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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
U.S. and Israel Sources Contradict Trump on Key Gas Field Strike; Trump Seeks Additional $200 Billion from Congress for Iran War. President Trump Says that the Economic Toll of War Could be Worse; Stalemate at the Homeland Security Funding Remains at Deadlock as More Long Lines at Airports Worsened. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired March 19, 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 VIDEOTAPE)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, escalation ladder after Israel strikes a major target.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: Israel acted alone against the Asaluyeh gas compound.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I told him, don't do that, and he won't do that.
PHILLIP: Is the president in danger of losing control?
Plus --
TRUMP: It's a small price to pay to make sure that we state tippy top.
PHILLIP: -- will Pentagon's $200 billion request become a referendum on the war?
LAUREN BOEBERT (R-CO): I am a no. I am so tired of spending money elsewhere.
PHILLIP: Also, from short-term pain to a temporary blip. Now the war's economic toll gets a new framing.
TRUMP: That there was a chance it could be much worse. It's not bad.
PHILLIP: And as airport lines get longer, so does the line in the sand for Democrats.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All we want is for ICE agents to be held accountable. It's not a heavy lift.
PHILLIP: Live at the table, Scott Jennings, Bakari Sellers, Lydia Moynihan, Josh Rogin, and Beth Sanner.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening. I'm Abby Phillip in New York.
The war with Iran is moving further up the escalation ladder and there's no clear off-ramp in sight as oil infrastructure comes under attack across the Middle East. Now, today, an Iranian missile struck a major refinery in Northern Israel. It follows Israel's strike last night on Iran's facilities at the world's largest liquid natural gas reserve, South Pars.
Now, that attack triggered Iran to retaliate, hitting a critical gas hub in Qatar. Oil and gas prices are now skyrocketing in the aftermath. And what the White House called a temporary blip now has the potential to spiral into an all-out global energy crisis.
President Trump yesterday said that he knew nothing about the South Pars strike. However, an Israeli source tells CNN that Israel coordinated with the U.S. to carry it out, and an American source says that the U.S. was aware.
So, here is what Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump are saying about it publicly.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NETANYAHU: Fact number one, Israel acted alone against the Asaluyeh gas compound.
Fact number two, President Trump asked us to hold off on future attacks, and we're holding that.
REPORTER: You talked to Prime Minister Netanyahu about attacking the oil and gas fields?
TRUMP: Yes, I did. I did. I told him, don't do that, and he won't do that. We didn't discuss. You know, we do -- we're independent. We get along great. It's coordinated. But on occasion, he'll do something, and if I don't like it, and so we're not doing that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, two main things I guess at issue here. One is whether it's credible that the United States would just simply not know that Israel was going to do something like that. And then the second thing is Netanyahu saying we acted alone, not sure anybody is disagreeing or disputing that part of it. I think the question is not whether they acted alone, but whether they did so without any knowledge from the United States.
BETH SANNER, CNN NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yes. I mean, look, there's a difference between the militaries coordinating and President Trump personally approving a strike, right? I think that it's -- to me, I don't know what happened. I think I do know that the Israeli and the U.S. military absolutely knew about this strike, but I don't know whether it moved up the chain or not.
PHILLIP: Do you really think it's possible? Sorry to interrupt you, but I think that's extraordinary if that's true.
SANNER: It might be true.
PHILLIP: But if there is military coordination on something as serious as a gas field attack, that would not make it up to the president?
SANNER: I mean, I don't know. Things happen. I don't know. If you've ever been around in the Oval Office and how busy the president is and the prime minister's coming in, I don't know. Things happen. I've been in the middle of where, you know, the DNI has been accused of not -- how could you possibly not know? Well, he was busy and no one told him. Maybe it's possible.
But I think that's not even the point. The point is that Israel did this on purpose. They did this in order to escalate or they're really, really dumb about what Iran is capable of doing and what they think, because it is so obvious after the Kharg hit and the escalation that this was going to happen.
JOSH ROGIN, LEAD GLOBAL SECURITY ANALYST, WASHINGTON POST INTELLIGENCE: I think it actually is very important whether or not the United States was given a heads-up on a huge escalation by the Israelis that's attacking Iranian oil infrastructure, which resulted in retaliatory attacks on Gulf infrastructure, which is tanking the world economy and affecting the pocketbooks of every American citizen.
[22:05:16]
So, yes, I would like to know.
And it's pretty clear that the White House put out opposite signals. Earlier, they said -- they were putting out the reporters that they were briefed and it was part of a means to pressure the Iranians to open the Strait of Hormuz. Guess what? That didn't work. The Iranians escalated. And then later, Trump said that he didn't know, and then the Israelis leaked that he did know. So, yes, I think it's worth figuring it out.
But it just goes to show you, as President Trump has said, as Tulsi Gabbard testified today, U.S. and Israel are on different pages. They're operating from different objectives. They want different outcomes. They have different estimations of how long the war should last. They have different targets. And that's a problem. That's a huge problem --
BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think to piggyback a little bit on your point, it highlights one of the greater problems people have. Because even if Democrats, as they should, should say that Iran's naval capacity has been decimated, one of the largest sponsors of terror has been depleted, their ballistic missiles have been depleted, I mean, all of those things can be successes, as you're talking about what the military objectives are. What we still don't know is what the cost is, what the human cost is, what the human cost is going to be. We don't know what the cost to everyday Americans is going to be. We don't know if we're going to have to put boots on the ground. And all of us around the table, if we're intellectually honest, we know that if one of our objectives is to go in and make sure that they don't have the ability to have a nuclear program, we're going to have to put boots on the ground to achieve that.
So, I think that what we want and what most people want and what most average everyday Americans want is, while it's taking us more dollars at the tank to fill up our gas tanks every single day just to do our nominal task, we want to have clarity. We want transparency and we want honesty.
Like even if you were to say, which I said at the beginning of this statement, about the successes of some of the military objectives true, the question is, what is the off-ramp? We thought at the beginning of this, we'd be out of this by now. And what is the cost? And no one's been able to articulate that at all.
PHILLIP: So, one of the parts of this that kind of merges what you're both saying on this either side of the table, if we are not the ones driving the tempo and the escalation of this war, and, in fact, Israel is, this is a question that was posed to the secretary of defense today, why are we helping Israel prosecute this war if they're going to pursue their own objectives? And here is what Pete Hegseth.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: We hold the cards. We have objectives. Those objectives are clear. We have allies pursuing objectives as well. And the truth speaks for itself. I mean, President Trump was very clear about that Iran has weaponized energy for decades. Israel clearly sent a warning and POTUS has made it clear, very clear. Iran knows when you hit Kharg Island and you hit military capabilities on Kharg Island, which is the only thing we hit, we can hold anything at issue, anything. The United States military controls the fate of that country. Iran has the ability to make the right choices. It should not, going forward, target Arab allies, Arab countries trying to create pain, the pain that they created themselves.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I think, Scott, you would call that a word salad. I'm not sure what he's saying there. And what is the answer to the question? Are we controlling the tempo or is Israel controlling the tempo?
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, look, the president said today we're coordinating, we're allies here, but it's perfectly reasonable to believe that we do have different objectives here. Our objectives, I don't think have really changed. We don't want them to export terror. We don't want them to have nuclear missiles. We've taken out the navy. And these are our objectives. Israel has to live with this in the neighborhood. And Israel, of course, for them, this is the finishing off of what was done to them on October the 7th, which will never happen again. So, it's reasonable --
PHILLIP: So, what is the answer to the question? Is the answer to the question that Israel does what it wants, and we just have to live with it? Because that's the question that's the question the world is asking themselves, if Israel decides to continue moving up the escalation ladder, attacking energy, retaliatory attacks, that's not just Israel's problem anymore. That's the whole world's problem suddenly.
JENNINGS: Well, look, it sounded to me today like President Trump was not happy about this strike, and it sounded like Prime Minister Netanyahu got the message. So, look, my anticipation is that we're heavily influential to them. We don't run them and they don't run us. We're allies, but they don't control us. And I don't know that we're necessarily controlled.
ROGIN: We're the senior partner, they're the junior partner. We have the weapons. We give them the weapons. We're funding this war. We're the great power. They're our client state. So, in theory, we should be able to have more than a 50 percent say in whether American blood and treasure is spent to perpetuate this war for months and months.
[22:10:04]
And it's pretty clear from what President Trump said today that the war is -- he wants to get out very soon. He keeps saying it. It's an excursion. He wants to get out very soon. And it's pretty clear from what Netanyahu said today that he doesn't want to get out very soon.
So, both of those people can't win. One of them is going to be right and one of them is going to be wrong. So, who's going to win that disagreement? Is it going to be Trump and we're going to end the war soon or is it going to be Bibi and the war's going to go on for a very long time? Both of them can't be right, Scott. And in the end, we're going to find out who really wears the pants in this bromance.
JENNINGS: Well, look the bottom line is that Israel cannot exist, will not exist, has said they won't exist any longer with an Iranian state that is funding terror proxies and committing the kind of atrocities against Israel that we saw on October the 7th. They have wiped out the terror proxies for the most part. They're continuing that against Hezbollah now.
But Israel is not in a position to say, okay, you know what, we'll just let them reconstitute what they had for the purposes of going after us again. That's not going to happen, and they shouldn't let it happen.
ROGIN: If the Israelis want to perpetuate ongoing offensive hostilities against Iran forever, that's on them. You know what I mean? I'm not Israeli. You're not Israeli. We're Americans, right? Do you think that's a good idea or do you think we should just have a strategy that says we're attacking the Iranians forever and ever because the regime's not collapsing, they're not going to stop trying to have an army, and they're not going to stop trying to have the capability to project power. So, the only options are to attack them forever or to have some sort of endgame that gets us extricated from this conflict? Which one of those are you for, Scott?
JENNINGS: Well, I think you're being a little dramatic, A.
ROGIN: No, it's pretty simple.
JENNIGNS: B, we have significantly --
ROGIN: It's a dramatic kind issue.
JENNINGS: -- degraded the regime.
And, look, here's the deal.
ROGIN: What's the answer?
JENNINGS: The Israeli government cannot allow Iran to ever be in a position again to do to them what they did on October the 7th. It cannot happen. They do have some different experience than we do on this front. And so if they have to finish that job to their satisfaction, that needs to happen. But that's different than what we're doing there, which I think is being a good partner. But Israel has to live with it, and they did live with it, and we shouldn't expect them to have to live with it again.
PHILLIP: Look, so there is such a thing as things that you can't take back, right? And one of those things is actually destroying resources. And here's Mohamed El-Erian, he's a famed economist. He -- this is what he's warning about where this is all headed. It's not just tit- for-tat and war, long-term damage. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MOHAMED EL-ERIAN, CHIEF ECONOMIC ADVISER, ALLIANZ: My main concern as you know, Sandra, is we've gone from disruptions to energy infrastructure to damage to energy infrastructure. 17 percent of Qatar's energy infrastructure will not come back online for years. So, these are meaningful disruption that have long-term effects.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And, ultimately, that's why, as reasonable as what Scott is saying, the Israeli position is the rest of the world has a say in this as well. Energy isn't just a convenience in terms of how much it costs. It's also life and death for a lot of people who rely on it. And that's what's at stake here.
LYDIA MOYNIHAN, CORRESPONDENT, NEW YORK POST: Energy independence is independence and energy freedom is freedom.
First, I would like to say, I mean, there's so much chatter online in particular that Trump is just Bibi Netanyahu's puppet. Clearly, he's very comfortable saying exactly what he thinks and exactly what he wants to see. And I would say Netanyahu's been fairly deferential if you watch interviews --
PHILLIP: Just after the fact. I think that's the problem. Not before, but after.
MOYNIHAN: He's setting the tone moving forward. But I think Trump certainly has a much more global picture in mind. He's cultivated deep relationships, certainly in the Gulf region. I think he has a very good pulse and is recognizing, of course, that oil base that was destroyed there in Qatar. It's a significant degradation of their energy capacity. So, I think he's well aware of that.
I mean, it's interesting to note the Gulf countries have committed to invest a lot in the U.S. That has not changed. And they still seem to be quite aligned with the Trump administration. So, I think, look, I think he's looking out for America's interests and I think that's absolutely what he should be doing.
PHILLIP: We got to hit pause here. I mean, I think it's that last point that you just made. That's the whole -- a whole new other question mark, is what is the future of Middle East investment and where are they going from here, because their economy has basically been shut down for the last three weeks, and how much longer can they take that and still invest the kinds of things that they've promised all across the globe?
To be continued. But next for us, the administration's $200 billion request is quickly becoming a referendum on this war. And even Republicans now are balking at the price tag.
Plus, another day, another spin on the economic toll, why the president says the pain isn't really that bad.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:15:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, the cost of war. Soon, President Trump could ask Congress for $200 billion to fund the war with Iran, but that's going to be a hard sell on Capitol Hill. Sources tell CNN that Republican leaders don't think they have the votes for it.
Earlier, Trump defended that price tag claiming that it's a small price of doing business.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Well, we're asking for a lot of reasons beyond even what we're talking about in Iran when this is a very volatile world. And the military equipment, the power of some of this weaponry is unthinkable. You don't even want to know about it. At the high end, we have a lot, but we're preserving it. We don't really need it. But we're building.
[22:20:00]
We want to be sure, and it's a small price to pay to make sure that we stay tippy top. (END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Pete Hegseth was even more blunt with his assessment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HEGSETH: It takes money to kill bad guys. So, we're going back to Congress and our folks there to ensure that we're properly funded for what's been done, for what we may have to do in the future.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego points out that it cost $140 billion a year at the height of the Iraq war to fund that conflict, adding that if the Pentagon is going to ask for $200 billion, they are asking for a long war. The answer is simply no.
And, Lydia, it's not just Congressman Gallego. Here's what Lauren Boebert said earlier today about this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BOEBERT: I will not vote for a war supplemental. No, I am a no. I've already told leadership I am a no on any war supplementals. I am so tired of spending money elsewhere. I am tired of the industrial war complex getting all of our hard earned tax dollars. I have folks in Colorado who can't afford to live. We need America first policies right now and that I'm not doing that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Isn't that what Trump ran on? I mean, he's already plused up the DOD budget by 50 percent, $1.5 trillion for the fiscal year, and now $200 billion on top of that?
MOYNIHAN: So, first way, I'd say, fundamentally, the role of the government is to protect and defend its citizens. And the artificial intelligence, the weaponry that we're deploying, is astonishing in what we're able to accomplish. That costs a lot of money, and it's also part of the reason that I think fewer troops, fewer men have lost their lives in this conflict.
What I'd also say is that it's interesting that now Democrats are outraged about spending money on war. We spent $175 billion on Ukraine, where we weren't even in. Nancy Pelosi rallied for it. It said it was a victory for democracy. And everyone was to spend that again on your grade. Why not in Iran, a war that we're already in supporting --
PHILLIP: Not in one year. Most of that month's -- a portion of that money, about 40 percent of it hasn't even been spent, what you're talking about. This is a three-week conflict that they have all -- they've only told us they've spent $11 billion in six days. Now, they're asking for $200 billion. I think it's not just Democrats, but it's Republicans asking, that's a burn ratio that is enormous, even for expensive conflicts. ROGIN: War makes strange bedfellows. You know, Ruben Gallego and Lauren Bobert, I'm quoting Tulsi Gabbard, like, you know, things are going weird in 2026, for sure. But you have to ask yourself the question, if Trump says the war is going to end very soon, then what's the $200 billion for? Well, because if the war's going to end very soon, then it doesn't cost $200 billion. And he gave us a hint. He said, oh, I want you to fund the next war. What's that one? Oh, it's Cuba. What are you going to do? Oh, I'm going to take Cuba. What does that mean? Don't worry about it. And that's --
MOYNIHAN: And just like maybe we don't want to tell to the enemy our exact timeline --
(CROSSTALKS)
ROGIN: I wish they would at least tell the president because he doesn't seem to know how long this is going to take.
SELLERS: The problem is that MAGA stands for absolutely nothing. And let that radiate headlines across social media and everything else. You talk about America first, but you have people out here who cannot make ends meet. You have prices at the tank skyrocketing daily. You have American soldiers dying, and then you have the audacity to tell Congress persons that they're supposed to come back and vote for a $200 billion supplemental for a war we don't know how we're going to get out of? How much it's going to cost or how many lives are going to be used and die as a result of something with no objectives?
And so, yes, I'm struggling --
ROGIN: And then another word to be named later. Can we just take a one beat on Cuba? Does anyone --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Let's let Scott answer your question or response to all of that. Go ahead, Scott.
JENNINGS: A few things. Number one, I made a few phone calls to Capitol Hill tonight to some senior Republicans. I do think the president's going to get some support. I talked to Mitch McConnell, actually. He is the chairman of the defense subcommittee on appropriations. He's going to support the president on it. A member of leadership told me they hadn't gotten the details, nothing formal had been submitted, but it was going to get a thorough review.
And in the House, interestingly, you know, there's been a debate going on in the Republican conference about whether to do a reconciliation package, and they may use this supplemental request to jumpstart that. So, it may not just be a defense supplemental that gets voted on. It could be other things. That would be a part of a larger --
PHILLIP: Sure. But let me just add to that. Look, listen, be that as it may, Republicans have a razor thin majority in the House. So, you've got Lauren Boebert. Here's Chip Roy asking, what are we doing? We're talking about boots on the ground. We're talking about the kinds of extended activity.
[22:25:01]
They got a whole lot more briefing and a whole lot more explaining to do on how we're going to pay for it and what's the mission here. Thomas Massie says, it begs the question, how long do they plan to be there? What are the goals? Is the first $200 billion -- is this the first $200 billion? Does it turn into a trillion? So, they have some hurdles to climb, and rightfully so, because $200 billion, just to be clear, is a lot of money. At the Afghanistan war, $825 billion over 20 years, okay, 20 years.
SANNER: So, they asked this year for $28 billion extra to pay for munitions. So -- and we were -- we did need to improve the defense industrial base, but now we have gotten ourselves into so much more of a hole that we have to ask for $200 billion more.
Now, I am not a peacenik here in any way. I think that we need to be prepared for war, and this war is making us less prepared for the real threats that we have. It's a war of choice, in my view, and we have just expended unbelievable amounts of the exact same weapons that we need to protect ourselves from China.
So, we're in this huge hole now. I don't know if it's a $200 billion hole, but just yesterday, the U.S. debt reached $39 trillion. By October 1, it will be $40 trillion. By doing this, we are adding to our huge budget deficit and our huge debt, and this is a war of choice.
MOYNIHAN: And the vast majority of that is because of entitlements. Like let's be very clear.
PHILLIP: Not necessarily. It's also from -- sure, but also, Lydia, it's from tax cuts that have not been paid for since the Bush administration. It's from spending that has not been paid for by either Republican or Democrat administration. I mean, it's from entitlement reform that has -- hold on, it's from entitlement reform that has -- we are talking about trillions of dollars. We're not talking about billions of dollars. We're talking about trillions of dollars. We're talking about more -- we're talking about more in interest payments. We are talking about more in interest payments than anything else that we pay for.
So, again, she's making a good point that when we have as a nation choosing what we do with our money, that's what Lauren Boebert's talking about. That's what Donald Trump, by the way, was talking about when he ran for president in 2016. And he said, we should be spending our money at home, not on regime change in the Middle East.
Literally, last year in the Middle East, he went to Saudi Arabia and he talked about no more regime change, and what a year it has been, because here we are, ousting Venezuela. We are trying to engage in regime change in Iran and maybe in Cuba too. Are there -- I'm going to go back to Bakari's question. Let me go back to Bakari's question.
(CROSSTALKS) PHILLIP: Are there MAGA principles or is it just what Donald Trump feels like doing on any given day?
MOYNIHAN: Well, if you ask Donald Trump, he's called out Marjorie Taylor Greene and people who disagree with him saying, I am MAGA. So, that's his definition. MAGA is very supportive of this war and that's -- I mean, it's really a following of Donald Trump. That sort of -- he invented it --
(CROSSTALKS)
SELLERS: One of the things we talked about in the break in tangibly, I just want to bring, highlight this because I think it's important is you have farmers right now because of this war that are paying a higher price for fertilizer. And you know more about this than I do.
SANNER: And diesel.
SELLERS: And diesel, right? And so we're not talking about some esoteric ideal, right?
And when you have people just a month ago, we were on this show arguing about subsidies, year-long subsidies for the Affordable Care Act so people could have access to healthcare, right, so, that we could actually fill gaps in Medicaid, so that we could expand healthcare, those type of ideals. But then you tell me that we have enough money to fund a war that we are not sure objectively how we get out of it.
MOYNIHAN: What I would say, look, I would like to see more clear messaging for the White House. I would like to see him address American --
(CROSSTALKS)
MOYNIHAN: What I also want to say though is I speak a lot of folks in the defense tech space. This is really a strategic moment when we talk about the adoption of A.I. China is looking at exactly what we're doing, and so they see this as an investment. We're trying to reshore more manufacturing facilities here to the U.S. so we can produce more as a deterrent. So, I would say this is sort of a seminal moment when you think about technology and defense, and I think it's important in this time --
ROGIN: For sure.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: But are we starting a war so that we can reconstitute our A.I. model --
[22:30:02]
(CROSSTALKS)
MOYNIHAN: China is watching what we're doing. SANNER: You are right about this. This is a seminal strategic moment. And what I worry about is at the end of this, the countries that are benefiting the most from this are Russia and China.
And that's the thing. It's like the second and third order unintended consequences. And this happens no matter what your foreign policy is.
The world is connected, it's hard. But unintended consequences here is that Russia, you know, President Trump was, in my view, very bold in finally taking a step that Biden wasn't willing to do in actually sanctioning the oil and the gas from Russia.
And guess what? At the beginning of this year, their oil sales revenue went down 50 percent because of what President Trump did.
Now they're getting such a windfall that they will make up for what they were going to loss plus much, much more. So that's a problem.
PHILLIP: And also unsanctioning temporarily Iranian oil as well. So there are a lot of things going on there.
ROGIN: A lot of things going according to plan.
PHILLIP: Yes.
Next for us, the White House has some new spin for those higher gas prices. Things could be much worse, but is that really how voters feel? We'll debate that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Tonight, gas prices are spiking. Americans are now paying nearly $1 more per gallon at the pump.
And the Trump administration is repeatedly dismissing their concerns about the economic toll of this war with Iran.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAROILNE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Rest assured to the American people, the recent increase in oil and gas prices is temporary.
J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: The President said this, and I certainly agree with it. This is a temporary blip. It's not going to last forever.
KEVIN HASSETT, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL DIRECTOR: If it were to be extended, it wouldn't really disrupt the U.S. economy very much at all. It would hurt consumers, and we'd have to think about if that continued, what we would have to do about that. But that's really the last of our concerns right now because we're very confident that this thing is going ahead of schedule.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: But as the White House suggested, this turmoil is not long- term. Today, Donald Trump framed the issue differently.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: And I saw what was happening in Iran, and I said, I hate to make this excursion, but we're going to have to do it. And I actually thought the numbers would be worse. I thought that it would go up more than it did.
I thought it would be worse, much worse, actually. I thought there was a chance it could be much worse. It's not bad, and it's going to be over with pretty soon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: The thing that strikes me, Bakari, about all of this is that it's not just the war by itself. It's also the broader moment that we're in.
The economy is sort of in a -- it's in a delicate place right now where I think the policy decision-making matters a lot. There were no jobs created last year. GDP growth is sort of mid at best, and now you have a war on top of that.
BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: So at the end of the day, when we leave this show, we all have conversations with real people. When I'm in the barbershop with Tremaine and people are having conversations around with the barbers about March Madness and everything else, the number one question people ask is, why should I care about what's going on in Iran?
And it's sometimes hard to drill down on it. But people are actually feeling this right now. They're not just feeling the gas prices, but they're feeling the fact that our needs aren't being met on a daily basis.
They aren't seeing a clear line of distinction between the two parties. But they also realize that there's real human costs. Because at the end of the day, while the President's hawking shoes and all of his friends are going overseas and making money from defense contracts and whomever, and it's funny how in politics, and I think you said this a couple of blocks ago, how it makes strange bedfellows, how when you start talking a lot, you start sounding like Chip Roy, you start sounding like Marjorie Taylor Greene with the fact that you see all of Donald Trump's friends making tons of money, while average everyday Americans are still angling to make ends meet.
And so yes, I can give the Secretary of Defense and Donald Trump credit for their military objectives on certain things being met. However, the lack of clarity is a problem and the human cost and the average cost to everyday Americans is a problem. And it's hypocritical for anybody in MAGA to tell me that you're putting America First when you have Americans starving and you're not doing anything but kowtowing to whatever Donald Trump's wishes are.
PHILLIP: Let me play, this is Minnesota Senate candidate Michele Tafoya, she's a Republican.
SELLERS: I hope I don't sound like Michele Tafoya.
PHILLIP: Let me just play what she said because this is just illustrating how they're struggling to figure out the messaging here.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
MICHELE TAFOYA (R), MINNESOTA SENATE CANDIDATE (on the phone): I know it's frustrating, and I know it's hard for people. What I would say to them is we've lost some service members over there who have put their lives on the line to protect us.
I think right now, at least just kind of keeping a stiff upper lip, maybe you take one less trip to Starbucks and so that gas goes a little further, until this thing is over and these gas prices come back down again. Let's just try to be patriots about this.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Reminds me of Jimmy Carter. Turn the thermostat down to 50 whatever.
ROGIN: Or when Pete Hegseth blames the press for the bad coverage of the war, that's like blaming the people covering the plane crash for the plane crashing.
[22:40:01]
PHILLIP: But Scott, you see that there's risk in a message like that. Just tell Americans, don't go to the grocery store quite as much, don't go to Starbucks. Just suck it up for a little while.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: There's risk in everything. Every decision a President makes has risk and none are riskier than the decision to commit troops to the theater of war. Not just because of what can happen in the theater, but because of what can happen at home.
Gas looks like it's $3.73 a gallon. It got somewhat higher than that during the Biden administration. We haven't gotten back to those numbers yet.
But for candidates, going out and talking to people, they're in a little bit different situation than the commander-in-chief who has to look at a national security situation. They have intelligence that nobody else has and they have to make decisions knowing full well the risks that come with it. He made the call, the polling by the way, among the Republican Party and among the MAGA-friendly voters is quite clear.
They trust the President on this. How long it lasts and when we get out, we'll make a difference on that. Right now -- PHILLIP: MAGA is like 30 percent of the country. The rest of the
country does not agree.
ROGIN: This is the most unpopular war in American history for good reason. The longer it goes on, the worse those numbers are going to look. There is no instance in history of prolonged war benefiting any nation.
JENNINGS: How do you know it's going to be prolonged?
SELLERS: We don't know it's not.
ROGIN: Because that's the story of pretty much every war ever.
JENNINGS: How long did the Venezuela war last?
ROGIN: That wasn't a war.
JENNINGS: We haven't had a war since World War II, Josh.
ROGIN: I think the Vietnam generation would take issue with that, and the Iraq generation and the Afghanistan generation.
JENNINGS: We haven't declared war. You're saying a three-week situation is the most unpopular thing we've ever done.
ROGIN: I'm saying that Americans understand what's clear, which is that this is getting worse every day and expanding every day.
The war is expanding. More countries are getting attacked.
The energy crisis is growing. The economic crisis is growing. Inflation is growing.
Extremism and attacks on the homeland are growing. Everything is getting worse every day. And the war is expanding, despite President Trump saying --
JENNINGS: You're not exactly a glass-half-full kind of guy, are you?
SELLERS: I was going to comment on that. I was just saying that there are a lot of things getting worse that people who are not sitting around this table or in this studio feel every single day.
And I think that the problem has is that when Scott, when you call it a situation, or when Michelle Tafoya compares it to a Starbucks cup of coffee, people really turn off from that.
JENNINGS: I said it was the riskiest thing a President could do.
SELLERS: When Michelle Tafoya, in her statement, says that take -- I listen to Michelle Tafoya, so this is where I'm addressing. When she says things like, take one less cup of coffee, and you see the coffin come back of the gentleman and his family running up, the shroud of the American flag, you know that is not worth just a cup of coffee. When is Washington, D.C. going to wake up, I think, is my argument. My
argument is not with Scott Jennings. My argument is with people in Washington, D.C.
ROGIN: I'm very aware of the horrendousness of this excursion.
MOYNIHAN: I just want to point out that there is a vast trove of reporting over the last few years saying that the President shouldn't be responsible for gas prices when Biden was in office. CNN reported Americans blamed Biden for record prices at the pump. Biden had relatively little control over the prices set primarily by global markets in 2025.
CNN reported gasoline prices are coming down, and President Trump is happy to take credit for that. I would just note that every other time period, the media tries to say that the President has anything to do with the gas price.
PHILLIP: Did President Trump initiate a war that led to higher gas prices?
MOYNIHAN: It depends who you ask.
PHILLIP: Who initiated this particular conflict?
JENNINGS: Look, the answer is yes.
PHILLIP: The answer is yes. That's it.
JENNINGS: Was it a worthy call?
PHILLIP: That's actually not the question.
JENNINGS: That's how the politics shake out.
PHILLIP: That's not the question that Lydia asked. Lydia asked who's responsible for the gas prices going up a dollar per gallon in the last 30 days.
MOYNIHAN: When Russia invaded Ukraine, it was all Putin's prices. Everyone was happy to blame -- Russia invading Ukraine. Everyone was happy to blame Putin.
Why can't we blame Iran?
PHILLIP: We decided that despite the risk of increased gas prices, we were going to act anyway. I'm not saying that's a bad decision to make. I'm just saying that's a choice that we made knowing that this was likely going to be the outcome.
So President Trump, his response to that is basically, it's going to be brief. And if he's right, cool. But if he's wrong, it's going to be a mess.
ROGIN: He claims he didn't know. He claims it's all a surprise and he got it all wrong. PHILLIP: He does claim that. No one else does, though.
[22:45:07]
Airline passengers and TSA agents are paying the price for that partial government shutdown that we're still in the middle of. But neither Democrats nor Republicans right now are budging on their red lines. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Meetings are now starting between the administration and a bipartisan group of lawmakers over the DHS shutdown in what is being called a first step.
[22:50:07]
As airport lines get longer, so does the line at the stand for the Democrats.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNKNOWN: We demand ICE reforms.
SEN. JACKY ROSEN (D-NV): Because a red line for me is this. As long as we live in a democratic United States of America, I say as a democracy, not Democrat and Republican, we will not have a roving band of thugs that are unaccountable, that act like they are above the law, that stop people in the streets, that throw them to the ground, that everyone asks for their papers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So are we going to get there?
Because it seems like the Trump administration has already acknowledged that they need to make some changes. You had Mullen saying we don't want ICE to be on front pages. We don't want them to be the story.
There are a couple of body-worn cameras, masks, enforcement activities at sensitive locations. These seem like solvable problems.
JENNINGS: Yes, and they sent Tom Homan up to the Hill today to meet with Democrats and Republicans. I took that as a step in the right direction because Homan does have a lot of credibility, I think, with people in both parties.
Now, it doesn't sound like they got there today or even got all that close, but it felt like the talks were moving in a direction that would get us to a deal. And by the way, it can't come a moment too soon.
I live in airports. These poor TSA people, they've missed two paychecks. They're about to miss a third one.
They're having to call out in places. Hundreds have already quit. They have to make ends meet.
They've got to get other jobs. It's unconscionable what we're doing to them. And also, given the security and terrorism threats in the United States, having this shutdown right now,
I do think the Democrats are risking a lot of blowback. But I've been in and out of a lot of airports. It's been hit and miss.
Some long lines and some have been okay. But that's the thing. You don't really know what you're going to get when you show up right.
SELLERS: I think that a lot of people are talking about the fact that we are at war, and I just kind of echo a lot of Scott's sentiments except kind of the last point.
When you have Republicans who run every single facet of government from the White House and the branches of power in D.C., the question is what else do you need in order to make government work?
I do wish, however --
JENNINGS: Seven votes.
SELLERS: Go get them. Go get them, right? And we're just talking about very simple ideals.
And when people say, well, why don't you just fund TSA or why don't you just fund ICE or ICE will be funded regardless because of the ugly bill. Well, why don't you just fund TSA, the response is we don't want people just murdering people in the street, we don't want people wearing masks. We want you to wear badges and identification.
And I think Scott's point should be heard because now we're in a time of war, and the stakes are a little bit higher. And so what's the risk and what's the calculation here?
And I just think that this is when people should have elected leaders in Washington, D.C. that can sit down around a table, have some Jameson or tequila, and figure this out because that is what the American public deserves.
PHILLIP: So reading the tea leaves, the Journal has a story tonight. Trump told his inner circle that some mass deportation policies went too far.
The White House statement says, nobody's changing the administration's immigration enforcement agenda. His priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals. But the President is recognizing he's got a political problem, it seems.
ROGIN: Yes, that doesn't mean he's going to change the policy. I'm of the belief of watch what they do, not what they say. So we'll see if the actual policies change and I'm at least cautiously optimistic that the new regime will have more humane policies because the policies that we've seen on the streets of American cities are just grotesque. And I think there's huge blowback to that that they're recognizing. But on the broader issue, I agree with Bakari. The original sin was that they gave them all this money for ICE in the first place without any accountability or checks and balances.
And now it's too late, and they're trying to figure out another way to constrain it that's going to become increasingly unpopular. Essentially, Democrats are going to have to fold on this one. They just should have never given them the hundreds of billions of dollars in the first place without any accountability, which is why I say now, Abby --
PHILLIP: Just to be clear, Democrats didn't, by and large, vote for that ICE plan.
ROGIN: Sure, but that was the place to take a stand before you give the problematic organization $100 billion. And that's why we shouldn't give $200 billion to the Department of Defense or the Department of War, whatever you want to call it, without even knowing what the next war is going to be because we should know what war we're funding before we pay for that war. Or maybe I'm just old-fashioned.
PHILLIP: Thank you very much. Next for us, the President loves to speak candidly in the Oval Office with world leaders, and today was no exception to that. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:55:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Donald Trump is no stranger to awkward moments with world leaders in the Oval Office, and today was no exception. During a photo op with Japan's Prime Minister, he referenced Pearl Harbor when asked about the initial strike against Iran.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Why don't you tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Okay? Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor? Okay? Right?
He's asking me, do you believe in surprise? I think much more so than us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: You can add that moment to a long list of cringe-worthy Oval Office encounters. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We do have a very special relationship. In fact, I'll get that little piece of dandruff off. Little piece.
We have to make them perfect.
REPORTER: You have said that Canada should become the 51st state. Do you believe that?
TRUMP: No. Well, I still believe that. But, you know, takes two to tango, right?
MARK CARNEY, PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA: It's not for sale, won't be for sale ever.
TRUMP: You don't have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards.
But right now you don't have playing cards. You're playing cards. You're gambling with the lives of millions of people.
You're gambling with World War III.
REPORTER: Mr. President, handshake please?
TRUMP: Thank you, everybody.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
