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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Mulls Winding Down War Despite Deploying Americans; Trump Calls NATO Allies Cowards For Failing To Help In War; Trump On Strait Of Hormuz, At A Certain Point, It'll Open Itself; Lawmakers Now Scrambling To End DHS Shutdown, Airport Long Lines May Worsen By Next Week; White House Debunks Mark Twain Prize Given To Bill Maher And Labeled As Fake News. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired March 20, 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, the president deploys thousands more Americans to the Middle East --
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Oh, I think we've won.
PHILLIP: -- as the U.S. prepares for the worst case scenarios against Iran plus. Donald Trump's insults of allies are well-documented.
TRUMP: NATO could help us, but they so far haven't had the courage to do so.
PHILLIP: But this time he's calling them cowards over the war.
Also --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do better. Trump, fix it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's disgraceful what's going on here. Wait until November.
PHILLIP: Lines are longer. Call outs hit records. And now the Trump administration is ramping up the rhetoric against Democrats.
SEAN DUFFY, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: If a deal isn't cut, you're going to see -- what's happening today look like child's play.
PHILLIP: And last laugh. Bill Maher gets selected for the prestigious Mark Twain Award, but the White House says he's not getting it.
Live at the table, Adam Mockler, Hogan Gidley, Margaret Donovan, Abel Maldonado, and Anthony Scaramucci.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening. I'm Abby Philip in New York.
As the war with Iran is entering its fourth week and new strikes rocked Tehran, President Trump's words and the Pentagon's actions aren't quite matching up. Tonight, Trump says that he's considering winding down military efforts in the Middle East as the U.S. gets closer to meeting its goals, but Iran claims there's no indication of that.
And by the looks of it, the U.S. actually appears to be ramping up its mission. Sources tell CNN that thousands more Marines and soldiers are deploying to the region from the West Coast with some set to arrive in the coming weeks. In total, we can see at least 5,000 troops there.
The White House has been scrambling to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the critical shipping passage that's been paralyzed for weeks now. And there's one potential solution which is taking over Iran's economic lifeline, Kharg Island. That's something that officials have privately weighed as a way to force Iran to back off of the strait.
But now, as we wait for all of this to play out in the weeks and months ahead, Trump tonight is declaring victory.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Oh, I think we've won. And we've knocked out their navy, their air force. We've knocked out their anti-aircraft. We've knocked out everything we're roaming free from a military standpoint. All they're doing is clogging up the strait. But from a military standpoint, they're finished.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: He says they're finished. He says, we're winding down.
And, Margaret, you know, your experience in the military, I mean, when you hear all the seemingly conflicting things, what do you think is really going on here?
MARGARET DONOVAN, FORMER ARMY JAG: Well, I have two thoughts on that. First is that just getting into a war like this, this is why it's important when the framers created the Constitution, that they vested the power to declare war in Article 1. Article 1 addresses the legislator.
And that was important to the founders because they wanted to make sure that people could enter war through their elected representatives, and here's why. They want to know a plan. They want to know why we should go to war, and that process should happen through people's individual elected representatives. So, that's my first thought is that we have no information because there's one person making all of the decisions. And nobody knew about this. Nobody was briefed on it. Nobody was consulted for a plan.
My second thought on this is just my own perspective from being in Iraq in 2016. And I've been on your show before, we've talked about during airstrikes. And I was in Iraq in 2016 five years after the United States had left Iraq. In 2011, President Obama at that point made the choice to withdraw.
In the timeframe between 2011 and 2014, a group called the Islamic State took over Iraq and Syria. And by 2014, they were about to seize the Baghdad airport. So, we had to make the decision, the U.S. had to make the decision to go back into Iraq.
And so, in 2016, facing the Islamic State, when I was there, I was actually working alongside commanders, generals who were my, you know, people that I was within the strike cell, who were now partnered with Iraqi National Army generals, okay?
[22:05:13]
So, consider that perspective. These are the people that during the 2003 invasion, these American commanders had actually been fighting, they were targeting. And yet in 2016, because we didn't properly plan, in my opinion, and we left this country basically to an ungoverned populace that was sort of wreaked with war, the result is that in 2016, you had the Iraqi National Army and the United States partnered together in order to try to root out a very dangerous organization.
PHILLIP: And a new danger that perhaps was not anticipated at the beginning. That I guess is always the possibility here. I mean, there are lots of possibilities, including unintended consequences. If we do decide, as the president seems to suggest, that, okay, we have these limited objectives, they're met up until a certain point that he has decided, but then we pull out and then what? You know, we've got the Iranian regime that is wounded but still largely intact, according to Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence. What happens then when they're still in charge? They're still going to be trying to wreak havoc all around the world
ADAM MOCKLER, COMMENTATOR, MEIDASTOUCH NETWORK: Every single day this war is wage, the world becomes an inherently more dangerous place. We're helping our enemies, like Russia, get more money by lifting sanctions. We're helping Iran have more money by lifting sanctions. You know more about Iraq than me, obviously, but I did some research. Iran is four times the size of Iraq, three times the military and twice the population.
So, I see two likely scenarios in which this plays out. Either Trump does go boots on the ground, which he's being kind of weirded off, but he's currently sending troops to the Middle East, so we don't know. If he does do that, it'll be almost impossible to invade a country like Iran. The geography means that mountains are just are on all borders, and it would be almost an impossible invasion, which would result in thousands of troops dying.
So, the other scenario is that Trump backs off and looks for an off- ramp. Well, what did we get from this? We made Iran more extreme. Khamenei's 86-year-old father is now replaced by the 30-year-old younger son, who is more extreme, more radical. The moderates in this country are being purged. The IRGC is becoming more radical. So, what do we get for this? Either a more radical Iranian regime that will continue to fight, or we got boots on the ground. There's no -- I don't know. PHILLIP: Let me play what Trump said about who, if anybody, there is to talk to in Iran.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Their leaders are all gone. Their next set of leaders are all gone. And the next set of leaders are mostly gone. And now nobody wants to be a leader over there anymore. We're having a hard time. We want to talk to them, and there's nobody to talk to. We have nobody to talk to. And you know what? We like it that way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Is that really the plan, Hogan, no one to talk to? How does this war end then?
HOGAN GIDLEY, FORMER PRINCIPAL DEPUTY WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY, TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: Well, I mean, look, I think Donald Trump has been pretty obvious in what he wanted to accomplish on the front end of this, and I think he's done a pretty good job executing that. The military, for all of its incredible lethality, has been showcased as what are those are just strategic entities on the face of the planet with what they've been able to accomplish under Donald Trump's administration.
This operation is no different. As Donald Trump has pointed out many times, not only did he completely eradicate any potential for Iran to create a nuclear weapon, he also destroyed their ballistic missile capability, which, of course, is vital to safety and security around the globe, but also in that region. In addition, he has prevented them now from carrying out other terrorist activities through proxies around the globe too, not to mention the fact destroyed their navy.
So, this administration has done things that both Republican and Democrat presidents have talked about for a long time. Both Republican and Democrat candidates for president, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, all said Iran can't get a nuclear weapon. Also Barack Obama said that as well. Who's going to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon? Donald Trump has done that here, and I would argue, antithetical to this one here, this world is a whole lot safer without a nuclear capable Iran than ever before.
MOCKLER: I mean, gas prices are spiking, oil prices are spiking. It's not safer for people --
GIDLEY: That's a different conversation to have. You're talking about safety and security around the globe. This president, not only --
MOCKLER: Wait a minute. Safety and security around the globe is Russia getting more money secure? Is Iran getting more money making us more secure? Yes or no?
GIDLEY: All right. In the first administration, this president was able to get peace deals in the Middle East.
MOCKLER: We're talking about now. He's starting wars now. GIDLEY: And now in this administration, he's preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. That's better for the entire --
MOCKLER: Eight months ago --
PHILLIP: Is the world safer because of this war, in your view?
[22:10:02]
ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: In some ways. Let's -- I'll be very balanced about it. In some ways, their military capability has been degraded. I'm sure they're on the run, and so, in some ways. But in other ways I think we're less safe because the economies are more uncertain.
And I want to give the president some due here, and you know, I'm often very critical of the president. He said something there that people should listen to. He was looking for a secularist to do a deal with, and they killed all the secularists. And so the question is, at what point did that happen and when did it happen and when was that divergence? Because it sort of feels like the Israelis killed the secularists in terms of what the president is saying.
So, we're safer in some ways. I'll give Hogan some credit for that. But I would say that, generally, this didn't need to happen. I don't think anybody around the president thought it needed to happen. And it was reported that Bessent, Gabbard, Vance were all put in the Situation Room and away from Mar-a-Lago. So, there was dissent inside of his own administration in terms of the war.
And if I could just ask Hogan a question, you guys campaigned on no more forever wars, and so this is the definition of a forever war. So --
PHILLIP: And might I just add to that, he explicitly said in the campaign that his opponent would start a war with Iran.
GIDLEY: Sure.
PHILLIP: And then he started a war with Iran. So, you can say, of course, like he said, like every other president has said, Iran should never have a nuclear weapon, but he was the only person who explicitly argued to the American people that they should elect him because the other guy or woman was going to start a war and then he did the exact same thing.
GIDLEY: What he said was he wanted no more stupid wars and no more long-term protracted wars.
PHILLIP: He also said Kamala Harris is going to start a war.
GIDLEY: Neither one -- this is neither one of those two things.
PHILLIP: You probably don't remember.
GIDLEY: He literally said, no new wars. PHILLIP: But he said Kamala Harris was going to start a war with Iran.
GIDLEY: Sure.
FMR. LT. GOV. ABEL MALDONADO (R-CA): He said Obama was going to start a war in 2013.
PHILLIP: He said Obama was going to start a war, yes.
MALDONADO: I'm -- I don't like to tell my age, but I'm 58 years old. And --
SCARAMUCCI: You're spring chicken, man.
MALDONADO: -- 47 years of my life, for 47 years of my life, George H. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George W. Bush have said to me that, you know, Iran's a threat. Iran is a threat. And, yes, we are safer today than we were prior to this regime being gone. Right now, what President Trump needs to do is --
PHILLIP: The regime is not gone.
MOCKLER: The regime is not gone.
MALDONADO: The regime is going to be gone.
MOCKLER: How? There's 300,000 IRGC members who will die, the very last one.
MALDONADO: Air force, gone. Radars, gone. Marines, gone.
MOCKLER: One person is not the regime.
SCARAMUCCI: We know that that actually isn't true, because I had --
MALDONADO: What do you mean it's not true?
SCARAMUCCI: I had Israelis in my office today and they're getting bombarded in Tel Aviv every 90 minutes. They're taking their kids out of their apartments and putting them into bomb shelter. They're not 100 percent gone. I hear what the president's saying, but I'm just telling you what's happening on the ground.
MALDONADO: Okay. We're very close to them being gone and they're going to be gone. Trump is not going to stop here. He is not the guy to back off and say --
MOCKLER: For 47 years, Iran has been a threat, I agree. I would like nothing more than the dismantling of the Iranian regime.
MALDONADO: And it is no longer a threat today.
MOCKLER: That's not true. That is not true. I wish there was some way that two leaders could maybe negotiate and we could have more oversight over their nuclear capabilities to minimize it. I wish some sort of deal. MALDONADO: Five presidents with this guy.
MOCKLER: And which one had a deal? Obama had a deal.
MALDONADO: He gave them $6 billion.
MOCKLER: It was their own money. What are you talking about?
MALDONADO: Come on.
MOCKLER: Can I just say --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Can I ask Margaret a question?
DONOVAN: Yes.
PHILLIP: Is the president in your view looking for an off-ramp here based on his public statements?
DONOVAN: I mean, I wish, I don't think anybody knows what the president's looking for. That's part of the problem. But, you know, to the point that we were just discussing, I just -- respectfully, I just -- I don't understand how you can say that we're safer or how anybody can say that we're safer because we've just -- really, we started a war with somebody who state sponsors terrorism.
(CROSSTALKS)
DONOVAN: And he's very good at asymmetric warfare. And so if the facts were there was a country who was about to launch a nuclear weapon at us, yes, if those were the facts, then we would be safer. But I think that you are discounting the asymmetric nature of how Iran is going to respond and how they might currently respond to us.
And I also think that you're discounting to some, and respectfully, just to some extent, the fact that we are doing an all-airstrike campaign, so we are just dropping sledgehammers from 10,000 feet in the air, and we don't have boots on the ground, we don't have a robust State Department, USAID, you know, rebuilding construction infrastructure there, I just think we've seen this story before and it resulted in something that was much more dangerous than we sought to dismantle in Iraq.
GIDLEY: I think -- okay, a couple of things. First of all, they started this war decades ago.
[22:15:00]
But, second of all, I do think there's an interesting debate to be had here about the Colin Powell ideology, doxology, you break it, you bought it. Do we own it? Do we need to rebuild it, or do we just need to break it? That's the question I think a lot of people have right now because --
MOCKLER: It worked well when we killed Gaddafi.
GIDLEY: Are you arguing for us to go in there and put boots on the ground? I don't think you are.
DONOVAN: Well, actually, my perspective is I think you kind of have to. I don't want to be in this war. I made the decision. I would've said it's probably not an imminent threat and maybe there's something else can be done. I'm not saying that it wasn't a difficult problem, but I don't think having done a lot of airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.
I can tell you there are just serious secondary consequences from that in the form of civilian casualties, right?
GIDLEY: Sure.
DONOVAN: And so if you have a regime that is doing horrific things to civilians, you know? We know that they were killing protesters and absolutely brutal. But if the alternative is just conducting airstrike after airstrike after airstrike, and not allowing the people or helping them to rebuild while simultaneously taking out the governance structure that would've helped them rebuild, a new structure will come in. They will find to a governance -- they will move to a governance structure that helps them rebuild it. It may not be the kind of Iran.
(CROSSTALKS)
DONOVAN: I don't think there's going to be an organic --
SCARAMUCCI: They don't have the arms to do that.
(CROSSTALKS)
SCARAMUCCI: The people themselves have no arms.
MALDONADO: But the regime has no arms.
SCARAMUCCI: And, by the way, regarding regime does have arms. That's --
PHILLIP: I mean, they just carried out a handful of public executions this week, which is --
MALDONADO: They used a noose.
PHILLIP: Yes. But that's done --
MALDONADO: Downtown Tehran.
PHILLIP: Hold on a second. That's done specifically to exert fear over the population and to show that despite all the bombing, DNI Tulsi Gabbard said they are still intact. This is a regime that still has control over the population right now inside of Iran, despite all the bombs that are raining down on them.
But much more ahead. Next, Donald Trump calls our NATO allies cowards, and he's threatening to leave the Strait of Hormuz in their hands. Plus, new tonight, did the president deny Bill Maher the prestigious Mark Twain Prize after he was selected for it?
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, President Trump is not backing away from his frustration with NATO. In a scathing Truth Social post, he says NATO is a paper tiger without the U.S. and that they are complaining about high oil prices but aren't helping to open the Strait of Hormuz. He added that the opening of the strait would be easy to do for them with so little risk. Cowards, and we will remember, he adds. He later voiced even more of that disappointment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Simple military maneuver. It's relatively safe, but you need a lot of help in a sense of you need ships, you need volume. And NATO could help us, but they so far haven't had the courage to do so, and others could help us.
But, you know, we don't use it, you know, at a certain point it'll open itself, at a certain point.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, actually, Hogan was just saying right before the break that maybe we break it and we don't fix it. Is the Strait of Hormuz sort of on that trajectory where Trump says, well, let's close and we just get on out of there and leave it the way it is for other people to deal with?
MOCKLER: The timeline of this has been so humiliating for the United States. A few weeks ago, Donald Trump made this grandiose announcement that he was assembling a coalition of ships to escort -- a coalition of countries to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz. Then he realized, wait a minute, the same countries I've been antagonizing relentlessly over the past few years might not want to help go on a suicide mission going through the Strait of Hormuz, which at its most navigable narrow shipping lane is two miles wide. Iran can just lob missiles over into that shipping lane. So, it's almost a suicide mission for ships to escort other ships through that.
And no countries that are NATO allies that have been bullied by Trump aren't going to be willing to do this. They're not going to be willing to go on the suicide mission for someone that's kind of an asshole to them.
DONOVAN: Well, and we are like weeks after our threat to invade Greenland, right?
MOCKLER: Exactly. DONOVAN: So, like I can't imagine -- you know, treaties are really important and I think that's something that this administration unfortunately sort of discards is the value of things like international law, like treaties. In the U.S. Constitution, for people who are originalists, you can look at the Supremacy Clause and you realize that treaties are actually on the exact same footing as the Constitution and as statutes that are passed by Congress. So, when I think that when we threatened to take over Greenland, that probably really offended our NATO partners.
I'd also say that we're the strongest military in the world, and so I imagine that the NATO partners are thinking like, why do you need our help?
PHILLIP: Yes, that is a good question. I mean, why -- he's saying -- he's talking out of both sides of his mouth. He's saying we can do it ourselves, but we want their help, and then is calling them out for not helping us. If we could do it ourselves, why aren't we doing it? Why haven't we done it yet?
MALDONADO: But, Abby, he's always been consistent on NATO. He's been very hard on NATO. In 2016, he called him obsolete. Then he came back in --
PHILLIP: Yes. But now he needs them.
MALDONADO: But then he came back and negotiated with them. And they're paying the highest amount of money they've ever paid, and now he's (INAUDIBLE).
PHILLIP: Just to be clear, this is a pet peeve of mine. Nobody's paying anyone, okay? It's a percentage of their GDP that they are supposed to spend on defense despite --
MALDONADO: Are they paying more?
PHILLIP: Despite -- it's not -- nobody's paying anyone. They are spending money on their own defense infrastructure. That is how NATO works. They're not paying anyone anything, least of all the president. Continue.
DONOVAN: And Article 5, which is the collective self-defense article of NATO, is not an obligation to go to war with the other nations. It's an obligation to defend them when they are first attacked.
[22:25:02]
SCARAMUCCI: I think there's a bigger issue, though. And the bigger issue is, and I'm not hearing it from the press, and certainly don't know who's saying it in the administration, define success, Mr. President. Write down on a note card what are the three or four things that you would define this to be a successful operation, because he's not doing that. He's spinning. At one point, he's saying they're completely degraded. Then why would you need NATO? At another point, he's saying he needs the volume of their ships to come into the strait, but he also knows that that isn't really true because of the mechanisms that the Iranians have in terms of the way they can lob the missiles. They'll just blow up some of the NATO ships. So, the NATO commanders, they know that that's true.
I just want to make one last point. You're going to see ground troops better than 65 percent in Iran. You're not sending two Marine Expeditionary Forces totaling 4,400 people into the area if you're not going to have the ground troops. Because he has probably been told that the only way to completely clear the strait is to put troops on the ground, particularly on the strait, on the Iranian side. Margaret, do you agree with that, or you think I'm wrong?
DONOVAN: Yes. Look, I just want to clarify. I don't want to put troops on the ground. I just don't see how you can do this without --
SCARAMUCCI: I don't either, but that's what's coming.
DONOVAN: Yes.
SCARAMUCCI: And the American people have to be ready for it. Also --
PHILLIP: Let me just play one thing. This is -- we almost never hear from Jim Mattis, a former secretary of defense who served under Trump, but here he is in an interview and he's being asked about whether or not Trump is right, that we don't need any help with this war.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can the United States succeed in this war without allies, other than Israel?
GEN. JAMES MATTIS (RET.), FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: No.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What is your sense of the biggest concerns from our allies right now?
MATTIS: Well, there are many of the same concerns that we hear from our fellow citizens. America is becoming predatory. America is unreliable. They say one thing and they change seven days later or two days later. So, there's a sense that we are not a reliable security partner right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I mean, that's a pretty strong critique. And, look, if you're Europe, and as Margaret was just pointing out, you just got through the whole period where Trump was threatening to invade a part of NATO. Yes, you're wondering if we should even bother.
GIDLEY: First of all, he wasn't threatening to invade part of NATO.
MOCKLER: He absolutely was.
GIDLEY: But, listen, I was at NATO in the first administration when Donald Trump demanded the other countries pay their fair share, as Democrats like to say.
PHILLIP: That's not --
GIDLEY: That 2 percent. That 2 percent that they're supposed to put into their own --
PHILLIP: No, they're not paying that.
GIDLEY: They're supposed to put into their own defense budget, which they were not doing.
PHILLIP: I appreciate the accuracy.
GIDLEY: Correct. At the time, the media lost its collective mind that he would dare ask other countries to not continue to rely on American taxpayers to fund their defense, their protection.
What they did was decide to pony up and say, you know what, we should pay that 2 percent to our own budgets. Then Stoltenberg, who was the head of NATO at the time, pulled Trump aside and I was in that meeting, and he said, thank you for saying that, because for too long, all of these countries had been relying on America as the world's piggy bank to pay for all of their crap.
We have continued to do that in this country for decades. This president has forced these other countries to pay the piper, if you will, and pony up to what needs to be done. In this particular instance, all of these NATO countries have all been very clear this action is right, but we don't really want to do any of our stuff to help out. Fine. That shows you for what you are, and President Trump is calling out as the mooches that these countries are.
SCARAMUCCI: Don't use the word mooch in here.
GIDLEY: And by the way, I was going to say --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: What does it say about President Trump's leadership that given all that you just said, he still cannot convince our treaty allies to stand with us in a moment like this?
GIDLEY: They also just said, hey, maybe we will help with this.
PHILLIP: But, listen --
MOCKLER: After the war.
PHILLIP: -- why would they -- actually, let me just point this out. So, there was a statement from E.U. countries, Japan, Canada, Ukraine, et cetera, and it's got a lot of things in there about global energy supplies. And it says, we express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the strait. No actual commitments in that letter. And it's kind of best viewed as something that's out there just to make the president seem a little bit happier about the situation, but they're not doing it.
[22:30:04] And that seems like a failure of leadership on the president's part. That's what leadership is.
GIDLEY: Oh, no. What he is doing is calling attention to the fact basically ran on and won on one of the things of this country. Stop being the world's piggy bank--
PHILLIP: You're telling me, we're in an existential threat against an evil regime. And this President cannot but convince a single additional (inaudible) outside of Israel--
GIDLEY: That doesn't say something about Donald Trump. It says something about the other weak countries for everything they do, and the European Union has been very clear.
We can't do anything without America. And when we need them, they don't come. They don't want to help leadership that shows you how ridiculous they are.
PHILLIP: What is leadership?
SCARAMUCCI: I'm glad they haven't escalated. What can I rebut some of that or no?
PHILLIP: Yes. But what is leadership, if not the ability to bring people along with you?
SCARAMUCCI: This is a good that's how we operate.
So he operates unilaterally. And he's got a very big brain. And it's a smarter brain that everybody else in the room.
And so he makes all the decisions himself and he elbows out everybody. And when they tell them they may close the strait or they may attack our allies says, oh, they're not going to do that. I have a very big brain.
And then he has to admit that he didn't factor in that they were going to launch 9:1 missiles. He said it.
He said it to the press. I did not expect them to attack 9:1. The missiles are going in ratio wise into our allies versus Israel, 9:1 the missiles. He said he didn't expect that.
So let's be honest about it. He went in unilaterally. He didn't sell to the American people, he didn't sell it to his NATO allies. And now he's--
GIDLEY: --done that. You'd be saying it's just like Iraq. You're already saying that it's been like two weeks.
SCARAMUCCI: I'm not saying that.
GIDLEY: No, I'm saying you must be saying it's a very similar. It's a long, protracted war. It's not.
SCARAMUCCI: I'm saying we're not going to do the exact same thing.
We have 25 years. Listen to Margaret. We have 25 years where we are not good at this.
We are not good at what regime change. We went from the Taliban to the Taliban--
GIDLEY: He's not trying that to change the regime. He's weakened.
He's weakened.
SCARAMUCCI: He went from Khomeini to Khomeini and less than Scaramucci. We're not changing--
PHILLIP: Alright, a quick last word to Margaret.
DONOVAN: I just want to say we have seen this before. This is less than a decade ago. Right.
I was going back to Iraq when the Islamic State took over. We have seen what happens when you knock out a regime and you don't have a plan in place to follow up. The difference is that when we were doing it, then we were part of a 68 country coalition and we are alone and unafraid now.
And from the time of the revolution, we have made international allies and we have succeeded in wars because of our alliances. And so we're in a very dangerous place right now. And I completely disagree that we are more safe right now than we were before we started bombing.
PHILLIP: All right, Margaret Donovan, thank you very much. We really appreciate your insights tonight.
Next for us, if you think that the long lines at airports right now are bad, the White House is warning that next week could be much worse. Will that be enough to convince lawmakers to finally end the DHS shutdown? We'll debate.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Tonight, after weeks of stalemate and mounting airport delays nationwide, leaders of both parties are scrambling to end the DHS shutdown. After two days of talks, multiple Republicans tell CNN that they've improved their offer to Democrats addressing their concerns over immigration enforcement.
As the shutdown drags on at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta, some passengers claiming real wait times of up to three and a half hours today. But as Democrats remain tight lipped, the White House is out with a new warning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEAN DUFFY, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: I think as we come into next week, that second paycheck is due a week from today, as they're going to miss that. If they do, if a deal isn't cut, you're going to see what's happening today look like child's play. These are going to be good days compared to what's going to happen a week from now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: It seems that both sides are incentivized right now to do something about this. And Democrats, though, I've been surprised.
I mean, many of them are adamant, including, you know, Senator Raphael Warnock, he represents Georgia, where some of the worst delays are happening. They're not budging on their demands for more accountability from ICE. Right move or wrong move?
SCARAMUCCI: I think it's a wrong move, because I think at the end of the day, it's like the city government here. People want safe streets and they want a clean city and the federal government. We want to feel safe and we're going to want to get the trains and the planes running on time.
And I just think it's a really bad message to everybody that we have this high level of dysfunctionality that we got to hold everybody up in the airport. We're going to go to $6 a gallon of gasoline by Memorial Day.
And oh, by the way, we actually don't care about you guys. We're in a fight with each other over ego based things, in my opinion. And they could reach an agreement, and I think it's a big mistake.
MOCKLER: Democrats on both sides, by the way, it's an advisement. Democrats introduced a standalone bill to fund TSA.
We have the money to fund TSA. It's very important to point out this is not a revenue problem we're experiencing right now. It's not that we don't have the revenue.
It's that Republicans keep voting no because they don't want to. It's an accountability problem.
SCARAMUCCI: You're blaming one side. And I think that's also a mistake.
MOCKLER: Well, it's an accountability problem.
SCARAMUCCI: This is an indictment of both sides.
MOCKLER: Can the Republicans vote on DHS--
SCARAMUCCI: You say that? But they're hung up on the--
MOCKLER: An omni bill.
[22:40:03] GIDLEY: This is the third time that Democrats have voted to shut down the American government to protect non-American citizens. They did it before to give illegal aliens taxpayer funded American paid for health care. They did it the second time to make sure that child molesters and rapists could roam free in Minneapolis.
And now they're doing it because they're attaching customs and border protection funding. They zeroed out in this particular bill to open the border again for the life of me. Politically, I cannot understand why Democrats continue to support illegal aliens instead of American citizens.
PHILLIP: You have to remember and that the political reality is that the reason that the White House is moving on this issue, they don't often move on things, but they've been moving on immigration. They got rid of the DHS secretary. They promised to basically roll back ISIS prominence in American streets.
It's because two American citizens were killed on the streets of America. That's why. Because that was seen by millions of Americans and it made this issue deeply unpopular for this President.
So it's not true that this is only about undocumented immigrants. It's a lot of it --
GIDLEY: -- and vote on to protect illegal aliens.
PHILLIP: Listen, some of the things, some of the things that they're debating about here and look, this is talking. This is separate from whether or not the government should reopen.
GIDLEY: I'm sorry. Killing people in the street.
PHILLIP: Some of the things are masks. Fourth Amendment protections.
GIDLEY: That's not the point. I'm up at the Hill every single day. These bills have been passed to fund TSA, to fund DHS, to fund the Coast Guard and all the things that matter.
And while the government, four percent of which is shut down now because of Democrats, that four percent is extremely vital to the protection of this country. And so we're clear.
First, Democrats said here's what we're going to do. Open the borders on purpose, not by accident, by design.
Then we're going to, on purpose, allow 10 to 20 million people in this country, 700 of whom at least are Iranian nationals. And the third is now they are saying we are not going to vote to fund the very agency designed to protect us from the threats they let in the country on purpose.
It is fascinating from a political standpoint and ridiculous.
SCARAMUCCI: And your fellow citizens getting shot at. MOCKLER: Do you think the officers who killed Alex Pretti should be
held accountable? Should the officers who shot Alex Pretti be held accountable?
GIDLEY: Anybody who discharges their firearms should face whatever legal process.
MOCKLER: So we're not seeing that legal process and that is a problem.
GIDLEY: I don't know if it's happening or not, but I know this. Stopping ICE from enforcing the law is a crime.
MOCKLER: You are incongruent. You are incongruent with the own administration's position. They've been covering this up and trying to make sure there's no accountability.
GIDLEY: No one's covering anything up.
MOCKLER: Are you kidding me? They've spiked multiple investigations. People resigned from the civil rights division of the DOJ.
GIDLEY: No one's covering anything up.
MOCKLER: Not the Epstein files, not the murders, not anything. No one's covering anything up.
GIDLEY: You wouldn't know anything about Epstein had it not been for a Republican Congress and a Republican President. Democrats had it for four years and did nothing.
PHILLIP: Let me let Abel have a word. Go ahead.
MALDONADO: Abby, I'm trying to figure out the strategy of the Democrat party, to be very sincere with you. Their strategy is let's hold the American traveler and let's hold the TSA worker hostage because we want to change ICE.
MOCKLER: The Democrats are doing that?
MALDONADO: Yes. Guess what? The President gave them the change that they wanted.
He said, Kristi Noem out. He's bringing somebody new in.
SCARTAMUCCI: This is why people hate Washington. This is why the Congress has a 14 percent approval rating. Guys, get it together.
PHILLIP: Here's the thing, I don't want people to miss the headline that we came in on, which is that there are talks happening yesterday and today. One of the reasons that talks are happening is because Trump changed course.
He put Tom Homan in charge. Tom Homan is sitting down with Democrats. They're hammering out a compromise.
All these things that you guys are arguing about, there's going to be a compromise on the table that compromises on many of those very things. And so I think the American people are asking, why couldn't we have sat down and hammered this out three weeks ago?
MALDONADO: Exactly.
PHILLIP: As opposed to now. If at the end of the day, that's both parties.
MALDONADO: Trump's not going to back out.
PHILLIP: Trump has already backed down. He is actively in the process of backing down.
SCARAMUCCI: You guys came to the table with great Republican talking points. Tell the truth.
They're causing 50 percent of the problem. The Democrats are causing 50 percent of the problem. Stop it.
Get together and end this madness. It's very unpopular with the American people.
[22:45:06]
PHILLIP: Hopefully, there will be a working weekend in Washington as they sort this out. Hopefully, by next week, Americans won't have to deal with this at the airports.
Next for us, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor will not be going to Bill Maher. We'll discuss why that is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:50:06]
PHILLIP: Tonight, has Donald Trump had the last laugh over one of his most vocal critics?
Well, sources tell CNN that comedian Bill Maher was selected to receive the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and Maher was seriously considering accepting it. But the White House is now saying, nope.
In a statement, the White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt calls reports of Maher's selection fake news, saying that he will not be getting this award.
The on-again, off-again relationship between Bill Maher and President Trump-
SCARAMUCCI: Stop. Is there a crush there, Abby?
PHILLIP: I don't know. You tell me. Is there a man crush there?
PHILLIP: What do you think is going on here?
SCRAMUCCI: Well, I think somebody leaked that, that that was going to happen. And obviously, the President's mad at him.
Again, they were lovey-dovey at dinner. He wants these comedians to be completely uncritical of him. That's not the job of a comedian.
And Bill Maher, whether people like this or not, won this again, because this helps his ratings, just like it helped Jimmy Kimmel's ratings and other comedians that the President goes after.
PHILLIP: So one of the reasons that his audience was kind of mad at him is because he had this dinner with Trump. And in April, he talked about the dinner and the critics of that dinner. Let's just play it real quick.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL MAHER, COMEDIAN, AND HOST, "REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER": Well, first of all, the people who stopped watching my show because I had dinner with them are idiots.
They just are. They're just completely emotional because they're always asking the wrong question, which is like, how dare you have dinner with Donald Trump? The question should always have been, what did I say after I had dinner with Donald Trump?
Now, if after I had dinner with Donald Trump, I came back to this show and was seduced by that dinner and stopped tearing him a new one every week, every time I thought he did something wrong, then you would have a case. That didn't happen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MALDONADO: Well, there you have it.
PHILLIP: He did say after the dinner that he'd never seen Trump laugh until he sat at dinner with him. So that's one of the reasons that people said that.
MALDONADO: So that was, that's, you know, he went to dinner. It was a bromance, as Anthony said. It was all good.
And then after that he came up and criticized.
SCARAMUCCI: The President has a man crush on Bill. It's going to be okay.
MALDONADO: Then he criticized.
SCARAMUCCI: We'll get back together again for dinner soon.
MALDONADO: Yes, then Bill criticized him.
GIDLEY: For the record, I've seen Donald Trump laugh many times. Also, Moosh and I have both done Bill Maher's show.
I like Bill Maher, I think he's a good comedian. It's a very heady show, smart show. I don't know if he's actually getting this award or how this whole process works.
MALDONADO: He's not getting an award.
GIDLEY: I mean, I don't know if he's getting one or not, but I mean, look, it's just a fascinating deal.
MALDONADO: He's getting the ratings award.
GIDLEY: But I will, one thing you just said, you said Trump likes comedians who never criticize him that will only be positive. There's not a single comedian on a single late night talk show that doesn't just solely go after Trump nonstop.
MALDONADO: That's true.
PHILLIP: That actually raises a really, to me, the next question is like, okay, if not Bill Maher and any other comedian who doesn't like Donald Trump, then who?
MONKLER: Really quickly, just to be honest, I'm just so incredibly sick of the President of the United States constantly beefing with celebrities, whether it's Jimmy Kimmel. Because when the President of the United States is dancing on Rob Reiner's grave 12 hours after he's murdered, I think that's beneath the presidency. When we're at a war that is currently increasing our national debts, it is currently going to burden my generation with more debt.
And our President is more focused on Jimmy Kimmel. Do you think that's a good thing?
GIDLEY: He's not focused on Jimmy Kimmel, but look, let's be honest. I mean, every other Democrat President cozies up to these celebrities. It's Donald Trump who pushes back.
PHILLIP: To be honest, I've never, I have no recollection ever of any other President giving an opinion about the Mark Twain award one way or another. It's just usually not something that rises to the level of the presidency.
MALDONADO: I think comedians went after Barack Obama as well.
PHILLIP: My point is that Trump carrying out his grievances against people in this way is unusual.
SCARAMUCCI: Go crazy, have at it, get in the mud and start slinging mud.
GIDLEY: No, I'm saying, as you know, nothing's beneath him. As you know, your 10 days there was --
SCARAMUCCI: 11.
GIDLEY: We'll be very obvious to explain the fact he is a counterpuncher. You go after him, he's going to push back every time.
MALDONADO: Absolutely. SCARAMUCCI: And every time he counterpunches, the ratings go up.
PHILLIP: Thank you guys all for being here. We'll be back in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:55:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: "Have I Got News For You" is back tomorrow. Here's a preview.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROY WOOD JR., HOST, "HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU": Question to the panel. Why is it weird that RFK Jr. made a bunch of changes to the vaccine schedule?
MICHAEL IAN BLACK, TEAM CAPTAIN, "HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU": He literally said, yes, when he was being confirmed, they're like, are you going to change the vaccine schedule? He's like, nah, I'm good.
And then he did it just like Donald Trump said, I'm not going to go to war with Iran. And then he did.
WOOD JR.: Exactly. It's weird because RFK said he wouldn't do it.
UNKNOWN (voice-over): During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy said he wouldn't change the existing vaccine recommendations.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: Senator, I support vaccines. I support the childhood schedule.
[23:00:04]
HARI KONDABOLU, COMEDIAN AND WRITER: I mean, the worm might have eaten the part of his brain that remember saying that.
WOOD JR.: The Americans trust the medical information that they're getting from RFK Jr. panel.
BLACK: I just think it's hard to take medical advice from a guy that sounds like that.
KONDABOLU: Like he sounds like he's dying.
AMBER RUFFIN, TEAM CAPTAIN, "HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU": He does like that.
KONDABOLU: He sounds like he's actively dying.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Catch the all new episode tomorrow at 9 p.m. on CNN. And don't miss our Saturday show "Table for Five" tomorrow at 10 a.m. Eastern.
"Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
