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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
House Republicans Release Jack Smith Testimony On New Year's Eve; Trump Threatens Iran Over Deadly Protest Crackdown; Trump Warns Of A U.S. Intervention If Iran Kills Protesters; Schwartz Joins Artists' Boycotting Trump-Kennedy Center; Pressure Campaign Against Venezuela Could Put Americans At Risk. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired January 02, 2026 - 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, tale of the tapes, what Jack Smith told Congress in his deposition about January 6th and President Trump --
JACK SMITH, FORMER SPECIAL PROSECUTOR: Our view of the evidence was that he caused it and that he exploited it and that it was foreseeable to him.
PHILLIP: -- as key defendants plan a March on the Capitol to mark five years since the insurrection.
Plus, locked and loaded and ready to go, Trump draws a red line for Iran if protesters are attacked and MAGA melts down.
STEVE BANNON, HOST, BANNON'S WAR ROOM: Isn't that straight from the Samantha Powers and Hillary Clinton playbook?
PHILLIP: And Mamdani takes over the New York City Mayor's Office and ends some policies seen as pro-Israel. And this promise in his inauguration speech --
MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI (D-NEW YORK CITY, NY): We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.
PHILLIP: -- has the right in a collective fury.
Live at the table for a special two-hour news night, Brad Todd, Charles Below, Miles Taylor, Lydia Moynihan and Elie Honig.
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. Jack Smith, the man at the center of the DOJ's criminal investigation into President Trump now in his own words, for the first time, explaining his decision to charge President Trump for his role in the attack on the Capitol on January 6th.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: The evidence here made clear that President Trump was, by a large measure, the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, as part of this case, does not happen without him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee choosing to release the long awaited interview on New Year's Eve while most of the country was off the grid for the holiday. It's also worth noting that Smith wanted to testify publicly and the testimony released this week gives us a sense of why Republicans may have rebuffed that offer.
Elie Honig, we're hearing and seeing frankly Jack Smith in a way that we haven't since he was appointed as special counsel and he is pretty sober in how he lays out a clear case, in his view, that Trump was responsible, that he was warned by people, his own allies. Does this help us understand better why the charges that were brought were necessary?
ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: I think it does. First of all, Happy New Year, great to see all of you, happy 2026. It's an honor to be on the first show of the year.
To your question, I think now that the dust has settled a bit on Jack Smith, my conclusion is that he has been unfairly vilified by the right but also unjustly deified by the left. The man is neither perfect nor a sinner. I think he's somewhere in the middle. I think it's interesting to hear him lay out his charges, why he thought they were justified in a very standard, prosecutorial manner.
I think the criticisms of Jack Smith are fair too, though. Look, Jack Smith loves to bless himself and declare that I had no political motive, I never thought about the election at all. That is demonstrably false. Every move he made was to rush that trial in ways that would have violated Donald Trump's unconstitutional rights to get it done before the election.
Now, there's an argument, I'm sure Miles will make it, that that was the right move and the necessary move, but you can only make that argument if you concede that he was thinking about the election and trying to accelerate before the election, which prosecutors are not supposed to do. On the other hand, the man did nothing even remotely criminal. I think Donald Trump's calls to prosecute, investigate, imprison Jack Smith are outrageous and unnecessary and destructive.
So, it'll be a complicated, I think, telling of history for Jack Smith and I think he's neither sinner nor saint in the final analysis.
[22:05:05] CHARLES BLOW, LANGSTON HUGHES FELLOW, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Right. But there's a difference between what we say what it means to take into account the election. It's one thing to say, I'm doing it because this is an opponent of the president who is now seated. It's another thing to say, I'm trying to get this out of the way so that we skip, we don't run up against an election and be prosecuting someone who is a leading candidate in another party during an election. That's a very different thing.
HONIG: I agree with you, yes.
BLOW: I do believe, however, that the Democrats did make a mistake that the country keeps making, which is that they didn't do this quickly enough. They didn't -- you know, Merrick Garland took a year and a half to even appoint him, and then he was now rushing to -- in seven months to see if we have an indictment or not.
I did think it was very illuminating that he said in the transcript that he and his -- you know, the people in his office sat around and debated all the time, should we, shouldn't we? There were people who said, no, we don't have enough yet.
And it wasn't until they finally had enough evidence that he believed that they should go ahead with the prosecution. But by that time, you were in a political jam because now you're up against -- you know, first of all, they have legal avenues that they really do have an option to exercise, and the president did, but also you're up against the election.
And so now it is a critical issue about whether or not you proceed with this because we are in uncharted territory. This is not something we have ever had to consider before.
HONIG: Just real quick, two things. I agree with you. He was thinking about the election. There may have been good reason for it. And the first sentence of the chapter of my book about Jack Smith reads, Jack Smith never had a chance precisely for that reason. It was too late.
PHILLIP: I also just want to make one note because, I mean, he said -- I won't play it because I don't want to take up the time. But he said he wasn't trying to hamper Trump's chances in the election, which I think to Charles' point is a different thing from the issue of timing because he obviously knew, because this is what happened, that if Trump were a candidate, he were to win this -- the charges, the case goes away, it just disappears, and that's exactly what happened here.
BRAD TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, first of all, I agree with Ellie. He shouldn't be prosecuted. And I've said that plenty. I think we'll all end up saying that plenty. But I would take issue with Merrick Garland's delay of it. I think Merrick Garland delayed appointing Jack Smith because Merrick Garland wanted Jack Smith's prosecution to be happening in the election year. Nothing the Biden White House did was apolitical. They were trying to --
BLOW: what's the proof of that?
TODD: They -- everything he did?
BLOW: No, but what's the proof of it?
TODD: Because look at the way Democrats immediately embraced him. There were yard signs in my Democratic precinct that said --
BLOW: So, the response is the proof?
TODD: Their Democratic precincts. No, I think the response is the fact that Jack Smith willingly took that center stage and he willingly rushed it, as Elie said, to try to get it done before the election.
BLOW: So, in other words, you have no proof of that?
TODD: No, I said I think the Biden White House was overtly political. That was four years ago.
PHILLIP: Brad, I'm not following that argument, because wouldn't it have been in the Democrats' interest to have Trump charged and tried well before the election so that maybe he doesn't even become a candidate? Why on Earth would Democrats make it so that this goes all the way up to the election and then doesn't even get to the point of trial?
TODD: Well, I think they didn't want him to be acquitted and they were afraid he might be acquitted.
PHILLIP: Why would --
TODD: Everything about Alvin Bragg and Jack Smith's motions indicated partisanship. That's -- I just don't accept the idea that, oh, this was a bumbling Merrick Garland, he just fumbled into it.
MILES TAYLOR, FORMER DHS CHIEF OF STAFF UNDER TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: Brad, I've got to say, everything about it now that we're a year into the second Trump administration strikes me that it was the opposite and I got a little firsthand experience of this with Donald Trump in April of this past year accusing me of treason, without any evidence, ordering a federal investigation into me and detonating my life, not based on any investigation, not based on the work of lawyers and frontline officers, but because he wanted it to be political. He wanted me to suffer. He wanted my family to be investigated.
That is what a political prosecution looks like. We have zero evidence whatsoever that the Biden administration from the White House down said, prosecute Donald Trump, put him in jail now. In fact, the delay was on account of the fact that Merrick Garland, Jack Smith, and others wanted to follow the law by the book.
And you can criticize that, but I'm telling you, we're living through what the opposite looks like.
TODD: First off, Miles, I don't want you to be prosecuted and I don't want you to be threatened to be prosecuted, but Merrick Garland said that parents who went to school board meetings to protest policies were terrorists. He said Catholics, conservative Catholics who said the mass in Latin might be collaborators with terrorists. It was literally a very political Department of Justice that went after his political enemies. I just don't buy that. Merrick Garland is this bumbling saint. I don't get it.
BLOW: We literally just had the president issue an order memorandum number seven, where he said political dissent was domestic terrorism, but somehow this escapes that for you. Like --
TODD: No, I didn't --
[22:10:00]
BLOW: Is that also a problem?
TODD: I'm not defending that.
BLOW: Is that also a problem?
TODD: Yes, I'm not defending that. We're talking about Merrick Garland.
BLOW: It's not a question that there's a yes or answer. Is that also a problem?
TODD: No, I don't think political dissent is political terrorism. It wasn't when Merrick Garland said so reason.
BLOW: But it's not the same thing.
LYDIA MOYNIHAN, CORRESPONDENT, NEW YORK POST: I think we need to take a step back here because I can't believe it's literally five years after January 6th, the media has spilled more ink, spent more time on T.V. talking about this. The American people still elected Donald Trump for a second term.
And I think that's part of, because of the fallout of January 6th, was the weaponization of Biden's DOJ. And that's a fact. They did not find the pipe bomber, but they were able to arrest, for instance, a grandmother, Rebecca Laurens, who was pushed into the Capitol as part of the, you know, riot and prayed, left.
There was another man, John Strand, who was held in solitary confinement for four months, eventually put in prison, and the Supreme Court actually had to come out and say, the Biden DOJ can't be weaponized. They can't charge people for literally being in a building.
And I want to touch on -- I want to touch on two things.
BLOW: Do really want to talk about people who have been mistreated? Do you want to talk about (INAUDIBLE) to this particular administration?
MOYNIHAN: I want to touch on two things --
BLOW: There are a lot of immigrants that would like to have a word with you. MOYNIHAN: The GOP has released this transcript, full transparency, so we get to see what's new in this. A couple of new things in this transcript, one, Jack Smith acknowledges that Cassidy Hutchinson was basically just repeating hearsay. She was the star witness for the entire January 6th committee. I think that undermines a lot of what they were trying to do.
PHILLIP: The Congressional committee, which is a completely different process from what Jack Smith was doing.
MOYNIHAN: Yes, but that's an acknowledgement that the January 6th committee was very political.
PHILLIP: That's irrelevant --
BLOW: The January 6th committee does not offer the indictment.
MOYNIHAN: It's something he said.
PHILLIP: It's irrelevant to --
BLOW: It's something he said.
PHILLIP: But it's irrelevant to what Jack Smith was saying.
MOYNIHAN: He also acknowledged the spying that happened under arctic frost (ph).
PHILLIP: Hold on a second. That was, first of all, not spying. He talked -- actually, he had a very interesting exchange about why they felt like they needed to actually get a court approval to get this information. And, Elie, I don't know if you saw this part, but this is important because he was basically saying, if we're going to go to court, we can't assume that they're just going to be like, here are the records that you're seeking. We have to go to a court and get them, and that's what they did.
HONIG: I think it's important to understand what Jack Smith did and did not do with respect to those phone records of the nine Republican members of Congress. He did not eavesdrop. This was not a wiretap. He was not listening in. He did not, after the fact, get any written transcript.
He has never had any access to the content of those phone calls. What he got is what we would call call records. If you remember in the old days, we're the same age, you know, you would get a phone bill, right? It would say, this number called this number at this time for this duration. That's it.
Now, there's fair question --
BLOW: How did you think I'm that young?
HONIG: There's fair questions about whether that was bad judgment, whether that was overstep, whether he was politically motivated. It's not illegal, though, and it's not wire tapping or anything closer. MOYNIHAN: He didn't disclose to the judge, right?
HONIG: It's in his final report. I mean, his final report came out publicly.
PHILLIP: He did, yes.
MOYNIHAN: To get the subpoena records though.
PHILLIP: They went to get the records and they got approval to get the records. But let me play this because this is really important. This is why he says that President Trump was not just responsible but he was also hearing from people in the Capitol, his allies, that they needed help and he didn't help them. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: When that violence started, the president refused to stop it. He endangered the life of his vice president and he's getting calls and not just -- not calls from Democrats, not calls from people he doesn't know, calls from people he trusts, calls from people he relies on, and still refuses to come to the aid of the people at the Capitol. That's very important evidence for criminal intent in our case.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: At the end of the day, that's the bottom line. It's not the claims that all of the January 6th, you know, people who were convicted were victims. They're not really the victims of this story. Our democracy is the victim of this story.
BLOW: They're not all the victims of this story. And I think it's really important to always say, because people throw this around all the time, that the Biden DOJ was weaponized. No, it wasn't. And we have to say that every time that it gets said, because it is a cover for an actual representation, which is happening right now in front of our eyes, and people try to set up the Biden administration to say, because it was done, then it is okay that it is done now. It actually was not done then but it absolutely is being done right now.
TAYLOR: I'm going to have to agree with Lydia that we need to zoom out, but I'm going to disagree on why. This was not a protest that went awry. This was an effort for the first time in 250 years of our republic to prevent power from being transferred. That is so completely clear from the record, a president of the United States didn't want a peaceful transfer of power.
[22:15:05]
And I will tell you this will happen again, but this might have been a dress rehearsal, because last time, Trump's own team at DOJ, DOD and DHS weren't fully on board with this attempted coup. My former colleague, Chris Krebs, his top election official, a fellow Republican like me, said the election was free and fair and the president fired him. Now what's he doing? He's investigating Chris Krebs and he's filled the Department of Homeland Security with insurrectionists and election deniers to secure the next --
HONIG: But let me pick up on this. As we head into the New Year, let me make this plea to everybody out there. There were prosecutorial excesses against Donald Trump. Alvin Bragg, longtime friend of mine, absolutely unjustified case. Other things, I think, went overboard against Donald Trump. What the Trump DOJ is doing now is more and worse. There's no reason you, Miles Taylor, or anyone in your position, Jack Smith, should be under any sort of criminal investigation. As a friend of mine said on air the other day, the thing about slippery slopes is they're slippery and they get worse and worse.
So, let's hope that 2026 is the year we cut this crap out, all of us collectively. Right now, it's the Trump administration that needs to stop it.
BLOW: Let's also not mix Alvin Bragg with the DOJ. You may say Alvin Bragg, they're very different. And the Biden DOJ, there is no evidence that anybody has ever offered me actual evidence of this that there was a weaponization of that DOJ in service of going after Donald Trump. You say it --
(CROSSTALKS)
BLOW: But there is absolutely no evidence that the Biden DOJ was weaponized against Donald Trump. Donald Trump did horrible things and he was being held accountable for it.
PHILLIP: All right, we got to leave it there, everyone.
Next for us, President Trump draws a red line. He's telling Iran that the protesters -- the protests better not turn deadly or else, and the right is now in an uproar over that statement.
Plus, remaking Washington, D.C., in his own image, Trump adding things to his list to rename and rebrand in the nation's capital. We'll debate that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Quote, locked and loaded and ready to go. Donald Trump is drawing a red line for Iran, saying if protestors are attacked, the United States will come to their rescue. Trump's 3:00 A.M. social media posts calling for intervention in Iran was reposted by the White House later this morning, but not everyone, including many of the supporters of Trump's are buying this message.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BANNON: Aren't people teasing right now that Samantha Powers and Hillary Clinton must somehow have gotten invited to the Mar-a-Lago New Year's Eve celebration because the president coming out today saying, hey, we're locked and loaded? Isn't that straight from the Samantha Powers and Hillary Clinton playbook? (END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: On social media, Marjorie Taylor Greene called out Trump, saying his threat represented everything MAGA voted against in 2024.
At least seven people have been killed across Iran as protests sweep across the nation sparked in part by the collapse of Iran's currency. Crowds have adopted anti-government slogans.
And it seems, Brad, that Trump's threat could very well be tested. It is pretty likely that there would be attempts to repress these protests? Is he actually going to follow through on that threat?
TODD: I hope he does. In 2009, the Green Revolution that happened in Iran was left to wither on the vine by Barack Obama because he was trying to cut a nuclear deal or a fancy cutting a nuclear deal with the Iranians in the European Union. So, I hope President Trump does. Iran's an enemy, not just an enemy of the United States, an enemy to all of western civilization. And I hope that we make sure the protesters succeed.
I want to say, go back to Steve Bannon, though. Steve Bannon is a dove who's always wrong on this stuff. He said that in the summer that taking out Iran's nuclear facilities would start World War III. He's always, always wrong, and he doesn't speak for Republicans.
TAYLOR: I got to say this is the right message from the president for all the wrong reasons. Right message, because I think it is the obligation of the United States to stand up for human freedom wherever it's blossoming. It was the case in 2009. It's the case now. We should stand with people who want to have a free republic in Iran, not an Islamic Republic.
But the wrong reason is the president of the United States is only doing this because he has a personal beef with Iran. Look at other autocrats around the world who he doesn't stand up to, President Xi in China, Putin in Russia. I wish Donald Trump would show the same zeal in defending Ukrainians and their rights to freedom that he is now for the Iranians. So, that's the issue here, is Donald Trump is making foreign policy personal, and he's in love with some autocrats and he's opposed to others. That's not what we want.
BLOW: I would think Donald Trump would make sure the same zeal for Americans right here in this country. At the very same time, he's saying he's going to go to bat for peaceful protesters in Iran. He is working personally to make sure that dissent in this country gets reclassified as domestic terrorism. That's the problem. Irony is completely dead in the Donald Trump age.
TAYLOR: Let's be more specific. The president of the United States posts A.I.-generated videos of feces dropping on his own protesters in the same several months as he's defending Iranian protesters.
BLOW: Absolutely.
TAYLOR: That's real. That's not me making that up. That's a horrific side by side. And, yes, I think we need consistency.
MOYNIHAN: I think we can -- I think we understand that people in Iran are going to get killed for protesting potentially, as they have. I mean, women get acid poured on their face and murdered. That's not happening to protesters here in the U.S. That's a really important distinction.
BLOW: Republicans in some states have made it okay to run over protesters with their cars. They will die, but that happens. We actually saw that happen with somebody ran over with a car and they died. That happened right here in America. That happened right here. Now it's legal.
MOYNIHAN: Do you really think it is just as dangerous to protest in the United States of America than in Iran?
[22:25:04]
BLOW: I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the principle of defending peaceful protesters in one country while you're suppressing it in your own country --
(CROSSTALKS)
TODD: I thought the question was whether we should take out an enemy of the west. I thought that was the question. Should we take out an enemy of the west if we get the opportunity? Should we support democratic protests?
BLOW: It would be good if the president's policies were not schizophrenic, if he were not --
TODD: You're not answering my question.
BLOW: No, I'm asking your question, absolutely. Because what it -- because the idea of American interest gets played with rather than applied in a consistent way. If we were talking about all the enemies of American interests, we'll be looking at protesters in a lot of countries. We'll be looking at administrations in a lot of countries and saying, we're going to be just as hostile to them as Iran, as Venezuela, or wherever.
But that's not what we're doing. This president is golfing. This president is golfing. And then when he wakes up and figures out he wants to do something at 3:00 in the morning because he got up and he had to use the bathroom because he's old, then he gets up and he says, oh, I'm going to attack people in Iran, this is craziness.
TODD: Charles, should we help the dissidents in Iran or not? Should we help the dissidents in Iran or not?
BLOW: I want to first have a consistent policy about protests, peaceful protests and whether or not it is legitimate, whether it is here in Iran in any other country.
TODD: You're not answering my question. Should we take half (ph) the Iranian regime if we --
BLOW: Do you agree with me? I don't now have to answer your question because I want to know, do you agree with me that we should have a consistent policy about whether or not peaceful protest is legitimate, whether or not it's there or here. Now, you answered that.
TODD: I'm a free speech zealot. I think free speech should be protected.
BLOW: In here too, right?
TODD: Yes, in the United States.
BLOW: If something is wrong, right?
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: I have a question for you guys, and I presume nobody here is a fan of the Iranian regime. But what are we even talking about in terms of being locked and loaded? What does that even mean? And should we have a conversation about that, Lydia? I mean, I think that's kind of what Steve Bannon and Marjorie Taylor Greene are also talking about, is that back in the day, Trump used to say this about whether or not we were going to be running around policing the entire globe. This is what he used to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: We are not the policemen of the world.
We more and more are not wanting to be the policemen of the world, and we're spending tremendous amounts of money for decades on policing the world, and that shouldn't be our priority.
I want to help all of our allies, but we are losing billions and billions of dollars. We cannot be the policeman of the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: It's easy to say we want the Iranian regime gone, but are we going to bomb them out of power? Is that really the plan?
MOYNIHAN: I mean, there's a frustration that Americans feel like they can't afford the American dream, and we're spending all these money on foreign aid and foreign wars. And, certainly, most people in the MAGA base are not looking to get entangled abroad. Yet Trump is the commander-in-chief.
And I think we've previously seen, he's been able to sort of thread the needle on between making sure that America is safe. Because, let's be clear, Iran is a murderous regime, they're a huge funder of terrorism. And so I think he's trying to balance those interests. And we've seen when he bans Iran --
(CROSSTALKS)
BLOW: I mean, he's bombed nine countries in the first year of presidency, called themselves a peaceful president.
PHILLIP: If he's not willing -- he's basically threatening regime change.
TAYLOR: Yes.
PHILLIP: If he is not willing to actually carry through on that thread, how is that not another red line that basically disintegrates into nothing because you're not able to follow through on it.
TAYLOR: Yes. I mean, he's so completely fantastically hypocritical on this question. But Lydia's right, he's the commander-in-chief, but Donald Trump's not an avid reader. And if he was an avid reader and if he had read the United States Constitution, he would know that even as commander-in-chief, he doesn't have the unilateral ability to start wars with other countries, which he does not seem to believe. He thinks he doesn't need Congress for these things, and that's the biggest blaring red alarm about this right now is the president of the United States is implying he might start another --
MOYNIHAN: I do think there's a sense --
PHILLIP: (INAUDIBLE) constitutional loopholes of the last century, right?
HONIG: Yes.
PHILLIP: Every president feels like, and maybe -- and in some cases have been able to engage in a lot of military activity without going to Congress explicitly for the say so, and Trump is threatening it in Venezuela. He's threatening it in Iran. Where does this end?
HONIG: Yes. The way this used to work is we would have formal declarations of war by Congress that went up to World War II. Since then, we've had these authorizations use of military force, in some instances, but we haven't had one since 2002. And every president since then of both parties has essentially backdated to that 2002 authorization of force to do almost whatever they want overseas, right?
[22:30:00]
Now, there's different rules when you're talking about domestic enforcement but overseas enforcement. But yes, Donald Trump, clearly, with the strikes on the Venezuelan boats with these threats is pushing that executive power and his power as commander in chief and chief diplomat to new levels.
And I want to make this clear, there's not a courtroom based, U.S. courtroom-based remedy or solution to any of this. People who don't like the Venezuelan boat strikes complain about it, but there's no -- you know how you can tell? Norm Eisen, all of our friend who makes a living suing Trump, has not sued Trump over this because there's no judge in the United States federal judicial court system that has the power or is going to try to limit Donald Trump in doing that. If there's going to be a response to any of this, it has to come from
the political sources. It has to come from Congress. It has to come from public opinion.
CHARLES BLOW, SUBSTACK AUTHOR, "BLOW THE STACK": Right, and we have a Congress that is completely abdicated. It's also one of the --
(CROSSTALK)
HONIG: Democrats have to win elections.
(CROSSTALK)
BLOW: -- one of the least effective Congresses in modern history. And Republicans like it that way because this President wants, you know, he doesn't want to go to them. He wants to do things by dictate, and they're allowing this, and they're not --
(CROSSTALK)
BRAD TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Hundreds of drone strikes in the Obama administration -- hundreds of drone strikes. Democrats in Congress never tried to restrain his power. I was -- I supported him. I'm glad he did it. I wish he'd followed through with the red line in Syria. I wish he'd been tougher than he was. That's just a function of the modern presidency. He has access to more information, things move faster. He's going to conduct foreign policy with a pretty long leash.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: I guess the neocons are back. We didn't -- we didn't expect this one, but they are back. Coming up next, marble onyx and hundreds of millions of dollars. We're going to take a look at President Trump's latest plan to transform Washington, D.C. and if they've gone too far.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:36:02]
PHILLIP: Tonight, "Wicked" composer Stephen Schwartz joining a growing list of artists boycotting the Trump-Kennedy Center. The Oscar and Grammy award winning composer who was scheduled to appear at D.C.'s most iconic performing arts center this spring is telling CNN in a statement, quote, "It is no longer apolitical and appearing there has become an ideological statement. As long as that remains the case, I will not appear there."
The president of the Kennedy Center, Rick Grinnell, posted on social media, "The Stephen Schwartz reports are totally bogus." So, take that for what you will. What's not bogus is that a lot of people are boycotting the Kennedy Center right now. And this is just one piece of all the stuff that's going on with Trump in Washington.
He is trying to put a triumphal arch in. He's redoing the ballroom, making it larger than the White House itself, slapping his name on the Kennedy Center. All of this, I don't know, I mean, why do you think it's happening? MILES TAYLOR, FORMER DHS CHIEF OF STAFF UNDER TRUMP ADMINISTRATION:
Look, I think it's symbolic of the lawlessness. I mean, there's a long history to this that I think we are seeing brought into sharp relief with Trump renaming the Kennedy Center and the White House and building the Triumfal Arch. And it was laid out best back in the '60s by a conservative writer that a lot of conservatives like me read growing up, and that was Ayn Rand.
And she wrote this essay called "The Monument Builders" where she went through the history of despots throughout time who built monuments to themselves while they were in power from the pyramids, all the way to Soviet Russia where the train system that Tucker Carlson lauded a few years ago was built by the generous hands of workers who were forced to do it.
And now, we have Donald Trump who's spending taxpayer dollars to honor himself by building monuments to himself. There is no better or more on the nose of someone's authoritarian tendencies than their desire to build monuments themselves. And so, I think it's quite right inappropriate that entertainers would say you know what? I'm not going to be party that especially if this building is now symbolic of a desire for this man to build a monument to himself.
PHILLIP: Okay, Brad, I'm curious that as a conservative as well, what's your take on that.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I think it is a pretty --
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: I think the people -- the argument the people who are in canceling their shows at the Kennedy Center are rich liberals who can afford to lose the money. They're hurting the IATC (ph) members, the electricians. the stage hands, people who work on contract basis every time those shows come in and they can't replace that work.
They're hurting school kids who take field trips and go see shows at the Kennedy Center. They're hurting people who want to be exposed to the arts in the area. It's a selfish virtue signaling exercise and it's really dangerous. We don't need to have the Kennedy Center politicized because the president appointed the members of the board. By the way, every president's done that.
TAYLOR: But the President named himself on the building. How is that not politicizing the Kennedy Center?
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: Karine Jean-Pierre was on the board of the --
(CROSSTALK)
TAYLOR: But did she put her name on the building? Did she put Joe Biden's name on -- TODD: It's an executive order of the --
(CROSSTALK)
BLOW: They literally changed the bylaws to make sure that some members could not vote, but only presidential appointed members could vote so that only President Trump's members would be able to vote. And that's why you got a unanimous vote to put his name on the side of the building. That happened before this vote.
TODD: Wait, Charles, "The Washington Post" contacted all the previous ex-official members. They said they've never really participated in voting in those things.
(CROSSTALK)
BLOW: No, the bylaw change is a fact. Bylaw change is a fact. That happened.
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: The ex-official members have not been --
(CROSSTALK)
BLOW: Are you saying to me that bylaw change is not a fact, that I say something that wasn't a fact?
TODD: No, I'm saying that you're shading
BLOW: So your no is yes. Your no is yes.
TODD: No, you're shading it. You're trying to convince the audience something important that's not.
(CROSSTALK)
BLOW: I'm not shading it. It's the fact. Is that a problem? Are facts problems?
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: No, I mean, it is significant that in the past, ex officio members could vote and --
TODD: Did not vote.
PHILLIP: And did not, sure. They could, but they did not.
TODD: That's why the title is ex officio. That's what it means.
[22:40:00]
PHILLIP: Under the Trump regime, they changed the rules so that they could not vote and then proceeded to put on the table a vote with Trump's name on the building, that they wanted to be unanimous and was only because the ex officio members couldn't vote. Okay, Elie.
HONIG: Let me try to settle this. So, we don't even have to spend time worrying about ex officio members or the regs because there is a law that was passed by Congress that makes it illegal to rename the Kennedy Center. I am amazed by the law all the time. I didn't realize this even existed. There is a specific law on the books, a federal law. Let me just read it. It was passed when the Kennedy Center was built.
It says, "No additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts." There are some minor exceptions. You can rename a seat for a donor or that kind of thing. But the law says you can't rename this place. So, I don't even know who hears what the board is saying.
(CROSSTALK)
BLOW: But here's the thing. Here's the thing. You do want to get out in front of it. You do want all the members to vote so that you don't have this issue in the first place. Because this is the Trump methodology, which is I do it first. And then I wait for the courts to check me or not but it's already done. I knocked down the East Wing.
HONIG: Charles, you're exactly right. This has been --
BLOW: And then I let you sue me, but it's already gone.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: And the couple of commissions that are responsible for overseeing a change like the ballroom, he's stacking the deck with his people so that they can just give him a blank check.
HONIG: Yes, I mean, Charles is exactly right. Donald Trump's approach to the litigation in the courts, since he was in New York, since before he was a president, when he was in real estate, was act first and then you got to go get a lawyer. You have to be the --
(CROSSTALK)
HONIG: And look, it's effective. He wins a lot because it's better to be the defendant. The plaintiff is someone with the burden of proof, plaintiff's the one who's got to hire a lawyer. And he's doing it again here. But look--
(CROSSTALK)
BLOW: Actually, if the building is knocked down, what are you going to do? You can win but it's gone.
TAYLOR: Elie's heard me say this before but I mean he brought that philosophy into the presidency. I mean he said to us more than one occasion in the Oval Office, look, what I learned in business is you don't threaten to sue someone. They wave you off. You sue them and then they settle. He'd said that to us. That's his strategy. PHILLIP: Contracts, okay? So, he signed a contract when he's president
the first time to give the leases for D.C.'s public golf courses, 50- year leases to an entity. Then he comes in the second time and says, never mind, rips up the lease. Why? Who knows? Because he wants to redecorate or redesign these golf courses. Are there not more important things for him to be doing? He was marble shopping today for parts of the ballroom.
I mean, he is the President of the United States. Inflation is a problem for Americans. You know, people are worried about their financial well-being. Are there not other more important things for him to be doing than these things?
LYDIA MOYNIHAN, "NEW YORK POST" CORRESPONDENT: I think you could say a lot of things about Donald Trump saying that he's unproductive or isn't working hard enough is not one of them. I mean, he's closed the southern border. He's gotten gas prices to their lowest level.
(CROSSTALK)
UNKNOWN: He didn't come down to work until 11 A.M.
(CROSSTALK)
BLOW: He's literally one of the laziest presidents in modern American history. I'm old enough to remember when he was castigating Barack Obama for playing golf and literally said, I will be working so hard for you that I will never go out and play golf. Those are his words, 2017. And now he has been playing golf every single weekend and sometimes during the week.
(CROSSTALK)
BLOW: What he is good at doing is disguising that in destruction. He sits behind that, he really works the desk. He really works the desk. He signs every piece of paper they put in front of him because that looks like something. He makes a lot of proclamations because that looks like something and he tells other people to go do destructive things because that looks like he's doing something. But in fact, he is one of the laziest presidents we have had in modern American history.
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: You're wound up but you have to give him credit.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Go ahead, Lydia.
MOYNIHAN: It's like people are constantly outraged about all the things he's doing. I didn't realize that he was so lazy. But look, he is a builder. He spent his entire career building, doing real estate deals. I don't think most Americans really care that much.
You know, he passed an executive order saying he wants federal buildings to have classical architecture. I think people like that. He's not taking taxpayer money to build the East Wing. We needed a ballroom I don't think that if you look at each of these issues, the American people really care --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: We do have to leave it there. Ahead for us, everyone wants to know why is President Trump's hand bruised so often. Well, he called up "The Wall Street Journal" to tell them why, and we'll tell you next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:49:13]
PHILLIP: One thing President Trump understands is that image is everything. And for him, these images aren't a good look at all. Pictures that appear to show him dozing off during meetings. And it is drawing the comparisons to President Biden and raising new questions about his health. So, Trump decided to call up "The Wall Street Journal" to talk about it.
And he revealed that he takes 325 milligrams of aspirin. He underwent a C.T. scan, not an MRI in October. He wore compression socks, but didn't like them. And he doesn't like to exercise. Trump's doctor says that the C.T. scan was done to rule out any cardiovascular issues. As for the aspirin, well, that's more than triple the recommended dosage from doctors. But Trump says that he takes it because, quote, "I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart."
[22:50:02]
Trump says the aspirin makes his skin more susceptible to bruising, which the White House has tried to conceal with makeup. I don't know what's more stunning, the fact that Trump called "The Wall Street Journal" to talk about this, or just the details that are in there. I don't know.
TAYLOR: I got to say it was worrying enough at the beginning of the first Trump administration almost 10 years ago now when I remember people who were first interacting with him coming back from meetings before I'd gone into Oval Office meetings with him saying you can't pay attention to anything. Don't go in with more than two topics to bring up with him.
You're going to have to repeat yourself constantly. And having trouble getting the President focused. That was 10 years ago that people around the President were worried about his health, his behavior, his impetuous. And now, here we are. And a lot's happened since then. And there's a very different Donald Trump with a diminished schedule, statistically, 40 percent fewer meetings than he had 10 years ago in that first administration.
I mean, he is a diminished president. And you can't just say, well, it's because he's tired, or he's done everything. To me, it seems like there's all the warning signs that something else is going on here with the man and he's continued to mislead us about his health.
But I will tell you, Abby, one time I remember Donald Trump trying to bury a news story about his health because he didn't want people to know about his physicals and he was holding on to his physical results one year and there was a big news story. And I remember he called Sarah Huckabee Sanders into the Oval Office and he said, why don't you release my health records now while everyone's paying attention to this other thing? The guy is constantly trying to distract us from the truth about his health.
HONIG: Okay, two things. One, I think we can all agree, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, that Trump is absolutely right, that the treadmill is horrible and boring, which is a point he made to "The Wall Street Journal." What do people think, what do skeptics, people who are skeptical of his health think that that is on his hand? I cannot, I mean, obviously he has a bruise, obviously he's... putting makeup on it, but what is like in the skeptical view? What is that?
BLOW: I'm not a doctor. I don't know what it is on his hand. I know the older people, you'd have bruising and all the things -- all the things. But you cannot be the president and using the excuse for the closed eyes that I used at fourth grade. They just called me when I was blinking, but I blink like this. What are you talking about? That is not true. Clearly that's not true.
But like, and that just leads you to not believe, not trust anything that comes out of this White House. I have no clue what's happening with the President. But I also don't trust what he's saying about it. And I don't know what the trust -- what the White House is saying about it.
PHILLIP: And just to add a little bit of expert context here, let me play with Jonathan Reiner, a cardiovascular doctor said about this earlier today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: He's he has never disclosed the history of heart disease. He's never disclosed the history of stroke or peripheral vascular disease that would warrant aspirin therapy. I will say, though, that if that was the conclusion of the White House medical team that he's bruising severely because he's taking too much aspirin, then why hasn't he decreased the dose of aspirin? The indication for the president taking aspirin seems to be pretty thin.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, several questions.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: A, what's going on with his heart? Do they have concerns? And B, why are his doctors allowing him to take aspirin as --
(CROSSTALK) TODD: Hundreds of millions of Americans take aspirin for the same reasons. He may take too much of it. He may take more than his doctors --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: The dose is the issue, not the fact that he takes it, yes.
TODD: It sounds to me like he's given an answer to that question. I think the President would be wise to --
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: I think the President would be --
BLOW: Do you believe him?
TODD: I think -- I think -- I don't have any reason not to believe him on this.
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: I think the President should be very forthright about as many of his medical records as he can. I think it's an opportunity for him to show a contrast with the Biden administration. You know, he does more press conferences in a week than Joe Biden did in a year. The public sees him. They can make their judgments about his condition to do the job every day. I think that means he should be very forthright and very forthcoming and produce a lot of medical records. He's an old man.
PHILLIP: It is actually those observations that's led to these questions. The swelling in his legs, the bruising on his hands. And there have been some reports that even something as simple as one of his cabinet secretaries' wedding ring nicking him on the hand caused bleeding. So, there's something going on there with the President.
But again, I think the bruising thing seems like a minor issue. The cardiovascular questions are a bigger problem. And then the White House not correcting the record when he said he had an MRI, when it really wasn't an MRI. I mean, all of this, it seems that there's obfuscation happening.
MOYNIHAN: Well, I mean, I think that American people have a hard time taking the media seriously on this issue when Biden's very visible decline -- he had a cheat sheet with questions and the names of the reporters and the answers to the questions. The media ignored that for four years.
[22:55:00]
But look, obviously, Donald Trump's health, he's the President, he's the commander in chief, it matters. But I think the American people can look and see what's going on with the President. Kaitlan Collins said, it's tough for reporters to keep up with him, especially on foreign trips. You know, he's calling up "The Wall Street Journal" to say, here's what's going on with my health. He's pretty transparent answering all of these questions.
And so, I think it's very good that the media and people are asking questions about this. And I think he's providing answers.
BLOW: Well, you're not obliged to follow the truth, you can actually say whatever you want. So, personal profits become very easy for you.
PHILLIP: All right, next for us, a U.S. official says several Americans have been detained in Venezuela. As the Trump administration is ramping up the pressure on Maduro, is it a leverage play from the Maduro regime? We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:59:40]
PHILLIP: The pressure campaign against Venezuela looks like it's now putting Americans at risk. A U.S. official says Venezuelan security forces had detained at least five U.S. citizens in recent months. Now, we don't know the reasons and each case appears to be different. But we're told the Trump administration believes the Maduro regime is trying to build leverage against the U.S. And there's no doubt that the U.S. and Venezuela are increasingly at odds these days.
The Trump administration has been striking these alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and in the Eastern Pacific since September. And this week, we learned that the CIA carried out a drone strike on a port facility on Venezuela's coast earlier in December.
