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CNN Live Event/Special
CNN Saturday Morning Table for Five. President Trump Accepts Luxury Plane from Qatari Royal Family to Replace Air Force One Despite Previously Criticizing Politicians for Taking Money from Qatar and Other Countries; New Book Exposes Extent to Which White House Staff Went to Conceal Former President Biden's Cognitive Decline; Trump Administration Gives Refugee Status to White South Africans Citing False Claims of Genocide and Land Confiscation as Reasons; Trump Administration Officials Say Former FBI Director James Comey Should be Prosecuted for Social Media Post Suggesting Ousting of President Trump from Office; Student at Northeastern University Asks for Refund after Discovering Professor Used ChatGPT to Provide Feedback on Her Work. Aired 10-11a ET
Aired May 17, 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]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: This morning --
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: Why wouldn't I accept a gift?
PHILLIP: Plane envy is just the tip of Donald Trump's swampy presidency that's not blurring the lines but erasing them.
Plus, he's sporting a beard in Iowa. She's testing the waters in California. But will the Biden hide-and-seek scandal derail their futures?
Also, the White House tells most refugees, sorry, can't come here. But for dozens of white South Africans, the gates are wide open.
And MAGA twists themselves into knots after James Comey's seashells by the seashore post.
TULSI GABBARD, NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR: -- should be held accountable and put behind bars for this.
PHILLIP: Is the outrage warranted or retribution theater?
Live at the table, Mike Leon, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Toure, and Brad Todd.
It's the weekend. Join the conversation at a "TABLE FOR FIVE".
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Good morning, I'm Abby Phillip in New York.
If you wave at the camera while shoplifting, is it a crime? In MAGA world, apparently not. That observation from journalist Dave Weigel defines Trumps week after a trip filled with diplomatic progress. It was instead dominated by the president accepting a free luxury jet from Qatar, a nation that he once called funders of terror. Trump says that only stupid people would reject such a gift, but those people include many members of his own party. Heck, the 2016 version of Donald Trump thought that as well.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: Saudi Arabia giving $25 million, Qatar, all of these countries. You talk about women and women's rights. So these are people that push gays off business -- off buildings. These are people that kill women and treat women horribly. And yet you take their money.
My goal is to keep foreign money out of American politics. Hillary Clinton's goal is to put the Oval Office up for sale to whatever country offers the highest price.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, this is hardly the only action that's blurring the ethical, legal, and moral lines of a presidency. His crypto ventures, his meme coin and private dinners, his sons billion dollar deals with nations the U.S. does business with. And yet, the speaker of the House says, if you can see it, it's all good.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MIKE JOHNSON, (R-LA) HOUSE SPEAKER: The reason that many people refer to the Bidens as the Biden crime family is because they were doing all this stuff behind curtains, in the back rooms. They were trying to conceal it. What President Trump is doing is out in the open. They're not trying to conceal anything.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But Mr. Speaker, the investment in the meme coin, those folks are not transparent. We do not know who those people are.
JOHNSON: I don't know anything about the meme coin thing. I don't know. I can just tell you that, I mean, President Trump has had nothing to hide.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I love the kind of two sides of the coin here. For Republicans, it's always, I don't know anything about that, but I can just tell you that they're being extremely transparent. I don't know, is transparency the antidote to corruption?
MIKE LEON, DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY, FREE AND EQUAL ELECTIONS FOUNDATION: Can I just go back a second? The follow up question there is, are you saying that what he is doing right now in the open, like, are we are we listening to the same thing? Like you just admitted that he's doing it in the open, so it's OK to do it in the open? It still screams of impropriety, smells of it, right? So the follow up question has to be a lot more rigorous.
But I do agree with what you're saying. Republicans have been getting asked this a bunch now, and everyone has to go back to their talking points about, look, the jet, he is flying on an older White House plane. Yes, that's conflating two different things. We can talk about the plane separately, but right now he would be receiving a gift, and it would scream of impropriety. And also, as other law enforcement officials have said, they have to sweep the plane. There could be something underneath.
TOURE, SUBSTACK AUTHOR, "CULTURE FRIES BY TOURE": We keep coming back to this sort of divide. This is not an ideological issue. There's no reason why the right or Republican should be like, this is fine. This is clear corruption. This is emoluments. This is against the Constitution. This is just the process of running government. And it's like the due process issue, which is also, not ideological. The right should agree, we should use the courts before we throw people out of the country. But we keep arguing about process, and the right follows him. So they're like Trumpist, and we're like pro-Constitution, pro- democracy, anti-fascism. Just follow the Constitution. This should not be an ideological issue.
[10:05:07]
PHILLIP: I feel like this is where I have to say even Ben Shapiro, because even Ben Shapiro thinks that perhaps this may be crossed the line.
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BEN SHAPIRO, HOST, "THE BEN SHAPIRO SHOW": Yes, I think inherently it is bad. I do not think this is good. I think if we switch the names to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, we'd all be freaking out on the right. Let's say if Qatar was giving Joe a $400 million jet for his use at his presidential library after his presidency, or if Hunter launched a crypto firm with the son of Anthony Blinken and then launched a series of crypto products in which mysterious strangers, including foreigners, were investing, all while that crypto firm was being regulated by Joe's administration, we'd all have been pretty upset on the right.
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PHILLIP: I have nothing else to say, because I think that lays it out pretty clearly what we're talking about here.
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Absolutely right. I mean, listen, another element that you can't ignore in this is the Qataris basically house Hamas and they shield their finances, which are used for international terrorism, which have been used to wage this war against Israel, one of our closest allies in the Middle East. So way to step on your own message, Donald Trump. You just got Edan Alexander, the last remaining American Israeli hostage back in the same day you're taking Qatari blood money. BRIAN TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: The only way, the only way he
should take the plane is if all the hostages are on it. And, you know, I mean, I mean, the leadership of Hamas is three doors down.
GRIFFIN: But even when I was a White House official, we couldn't take a gift over $20. And even so, if it was, you had to report it to an ethics adviser, take an accounting of it. But we were also told, don't even take a pen from a foreign diplomat, a head of state, because it likely has surveillance technology on it. What it's going to take to go through this Boeing 747 and take out anything that could be surveillance technology and pose a national security threat, it's going to cost so much money.
TOURE: Part of what we did this week also was normalize Hamas. We negotiated with Hamas. The plane could be a gift for that. It's probably a gift for the business that he's doing there, but it could be a gift for that. Qatar does fund Hamas, right? I mean, they would consider them a freedom fighter, right? Not that --
TODD: You're not suggesting it's a bad idea to have gotten Edan Alexander out of --
TOURE: Of course not. Of course, that specific part of this is a good idea. But we don't negotiate with terrorists. So if we negotiate with them, then they are not terrorists. And I'm sure that Israel would not appreciate that conversation.
TODD: Well, again, all I care about is do those hostages come home back to their families. And do the ones that have been killed get to bury their remains in a dignified way. And I don't think the families care. You know, also, we have to say that Donald Trump has made a pretty high priority of getting American hostages home, more than Joe Biden did, more than Barack Obama did, more than he did in his first term. And I think we ought to give him credit for that.
PHILLIP: But I have to say, to be honest, that's not actually accurate. I mean, Joe Biden brought a lot of Americans home, too. And frankly, the people working on this are not people who are, like, stamping Rs and Ds next to their name, OK? They're not doing it for partisan reasons. And the presidential --
TODD: I think we need to give him credit for this.
PHILLIP: I just have to say that, because I know some of these people, I've talked to, a lot of them. They are not partisan people. They are people who are fighting every day.
TODD: Would you agree he has prioritized it and he's had success at it.
PHILLIP: He's prioritized it for the people that he's brought back so far in his --
TODD: Why can't we just say yes? He's prioritized it and he's a done a good job of it.
PHILLIP: What I'm saying is Joe Biden has brought a lot of Americans home, too. It's just that you didn't pay attention to it because.
LEON: It's not a running scoreboard.
PHILLIP: Yes.
LEON: Like it's not a tab. We're just trying to bring people back.
PHILLIP: OK, but here's the thing, here's the thing, OK? I have to say about this crypto thing, this crypto thing is 1,000 times bigger and more significant than the plane. The plane is crazy and weird in a way, because Trump just likes nice things. But the crypto thing is a massive, you know, perhaps multibillion dollar scheme to make tons of money for his family while he is in office that he is actively participating in. And nobody is saying a word about it.
TOURE: So we're talking about it. But this is just, give me money just because you like me, or you might have a chance to meet me, or even tour the White House. This is completely inappropriate. This is selling the presidency and privatizing the presidency, making money off of being the president. You are not supposed to make money off of being the president.
LEON: And look, look at the hurdles that were all doing right now, the mental gymnastics that we're all doing, even though we all are in agreement like that this is wrong. So it's incumbent upon us as media, whether it be independent media or part of this network, we have to start asking the questions and framing them in the correct manner. Mr. President, this is inappropriate as per as Toure said before, as per the laws of this land. Like, do you understand the impropriety here? Do you understand that?
(CROSS TALK)
LEON: But I don't think they get asked rigorously, though. That's the problem.
TOURE: The problem with the media, we are asking the question. The problem is the corruption and the unethical behavior.
PHILLIP: I also think the question is, is about the mechanisms of enforcing the law, right? So, I mean, if Congress says, oh, nothing to see here, then there's not a whole lot left that people can do. And I'm just wondering, like, do you think at some point somebody has to say to the president, this has to stop? Or is that just not going to happen and they're just going to pocket all of this money?
TODD: Well, I think he's going to continue on with his private business in the way that his family has always done their private business. They're in the development business, for instance. I think that's --
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[10:10:03]
PHILLIP: The crypto stuff is not -- TODD: Hold on, hold on.
PHILLIP: But the crypto stuff is not real estate. It's just free Trump money.
TODD: By the way, I don't think, I don't think you should do the meme coin, but I'm a critic of a lot of cryptocurrencies. I think the president, United States and the Congress of the United States ought to be trying to promote the dollar as the store of value worldwide and not -- I'm a crypto skeptic. So I'm certainly a skeptic of a meme coin by any, any, any celebrity, much less the president of the United States. So I think that's a bad idea.
But I think the Congress is focused on plenty of other things. I mean, the Congress is focused on reconciliation bill. They're focused on foreign affairs. I don't think it's fairly high on their list.
GRIFFIN: If I could just mention on the meme coin aspect of it. Listen, it's not, it doesn't feel like draining the swamp. There's obviously the pay for play access of it. But I'm also, frankly, offended by some of his diehard followers who don't have a lot of money to spend, who fell for the scheme and are not making money back on it. They're not getting something out of it the way the Chinese investor who is going to want an ask down the road does. It just feels like taking advantage of the very people who put you into office.
PHILLIP: Yes, they're putting a lot of money into this meme coin. And when the value drops, which inevitably it will, they're going to lose their hats in all of this.
Coming up next for us, though, in the wake of Joe Biden's alleged cover up scandal, does it hurt the political futures of his allies? Plus, is MAGAs outrage over James Comey's beach post warranted or just for show? We'll debate.
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[10:16:06]
PHILLIP: Welcome back. "Joe Biden totally effed us", that a quote from a Kamala Harris official in a new book that paints a damning picture of how far the White House went to hide his decline. Among the revelations from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's book, Biden's team hid him from his staff and even members of his cabinet. They considered that he may need a wheelchair in the future, and contradicted warnings from his doctor. And Biden didn't recognize George Clooney, one of his longtime supporters, and, of course, one of the most famous movie stars and faces on the planet.
But as the scandal branches grow, what about the people who have political runways, the Pete Buttigieges of the world, hitting a Midwest tour, Kamala Harris thinking about a run for California governor? Will and should their futures be impacted by this scandal? It kind of seems like the answer has to be yes, right? Especially for someone like Kamala Harris, who was in the White House. TODD: Every Democrat is rushing to say, oh my gosh, Joe Biden wasn't
fit to run for reelection. But they let him stay in running the country for another five months. It's complete hypocrisy to say, yes, we think he wasn't fit, but it was OK that policy continued to be made and we didn't ask him to step down.
TOURE: It's tragic for the Democratic Party to have let him go on so long when clearly people around him knew that there was a serious problem. The people closest to him had been close to him for years, most of them like 20 years. So they were super loyal to him more than normal analysts -- activists who come and go.
I don't know that I retain, as a Democrat, if I retain being a Democrat, if I'm mad at Pete Buttigieg because he didn't -- am I mad at Kamala? I would not think it would be her responsibility to say you're not -- now, might she say something privately? Yes, but I would not expect her to publicly --
TODD: That's what the 25th Amendment is all about, though.
PHILLIP: But I guess, maybe not you so much, because you're left leaning. I'm talking about the average American. When they ask the question, what did you know and when did you know it? Right. And I think one of the things that that that is in the excerpts from this book is this idea that it wasn't just that that Kamala Harris only had 100 plus days to run, but that the idea that Americans felt like they were being deceived by the Democratic Party, it tainted her in that last election already.
TODD: She did the deceiving.
PHILLIP: Well, I think that this is the question. I mean, how does she escape that now?
GRIFFIN: This was something where I think the public was ahead of where the politicians and even to some degree the media was. Two years before the disastrous debate we were sitting there together, Abby, there were polls that were showing 67 percent of Americans thought Joe Biden was too old to have another term. And Democratic politicians did not listen to those warnings.
And listen, I interviewed Joe Biden a week-and-a-half on "The View". I left thinking he definitely could not have done another four years. I'm grateful for his service. He had a good command of the facts of things he was proud of to talk about that he did. But there was just no way that that Joe Biden could do four more years. And I do think the future leaders of the party have to say something better than it's time to look forward. They need to address that. The public was saying we need someone else, and they waited until the last minute and, frankly, did not have a particularly democratic process.
PHILLIP: Can I ask one quick question, Alyssa, about that interview? I mean, what did you make of the fact that Jill Biden was there with him?
GRIFFIN: I thought it was very unhelpful. I asked the specific question about allegations of his cognitive decline, and he began to answer it. And then she jumped in for him. And I get it, as a spouse, you want to help your partner. But that was his moment to knock out of the park any fear that he has cognitive decline. And it played into basically the worst assumptions, that he can't finish sentences and she had to help him out.
LEON: I think Democrats have to start doing what these two things right here, start listening a little bit more, because Representative Dean Phillips went on a tour in November, October. He went on "Pod Save America," where David Plouffe and all these folks went to complain about how they didn't have enough time.
[10:20:00]
and they didn't listen to Dean Phillips and others that were warning about Joe Biden was not in the best position to lead the party to beat Donald Trump.
Back to your data point, there was polling that showed we didn't want a rematch. You and I did Super Tuesday. We were talking about this, like, America doesn't even want a rematch. I was like 60 or 70 percent of Americans don't want a rematch. Going back to the journalistic angle, where I come from this, we did this on the show recently where a lot of segments when we were listening back to KJP press conferences, a lot of the questions were focused on --
PHILLIP: Karine Jean-Pierre, the press secretary.
LEON: Yes, the press secretary, thank you. We were doing a lot -- she was taking a lot of questions about how voters feel about Joe Biden's age. But that's not the question. The questions again, back to this journalist part of framing questions. The man fell off a bike. The man gave a terrible debate performance and looked like he was completely out of it. 2020, he does an interview with CBS News and he looks incredibly cogent, and he looks like he's there. And now what we're seeing is a frail old man, right?
And so like, there's got to be something timeline-wise that we continue to ask what is being hidden. So now that the book is coming out, and again, Jake's coming on my show so I'm going to ask him about this, but it's just, something is curious about it. It's different than what I'm talking about with the Democratic Party.
TOURE: I think you're right.
PHILLIP: Everybody knows older people who again, it's a good day, bad day kind of situation. I think that's part of the difficulty of this story.
TODD: But the 25th Amendment is there so that the bad days, you don't accept them. And you accept -- we don't let someone stay in the job who has the days that are that bad.
I think Mike's right, though. Dean Phillips has owed a big apology, and that's something that's missing in this analysis by Democrats, this autopsy. No one is saying we should have listened to Dean Phillips. And the reason they didn't listen to Dean Phillips, who was a member of the Democratic leadership, who'd won in a tough suburban district, who was sufficiently liberal to satisfy most liberals, is Trump derangement syndrome. Most Democrats and a lot of people in the news media were so furious at the thought that Donald Trump could win they didn't want to risk an open primary. They were all in on the game. It was all a rigging for Joe Biden.
PHILLIP: All right, we've got to leave it there on that conversation.
Up next, which refugees are allowed into the U.S.? The United States says white farmers from South Africa can come in, but Afghans fleeing war and oppressive regimes cannot. We'll discuss.
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[10:26:42]
PHILLIP: Welcome back. Donald Trump has essentially rejected most refugees into America. But for dozens of white South African farmers, they're getting a green light. Sixth of them arrived in Virginia this week, alleging discrimination on stolen lands. Their entry was expedited because the administration considers them victims of genocide.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why are you creating an expedited path into the country for Afrikaners, but not others?
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: Because they're being killed, and we don't want to see people be killed. It's a genocide that's taking place that you people don't want to write about. Farmers are being killed. They happen to be white.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: It's worth noting the South African president, South African judges, and the group's own political party all deny a genocide, and they don't fit the definition of refugees. But also this week, the DHS is revoking protection status for thousands of Afghans who came to the U.S., many of whom helped this nation during the war. So why are the farmers being fast tracked while other refugees, also suffering from genocide, famine, and war, are denied? I --
TOURE: I know, I know. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know why. I know why.
PHILLIP: Just to be clear, there is no genocide. OK? That is not happening. Also, there's no land being stolen. No land has been has been taken under the law that they're signing. So why are we just making things up at this point?
TOURE: This brings together three themes that we consistently see around Trump world -- white privilege, right? They get it because they're white and the brown immigrants don't get it. White victimhood. And he believes a myth that is not true, and he's basing this on a myth that's not true. And he's repeating the myth as if it's true, and except asking us to believe that it's true. This is consistent of what we see with him, that certain people had to be thrown out of the country without even getting due process and go to a concentration camp, and other people are being welcomed in. I wonder what Elon's part in all of this is also.
PHILLIP: Well, we know because this is a huge hobbyhorse for Elon. But just to your point, I mean, they've been revoking visas of U.S. students for speaking out about Palestine. They are screening visitors to the United States for what they're calling antisemitic views, which could include anti-Israel views. But here's who they just let in, according to The New York Times, an Afrikaner granted refugee status linked to antisemitic posts, including some posts that called Jews untrustworthy. I mean, come on.
GRIFFIN: Yes. Neo-Nazis come in all different forms and we shouldn't be letting them in. But can I speak specifically to the Afghan refugees? This is a complete missed opportunity for President Trump, and I seriously hope he'll reconsider it. He ran in big part by saying that Joe Biden totally botched the Afghan withdrawal. And I agree with him on that. And he betrayed allies that served alongside us, translators that worked with our forces in Afghanistan for 20-plus years. Those people are going to go back to beatings, to potentially being killed, to potentially being jailed. It would be a moment to say, this president keeps his words to those who fought alongside American forces. It's absolutely horrific that we would think of something like that.
TODD: We're conflating, though. The Afghanistan situation is not fully resolved yet. Trump said this week that there are some religious minorities who he believes maybe face persecution in Afghanistan and they may need to be protected here.
[10:30:02]
We also, it's the temporary protective status for writ large for Afghans that Kristi Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security, has revoked. That does not mean that the administration can't in each individual case, allow those who worked with our troops as translators and drivers to stay. So let's give them time to fully implement this policy.
GRIFFIN: My gear, though --
TODD: I think they should do that.
GRIFFIN: My fear having worked on SIV, though, which is specifically to people who worked alongside U.S. forces, is that they will be rounded up, and then many of them are Muslims. Most are not Christian Afghans who would be spared from this, and those are people who could face, frankly --
TODD: If you helped us in the -- if you helped our troops in the field and your life is going to be at risk because of it, you absolutely should be allowed in.
PHILLIP: All of that, I think, is a fair and fine debate. But they just created a special status for white South Africans --
GRIFFIN: No, it's crazy.
PHILLIP: -- based on a lie that they are experiencing genocide. None of that fits into any framework of rationality. And it also doesn't even fit into a framework of coming into the United States should be reserved for people, you know who --
(CROSS TALK)
PHILLIP: Except for race. I mean, I guess being white is the only criteria they care about?
TODD: I think Joe Biden was very aggressive in redefining the categories in the immigration system. It's what he did on Haiti and Venezuela was unprecedented. And I think Donald Trump, who rightly criticized that, is risking his critique of those moves being clouded by this.
GRIFFIN: But don't you I think even Haiti and Venezuelans are entitled to refugee status more than --
TODD: Refugee status in law. You're entitled to refugee status --
TOURE: -- has been about making America whiter, right. And that has been the core of it. So we're pulling in these people and pushing other people away because they're not white. You are making a great point about, like, these Afghans who fought for, that is fantastic. But that is not what we're talking about. And that is not the world that Donald Trump has campaigned on.
GRIFFIN: We should have mentioned --
PHILLIP: Go ahead, Brad.
TODD: The bite you, the bite we just, he was cut off when he said they happened to be white. And he goes, I don't care who. I don't care if they're black. But like so.
(CROSS TALK)
PHILLIP: Hold on, hold on, hold on. Listen, the policy, Brad, I don't care what Donald Trump just said. The actual policy that they are putting into place applies to white South Africans based on the idea that they are having their land dispossessed. White South Africans are seven percent of the population. They own 72 percent of the farmland. Black, black, South Africans, 81 percent of the population, and by the way, indigenous to South Africa, own four percent of the farmland. What are we talking about?
LEON: Michael Eric Dyson said to me one time, Mike, I hate to be incredibly reductive, but sometimes you can only reduce it to that. Look, I'm not trying to make a joke here. Like, I live in Miami. There are 700,000 Venezuelans, Cubans that are TPS status. You talked about the visas round up at FIU, where I live right next to, 18 students or so were rounded up. All of them, guess what shade of color. Anybody want to take a guess?
TOURE: Brown.
LEON: So at some point we have to start calling things out for what they are, face value. I get what you're saying. Give them time. Maybe there's a P.R. play here of like, hey, you know what? These folks helped us from a transition standpoint in the war and we can get them. But at the end of the day, they're helping white people and they're displacing black and brown. We've got to say that.
GRIFFIN: And the one caveat to this, which is unresolved, is he has talked about deporting Ukrainians, but that you could read political reasons into it.
LEON: I was going to say.
(CROSS TALK)
TODD: I would say this. He is winning on immigration in so many ways. He needs to restrain himself and not --
TOURE: He's not. He's literally not.
TODD: You think 168,000 --
PHILLIP: Unfortunately, we cannot litigate that one in this particular segment. We're going to leave it there.
TOURE: Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
PHILLIP: Coming up next for us, the Secret Service interviews James Comey over his beach posts. Is the outrage warranted, or is that all theater? We'll discuss that.
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[10:38:29]
PHILLIP: The last time a beach picture made this many waves, 73-year- old Bill Belichick was playing superman with his 24-year-old girlfriend. But enter James Comey to the chat. The former FBI director decided to post a picture of a shell formation, reading 86 47. He later took it down, saying he was unaware some associate that expression with violence. But it sent MAGA and the administration into a full blown "how dare he?" mode, calling for investigations and a one-way ticket to jail.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TULSI GABBARD, NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR: The rule of law says people like him who issue direct threats against the president of United States, essentially issuing a call to assassinate him, must be held accountable under the law.
JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS HOST: Do you believe Comey should be in jail?
GABBARD: I do.
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant. If you're the FBI director and you don't know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear. And when you add his history to that -- if he had a clean history, he doesn't. He's a dirty cop. He's a dirty cop. And if he had to clean history, I could, I could understand if there was a leniency. But I'm going to let them make that decision.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Legal experts say this doesn't come close to being prosecutable. So is this outrage for show?
TOURE: Wait, can we define. Is this actually -- because I worked in restaurants when I first came to New York. Eighty-six means we don't have that, right? Eighty-six salmon. We don't have it. It doesn't mean we killed the salmon. It doesn't -- I don't -- it's not 187, like Snoop Dogg says 187.
[10:40:05]
PHILLIP: Merriam-Webster says 86 is slang to meaning to throw out, to get rid of or to refuse service to.
LEON: I just deleted my 8675309 post.
(LAUGHTER)
LEON: Is that OK?
GRIFFIN: But can I say one thing? I do think it was super irresponsible of James Comey.
PHILLIP: Absolutely.
GRIFFIN: I think that this is something -- he has been trained. He knows the threat environment we live in. He knows we live in a moment of political violence. He knows there were two assassination attempts. Now, I don't think he was calling for that. I think this was protected First Amendment speech saying, oh, I want that guy out of office. But it was stupid and irresponsible.
The reaction on the other side is -- but I would also add this, there has been a lot of discussion around the politicization of the FBI and the Department of Justice. Kash Patel, a partisan running it. Well, James Comey is making himself look like a major partisan, and that does not help the career FBI officials who are tired of being in the partisan --
TODD: He looked like a partisan when he ran it. The inspector general chastised him because he mishandled information. He leaked it to the press and lied about leaking it. I mean, James Comey is a bad actor and we should not make excuses for him.
PHILLIP: Can I just say one thing? Listen, Martha Stewart and Hillary Clinton would love to see James Comey take a little blow to his ego, for sure, right? But this man has been out of government for eight years now. He's walking on a beach. He does something stupid. It's asinine, absolutely. But I mean, throw him in jail? Or is it just because Trump wants to throw him in jail?
TODD: He should be interviewed.
PHILLIP: Yes, exactly. Like all the other people who do this kind of thing.
LEON: In the movie "Office Space," the guy wants to make a "Jump to Conclusions" matt. You guys all remember this, right?
(LAUGHTER)
LEON: Like, it's a huge leap, just because he happens to be the former FBI director, to say he posted eight, 8647. I mean, I posted ushers 8701 album. Like, are we all going to be investigated now because of --
(LAUGHTER)
LEON: Look, Donald Trump Jr. as a son, his dad has gotten threats. I live by that course where the guy tried to go in through the bushes. I've actually played that course. I played it pretty well, too.
(LAUGHTER)
LEON: But like, I get, I get all of that like, and I get it. But my whole thing is, like, it's a huge leap to say somebody put four numbers up from seashells and that that means that he wants to the president of the United States assassinated.
PHILLIP: OK, all right.
TODD: This is not a beachcomber. He's not a beachcomber. He's a law enforcement professional. He should know that.
PHILLIP: Just to reinforce what you're saying here. OK, here is Matt Gaetz, this was when he was in Congress. He says "We've now 86ed McCarthy, McDaniel, McConnell. Better days ahead." Jack Posobiec just today said that James Comey should go to prison over this -- 86 46. Who's 46?
GRIFFIN: That was Joe Biden.
LEON: But see how we're not outraged? Because it's numerical stuff. Like, we have to -- no, I'm being serious. Like the person now has to make this quantum leap and say, oh, that means they want to kill somebody.
TODD: Jim Comey really wants people like us to talk about him. And now we've given him exactly what he wanted. More than he wants Donald Trump gone is he wants us on cable news to make him the center of attention. PHILLIP: Listen, I mean, look, he has he has been interviewed by the
Secret Service Friday after 5:00. He was interviewed, as people are. I mean, if you're a random person on the internet and you post something that is perceived as a threat, you'll get a knock on your door for sure. And so that's not a surprise.
GRIFFIN: No serious person thinks that James Comey meant that as a threat to Donald Trump. I would say we live in an environment where there are actors who may follow him, who may take that as something more serious than he intended for it to be. And that's why it is worth the Secret Service looking into it. I know it's not prosecutable.
PHILLIP: All right, coming up next for us, students are told that they cannot use A.I. in their classwork. So should their professors get a pass to use it in the classroom as well? We'll debate that.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:48:38]
PHILLIP: Welcome back. A.I. is no doubt changing how many Americans do their jobs, but what if the job is teaching? A Northeastern student is demanding that she get her money back after she discovered that her professor used ChatGPT to give her feedback and notes. Part of her complaint notes that students aren't allowed to use it. So why should teachers? Professors say they use A.I. as a tool to save time and serve teaching assistants. So the question is, does she actually deserve a refund check? I have to say this is a little unfair.
TOURE: What are you talking about?
PHILLIP: It's unfair.
TOURE: Spoken like a parent of a small child. No, this is a normal conversation that we get into as parents of teenagers. Why can't you do it? I'm at work. You're here to learn. I'm here to get some money and get through the day. So I could use A.I. to help educate you. But if you use A.I., you won't learn how to read and write. This is not a hard question.
GRIFFIN: I only slightly disagree. And Scott Galloway always says that your job isn't going to be replaced by A.I. but by someone who knows how to use A.I. And I think that that's very well taken. So I do think that for older students, making sure that they actually know how to use the tools and it's integrated into their curriculum probably is a good thing for the next generation economy they're going to go into.
(CROSS TALK)
LEON: She should know -- when I went to Rutgers, and this was eons ago, we had first class notes, which was written by students that had a GPA of a certain higher. So you can get the notes without going to the class. I felt like I was cheating because I was paying for somebody else's notes, but it was a legit --
[14:50:05] PHILLIP: Wait, was this a real thing?
LEON: Brick and mortar, first class notes. You can look it up, Rutgers University, that's what the pin is for.
But like, this was a two-way street. Like you can use A.I. as well to your advantage as a student. She shouldn't be asking for a refund check. Like what are you talking about?
PHILLIP: Yes, but she's not allowed. She would get expelled.
TODD: Listen, I have a friend who is a college professor who just finished his final exams, and he had people come in and do them orally because he says you can't trust that the students are not going to use A.I. So in an oral exam, they can't. So it's one person at a time over and over.
But I would just say this about the woman who wants a refund. I think she may have a point. Having just gone through the college search process with my daughter, no school tells you that that's going to happen. They say, oh, you're going to have great relationships with your faculty, the faculty care. The faculty is really intense. You're going to you're going to get feedback from them. So I don't I think if they promise we're not going to look at your papers, but A.I. will, people wouldn't go to Northwestern.
TOURE: Of course there are adults looking at the papers and not just computers, but they have to use A.I. to look at the kids' papers to understand whether or not the kids use ChatGPT. So there's apps that show them, oh, look.
LEON: It's like a mirror.
TOURE: Look here, you used ChatGPT.
PHILLIP: The feedback, though, is what came from the computer. Like a robot --
LEON: I'm sure the professor read the feedback.
PHILLIP: Well, no, I'm saying like the professor apparently put the paper into the ChatGPT and it spat out some feedback, which is like, OK.
(CROSS TALK)
TOURE: It's not ChatGPT issue. It's an adult and children issue. And in the spaces where we are together, children don't understand we are not the same. And sometimes you have to say to them, we are not the same.
(LAUGHTER)
PHILLIP: Spoken like a true black parent.
LEON: I had the same analogy. PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, yes, fine. But I also think like to Alyssa's point, like why are we demonizing A.I. for kids as opposed to teaching them how to use it effectively?
TOURE: Learning to use A.I. is one tool. Learning how to read and write an essay on your own --
TODD: You ought to develop judgment on your own. You ought not outsource judgment to a computer when you don't have it yet.
GRIFFIN: And that's why the onus is on the teacher, to your point, that you should be able to incorporate into the way that you're teaching or into your exams to kind of get around ChatGPT or using different A.I. models, like make it more personal, make them have to personalize their essays so it can't just be written for them. Like, that's going to -- that needs to be a bigger focus that teachers have.
PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, look, I'm playing a little devil's advocate here, but I do think it's unfair, it's unfair to be like, don't use this because it's lazy. And then you, like, use it because you're lazy.
(LAUGHTER)
PHILLIP: I don't think she should get a refund.
TOURE: They're not learning how to read -- they're not learning how to write an essay if ChatGPT does it for them.
TODD: Tuition is really expensive these days, too. So like if you're going to raise the tuition and drop the interaction with faculty, maybe there is a new technology improves efficiency.
PHILLIP: You know what, I think at the very least a discount if these teachers are using ChatGPT to cut down --
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSS TALK)
PHILLIP: Coming up next for us, the panel's unpopular opinions, what they are not afraid to say out loud.
But first, a programing note, don't miss an all new episode of "Eva Longoria Searching for Spain." She's going to explore the next level cuisine of San Sebastian and the Basque Country. Thats this Sunday night, 9:00 p.m., right here on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:58:01]
PHILLIP: We're back, and it's time for your unpopular opinions. You each have 30 seconds to tell us yours. Mike, you're first.
LEON: All right, first off, I flew up here yesterday, and one of the things that the lady next to me did, we see a lot of people do this all the time, right? They start clapping when it lands. Did you expect the plane to crash? Like, the whole point of it is to land. But be that as it may, the lady next to me actually did this. A little golf club. And I said, that is an appropriate measure, a little golf clap. So I will say from now on, you can golf clap on airplanes. And also sit your down ass down. You're in row 18 with me. You're not getting up.
PHILLIP: Did you fly into Newark?
LEON: No, I Flew to JFK.
(CROSS TALK)
LEON: No, no, for golf, for golf.
PHILLIP: If I'm flying into Newark these days, yes, I'll probably be clapping.
Alyssa?
GRIFFIN: My hot take, stop making terrible movies. I finally saw an excellent movie. Finally saw "Sinners." Perfect. No notes. Cinematography, directing, acting, the storyline, it was excellent. But I left the movie theater sad because I realized I hadn't seen a good movie in a really long time. And I think in our demand for endless content and just like always needing the new thing, there are so -- there's so much bad art being made. So make better movies.
PHILLIP: Yes, I cannot agree more. And then maybe I will leave my house and go to the movie theater.
TOURE: Just as much as you, I love this thing, TikTok, Instagram, all the things. But you know what, a physical book where you can feel the words and feel the page and write notes to yourself on the page, that is a beautiful thing. That is what us writers are doing, trying to create a thing that you'll curl up with under a light, under the covers. Do that. Please read more physical books.
PHILLIP: Toure is in old man mode today, and I'm here for it.
(CROSS TALK)
PHILLIP: I really am. You know what, more power to you.
Go ahead, Brad.
TODD: I love physical books. I want to I want to second that.
I think sushi should only be used for bait.
PHILLIP: Oh, wow. Oh my God.
TODD: It's time for fishing season to start here with Memorial Day weekend coming up soon. And I'd like to just lay that marker down, that we should reserve sushi for bait. TOURE: What is your daughter going to eat for lunch?
PHILLIP: Brad, I don't know. One day we will take you to a really good sushi spot. I will change your mind.
OK, everyone, thank you very much. Thanks for watching "TABLE FOR FIVE". You can catch me every weeknight at 10:00 p.m. eastern with our News Night Roundtable and any time on your favorite social media, X, Instagram, and TikTok.
But in the meantime, CNN's coverage continues right now.
