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CNN Saturday Morning Table for Five. U.S. Stock Market Falters as Trump Administration Announces New Tariff Regime; President Trump Calls on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to Lower Interest Rates; President Trump Fires Members of National Security Team after Meeting with Far-Right Conspiracy Theorist Laura Loomer; Elon Musk Possible Political Liability for Republican Party after Wisconsin Supreme Court Election Loss; Numerous Books Released Detailing Democratic Party's 2024 Presidential Campaign Including President Obama's Attitudes Towards Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired April 05, 2025 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[10:00:35]

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, a man-made disaster. The early returns on Donald Trump's elective surgery are shocking the world.

DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: I think it's going very well. It was an operation.

PHILLIP: But if he breaks it, who will buy it?

Plus, the president fires his national security team after advice from a 9/11 truther.

LAURA LOOMER: I don't want to listen where people tell me that I'm a conspiracy theorist.

PHILLIP: Also, is the X man hitting his expiration date?

ELON MUSK, PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER: What do you think of my hat?

PHILLIP: Why an expensive defeat may lead the Tesla billionaire off the exit ramp.

And did Barack Obama initially oppose Kamala Harris? Was Joe Biden out of it as president? New books spilled the liberal tea.

Here in studio S.E. Cupp, Scott Jennings, Van Lathan, and John Avlon.

It's the weekend. Join the conversation at the "TABLE FOR FIVE".

(END VIDEO CLIP) PHILLIP: Good morning. I'm Abby Phillip in New York. Let's get right to what America is talking about. Do you feel liberated yet? Donald Trump is betting his presidency on an unprecedented economic war. But instead of punishing other countries, it's Americans who are so far feeling the impact. The president was handed an economy that the rest of the world envied. It was showing signs of cracking, and despite that, he still decided that now, now was the time to start a trade war, the one that he's been dreaming about for decades. He is on a small island on this issue. Economists are against it. So is Wall Street. Many Republicans, his voters, business leaders, and global allies.

After three days, the markets are in shock. CEOs are sweating. Consumers are confused. Experts are just dumbfounded by the math, the math on 185 nations, including one where only penguins live. Lawmakers are so worried they are considering legislation that would rein in his wrecking ball.

So now, after voters elected him to lower prices, those prices will skyrocket. He was elected to slow inflation but instead may speed up a recession. And here is how one economist summed it all up.

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JEREMY SIEGEL, ECONOMIST: I think this is the worst economic policy in almost 100 years. You have to go back to the Smoot-Hawley tariffs.

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PHILLIP: Funny that he should mention that history lesson, because it showed up in Ferris Bueller's classroom.

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BEN STEIN, ACTOR: In 1930, the Republican controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the -- anyone? anyone? -- the Great Depression, passed the -- anyone? Anyone? -- the tariff bill, the Hawley-Smoot tariff act, which -- anyone? Raised or lowered? -- raised tariffs in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Anyone? Anyone know what a tariff is? Well, it's a tax. It is a tax. And we are here now looking at a tax that could hit 46 percent on everyday items that Americans are buying, honestly, just to survive. Because if you're buying cheap goods from China, it's not because you're rich. It's because you need them. You need the clothes. You need the water bottle for your kid. And this is what people are actually going to face.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, and I was talking to a small business owner earlier today who said she's already having to raise prices. I was talking to people who were on major corporate boards saying the implications of this are not even adequately priced into the market with the market down 15 percent since Donald Trump took office, that this is going to take profitable companies and cause them to have a P and L crisis. And they're going to take it out on workers, and it's not going to benefit the workers. It's not going to benefit consumers. This is a self-inflicted disaster that Donald Trump has wreaked upon America and the world.

PHILLIP: And now, in light of all of this, the president is leaning on the Fed. He sent this Truth Social post saying "It would be a perfect time for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to cut interest rates. He's always late." I mean, we've always known he wants to control all the levers, including the Fed, right.

[10:05:04]

But it also seems that maybe he thinks that by lowering rates, the Fed might help him out by making borrowing cheaper. I'm not sure I understand why he thinks that this is the way out when the easy way out really would be to just backtrack on the tariffs.

S.E. CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Right, he's not known to backtrack. And I think that was maybe also a way of sort of future proofing, like he'll blame the Fed when this goes wrong, because he'll need to blame someone. He won't blame himself. Because this isn't a mystery as to how this is going to go. We know from history how tariffs go, and we know from basic math how tariffs go. The mystery is how this will go politically. And I can't imagine a worse political malpractice than doing this to your own voters, because we know his own voters told us very clearly, we're electing Donald Trump to lower the cost of living for us, to lower the cost of goods.

So it's wild that really his first major initiative is to raise the cost of goods for everyone. Imagine the arrogance of saying, to hell with the economists, to hell with history, to hell with Republicans, to hell with voters, to hell with working Americans, to hell with farmers, to hell with our allies. I know what I'm doing, and I'm going to blow up the global economy because I can. That's wild to me and crazy. I'm just wondering if there's going to be a political price.

PHILLIP: Is this the -- this finally the Fifth Avenue moment, to crib from my friend over here, S.E. Cupp. I mean, is he is he stepping on that live wire?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I'm sorry. You're telling me this for the first time?

PHILLIP: I'm asking you.

JENNINGS: Tariffs. Oh, tariffs. Yes.

PHILLIP: I'm sorry. Not your favorite topic, I understand.

CUPP: Would rather talk about anything else.

(LAUGHTER) JENNINGS: Look, here's the thing. He believes in this. He's believed in it for 40 years. He probably doesn't have a view about politics or economics more closely held and more consistently held than this one. That's number one. Number two, he said he was going to do it. Number three, if you wanted to make a counterargument, and some could be made, it's that there are some announcements of investments in the United States, which he believes will continue to ramp up. And apparently other countries are calling up and saying, what can we do here, including Vietnam, which apparently called yesterday.

So I guess we'll have to see how it plays out over the next few months. But there's no doubt what you said is true. The market going down is shocking to many. The prospect of more expensive goods is worrisome to many. And we'll see how long the political leash is on this. But I just, I don't see any, I just don't see any evidence that he's interested in backing down on this, because he's always wanted to do it.

PHILLIP: I'll just ask you, Scott, because I'm wondering, like, what do you think? I mean, you've worked in politics for a long time. What are what are the risks here politically for Donald Trump? Or, the truth is, despite what he says, he's not running again. He's not going to be president again. Does he not care? Is he just throwing it all to the wind?

JENNINGS: So there's reward possibilities and risks. I mean, if he's right and everyone is wrong, you know, it'll be the most ballsiest and successful thing anyone ever did. If he's wrong, he's not running again. But who will be running? Republicans will be running in the midterm. J.D. Vance will be running for president, I assume, in 2028. And just like Kamala Harris found out when she tried to run on Joe Biden's economy, if somebody runs on what is considered to be a failure, they will they will meet the same fate.

It's very simple. Most of the time, presidential elections turn on how people feel about the economy, or at least their own personal economic trajectory. That's what we have to see unfold over the next three years. He is quite confident that it's going to work if given the chance. And the Congress also does the other corresponding piece, which is make the tax cuts permanent and energy changes and so on. He's confident. There's people who are confident he's wrong, and the next elections will tell us who was right.

VAN LATHAN, PODCAST CO-HOST, "HIGHER LEARNING": Something happened to me outside when I was walking up here. Whenever people know I'm going to be on talking to you guys, particularly black people, black men, they always have something they want me to say. It's always like, hey, man, you got to tell them this about the DEI thing. They're going too hard on the CRT thing, then you got -- I legitimately was stopped on my way up here by a brother named Kevin. He could have been 35, he could have been 65.

(LAUGHTER)

LATHAN: That's the way, that's the way it gets with us.

CUPP: You don't have to rub it in our faces.

LATHAN: Right, right.

(LAUGHTER)

LATHAN: And you know what Kevin told me? Kevin said, Van, you have to say something about what's happening to the market like that. That was profound to me, that the actual cultural flashpoint talking thing of the moment has nothing to do with a battle of identity. It has to do with people's fear from being economically abandoned by the president's economic plan.

CUPP: It's the great uniter.

LATHAN: Yes.

PHILLIP: We've been here before. I mean, I think that this this idea that, oh, Americans don't care about the stock market. Guess what? Most people who are adults right now lived through the recession, which was not that long ago, and they saw what happened last time there was a big crash.

[10:10:07]

And many people, many regular people lost everything. And I think people are afraid of that.

AVLON: Hundred percent, and they should be. The implications of this are massive, right? In addition to, I think downstream, you're going to see a lot of our foreign powers trying to have the U.S. dollar replaced as the world reserve currency because we are no longer seen as a trustworthy ally. But this is -- the difference with the Great Recession or what happened during COVID is these are extraneous events that sort of conspired to drag the world economy in a dangerous direction. This is being done by one person, Donald Trump. He is making this turd sandwich and he's making everybody eat it. And they're going to reject it, because it's bad politics, it's bad policy, and it's going to hurt people where they live. And it already is.

Wait till Monday. Wait till Monday. We're going to have a black Monday, people get a chance to really price in all this chaos that's been occurring. And this is hitting people where they live, their 401(k)s, the people he was elected to help he is actively insulting.

PHILLIP: And people know that when businesses suffer, they lose their jobs. It's not that complicated. It's not Russian math. It's just basic stuff.

CUPP: It is basic, and the politics of it are so basic, too. People are forgetting how bad it was under Democrats, right? There was a sense, and this is why Trump won, that it was bad under Democrats, that Democrats were failing on economic policy, on immigration policy, and on crime policy. They're going to forget that so fast, just in time for midterms, because of this economic hell that they're going to have to endure. Even if somehow were pulled out of this by some deus ex machina or some Fed thing or whatever, the pain and suffering that is going to happen and the irreversible damage we've done internationally and with our allies, that's going to last a really long time. So it's like he's turning off the switch. Forget about the Democrats, forget about how much you were disappointed in the Democrats. And look, put all your eyes on what I'm doing now. It's a bizarre political exercise as well.

LATHAN: And you know what, even the issues that you're talking about that right there, they're all downstream from the economy. It's all look at what's happening at the border. And there's a fight for resources at the bottom. Look at what they're getting and what you're not getting. Look at how poverty is influencing crime because people don't have what they need, the smash and grabs everywhere. The entire campaign, the entire Trump agenda moving forward was oriented around fixing the economy and making America wealthy. That's what everyone talked about. And this is an issue that people can't talk about to one another. They don't understand it. They can't communicate to each other about the future. They are unsure of what's going to happen, and even that alone is making them fearful.

PHILLIP: More ahead. Coming up next, a far-right conspiracy theorist with a history of racism convinces Donald Trump to fire his national security team.

Plus, after MAGA's embarrassing moment in a swing state, is Elon Musk on his last ride at this White House?

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[10:17:42]

PHILLIP: Welcome back. As we talk about who has the president's ear on economic issues, it appears that a far-right conspiracy theorist has his ear on national security decisions. You might remember Laura Loomer. She has described herself as a pro white nationalist and a proud Islamophobe. She entertains conspiracies about everything, including 9/11 being an inside job. And despite that, Donald Trump took her to visit lower Manhattan to mark the September 11th attacks last year.

Well, this week she's made another trip, this one to the White House, where apparently she told Trump that members of his national security team were disloyal. Hours later, he fired half a dozen of them, including the man in charge of the nation's cyber intelligence.

So the question this morning is, is Americas national security team in the hands of a 31-year-old MAGA flamethrower? And what else is Trump getting advice on, and from whom? This is confounding in --

LATHAN: She's only 31?

PHILLIP: Well, that's a different conversation.

(LAUGHTER) PHILLIP: Yes. I mean the truth is that, yes, Trump has the right to hire and fire, however, whenever whatever. But most of these people and I think this is what kind of gets me about this. There are people in the national security apparatus of this country, people who served in the military, people who have served in government loyally to Democratic and Republican presidents, who are not thinking about politics when they are doing their jobs. And they serve regardless of administration. And those people were serving Trump just fine until Laura Loomer decided, oh, well, they worked for under Joe Biden, so they've got to go.

AVLON: In many cases, they were people who served in Trump's first term.

PHILLIP: Yes.

AVLON: So this isn't even nonpartizan civil servants being purged. And let's be careful about, you know, MAGA flamethrower, right? Self- described white nationalist is what you said?

PHILLIP: And Islamophobic.

AVLON: Islamophobe and 911 truther, right.

PHILLIP: All of those things.

AVLON: So I lived through 911 up close, right. So there was a time not that long ago that that alone would have been the end of the conversation. But this person is --

PHILLIP: It should be the end of the conversation today.

AVLON: This isn't that she's kind of out there, but this person has actually marched into the White House, speaking to the president directly, and then he's acting on it by firing national security staff, that should make nobody feel good.

[10:20:00]

JENNINGS: Well, you're leaving out a step.

AVLON: What's the step?

JENNINGS: Which is my understanding is that she did go to meet with him and presented him with a rather basic vetting information about some of the staff and things they had said, maybe political contributions they had made, as evidence that perhaps they were not supportive of his agenda when it comes to national security. And it is the president, it is the president's right to have the staff that supports him.

PHILLIP: Can I just jump in on that, because the reason I brought this up about the people who just work on national security issues, and they're not -- they don't have an "R" or a "D" stamped on their foreheads, two of the people, and she tweeted about this today, two of the people, she said that they were disqualified only because they had worked under the prior administration, under Joe Biden.

And that makes no sense, because there are many people who work in the government, who work in the government over long periods of time, and they work under Democrats and Republicans. They might have worked under Trump and then Biden and then Trump again. That is not enough reason to fire someone unless you are Laura Loomer who, as we've established, is questionable at best in terms of her judgment.

JENNINGS: I disagree because I think White House staff, key White House staff, presidential advisers are different than mid-level bureaucrats at some far-flung agency.

PHILLIP: But you know that national security staff, you know this because you've worked in the White House, that national security staff, a lot of them do stay on regardless of administration because they are detailed from the Pentagon into the national security apparatus so that there is continuity.

JENNINGS: It's true.

PHILLIP: That's why that happens.

JENNINGS: It's true. But it's also true that the president wants to know and deserves to know whether the people who are staffing him on any issue actually support his agenda. That's the thing.

By the way, I'll just bring up the phrase, pleasure of the president. When you work in these jobs, that's what you got to have. And you either have it or you don't. Right now, these people don't have it. It's his right to have the staff that he wants. And, you know, that's why we elect presidents, to hire and fire teams and make decisions.

CUPP: I think that part of it, to me, is so unsurprising, and actually less -- that bothers me less. I'll just make a broader point. There was a moment in 2015, 2016 for Donald Trump and the Republican Party to say Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, white nationalists, antisemites, quacks and conspiracy theorists, you're not welcome in my movement. I don't want to be associated with you. He didn't. He said, come one, come all. If you like me, that's enough cost of entry. That's that gets you into the party.

And then conservatism and the Republican Party sort of swallowed these people up and became -- morphed into this MAGA movement. And that part is so bothersome to me more than he fired some people at the recommendation -- it's that Laura Loomer associates herself with conservatism and the Republican Party. That is that is so awful.

PHILLIP: And Trump calls her a great patriot.

CUPP: Yes. And that is associated with the movement that I found so empowering that I joined it at 18. That's the part that bothers me.

LATHAN: It's been codified. It's been culturally codified at this point. I mean, you have someone talking to the president, not just chumming around, not just at a dinner, but going to the White House and delivering advice to the president that he then acts on, who is an avowed white nationalist, terrifying. Terrifying, to the point that I thought he had to be flooding the zone, that this had to be something that he was doing to take our minds and the talking points away from the tariffs and the bad week that he had, and it had to be some sort of stunt.

But the more that I think about it, it doesn't matter whether it is or whether it's not. This is the worst fear of a lot of people who, just to be honest with you, were gaslit and told that there was no connection between Donald Trump and white nationalism, that there was no connection between Donald Trump and these far-right people that you're talking about right now. And we were lied to. They're in the White House. They're talking to the president, and he's listening.

PHILLIP: I mean, there's nothing off limits anymore.

CUPP: Nothing.

PHILLIP: I mean, and toward the end of the first Trump term, it was the Sidney Powells of the world and the Rudy Giulianis. I mean, they were scaring even the most dyed in the wool Trump people because of how loony they were in that time. And now it seems nobody is saying anything at all. But that's where we are.

Coming up next is Elon Musk a political poison? Well, that's the question that's being raised after he spent time in Wisconsin only to see his candidates lose. We'll debate that.

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[10:29:04]

PHILLIP: Welcome back. Is Elon Musk Donald Trump's political poison? The bromance still has the spark, but after this week, it may be getting a little dimmer. A majority of Americans already dislike the billionaire having his hands in pretty much everything, including his mass firings in the federal government. But now he is interjecting himself into politics with, so far, bad results.

Musk campaigned in Wisconsin, even donning this cheesehead there and spending millions of dollars on that state supreme court race. He called it crucial to the survival of western civilization. Well, the voters disagreed. The liberals won that race, and the next day, the White House denied reports that his time at the White House is cutting coming to a close. Ditto from the boss, Donald Trump.

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DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: I think Elon is great, but he also has a company to run or a number of companies to run that he could do this, that he can find the time. He loves the country. That's why he does it.

[10:30:03]

But we're in no rush. But there will be a point at which time Elon is going to have to leave. (END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Technically, that is true. He's got 130 days of special government employee. It's May 30th or something to that effect. But it's so funny because up until this point, Elon was like Trump's heat shield. It's almost like Trump with the tariffs kind of took the heat off of Elon after what happened in Wisconsin because he needs it. He's been having a really rough few weeks. And Republicans in Congress and elsewhere are getting nervous, and they would like him to turn the dial down on some of this stuff.

LATHAN: Yes, I was on with you guys some weeks ago, and I said that the Republicans were going to have to bench Elon Musk, that they were going to have to put him on the bench. He is deeply, deeply unrelatable, when you look at him. And then he doesn't seem to talk about the American people as if they're actually people. He's running his part, his wing of the country in a very dollars and cents like, Neo from "The Matrix" way, and he doesn't seem to have that little empathy chip that allows a person to understand when you're talking about somebody's job, when you're talking about somebody's future, when you say that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, I immediately think of my grandmother. And anyone who thought of grandmothers wouldn't say that. So after a while, the shtick was going to get old, and it was going to cost the Republicans electorally. It's a matter of time.

AVLON: I mean, it's more than having no empathy gene. He has said recently that western civilization's greatest failure is empathy, which many people would argue is actually one of the better hallmarks of a civilization worth the name. And there is a political backlash. Harry Enten has run through the numbers a million times, but the reality is, is that he is deeply unpopular.

Now he put a lot of personal capital and financial capital into this Wisconsin race. It didn't go his way. But at some point, all the knives are out. And he's a great entrepreneur. You know, you've got to give him credit for that. He is one of the great entrepreneurs of our time. But this incarnation of Elon Musk is causing massive damage.

PHILLIP: I'm just going to channel Kara Swisher here for two seconds and note that he did not create Tesla. He came into Tesla, and many of his other companies as well. But I like this headline from CNN Business. It said in short, "Voters, customers, investors, and the MAGA elite say Elon Musk, the Elon Musk show has lost the plot." His companies are having a hard time with this.

And I do think that there's something about this Wisconsin race that was so interesting in the way that Elon really kind of put his money front and center. He wasn't just saying, I'm using my voice as a citizen to push for the guy I like. He was like, let me just hand out some checks, and this is how we're going to win this thing. And I do think that there was always a risk that voters were going to say, that's not how this country works, and we don't like that. And some of that backlash, no question, hurt the Republicans.

JENNINGS: What do you mean that's not how this country works? People don't donate money to political campaigns?

PHILLIP: No, no. What I'm saying, what I'm saying is that the idea that a billionaire hands people checks for votes is not how the country works.

JENNINGS: I think you're -- I think you're I don't think that's accurate. He wasn't handing people.

PHILLIP: So if George Soros were to hand -- were to say, oh, I'm going to give away, I'm going to give away $1 million to a random five people who go out and vote on this day, what would you say?

JENNINGS: Look, all kinds of billionaires spent money in this race. I think you guys are dramatically overreading the results. A liberal seat stayed in liberal hands and got about the same percentage of the vote as the last Supreme Court race in Wisconsin. It's absolutely true, he stuck his neck out for someone that he thought was important. And you don't win every time you try in politics.

I think his electoral record, though, beyond that, is pretty good. Chiefly, I think he was one of the key reasons why Donald Trump got elected president last November. And so, you know, in the pantheon of his political engagements, this is a minor blip compared to the major success of helping Donald Trump regain the White House.

He's a great entrepreneur. I think his companies and he personally are getting all sorts of negative attention and even vandalism and all these violent attacks, and it's terrible. I know personally that he's been getting death threats, all for the sin, all for the sin of having been a liberal who decided to support Donald Trump and then go serve in his government for a short period of time. It's outrageous.

LATHAN: That's actually not true. I just want to say something real quick. I understand it, a lot of people want to frame this as people started to hate Elon Musk or not like Elon Musk once Elon Musk decided to support Donald Trump. It's just not true.

JENNINGS: I think it's true.

LATHAN: Its definitely not true.

JENNINGS: Definitely true.

LATHAN: It started long before then. When Elon Musk bought Twitter, hate speech just erupted on Twitter. Elon Musk's flirting with Nazism and far right type of stuff for a couple of years before this has made people -- has gotten people off the Elon Musk bandwagon way before he decided to --

PHILLIP: I think chronologically that is accurate. Long before --

JENNINGS: So you're saying when he challenged the liberal ownership of Twitter, that's when the liberals started to hate him?

LATHAN: No, no, no.

JENNINGS: So it is true.

LATHAN: No. It's not about challenging the liberal --

PHILLIP: I don't it's solely about Donald Trump. I think it is, to Van's point, that he has been, even before he owned Twitter, actually, before he bought it, before he wanted to buy it, he was turning his personal platform into a place where conspiracy theories, harassment -- he accused a random person of pedophilia and was sued for it. I mean, like, this was happening years ago before all of this.

CUPP: You know, I agree with Scott that we shouldn't make too much of the Wisconsin thing. And in fact, I think there was a bit of a Streisand effect here. Like, I think if Elon hadn't injected himself into Wisconsin politics, it might not have gotten as much attention and it might.

PHILLIP: One hundred percent.

CUPP: Right. So I don't even know that, you know -- anyway. So that's one thing.

But I also think he has done exactly what he was meant to do, exactly what Donald Trump wanted him to do in all the ways -- the heat shield, I mean, the crap that he has done and the incoming he has dealt with took a lot of heat off of Donald Trump for the first couple of months of his presidency. That was important, I think, for Donald Trump. And wrecking the U.S. government I think is exactly what Donald Trump wanted him to do. The idea that they would be upset with him doesn't make sense to me, doesn't ring true to me. So maybe by the end of this 130-day period, he'll shift. He'll do something else. But I don't think he's going anywhere. I don't think he's going to be sidelined. I think he's been incredibly useful for this administration.

LATHAN: Can I say something? This might sound like a wacky, wacky theory. There's also a chance that he's just getting on their nerves, that being around someone like Elon Musk, who has the type of ego that he has, that is not exactly the easiest guy to connect with, that he is just getting on their nerves.

PHILLIP: Coming up next, it's like a reunion episode of "The Real Housewives." All of the tea is coming out in new books about the 2024 Democratic campaign. We're going to discuss the drama next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:42:20]

PHILLIP: Welcome back. As Donald Trump compares his tariff force to a surgery patient, we're now seeing the autopsy results for the ghost of the Democratic Party's 2024 chances, and the cause of death included a whole lot of friendly fire. New books are starting to spill out with the liberal tea on what happened behind the scenes of Joe Biden's messy exit from the campaign and Kamala Harris's historic ascension, including the role of former president Barack Obama and what he did in the background.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JONATHAN ALLEN, SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER, NBC NEWS: President Obama absolutely did not think that Joe Biden should continue, according to our sources close to President Obama. And he also didn't want Kamala Harris to be the replacement for Biden. He didn't think that she was the best choice for Democrats. And he worked really behind the scenes for a long time to try to have a mini-primary or an open convention, or mini-primary leading to an open convention. He did not have faith in her ability to win the election. So, and as it turned out, she didn't win, but he was really working against her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: That's John Allen. He's one of the authors of one of the many books coming out about this era in our lives, which was like six months ago. But I mean, I do know, I mean, I was reporting at that time on this. They there were many people, including people close to Obama, who wanted a mini-primary.

CUPP: Yes.

PHILLIP: However, it is also true that there was no feasible way for that to happen. So, I mean, both things are true.

CUPP: 2024 was a was a mess. And all I've seen, and I'm going to say this until I am blue in the face. So you've heard me say it, I'm sure you've all heard me say it. They're missing the point. Democrats are missing the point about what happened. It wasn't Obama's fault. It wasn't Kamala's fault. It wasn't the messenger. It was the policy. It was bad policies, economic, immigration and crime. Until they acknowledge those policies failed the American people, and we lied to the American people about whether those policies were working. We said the economy was great. We said there's no crisis at the border. And we said, crime is going down. Until they acknowledge that, all this other noise -- and I appreciate John and Amy and all the reporters doing these books, I appreciate that, but it's all noise. It doesn't matter. If Democrats want to win again, they have got to jettison bad policies.

PHILLIP: They had to have turned the clock back maybe four or five months before even the debate that Joe Biden bungled to get to a point where they could start to address what you're saying there. I think that's really fundamentally what happened.

[10:45:00]

AVLON: That's the original sin, which was that Biden, who had run as -- I think was an effective and consequential president in many ways, and his economy might start even looking better by contrast with what Donald Trump is doing today. But by not stepping aside -- it's not a secret that Obama, even in his statements at the time he talked about an open primary and open process. There's nothing to say that was impossible to do. It would have been unprecedented. But so was everything about that election.

PHILLIP: The other person who is speaking out is Kamala Harris. So she was at an event yesterday in California. Listen to what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, (D) VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We are seeing those who are capitulating to clearly unconstitutional threats. It understandably creates a great sense of fear. Because, you know, there were many things that we knew would happen. Many things -- I'm not here to say I told you so.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Van?

LATHAN: Maybe it's my TMZ days, but I'm not really interested in the politics of this. I'm interested in the mess. I like the mess of this.

PHILLIP: There's a lot of mess.

LATHAN: It's a lot of mess going on, particularly with President Obama. I'm wondering how durable his reputation is with certain people on the left. It has -- look, when this comes out, if it's discussed in a robust way, people will start looking at President Obama as someone who was trying to subvert the first black woman president. And I'm wondering how they are going to respond to that.

PHILLIP: It's complicated.

LATHAN: Band so, but look, I'll say this.

PHILLIP: It is complicated, because at the end of the day, I mean, I guess you could argue that what he was saying was that we need to win this election, because the Democrats were the ones saying this is an existential crisis for the country.

LATHAN: You guys --

CUPP: And Joe Biden isn't it.

LATHAN: You guys are both right, and I'm not saying that Obama wasn't right. What I'm saying is this also comes on the heels, should I say, of Obama chastising black men and then telling them that they didn't want to vote for President Harris because she was a lady, which did not go over well in my barbershop, which is at my apartment.

(LAUGHTER)

LATHAN: So what I'm saying, when you take all these things into consideration, you know, maybe there's a little bit of space, a little bit of gap in Obama's reputation.

JENNINGS: Well, I was going to criticize President Obama, but you handled it. So thank you.

These books, first of all, seeing that video of Kamala Harris and then these videos of Tim Walz the last few days, man, did we dodge a bullet. Lord have mercy. These books coming out, these books coming out --

AVLON: Walking into the fire right now.

JENNINGS: These books coming out, it can all be told now. I mean, I sat here all during the campaign and was assured Joe Biden was fine. Kamala Harris had the most organic, grassroots driven campaign. The Democrats were unified. We had a campaign of joy, and everything was hunky dory. That's what I was told night after night after night. And now all the books are coming out, and it's amazing because a lot of the people who were telling those lies are now going to get paid to write those books. It's crazy.

CUPP: I think, a lot of people -- yes, I think a lot of people feel that betrayal, being lied to their face about Biden's health, about the strength of the party.

JENNINGS: Our own government, our own government from the White House podium lied to us about his condition and covered it up. And even Ron Klain, the former chief of staff, is now saying things that are crazy when you read them today.

AVLON: So you agree that lying is wrong, right, Scott?

LATHAN: I'm going to hold you to that.

JENNINGS: I agree that we live through the biggest scandal in modern American politics, John Avlon, yes.

PHILLIP: All right, we've got to leave it there, guys.

Next, the panel's unpopular opinions, what they are not afraid to say out loud. But first, don't miss an all-new episode of "United States of Scandal." It's about Anna Delvey who conned New Yorks elite. That's Sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern only on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:53:32]

PHILLIP: We're back, and it's time for your unpopular opinions. You each have 30 seconds to tell us yours. So, John, you're up.

AVLON: All right, I'm at bat. So the Yankees torpedo bats are blowing away the competition. People are crying about this. Look, I love it, not only because we've hit 25 home runs so far this season, but because it's about innovation, right? If you're not busy born, you're busy dying. They had an MIT trained physicist join the team, came up with a new bat, and that's really innovating things. So lean into the innovation. Don't just all judge because you're getting your butts kicked.

PHILLIP: Hey, all's fair.

CUPP: My unpopular opinion is I think we need to end congressional hearings. I don't know what's accomplished.

PHILLIP: Agreed.

CUPP: All they do is yell at each other. Today it's Ted Cruz and Amy Klobuchar. Another day, it's Jasmine Crockett and Marjorie Taylor Greene. I don't know what's happening in these hearings that is productive or governing or solving problems anymore. And I'm sure a lot of this could be done on email, that could have been sent in an email, that could have been make a report.

PHILLIP: The stuff that's doing the work of writing the bills is happening at, you know, the Capitol --

CUPP: Its not in there. What are they for?

PHILLIP: Yes.

LATHAN: I find myself on James Brown's Wikipedia, and my hot take, my unpopular take is that if we want great music, we're going to have to excuse some stuff. Because when I looked, I started looking at some of the greats of old. Not exactly the best people. So I think we're a little too hard --

CUPP: Like Diddy stuff.

LATHAN: Not -- OK, there's a limit. OK.

PHILLIP: Scott Jennings?

[10:55:00]

JENNINGS: Major problem -- human sized easter bunnies. It is the season.

(LAUGHTER)

JENNINGS: And look, I think if you want -- they're demonic. And I know, I know parents like to have their children photographed with these human sized demonic easter bunnies. I counsel against it. If you want to show them a regular sized rabbit, fine. The Cadbury bunny is fine, and I'll even make an exemption for Playboy bunnies.

(LAUGHTER)

JENNINGS: But human sized easter bunnies out. They're right out.

CUPP: Terrifying.

JENNINGS: Terrible. You only have two weeks to make your plans. Easter is coming. Eliminate this from your photo regimen. Do not traumatize your children.

PHILLIP: Absolutely no playboy bunnies. OK, I am sorry, but that is out.

JENNINGS: I said exemption. (LAUGHTER)

PHILLIP: OK, thank you for watching "TABLE FOR FIVE". You can catch me every weeknight at 10:00 p.m. eastern with our news night roundtable, and anytime on your favorite social media platforms, X, Instagram, and TikTok. But in the meantime, CNN's coverage continues right now.

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