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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
U.S. and Iran Give Conflicting Messages on State of Talks; Source Says, Potential Short-Term Deal Would Agree to Resume Talks; White House Official Boasts That Credit Card Spending is Through the Roof. Ken Griffin Slams New York Mayor's Rhetoric Comparing it From Rich to Racial Slurs; Cable News Pioneer and Turner Broadcasting Founder Ted Turner Dies. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired May 06, 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 --
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: It's very possible that we'll make a deal.
PHILLIP: But is the potential deal to end the war with Iran the same or worse than Barack Obama's?
Plus --
KEVIN HASSETT, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: The consumer is really, really firing on all cylinders. Credit card spending is through the roof.
PHILLIP: The White House touts a statistic that's usually a warning sign for the fate of the economy.
Also, one titan likens Zohran Mamdani's tax the rich attacks to racial slurs.
And a large majority of Americans scorn the administration's use of religion in war, and the use of Jesus to keep score.
Live at the table, Bakari Sellers, Scott Jennings, Ana Navarro, Shermichael Singleton, and Kevin O'Leary.
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.
Tonight, a renewed push toward peace. In the next 24 hours or so, Iran is expected to respond to the United States' proposal to end the war. Now, both sides are reportedly moving closer to an agreement on a memo that would end the conflict for 30 days so that they can hash out three key sticking points. That include Iran's nuclear issues, unfreezing Iranian assets, and future security in the Strait of Hormuz.
A source tells CNN that the plan would include a discussion of a moratorium on Iran's enriched uranium for longer than ten years, and it would require Iran to ship its highly enriched uranium out of the country. Today, President Trump warned that if Iran doesn't agree to this, the United States will begin bombing at a higher level and intensity than before. But later, he expressed optimism about a potential deal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We've had very good talks over the last 24 hours, and it's very possible that we'll make a deal.
We've had some good talks before, as you know, and all of a sudden, the next day they're like they forgot what happened.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, a one-page memorandum that basically buys 30 more days to talk to the Iranians. Scott, why are we in this constant pause to talk, to pause to talk, to pause to talk cycle with Iran?
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, a few things. One, I think Trump does want to end the war. I think he knows we've destroyed basically all the military targets, and so what's left is to negotiate the outcome that he wants, which is no nuclear weapons. So, that's number one.
Number two, he's got this summit with the Chinese coming up next week. This is an important moment, and in fact, today, the Chinese foreign minister, I guess, had the Iranian foreign minister in Beijing. I assume there's some discussions going on with China to bring their pressure to bear before the president gets over there to talk to the Chinese. So, that's the second issue.
And then the third issue is I think he's trying to make a deal here, but it's not clear maybe internally who we're making a deal with. It's a little bit divided right now.
On what they're trying to do if we get what they say on the nuclear piece, no pursuit of nuclear weapons, I think that's terrific. The one thing that's not been talked about in the memorandum that I'm interested in is whether we're going to make a deal with them on not pursuing any missile program, because the missiles is what's terrorizing everybody in the Middle East. They apparently possess some missiles that could reach most of Europe. That's a non-starter as well. But the nuclear piece is obviously number one.
PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, there are a lot of missing -- I mean, it's a one-page memorandum. So, clearly, it's not going to address all the issues. It doesn't address their support for proxies. It doesn't address, to Scott's point, their missile program. It also has a timeline similar to the JCPOA that, according to our reporting, is longer than ten years. There's been previous reporting that maybe it was 20 years. But the Iran nuclear deal was 15 years. So, we're kind of in the same ballgame that we were in before, except that now Iran is way closer to a nuclear weapon than they were during the JCPOA.
BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: The problem is I colloquially we say that Trump is hustling backwards. I mean, that's what they're doing. That's what this administration is doing. They're selling us a bill of goods. I mean, I don't think anyone around the table, people watching, there's no one out there that says that Iran deserves a nuclear weapon. So, let's start with that preface. Let's literally start there to take that argument off the table.
But what we are doing is saying, one, we're still giving Iran resources. Two, the Strait of Hormuz wasn't closed before we entered this war. Three, we entered this war without a strategy to get out. We've already lost military members, which is four. We've lost men and women who were battling and wearing our shield on their vest.
[22:05:00]
And, five, even more importantly, even today as we inch closer to what they perceive to be a deal, we are still echoing the same thing that the JCPOA did.
And, actually, I would argue that the JCPOA actually made sure that Iran was further away from a nuclear weapon than they are today, and they will be under whatever Donald Trump agrees to. We are the definition of hustling backwards, and that is the tragedy.
PHILLIP: The Strait of Hormuz is still closed, and actually today, Iran released this website that says, welcome to the Persian Gulf Strait Authority. They are asserting control over the strait. They're setting up an entity that would allow them to do things like collect tolls, to manage the inflows and outflows. I mean, this is a different world than we were in before, and that can have profound impacts on the global economy.
KEVIN O'LEARY, CHAIRMAN, O'LEARY VENTURES: It's just social media. It's irrelevant. And the way I look at it and why this outcome probably is going to work out is the alignment in the Middle East has changed forever. There was a time only 70 days ago when the countries around Iran would not take issue with them, considering them to be in the circle of friendship, so to speak.
They showed their colors by bombing all their neighbors. They didn't -- weren't successful, but they caused a lot of economic damage data centers, oil refineries. Those countries, UAE specifically, which took so much of the brunt because it's so close to the U.S., are forever aligned with the United States now, period. So, whatever deal's going to happen, it's going to be with an understanding that odd man out in perpetuity is this rogue country where you've got a militia of 250,000 people, you've got to pay them to kill people, so you can't cut off their oil forever, and right now, every day they lose $210 million. So, there's two ways to tenderize Iran. Shut down the strait so they can't get their oil out. Squeeze their cash so they can't pay the murderers that are in there, because, remember, there's 92 million people, good people. There's a million army controlled by 250,000 paid thug murderers, militia. That's how it works. Now, you cut off that money, the thugs don't get paid. They don't kill anybody anymore. Then maybe you can get a change.
But whatever happens from this point on --
PHILLIP: (INAUDIBLE) we would be in a different place right now.
O'LEARY: It's just the way it is. That's a fact.
PHILLIP: Because, well, I think that your presentation of it sounds nice and straightforward, but the reality is -- well, the reality is that we're dealing with an ideological regime, and we're dealing with an ideological regime that's controlled by the people with the guns. And those people, despite all the economic pressure, contrary to what you are saying, have not backed down. That's why we're in this predicament. Because Trump is talking to some people, but the guys with the guns keep saying, no deal.
ANA NAVARRO, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Listen, I genuinely want the United States to succeed. I don't want us to have gone through all of this hell for the last few months to end up in a worse place than where Obama had left us. And -- you know, and I want it to be over quickly.
I consume an inordinate amount of news on a daily basis. I can't keep up with what's going on because I feel like you wake up in the morning, you read something in the newspaper, then by mid-morning, the White House spokesperson or Hegseth or Rubio have come out and said this thing is over. Two hours later, Trump is tweeting the opposite, and then in the middle of the night, he'll wake up and he'll tweet out some sort of meme that makes absolutely no sense.
In the meantime, you've got the Iranians giving him a -- you know, playing from the same hymnal, doing memes of Legos and tweeting things out on social media. I feel like I have heard I don't know how many times now in the last, what, two and a half, three months, that this war is almost over, that we are close to a deal. I hope we are close to a deal, but at this point until I see that deal, I don't know what we're talking about.
PHILLIP: President Trump was -- so let me just play what he said today about how this blockade, this naval blockade has been working.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We're dealing with people that want to make a deal very much, and we'll see whether or not they can make a deal that's satisfactory to us. We have it very much under control. The blockade is unbelievable. The Navy's been incredible. The job they did is like a -- it's like a wall of steel.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: He keeps saying that it's very much under control, but it's not. There's no traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. And, in fact, yesterday they were going to escort ships and then they abandoned that plan after regional partners, including Pakistan and other regional countries, said, let's stop doing this, because they were coming under fire from Iran.
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, sure. Look, this is complicated. The JCPOA took 20 months, almost two years, of intense negotiations back and forth. Six months in, they thought they were close, and then it took another six months, they thought they were close, and it took almost two years.
And so I think sometimes this is complicated stuff.
[22:10:00]
I know there are different positions about whether or not the conflict should have even started. People can argue that. But I think at this point we can't look backwards. And so I think the American people just have to understand that this is going to take time. This is not going to happen overnight.
PHILLIP: So, what's the point of a 30-day memorandum then?
SELLERS: But that's also like --
SINGLETON: Well, the 30-day memorandum is to stop the ceasefires for 30 days.
PHILLIP: Yes, but in order to get --
SINGLETON: But the actual negotiations itself aren't going to occur in 30 days. That's impossible.
NAVARRO: Yes, but it also buys him time not to have to go in front of Congress --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: But putting a timeline on it doesn't make any sense because, to your point, it could take years.
SINGLETON: Well, it could take a year and a half.
SELLERS: But Donald Trump also lied. And I think that people -- like let's call a spade a spade. I mean, Donald Trump, when he announced this war in Iran, simply said that he talked to the Iranian people and said, take control of your government. Then seven days later he said, this is going to be over soon. I mean, he continuously comes out here and lies not only to our face, but to the world partners.
SINGLETON: Did you think this was going to be over soon?
SELLERS: Because I know better. We know better. But not only that, but the --
NAVARRO: Well, when he first came out, he said that this was going to be about regime change. When they changed that messaging --
SELLERS: But you cannot -- but now you're saying, and one of the things Shermichael just said, is that the American people are going to have to just somehow get over this.
SINGLETON: No, that's not -- no, I said they have to understand it.
SELLERS: Oh, understand.
SINGLETON: The complexity of this, this is not going to happen in 30 days.
SELLERS: Correct.
SINGLETON: This takes a lot of time.
SELLERS: That is a very -- that is a -- the difference between that assertion and the JCPOA is that during the JCPOA negotiations, you weren't having farmers in the middle of America struggling to afford fertilizer. You weren't having airlines that were having to go under because of the rising cost of fuel.
SINGLETON: Well, Spirit was more complicated than just rising fuel.
SELLERS: Well, don't worry, JetBlue is coming. JetBlue is coming. Don't worry about that.
SINGLETON: Come on.
SELLERS: But you also weren't having people having $5 and $6 a gallon at the pump. See, that is the difference between the JCPOA and what we're doing right now.
SINGLETON: But, Bakari, that doesn't change the fact that this is not going to happen in one month.
PHILLIP: Well, I guess --
SINGLETON: That's my point.
SELLERS: thank you for telling the truth. I'm with you. I'm with you. No, I agree. I agree. I agree.
PHILLIP: I think you're totally right about that, but the problem is that the president is not sending that message to the American people. Every day he wakes up and he's like, we're almost getting a deal. And if you believe that, which I think at this point you should know better, but if you do believe that, then I think you will be surprised when it probably doesn't happen overnight, it doesn't happen in 48 hours or 72 hours or ten days or whatever timeline he has decided to put on it.
JENNINGS: Yes, I don't know when it's going to end. I don't know when they're going to come to their senses. I mean, look, eventually the president's going to have to decide what the timeline is on his patience. I think he's showing some restraint right now and some patience with them.
I mean, they have kind of violated the ceasefire. They've sent these little boats out and they've fired on our partners in the Middle East. The president has showed restraint because I think he believes in the diplomatic process that's going on.
I agree with Shermichael, it may take some time but --
PHILLIP: Should he level with the American people about truly how long this could take? And if it does take a long time, how long we could be living with a global economy that's being held hostage by Iran?
JENNINGS: I mean, the truth is he probably doesn't know, A, because, you know, we're dealing with a fractured government, and, B, we're dealing with folks here who, let's be honest, aren't the best faith operators.
And so I think, look, however this ends and whenever it ends, one thing has to be true, complete and total victory, which comes in the form of saying they will never have a nuclear weapon. Whenever he gets to that point, then it will be a success.
PHILLIP: Well, will never -- does never mean a ten-year timeline?
NAVARRO: If it's ten -- can I? If it's 10 years or 15 years, for you, that's not complete victory?
JENNINGS: Well, what I read --
NAVARRO: 20 years?
JENNINGS: What I read today was that there would be a moratorium of maybe 15 years, and that the Iranians would also agree to send their 970 pounds of enriched uranium to the United States, and that they would promise to not pursue any weaponization. If those three things happen, that's victory.
SINGLETON: But I would just say quickly, Abby, to your point about the rise in oil prices, you talked about this Bakari, I mean, a part of having a 30-day ceasefire is, in those negotiations you're going to, I assume, argue for them to open up the Strait of Hormuz because it is going to take at least 90 days, or maybe even longer, to see oil prices begin to drop again. And so that has to be a part of that negotiations until you get to an ultimate end deal.
SELLERS: Why was that not-- I don't -- explain to me like I'm a fifth grader, like why was the shutting off of the Strait of Hormuz not actually something that Pete Hegseth and the rest of them thought about prior to --
SINGLETON: I mean, how am I supposed to know? I wasn't in the --
SELLERS: I'm just asking. I thought --
(CROSSTALKS)
O'LEARY: Because the Strait of Hormuz is how Iran gets income. We know that part. So, this --
(CROSSTALKS)
SELLERS: No, but my question is why did we not anticipate them shutting it off? Like if you're going to war with somebody --
O'LEARY: Who said we didn't? I have no idea. The strategy was to go in there and change the dynamics in perpetuity. No question after this is over.
SELLERS: It's like we didn't know what the hell we were doing.
O'LEARY: I guarantee you two things. Before this is worked out, the strait will be open and probably policed by people around that region because it's in their best interest. And, secondly, there are no friends in the world left for Iran. Maybe you could call China in. Maybe you could call Russia, but these are rogue nations.
[22:15:01]
And what Trump has done, whether you like it or you don't, he's changed the axis of power there, because at the end of the day, this is good for that region. That region has such potential and growth, and you can see it in Dubai --
SELLERS: Explain to me what's good right now. Explain to me right now as we sit here what's good for the American public.
O'LEARY: We want to do business in growing jurisdictions. We want to sell stuff to people where their economies are growing. That's what we've done for 200 years.
SELLERS: You just said a bunch of nothing. Like explain to me right now somebody who lives in South Carolina, Nebraska, Ohio, what is good right now for the American public going into a war where you do not understand that they're going to close the Strait of Hormuz? Explain to somebody watching right now where they're from.
O'LEARY: This war is 78 days old.
SELLERS: So, you don't have an answer. Just say, I don't have an answer.
O'LEARY: I have a 100 percent answer.
SELLERS: What's the answer?
O'LEARY: You make stuff in North Carolina, you make stuff in South Carolina, you have to sell it to somebody. You want to ship it to countries where they can afford it, where they make a lot of money, where the income per capita is very high. (CROSSTALKS)
SELLERS: You keep saying me a bunch of B.S.
(CROSSTALKS)
NAVARRO: But, Kevin, the farmer in North Carolina, who was not able to secure fertilizer for their planting crops right now, is not going to have a short-term answer.
O'LEARY: They won't have solved that problem in 24 hours?
NAVARRO: It's not going to be able to solve --
O'LEARY: You just take the tariff off potash.
JENNINGS: Well, you raised a good topic, which is short-term versus long-term, and I grant you, there will be people who look at this as a short-term painful experience. What the president has said, though, is, look, I just cannot permit after all these years, after 47 years of these people being at war with us and Western civilization, I cannot permit them to get to a place where they have a nuclear weapon. And over the long-term, our children and our grandchildren will thank us when we take that away from them.
So, it is a good debating topic, short versus long-term. The president here has a long-term thought, which is he can't let them get that.
NAVARRO: Scott, there's such a huge number of farmers declaring bankruptcy right now. And if I were a farmer in America, I'd be asking myself, why the hell did we send $40 billion to bail out Argentina and nobody's helping us home?
JENNINGS: That was a credit swap, and we made money on it.
PHILLIP: Shermichael, you were going to say something.
SINGLETON: Look, I was just going to say quickly --
NAVARRO: Explain that to the farmers.
SINGLETON: -- I mean, Bakari is raising a very legitimate question about the immediate versus the long-term. I mean, in terms of immediate, I don't have an answer that will be satisfactory to most people who are struggling out there. To me in the long run, I'm looking at stabilization in the region. I'm also looking at China, which has been a big focal point for me. They get 13.8, 14 percent of their oil reserves from Iran. They are our number one adversary globally. I think any opportunity the United States can diminish that is critically important for our hegemony over the next 50 to 100 years. That's a long-term answer, but a very valid one.
PHILLIP: All right. Well, the thing I'm looking for is can they actually get a deal? Because at the end of the day, Iran's big play has been for many decades just to keep talking. And they'd love to just keep talking until the cows come home. But will they actually sign on the dotted line is the big question for this White House.
Next for us, a White House adviser is bragging that Americans are spending more on their credit cards, which is usually not a great sign for the economy.
Plus, a CEO likens Zohran Mamdani's tax the rich rhetoric to racial slurs. We'll debate.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, the Trump administration is celebrating a potentially alarming trend, claiming it's a sign of consumer confidence. Trump's top economic adviser says the American consumer is, quote, really firing on all cylinders for this puzzling reason.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HASSETT: I had the head of one of the big five banks in my office yesterday going through the credit card data. And just as Secretary Bessent said, credit card spending is through the roof. They're spending more on gasoline, but they're spending more on everything else too.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Today, Kevin Hassett credited Trump's no tax on tips, overtime, and Social Security policies for putting so much more money in Americans' pockets. But notably absent from that list, Trump's tariffs, which are said to have cost the average American family over $1,700.
Kevin, I'll -- the other Kevin, you know, look, I'm sure that there are plenty of economic people who can make a good case for why people spending themselves into debt is a good thing for the economy, sure. But for actual American pocketbooks, when you are spending yourself on credit cards, it's usually a sign that things are not going well with your cash flow.
O'LEARY: It's very interesting what's happening because I was listening to the Disney call, the earnings call, which is such a great index for consumers. Think about families going to theme parks, buying gasoline, buying stuff. So, Disney, this is a new CEO, it's his first call, was asked right out of the gate, because every analyst is trying to figure out where the consumer stands, have you seen a slowdown in park traffic? Remember, parks are more expensive than they've ever been. And the cost of taking your family in the car should be more expensive than ever, because it's gas $4 to $5 now. Zero change in traffic. In fact, it's up.
And so what is happening to this economy that people feel confident enough to see forward to the end of whatever this volatility is, particularly on gas prices, the truth is 50 percent of the S&P 500 companies have absorbed the tariffs themselves by using A.I. to increase their margins and productivity. So, the full weight of tariffs hasn't ever affected the consumer yet because of this incredible productivity enhancement, this serendipitous tool that Trump never saw coming, called A.I., in all 11 sectors.
The earnings are stunning in the S&P 500, which is the index of everybody that saves money, that is saving anything in their savings account in America driven by the power of an economy that seems to be ignoring the conflict in the Middle East.
[22:25:13]
You would think, given all of this volatility, that somehow it would affect something in America.
PHILLIP: Well, I mean, Kevin Hassett is telling us it is.
O'LEARY: And the answer is nothing yet.
PHILLIP: But Kevin Hassett is telling us, I mean, just to ask you to respond to what he said, he said Americans are spending more on credit cards, that they are not only paying more, they are paying more for things that they are buying, but they are doing so on credit cards. That's what he's saying. That's a fact. That's a causal fact.
NAVARRO: The amount that Americans are carrying on their credit card has increased. It's gone up to almost $7,000 per person. A lot of Americans are making minimum payments. The average interest rate is between 21 and 22 percent on whatever balance they are carrying. And then you've got the chief economic adviser to Donald Trump out there with a shit-eating grin telling us how great it is that American debt is increasing, that the average American's debt is increasing.
I just think it speaks again to this constant theme I see from this administration, which is tone deafness, right? Oh, it's just a little short-term pain. Oh, buy your daughter less dolls. Oh, it's, you know, the -- it's worth the little pain they're feeling. Oh, it's great that they've got more credit card debt. I mean, I would say that if I'm a person who can't pay my gas, whose dollar is going a lot far in the grocery store, who is stuck in Fort Lauderdale Airport without being able to get back home because Spirit Airlines no longer exists, I hear this guy, and I'm not happy about it.
SELLERS: I mean, I think, that is kind of the difference, I think, the last Ana and Kevin illustrate the difference in the way that I think many Americans are viewing it. And for a long period of time, Democrats had their head in the sand about things like the economy, inflation particularly, and crime, right? I mean, we spent, before in 2024, 2020 to 2024, talking about the messaging the Democrats didn't get right around immigration, crime, and inflation.
But to you -- Kevin was articulating the fact that a Disney earnings call and people coming to the park could dictate the pulse of what average Americans were feeling, and I would argue that's not quite the case. I think most people are looking at the fact that their electricity bills are rising through the roof. I think that people elected Donald Trump so that their grocery prices would go down, and they have not seen that. I think people are talking about gas and fuel prices. I think most people are not necessarily talking about Disney, per se, but instead they're talking about how to make their everyday ends meet.
Of course, we are. We all --
PHILLIP: I mean, Disney, to your point, is a luxury item.
SELLERS: Luxury? I mean, yes. I went on a Disney cruise and realized I had to work more years just to pay for it. So, yes, I understand that.
JENNINGS: Abby, I think Kevin said something that I think is a good point, and that has to do with confidence. People have some confidence about what's going on in the future. There were two numbers that came out this week that I think illustrate that. One is the ADP hiring report. They forecast 109,000 jobs added. The other thing was that the U.S. hiring rate jumped to 3.5 percent in March, which is a 22-month high, and we're still sort of in what do they call, low hire, low fire sort of a muted turnover in the labor market.
So, I think there are jobs being added. People aren't worried about necessarily losing their jobs. So, I think what Kevin was maybe -- I don't want to put words in your mouth, but there is a little bit of confidence among the American workforce about, hey, my job is okay. I feel good about the future.
SELLERS: Can I ask you- can I ask you both just a question? This is just a literal question. I'm kind of taking Abby's role, I guess. But how do you say that we are not necessarily losing jobs and there are confidence in the job market, but yet talk about the bolstering of A.I.? Because a lot of the same people that we're talking about who are in these jobs that pay between minimum wage and maybe, you know, $20 an hour, those are going to be the same jobs in the next five to ten years that are going to be excommunicated because of A.I. So, what is the balance there and how are we --
O'LEARY: You're assuming net loss of all jobs, and you're not seeing any new jobs that may be higher paying coming from A.I. And I'll give you example of exactly that.
So, people that used to look at the tops of Target stores and Walmart stores to look for, every year, cracks that they have to cover for insurance, that no longer is done by people going up ladders anymore. It's done by drones. And the people that fly the drones make ten times more than the guys that went up the ladders.
SELLERS: So, what happens to the people who went up the ladders?
O'LEARY: Listen, the point is they --
SELLERS: No. I just -- I'd like a very specific question. So, what happen -- so that's my point. What happens to the people who went up the ladders? So --
O'LEARY: They learned how to fly drones. That's what happened to them. SELLERS: But we're not investing in that.
O'LEARY: They start making a lot more money. I mean, the point is you make the assumption there's no mobility, that people are stuck in something they're doing when they're 28 or 38 years old. They're not stupid. They learn how to do new things. They're accommodating them through new technology.
JENNINGS: I'll tell you one other thing. I interviewed a CEO actually on my radio show today who is head of this company.
[22:30:02]
They make semiconductors. And because of the A.I. -- you asked about A.I.
SELLERS: Yes.
JENNINGS: Because of the boom, they're now currently building an advanced manufacturing plant in Greenville, North Carolina that will add between 400 and 600 jobs in an advanced manufacturing setting.
These people make a ton of money. The only reason they're building it is because they are the backbone that goes into NVIDIA. And so when you look at the interplay across A.I., you can see there is manufacturing being added in a place like North Carolina.
People are going to make a ton of money. It's only because of the A.I.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: So I think all of that is relevant. But I also think, just getting back to where Americans believe the economy is, by every indication, they are pessimistic about where things are.
Consumer confidence is at all-time lows. Their confidence in President Trump's handling of the economy is pretty low. And prior to now, if you look at Trump's first year in office, I keep repeating this because I think it's important to note, when we talk about tariffs, it's not just who's paying them, it's also what is the overall effect on the economy.
And there were effectively net-zero jobs created in his first year in office. So Trump stagnated the economy for a year. Maybe we're coming out of that now.
But you can see why Americans are not so sure where this thing is headed. And then they look at gas prices, they look at a war that maybe isn't ending, and they're asking, are you focused on what you said you were going to be focused on, which is raising our incomes, lowering our prices, all of that?
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, AND REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, one, I think the president probably recognizes that, which is why he's trying to bring some type of resolution to the conflict with Iran. I think looking at Disney's earnings call, that's one key indicator one can look at a segment of the population to give us a tall tale in terms of how they're performing, behaving in terms of spending, et cetera.
But when you look at how much does the average American have saved for an emergency, $500, $1,000, most frankly don't. And that sort of worries me.
So people can iterate a little bit. They can adjust themselves to A.I., et cetera. But that takes time, that doesn't happen overnight.
And so for me as a conservative, I certainly want to see us focus a little bit more on making sure the American people have the skills for the jobs that you're talking about because it will have a significant impact in the next five to ten years.
I don't know if Congress as a whole is focused there collectively. I want to see a little bit more of that. But in the immediate, I do think maybe we can try to attempt to pass some legislation, Abby, to provide some relief to people who are struggling, families.
Congress can do that. We have a Republican majority that will certainly benefit us going into the midterms this November. So that's sort of how I'm looking at this.
PHILLIP: But they're doing those allocating a billion dollars for a ballroom.
SINGLETON: For the bunker, a little different.
PHILLIP: They're doing a lot of other things that involve spending money.
BAKARI SELLERS (D), FORMER SOUTH CAROLINA STATE REPRESENTATIVE AND CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Imagine the Barack Obama ballroom. They cost a billion dollars.
JENNINGS: Well, the billion dollars is separate from the building.
PHILLIP: On many things that don't have to do with affordability over in Washington.
Next for us, one CEO compares the tax the rich rhetoric to racial slurs. Another calls Zohran Mamdani's videos outside of his home creepy. We'll discuss that next.
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[22:35:00]
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI (D), NEW YORK CITY: When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. Well, today, we're taxing the rich.
I'm thrilled to announce we've secured a pied-a-terre tax, the first in New York's history. This is an annual fee on luxury properties worth more than $5 million whose owners do not live full-time in the city. Like for this penthouse, which hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238 million.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: That was New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announcing his plan to tax wealthy residents' second homes as he stood outside of Citadel CEO Ken Griffin's multi-million-dollar penthouse. But that video didn't sit well with two of the city's richest, including Griffin, who had this to say about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEN GRIFFIN, CITADEL CEO: I actually had to see it a second time because the first time I couldn't believe what I was watching. And I'll tell you, it took a moment to digest what I was watching.
What really upset me about the video was the fact that it put me in harm's way to turn me into a political puppet was just in poor taste, really poor taste.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: New York real estate titan Stephen Roth went even further saying, quote, "I consider the phrase tax the rich when spit out with anger and contempt by politicians both here and across the country to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs and even the phrase 'From the river to the sea,'" he's referring there to a controversial pro-Palestinian slogan.
I don't know about the racial slur piece. I do think Ken Griffin's discomfort with somebody being outside of his home is very reasonable.
ANA NAVARRO, CNN DR. POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think Mamdani really screwed up there. I think it's boneheaded and short-sighted.
Listen, Ken Griffin has now moved to Miami. We know because we live in Miami, Ken Griffin has single-handedly changed the face of philanthropy in Miami. He's giving to everything.
[03:40:00]
But we just saw it in that clip. We didn't see it in the clip of Ken Griffin, but he alludes to the assassination of the CEO of the health insurance company by Luigi Mangione last year and the fact that this puts him in the crosshairs. I think Mamdani did this for clicks, I don't think he needed to do this.
In Florida and I think in a lot of states, people who have homestead there who are permanent residents usually pay or have some tax loops that somebody who has a pied-a-terre or has a second home has to pay higher taxes than I do as a person in Florida who's got a homestead exemption because I'm a permanent resident.
So I don't know why he's got to do this entire show. I do think he put Ken Griffin in harm's way -- Ken Griffin's children in harm's way. I just think it was stupid and I think Mamdani should have the humility to accept that and to apologize because this is a city that is the financial center of the world and if people like Ken Griffin start leaving and deciding not to buy second homes here and not to have their businesses here, New York City is going to be in a world of harm's way.
PHILLIP: There's that extreme and then there's the other extreme of Stephen Roth saying that this is like a racial slur. When people hear that, they're like, that doesn't make any sense.
SINGLETON: People can make their own determination for that, but I want to pick up where Ana was leading to. She's right, 1.6 percent of the wealthiest people in this city pay nearly half of the taxes.
If those folks leave, to Ana's point, you're going to have a financial crisis of magnitude of which Mamdani does not understand. You think about everyday things that people utilize, public transit, safety, education, all of the taxes that go to provide for all of those things for poor people in this city, what in the hell are they going to do if 44 percent of those dollars all of a sudden disappear overnight?
And this is a short-sighted...
PHILLIP: I think it's your right to have that debate about what the impact is going to be on the city. But I will say that you also have to keep in mind that New York City has continuously increased their tax rate and they've done so and not decreased the number of extreme wealthy people in the city. In fact, the number of extremely wealthy people in the city has increased.
SELLERS: I think Ana's point about being in front of someone's home, for all of us, I'm assuming, and if I'm wrongfully assuming, God bless you, but all of us have been through threats or having law enforcement in front of our house. I mean, me and you and Donna Brazile talk about that all the time, just the different type of threats that we deal with, I know Scott deals with it as well.
That is beyond the pale of politics and something that you should have the humility to recognize and the political wherewithal to correct that. So let's say that first.
JENNINGS: What about the impulse to do it in the first place?
SELLERS: The second part, the impulse to do it, or the reasoning behind it is the messaging. And no one is leaving New York because of tax the rich.
NAVARRO: That's not true.
SELLERS: The statistics don't bear that out, but also let's just say this. And while there is this inordinate attention that we're paying to people who are beyond wealthy, because we're not talking about people who are making $1 million or $10 million.
JENNINGS: That's still a very small percentage of American people, even at $1 million. That's my point exactly. I think one of the things, and I'm not a Zohran Mamdani fan by any
stretch of the imagination, but one of the things that has occurred in New York City since he has been elected is that people are paying attention to the class warfare that's happening in this country.
And listen, we're not just talking about the rich and them being uncomfortable because I simply say tax the rich. In fact, that's not anything on my top 10 policy initiatives.
However, when we're having this discussion, there are people in this country that are literally starving. There are people in this country -- I'm not finished.
There are people in this country who literally cannot, they're the working poor, who work 40, 60 hours a week and cannot afford health care. There are people in this country who are going through these things. And so I totally get Zohran Mamdani highlighting the plight of the working poor in this country, distasteful as it may be.
PHILLIP: Hold on Kevin, let Shermichael--
SINGLETON: I'm in agreement with you morally about the plight of working class people. I'm not going to ignore that.
Everybody at this table, we have people in our own families that are working class. I'm never going to dismiss that.
But the short-sighted nature of the mayor to go after what I would argue success. Because at some point, maybe you go after the top 1 percent and when you tax the hell out of them, then you go after the group that's beneath the top 1 percent. And at some point, everybody at this damn table will be next because of our income levels.
So what message does that signal to younger people, to hard-working people in New York City, across the country? Should they not attempt to be successful? Should they not attempt to make a shot at earning a significant amount of money?
[22:45:01]
PHILLIP: We're going to take a quick break and we're going to come back on the other side. And Kevin, you'll have your say.
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PHILLIP: Let's pick up where we left off.
KEVIN O'LEARY, CHAIRMAN, O'LEARY VENTURES, AND "SHARK TANK" INVESTOR: I just wanted to take the emotion out of it and talk about the policy. Think about this.
Wouldn't you want more people to come to New York that spend over $5 million construction jobs making their pied-a-terre? And then they have to pay the maintenance on it. Then they pay the property tax on it.
[22:50:05]
But they put no financial burden on the city because they're not here. So why would you disincentivize the incremental person to do that by taxing them more? Why not say to them, if you don't use the city's services at all, and you spend all this money on taxes and construction jobs and maintenance and doorman and everything, let's get more of these people. Let's get hundreds of thousands more of them.
NAVARRO: So my friend Bakari Sellers has asked me to explain pied-a- terre.
SELLERS: Yes, I have no idea what you're talking about. You're using these French words, I thought it was a sandwich.
I thought it was a sandwich with ham and extra slices.
PHILLIP: To your point, just to your point.
O'LEARY: I want you to tell us something about that actual video, 60 million views within four days. And I asked one of my social media editors, how did they produce that?
And he said, by the way, we think that tap on the window, that's post. It's genius what that guy is doing.
He's got a team making social media.
NAVARRO: No, it's genius if what you want is to get clicks. But it is not genius if what you want is for Ken Griffin to continue building his project.
PHILLIP: Hold on one second. Just to Kevin's point about what Mamdani is trying to do.
Just look at this chart. Low, middle, and upper middle class wages have been growing at, let's call it 10 percent in this country. The top 3 percent or not in this country, New York City, the top 3 percent, their wages have been growing by 34 percent, that's the imbalance.
That is the imbalance that Zohran Mamdani was elected to address.
SELLERS: And that's what most of the people are.
PHILLIP: So I guess what I'm saying is if you want to understand why he's doing what he's doing, it's because there are millions of regular New Yorkers who say the rich people are fine. We don't need to be worrying about them or catering to them.
Who's going to worry about us? I mean that's a basic principle of populism that he is enacting as mayor.
JENNINGS: And look, it's a powerful branding that he's tapping into. He's hardly the only one. Most major Democrats are tapping. But this whole idea of demonizing people who have been successful, it's a powerful thing right now. But I think one unacknowledged point, and it extends Ana's point, which I think was very well stated and I agree with you 100 percent, there's a dark undercurrent of rage and violence that comes with this.
You look at the Luigi killing of the United Healthcare CEO, the guy who burned down the Palisades in L.A., he told the police he was doing it to get back at the billionaires. They arrested a guy in Pennsylvania who was a political candidate for leaving threatening messages for members of Congress, he threatened to kill Donald Trump.
You listen to the transcripts. He's saying we're going to surround all the rich people in the country and we're going to slit their throats.
I think the unacknowledged undercurrent here of violence and radicalism is going on. The Democrats are playing with fire and it needs to be discussed. A lot of violence.
PHILLIP: We do have to leave it there. Everyone, thank you very much for being here tonight.
And next for us, we're honoring a visionary television pioneer and the original "Captain Planet."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TED TURNER, CNN FOUNDER, AND PHILANTHROPIST: It was more than just a company to me. It was a way of life.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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[23:55:00]
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PHILLIP: Today, we here at CNN, along with others all around the world, are mourning the loss of a true legend. CNN founder Ted Turner died this morning at the age of 87, surrounded by his family. Turner was an innovator and he was an icon.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TURNER: I want to present both sides of controversial stories and let the viewers make up their mind rather than having Walter Cronkite make it up for you. He was always recommending what people ought to think.
CNN didn't do that. We let people think for themselves. That's I figured that was the best way a democracy should be run.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: But beyond revolutionizing the media and his business chops, one of Ted Turner's biggest impacts was on the earth. An environmentalist and a conservationist, he became one of the
largest private landowners in the United States. He even helped create the 90s cartoon "Captain Planet and the Planeteers" to educate children about the environment.
(VIDEO PLAYING)
That really takes you back.
The show encouraged youth activism and it popularized "The Power is Yours" catchphrase and spawned the Captain Planet Foundation, which has helped millions of young people engage in environmental projects. The series became one of Turner's favorite endeavors.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TURNER: The best environmental idea I ever had by far was Captain Planet. We dealt with every subject, we even had two episodes on overpopulation. We had them on warfare.
Mostly they were environmental and we really simplified those. Most of you all have seen it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[23:00:02]
PHILLIP: Still, Turner often called CNN the greatest achievement of his life.
And today at CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta, messages of thanks and tribute left by the staff now cover those famous three letters. A simple but powerful thank you for the vision that changed how the world sees the news.
