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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
GOP Averts Disaster In District That Democrats Made Competitive; Trump, Hegseth Insist They Didn't Know About Second Strike; Hegseth Under Fire From Lawmakers; Trump Defends Boat Strikes. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired December 02, 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, when the buck doesn't stop.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I didn't know about the second strike.
PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I didn't stick around.
TRUMP: I didn't know anything about people.
HEGSETH: I did not personally see survivors.
PHILLIP: Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth double down on their distancing from the double-tap.
Plus --
TRUMP: They contribute nothing. I don't want them in our country.
PHILLIP: -- the president attacks an immigrant community over fraud and a foe.
And is Trump flying blind on one of the issues that got him elected?
TRUMP: The word affordability is a Democrat scam.
PHILLIP: Live at the table, Ana Navarro, Brad Todd, David Pakman, Batya Ungar-Sargon and Kmele Foster.
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 New York. Let's begin with some breaking news tonight. Republicans avert a disaster, but they get another wakeup call about the mood of the nation. Republican Matt Van Epps tonight winning a seat for Tennessee's Seventh Congressional District. That was a race that shouldn't have been close at all. Donald Trump won it by 22 percent last year. But the Democrat, Aftyn Behn, made it competitive this year, even forcing Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson to sound the alarm over the last few days.
Now, this race is becoming, I think, yet another sign, as you were saying last night, that Republicans perhaps need to wake up when you have a 20 -- a plus 22 district, and then suddenly now it's plus 6, maybe plus 7, we'll see how the numbers really shake out, it really does suggest that if you are in a seat that Donald Trump won by 15 points or less, you better watch out. There might be a challenger, and it will likely be competitive.
BRAD TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think that's the wrong lesson to take away here. This is a -- well, Trump did win it by 22, but Marsha Blackburn in the midterm in 2018 when Trump was unpopular, only won the district by half a point. So, Matt Van Epps is going to win it by nine tonight.
And the lesson to take away from this is Democrats picked their wrong candidate. They had three state representatives running. They picked the liberal wing nut, the person who said she hated country music, she hated Nashville, she was uncomfortable with prayer, she wanted to bully state troopers. That's the problem Democrats face in primaries all over the country in 2026, that they may nominate a left wing nut who can't win the general.
ANA NAVARRO, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, but even if they nominated a left wing nut, to use your words, if that left wing nut in the deepest red district that Donald Trump won by 22 points is getting this close, I do think that there is a lesson learned there for Republicans. I hope that the lesson they learn is that they need to owe themselves to their constituents and the people that vote for them, not to Donald Trump. And they need to push back. I think Americans are getting very tired of reading the headlines about the Trump family getting richer and richer and richer through crypto grifts and all sorts of shenanigans when Americans are feeling poorer and poorer and poorer.
And so I think people want some oversight. I think they want some pushback on the abuses of power, and Republicans have a chance to do that. We're seeing them do it on Venezuela, on the boat strikes, right? We're seeing some bipartisanship on that. They can do it and they should do it. And that's what I hope the takeaway is tonight.
DAVID PAKMAN, PODCAST HOST, THE DAVID PAKMAN SHOW: I think Ana's completely right. And if we look at some of the other races, I mean, you look at New Jersey gubernatorial, which went from plus 3 to plus 15, you look at Virginia, which went from Youngkin winning by, I think it was 1.8 to plus 15 for Abigail Spanberger.
There's a lesson for Republicans. If they don't want to learn it, that's completely fine with me. But there were was talk of 40 seats maybe in the House in '26 flipping. It could be 60, it could be 70. I mean, this could be a disaster next year.
PHILLIP: I also wonder, you know, the redistricting part of this, you know, I think Republicans clearly want to redistrict their way out of electoral problems next year.
[22:05:04]
But if they make a bunch of districts sort of like moderately red and get rid of blue districts, I'm not sure that's really going to be the panacea that they think it is.
I think there are a couple of messages here that might -- if you're in Indiana, for example, you're probably like, I don't really know about this.
KMELE FOSTER, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, TANGLE: Yes. Trying to make yourself impervious to defeat is some -- is a bad strategy because everyone knows what you're doing. The doubts among Democrats don't really matter much. Those are to be expected. The growing doubt and discomfort among independents, that is a deep concern.
The fact that a lot of Republicans are beginning to ask real questions like, what is the deal here, the tariffs were supposed to do particular things like is perhaps the biggest concern. I think you can read the tea leaves in a bunch of different ways. You can see all manner of shapes in the clouds, and you can read it in ways that are good for Democrats or bad for Republicans.
But I think however multidimensional all of this is, there are fewer and fewer universes in which this doesn't start to look like Donald Trump being somewhat of a drag on his party, whereas before he was undeniably the wind in the party's sails. It's not clear who else could be the standard bearer for the party, but it is clear that there are real questions about his ability to lead the party into the future and pass the midterms.
TODD: Well, the midterms always tough for the president's party in power. They're always a real challenge. The question is whether we're looking at a midterm that looks more like 2018 or one that looks like 1998. 1998, Bill Clinton actually gained a few seats because voters became convinced that his opposition party, the Republicans, were only out to get Bill Clinton.
And so if swing voters this year decide that Democrats really don't have what's in the best interest of the American people at heart, and that all they really want to do is impeach Donald Trump, I think Democrats could way undershoot their potential --
PHILLIP: I'm curious about where you think the evidence is that this is a 1998 election, but I also --
TODD: It didn't look like it looked until the end.
PHILLIP: Well, I just think that all the available evidence suggests that voters are souring on Trump specifically, that they actually want checks and balances on him, that they think that he's not doing what he promised to do. And then one of the reasons that they think that is because of things like this that he said earlier today talking about how, I guess, the word affordability, perhaps like groceries, is something of a hoax. Listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: this is fake narrative that the Democrats talk about, affordability. They just say the word. It doesn't mean anything to anybody. Just say it, affordability. I inherited the worst inflation in history. There was no affordability. Nobody could afford anything. The word, affordability, is a con job by the Democrats.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Okay. And, Batya, I mean, listen, I'll just acknowledge last night you were very clear that he needs to take this seriously, but he seems to think that this is like all of the other things that he calls hoaxes, and that if he just labels it as such that it'll just go away.
BATYA UNGAR-SARGON, NEWSNATION HOST, BATYA!: Okay. I want to preface what I'm about to say by saying you cannot tell people that the problems they're experiencing in their pocketbooks are fake. Like that's just a bad, bad strategy. However, it is also the case that wages have kept up with inflation. In fact, they have outpaced them. It is also the case that prices in some industries are going down and it is the case that the economy is generally good.
So, there's a mystery here, which is why does consumer sentiment feel so bad, why do Americans feel like things are so bad. Now, Joe Biden made the mistake of trying to do exactly what I just did and lecture people --
PHILLIP: Quite literally. In fact, quite literally, all of those statistics were things that they would point to a year ago.
UNGAR-SARGON: However, at the same time, you have to look at things and say, okay, what can the president do, what can he take responsibility for and what can't he? You don't actually want a certain degree of deflation because, of course, that will impact wages again. The president has made some big, long-term bets on the economy in terms of immigration, deportations and tariffs. They are building factories, as we speak, with the $20 trillion that he has brought here in investment. That has not yet shown up in a big way such that people know people who have gotten jobs in those factories, and it may not by the midterms but that is still a fact that that happened.
PHILLIP: It may not at all. And that's -- so a couple of big political problems for Republicans, I think that they thought that the tax bill, for example, would be this sort of panacea. You give people a tax break except that it's really the same tax level that they had before. So, people are not going to experience it the same way. And then on top of that, he drops a bunch of tariffs on this economy.
And I think that that is probably going to end up being a major miscalculation. I didn't even talk about healthcare, healthcare being one of the big issues in this Tennessee race. They haven't even figured out if they're going to let people have premiums that skyrocket double, triple what they were before. There are a lot of red flags.
NAVARRO: And we have ten days left.
[22:10:00]
PHILLIP: Yes.
NAVARRO: In the enrolment --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: I'm just talking strictly politically in the sense that --
UNGAR-SARGON: So, we just heard that Costco is now suing the administration over the tax.
PHILLIP: They are, yes.
UNGAR-SARGON: Now, that's so interesting, Abby, because I have sat at this table so many times and been told that corporations are passing on those tariffs to consumers, and yet somehow Costco thinks it has standing to sue the administration for millions and millions of dollars --
PAKMAN: Both of those things can be true, Batya.
UNGAR-SARGON: Actually, they can. Because if they pass them onto the tariffs, how could they possibly --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Tariffs are tax, okay? Corporations, they swallow some of it. They pass on some of it. But guess what? These corporations are also American companies. That is also hurting America. Whether you are taxing the consumer or you're taxing the corporate -- the corporation, and then they have to decide whether they pay their employees less or whether they --
UNGAR-SARGON: Well, I'm a leftist so I believe in taxing corporations. I think that's great.
PHILLIP: I'm just saying that the tariff situation was a play that Trump made because he thought that everything was fine and dandy, that the economy was not on a razor's edge. And it may turn out that that was a massive political mistake because the American people are saying everything that he has done thus far has not helped them.
TODD: I just wanted to go back a moment. You said a moment ago that President Trump kept the taxes where they were and it wasn't a big tax cut. That has not been CNN's position for months. CNN said it was a big tax cut for the rich people. Most commentators on this network have said that. I made the point that this was merely stopping the tax increase, and you're not agreeing with me.
PHILLIP: Let me clarify. Let me clarify that, you know, the Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress, they had some choices that they faced. They could have --
TODD: Raise taxes or stop --
PHILLIP: They could have kept taxes the same for the vast majority of Americans and they could have raised taxes for the wealthy. They chose not to do that. They decided to keep taxes more or less the same, but also cut spending in ways that cut what lower income Americans received from the government for their tax dollars and use that transfer to fund the tax cuts for wealthy people.
So, look, you can call it whatever you want. My only point is --
TODD: But I want to put pin in this. We're going to talk about this more --
PHILLIP: My only point is, Brad, you're -- I think that Mike Johnson and you and Donald Trump thought that, well, the American people are going to reward you for giving them those tax cuts. Well, it turns out they're not really going to give you a brownie for keeping things basically the same. They wanted things to improve and it's not --
TODD: If you think the economy is not what it ought to be, now you should have seen what would've happened if their taxes had gone up. If Democrats tried to raise taxes on every other American --
PHILLIP: You act as if this was a button. You act as if this is a binary choice.
TODD: Democrats had no plan. They had no plan to stop the taxing for wealthy people.
PHILLIP: Republicans could have kept taxes low for the vast majority of Americans and they could have rolled back some tax cuts on the wealthy. They chose not to do that. That was a choice.
NAVARRO: There's a larger gap in America between the haves and have- nots right now. And the problem is that Donald Trump lives in a white billionaire bubble. And if you are a multimillionaire, if you are a billionaire, you are doing very well because the stock market, despite everything else that's going on, is going strong. But if you are one of the people who shops at Costco and goes home with 30 rolls of toilet paper and 20 pounds of, you know, ground beef, you are feeling it.
And these people that Trump hangs out with on a daily basis, the billionaires in his cabinet, the billionaires at Mar-a-Lago, the billionaires that he invites to the White House, they are not feeling it. And he just -- you know, he is clueless. When he says that affordability doesn't mean anything to anybody, it means a hell of a lot to the people who can't get healthcare because those premiums -- naturally, they're not. They're --
UNGAR-SARGON: Yes, they are. For every billionaire who gave Donald Trump money, Kamala Harris got two.
PHILLIP: All right.
UNGAR-SARGON: So, it's really a Democrat issue there's a lot of billionaires at Mar-a-Lago.
PHILLIP: Next for us, Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth, they are doing some deflection gymnastics over an alleged war crime. As their stories keep shifting, another special guest is going to be with us at the table.
Plus, the administration suggested the Democrats be tried for treason for reminding troops that they do not have to follow illegal orders. Well, it turns out Pete Hegseth said the exact same thing years ago. We've got the tape to show you.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:15:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, there's more shifting than the sands at Mar-a-Lago. If you are trying to keep up with the Trump administration's deflection, denials, and distancing from a potential war crime, here is a short version for you. First, it didn't happen. Fine, it happened, but it was legal, so legal in fact that here's a turtle meme from a children's book. Oh, and the president didn't know. But if he had known, he wouldn't have approved.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I say I didn't -- you know, I still haven't gotten a lot of information because I rely on Pete. Somebody asked me a question about the second strike. I didn't know about the second strike. I didn't know anything about people. I wasn't involved.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNGAR-SARGON: So, talk to Pete. Pete says he didn't order it, an admiral did. And then after he bragged about watching the first strike, Pete now says he wasn't in the room for the second strike. Pete didn't see the survivors either. But whatever happened, whoever ordered it, all legal, and anyone who asks questions, well, you're an idiot in air conditioning.
[22:20:02]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HEGSETH: I watched it live. We knew exactly who was in that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing, and we knew exactly who they represented.
I watched that first strike live. As you can imagine at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do, so I didn't stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs. So, I moved on to my next meeting.
I did not personally see survivors, but I stand -- because the thing was on fire. It was exploded in fire and smoke. You can't see anything. You got digital. This is called the fog of war.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNGAR-SARGON: Margaret Donovan, a former JAG officer, joins us in our fifth seat. There's a lot of deflection going on there, just his body language as he talks about this. And then he uses the term, fog of war, as if that absolves you from responsibility. Does it?
MARGARET DONOVAN, FORMER ARMY JAG: No. Listen, it is September 2nd. This is the opening strike on a highly controversial air campaign that has never really been done before by the American military, and you have the secretary of defense saying that he didn't stick around for the whole strike. He had a meeting to go to and he couldn't see the entire thing through. You are the secretary of defense. You can push the meeting and you can stay for the strike, because, lo and behold, conveniently, at the very moment that he walks out, apparently, a war crime occurs. So, everything that he just said there in those clips is fascinating.
First of all, any, I guess, defense or other narrative that this boat was still operable is gone because Secretary Hegseth just said it was on fire, and you have the president of the United States saying something that you would expect the president of the United States to say, which is that he's relying on his secretary of defense for this information. Well, guess what? Pete Hegseth doesn't have that information for you because he walked out of the room. And now there's a four star general with a highly respectable career in the special operations community who's going to be left holding the bag.
PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, it does seem like they really are throwing him under the bus.
Let me just read what George Will, a conservative columnist, said about this whole thing. He says, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal without a war, an interesting achievement. The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself.
I would have expected, despite the, there's all this back and forth about who ordered it, who didn't, let's put all that aside. They're in that room, they're asked about it. We know there's a second strike. Why didn't either one of those men say, we're going to look into this? Something like that should never happen in an engagement by the United States military. Why?
NAVARRO: Abby, I can't even understand any of this Venezuela thing. To me, it is absolutely cuckoo crazy. Look, Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez before him are corrupt, sadistic, cruel thieves, authoritarian, anti-American, son of a bitch. And what Donald Trump is doing is attempting regime change. I will be incredibly happy, elated if Nicolas Maduro goes away. I don't care which way.
But the things that Donald Trump is claiming regarding Venezuela, that they are flooding the U.S. with drugs, that simply is not true. The fentanyl that is killing all of these Americans is coming through Mexico. The people that -- the preferred route for drug dealers is through the Pacific and then through Central America, including the country of Honduras, where he just pardoned the former president that did flood American streets with cocaine that killed thousands and thousands of Americans.
And then, you know, he's claiming that Venezuela opened up prisons and insane asylums and released all these people into the United States. That actually did happen. It happened in 1980 in Cuba, and we all saw it happen. I was in Miami when the Mariel boatlift happened.
There is zero evidence that that has happened in Venezuela. What happens? He wants to do regime change. He wants his Panama with Noriega. He wants his Grenada moment like Ronald Reagan did. But he can't say that it's regime change, one, because it's highly unpopular with the American people, and because, two, it would require the authorization of Congress.
DONOVAN: Well, and we're not even close operationally, right? We're not even on land yet. And we've already got a war crime, you know, national embarrassment on our hands. We haven't even proceeded with the actual land operations.
NAVARRO: And how much of the U.S. Navy arsenal is in off the coast of Venezuela right now?
DONOVAN: Oh, absolutely. For some kilos of cocaine? I mean, give a break. It's got to be --
PHILLIP: And, Batya, I've raised this yesterday. I mean, I think one of the big question marks here is, is this a pretext for regime change? And if it is, what is our level of engagement going to be in that and should they be transparent about it? I think those are really important questions for Americans who care, you know, if they're on those battleships in the Caribbean, if they are living -- there are many Americans in the Caribbean who could be, you know, in the area, as Trump has said, the airspace around Venezuela is closed.
[22:25:11]
So, don't we deserve answers on some of those things? Even on a basic level, don't we deserve answers about who these men were if he knew exactly what they were and what they were doing? Don't we deserve answers about that?
UNGAR-SARGON: I definitely want to know if regime change is happening, and I will be very angry if it happens, and I was not informed. So, the answer to all those questions, I always want more information. But I feel like we're in the midst of another Russia gate hoax. There was a group of Democrats who said you can refuse illegal orders, and now they're out there in search of a war crime and there absolutely isn't one.
So, what happened was the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel issued a classified legal opinion authorizing these U.S. military strikes. At that point, the Department of, I guess I have to call it, War issued the directive that we were going to start hitting them. At that point, Admiral Bradley gave the order for the first strike. Pete Hegseth watched it. The boat caught fire.
Now, in order to establish that a war crime happened, we have to know that the boat was completely destroyed, the military action, which was authorized by the DOJ under Article 2 powers, which Trump has the legal right to issue that that boat was destroyed, was no longer a threat, and that there were two people clinging to it for life who are also no longer a threat. We do not know that yet.
PAKMAN: You don't really need to know what happened.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: I mean, we do have a JAG lawyer who has a lot of experience with military strikes.
UNGAR-SARGON: Well, I mean, please tell me what am I getting wrong here, because if the boat was only disabled and not destroyed, it is still a legitimate military target.
PHILLIP: Hold on. Here's the main issue. Is it legal when there -- if there are survivors clinging to whatever, is it legal to then strike them again? And maybe we don't know the full answer to that question, but that is the central issue here.
UNGAR-SARGON: Well, can I just --
PHILLIP: That's the central issue here.
UNGAR-SARGON: The question is not actually that. The question is --
PHILLIP: That is actually -- the question is actually that.
UNGAR-SARGON: No, Abby. Is the whole thing hangs on whether the boat is still a military target or not?
PHILLIP: The issue when it comes to --
UNGAR-SARGON: Because if it was a military target, there were people on it when they hit it the first time.
PHILLIP: The issue when it comes to the legality of the second strike, not the first one strike.
UNGAR-SARGON: It's not whether there are people there.
PHILLIP: It is what happens to -- no, no, no. It's what happens to survivors.
UNGAR-SARGON: No, it's not, Abby. That's wrong.
PHILLIP: And we don't know -- I think I'm going to acknowledge that there are things about this that we don't know, that we don't know what -- where they were, what was the state of the boat, all that stuff, sure. We don't know who gave the order. But I do think that is the central question, Margaret, that needs to be answered. UNGAR-SARGON: It's not. The question is not the existence of the survivors. It's whether the boat is still a legitimate military target.
TODD: Hold on a second.
PHILLIP: I want Margaret to weigh in on this.
DONOVAN: That's definitely not true. Look, because you cannot shoot survivors of a shipwreck that are clinging on for dear life in the middle of the ocean.
UNGAR-SARGON: That's not -- you're using the word, shipwreck, to hide the distinction.
DONOVAN: No. I'll use Secretary Hegseth's word.
PHILLIP: Is in the wrecks.
UNGAR-SARGON: Yes. But I'm saying the whole point here is it still a legitimate target or not? If they can get on that debris and call for the rest of the narco-terrorists to show up and save them, it is still a legitimate military target.
PHILLIP: Okay. I'm going to defer to the expert here.
DONOVAN: No. Factually, this just doesn't pass the laugh test. You're talking about two people stranded in the middle of the ocean and you think they're going to call for backup.
UNGAR-SARGON: Can you please say, is that distinction between whether it is disabled or whether it is --
DONOVAN: And can we back up a little bit because I just want to explain sort of how an airstrike is prosecuted, right? Because, first, you have a target in the first place.
UNGAR-SARGON: Yes.
DONOVAN: And a target could be an individual, the target could be a building --
UNGAR-SARGON: Do you think that that was never --
(CROSSTALKS)
DONOVAN: And so this is why we need, and we talked about this the other night, we need a full investigation. What was the target? Because I thought the target was the drugs. Those are gone. The boat's on fire. Maybe the target is the so-called terrorists.
UNGAR-SARGON: The target was the boat according to all the reporting.
DONOVAN: So, I think we should wait for an investigation to see what the target actually was. If the target was a boat, then we're in this place where, you know, we are using military force to target boats, what? I mean, for something that --
UNGAR-SARGON: Yes. You don't think that the initial military attack was legitimate.
DONOVAN: And can I make one more point? Because this entire hypothetical --
UNGAR-SARGON: So, talking about the second one, right?
DONOVAN: The entire hypothetical that you're posing hinges on whether or not they could call somebody to be rescued. But if they're in a scenario where they need to call somebody to be rescued, they are shipwrecked. That is the definition of shipwrecked and they cannot be targeted. That term, as Abby pointed out --
UNGAR-SARGON: I'm sorry, if the radio still working on the boat, it is still a legitimate military.
PHILLIP: Batya, you cannot just concoct your own explanation for this.
UNGAR-SARGON: I'm not concocting my own explanation. This is the law.
PHILLIP: Here's what -- no. I'm saying that, literally, the law says that attacking shipwrecked individuals in the context of war is not allowed. That is literally what it -- they use that --
UNGAR-SARGON: Because a shipwreck is no longer a legitimate target.
PHILLIP: The word, shipwreck --
UNGAR-SARGON: It's no longer a threat.
PHILLIP: -- is in the document.
UNGAR-SARGON: We're agreeing.
[22:30:00]
PHILLIP: So, I'm just saying, you are suggesting that if there's any scenario in which maybe they could have called somebody on land, they would have come by boat or helicopter to help them, then that would have justified attacking them again. I am pretty sure as Margaret is saying, as virtually everybody is saying, that is not the case. I will agree with you on one thing. This requires investigation. We need more information.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: But the basics of the situation are such that this would be a --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Okay, we have more ahead. We have more ahead, Brad, so hold that thought.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Because CNN did dig up old video of Pete Hegseth saying the troops won't follow illegal orders, which of course is exactly what Democrats warned in that infamous video. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:31]
PHILLIP: Tonight, as Pete Hegseth denounces six Democratic lawmakers for urging U.S. service members to disobey illegal orders, a new video has been unearthed by CNN showing Hegseth back in 2016 saying almost exactly the same thing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I do think there have to be consequences for abject war crimes. If you're doing something that is just completely unlawful and ruthless, then there is a consequence for that. That's why the military said it won't follow unlawful orders from their commander-in-chief. There's a standard. There's an ethos. There's a belief that we are above what so many things that our enemies or others would do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: He called those Democratic lawmakers the seditious six and he accused them of spreading despicable, reckless and false information in their video that they made earlier this month. A video that sounds virtually identical to what he just said there. Just a factual statement that unlawful orders are expected to be rejected. And in this case, now there's real questions about whether or not those unlawful orders actually came and whether anybody actually said anything about it.
BRAD TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I don't think they engaged in sedition, the Democratic lawmakers, but I do think they were trying to shred this chain of command. They were eliciting members of the military to maybe get themselves court martial for not following legal orders. Because --
PHILLIP: Why? Why would you say that? Because when they say --
TODD: It was clickbait. It was clickbait.
PHILLIP: -- don't follow unlawful orders, do you think that they meant don't follow legal orders?
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: Every person in the military knows they're not supposed to follow illegal orders. They know that.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Then why did Pete Hegseth say it in 2016? TODD: They know that. He was talking theoretically. Of course they all think they all know they should not sponsor --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Yes, so were the Democrats.
TODD: No, it was all -- it was all a publicity stunt.
PHILLIP: I don't understand --
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: -- to drive up donations --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I don't understand how you can hear someone say don't follow illegal orders and then you hear -- they're really trying to say don't follow legal orders.
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: If they believe there's an illegal order being given they have an obligation to tell us what it was
PHILLIP: Okay, well here we have a potentially illegal order.
UNNOWN: Yes.
PHILLIP: -- in a double-tap airstrike -- somebody may be -- it may be the case that somebody should have said, Sir, that's illegal.
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: You know. I want to go back to some --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: And if that had happened, where would we be right now?
TODD: I want to go -- what would happen to that person if the lawyers who are in charge of deciding if it's legal or not said it was legal then of course the troops are supposed to assume it's legal. That's why the DOJ --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Well, we don't know that. I'm asking you the question, what happens in that scenario?
MARGARET DONOVAN, FORMER ARMY JAG: There actually is a presumption of lawfulness to military orders because as you can imagine the military can't really function if everybody has questions orders all the time. Having said that, I don't think what the lawmakers said was illegal. And I don't think what Pete Hegseth said was illegal. I don't think that there was anything really that controversial about it. I believe it came from a good place.
I think people were concerned of something happening exactly like what we are seeing happening now. I think they were genuinely concerned that they may be in a position where they don't feel clear enough to speak up. And when you are looking at the context of what is happening in the Caribbean and outside of Venezuela, even just our standing to be there is legally debatable. And I think most reasonable scholars will tell you that.
And so, you're already starting off very unclear foot in terms of your legal authority to be where you are. And when you are asking people to kill somebody, when you're in a strike cell and you are asking American soldiers to kill somebody else, to take that on as a responsibility, as a moral responsibility and as a military responsibility through their official duties, that is a very serious ask of American service members. And they deserve to have ironclad legal justification to do so.
TODD: They do, they do. You're right. I agree with that and they should have a presumption that has been legal and I think that they did have that in this case. On the third day of Barack Obama's presidency, he ordered drone strikes. They killed 20 civilians. He would go on to order 500 drone strikes. These same Democrats who are up in arms about these strikes in Venezuela said boo about any of Barack Obama's drone strikes.
DAVID PAKMAN, "THE DAVID PAKMAN SHOW" PODCAST HOST: That's not true. A lot of us were talking about them.
(CROSSTALK)
DONOVAN: And I don't think it's true and I deployed under Barack Obama into Iraq and we reported civilian casualties. We had requirements -- reporting requirements to Congress so people were involved in that. And by the way, the person who authorized the strike for each of those was there for it.
TODD: But their protocol was that it had to go through interagency legal approval, which we're now told these strikes also did. We're going to find out more. We're going to find out -- Roger Wicker says we're going to investigate and find out. But we're told that happened here, too.
ANA NAVARRO, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You said something in the break which I think is the crux of this. You said if they call the regime change, I'd like it better. This thing, you know, looks like regime change, smells like regime change, rants like regime change.
[22:40:01]
And they're trying to make it all about war on non-existent drugs to the U.S.
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: But you know -- it's not non-existent. It's not, Ana. This week, "The Wall Street Journal" says Venezuelan gangs flooding Europe with cocaine because the Colombian passengers took on.
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: Okay and so you're a go-bomb them, and so why are we bombing -- Europe?
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: Do you think the cocaine only goes to one country?
NAVARRO: I don't think from Venezuela, it comes to this country, I think it goes to Europe.
PHILLIP: Other cocaine comes to us and lot of fentanyl comes to us and that is what's going on.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Margaret Donovan, thank you very much for being here, second day in a row. Next for us, as a fraud scandal erupts in Minnesota, Donald Trump attacks the state's entire Somali community.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I don't want them in our country, I'll be honest with you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:45:23]
PHLLIP: Tonight, President Trump ups the rhetoric against Somali immigrants in Minnesota. This comes after prosecutors uncovered fraud that largely benefited parts of the state's community. They say 59 people have been convicted in those schemes and more than $1 billion has been stolen from taxpayers. Despite only a small pocket of the tens of thousands of people in the Somali immigrant community there being responsible, President Trump, he's attacking all of them.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars, billions, every year, billions of dollars, and they contribute nothing. I don't want them in our country, I'll be honest with you, okay? Somebody said, oh, that's not politically correct, I don't care. Their country stinks, and we don't want them in our country. I could say that about other countries, too.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And now a federal official tells CNN that ICE will launch an operation targeting Somali immigrants in Minneapolis and in St. Paul in the coming days. Kmele Foster is back with us. This is not surprising because it is often the case that when something happens, Trump targets the entire community. But in this case, 59 individuals brought to justice or will be brought to justice over this alleged fraud. But now everybody from Somalia should be kicked out of the country?
KMELE FOSTER, "TANGLE" EDITOR-AT-LARGE: Yes. Look, the categorical denunciations are bad. It is also the case, and this isn't qualifying it in a way that may abdicate Trump's responsibility for having said it, although he isn't the most sophisticated communicator. Charismatic, sophisticated, not so much. This is how we talk about race and ethnicity in this country. We do a lot of categorical denunciations.
For very long time, it was all about kind of black lives and whiteness and what whiteness does. No one should be shocked that this is how we're talking about Somalians in this context, as well. And I think in general, if we were to move away from that kind of categorical nonsense, it'd be a little bit easier to take on board the condemnations of the President in this context as opposed to having to just kind of do it when it's convenient for us. So, that's the first thing I'd say.
But again, I do think that responsibility for this sits with the President. He ought to be a hell of a lot more careful. It is completely inappropriate to condemn an entire community for the failings of a particular community, but the failings -- or failings of particular people in the community, but the failings of those people are real. And the actual scandal here is genuinely egregious. PHILLIP: Yes.
FOSTER: And there are lots of political actors who ought to be condemned. And I do think that we do ourselves a disservice when we don't try to interpret this in a way that allows us to both condemn the categorical statements here that are again irresponsible and wrong but also acknowledge there is actually a real controversy here.
PHILLIP: But, well, he --
FOSTER: There's something that ought to be --
PHILLIP: Yes. I think not everyone acknowledges that this is a real, not only a real controversy, it's a real criminal case. And these people are being tried. However, Trump is basically saying, he literally has said, they don't contribute anything, they should go back, we don't want them here.
FOSTER: What he said was that people who are complaining, et cetera, et cetera, and who come from these poor, these bad countries, that they are -- they are bad and we don't want them here. Again, I think that's how most people who support the President are going to interpret this in generous way.
PAKMAN: This is really the latest panicked scapegoating because Trump is in real trouble in a lot of areas. He fell asleep four times during this meeting, by the way, which is raising even more questions about the energy level.
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: Having your ass (ph) -- (CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: -- for hours could be little boring.
(CROSSTALK)
PAKMAN: We've got the war crime situation voters increasingly know he said he was going to bring prices down --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: In fairness though, but this is the deflection that I'm talking about. There is a legitimate issue
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: The failure of Minnesota officials who actually permitted this kind of nonsense --
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: The governor of Minnesota who didn't answer any of the whistleblowers or the warning signs on this scandal who swept it under the rug nearly became the vice president of United States and everyone in American news media ignored this. "The New York Times" is just now reporting on a scandal that's been years in the making. Why? Why didn't they do a dive on Tim Walz and the campaign? How is this possible?
PHILLIP: Hold on. Wasn't it Merrick Garland of the Biden administration that brought many of these charges in the first place?
TODD: Yes, and Tim Walz.
[22:50:00]
PHILLIP: So are you really suggesting that Democrats ignored it even though a Democratic --
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: Tim Walz was a competent governor and yes, he ignored it.
PHILLIP: The attorney general of a Democratic administration prosecuted the case.
TODD: It's state program. It's a state --it's fraud within a state program in Tim Walz's administration.
PHILLIP: Here's the question that I have. Trump has now put a target on the back of Somali Americans all over the country. I understand, Kmele what you are saying about the significance of these fraud charges.
What I am asking is, is it legitimate in the United States of America in 2025 for anybody who is from a particular nationality, whether you are Somali or Afghan, to be painted with the brush of any other person who happens to be from a similar ethnic or a country of origin to be painted with that same brush. Is that what we're doing?
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Is that what we're doing?
TODD: Groups -- are wrong.
FOSTER: It is what we do, Abby.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Okay, but it's either right or it's wrong.
NAVARRO: Of course it's wrong.
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: It's of what we did with the Haitians, right? They eat cats.
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: Wait, wait.
NAVARRO: It's very reminiscent of him calling Haiti a shithole (ph). It's very reminiscent you know particularly if it's poor country particularly if the people in that country are brown or black. Yes, he has no qualm --
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: This is a culture-wide thing. This is a culture-wide thing. I mean, these phrases are thrown around all the time and group slurs are a bad idea, but we get toxic masculinity, patriarchy's wrong. We are all short-handing --
PHILLIP: I mean is the patriarchy wrong or not?
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLLIP: I don't think those are the same thing. There are 59 people who have committed fraud. There has been a lot of fraud in these pandemic era programs. Thirty-five hundred defendants charged, billions of dollars. Donald Trump literally in the last week has parted or he commuted the sentence of a American fraudster, $1.7 billion worth of fraud.
So, people who are white are defrauding folks. People who are black are defrauding folks, Americans, Somali Americans. Why is it that suddenly all Somali Americans don't deserve to be here because of individuals who committed crimes? Why not this guy who Trump just let him Scott free?
(CROSSTALK)
BATYA UNGAR-SARGON, "BATYA" "NEWSNATION" HOST: We keep saying that we all that the fraud story in Minnesota is bad and yet the topic we're discussing is not the fraud scandal. It's Donald Trump talking about --
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: Right, or the governor who's swept it under the rug.
(CROSSTALK)
UNGAR-SARGON: This is why he won in 2016 and he's widely won in 2024 because instead of talking about the outrageous situation in which immigrants who were given the greatest privilege on earth, American citizenship turned around and stole from the American people. We're talking about how Donald Trump talks about that.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Listen. People of all backgrounds --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: People of all backgrounds steal and defraud, okay? It would be a better argument if we were talking about a case that was not being prosecuted, about justice that was not being served. But it is happening in this case, and it is wrong that this happened in the first place.
But the question, I think it is a fair question, for innocent people, regardless of whether you are from a country that Donald Trump doesn't like or a religion that maybe he doesn't like, do you have the right to exist even when somebody who has the same characteristics as you, does something bad.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Is that okay?
UNGAR-SARGON: The mass fleecing of the American people by immigrants, it's just utterly unacceptable. And it is a unique, beautiful, when people have been randomly --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Hold on. You just said mass fleecing of the American people by immigrants.
UNGAR-SARGON: Yes.
PHILLIP: There is mass fleecing of the American people that is happening by Americans every single day. Most of the fleecing is happening by Americans. (CROSSTALK)
UNGAR-SARGON: People took advantage of our generosity and that is uniquely --
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: Okay, let me get a word in edge voice. Let me tell you where there is massive fleecing going on by some immigrants in Miami, in South Florida by Cuban-born immigrants who have defrauded Medicare. Seventy-five percent of the arrests and convictions in South Florida for Medicare fraud, up to the tune of millions and millions of dollars is by Cuban-born immigrants.
Forty percent of the arrests and convictions on Medicare fraud across the country is from Cuban-born immigrants. But that is a community that by and large supports Donald Trump and that Donald Trump likes so much. So he wouldn't think, it wouldn't occur to him to say, Cubans are garbage and I don't want them here.
FOSTER: I'm just not sure that that kind of speculative conversation is as valuable as having a particular conversation about --
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: No, there's nothing speculative about what I just said. This is facts.
FOSTER: If I could say -- well, you're speculating about what he would do with respect to Cubans. That explicitly speculation, objectively.
[22:55:02]
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: You heard him talk about Cubans?
FOSTER: This is again, we're getting derailed. That is still speculation whether or not he would in general. This specific circumstance, however, does merit some attention. The "Times" wrote a very great, exhaustive piece.
One dimension of it that we haven't talked about here is the fact that racial justice and unique concern about people being condemned for discrimination is one of the reasons why this fraud wasn't identified, pointed out, and better policed. That is really interesting. And I think for people on the left who helped agitate for those issues --
PHILLIP: Sure. But what about --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: -- that actually helped us create this problem.
(CROSSTALK) PHILLIP: But Kmele, we got to go. What about the fraud that's perpetrated by just white people? Are we just afraid to condemn white people?
FOSTER: I think that all fraud is generally bad and we should not be condemning people on the basis of their ethnicity.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: There's fraud that is happening. And a lot of this COVID fraud was not identified and dealt with. So this is not a unique situation to Minnesota. Everyone, thank you very much for being here. We'll be back in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
