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Table For Five
President Trump Continues to Struggle to Secure Peace Deal with Iran as Military Strikes Continue Despite Ceasefire; Former President Joe Biden's Son Hunter Biden Publicly Supports Maine Democratic Senate Candidate Graham Platner during Interview; President Trump's Sons Promoting Commemorative Gold Coins Priced Up To $12,000 on President Trump's Birthday; Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz Criticizes Texas Democratic Senate Candidate James Talarico for Not Being Masculine. Aired 10-11a ET.
Aired June 13, 2026 - 10:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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[10:00:38]
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: Today, buckle up. That's the warning from a Republican senator to Donald Trump, as the president starts to lose patience.
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: I'm not frustrated. I don't get frustrated.
PHILLIP: Plus, the son returns.
HUNTER BIDEN, PRESIDENT BIDEN'S SON: What the -- man? What are you all -- talking about?
PHILLIP: Hunter Biden goes X-rated and unplugged to attack his critics, something the left is cheering on.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We kept it classy for too long, and at this point, I'm like, come at me and I'm going to punch you in the mouth.
PHILLIP: Also, on the eve of fight night at the White House.
MARCO RUBIO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Maybe, you know, well just host weekly fights between people and politics.
PHILLIP: The Trump family cashes in on the president's UFC spectacle.
And, you mad, bro? MAGA tries to make masculinity an issue in these midterms.
SEN. TED CRUZ, (R-TX): A stiff breeze came by, it would blow him over like a feather.
PHILLIP: Here in studio, Bakari Sellers, Noah Rothman, Reshma Saujani, and Xochitl Hinojosa. It's the weekend. Join the conversation at a "TABLE FOR FIVE".
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Hi, everyone. I'm Abby Phillip. As the pressure is mounting on Donald Trump, he claims it doesn't faze him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: I'm not frustrated. I don't get frustrated.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: But the problem is that this week showed that he's clearly not telling the truth, or at least not quite telling the truth. Sources said that he's furious that new strikes against Iran weren't seen as powerful enough. He also made a pretty far-fetched claim when he was complaining about the media coverage of the war.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: Iran is very good at publicity, but they're not good at fighting. So I took a look, and I must tell you. They can't believe the press they're getting. They can't even believe it. And they told me, they said, it's amazing how well we're doing in the papers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: On top of the war, he gave in to pressure and named a new pick to lead the nation's intelligence agencies. That's after backlash over his unexpectedly inexperienced selection. He called Californias elections rigged when Spencer Pratt lost a mayoral race, but apparently believed them when his gubernatorial candidate advanced. He blamed his staff for making him endorse a candidate who lost his primary this week. And many times, when Trump gets frustrated, he denies reality, like claiming that he wasn't booed at Madison Square Garden this week, or this comment about inflation hitting a three-year high.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you concerned, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number which came out this morning? Could that be a --
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: No, I love it. The numbers were great.
You know what I really love? I love the inflation. When the war is over --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes?
TRUMP: -- it's coming down.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know you can't --
TRUMP: It's going to come down like a rock.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: But despite playing it cool, one of the Republicans who lost his primary after a Trump snub says that he and others have more freedom now, and Trump is in for a bumpy ride for the next few months, and perhaps the next two years.
I think a lot of things are happening this week, but they all kind of converge on one thing, which is that a lot of the force of will that Trump puts behind everything that he does in the presidency has not been enough to do two things. One, resolve this war in Iran fully, and two, release some of this economic anxiety that voters have had and their unhappiness with how he's handled the economy. And this is all happening, and the midterms are just a few months away now.
BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think Trump and the Republican Party are in for a rude awakening. Most times you have an incumbent president, and during the midterm you usually see some fall off. I mean, that's the way that history goes.
But I think now you're starting to see Trump's imprint on the party be detrimental to their chances for success in November, because everybody recognizes when Trump endorses someone in a Republican primary, those individuals win. The problem is, over the next six months, you kind of have to shake that off, because voters right now, they're not in favor of higher inflation. They're not in favor of a war in Iran. They're not in favor of higher gas prices. They elected Donald Trump with all of his vulgarity, with all of his tweets, with all of his behavior, with all of the things that drive me up a wall, they said they were going to vote for him again because he's going to lower the cost of living.
[10:05:08]
What has Donald Trump not done? Lower the cost of living. They elected him because they said, we're going to put see they said, were going to put America first. What are they not saying? America first.
And so they are very tangible things -- ideals, politics, policies -- from a 50,000 foot view that we don't even have to get in the weeds of policy to see where Donald Trump has not even met the level of expectation of the voting base that put him back in the office.
Man, that was good.
(LAUGHTER)
PHILLIP: You left Noah a little speechless. Go ahead, Noah.
NOAH ROTHMAN, SENIOR WRITER, "NATIONAL REVIEW": No, I think the president, if he's frustrated with the degree to which people reacted to his strikes and said, well, this isn't big enough, he only has himself to blame. We were here when that happened. He called them off mid-sortie, under the expectation, apparently, that the Iranians were coming closer to a deal with him. And the deal is subject to interpretation. What were getting from the White House and what we're getting from Hanson (ph), for example, or here, the Iranian news agencies, diametrically opposed. There's no way to reconcile those two things. So we don't even know what's coming.
I would -- I would suspect that the president believes, and correctly believes, that the American people will be unforgiving if he emerges from this war with anything less than a realistic claim to success, to efficacy.
PHILLIP: Can I ask you to respond to this and let you -- I just want you to respond. This is Don Bacon. He said this on Thursday, and this is how he sees where we are in the war.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. DON BACON, (R-NE): Iran needs to come to us wanting a deal. Right now, we're going to them. And they and they are abusing the president in these negotiations, if you ask me. Because they think he wants it more than they do. We've got to make the Iranians want a deal. And right now they think they can, they think they have the advantage over President Trump.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I just wonder, based on what you were just saying, I mean, do you think that's an accurate interpretation of where we are?
ROTHMAN: I don't think it's an inaccurate interpretation. I'm too removed from the process to know what the -- and I don't suspect Congressman Bacon is who I really respect. I don't suspect he's close enough to the process either to know precisely what the Iranians are thinking.
Look, the blockade is having a significant effect on behavior of the Iranians. We don't even have to be in the room to know that Iranian behavior is shifting as a result of the economic complications that they're facing, the degree to which the IRGC can't pay its subordinates, et cetera. That's pressure that should continue. I don't see how the president gets what he wants in the absence of that pressure, combined with kinetic force designed to open up the strait.
Look, we've done it before. We did it in the 1980s. I'm not sure why this president is reluctant to go back to high tempo combat operations. Perhaps it's because our exquisite defensive interceptors are too short to guarantee the safety of the Gulf. Perhaps the Gulf allies are getting squeamish. Perhaps political concerns on the domestic front are altering his calculation. Irrespective, the president is coming out of this looking weaker.
PHILLIP: Well, it's not helpful that he keeps telling Americans that the war is over, and then they keep bombing. Well, I mean, that's not helpful.
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's not only that, but all of this is self-inflicted. I mean, if you look back at what happened a year ago, whenever there were -- he put forward tariffs and he told the American people that they would just have to deal with a little bit of pain for long-term gain, that didn't end up happening.
Then fast-forward to this war, again, self-inflicted. So gas prices, all of these things, the economy was actually heading in a pretty good direction. President Trump inherited an economy, and at the start of his presidency, it was going in the right direction. All of the things that he has done, he's gotten in the way of the American people prospering. And the American people are starting to see that. And now they don't really believe him anymore every time that he says, listen, just bear with me for a little bit.
And so I think that if you're looking at this week and totality, everything is because Donald Trump caused it, as were heading into the midterm elections.
RESHMA SAUJANI, FOUNDER, GIRLS WHO CODE AND MOMS FIRST: Yes, and I also think he's just like unabashedly being like, I don't care.
HINOJOSA: That's right.
SAUJANI: I mean, almost 50 percent of Americans, they can't afford the essentials, like diapers, you know what I mean, food, shoes for their kids. And he has said over and over again, basically, like, I'm going to put billions into bombs and pennies for moms. And he's going to pay the price of that. Like he -- the math is not mathing for American families. You can't hide behind that. It's just facts.
ROTHMAN: I honestly --
PHILLIP: That chart. Look at this chart, the inflation chart. Producer price index and the consumer price index both up sharply for the month of May. I mean, that's directly a result of the war. Inflation is now officially eating up wage increases. And so, it's just not a good fact pattern when you run on bringing prices down and then prices spike.
ROTHMAN: Yes. And that's not the only consideration. Americans are not in favor of Iran getting a nuclear weapon. They don't like the Iranian regime. They don't want to see it continue to exist. I kind of wish that he had approached the American people and said, listen, you're going to have to bear a little bit of a burden in your pockets for a while so we can extricate this --
PHILLIP: But they also just don't like this war. I mean, they agree with you on those two things, but they don't like the fact of this war, and they don't like how it's been --
[10:10:04]
SELLERS: But also, the legislative way to do that would have been for Donald Trump to actually go to the United States Congress and make his case there and build a coalition to actually authorize war powers to go and do this. The problem with what you're saying is that, although we all around this table agree that Iran does not need to have a nuclear weapon, and I would venture to say the overwhelming majority of Americans actually would agree with that, the way that we went about it from the very beginning poses a problem.
So now this happens. You have Marco Rubio, who articulated two weeks ago this litany of successes that they've had. One of the things that Marco Rubio did not articulate is actually destroying their nuclear program or making them further away from a nuclear weapon than they were when they destroyed the JCPOA.
So what I'm simply saying is if Donald Trump, he's put himself in this box. If Donald Trump ends this war and the nuclear program in Iran is not destroyed, not just disrupted, but destroyed, this is not a success. And that's a -- that is, that is a hell of a bar that he set for himself.
PHILLIP: And you're going to start to see Republicans, we're already seeing this -- Thom Tillis, Cornyn, Cassidy, McConnell to some extent, basically saying it's time to cut bait, because we have a midterm coming up, and this guy in the White House is doing what's good for him, but not what's good for the rest.
SAUJANI: And also, I think if you ask the American people, do you want to get rid of nuclear weapons in Iran or do you want childcare? I promise you they're going to pick childcare.
ROTHMAN: But you can't deliver childcare. Hang on, one second.
SAUJANI: Excuse me. You can deliver care. You absolutely can. You've had Vermont do it.
ROTHMAN: The federal government can promise you childcare. It can take your money out of your pocket. It's not going to give you childcare. Private providers give you childcare.
SAUJANI: That's not true. That's actually not true.
ROTHMAN: It's not a promise to pay. That is actually how it works. The federal government disburses money that extracts from your pocket.
We can overread the poll numbers which say that the Iranian war is unpopular. But if you ask in those very same polls, in those very same polls, you ask what the American people want, these are 80-20 propositions. The Iranian government should not have a nuclear weapon, the Iranian regime should collapse.
PHILLIP: Yes, but you are over -- I think you are overreading those polls, because there is -- it is definitely possible for Americans to say, we don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and to also say we don't think that the best way to make that happen is war.
ROTHMAN: Well, that's wrong.
PHILLIP: Those are not contrary --
ROTHMAN: I'm going to tell you why.
PHILLIP: Those are not -- maybe you think that they're wrong.
ROTHMAN: I am, and I'm going to tell you why. It's because after 2015 --
PHILLIP: But that's what the American people, they don't agree with that.
ROTHMAN: -- they codified an agreement in which the Iranian people, the Iranian government, was allowed to keep it's uranium enrichment centrifuges, it's uranium bomb making equipment, and it --
PHILLIP: No, they were not.
ROTHMAN: That is not true.
(CROSS TALK)
ROTHMAN: The centrifuges were mothballed. Yes, it is.
(CROSS TALK)
ROTHMAN: How did they start up this -- yes, it is. How did they start up the highly enriched --
PHILLIP: It's not true that the JCPOA allowed Iran to keep their bombmaking capabilities. That is not true.
ROTHMAN: Abby, that's inaccurate.
PHILLIP: No.
ROTHMAN: The JCPOA mothballed centrifuges. It did not dismantle them. That's why they started enriching uranium immediately after the JCPOA collapsed. And if you think that there wasn't going to be a hostage crisis over the nuclear weapons program --
PHILLIP: We don't we don't have time to get into all the details of the JCPOA.
ROTHMAN: The details matter here, because you're saying they're wrong when that's inaccurate.
PHILLIP: It does matter, because I do think that your assertion that the JCPOA basically just left unsaid whether or not they could have a nuclear weapon is not true.
ROTHMAN: It didn't leave it unsaid. It said, actually, that you could engage in nuclear research when it's sunset, which would have been sanctioned --
PHILLIP: And on top of that, and on top of that, the Trump administration effectively made that sunset immediate when they pulled out of the deal and did not replace it with anything. So what it did is it unshackled Iran from any sort of prohibitions or oversight over what they were doing, and then they immediately started enriching to a level that is -- SELLERS: I mean, can we go back to just a simple question that I would ask --
PHILLIP: OK, last thing.
SELLERS: -- that I would ask a voter and I would ask you. I would simply say, the only way that you can destroy Iran's nuclear program is to put boots on the ground, right, absent Iran doing it themselves, which takes a whole hell of a lot of belief in Iranians and their government. And nobody around this table actually believes that they're honest brokers. Do you think the American public is willing to risk the lives of our men and women with boots on the ground when we have surging cost of electricity, gas, fertilizer, et cetera? And that's why, that's why, that's why when you -- that's why when you brought up the polls, I was like, yes, it sounds OK.
ROTHMAN: I think it just displays a remarkable lack of faith in the American people that they wouldn't support a project to liberate Iran and extricate this 50 year threat, and, and ensure that the hostage --
PHILLIP: It's not guesswork, Noah.
(CROSS TALK)
ROTHMAN: The hostage crisis that we are experiencing now in the Strait of Hormuz.
SELLERS: That's not America first.
(CROSS TALK)
SELLERS: I thought we were America first.
PHILLIP: Guys, it's not --
SHIRLEY: No, clearly America last.
[10:15:02]
PHILLIP: There is polling on this.
(CROSS TALK)
PHILLIP: The American public has been asked about this, and they have said a resounding no.
ROTHMAN: -- as though it's a zero-sum game.
PHILLIP: It's not, it's not a guess whether or not they support it. They don't.
HINOJOSA: You should go to Iowa. The voters in Iowa will tell you that they do not.
PHILLIP: Hunter Biden takes the gloves off and his X-rated style has some liberals cheering on. But -- and also, on the eve of the president's birthday fight at the White House, he and his family are once again trying to cash in. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:20:10]
PHILLIP: Welcome back. He was the right's punching bag for years, but now Hunter Biden is the one punching back. The former president's son is causing a stir online, whether sitting down with former critics like Candace Owens or X-rated posts that involve making fun of himself. This week, he joined Gavin Newsom and defended Graham Platner, and the scandal-laden a candidate in Maine got a little bit of support from Hunter Biden after he won the party's nomination. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HUNTER BIDEN, PRESIDENT BIDEN'S SON: I have not heard anything in any way that would say to me that that, uh, that he is a, um, abusive, um, uh, misogynistic, or antisemitic, or a racist person. And I have heard this from Graham Platner, though, that he thinks we should all have free health care. I have heard this from Graham Platner also, that he thinks that we have to radically change our politics. I have heard this from Graham Platner, that working people are getting -- screwed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So Hunter Biden is back, and I'm not sure who asked for this. Does anyone know?
HINOJOSA: I did not ask for this. And I think that if you -- the vast majority, I think in the Democratic Party, also are kind of done with talking about the Biden family. They -- President Biden did wonderful things, and I'm not sure -- I'm not sure why he's going out and talking about it.
One thing about his comments on Graham Platner I do find it interesting that there has generally been a divide in response when it comes to response from men, and then response from women. One thing I think I would caution the Democratic Party more broadly about it, is that women make up a majority of the electorate, especially independent voters. And if people are -- and I think that obviously the voters of Maine are going to vote when it comes to Graham Platner, it seems like the allegations don't bother them. But for national Democrats to really go out on a limb right now, I don't think it is a smart idea for the reason that we need them to win in the midterm elections. We need women to win in 2028. And we start alienating women, that is terrible for the Democratic Party. We cannot be the Republican Party. And so this conversation, you know, with national Democrats I find interesting because of that gender divide.
PHILLIP: Reshma, do you think it's alienating women, the way Democrats are handling it?
SAUJANI: Yes, I just, I didn't like the smirk on their faces, right, when they actually made that comment about, like, he hasn't done this, he hasn't done that. But he has real allegations from women accusing him of abuse. And we should have to take that seriously.
Look, I think on the Hunter Biden thing, like, he's not a politician. He's an entertainer. And I don't know about you, but I almost rather take, like a shit-poster on X rather than a grifter to be the next president's son.
And I think -- but the problem is, is like, we've got to be careful about this, right? We kind of are falling in love with these men who are just simply entertaining us. And we elected one. And now everyone thinks that that's basically the playbook. Didn't work in L.A., right? I think the reality is, and you see this with Mayor Mamdani's win. You know, he was incredible as a social media personality, but he also had substance. He gave us hope. He gave us inspiration. That's what America -- that's what the that's what voters are looking for.
And so I think just be careful on this playbook as it being a signal of, like, that's what you have to do to actually get elected.
PHILLIP: That is such an important point, because to me, the Hunter Biden thing, like, first of all, I don't think most people care one way or another. No, nobody really is like begging to hear from Hunter Biden. But the quickness with which some Democrats are like, oh, he's trashing Trump online, let's elevate that, I don't know. I mean, why? Like, that just seems substance free.
SELLERS: First of all, you had two people that were together for a particular cause, right, a singular cause. And I think that a lot of times people assume that Gavin Newsom ascended to the level of popularity he did because he had the same type of arrogance, egomania, and Twitter presence that Donald Trump did. And when you match him with Hunter Biden, you kind of get this really weird, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And for some Democrats, that's what they're looking for. They're looking for accountability. They're looking for boisterism (ph). They're looking for machismo, something that Donald Trump represented.
I think for me, Hunter Biden can do whatever he would like to do. He's not in the arena. I could care less. I do hear your points, though, because when I was -- when I was preparing for the show this morning, one of the things that we talked about was Hunter Biden, and I was really prepared to say, I don't care. I give two cents. But I understand your point about the way that it makes women feel when they have this type of colloquial conversation. So I take that, and I hear you on that. And I'll have to self-evolve on that.
The other point is that Donald Trump Jr. actually is in the White House right now. He is the president's son. In 1789 capital, he joined the board. They got a $620 million contract with the Pentagon. You can giggle, but it's a fact. You have drones.
[10:25:09]
ROTHMAN: It's a non sequitur.
SELLERS: You have, you have --
ROTHMAN: That's not the topic at issue. Hang on.
SELLERS: No, no, no. Let me finish. This is called, this is called grifting.
ROTHMAN: So is that.
SELLERS: And that's fine. He's not in the White House. But what I am saying, and whataboutism is fine if that's going to be the argument.
ROTHMAN: No, it's not.
SELLERS: But what I'm also saying, it's meme coins. I'm saying bitcoin. I'm saying cryptocurrency. I'm saying the businesses that the president's sons have joined, the boards, that they've monetized. And so I think that the American public is very clear-eyed about the fact that Donald Trump and Eric Trump are just as bad, if you want to say so.
ROTHMAN: OK, back to the subject at hand, Hunter Biden and Graham Platner, what I heard there was very representative of the progressive movement. Yes, he's got some character flaws. Maybe I didn't hear that he said black people don't tip. Maybe I didn't hear that he said that women should, you know, accept the fact that they are inviting rape. Maybe he didn't hear any of that, but his progressive sensibilities, his policy preferences, they suffice for character. I hear that all the time. And I hear it from progressives looking for a rationalization to vote for Graham Platner. And if the shoe was on the other foot, if it was a Republican, it wouldn't be his ideology.
HINOJOSA: Well, there is with Ken Paxton.
(CROSS TALK)
ROTHMAN: And this is exactly, you just made my point for me.
HINOJOSA: I know, and I'm not defending Graham Platner.
ROTHMAN: They would say that it's rapacious, cold-hearted, conservative ideology that is part of that philosophy.
SELLERS: Did you vote for Donald Trump?
ROTHMAN: No.
SELLERS: Not any of the three times?
ROTHMAN: Never. And you know why? Because character matters.
HINOJOSA: Yes. So let's be clear, we don't want either one of them. You know what I mean? To be on the record.
ROTHMAN: So the point being that progressives never confront their own ideological prescriptions that may contribute to this as well. The political violence that attends around progressivism, the paternalism towards minorities that attends around progressivism.
(CROSS TALK)
SELLERS: Neither one of them are actually rooted in truth.
ROTHMAN: The paternalism is self-evident. You were here for the DEI events, all the debate around it, which was that minorities cannot navigate life without a liberal sherpa holding their hand.
SAUJANI: That's not what DEI is about.
PHILLIP: Hold on, OK. Let me play this, because I think it speaks to some extent to your point. But I think what's -- what you're going to hear here is actually maybe an evolution among some people on the left. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SOPHIA BUSH, ACTOR AND GUEST HOST, "THE VIEW": The kind of old rules, unfortunately, don't exist anymore. I think a lot of us, I miss decorum. I miss actual researched and corroborated journalism being what gets on the air. But at the end of the day, I think if you don't go into some of these spaces, you leave a vacuum for the worst misinformation, for the worst racism, for the worst sexism to grow.
And while I do believe my forever first lady, Michelle Obama, should stay high, like when they go low, she should stay high.
(APPLAUSE)
BUSH: I don't want that woman in the muck. But I was raised by a mother who was raised in the Bronx. Do you want to go low, I'll meet you in the gutter.
We kept it classy for too long, and at this point I'm like, come at me and I'm going to punch you in the mouth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SELLERS: Let me, let me, let me chime in here because I hear everybody's points. I need to disabuse you of a couple of notions. First is this paternalism that you talked about with DEI and everything else. And I think that is a, that is a decently privileged statement to make for this reason. One of the things that people don't realize is that the cost of change in this country is extremely high for minorities and people of color. Every ounce of change we've ever had in this country has been because of black blood that flowed through the streets. So you don't have the 64-65 voting rights act. This isn't paternalism. This is without the Edmund Pettus Bridge, right. And that was the first time white people actually were able to see the brutality black people faced in the streets of Mississippi.
You don't have the Fair Housing Act of 1968 without the assassination of King. You don't have the confederate flag come down without the killing of nine people in a church. You don't have a conversation about criminal justice reform without George Floyd.
And so I give you those historical markers, because when you're able to articulate or come on TV and say that there is some paternalism that goes along with the progressivism and the way they treat minorities, that's simply not the case.
One of the things I believe, my goal in life is to, is to drive down that cost. And so when we talk about people like Graham Platner, when we talk about people who are in imperfect, with all of their markers, one of the things that minorities in this country in particular are dealing with are grasping with this unenviable task of choosing this kind of lesser of two evils, because we cannot afford the ability to be persecuted, oppressed, or put upon any longer.
And so I hear the balance, but I want you to understand there's a certain level of empathy that has to go into this decision about the choices that we make and the alternatives that we have, because if Graham Platner was not the nominee, I would cheer loudly. That is my goal. But there is a certain privilege.
ROTHMAN: I'm sorry, you're just looking directly at me. Empathy is fine, but empathy stripped of discretion is not fine. Empathy is stripped of discretion and judging individuals as individuals rather than avatars of a political movement, and then subordinating the standards you would apply to anybody else merely because they're part of your political movement.
[10:30:05]
PHILLIP: Next for us, as President Trump gears up for his birthday bash tomorrow with a UFC fight in his backyard at the White House, his kids are having commemorative coins made to remember the event, and they're pricing them as high as $12,000. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: It could be the most infamous fight at the White House since the aliens in "Independence Day." Tomorrow night, the president celebrating his 80th birthday on the lawn of the White House under an octagon and next to a UFC cage.
[10:30:04]
The event is costing $60 million and needs seven different agencies to pull off. It will even include a military flyover. And what would be an event these days without the Trump family profiting off of it? The Trump Organization is promoting gold coins priced as high as $12,000 bucks. The freedom 250 themed coins feature Trump's face, and the company says that the president himself had a hand in designing it.
Now remember, the sons have already licensed his name to promote phones, fragrances, crypto, golf courses, and a range of other business ventures.
But just on the coins for just a second, they have claimed that this is part of celebrating Americas 250th birthday. It's June. It happens to be the president's birthday, and they are selling coins with the president's face on it, and personally taking that money. How is that not something that Republicans are more up in arms about? ROTHMAN: Well, the political inducement here is not to be up in arms
about it, especially since Democrats are going to spend the majority of their time in the majority of Congress investigating this presidency for acts that are designed to enrich the family. We have the appearance of it. We don't have the facts. And I think Democrats will spend a lot of time.
PHILLIP: You don't think it's a fact that if they are selling $12,000 coins, they are benefiting off of literally the president's name and likeness and an event that is partially taxpayer funded?
ROTHMAN: Yes, most likely.
PHILLIP: That's not -- that's not a, that's not a supposition. Like, that's a fact.
ROTHMAN: Yes. And in an investigatory mechanism designed to establish that with evidence as opposed to supposition, then yes --
PHILLIP: What violence do you need?
ROTHMAN: You need an investigation to establish --
PHILLIP: Why.
(CROSS TALK)
PHILLIP: I'm not saying, I'm not --
ROTHMAN: -- impeachable offenses. That's something you actually have to investigate.
PHILLIP: Listen, I am actually not calling it criminal. I'm just saying, on it's face --
ROTHMAN: It could be.
PHILLIP: -- the money is going from the American people using the president as leverage and into the pockets of his own family, OK, his family organization that as soon as he's out of the office, he goes right back to run. So that is, just on its face. It doesn't require any investigation.
I guess I'm just asking --
ROTHMAN: It does.
PHILLIP: -- if you are worried about being investigated, why aren't Republicans doing more to stop the president from doing things that will prompt investigations? He feels clearly emboldened. So they just keep doing more and more and more and more.
ROTHMAN: Why didn't Joe Biden put the reins around his son when he was getting a sweetheart deal with Burisma and selling access to Joe Biden?
(CROSS TALK)
HINOJOSA: Hunter Biden was also investigated at some point for all sorts of things and eventually indicted. And so this Justice Department would actually --
ROTHMAN: And then pardoned.
HINOJOSA: Yes, but this Justice Department wouldn't actually investigate Don Jr., for example, for any of the acts that he is doing. And I think that the president feels emboldened because the Supreme Court has essentially said that he can do whatever he wants while he is president of United States.
ROTHMAN: We're investigating all history, but Joe Biden's department investigated him, yes.
HINOJOSA: Yes, yes.
ROTHMAN: And then Biden intervened, and then they offered Joe Biden an immunity deal and guarantees to not be prosecuted in the future indefinitely.
PHILLIP: The Trump Justice Department also looked into the Hunter Biden thing, and they produced nothing.
ROTHMAN: I'm sorry.
PHILLIP: The Trump Justice Department, you might remember, wanted to look into this too, also produced no prosecution of Hunter Biden. So it's not just the Bidens.
ROTHMAN: Well, no, there was a recommended to prosecute Hunter Biden, and then Joe Biden --
SELLERS: Donald, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump have violated the law. And I don't need an oversight committee to tell you that they've done that. I can tell you that Donald Trump from his office and behind the resolute desk have literally said that you should go out and buy XYZ stock while he's actually purchased that stock multiple times.
SAUJANI: Right.
SELLERS: I can tell you that there have been boards that Donald Trump Jr. and eric Trump have been a part of, that the White House has pressured them or their Department of Justice has actually given them contracts in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Like, I don't have to, there's no --
ROTHMAN: In this country you do. In this country, we say on camera, we say "allegedly", someone is accused of a crime and not convicted of a crime. Yes, we do, actually, have to be a little more circumspect.
SAUJANI: Why don't we put the grifting aside. To, I think it's --
PHILLIP: This is the last word. SAUJANI: Let's put the grifting aside. I think it's crazy that a president at this moment where Americans are drowning is throwing himself a $60 million birthday party. I mean, moms are choosing between like rent and childcare. To me, he's like modern day Marie Antoinette, right? Let them eat cake.
PHILLIP: All right, next for us, Republicans appear to be putting masculinity on the ballot this November, but the messengers are raising some eyebrows. We'll debate.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[10:44:35]
SEN. TED CRUZ, (R-TX): I got to say, if you were making a list of 1,000 adjectives to describe this guy, masculine would not be one of them. I mean, this guy, if a stiff breeze came by, it would blow him over like a feather.
JAMES TALARICO, (D) TEXAS SENATE NOMINEE: Real men serve others. Weak men serve themselves. And so I welcome this debate about what it means to be a man. And I don't think Ken Paxton or Ted Cruz are in a position to tell anybody what a real man is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[10:45:04]
PHILLIP: Who is more bro? MAGA is apparently trying to make masculinity an issue in the midterms, as Republicans are targeting Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico. But it's not the only culture war that's being waged ahead of November. At a turning point conference of conservative influencers, including Erika Kirk, they had this message for women.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ERIKA KIRK, TURNING POINT USA CEO: Charlie would often say that feminism was about wanting women to become men and eventually not needing men. Motherhood is a burden. Marriage is a trap, or motherhood is something that should be stalled or not even experienced at all.
As women in today's world, we are blessed with far more choices than any other generation. But why is that having all those choices is now leaving us with far less clarity about who we are and what we are created for?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Culture wars like this are part of Reshma's new documentary, "No Country for Mothers." And if you don't see the through line between these two things, that that the idea that in order for men to feel more masculine, women have to feel a certain way about whether or not they want to have children, whether or not they want to work outside of the home, that's kind of where this is converging upon. It's elevating men. But why does it have to come at the expense of women?
SAUJANI: It's so interesting. To me, it's like, the same thing, right? We create culture wars for both women and men to distract and divide, right? American motherhood is broken by design, right? Because we're constantly offering women a binary. Now it's be a tradwife or be a girl boss. And were asking them to do those things without any support, no childcare, no paid leave, no flexibility.
PHILLIP: Not even equal pay.
SAUJANI: Right, not even equal pay. And what most women want is, is something in the middle. But if were so divided, if were so distracted, if we're spending all of our time in the comment section and Instagram, we're not marching for paid leave and we're not marching for childcare.
What they're doing to men is pretty much the same. We're basically saying to men, and we see this in the Talarico race, is that you're not you're not man enough, right? You're weak. You're feminine. That's how you're a bad man. Right. And it's fascinating to me that the worst thing you can call a man is a woman. It tells us how much we hate women in this country.
PHILLIP: That's interesting. I mean, the whole argument against Talarico is that he's feminized. By the way, it's baseless. And it's also, you know, the that he's gay, that he's trans, whatever it is. It involves the denigrating of other people. But why? What place does that have in our politics?
ROTHMAN: I don't like those masculinity, you know, notion being introduced here. But what they're trying to do is focus on his comments about transgenderism and the notion that there are six genders that he can identify. That's what they're trying to make, that vulnerability glaring. And it's a pretty sound argument in Texas.
SAUJANI: I don't think that's what they're trying to do. I mean, you see this in the far right. They do this with each other. Like Alex Clark and Candace Owens, the way they get at each other is by telling them that their husbands are gay. Like, it's like this lavender fighting. It's the strategy on the right to essentially take you down a few notches, like the way I'm going to discredit you, the way I'm going to poke holes basically in your credibility is by telling you that you're, that you're gay. They do this with each other.
PHILLIP: There's definitely a disconnect there for a lot of Americans. And don't miss Reshma's documentary, "No Country for Mothers." It premieres on June 15th.
And next for us, the panel's unpopular opinions, what they're not afraid to say out loud.
But first, a quick programing note. Follow the descendants of explorers who pushed west as they reveal the hardships that transformed the distant frontier in the CNN original series "This Land." Two new episodes air Sunday at 9:00 p.m. on CNN, and the next day on the CNN app.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:53:46]
PHILLIP: We're back, and it's time for your unpopular opinions. Noah, you're up.
ROTHMAN: OK, the World Cup is boring. Now, this opinion is totally contingent on America not being in it. I'll watch and I'll root for America. But we tend not to be in it very often. So what you end up with is a game of passing between countries. Ronaldo to Adewale to Ronaldo. Fascinating.
PHILLIP: America is in it.
ROTHMAN: I'll watch it until they're not.
PHILLIP: Hopefully that will pique your interest. All right, Bakari.
SELLERS: The World Cup is fascinating, by the way.
Pumpkin pie is a crime against humanity. I think if I show up to your house and I -- and you don't have your pies labeled, and I grab a slice of pumpkin pie thinking it's sweet potato pie, I'm flipping everything over.
(LAUGHTER)
PHILLIP: That means you're not a real sweet potato pie connoisseur, because you should be able to.
SELLERS: The color.
PHILLIP: You should be able to look at it.
SELLERS: Because it's light-skinned? Oh, my goodness. Because it's a light-skinned pie?
(LAUGHTER)
PHILLIP: It just looks different, Bakari. You know that. Come on.
All right, Xochitl?
HINOJOSA: OK, don't throw me off the set, but go Spurs, go.
PHILLIP: Oh, God.
SELLERS: Oh my God.
SAUJANI: I might throw you off the set.
SELLERS: That's terrible.
SAUJANI: I'm like, I'm like Knicks, they're going to win tonight. Knicks in five, girl.
[10:55:00]
OK, so my unpopular take is Jalen Brunson is the GOAT.
SELLERS: Oh, my God, let's go to commercial.
SAUJANI: He's the GOAT. He is better than Michael Jordan, and I'm from Chicago. And I want to say why, right. Because he's got, he's got no ego. He is a servant leader. Everyone counted him out, and he is going to show how it's done. New York forever.
PHILLIP: I will say his humility has been one of the best things that I've watched about these finals.
SELLERS: Michael Jordan --
SAUJANI: He's a girls' dad.
SELLERS: Michael Jordan is an egomaniac, gambling nut, but he's the greatest basketball player to ever play the game. He has six championships. Jaylen's trying to get half of one.
PHILLIP: All right, everyone, thank you so much. And thank you for watching "TABLE FOR FIVE". You can catch our weeknight show at 10:00 p.m. eastern with our Newsnight roundtable and anytime on your favorite social media, X, Instagram, and on TikTok.
But in the meantime, CNN's coverage continues right now.
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