honduran politics. And while in office, he used his power to protect and enrich his drug trafficker friends.
So, again, why is this happening? Why is there a pardon at play here? Especially since, in their own words, Trump and his administration are using this justification to blow up boats in the Caribbean.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We made a lot of progress with Venezuela in terms of stopping drugs from pouring in.
PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: We must meet narco-terrorists and their illegal activities with strength and swift action.
KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The cartels have only gotten more powerful. So, the president is taking these unprecedented steps.
TRUMP: We don't want drugs coming in from Venezuela or anybody else or any place else.
There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country.
MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: To take on and eradicate these drug cartels.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: So, what's up with this? This is one of the most confounding things. I mean, Bill Cassidy, Republican senator, says, why would we pardon this guy and then go after Maduro for running drugs into the United States? Lock up every drug runner. Batya, do you have any sense why this is happening? UNGAR-SARGON: I have no idea why he did this. I wouldn't have done this. I wouldn't have told him to do it. I think it's really silly, especially because I think when working class Americans in those forgotten Rust Belt communities where you have high schools, where five kids of overdosed and died, when they see him blowing up those boats, they feel like he sees their pain. They feel like somebody cares.
And so, to me, I totally agree with you. I have no idea why they did this. I will say that I'm much angrier about the 86 Somalis who embezzled a billion dollars from Minnesota taxpayers and then accused people who were trying to call them out of racism than I am about this because, that actually speaks to one --
ROSEN: Does one have to bother you more than the other?
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: We've talked a lot at this table, and you've mentioned this, I think, very eloquently, how much death and destruction is due to drugs in this country. But I think even what the reason I'm really surprised is because I would've thought that you would be very concerned about a rationale for military action that is deceptive in nature, that if the Trump administration wants to engage in regime change in Venezuela, and they're using drugs as an excuse, but it's really something else, wouldn't that be more troublesome?
UNGAR-SARGON: I dispute that.
(CROSSTALKS)
UNGAR-SARGON: I dispute that characterization, Abby. I don't think that there's any evidence yet. If there will become evidence of regime change in Venezuela, I will absolutely object to that. For now, they are killing terrorists, and I 100 percent support killing terrorists.
PHILLIP: Sure.
UNGAR-SARGON: I love killing people --
DONOVAN: Sure. But they are killing people that they have labeled terrorists.
UNGAR-SARGON: Yes, indeed.
DONOVAN: Just to be clear.
UNGAR-SARGON: Indeed. People I think are terrorists, people I am at war with who are smuggling drugs into this country --
DONOVAN: Well, I'll tell you, terrorists don't travel 11 to a boat, you know, in a speed boat leaving the coast of Venezuela.
MOYNIHAN: So, you think Trump is just drone-striking boats in the Caribbean -- DONOVAN: I am saying that I have been to Iraq, I've been to Syria. I have done airstrikes against terrorists, and this is not what we're dealing with here. That is my opinion, that we are talking about drug mules when you look at how drug trafficking works, right? Let's take the September 2nd strike. This is a boat leaving the coast of Venezuela with 11 people on it. That is like drug trafficking 101, you're going to pay the least amount of people and use the most amount of space for drug trafficking, right? You don't want to have to pay 11 people and you're going to send people who are expendable, by the way. You're not sending your kingpins to --
UNGAR-SARGON: So, it's only terrorism if you like exceed a number of humans on the boat? Is that the argument here?
DONOVAN: I'm saying that it drugs, not terrorism.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Do we know? Do we actually know that, okay? I think that's, again, a basic question in all of this. Do we know for sure that all of these people were involved in the drug trade? Do we even know what drugs we're talking about here?
ROSEN: But, in a sense, it doesn't matter.
PHILLIP: Do you know?
MOYNIHAN: There is an element of the U.S. intelligence is arguably the best in the world. I don't --
PHILLIP: Shouldn't they be able to tell us at this point?
MOYNIHAN: When has the U.S. military ever given every single detail to the media?
ROSEN: Well, they're not even telling if it's a terrorist organization.
MOYNIHAN: We know that this has actually been an issue in Trump's first term enough that the first administration was worried during COVID, these cartels were stockpiling fentanyl and they were stockpiling cocaine with the intent of distributing them.
PHILLIP: Sure.
MOYNIHAN: And also it's a migration problem. Venezuela has been sending --
PHILLIP: We prosecuted -- we actually prosecuted actually starting in the Trump administration this guy for not just being --
DONOVAN: With evidence in court.
PHILIP: Yes, with evidence in court, not just for being some random guy on a fisher boat, but for being a mastermind of a government- sponsored drug cartel. And now the Trump administration is saying that they care so much about stopping drugs from coming into the country that they're going to bomb the guys on a fishing boat, but set free the guy who ran the cartel?
ROSEN: That's the issue. It's not an either/or Somali fraud in Minnesota, which I agree with you, is terrible. It's a, if you really want to get rid of drugs in this country and you're serious about it, do it across the board. This goes to this very strange pardon strategy that this president has that's mysterious. Why does he pardon, you know, the head of by the head of ByteDance?
(CROSSTALKS)
UNGAR-SARGON: Preemptively pardon your --
ROSEN: Yes. But those were obvious why he did that, right? I mean, you knew why Joe Biden was pardoning people, not that I was for it, but you knew why he was doing it. There's no rationale to pardon a drug kingpin. And there's no rationale to pardon --
UNGAR-SARGON: Biden pardoned a lot of criminals on the way out, a lot of murderers.
ROSEN: No. Nobody delivered four tons of cocaine into the country. And if you're saying you care about drugs, then you care about drugs.
[22:25:02]
WEST: But the flipside of this is that, you know, the level of spiritual bankruptcy and more decrepitude in the country is such that we have a high demand for drugs. It's like doing prohibition in the 1920s. You could come up with a policy to keep track of every boat with all the whiskey in the world, but if you live in a culture, a high-low quality relations, shattered families, 70 percent of our citizens living paycheck-to-paycheck, low levels of friendship, some of our fellow citizens find it difficult to cultivate the capacity to love.
That's spiritual emptiness of a level that puts a smile on T.S. Elliot 1922 in the Wasteland. Not a smile of arrogance, but just a description of what it is to live in a country where so many of our precious young people think the only way to make it is to fly high in the friendly skies with drugs.
I don't care what kind of drugs they are. That's not the sole factor, but that's a crucial factor we have to keep in mind.
ROSEN: Yes. But supply matters, right? And if you're letting a guy who brings four tons of cocaine in off the hook, you're essentially creating open invitation.
DONOVAN: 400 tons. And I think part of the justification is that people in Honduras told the president, you know, that this guy is fine and the facts were wrong, and that is the president saying an American justice system, as you mentioned, Abby, the investigation started, one of his co-conspirators was indicted under Trump 1, under Bill Barr's DOJ. So, you have an American justice system, an American jury convicting this guy in a full scale federal criminal trial, and that is not enough to prove that he's a drug kingpin.
PHILLIP: And we did not even get into the fact that part of what's going on here is an attempt by the Trump administration to influence the upcoming Honduran election, in which a candidate who is the political heir of this convicted drug kingpin is now running for president. You see him there with a picture of Trump underneath him. So, it's all very much connected.
Margaret Donovan, thank you very much for being here.
Next for us, the president says that he doesn't know why he got an MRI and now his doctors are releasing a letter, but does it actually solve the mystery? Another special guest is going to be with us at the table.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:31:46]
PHILLIP: Tonight, the White House is finally releasing the details of an MRI that Donald Trump received back in October. That's after facing pressure from a lot of sources. A memo released by President Trump's doctor says that his cardiovascular and his abdominal health is, quote, "perfectly normal".
Trump revealed in October that he received a scan of Walter Reed in a visit that the White House billed as a routine yearly checkup. But even as recently as last night, he left some key questions about that unanswered.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNKNOWN: What part of your body was the MRI looking at?
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I have no idea. It was just an MRI. What part of the body? It wasn't the brain because I took a cognitive test and I aced it. I got a perfect mark.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Dr. Chris Pernell joins us in our fifth seat. She's a fellow at the American College of Preventative Medicine. Dr. Pernell, I don't know many patients who would go into an MRI and be like, I don't know what you're looking for, but go ahead. But putting that aside, I mean, the letter that the doctor released today, it answers some questions, but it's sort of his answering questions that maybe weren't asked. What did you make of it?
CHRIS PERNELL, DIRECTOR, NAACP CENTER FOR HEALTH EQUITY: It actually, I think, left more things unanswered than answered and will not quell speculation. As someone who practices preventive medicine, I can tell you that MRI is not a first step or first line treatment or screening tool for prevention. And to say that it was something that you would give a person of his
age to prevent worse health outcomes, it just doesn't add up. It felt non-specific in many ways. It felt random. But nothing overtly suspicious. You would ask yourself, was there some other clinical concern that led his treating physician to order that MRI? Because you definitely don't begin there.
And this is -- we're missing a moment once again with this current administration, whether it's public health, health care or the power of prevention, we could have come out and have been very transparent and said this is what is happening. But instead, it's a little bit of cat and mouse.
PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, if everything's fine, why did it take literally a month and a half or whatever it was for this to come out? Also, even just the fact that they're labeling this an annual check-up, but he'd already had one earlier in the year. So, there's just a lot of things that don't add up here.
ROSEN: I normally would not think this is a good story or interesting story, but you know, two things. One, Donald Trump's virility is such a significant part of his brand, you know that he -- people actually like that he's a strong man. They like that he is -- projects that energy and that that's how he always campaigned.
So, and the second point is he made such an issue of Joe Biden's health for so long that for him not to take this seriously or to try and just sort of dismiss the conversation outright, you know, is I think a little ridiculous.
(CROSSTALK)
MOYNIHAN: I'm sorry but the mainstream media has no credibility on the issues.
(CROSSTALK)
ROSEN: I totally agree with you.
MOYNIHAN: Biden, they were the ones saying that Biden was doing 100 percent fine after tripping. Biden is declared healthy and vigorous.
(CROSSTALK)
ROSEN: No, no, you're missing my point. I'm just saying Donald Trump made an issue, right?
(CROSSTALK)
MOYNIHAN: --about Donald Trump.
[22:35:02]
Use your eyes. You could use your eyes with Biden and see he was trailing off --
(CROSSTALK)
ROSEN: Of course.
UNKNOWN: But you could also say that --
(CROSSTALK)
MOYNIHAN: And you your eyes with Donald Trump and see that --
PERNELL: You could also say that it's a president, right?
(CROSSTALK)
UNKNOWN: You also say that it's president.
PERNELL: You're missing the point.
ROSEN: People are also raising the point.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: People are also --
ROSEN: People are raising the point.
PHILLIP: I think that you're right that there should probably be, for the people who were defending Joe Biden, they should probably have a seat in this conversation. I don't know that anybody at this particular table were doing that.
ROSEN: I was one of those who said he shouldn't run, if you'll remember many years.
PHILLIP: However, if you are concerned about Joe Biden -- if you're concerned that perhaps he wasn't up for the job, "The New York Times" wrote a piece where they noted that he has -- Trump has fewer public events on his schedule. He's traveling domestically much less than he did in his first term.
He keeps a shorter public schedule than he used to, most of his appearances fall between noon and 5 P.M. on average, seem to recall that being a criticism of Joe Biden's, as well. And on top of that, I mean, Donald Trump is well known to make a lot of verbal gaffes on a regular basis. So if you're concerned about Biden, why would you not be concerned about that?
PERNELL: Right. And can we talk about this from a medical perspective?
ROSEN: Well, two wrongs don't make a right, right? So Trump makes this the issue --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: But that's exactly my point is that --
ROSEN: -- about other people. He ought to be able to handle it when it comes back at him.
PHILLIP: I think that that's exactly my point.
MOYNIHAN: He has traveled to 13 countries and he doesn't--
(CROSSTALK)
PERNELL: And -- but we're missing -- let me just say this again, we're missing the point. You have a 79-year-old man and we should be having a conversation in this country about how do you prevent progressive aging that could be debilitating. We are seeing --
(CROSSTALK)
PERNELL: We're not -- because it's always branded in, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm perfectly normal. I'm 100 percent strong. I am 100 percent well. When we know at their age there are risk factors for a host of cardiac issues, not saying that he has those things, we know that he is either overweight or he has obesity. That carries risk factors for other cardio metabolic issues.
We know that there have been occasions where His sentences were non- sensical. He has misnamed people. Look, I had concerns when President Biden was evidencing those similar types of symptoms as someone who could be going through some form of cognitive decline. And what I'm saying here is that we are left with more questions than answers. And if the concern really were about projecting transparency, if the concern were really about educating the masses on what you could do to protect your health span
So, like, aging and being well, then we would say, hey, this is what a 79-year-old man who's probably not in the best shape or the best fit is dealing with. But we don't get that. There's too much conjecture. There's too much speculation.
PHILLIP: It's not about that. I mean, it's obviously about protecting the principal, protecting the President from criticism. Trump lashed out at "The New York Times" reporter who wrote -- one of the reporters who wrote that, there were two writers, but he only lashed out at the woman. He calls her -- calls the "Times" a rag, says that it's an enemy of the people, and calls her a third-rate reporter who is ugly both inside and out.
And I think a lot of Americans -- this was true in the 2024 campaign, a lot of Americans are learning, looking at these elderly presidents and elderly candidates and saying to Dr. Pernell's point, shouldn't we have an honest conversation about the fact that aging is a thing that you don't escape?
PERNELL: Yes, it's normal.
PHILLIP: You don't get away with not aging.
PERNELL: It's normal.
WEST: That's right. You can't deny time. You can't deny history. But I mean, for me, the problem is not so much brother Trump having a problem with his head, never can -- never could pass a cognition test but Jeremiah says what? You fail and issues of the heart -- that's the crucial thing.
Julius Caesar could pass an exam for his head. The sister Rose says what? You're failing in heart. You're failing in compassion. You're failing in caring for the weak and the vulnerable. That's a much deeper issue that holds for both parties. It holds for all colors, all genders, all sexual orientations, all religious identities.
That's part of the spiritual moral crisis that again, we don't want to linger too long on because we can be overwhelmed by it. And yet sooner or later we had to hit it head-on.
PHILLIP: Look, it's a fair point.
WEST: Yes.
PHILLIP: But I think -- but I think in the context of running a country being the leader of the free world as it were, it is important whether you are well or not.
ROSEN: Politics doesn't have these conversations. There's no space for it.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I mean, look, presidents have lied about their health for a very long time.
PERNELL: Yes, they have. Yes, they have.
WEST: Oh, absolutely.
PHILLIP: It's not new but we know that he has health issues.
[22:40:00]
We know that he's been to the doctor three times this year and has now gotten an MRI. Why are they misdirecting about this?
UNGAR-SARGON: I just find the story hilarious. I don't begrudge anybody doing the work, pointing it out, that obviously as we saw in the last administration, there wasn't enough of that. I myself felt so sorry for Joe Biden for the embarrassment that I didn't talk about it enough and I hold myself to account for that. But it's just -- this is the most effective president of my lifetime.
The next president is going to get half as much done. So whatever is going on with him, he seems to me to be very virile, but he is extremely, extremely effective. He has done so much. He has revolutionized this country both in terms of foreign policy and in terms of --
(CROSSTALK) UNGAR-SARGON: I disagree with Dr. West. I think a lot that comes from a place of compassion for forgotten Americans. And so to me to see people sitting around being like, oh there must be something wrong with it, we should all be so lucky to be this effective.
PERNELL: Got to interject. No. Got to interject.
(CROSSTALK)
PERNELL: Health is crumbling. Health care is in disarray. We are no longer recognizing that today is World AIDS Day. Look, my father had a chronic HIV AIDS infection.
UNKNOWN: I'm sorry to hear that.
PERNELL: And in this country for us to continually say that public health matters are not important is abysmal. We have Americans who are being separated for care.
(CROSSTALK)
UNKNOWN: I mean he got the price of drugs down, right? Hundreds of thousands -- that was a huge deal promised by every Democrat and they failed to do it.
(CROSSTALK)
PERNELL: Well, that was actually a policy proposal that was inherited from the previous administration -- inherited by the previous administration.
(CROSSTALK)
PERNELL: And we know we need to lower the cost of drugs in nation. But we can't say that when we have a president and an administration that has executed policy violence that has disproportionately impacted historically marginalized groups has separated Americans from care.
(CROSSTALK)
UNGAR-SARGON: I don't know what that means. People of group --
(CROSSTALK)
PERNELL: What do you -- you don't --
(CROSSTALK)
PERNELL: We're talking about pharmaceutical drugs. We're talking about the well-being of populations. I am a public health physician. We can have a conversation about our American sicker, our Americans at risk to have worse and worse outcomes. We have an outbreak of measles. Measles was almost eliminated in the United States. That's happened under this administration. We see bouts of pertussis. That's happened under this administration. So you just can't sit there and say he's been the most effective
president. I don't know why we're not --we're talking about this issue because once again --
(CROSSTALK)
UNGAR-SARGON: On the economy, on immigration, on tariffs, on trade. He's ended nine wars.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Hold on. Hold on a second. There's a lot that you're saying there, okay?
(LAUGHTER)
PHILLIP: He's done some things on tariffs, but I'm not sure that they've all been good. I think there's a lot to dispute in what you're saying.
UNGAR-SARGON: But they've been effective.
PHILLIP: Next for us -- Dr. Chris Pernell, thank you very much for being here. Next for us, Republicans are so worried about a race in Tennessee that the President is now accusing the Democrat of hating Christianity and country music. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:47:36]
PHILLIP: It's a district that Donald Trump won by double digits in 2024, and it's a seat the Republicans, they've held it since the Reagan era, 1982. So why is the GOP running scared in a ruby red Tennessee district? Well, tomorrow's special election in the state's seventh congressional district has become the next big test for next year's midterms, with polls pitting a progressive Democrat and a Trump endorsed Republican in a closer than usual race. And even Trump is telling voters that the stakes can't be higher for his party.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Remember he's got a majority of three, a majority of three, and there aren't many people can do that, but we have to win this seat. She hates Christianity. Number two, she hates country music. How the hell can you elect a person like that? The whole world is watching Tennessee right now, and they're watching your district. The whole world is a big vote. It's going to show something.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Well? She did say. Let me just read what she said. This was in 2020.
(CROSSTALK) PHILLIP: It's on the podcast. l'll read it because we don't have the sound. "But I've been heavily involved in the Nashville mayoral race because I hate the city. I hate the bachelorettes. I hate the pedal taverns. I hate country music. I hate all the things that make Nashville apparently an it-city to the rest of the country, but I hate it." She has also since said that she was a private citizen. Nashville is her home. She actually represents Nashville. But I actually think the interesting part about this is that she's within two points of the Republican in this district, okay? Like that's a problem for Republicans.
ROSEN: This is like the best and oldest political ruse in the world, which is like we need attention where the Republican House majority. We lost badly a few weeks ago and everybody was saying we're done in the midterms. So what are we going to do? We're going to tell everybody how hard this race is going to be and if we win it --
PHILLIP: You think it's not that close?
(CROSSTALK)
ROSEN: -- we're the best. We are crashing into the midterms when we win this race. Come on.
PHILLIP: You think it's not that close? Is that what you're saying?
ROSEN: If the Republicans win this race, it's a no non-story. If the Democrat wins, that's an upset but like come on.
PHILLIP: That's right. But if the Democrat wins, would be a major big upset.
ROSEN: It's a big upset. But guess what?
[22:50:00]
PHILLIP: And the issue in this race --
(CROSSTALK)
ROSEN: The chances of it happening are so small.
PHILLIP: Well, maybe. But it seems like they're within striking distance in a race that shouldn't be --
(CROSSTALK)
MOYNIHAN: But Abby, go from --
PHILLIP: An issue is affordability.
MOYNIHAN: Well, to go from I mean, Trump won by 22 points, and now the polling would suggest that the Republican candidate is up just two points? This is a huge wake-up call to Republicans that they need to learn how to win when Trump is not on the ballot. And the reason that Trump's very good wins when he's on the ballot isn't just because of name recognition, it's because he works for it.
He is campaigning in three different states every single day. He's pulling clever stunts with a garbage can, McDonald's. He is working for the vote, messaging, putting surrogates on every network. And the folks I speak with who are familiar with this campaign note that this candidate's been kind of lazy. He's not out there giving the message that he needs to give. And that's what we need to be seeing from these candidates. They need to work for people's votes, even if it's a deep red district, and they need to hone the message of affordability and reaching voters.
UNGAR-SARGON: I was just going to say the point you were making is a very important one, which is even if the Republicans win, it's already a disaster because they lost a 20-point lead. And I think the reason for that is because we've seen this real political realignment. It used to be that the Republicans were the party of the rich and the Democrats were party of labor.
And we know that rich people turn out more to vote. They're much more engaged. They're high propensity voters. Now, Republicans represent the majority of working class Americans and low propensity voters and the Democrats represent the majority of rich Americans and educated Americans who are much more likely to turn out certainly on off-year elections.
The Republicans absolutely need to understand this. It's everything you said. They need candidates who care about them, who show up and speak about the issues that matter to them the way that Donald Trump did because the Democrats now have that advantage built in which is the advantage of representing very wealthy Americans.
PHILLIP: And not to mention that I don't know that it's going to be enough to tell the people that she hates country music.
(CROSSTALK)
UNKNOWN: Oh, I'm not sure about that, Abby.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: If that weren't enough, we would be -- you know.
(CROSSTALK)
ROSEN: I spent a lot of time in Nashville when I worked in the music business. And it's a pretty significant source of pride that they are the home of country music.
PHILLIP: Yes, well --
ROSEN: So I do think that these words are going to come back to --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Okay, let me just play what she said today to Casey Hunt about the country music bit. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AFTYN BEHN (D) U.S. CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE, TENNESEE: During my state race in my congressional primary, I sang nine to five. Once again, these personal attacks are almost satirical at this point. I've got a few, George Strait, Amarillo by morning, but --
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Fair enough.
BEHN: -- country music, yes. Anyways, taken out of context, but a big country music fan. And unfortunately, this is the result of this race being so close.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Cornel?
WEST: Nobody hates country music across the board. Blues, BB King, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, that's country music. Hank Williams on the vanilla side of town, that's country music.
(CROSSTALK)
WEST: Exactly.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Exactly, The panel is going to give us their nightcaps, "Word of the Year" edition.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:53:02]
PHILLIP: Oxford's word of the year is rage bait. It's defined as online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive. The word has tripled in usage in the last 12 months. So, for tonight's NewsNightcap, what's your word of the year, Lydia?
MOYNIHAN: Six-seven. It's sort of rain rot slang, purposefully opaque. You can use it for anything. I intended to confuse the boomers and I think it worked.
PHILLIP: Rain rot slang. I'm stealing that.
(LAUGHING)
PHILLIP: Go ahead.
ROSEN: I'm calling my Democratic friends triumphalists, which means, like, don't take too much for granted. Don't think the Republicans, you know, are falling apart and Democrats are going to sail through. Don't be triumphalists.
PHILLIP: That's a good word. That's a good SAT word. That's actual real word, not a slang word. Go ahead.
WEST: My word would be barbarity. That we've gone beyond hypocrisy and mendacity. We're moving toward barbarity, right? When we think we've reached a low point, we go lower and lower and lower. And just hope we have what it takes for bounce back. I think, I hope we do, but even if we don't, we just go down swinging. It don't mean a thing. I don't have that swing.
PHILLIP: That is so dark.
(LAUGHING)
PHILLIP: But I'll take it.
UNGAR-SARGON: What a swing reference. And mine is, I have to go with the most beautiful word in the English language. Tariffs.
PHILLIP: You said that like Oprah Winfrey. I said it like Oprah because we --
(CROSSTALK)
ROSEN: You get a tariff, and you get a tariff.
MOYNIHAN: Exactly -- all year and I could not be more thrilled with --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Tariffs might be the word of the year once the Supreme Court has their say.
WEST: Oh, that's true.
PHILLIP: All right, everyone.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Especially come Christmas when people have to buy just one doll for their child instead of two.
[23:02:00]
WEST: Oh, Lord.
PHILLIP: Everyone, thank you very much. Thanks for watching "News Night". You can catch me anytime on social media -- X, Instagram, and on TikTok. "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
