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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip

FBI Says, Man In Custody After Incendiary Device Thrown At New York City Federal Building; U.S. Identifies Soldiers Killed In Strikes, Trump Says, Iran Will Pay; Trump Imposes New Tariffs Against Certain Canadian Goods; Qatar-Gifted Air Force One To Undergo Upgrades Amid Security Glitches. Aired 10-11p ET

Aired July 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)

SARA SIDNER, CNN HOST (voice over): Tonight, an explosion outside of a federal building in New York City, the alleged suspect carrying anti- ICE material. The White House border czar blames rhetoric on the left.

TOM HOMAN, WHITE HOUSE BORDER CZAR: They feel emboldened because members of Congress are agreeing with him that ICE needs to go away.

SIDNER: Plus, is Iran turning into Trump's forever war? Growing impatience on the right now with the negotiators themselves.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It ought to be a real hardcore son of a bitch, and I don't think we have that right now.

SIDNER: Also, a new 50 percent tariff for the neighbors to the north if Canada doesn't drop its tariffs on certain Canadian goods.

JUSTIN WOLFERS, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN: He's literally got 14 pages of different goods that he's now imposing his 50 percent tariff on.

SIDNER: What it means for the affordability crisis and the midterms.

And the new Air Force One in time out.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: They're going to be sending it and they'll have it be maxed out.

SIDNER: Is the White House acknowledging now it needs security upgrades?

Live at the table, Keith Boykin, Scott Jennings, Elizabeth Pipko, Christine Quinn, and Stephen Moore.

Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER (on camera): Good evening. I'm Sara Sidner in for Ms. Abby Phillip.

Tonight, a 43-year-old Army veteran is in custody accused of throwing an incendiary device at a federal building that houses offices for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New York City. Now, you can see the moment that authorities say Andrew Arabaca threw the gasoline near the building. You see him throwing it there before lighting it on fire.

Officials say the suspect had two axes, a hammer, a machete, and three knives, and a sign that read, quote, ICE off our streets. The FBI warned he, quote, came armed with bad intentions. The White House border czar refused to comment on the investigation, as it is ongoing, telling reporters he would let the investigation play out. But he did talk about who he thinks is partly to blame anyway, naming leftist politics for the current climate surrounding immigration enforcement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOMAN: What happened in front of the federal building is another example of attacking ICE. And I'm sure if you ask that person why he did it, he will repeat the talking points I just said that you hear from Democratic members of Congress, the Democratic mayors and governors who simply want ICE to go away.

And as they keep attacking and miscommunicating what ICE does every day, calling them Nazis and comparing ICE to the Nazi regime, are you kidding me?

And for any member of Congress to keep attacking ICE and calling them fascists and Nazis, I said a thousand times, if they're a Nazi for enforcing the law, what's that make them? They broke the law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Now, before we open it up to the table here, we invite you at home to join this debate. Head to cnn.com/abby and weigh in. We'll get to some of your comments throughout the show.

Scott, I'm going to start with you. Words do matter. So do actions, right? I think we've talked about this before with, you know, Republicans saying things, Democrats saying things, and then there's the actions of ICE as well. When you look at this, do you agree with Homan that this is something that is because of Democrats, or is this a single guy who decided to do something that was illegal?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Of course, I agree with Homan, and it's not a single guy. This is another in a long string of attacks on ICE personnel, ICE facilities. There's been a massive spike in violence against ICE agents, really against all law enforcement, specifically federal law enforcement out there.

So, I think Mr. Homan is absolutely correct. And I think you've got members of Congress, the mayor of New York City, governors, as Homan said, all sorts of people out there who are using language that would lead someone to go do these kinds of things. It's despicable. These people are effectively political vigilantes. They've been programmed by the left to go out and take matters into their own hands, and it ought to be stopped right now. I noticed Mamdani today, you know, put out a statement saying, this is bad. We're going to cooperate. You know, this is the same guy who has said some of the worst things about ICE, who says he wants to defund the police and makes a lot of anti-law enforcement rhetoric a staple of his political movement.

I don't know how you can reconcile those positions, and I don't suppose they'll even try, but I think Homan's right.

[22:05:00]

SIDNER: But is it possible that it is the actions of ICE that have people talking like this, not just getting messaging from the Democrats, but seeing what's happening in their communities?

JENNINGS: So, if you believe that a government agency is doing something that you don't like, and your choices are, A, cast a vote, B, use your words, or, C, go set off an incendiary device at the federal building in New York City, and you pick C, there's no justification for this. There's no rationalization of it, and that's patently ridiculous if that what's is what anybody's going to argue tonight.

SIDNER: Keith, how do you --

KEITH BOYKIN, FORMER CLINTON WHITE HOUSE AIDE: Let's take Scott's scenario. If you believe a government agency is doing something wrong, do you use your vote, do you use your words, or do you resort to violence? In one very clear example, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, implicitly encouraged people to resort to violence. That was the January 6th insurrection.

He didn't tell people, your vote was enough, the 80-something lawsuits that we filed were enough. He didn't tell people, and we're just going to settle this in sort of a peaceful way. He actually encouraged people to walk from the Ellipse to the Capitol not knowing what might happen, and knowing that these people were armed and violent. This guy, Donald Trump, is responsible for some of the worst, most incendiary, and most politically violent rhetoric in our country.

So, I don't accept this statement from Scott at all. Violence, political violence is wrong, whether it's left or right. The problem is I don't know any president on the Democratic side in my lifetime who's ever encouraged political violence. In fact, I don't know any Republican president in my lifetime who's ever encouraged political violence until Donald Trump.

We have crossed the proverbial standard here. We've passed the point of no return with Donald Trump. And if we don't call him out for his responsible activities in encouraging this, we're responsible as well.

JENNINGS: Do you have any comment on the actual news story that Sara -- BOYKIN: I just said I condemn political violence in all situations. What you did is you took this situation and you agreed with Tom Homan's talking point that somehow this is a Democratic case. But the reality is the studies have shown that in the past decade or so, 112 of the past right wing -- of the 112 right wing murders have taken place, and only 13 have taken place from the left wing.

JENNINGS: So, you don't have any comment on this one?

BOYKIN: No, I just told -- what else do -- what else is there to say except, I condemn it, Scott? Do you want me to say more than that?

JENNINGS: Yes.

BOYKIN: What else -- you don't say -- you haven't said yet. What have you said about Donald Trump and the January 6th insurrection, the fact that he actually tried to create a $1.8 billion fund to support those people, Scott?

JENNINGS: I'm long on the record about political violence.

STEPHEN MOORE, FORMER TRUMP ECONOMIC ADVISER: How about condemning -- I think Tom Holman makes a very good point, that the rhetoric of the left against ICE has been outrageous and it does foment this kind of violence.

Look, there's nobody at this table who's more pro-immigration than I am. Immigrants are great for our country. They have to come in the right way. Trump won the election, in no small part because people were sick of millions of illegal immigrants coming into the country. If you're going to come in, you have to come in the right way. If you don't like the law, change it. But I'm sick and tired of people saying, oh, the police are terrible, or, ICE is dangerous.

All the ICE people -- now, there are some bad actors in ICE, I mean, I'll agree with that, but all they're doing is enforcing the law, for goodness sakes. And to be calling them villains and demonizing like this is dangerous.

BOYKIN: Do you have 38 Democratic senators who just sent a letter saying that they want ICE to enforce the law. They want them to take off their masks. They want them to actually do their jobs with accountability, to use warrants when they go into places where they need them, to actually identify themselves when they are engaging their behavior. We don't have an ICE agency that is following the truth of law.

MOORE: Would you want to be an ICE agent in this kind of environment right now?

BOYKIN: Police officers all across the country have been doing this job for decades, and they don't mask themselves when they go do their jobs, unlike ICE agents.

MOORE: These people feel like they have to protect themselves. ELIZABETH PIPKO, FORMER RNC NATIONAL SPOKESPERSON: Are they starting to mask themselves because of events like what happened today? Isn't that exactly why we're in this mess to begin with?

SIDNER: Let me just speak to something that, that we've been talking about, which is, you know, Homan going after the left and saying, look, words matter. And I think that we all agree that words do matter. Like in the end, words do matter.

But there have been words, as you brought up, Keith, from the president, and I just want to go over a few of them, just to give this some balance, because the president has shared video of supporters saying the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat. The New York Times reported Trump calling Dems video to service members seditious behavior punishable by death. Trump blasting prosecutors he appointed for not giving Hunter Biden a death sentence.

I mean, there's a lot of rhetoric that has been used by the president that is incendiary at the very least. So, how do you explain that when you have someone going, hey, stop this, but only talking about the left and not saying, hey, let's all stop this, you know?

[22:10:06]

PIPKO: First of all, I want to point out, I don't think he's only talking about the left. I think he's --

SIDNER: Well, he said he blamed the left.

PIPKO: Donald Trump has said a lot over the last ten years. Tonight we're talking about the left, but Donald Trump has also asked people to respect police officers and to respect authority and to respect ICE agents who are risking it all.

Truly, at this point in time, based on what happened today, we know that they're risking their lives to get this job done. They were respected up until Donald Trump became president. Wanting immigration enforcement was a normal, moderate viewpoint until Donald Trump became president, we all became racist all of a sudden.

So, the problem is not that Donald Trump came in and did something different, the problem is that after Donald Trump ran, everything that we knew to be basic decency, basic common sense American policy went out the window because everyone hated Donald Trump so much and we all became racist for wanting proper immigration policy.

So, I think the president has to be separated from what happened today. And if you want to sit here and talk about January 6th, which I think we're going to do on this show until the end of time, we should also be able to say, hey, when Democrats actually run on the same message that this man today was holding, get ICE off of our streets, no more ICE, abolish ICE, resist ICE, this is going to continue to happen.

SIDNER: Christine, (INAUDIBLE)? CHRISTINE QUINN (D), FORMER SPEAKER, NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL: People can take a position that ICE should be abolished, that you may disagree with it but it is not an insane policy position. There are a lot of people who feel that that is the right thing. And today we saw 38 senators ask for reforms. Yes, enforcement, but reforms.

You -- is the secretary correct that rhetoric has an impact? Without a doubt. And is what happened today outrageous and unacceptable? Yes. But we cannot hold Democrats to one standard and then say, not just a Republican, but the highest ranking elected official in the country, it's okay for him to say hateful, incendiary things, and he is not held accountable.

And also, you know, people having concerns about ICE, there were just two individuals killed by ICE agents, and every day we're learning more about one of those ICE agents --

MOORE: You talk about -- hold on. You talk --

QUINN: No, I'm talking. One of those ICE agents having a history of domestic violence and perhaps even traumatic brain injury.

So, there are real legitimate concerns. But, overall, it's not just the left and it's not just the right, everybody needs to take rhetoric down.

MOORE: Okay. You said that, you know, the Democrats are in favor of reforming the INS. Why didn't they do it -- they were -- They ran the place when Joe Biden was president, and millions of illegal immigrants came into the country, and they did nothing about that. That's not reforming the INS. That's just saying anybody can come in the country.

QUINN: What I said was the letter today.

MOORE: Yes, but why didn't they do it when they had the power to do it?

QUINN: But the letter today is about reforming ICE and their functions. And 38 senators signed that today in the present because in the present we have real problems.

MOORE: But my point is the reason people -- but the reason people didn't complain about ICE during Biden, because the ICE didn't do anything under Joe Biden. They let illegal immigrants come into the country.

BOYKIN: The reason why Democrats did not do anything about that is because your president, Donald Trump, told them not to. They had a bipartisan immigration bill, and Donald Trump called up the United States senators and said, do not pass that bill.

MOORE: No, I'm talking about the law.

BOYKIN: That's exact --

MOORE: The law was the law. BOYKIN: I'm talking about immigration enforcement. You said, why didn't Democrats do something about all the immigrants coming in?

MOORE: Right.

BOYKIN: They tried to do something, and Donald Trump said, don't do it.

As far as reforming or limiting ICE, Democrats are taking action right now. They're sending a letter. First of all, not that that's enough --

MOORE: Why didn't they just stop the illegal immigration?

BOYKIN: But ten people have been killed by ICE since this year.

MOORE: A lot of people get killed by illegal immigrants too.

BOYKIN: (INAUDIBLE) by ICE in the past year, in the past year since Donald Trump took office. That didn't happen in the Biden administration.

JENNINGS: So, let me make sure I understand, this deranged anti-ICE leftist tries to blow up the federal office in New York today, and that's Donald Trump's fault. Joe Biden --

QUINN: Nobody said that.

BOYKIN: Nobody said that.

JENNINGS: You just gave a long speech about it.

BOYKIN: I never said that. You didn't listen to a word I said, did you?

QUINN: No one said that.

BOYKIN: Apparently not.

JENNINGS: Joe Biden doesn't enforce immigration laws, and that's Donald Trump's fault. I'm trying to identify --

QUINN: Nobody said that.

JENNINGS: -- the end of the choose your own adventure book where it doesn't end with it's Donald Trump's fault. Stephen is right. They did not enforce the law, and you know who will tell you that? Anybody that works for ICE today will tell you when they were working there under Biden, they were told not to enforce immigration law.

We haven't passed any new laws, and today, we had the 14th straight month of no releases at the border. The border is closed. Not a single new law was passed.

The only difference is the feds are enforcing longstanding existing law, and you have Democrats now demonizing the people enforcing it, and you have people like this lunatic showing up trying to blow up the federal building.

BOYKIN: Nobody's supporting this guy who did the firebombing at the federal building today, so let's get that clear.

[22:15:00]

What we are saying is that if you're going to condemn political violence, at least be consistent because the top purveyor of political violence in our country is Donald Trump.

SIDNER: Let me just -- you mentioned something, Christine, and there's been some news on what happened in Maine. CNN's Erin Burnett spoke to the ex-wife of David Brouillette. He's the ICE officer connected to the fatal shooting of 24-year-old Joan Sebastian Duran Guerrero in Maine. That was last week. She says that he was the one who shot Guerrero, told her that. But CNN hasn't independently confirmed that.

She's also accusing her ex-husband of physical and emotional abuse, which Brouillette has denied in the past. She alleges that he once threw boiling water at her while she was still carrying their daughter, and left a voicemail last not long ago threatening to kill her. I just want to give you a sense of what she said to Erin Burnett about him and sort of wondering why he is an ICE agent in the first place.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Do you believe he's someone who should be an ICE agent, armed ICE agent?

ASHLEY BROUILLETTE, EX-WIFE OF ICE AGENT DAVID BROUILETTE: No, I don't believe that he's anyone that should be obtaining a job that requires any kind of weapon. Just for the simple fact of like just, you know, how he's been in his marriages.

Even, you know, towards his own mother as a teen, he has always displayed violent behavior, very angry person. And I've said for years that it's only a matter of time before he hurts anybody. I've even gone as far as saying if anything's ever happened to me, he would be the one to look at.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Now, David Brouillette has not responded to several requests from CNN for comment. CNN's not able to verify Brouillette's claim that he threw boiling water at her, nor the threatening voicemails that she says Brouillette left her last year.

The DHS, for a note here, has declined to identify the officer behind the shooting, only saying, quote, this, that, the ICE officer in question has nearly a decade of federal law enforcement experience with required training.

Is there an issue here when you hear from not just one, but there was a second wife who came forward saying that she was also abused by him, is there an issue here with not looking at these officers and the training and the backgrounds because they are trying to get 2,000 people each day? There's a quota out there. Do you think there's an issue there, Scott?

JENNINGS: Certainly relevant information, and that's why I think there should be a full investigation of this incident. Look, the police officer, whoever it is here, has rights, and he's going to be investigated. The incident needs to be investigated. It's relevant what she is saying. It would also be relevant what happened in the moment. We don't exactly know because there's no body cameras.

And one other thing about this whole episode, in addition to an investigation, is that I hope it is expediting the deployment of body cams. If -- at least one per team is what I've read, but I think they all ought to have them on because that would give you instant information.

And so, yes, I think this is a relevant interview, of course. But also what happened in the incident is relevant, and we're not going to have video of it, which is regrettable.

SIDNER: Yes, it is.

QUINN: And there's also reports that the individual himself, the officer, filed a lawsuit against a community college where he was training to be a firefighter. The case alleged that he was hit in the head by a steel beam. It caused him to not be able to finish firefighter training. And in his court case, he alleges that he was left with permanent injuries, from a mental health and a health perspective. That should also be very relevant information about whether this individual should ever have been hired and why ample court records in both the civil and the family court were not seen in the vetting process.

SIDNER: And as Scott said, there has to be an investigation, and it needs to be transparent, and that's the other thing that people kind of expect here.

All right, let's move on. Next, new strikes in Iran tonight, three U.S. service members killed this past weekend, and a promise for retribution from the president for those deaths. What is the end game in Iran? We'll discuss.

Plus milk, alcohol, and hockey sticks, all items on the president's list of Canadian goods that will be tariffed an extra 50 percent under the president's new plan. We'll talk about it all and debate it next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:20:00]

SIDNER: Tonight, new U.S. military strikes in Iran after Donald Trump vowed strong retaliation for three US service members killed over the weekend. The Pentagon has identified two of the soldiers as 25-year- old First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan of Hawaii and Georgia, and 19- year-old Private Isabella Gonzales of Carrollton, Texas. Both were killed in an Iranian attack on a military base in Jordan

that left one other U.S. service member missing. A third U.S. soldier was killed in Northern Iraq during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone. The deaths bring the number of U.S. service members who have died in the nearly five-month war to 17.

In a Truth Social post, President Trump says Iran will pay many times over for each American soldier killed. But as the conflict threatens to spiral out of control once again, Trump's narrative of U.S. invulnerabilities is once again being called into question. Here's Fox News' Maria Bartiromo contending with that yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I don't understand how it's possible that Iran has the capabilities to fight this way and continue to try to lash out at Gulf countries and U.S. military bases, because the U.S. has obliterated Iran's military, and the president continues to reiterate that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[22:25:04]

SIDNER: Now, as far as the public goes and how they feel about this war, it's pretty clear. A new Washington Post/Ipsos poll finds that 68 percent of Americans believe the war in Iran was not worth fighting, compared to just 28 percent who are saying it was. That negative 40- point split is worse than both the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan according to Washington Post/ABC News polling.

Elizabeth, I want to start with you. You have Maria Bartiromo, who is very friendly towards -- generally towards Donald Trump. Contending with this idea that at one point in this war, people were told, look, we obliterated their navy, we took out most of their military capabilities, and yet you're seeing service members die, and you're seeing them being able to lash out at places like Jordan in the region. How do you respond?

PIPKO: Look, I think first and foremost, we have to say that all of us here agree that this loss is horrific, right? U.S. loss like this is awful. We all mourn these lives. We all know they're doing the impossible. They're signing up for something none of us could probably fathom. I know it's hard enough for me to sit here with you all compared to, you know, what they sign up to do. These are American heroes. And I think we're all sitting here wondering what this means moving forward.

I believe the president when he says that they're going to strike them now ten times harder than they could have otherwise. I believe that he, you know, he means business. He always has. But when you take American blood like this, there's really no other response.

I think the entire country agrees with Maria. Maria's a friend. I know that when she looks at this, she wants to know that Iran is actually obliterated in the way that they can never react like this ever again. They never have this capability. But for them, it doesn't mean that their navy wasn't, for a fact, obliterated. It means they're using every last missile that they have to try and, you know, bring up American pain. That's what they do.

It does not mean we're not stronger than them. It doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate American victories. It means that this war is going to go on, which I think is unfortunate. It means we have a real task on our hand to either get a deal in place that's better than Obama's deal or obliterate the Iranian regime once and for all, and I would hope that we can all be united in that.

SIDNER: Do you think that we're in a scenario where we're in a quagmire now, where it's we can't find a solution, and it's just tit- for-tat, back and forth, back and forth?

PIPKO: Well, I think when you have a conflict like this that's gone on for 47 years, you know the solution. The solution is to obliterate a regime that wants the death of all American lives. That's the only solution, or a deal that's put in place that makes sure that future American generations never have to worry about a nuclear Iran.

You brought up the polling. I don't know if that's fair to compare conflicts considering Americans have a bad taste in their mouth. Maybe, you know, they should considering we had a 20-year conflict that we were in. They don't want to see that happen.

Again, I'm more curious to see what polling looks like after this conflict is behind us, knowing that it was taken care of in a much less time, hopefully a stronger fashion, and, again, make sure that Americans were safe for generations to come.

SIDNER: Christine, I do want to ask you about this because one of the things you're pointing to, you know, comparing it to other wars, and I think one of the things that Americans learned as they watch these wars go on and on and on and on is that they didn't feel in the end that they were worth it. They were worth the lives of those soldiers, the pain of the families and the ultimate result, I mean, the Taliban is now in charge of Afghanistan --

QUINN: After 20 years.

SIDNER: -- after 20 years. So, their taste for war is low.

But the president himself had promised no more forever wars, and I think a lot of people looked at that, and that may be reflected in those numbers. How do you see it, Christine?

QUINN: An interesting fact in these polls, the support for this war has plummeted very quickly, as opposed to Iraq and Afghanistan, where it took much longer for people to lose faith and lose support in the war.

I think people really see that the president went in without a clear plan. When he did then articulate a plan, one thing was regime change. We now have a leader who is more committed to killing Americans than the prior supreme leader. Two, it was to, you know, obliterate their nuclear capability, which we had said we had done, but then didn't do, and to, you know, obliterate their military capacity, which clearly we haven't done if soldiers are continuing to die at the hands of the Iranians.

I think people are so quickly dissatisfied because they know we didn't go in with a plan, we shouldn't have gone in, and going in without a plan means you don't really have a plan to get out. And in addition to the impacts you articulated, it's also having an impact on the American economy with gas being back up to $4 and more in some places, and diesel being back to $5. So, people are feeling hit.

And Americans are willing to sacrifice for the good of the country and the good of the world, and no one wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon, but their sacrifices, I think the polls show, they feel are for naught because there really isn't a plan. And every time the president says we've had a victory, it turns out not to be true.

[22:29:55]

SIDNER: Steve, when you look at this, how much of what you see in the polling and just the feeling of Americans that this isn't worth it has to do with the economy, has to do with the direct effects?

STEPHEN MOORE, FORMER SENIOR ADVISER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP, AND HOST, "MOORE MONEY WITH STEPHEN MOORE": Yes, nobody likes paying $4 a gallon for gasoline, and remember we had the lowest gasoline prices in 50 years back in January and February, so clearly that's part of this, and food prices too have been affected.

You know, if you'd asked me that question, that poll question that Americans were asked, my answer would be predicated on whether we've taken out their nuclear capability, and if we have, and I don't know what the truth is, but if we have, then I would say it's worth it, but if we haven't, then it's hard to see what we've achieved here, so I think it's sort of premature to judge this yet, because look, the impact of taking out their nuclear capability is massive for civilization.

SIDNER: Keith, when you look at this, is it possible that all of this in the end will actually end up hurting Iran, because other nations are being attacked by them, that's sort of in the region, and they're looking at other ways to try and get oil to people without going to the straits, so ultimately, and I don't know how many years' time, do you see this as being an ultimate downfall, if you will, for Iran, and --

KEITH BOYKIN, FORMER CLINTON WHITE HOUSE AIDE, AND AUTHOR, "WHAT DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE ABOUT RACE?": It's already hurting Iran, but it's hurting the United States, too, and that's the problem. I mean, you can't bomb somebody for months and months and expect it to have no impact on them. It did have an impact on Iran, but it didn't have the desired impact.

President Trump said he wanted to have regime change, or he wanted to have unconditional surrender, he was going to help the people of Iran, they were going to abolish their nuclear program, which he already said he did last year, which he didn't.

And we're going to create a better deal that was better than Obama's deal, and he created a ceasefire agreement that was worse than Obama's deal and paid him off, and so the American people are understandably frustrated, because we've been through this before, we've seen this movie before, we saw it in Iraq, we saw it in Afghanistan, and we don't want to see it again.

And the President isn't being transparent, so I agree with Stephen about the idea that we need the President and the administration to be transparent, because right now, we have 17 U.S. servicemembers who have been killed, but the new reporting is that nearly 100, or was it 100, servicemembers have been injured in the past two weeks, and we're just now learning about it today, because reporters are telling us that, not the government. That's a problem.

SIDNER: When you think about this number, there was reporting about the number of people that have been injured, and the response from the Trump administration was, well, we can't tell people about the injuries, because it actually helps Iran, they know then that they're doing this damage, but servicemembers have been killed, and you certainly have to tell the American public about those. What do you think about that response? What advice would you give the President?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, FORMER AIDE TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH, AND RADIO HOST, "THE SCOTT JENNINGS SHOW" ON SRN: Well, I think, certainly, when you have soldiers that have been killed in action, the public needs to know that. Now, regarding damage and other assessments following an attack from Iran, the strategic value of immediate reporting versus delayed reporting, I would give them some latitude on that.

I'm not really in a position to judge them on it, because I don't know what the truth is regarding the strategy of the bases that have been targeted, so I'll just leave that at that, but I think anytime you have soldiers killed, you got to tell the public, and we all need to mourn for them, and we all need to understand that war rarely goes according to anybody's plan.

War is dangerous, and these soldiers who sign up to fight for the United States sign up to do some of the bravest and most heroic things any of us could imagine, and sometimes that leads to loss of life, and we should just remember that they are heroes, and they're fighting for the United States, and they're fighting for an outcome.

The outcome is to make us safer. We would be safer if Iran is totally degraded from ever having a nuclear weapon. The world will be safer if they are no longer capable of being the world's largest sponsor of terrorism.

We will be safer if their ability to destabilize the Middle East as a whole goes away, and those are ultimately the outcomes, but I agree with Stephen. The nuclear piece was always the number one issue, and ultimately that's how this has to end. We have stopped Iran from being able to get a nuclear weapon. I think they've been dramatically set back from the activities of last

summer and these activities, but that's ultimately the goal, number one goal. There are other goals, but the number one issue is nuclear weapons. They cannot have them, and we cannot leave until we can assure the American people they will never get them.

SIDNER: All right, let's move on to the next issue.

The President's new 50 percent tariffs on a long list of Canadian goods could ignite a brand new trade war. How that might impact the affordability crisis and the midterms, we'll debate next.

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[22:35:00]

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SIDNER: Tonight, Donald Trump is announcing sweeping new tariffs against Canada, our neighbor to the north, threatening to reignite a trade battle with one of America's closest allies and top economic partners.

The 50 percent tariffs on certain Canadian goods, which include electrical equipment and machinery, are among the steepest tariffs the administration has levied against any country, although just last week Trump did threaten to tariff Canada over wildfire smoke. Administration officials said these latest tariffs, though, are unrelated to that threat.

[22:40:00]

Trump cited section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a law that does allow a President to tariff goods up to 50 percent without congressional approval when a country is believed to be discriminating against American goods.

Now Canada has something to say about this.

In a statement, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said, quote, "This trade dispute has raised costs for families, particularly in the U.S. Canada stands ready to engage intensively to address outstanding issues with the U.S. to the mutual benefit of our citizens." The law, Trump cites, has never been applied quite like this.

So, Scott, when you look at this, you have a state that gets directly affected by this almost every single time. And I do want to just quickly read what some Canadians are saying about this, if I can figure it out here.

Okay, let's get this viewer who has just gone to cnn.com/abby. John M.C. from Canada says in part, "This isn't right on any level. We are neighbors, friends, allies."

Just to note for some of you, "We do get nailed by these tariffs as much as you do. Our costs have skyrocketed." The second quote is very similar to that. What do you say to them?

JENNINGS: Well, the President today, by the way, let me acknowledge I am from Kentucky and the bourbon industry there has been caught up in these tariffs and they have concerns about it.

SIDNER: Because Canadians have said we are not drinking this anymore and they have taken it off the shelves in some places.

JENNINGS: Yes, and the retaliations there have been pretty clear. Now, the President issued some paper today, the White House did. You can look at it at the White House website.

The areas he was really concerned about were motor vehicles, alcohol and dairy. And I think they do make a pretty compelling case that the Canadians have unfairly singled out those industries in the United States for unfair trade practices. That is the stated reason for the tariffs today.

Now, going on in the background here is also that I guess we're currently renegotiating or trying to renegotiate the USMCA, although I think we're talking to Mexico and not the Canadians at the moment.

You would hope that in the outcome of all this, the Canadians would not unfairly target things in the United States like dairy and alcohol and motor vehicles. What's true -- what was true remains true today. The President believes in his authority to tariff.

He believes tariffs are not used enough, he believes tariffs give him economic leverage, but also diplomatic and negotiating leverage. I assume that's part of what's going on here as well.

That was his attitude before, it's his attitude today and I have no reason to believe he's ever going to change.

MOORE: Unlike some of the tariffs last year that the court invalidated, I think correctly, it's pretty clear that he has the authority.

This particular tariff is a legal tariff. It's a retaliatory tariff. It is true that Canada is imposing pretty high tariffs on the United States.

Look, I'm a free trade guy. I'd love to see Canada, Mexico, the United States be just one big free trade zone. But it is true that Canada is discriminating against American products.

And Trump has, for better or worse, and in some cases better, he has used America's leverage to force other countries like Canada to comply. The tariffs they put on American dairy products are outrageous. And I bet, in the next three or four weeks, I'll bet you that Canada will back down here and that will be good for America.

BOYKIN: The problem is that Trump acts mercurially. He doesn't really think these things throughout very long. He was just sitting around with the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada yesterday at the World Cup.

He couldn't have a conversation with them. He decides the next day he's going to slap tariffs on Canada. It's a reflection of a President who doesn't make decisions thoughtfully.

SIDNER: All right. Ahead, the President just got his new Air Force One. We all saw it, he loved it.

So why is it going to be out of service for a month to get, quote, maxed out? We'll discuss what that means next.

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[22:45:00]

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SIDNER: Tonight, just a few weeks after its inaugural flight, the Qatari-gifted Air Force One is getting some upgrades. It comes after President Trump appeared to admit that the $400 million plane needs additional defense systems.

Trump had denied that security concerns were -- oh, there he is. Let's listen to him.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: In about a month or so, they're going to send it to have it be maxed out. So they're going to be sending it and they'll have it be maxed out. It'll take about a month.

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SIDNER: Trump had initially denied that security concerns were part of a decision to swap planes on his way back from a NATO summit earlier this month. Sources tell CNN clearing the jet for the trip to Turkey was just simply a mistake.

What does maxing out mean, Scott Jennings? I just want to get your view on that.

JENNINGS: I don't know, but I hope it means all the missiles, defense systems, lasers, and anything else we can put on there to keep safe the President of the United States. I have seen this plane in action.

I was at Mount Rushmore and saw it fly over Mount Rushmore. It looks cool, but looking cool is secondary to being totally safe for the President. So whether it takes a month or three months or however long, if he's going to use it, I want it to have all the bells and whistles it needs.

SIDNER: I do want to ask you about the fact that he's gone after, there's a lot of discussion about this plane. And even before there was reporting that the reason why they didn't use it coming back from NATO was because of security concerns, there were security concerns. [22:50:07]

That was kind of a well-known thing. But now he is going after journalists, asking for all manner of things. He's going after people inside of his staff as to whether they leaked something to them, even though this was kind of widely known that this plane needed some more potential security apparatus.

What do you make of the President's actions?

JENNINGS: I don't know what was or is widely known on this front, but if you are in possession of security information, national security information that could jeopardize the safety of the President of the United States, and you choose to leak that, I would hope that you're held accountable for that because that's indefensible.

SIDNER: Should journalists be held accountable?

JENNINGS: Well, every administration has taken some action against journalists when they thought that they were in the wrong. I don't know what the truth is here. And I certainly give journalists in the First Amendment a broad latitude.

But I am extremely -- this guy has -- they tried to assassinate this guy numerous times. And we also know intelligence came from Israel that Iran was going to try to assassinate him while he was over there. He is probably as unsafe as any President we've had in the modern era because of all these threats.

And so if you're leaking information that could make him more unsafe, I don't look too kindly on that.

BOYKIN: I don't think the journalists did anything wrong. I mean, what they did was they released a report after it was announced that he was not going to take the plane. He was not going to be on the plane anyway, there was no danger to his safety whatsoever.

And that automatically raises a red flag. Any journalist worth their salt would immediately start asking a question.

Wait a minute, he flew this plane, which he's been touting all this time, cost $400 million, allegedly, and maybe even more, how much more to fix, all the way over to Turkey. And then he won't fly that same plane back. They had to get another plane in.

Any reporter would ask a question. That's a logical question to ask. And to me, this is a reflection of the incompetence of the Trump administration and the corruption of the Trump administration coming together to converge.

This is a whole corrupt deal with the Qatari government to accept this royal jet in violation of all constitutional requirements, the foreign emoluments calls and everything else. Not only that, but then he does the wrong job. He doesn't even get the plane fixed right, he's in such a rush because he wants to get this done so he can show off, instead of letting the Air Force take its time and do the job correctly. This is the problem with Donald Trump. He's not focused on the things

the American people care about, they care about affordability. And he's spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fix up a damn luxury jet.

Steve, but I do want to ask about something that Scott said. He said, look, this President has faced more than one assassination attempt, several. And you can look at the apparatus itself and say, since that is the case, shouldn't this have been taken care of beforehand, before he took any flights on this particular aircraft?

MOORE: Look, I think Scott nailed it. I mean, you've got to make sure that the President has always saved this President or any president. We don't want the movie version of Air Force One and so I don't know what the facts are.

But the most important thing is we've got to make sure that Air Force One is completely safe in the air and not vulnerable to missiles.

BOYKIN: But he has planes. He has other planes. He has other Air Force One jets that are capable.

CHRISTINE QUINN (D), FORMER SPEAKER, NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL: And the facts are, the plane was not safe enough to carry the President back from Turkey. That is a fact.

And that speaks to why was the question of why was this rush? Why did this have to go up in the air so quickly, as opposed to letting it be maxed out in a month's time?

SIDNER: We will see what maxed out means.

ELIZABETH PIPKO, FORMER RNC SPOKESPERSON, AUTHOR AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I'm glad everyone's worried about Donald Trump's safety here.

SIDNER: As they should be as the President of the United States.

All right, next. Panelists react to your feedback that you have put on cnn.com/abby.

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[22:55:00]

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SIDNER: Now we've got some viewer feedback from cnn.com/abby.

Juanita, telling us "Using negative rhetoric to combat rhetoric is getting us nowhere." We're doing a flash round here because we just have a little bit of time. Is she right?

JENNINGS: Well, it's not negative rhetoric. It's violent rhetoric, calling ICE, Nazi, Gestapo. I mean, that's routine.

Democratic talking points. I think that's well beyond negative. So I agree negative rhetoric is bad.

But I just -- I view this rhetoric as well beyond negative.

BOYKIN: A fish rots from the head. And the Donald Trump at the presidency in the White House is telling people -- calling people the enemy of the state and vermin can't get much more negative than that. It's Nazi rhetoric, literally.

SIDNER: All right, I'm going to let those two things stand opposite and opposing ideas.

Multiple viewers are asking for a fact check on Steve Moore's comment. And he's already shaking his head.

He hears you about January being the lowest gas prices in 50 years, according to AAA. That was a gas average between $2.81 and $2.87 in January, the lowest in the last five years, not 50.

MOORE: I'm glad people asked about this because it's the lowest gas price adjusted for inflation in the last 50 years.

SIDNER: Adjusted for inflation. And important note --

MOORE: The lowest price in 50 years. That's pretty much.

SIDNER: Adjusted for inflation.

BOYKIN: We still need the fact check or two.

SIDNER: We'll look into it. And we'll have to look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics to find those answers. But --

MOORE: You don't trust me.

SIDNER: But I mean, you didn't say the part about inflation earlier.

Speaking of inflation, a lot of Americans worried about the price of gas because it is going up, it is no longer that low number. We are now at $4 a gallon. We will see how this all plays out.

[23:00:05]

Thank you all for coming and having this debate with me. And thank you for watching "NewsNight." "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.