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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Faces GOP Pushback, Poor Polls And Economic Headwinds; DOJ Drops Case Against Olympian Accused Of Damaging Reflecting Pool; Trump Denounces The Death Of Anti-Weaponization Fund, Blanche's Nomination In Jeopardy; Trump Blames Minnesota For Cyberhacking. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired July 31, 2026 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, the president under pressure and the number one issue for Americans still a point of contention.
MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX BUSINESS HOST: The last time we spoke, you told me you were expecting 4 percent growth in the second half of the year, but it was way lower.
PHILLIP: How will the economy impact the midterms?
Plus, case dropped. A former Olympian is off the hook after the government admits the Reflecting Pool renovation was a rush job.
Also, put it in writing.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: It's dead, but, you know, I wish it weren't, to be honest with you.
PHILLIP: Trump makes the case for his anti-weaponization fund, but two Republican holdouts in the Senate aren't backing down.
And the president's exasperation with Iran on full display.
TRUMP: All they do is make me angry.
PHILLIP: But then goes against his own FBI on Iran's role in the Minnesota cyberattack.
TRUMP: I blame it on Minnesota because they're grossly incompetent.
PHILLIP: Live from the Food Network, Jemele Hill, Tim Parrish, Ameshia Cross, and Tim Pawlenty for a special Summer Fridays edition of Newsnight.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening. I'm Abby Phillip with the Field Trip Edition of News Night. Now, as you know, we spend our Fridays here at the Food Network Test Kitchen in New York. They're our sister company. So, we have a fabulous chef serving our friends of the show. She's got some special treats for us at the end of the night as well.
But, first, as always, the news, a disastrous week for Donald Trump, an indictment of his agenda, and there are many signs that things are not getting much better for him. Just this week, Trump's pick to be the next attorney general was put on hold, torpedoed by members of his own party. Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis are demanding limits on his tax immunity deal and a written guarantee that his slush fund for allies is officially and truly dead.
A new CNN poll finds that two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Trump, matching his career low, which followed the Capitol riot. Voters are also demanding change in Congress, indicating that they're willing to give Democrats a chance in November, and by a significant margin.
The war in Iran, of course, continues, but the dissent is only growing, even within MAGA.
And on the economy, Trump's signature issue, surveys say that the president is underwater. Pressed by CNN's Pam Brown about these dire poll numbers, Trump's top economic adviser appeared to doubt whether Americans actually feel that way.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAM BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Is this the, quote, amazing economy the administration thought you'd all be boasting about when the quote unquote Big, Beautiful Bill was passed more than a year ago?
KEVIN HASSETT, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: Well, again, right now the economy does look amazing to me. The inflation's going down, the unemployment rate is low, initial claims, like no one's getting -- almost no one's getting fired. And final demand was up about 4 percent.
BROWN: What do you say to that person who's part of that group, that 66 percent, who say Trump has actually made the economic conditions are worse?
HASSET: You know, I just don't believe a poll like that given how strong the numbers are and how strong income growth is how optimistic people are.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, before we open it up to the table here, we invite you at home to join the debate. Head to cnn.com/abby, weigh in there, and we'll get to some of your comments as we go throughout the show.
The president is it seems, in denial about the reality of the situation that he's facing on a number of different fronts. But in particular, the economic circumstances that we face are something that seems kind of far from his mind, and you heard that today when he was talking to his cabinet. AMESHIA CROSS, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: No, absolutely, and it was purposeful. This is a president who denies that affordability concerns actually exist. This is a president who, when given the opportunity to actually lean in on the topic of affordability, to talk to people about the price of groceries, to talk to people about the price of gas, to talk to people about the price of housing. This is also a president who pushed back against a bipartisan bill that would have made housing more affordable.
He simply doesn't care, and he's told the American public that not once, not twice, but now three times. He has promoted rations for people to feed their children.
[22:05:00]
He is somebody who, as recently as two days ago, RFK Jr., one of his appointees, told people to buy liver because liver is cheaper. This is a guy who does not care about the everyday concerns of the American people, and he doesn't want to have this economic conversation because he ran in 2016 on the economy.
The economy sailed for him up until the pandemic, and he believed that he could still continue around, you know, having that conversation and still be the heir apparent of a strong economy, even though his tariff policy, in all honesty, drove up a lot of prices as well.
PHILLIP: Yes. At this cabinet meeting, which was at Camp David today, it was the usual around the world of praise for Donald Trump in the room. But here's Scott Bessent talking about how he sees the economy as well.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT BESSENT, TREASURY SECRETARY: I think if we look back to whether our founders was President Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton could not have imagined the economy that we would have created. It is the envy of the world.
We've never seen anything like it, and we're pulling away from the rest of the world because of your leadership.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, if we are pulling away, it's actually for the wrong reasons, Governor Pawlenty. Look at this. We are at 3.5 percent in, of inflation. That is the highest of all the G7 countries. Inflation is going in the wrong direction, and there's really rarely an acknowledgement of that by this administration.
They talk about the the highs of inflation under Biden, which were really, really bad, for sure, but when Trump came into office, inflation was at 3 percent. Now we're at 3.5. Wrong direction.
FMR. GOV. TIM PAWLENTY (R-MN): Well, the Federal Reserve wants the inflation to be 2 percent and it's 3 percent, so it is too high, and I think anybody looking at it can acknowledge that part. We can also look at some other things, though, to say that it's -- to be fair, jobless claims are low, unemployment is, by historical measures, is pretty low, and we have a situation where the stock market is high, inflation is high, and there's some other negatives in the economy as well.
But I think the fair reading of what's going on is it's a mix, but the real key thing is the people, the voters, don't feel it's mixed. They feel it's concerning and it's challenging. And so that's the thing that politicians have to keep an eye on between now and November, obviously, and what they can do about it in policy.
JEMELE HILL, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Now, we also have to acknowledge that a lot of times, because some of us are stuck in the past, you're looking at what gas was in 1985 and wanting it to be the same, so there's always going to be a little bit of a disconnect.
But I think this is something worse because a lot of the reason the economy is in the situation it is because of self-inflicted wounds by the president. Nobody told him to do all of this with tariffs to increase what households are paying for goods, to make it tougher on businesses when it comes to circulating dollars in our economy, and so that's what people see.
Beyond all that, they're making a mistake actually the Democrats made in the last administration. Inflation was getting high. People could see that the economy was not working for everybody. And every time you tried to confront Democrats with this, they said, but the stock market. Now, Republicans are literally doing the same thing, making the same mistakes.
And when people are looking at this administration and they're seeing all this money toward renovations and pools and all this other dumb stuff that people don't care about, they get upset. They don't want their money being spent that way. They look at the money being spent in Iran. They look at the money, the blank check being written and given to Israel, and it makes people angrier.
And so because they refuse to acknowledge what these concerns are, it's only making people mad, and they're going to show that anger at the voting box when it comes to the midterms.
TIM PARRISH, CONSERVATIVE STRATEGIST: Yes, Abby, I think there's definitely a disconnect, and, Governor, I think that you point out aptly the wins that this administration has had in the, the economy. You also pointed out very effectively that they're not connecting those wins to the American people. When families are sitting around their dinner table and they're talking about how expensive things are, the administration is sitting, you know, around a table at Camp David, and they're telling each other how well they're doing.
But they really have to go take those wins out to the American public and say all the things that you just said, Governor, and lay out what those wins are, because the American people aren't feeling it. That's why you see these polls that are reflected that way, and there are a lot of distractions. I agree with you. As someone who lives in the D.C. area, when I see another gold thing go up, I'm like, man, why are we doing another gold something when the American people --
CROSS: But poverty isn't a feeling. Just to level set, if you can't pay your rent, you don't feel that you can't pay your rent. You can't pay your rent. If you can't feed your children, the food that you have bought does not last to the end of the week, that's not a feeling. Like we have to get beyond the emotional aspect of it and understand that like people are experiencing real hardship.
And I think I take umbrage with the term feeling in these conversations, in large part as somebody who grew up on food stamps, who had a mom who did everything she could to put food on the table for four kids. We never felt a certain way. We knew what we had, and we knew what we didn't have. And families right now are making those same very tough decisions, and you have way too many people in this White House who refuse to acknowledge that, and moreover, refuse to help.
PHILLIP: That's a -- it's a really important point because it does get boiled down to just, oh, they're feeling something, but it's actually not true, which is not the case.
[22:10:06]
I mean, people are actually experiencing the inability to pay their bills.
And a viewer comment just came in kind of to this point. The macro economy could have positive signs, but politicians need to realize that the micro economy is what the American people care about. It is their economy in their households that they care about.
And even if you do -- let's say you do want to zoom out to the macro economy, Fareed Zakaria, our colleague here, had an an op-ed in The Washington Post about even Trump's case for tariffs, which was supposed to be about manufacturing jobs and bringing those back, he says, the economic case against tariffs is stronger by the day as the numbers roll in.
Spending on manufacturing construction, which surged under Joe Biden and peaked at about $250 billion at an annual rate in September of '24, fell to $175 billion by May of this year. Manufacturing employment is down 75,000 jobs since Trump returned to office. Factory output has risen, but those gains are concentrated in the advanced manufacturing and in artificial intelligence, which reflects investments planned before Trump took office.
So, I actually think the American people, they're experiencing that. They're experiencing a consumer economy in which wealthy people are driving the spending and making the numbers look good in the macro, but in the micro, they're making choices. They have pay payoffs or trade-offs that they have to make every single day.
And when Trump goes out and says, actually, things are great, and his cabinet goes out and says, actually, things are great, let me tell you why. That is going to fall on deaf ears.
HILL: But it's not just saying that the economy is great. Remember, to what you brought up earlier, he told people they just going to have to suffer for a little bit. People don't want to hear that, and you can't really build a case that you're doing great around 401(k)s, around stock prices, because a lot of people don't own stock. They can't eat stock. And so that doesn't mean anything to them at all.
PHILLIP: They can't touch their retirement dollars.
HILL: No.
PHILLIP: It means nothing to them.
HILL: And especially when you have an entire generation that is right now locked out of being able to afford a home. And those are the things that people really care about.
So, all of this other things about the macro and how that's working, like when it boils down to it, if I go to the grocery store and I notice that my bill, my grocery bill is twice as big as it was last year, that's what I care about. I don't care about a 401(k).
PAWLENTY: The thing about inflation, Abby and is this. Once you raise it, like they did under the Biden administration, to 7, 8, 9 percent, the whole base goes up. So, even though subsequently it might've been a 2 or a 3 percent increase, it's up on a much higher base.
So, when you look at what does a pound of hamburger cost, what does a gallon of milk cost, it's not just that it's 3 percent more this year, that's on top of the cumulative 6, 7, 8 or 9 percent inflation increases that we've had not too long ago. So, the whole base adjusted upward, and that's part of the reason why people are feeling this pinch in their family budgets.
And I agree totally. It's not about the macro. It's about how does my family feel, how do I feel about buying groceries, putting it on the table, paying for gas, and the like.
PHILLIP: So, Jemele, you alluded to this. The CNN poll shows 64 percent believe that Trump has gone too far in pursuing his personal business interests while serving as president. It seems like the chickens are coming home to roost on some of this stuff. He may not care that people don't like that they see him getting richer in office, but that is actually one of the factors that's driving his approval rating down.
And I don't know that it helps Republicans to have this perception that people in power are enriching themselves at the expense of everyday Americans.
PARRISH: Yes. But when did the president say he didn't care about --
PHILLIP: Well, he said in a New York Times -- no, that's not what I said. I said he doesn't care that there's a perception that he's enriching himself in the office. He said so explicitly. There was a New York Times interview in which they asked him about why he's allowing his family to pursue these deals. He said, well, I realized that people don't really care, so I've let them do it.
PARRISH: Right. I don't think -- well, think you're probably mischaracterizing that the president didn't say that he doesn't care about the perception of the American people in that regard.
PHILLIP: So, then why is he doing it?
PARRISH: But I would say this, and we've addressed this time and time again with the president and his children and families. His children are adults that are businesspeople that can go and do their own ventures. They can go and build their own businesses. And so why -- I don't understand why every time one of the president's children goes and does something in a business venture, we act as if like it's something wrong.
PHILLIP: Well, because they're interacting with the -- the problem is -- the problem, Tim, is that they're interacting with the government.
PARRISH: Right. They're getting, they're engaging in businesses that have business before the government, getting government contracts for their investments.
[22:15:04]
It's not just, oh, they're out doing business deals on random things. They're doing business deals that have a direct relationship with the United States government, which is run by their father. That's an obvious problem.
PARRISH: The double standard in this story that it's atrocious what this -- how this double standard is being applied. First of all, just because, again, I'm going to stand on the point that the president's children can go run successful businesses and no one's -- they shouldn't be held to account because they're running a business because their father's the president of the United States. But we saw in the last administration family members of the Biden group, they were doing all sorts of things --
PHILLIP: I actually think that double standard is your problem, because if you had a problem with with Hunter Biden, you should have ten --
PARRISH: It wasn't just Hunter Biden. It was the brother.
PHILLIP: Sure.
PARRISH: It was the whole lineup of anybody that had issues.
PHILLIP: If you have a problem with that, you should have ten times the problems with what's going on with the Trump administration.
But let's just take his kids out of it. Let's take his kids out of it. The president himself, okay, was selling meme coins and making $600 million off of the sale of cryptocurrency meme coins while in office, that he advertised right when he was coming into the office.
So, you can take the kids out of it, but there's wealth being made off of the office right now by the president himself.
HILL: In addition to the stock trades, right, the president basically is acting like his own personal swap meet.
PARRISH: Abby, I'm not familiar with the story about the --
PHILLIP: I mean, look, the question was about whether voters care, and I guess what I'm saying is the polls shows they do care. You may not care, but voters care.
PARRISH: Well, I also just -- like I don't think the president said that, I never said that I didn't care either.
PHILLIP: Oh, so do you care?
PARRISH: Of course I care.
PHILLIP: Okay, great.
PARRISH: Of course I care.
PHILLIP: Well, then we're clear then.
PARRISH: Perfect.
PHILLIP: All right. Next for us, the DOJ is dropping its charges against the former Olympian that they accused of damaging the Reflecting Pool. Now, as it turns out, the real culprit was a shoddy, rushed construction.
And the president justifies the weaponization fund even while he admits that it's dead. But that doesn't convince the Republicans who are holding up Todd Blanche's nomination.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Well, tonight, the Justice Department is dropping its case against a former U.S. Olympian who was accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after concluding that it was actually the result of a botched installation by Donald Trump's handpicked contractor. According to a court filing from DC's U.S. attorney, Jeanine Pirro, new information pointed to a rush job by Atlantic Industrial Coatings to complete the project before the America 250 celebrations.
Now, canoe racer, David Hearn, was charged with a felony carrying up to ten years in prison after being accused of pulling up a piece of the pool's liner after it had already started to peel.
Now, Governor, you were just telling me you're a prosecutor. How do you get to this point where you don't do, apparently, any due diligence before you indict someone over something like this?
PAWLENTY: A former criminal prosecutor at a lower level and earlier in my career, but point is, you know, as you have an ethical obligation as a prosecutor to make sure that you have a requisite amount of evidence before you bring charges, and in this case, that was before a grand jury. At some point, we may know more about what was actually presented there.
But what we know now is this person was falsely accused, and that this person is owed an apology. He's an Olympian. And, of course, you can imagine what that does to him, his reputation, the kind of pressure that puts on his -- him and his loved ones. So, this was just a botched effort to prosecute him.
I will say I hope we can clean up the damn pool. I mean, it's been -- how hard is this --
PHILLIP: I mean, right now it's empty again.
PAWLENTY: -- to clean up one of our nation's iconic water bodies?
PHILLIP: It's -- yes. I mean, it's farcical. If it weren't so serious, I mean, they were really trying to put this guy up to legal jeopardy.
You know, July 17th, Trump put out a Truth Social post that said the pool was so badly damaged by vandals, and then he said the scum in court will hopefully be prosecuted to the max.
Now, Jeanine Pirro appeared on Fox News. I think this was the same day that David Hearn was prosecuted or was charged. And she goes so far as to basically say that this is -- what Trump is saying is true, and it seems like what Trump was saying was really the only piece of evidence that they had to suggest that these charges were legitimate. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS HOST: A lot of people, when this first happened with the pool, didn't believe the president that there was vandalism. That's not the case.
JEANINE PIRRO, U.S. ATTORNEY, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: Yes. It's not the case at all. In fact, I was at the Reflecting Pool yesterday. There not only is a vandalism that is reflected in today's indictment, but there is a cutting of the liner of the pool at the base of the pool for several yards across the pool.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, literally, they accused people of getting a knife or something, a razor, and going into the pool and just cutting it for yards and yards. A viewer put in this comment saying, I hope David Hearn sues the DOJ and gets a nice fat settlement. I guess this might be a good use for that anti-weaponization fund.
CROSS: Absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day, we all -- most people knew that Donald Trump was not being honest. A lot of his pushback came once folks -- you know, once it was revealed that the contractor was a no-bid contract.
[22:25:05]
This guy didn't really have the experience for what he said that he was going to do. In addition to that, he quizzically kept making the cut deeper every time he had the conversation. It was so many feet, and then it doubled in feet, and then it tripled in feet. It was a different length every time he talked about it.
PHILLIP: He literally said, like, at one point it was like hundreds of feet. I mean, they really want people to believe that someone went in there with a knife and nobody saw them?
HILL: Oh my God, shocking, the president lied. Wow, that never happens. I mean, I think the overall more scarier part about this is that he can create a scenario and Jeanine Pirro is just going to follow and do what he says. And if you're an American out here and you're looking at how he so easily weaponizes very powerful government entities against an average citizen, a citizen that represented this country, you have to feel very fearful. Like that I could be falsely accused of something and the full weight of the government is going to come down on me over a pool.
PHILLIP: That is such a good point. I mean, on a serious level, I mean, this is an example of the government lying on you, and then prosecuting you, and making you incur legal fees, and smearing you over the president's ego.
PARRISH: Yes, Abby. Look, this story's embarrassing, and I agree with the governor that this gentleman is owed an apology. And, yes, if he can go through the court process and get a settlement or something out of it, he's absolutely owed it. This is, I think, justice prevailed in this situation. Thank God for this gentleman. And I agree, Governor, like, you know, you can't put a price tag on his name being kind of smeared and ran through. I mean, I remember reading stories about this, and they pointed at this guy in particular. But this is why we have the presumption of innocence. He was and is now clearly innocent and was not found guilty.
So, I just -- yes, this is embarrassing. The gentleman is owed an apology, and I don't know that there's any other way to really approach this story.
PHILLIP: And there are other people, by the way, who they charged as well.
PAWLENTY: I would add one thing. President Trump didn't go down there and look at these cuts himself. Somebody told him, this is what happened, and then he made announcements on it, maybe exaggerated, maybe not. So, you know, who really brought this to the president as a, hey, Mr. President, we have the goods on this person. This person should be charged, or we're going to charge him or indict him. So, there's a chain of events here.
I don't think President Trump concluded initially that, you know, there was a crime there. CROSS: I mean, Trump is also known for saying some people are saying regularly, and those people are the voices inside his own head.
PAWLENTY: But somebody had to do -- process this. Somebody had to process this.
PHILLIP: I would tend to -- listen, I mean, I personally, just looking at the way that this unfolded, you know, Trump saw the algae growing in the pool. He saw the images of the pool's lining coming off. He -- we know from the reporting that he requested photos from the Park Service about it.
I don't know that he needed anybody to tell him, oh, people are vandalizing it. I think he came to that conclusion himself because his whole thing about this was that there's no way that this work that I commissioned would've been shoddy.
PAWLENTY: But even if he did, they had to go find somebody who supposedly committed a crime. And so somebody did that. So, some prosecutor or some investigator did that.
PHILLIP: Well, they were arresting people for sticking their hand in the water.
PARRISH: Right. And that's where the accountability should lie because. I agree, the person who gave this information to the president or the persons, the attorneys, what have you, they should be the ones held accountable for the fact that they, you know, clearly botched an investigation and, you know, there's some --
CROSS: He gave them what he wanted them to investigate, and they repeated exactly what he wanted to hear. This is not the first time that this White House has gone after somebody because Trump tweeted something out or he said something on Truth Social.
PAWLENTY: But he didn't go find Hearn, though. Somebody went and found Hearn.
HILL: Somebody might have done that. But it gets back to a deeper --
PARRISH: I don't know if you guys realize it. I'm agreeing with you.
HILL: Yes. And, listen, we're going to take small victories, okay? So, it'll be fine. But this gets back to a larger issue, is that this entire administration full of stooges is more than willing to lie to his face and tell him whatever he wants to hear.
PARRISH: Yes, I don't agree with that part.
HILL: Okay. Well, I'm just going to --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Actually, I mean, I think our next segment kind of speaks to that very same thing. Next for us, the president says that he knows the so-called weaponization fund is dead, but he wishes that it wasn't.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:34:06]
PHILLIP: President Trump is complicating negotiations as Todd Blanche's nomination to be Attorney General remains stuck in the mud. During a cabinet meeting today, Trump made this comment about the controversial fund that could potentially give taxpayer dollars to January 6th rioters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: That's behind the holdup. It's dead, but, you know, I wish it weren't, to be honest with you.
I think people were horribly treated, horribly abused. This has nothing to do with Todd, this was me. Horribly abused, and I'd like to see them compensated for the pain.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, Tillis hit back, saying that Trump made it clear the anti-weaponization fund is still alive, which is exactly why they're pushing to kill it. He then blamed an unnamed incompetent advisor to the President for Blanche's nomination snag. And Tillis also argued criminals who assaulted officers on January 6th should not be getting a check from the federal government, to state the obvious.
[22:35:05]
But as we were discussing in the last segment, to Jemele's point, this is actually really about whether Trump is installing yes-men into these incredibly important jobs that are really about justice. And how can you trust that they are not going to move forward with the weaponization fund, simply because Trump could sue to force them to, when the President himself says he doesn't want it to die?
PARRISH: Yes, I think the President has said very clearly that the fund is dead. I think that this is a horrible thing that we're holding up the nomination of an attorney general based on this issue.
And I do want to point out that I very much agree that we should not be compensating or paying people who were involved in any way in any criminal activity during the J6 stuff. And so all of this, to me, is a distraction and is not what we should be focused on as a nation.
And really, the Senate, yes, they have an advice and consent role. I think that they should be working with the President to, the senators, excuse me, not the entire Senate, but these two senators should be working with the President to try to get the attorney general confirmed so that he can get to all the important business that office has to do. PHILLIP: I think they're trying. Honestly, they're trying to help
these guys out.
PARRISH: I don't know that they're actually trying.
PHILLIP: Literally today, the President's private attorneys are appealing a lower court ruling that ordered sanctions against them for how they handled this very IRS lawsuit, which produced this controversial settlement, giving Trump and members of his family retrospective tax audit immunity. The tax immunity is part of the picture, too. And the Trump legal team is right at this moment contesting a judge's ruling that basically said this was unethical.
HILL: I mean, I think, again, the larger issue is we have a President who seems to put himself first in every possible situation. And he continues to put people in very important, critical positions that are there to serve him and not to serve everybody else.
Todd Blanche has a very long track record of being there to only do Donald Trump's bidding. The whole point of the Department of Justice is to seek actual justice and not just seek retaliation for Donald Trump. So my bigger concern beyond the anti-weaponization fund and this IRS or him getting this IRS immunity is what is this guy going to do in this job, period?
Because we've seen what he's done as an acting A.G., and that makes me very uncomfortable because it's these two issues today. If Trump wants something tomorrow, then he's just going to say yes.
So I understand and I'm glad this anti-weaponization bill appears to be killed, but I'm more concerned about what's coming down the pike. Because he has proven to me that he is not worthy of this position as Attorney General.
PHILLIP: I mean, should they put it in writing?
PAWLENTY: Todd Blanche, if I recall correctly, said under oath in a prior congressional hearing that this is dead. President Trump said today it's dead, wishes it wasn't. So they both have said it's dead, one of them under oath on a congressional hearing.
So what is the practical difference between saying it under oath and before a congressional hearing?
PHILLIP: Here's the practical difference. This is a lawsuit. I'm going to put that in quotes because it's not very adversarial.
Blanche also said under oath that Trump, as the plaintiff, could sue the government to revive it. And there's nothing stopping him from doing that. That's the first thing, and then there's also the tax immunity issue.
PAWLENTY: We should also remember how this started. The IRS illegally released Trump's returns.
PHILLIP: And that person was penalized and punished.
PAWLENTY: Yes, but as we tell the story, we should tell the whole story, which is President Trump did have a claim, I think you could say a valid claim.
PHILLIP: Sure, but why did he wait four years to file the claim? Or more? Actually, it was more than four years, six years.
PAWLENTY: You have a right under the statute of limitations to bring in whatever you want.
PHILLIP: He waited because he wanted his own Justice Department to adjudicate. This is why the judge sanctioned them. Because the judge basically said, you brought this case against your own Justice Department knowing that it was not an adversarial case.
PAWLENTY: Either way, Todd Blanche isn't going anywhere.
PHILLIP: That's part of it.
PAWLENTY: Either way, he's not going anywhere. He's going to be the acting attorney general right through this election and into next.
PHILLIP: Let me play. This is what Trump said about more about the weaponization fund, because as much as he says it's dead, he keeps talking about it as if he very much wants it to be alive.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: This fund was not for me. This fund was for those people that have been weaponized, that have been abused.
I think that there's a group of people in this country, history will show, that were treated like nobody else has ever been treated. So badly, so horribly. Their families have been ruined.
Many suicides, they've committed suicide.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HILL: No one else, eh?
PHILLIP: Just as a point of fact, the people who were convicted were convicted of committing crimes.
They went through a legal process. Some of their sentences that the government asked for, the government didn't get. They got shorter sentences.
[22:40:10]
He has never said a word about the four Capitol Police officers who did die by suicide, directly after the Capitol January 6th attack. Why is that? Why has that never crossed his mind? CROSS: Because he's been trying to recast Jan 6th since it happened.
This is a guy who knows that he did not call off the dogs, so to speak. He was actually, in many ways, excited that people were there, in his view, defending an election that he believed was botched, and one that he continues to tell us was fake.
This is a guy who will never admit to, even with all of the footage we have, even with the retelling from those who were literally couched under their desks while people were threatening to come in, he will not admit it, despite all the video evidence, despite all the real, live, first witness evidence. This is a guy who wants to recast January 6th as just another day in the park.
He doesn't see it as violent as it was. He doesn't see those who lost their lives on that day or in the immediacy afterward as anybody who is deserving of any of our emotional embrace. He wants to change the course of history, and if he could make all of us forget that it happened, he would.
PHILLIP: He certainly wants the government to try to make it something that it wasn't, and that's, I think, part of the reason that people like Tillis and Cornyn are pushing back, because they're living in the real world. They were there.
All right, next for us, America First. The President blames Minnesota for being cyber-hacked, even though his own FBI has Iran on the list of suspects. We'll be right back.
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[22:45:00]
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PHILLIP: The United States is reportedly planning fresh strikes against Iran as soon as this weekend. Officials tell CNN that U.S. Central Command has readied forces for expanding the war and is planning options to target energy sites.
But the White House fears that Tehran could retaliate against Gulf infrastructure and shock global energy markets. President Trump has been desperate for an exit strategy and is hearing conflicting advice about the path forward.
During a White House meeting this week, a Saudi Arabian official urged Trump to de-escalate the war. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also spoke with Trump about ways to pressure Iran, including renewing a full-scale war. Everything came to a head today during Trump's cabinet meeting as he vented his frustrations about the pace of these negotiations.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Iran is doing very poorly. Just in case you read incorrect stories, they're doing very poorly. They're having a hard time.
We'll be hitting them very hard. And at some point they're going to say, we just can't take it anymore. All they do is make me angry.
You know, they just make me angry. I'm losing faith in them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: This is quite a turnaround from what we were hearing from the administration, including from J.D. Vance, who said that it was so cool that the Iranians had changed, had a change of heart, and that they were willing to turn over a new leaf and go into this new era of peace with the United States. Now we're back to potentially full-scale war.
HILL: Yes. I mean, I don't know.
There was plenty of evidence over, you know, multiple presidencies about why this was a bad idea. And because, again, we are at the mercy of the President's ego, we are now in another endless war that has no path forward but to see it all the way through. It's a war that is deeply unpopular.
I think the Iranians know this, and that is why they are fighting a different kind of war than we are. We want to muscle up against them. Like, we want to go head up, that's not the war they're fighting.
We're going to try to destroy the economy. And they know these midterms are coming up, and they know how unpopular this war is. So that is the war that they are fighting, they are fighting a psychological war and one that will do damage to the economy.
PHILLIP: You know, the thing that our reporting says that I want to kind of zoom in on is they're thinking this time about striking energy infrastructure in Iran, which has been something that Trump has threatened. He's threatened the energy infrastructure and bridges.
Well, one of the problems with that is that Iran could retaliate, and they could do the same things with their neighbors, which could put us in a world of hurt. I mean, is there a risk that we escalate this to a point where we can't bring it back?
PAWLENTY: Well, first of all, on the energy infrastructure piece, a really important point, because you watch what the rest of the world is doing as rapidly as possible, diversifying their energy sources so they're less reliant on the Strait of Hormuz and Middle Eastern oil. And that's a good takeaway for the United States as well.
We've got an abundance. We want all the supply we can get, but we need to make sure we do it all the above, including next generation and frontier technologies, renewables and everything, the whole list.
But in terms of turning back, Abby, this thing changes every day or every week. What we know today could be totally different tomorrow because of these conflicting statements. But President Trump is trying something that nobody's done.
We've been in a level of conflict with Iran for 50 years in various forms, mostly diplomacy, mostly talking about it. And he decided, first time, to your point, to try something different, to go kinetic. And so far it hasn't produced the results.
And the results would be they can't have a nuclear weapon, and you've got to have the Strait open.
PHILLIP: But isn't that the problem?
PAWLENTY: And so far, they haven't achieved that.
PHILLIP: I mean, isn't the problem that, yes, he tried this other thing that other people didn't try because they didn't think it would work, and guess what? It didn't work.
PARRISH: I think, to the governor's point, every administration for 40, 50 years, as Iran has chained to death to America, has thought about how they can address the Iran issue.
[22:50:06]
And President Trump, hate him or like him, had the guts to actually do it, to take the decisive action to go after our number one enemy by their own admission.
PHILLIP: But Tim, to what the governor was just saying, it didn't work. So it would be one thing if he took decisive action and it worked, but it didn't work.
PARRISH: It didn't work so far.
PHILLIP: It has not been working. So I guess what I'm saying is like you can't praise the, I guess, the courage of Trump for doing something if the outcome is not better than what we had before.
PARRISH: Well, I can certainly praise, I mean, if you want to do the comparison.
CROSS: Do you not question why other Presidents in the past 45 years didn't do it?
PARRISH: I can't account for the cowardice of other Presidents who didn't take action. I'm glad you brought that up. They made promises.
President Obama made promises about what he would do with Iran, Kamala Harris, when she ran for President, said that if Iran did X, she would do, Hillary Clinton, everyone has talked about it.
CROSS: Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton were never the President.
PARRISH: And thank God they were never the President. Because President Trump has taken decisive action. President Trump has taken decisive action on our number one enemy.
CROSS: And we've got the strait closed, we've got gas prices skyrocketing. We have an infrastructure that is about to be a disaster.
PARRISH: He has run into difficulties while he is trying to be patient and negotiate with them.
CROSS: He's not trying to be patient. He's trying to calm down the pullout because he does not know how to pull out. He is now regretting he got into this.
He's been extremely patient with them, time and time again coming to the table.
CROSS: He's threatened to annihilate the entire population.
PARRISH: And I think that what the, because he very well could.
CROSS: That's not patient.
PARRISH: He could do exactly that. He could annihilate them.
And I think that a lot of people are calling for that. A lot of people are calling for us to actually take greater measures. And the President is being very patient.
And he's taking action. Something that the people you just listed, they wouldn't do.
PHILLIP: Let me just very quickly play Trump. This is Trump talking about a cyber attack in Minnesota. And not blaming the person who his own government thinks might be behind it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Minnesota is behind it. You know who's behind it? Minnesota.
Because they're grossly incompetent. I think the government's behind it.
I don't think there was an Iranian cyber attack. I think that Minnesota would have get its act together.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, I don't know if this is like a tough on Iran thing or not, but why can't he even blame Iran for something that they may have done? And why does he have to deflect blame inside his own country to avoid holding them accountable for it?
CROSS: Well, I think that it's not necessarily for him an accountability issue for Iran as much as it is this flows down that same vein of him trying to diminish faith in our electoral process already. Because he has already took so many aims at doing that since 2016, I don't think that he is going to stop any time too soon.
And this was just another feather in the cap. He's going to ignore any evidence showcasing Iran because he wants to tell people that our elections are not working, and especially in democratically-led states.
PHILLIP: All right, we're going to leave it there. Next, we're going to read some of your feedback. Plus, we're going to
find out what Chef Liza has been cooking up for us. We'll be right back.
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[22:55:00]
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PHILLIP: The Food Network's supervising culinary producer, Liza Zeneski, is here with us with some spectacular plates that we've been digging in in the break. So, tell us what we have here tonight.
LIZA ZENESKI, SUPERVISING CULINARY PRODUCER, FOOD NETWORK: So, these are our Guava Grilled Chicken Wings. They are sticky, sweet, a little spicy. I feel like it's a perfect recipe for you guys to make on your next barbecue.
Speaking of barbecue, our brand new hit show, "Pit Masters," is on Food Network at 9 P.M. And tonight's menu was actually inspired by the show. It's pretty intense. It's a week-long, non-stop, open-fire competition.
The food's incredible. They are some of the best of the best chefs. And I helped create and I culinary produced the show, so I'm incredibly proud and excited for it to be out in the world.
So, I hope you guys check it out.
PHILLIP: Where did you guys film it?
ZENESKI: We filmed in Utah.
PHILLIP: In Utah. Oh, yes.
ZENESKI: For six days.
PHILLIP: I love that.
ZENESKI: Without stopping.
PHILLIP: I'm personally very obsessed with watching open-fire cooking. It's one of my favorite things.
So, definitely check out "Pit Masters" Mondays at 9 p.m. on the Food Network. And you can also scan that Q.R. code at the bottom of your screen for the Guava Grilled Chicken Wings recipe.
It is delicious, I promise you.
Now, we've got a little bit of viewer feedback for you.
The first one. I'm a Minnesotan, this person says, hearing that nonsense about the water system hacks from the President makes it hard to maintain a patriotic spirit. I'm just going to go to the next one because we have a few tonight.
Wow, they are so out of touch with reality. The American people are struggling, and what Bessent said just doesn't line up with what we are living.
Lastly, this third person says, if they can't even speak truth to something that they said they had evidence of, why should the American people believe what they say about the economy, immigration, et cetera?
Lots of good questions there.
[23:00:02]
HILL: Yes, I mean, thinking about what that viewer said about what the President said about Minnesota, a lot of times I don't know that, again, you'd have to have self-awareness to actually think about this, but you're supposed to be the President of everybody, and the reality is that too often he comes off as somebody who only wants to be the President of people who like him.
PHILLIP: All right, we have to leave it there. Thank you very much for watching "NewsNight. "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
