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Table For Five
Republicans Attack Democratic Michigan Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed Along Religious Lines; Republicans Accused of Double Standard in Their Handling of Abuse Allegations against Republican Representative Max Miller Versus Their Condemnations of Former Democratic Maine Senate Candidate Graham Platner; Former FOX News Hosts and Current Trump Administration Officials Jeanine Pirro and Pete Hegseth Criticized by President Trump; Surveys Find Large Number of Americans having Difficulty Finding Romance and Long Term Relationships. Aired 10-11a ET
Aired August 08, 2026 - 10:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[10:00:35]
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: Today, they call him extreme, dangerous, radical. And now Republicans will have to beat him in their quest to keep the Senate.
SEN. TED CRUZ, (R-TX): This is literally a communist takeover of the Democrat Party.
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: When I watch Abdul, he's full of --
PHILLIP: Plus, just weeks after Graham Platner, another abuse scandal explodes, this one involving a Republican. But will MAGA treat Max Miller the same way they treated the Democrat?
TRUMP: It's a very sad situation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a very sad and unfortunate case.
PHILLIP: Also, foxes in the doghouse. A tough week for the former TV hosts who Trump hired in Washington.
TRUMP: I guess she choked. She folded like an umbrella.
PHILLIP: And love on the rocks. Why America may be in a romance rut.
Here in studio, Van Lathan, Lauren Wright, Noah Rothman, and Kmele Foster.
It's the weekend. Join the conversation at a "TABLE FOR FIVE".
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Hi everyone. I'm Abby Phillip. Thanks for joining us. There's a new villain on the Republican block, and the party is
wasting no time trying to show that he's not from the neighborhood. Abdul El-Sayed is the progressive who just beat the Democratic establishment for a chance to compete for a Senate seat in the swing state of Michigan. Now, that seat is key for Democrats if they want to have any hope of taking back the Senate. But already conservatives are zeroing in on his identity. Remember, El-Sayed is Muslim. He is a Michigan born son of Egyptian immigrants. He opposes military funding for Israel. And you put those three things in the campaign spin machine, and you'll get this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Abdulrahman Mohammad El-Sayed, the most radical Senate candidate in America.
ABDUL EL-SAYED, (D) MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE: I'm pretty damn dangerous.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Abdul El-Sayed, too radical, too dangerous. Wrong for Michigan.
J.D. VANCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENT: God forbid you're going to have president El-Sayed in three years.
SEN. TED CRUZ, (R-TX): This is literally a communist takeover of the Democrat Party. They want to cancel Thanksgiving. They want to cancel Christmas. Look, these communists hate America. They hate capitalism. El-Sayed is also an Islamist, as is Mamdani. And look, you see the green-red convergence where the communists and the Islamists, they want sharia law.
TRUMP: Abdul El-Sayed, lovely gentleman. He's a man of hate. And now he's going around saying, no, I love everybody, I love -- he doesn't love everybody. Put him in office. You're going to find out what he loves. He doesn't love Israel. He doesn't love Jewish people. He hates him. He hates him with a passion that burns in his heart, and there's not a freaking thing he can do about it. When I watch Abdul, he's full of --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: For his part, El-Sayed is trying to stay on some kind of message, specifically about the economy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ABDUL EL-SAYED, (D) MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE: So at the end of the day, you know, I invite the president to focus on what I'm saying. I want to get money out of politics, put money in your pocket, and pass Medicare for all. I think a lot of Michiganders want that right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So there is a lot to talk about when it comes to El-Sayed in terms of his past statements, his present positions, all of that. Is it the right political strategy for Republicans to focus on his Muslim name, call him an Islamist, say he wants to institute sharia law, versus actually just dealing with the actual policy that he supports?
NOAH ROTHMAN, SENIOR WRITER, "NATIONAL REVIEW": I'm like all of the above kind of person when it comes to this guy. He says, you know, I'm not a socialist, not like those guys. I'm a capitalist. All I want to do is nationalize the health care industry, eliminate border control, and seize wealth, not to, you know, use it for anything, but just to make the playing field fairer. But definitely not a communist.
But yes, they can absolutely focus on what I regard as anti-western ideals, like the notion that maybe he shouldn't celebrate the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei because his constituencies might be sad about that, like the fact that he couldn't issue a condemnation, full throated, unequivocal condemnation of an attempted terrorist attack on a Michigan synagogue that would have killed 140 Jewish children without condemning Israel in the very same sentence. And like the fact that he pals around with Hasan Piker, who he can't condemn, but who has said the United States deserved 9/11, and maybe people should kill, murder Senator Scott, Rick Scott.
[10:05:05]
Now, he said he apologized for that, but only because he was kicked off social media for saying you should kill a sitting Republican officeholder. All of that is fair game. This guy's a very damaged candidate.
LAUREN WRIGHT, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY POLITICAL SCIENTIST: And the father-in-law, the father-in-law, one of the biggest donors to the campaign and the biggest boosters, is a founding member of an organization that has been investigated for funneling money to the Muslim Brotherhood on the way to Hamas. I mean, these are really crazy, crazy things. And I think it's fair to ask questions about all of them, just like you would someone Trump's campaigning with, just like anyone anyone is campaigning with. We would all say scrutinize them. And that's what this is. I think it's fair.
VAN LATHAN, PODCAST CO-HOST, "HIGHER LEARNING": Is it? I wow, I'm delighted to see a moral center has been found, man, because like, I thought you guys were the party of Laura Loomer. I thought it was --
WRIGHT: Not me. I would say the same thing about those people.
LATHAN: What I would say, though, to me is that like, you know, when I look around, not at who the president has surrounded himself with, who the president is and who the president has empowered, and some of the things that these people have said and done, I think it's best if we kind of get the pearl clutching out of the way and concentrate on the policy because I --
WRIGHT: Pearl clutching Hamas and Israel are on the same moral footing, that's pearl clutching. No sane person would say something like that and not --
LATHAN: Well, then I'm very insane, because this is what I'll say. I'll say that a lot of people are looking at Israel and its actions since October 7th and don't see a moral footing for them to stand on and criticize anyone. A lot of people are looking at dead children.
ROTHMAN: That's Hasan Piker's view, that there's no moral distinction between Israel and Hamas.
WRIGHT: And El-Sayed.
ROTHMAN: Republicans are thrilled to litigate that issue.
LATHAN: That's fine. I'm glad. I'm glad that you guys are thrilled. I'm glad that you find joy. We should all have joy in life.
But what I'm saying is there are a lot of people in America right now that over the last couple of years have looked at pictures of emaciated children. They know that children have been dismembered, incinerated, bombed, journalists being killed. And they're not just -- they don't agree with you. And so you're going to have to make a case to those people, not how bad they are for not being able to see a moral distinction --
WRIGHT: And you'll have to make a case to the Jewish voters who care about the same things happening to kids in Israel.
PHILLIP: I hate to break up this foreign policy discussion, but what about the economy? I'm not saying that flippantly. I'm just saying, you know, there is a hierarchy of needs here for the American people. And I don't think there's really any question that at the top of that list is the economy. And there are all these things you could say about El-Sayed and a lot of these other candidates, but one of the big reasons that these messages, whether you call them socialist or not, are working, is because people feel like the system is broken. It ain't working for them. They are not bringing home enough money.
KMELE FOSTER, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, "TANGLE": I'd say that the maga, the populist MAGA message has resonated with plenty of people, and for much the same reason. I think some of the DSA style, communist style, not communist. That's unfair. But DSA style rhetoric has resonated with plenty of people as well.
WRIGHT: It's a nice little stepping stone on the way.
FOSTER: But I do think just going back for a briefly, not all the way in. I'm sorry, Abby, but briefly, I mean, Van, you weren't so much defending the candidate. You were doing this thing that we've become accustomed to calling whataboutism. I thought the president had these bad affiliations.
It does seem totally appropriate to address El-Sayed politics and proposals, but also to address his affiliations. And the affiliation with Hasan Piker is one that strikes me as particularly odd. Nick Fuentes is someone who is a vile, awful character in our politics, but he's also not someone who I've seen any prominent Republican aspirant or elected official, like, palling around with regularly. There was that conversation about Donald Trump having lunch with him.
(CROSS TALK)
FOSTER: But for the most part, and for the most, and for the most part, but honestly, for the most part, you've only heard prominent Republicans repudiating him. I do think the permission structure on the left, that gives me some concern.
LATHAN: Now listen to what, my friend. I'll just go ahead and say this, this guy is my friend. But listen to what this guy just did. The president of the United States had dinner with the most prominent white supremacist right now in the entire world.
FOSTER: I'm not dismissing it.
LATHAN: You did dismiss it.
(CROSS TALK)
LATHAN: No, no, no, you -- just wait a second. No, no, no, you did dismiss it. What you did was you attempted very artfully to skirt over it in order to talk about Hasan Piker with a prospective Senate candidate when the president in some way found himself at a dinner table with an avowed white supremacist.
FOSTER: Can I go a little further?
PHILLIP: And actually didn't kick him.
LATHAN: Didn't kick him?
FOSTER: Let me let me just go a little further.
LATHAN: The type of dissonance that we were dealing with.
FOSTER: No, what I want to put on the table, what I want to put on the table is that we are engaging in this pretty foul calculus of trying to figure out who is actually worse because our politics and the culture surrounding it are so depraved. But there is a real question about whether or not that depravity is being tolerated in ways that should concern us. I think there is --
[10:10:06]
PHILLIP: I asked Bernie Sanders about this this week, and, you know, he basically said that that the whole anti Hasan Piker thing is cancel culture and that Democrats need to have a big tent, that, um, it's not about him endorsing everything that Hasan Piker believes.
FOSTER: That's incredible.
PHILLIP: Just to put that out there. I mean, that is that's the view. Abdul El-Sayed was asked about it on a Wednesday. Let me just play briefly what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ABDUL EL-SAYED, (D) MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE: I'm less focused on folks who are campaigning with me and more focused on the folks I'm campaigning to. And I think it's important to stay in touch with the folks who you want to elect you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: It's a little unclear who he's talking about staying in touch with. But, I mean, he knows there's a constituency among younger people in particular for what Hasan Piker talks about. And I will also say that's not a -- that's not unique to the left. Right. This is something going on the right, too. So yes, I mean, this is what we're seeing.
ROTHMAN: I think that's really stupid. There is a very online constituency for a lot of this stuff. The notion that it manifests in political objectives, political goals, electoral goals is really the jury's out on that one.
To your point about the economy earlier, we should talk about the economy. It strains credulity to suggest that it's the Republicans here are deflecting from the economy to talk about Israel. The DSA candidates talk about Israel obsessively --
PHILLIP: I didn't say that. I mean, look, I didn't say that. I guess what I'm asking is --
ROTHMAN: Well, here's how El-Sayed --
PHILLIP: What's the Republican message on the economy to counter the El-Sayed message on the economy, which is that that we're trying to put more money in your pockets, and we're going to do so by taxing the rich, by doing all these different things.
ROTHMAN: Yada, yada, yada, step a, step b, money in your pocket.
PHILLIP: What's the other argument?
ROTHMAN: So the Republicans do have an economic message. That's a problem. The El-Sayed economic message I think is really easy for Republicans to swat away because he himself brings it back to Israel. He himself says that foreign aid, the minuscule, economically illiterate argument that foreign aid is taking money out of your pocket is his case.
PHILLIP: But isn't that essentially what Donald Trump has done for the last 10 years, which is to say, we need to end these foreign wars. Let's stop funding war in Ukraine because it's taking money out of your pocket.
ROTHMAN: But that's a stupid argument.
PHILLIP: I'm just saying it is -
(CROSS TALK)
ROTHMAN: It is stupid in their mouths too. LATHAN: It is the beacon by which the America first movement, like,
got its footing. It is legitimately the bedrock of it. And by the way, you know as well as I do that there is a huge far right insurgency that believes all of the same things in that kind of horseshoe. If it's Tucker, if it's Alex Jones, all these people that you guys loved a little while ago, but when they started --
(CROSS TALK)
LATHAN: Well, what I'm telling you is this, though. Number one, when I see him talk, what he does is he takes questions that he has asked, questions that he's asked, like on this network. Every time he's on this network, it's not the economy, it's not -- it's Israel. And so he goes, let me kind of connect these two ideas about why I think that we should take money and not give it to Israel, not give it to any foreign power, and reinvest it into our cities and our states. So a lot of times he is making an economic message out of questions he's being asked because were obsessed with litigating Israel every single time he comes up.
PHILLIP: All right, we'll have to leave it there.
Next for us. Now it's Republicans facing a domestic abuse scandal, but their tone is very different on Max Miller than it was with Graham Platner.
Plus, from Pete Hegseth to Jeanine Pirro, the former FOX Newsers, they had a rough week. Why Trump says one of them folded like an umbrella.
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[10:18:31]
PHILLIP: Welcome back. Is there a double standard when it comes to domestic scandals in politics? For weeks, Republicans made the accusation against Democrat Graham Platner one of their most popular talking points.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: I watched that thug that's up in Maine. He's a thug. And they're trying to make excuses for him. I mean, he's worse than any human being that's ever run for office, probably. He's a cheap, no good person, because he's just an outright pig. He's like a pig. I watched him, I come up with good names for people. I don't want to stick him with that one, although I think pigs would be very upset about it.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Platner, of course, would eventually leave his race after pressure finally mounted from Democrats. But now the shoe is decidedly on the other foot. Congressman Max Miller is refusing to exit his reelection race after horrific allegations from his ex-wife. Miller has a history of investigations and allegations involving women. And his former father in law, Senator Bernie Moreno, says that he doesn't belong in the halls of Congress.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BERNIE MORENO, (R-OH): This is truly the seventh level of hell. This has been a horrific experience for my entire family
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: But as for Republican leadership, they are not calling on Miller to exit the race like they did Graham Platner.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[10:20:00]
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: I'm not going to get involved in that. It's a very sad situation. And I know Max very well.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Will you tell him to drop out?
REP. MIKE JOHNSON, (R-LA) HOUSE SPEAKER: No, I will tell Max what I tell everyone. These are serious allegations. I'm the father of two daughters who work on Capitol Hill. I mean, the allegations are serious. I think max is taking them seriously. I think our colleagues are. But again, we have to allow this process to play out. It's just begun.
SEN. JOHN THUNE, (R-SD) SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: It's a very sad and unfortunate case. It is a family matter, and I just, I don't have any observations beyond that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Kmele, you're a father as well. Are they just hiding behind process here to not deal with an issue that actually involves not just the mom, but the child? I mean, there are allegations that were investigated that he denies and where, you know, they didn't substantiate them, but there were allegations that had to be investigated, that the child had been injured in some kind of confrontation.
FOSTER: I mean, I think in this context, hiding behind process, it might be a fair assessment, especially given that there aren't only these allegations. There are other allegations involving other women and other allegations of domestic violence. This is very serious stuff and real questions about his conduct in general.
And I certainly believe in due process. I want these things to be adjudicated so that we're not allowing rumor and innuendo to dictate what happens in the course of our politics. But these particular offices demand a very high standard. We've had all of these instances very recently of people who are having various medical issues, and they don't talk about it. We don't know exactly what's going on, just the mysterious absence in these contexts. We ought to be demanding a higher level of accountability. And I think
it's fair to expect the parties to not simply behave in this duplicitous, obviously partisan manner, which is precisely what we've seen here. Is there a double standard? No, there is a conventional hypocritical standard employed by both parties any time someone in their own ranks is in trouble.
PHILLIP: But it is true that Democrats kicked Graham Platner out.
FOSTER: Eventually.
WRIGHT: Eventually. It took too long, and Republicans should learn the lesson. They watched that.
PHILLIP: But not to interrupt you, but just to be, just to be clear, like I would say, most Democrats at the beginning were ready for Graham Platner to go. But he stayed because his campaign and a lot of online voices were backing him. But I mean --
FOSTER: He was defended by lots of Democrats.
PHILLIP: But the establishment didn't back him to begin with. So the people who had the have the power in the party were largely saying time to go, because he wasn't their candidate to begin with. That's not what we're seeing here.
WRIGHT: If they had the real power, he would have been gone, and he wasn't, because they were waiting and playing footsie and saying maybe it's not really a nazi tattoo. Maybe it's not really that he was beating all these girlfriends. Maybe it's really not true. And yes, these people do deserve their day in court, of course, like Kmele says. But learn the lesson. You can at least condemn it. You can -- Trump could at least say, if this is true, it's horrific and he has no place in Congress, and we want nothing to do with you.
ROTHMAN: Trump is not going to do that. Trump has a double standard.
WRIGHT: Trump should do a lot of things that he doesn't do. But the party leadership should be much --
ROTHMAN: That whole thing could have made you think that the Republican party is foursquare behind this guy. A third of the Senate conference right now is calling for him to get out at least, maybe more, and that's including at least nine Republican senators.
WRIGHT: Because they know the father-in-law.
ROTHMAN: Yes, it's all on record. And on top of that, the process, because the parties are so weak, the process is really how you make this work. It worked for Van Taylor. It worked for Tony Gonzales after a lot of pressure. Even this week, a guy facing, Edwards, Representative Edwards, who is facing an ethics investigation, said I'm not going to run again because of the ethics investigation. There's no mechanism for the parties to kick people out anymore. The Supreme Court decision in NRSC might change that, but it hasn't yet.
PHILLIP: If Donald Trump said he should get out, he would get out.
ROTHMAN: Yes, sure. And he should. And the president should --
WRIGHT: -- knows better than that. It's a family matter --
PHILLIP: And the ethics process is not the only mechanism. There is a public pressure mechanism. It does exist. And his name is Donald Trump.
ROTHMAN: Yes. And he should act. He will not because he will be indicting himself.
LATHAN: Yes, yes. He just doesn't have the moral courage to do so. Look, the Platner thing was a disaster. It was a disaster roundly. It, like, my flank, the left flank of the party failed, people on the ground, Platner. They weren't as invested into Graham Platner and who he was. I'm a black guy. You got to do better than I didn't know I had a nazi tattoo. I was saying it on the podcast the entire time. Nobody was listening. We ended up where we are.
I hope that the American people are paying attention, that there's no moral standard, there's no moral courage, there's nothing but team sports in your politics right now. That's what it is. And the people that are going to rise to lead this country in the near and not so near future are going to be the ones that have an eye on their moral center and who they are. The reality is, I've watched this. There's too much there there. This guy is unqualified to lead. And when he is questioned about this --
[10:25:00]
WRIGHT: Yes, that's a very good point.
LATHAN: His responses are wholly insufficient, that he looks insincere. He looks worse. That Jake Tapper interview was a disaster.
WRIGHT: Stoic, uncaring.
PHILLIP: He tried to defend withholding his daughter's blue bunny --
WRIGHT: Oh my, I can't even --
PHILLIP: -- over, get this, process. He felt like there wasn't, they didn't go through the right process to have the blue bunny returned to his two-year-old.
WRIGHT: Psychotic.
PHILLIP: I mean, this is the kind of thing that they've been litigating in the press all week. I mean, at the very one of the reasons the ethics thing, though, doesn't really work for Republicans this time around -- they have until August 10th to figure this thing out, otherwise he's it. And so, no, the ethics process isn't going to work itself out by then. And in the meantime, this guy is demonstrating day by day that he is just going to be a source of negative headline after negative headline from now until November. That's a self-own.
ROTHMAN: I think the ethics process is part of that public pressure campaign, because you're right --
PHILLIP: He called it his own ethics process because he thinks it's not going to do anything.
ROTHMAN: He thinks it's going to save him. But no, actually, I think it's a miscalculation because it shines a spotlight on his own problems.
And Republicans are freaking out, duly so. Republican voters aren't really tuned in to the race yet. And they might not if what they're tuning into is a car wreck. Your friend's horrible divorce that he won't stop talking about and you have to litigate it. You've got to hear what she did just now. Nobody wants to hear what she did.
FOSTER: To Van's point, I mean, in both this situation and the Graham Platner situation, we are seeing evidence of principle actually being the right thing to do here from a partisan standpoint as well. Everyone is making these decisions hoping they can save face, save their candidates, save their party's position, in doing that, compromising in ways that ultimately end up hurting the party far, far more. And Republicans are clearly doing that to themselves now.
PHILLIP: All right, next for us, they left their FOX News jobs to serve President Trump. And now Pete Hegseth and Jeanine Pirro are navigating rough headlines and the ire of their boss.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:31:38]
PHILLIP: Welcome back. The former FOX Newsers are having a rough week of it this week in their new jobs. The White House denied a report that the president was furious at Pete Hegseth over the munitions shortage in the middle of the Iran war. Now, it's of course, not the first time that Hegseth has faced incoming. Whether the Signal chats or his messaging on Iran.
But also, the former TV host who got the worst of it was D.C. U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro. She did a U-turn in the reflecting pool case, deciding not to prosecute alleged vandalism and instead blaming bad contracting work. This made Trump furious, and he summoned her to the White House for a tense meeting. Pirro and Trump, of course, go back many decades, and she is the one who has defended him over the years on her show. So it was extraordinary when he said this about her this week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENT: Jeanine Pirro made a mistake. It was vandalism. Frankly, I think she choked, because the judge was really vicious. Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and went after her department. And I guess she choked. I don't know what the hell happened. I was disappointed with Jeanine Pirro, really disappointed with
Jeanine Pirro. She, uh, she folded like an umbrella.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So we're going to start with Jeanine Pirro, because the president will not let this go. He is obsessed with the reflecting pool. And to the fact that this is putting Jeanine Pirro, which, who, frankly, would do a lot of things for Donald Trump in a tough spot, is saying a lot.
He sent out this Truth Social post on Friday that says "The people are able to see it up close. They are reporting pure vandalism at the reflecting pool." He says, "People were on their knees with their hands in the water at the exact location of the slashes. There were witnesses to the vandalism." He accuses the former Olympian who they charged and falsely accused of this of being the "gentleman" who was involved was "a big player in ActBlue, a disgraceful fundraising scam, and is represented by a Trump deranged sleazebag, political hack lawyer Norm Eisen and crew."
So, I mean, this is a no-win situation if you're Jeanine Pirro, because if you go before a judge and you put this up there, the judge is probably going to laugh her out of the court.
WRIGHT: She probably tried. I mean, she said she would do anything she can.
PHILLIP: She knows, I mean, she knows better than to than to go and do it because she -- you can get sanctioned for stuff like this.
LATHAN: Yes. All of these people will end up just being treated like faulty Kevlar, like things that don't stop the bullets and shrapnel from coming to Donald Trump and the decisions that he's made, right. Because the erosion of all of these institutions, these institutions are supposed to be things that function in government for us, but they function now for Donald Trump. There's only one outcome there. The outcome is that he will make a decision that does not fly, and you will be called to fall on your sword.
And that day is coming for everyone. I do not understand what the charm is that he gets for people to come and give up their entire reputations and their careers for him, but it happens all the time. The last vice president, they tried to hang the guy, and everybody is trying to -- I really don't get it. But this is the only place that all of this stuff ends up going.
[10:35:05]
WRIGHT: But doesn't that mean, it's working? Government Van, what you're saying? I mean, yes, he surrounds himself with loyalists and they don't do what he wants them to do, and then they lose their jobs. But that's government institutions. Like you said, it's not an authoritarian regime, as Democrats keep saying, where everyone just does what Trump does all the time. PHILLIP: Well, he would like them to do what he wants. And I would
say, like, also, I think Trump is learning that the sycophancy of the sort of talking head on FOX or wherever is not going to translate into what they can actually do in government.
FOSTER: Yes. I mean --
PHILLIP: It doesn't -- it's not the same thing.
FOSTER: Yes, I don't want to jump the gun, but this very much sounds like the Hegseth thing. Like that is this is an illustration of why that problem exists.
ROTHMAN: It strikes me as a little different, actually, because if this doesn't become a huge scandal, it really should be. This isn't like -- I'm trying to put myself in the head of the average voter who maybe can't keep all the Democrats problems with the presidents construction problems, projects together.
WRIGHT: They don't care about that.
ROTHMAN: But, well, but now they do and probably should. Because even if you thought the prosecutions of Letitia James and James Comey were egregious, they were in the game. They took their shots. Trump took their shots at him.
This is different. Four civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time were handcuffed and got federal charges because the president needed a scapegoat. That's existential peril. There but for the grace of God go I. That's the sort of thing that focuses the mind. And it really should be --
PHILLIP: I mean, who among us has not stuck their hand in the reflecting pool?
(LAUGHTER)
PHILLIP: It's just a thing that people do. It's a thing that people do. And it's, yes, I mean, you're totally right that like regular people are looking at this and saying, actually, I'm sorry, this is kind of deranged.
FOSTER: But the sycophancy, and the point I was making is that the sycophancy that is expected from all of these people actually contributes to the manifestations of incompetence.
ROTHMAN: But Hegseth is not responsible for interceptor shortage. That's just stray voltage.
LATHAN: He's expected to fall for it though.
FOSTER: He's expected to know something about it. He's expected to notify the president about it. And my suspicion is that part of the reason you don't notify the president is you don't want to be the bearer of bad news. You want to be the guy who got the problem solved or at least swept it under the rug long enough for nobody hear it. PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, I think Hegseth's problems are -- you know,
Trump will lash out at someone, whoever is in front of him, for giving him bad news. I don't know that he's really lashing out at Pete Hegseth because he thinks Pete Hegseth is incompetent. Pete Hegseth is just the one delivering the bad news. But what Pete Hegseth really should have done was from the get-go, before this war started, tell the president here's our -- here's our capacity.
FOSTER: Absolutely.
ROTHMAN: Why do we think that the president wasn't briefed on our on our missile depth? I kind of think he was.
PHILLIP: I don't know, because this defense secretary has been, uh, we're locked and loaded. We can --
LATHAN: -- interested in having realistic conversations about with the president.
PHILLIP: He has never expressed having anything measured about this war. And so it strains credulity that somehow in private he's going to acknowledge that there are limitations to our ability as well.
WRIGHT: I wanted to believe he would raise, you know, rise to the occasion of this job. But he has not had this sort of operational job before. So maybe the answer is very simple.
PHILLIP: Next for us, they want love, but they are sick of trying to find it. Why America may be in a great romance slump.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:43:05]
PHILLIP: It's a crazy little thing called love. And younger Americans are apparently having a harder time finding it right now. "The Atlantic" this week came out with this headline, "America's great romance slump." More singles are finding that dating is more difficult, whether rising costs or burnout from dating apps. The article also blames the role of technology in our lives, too.
In general, shrinking love isn't a sudden phenomenon. In 2019, 42 percent of single adults younger than 40 told Pew that they had never been in a committed relationship. And that's before COVID, which made dating obviously even harder. It also sounds like people, here's what "The Atlantic" says, "People have not stopped wanting love. Rather, the conditions around modern romance, economic pressure, dating technology, shifting expectations, and social isolation have made pursuing it increasingly difficult."
I guess no single people at the table tonight, so you all can't relate.
WRIGHT: Maybe it's good. Maybe we have higher standards.
PHILLIP: But this is what's going on, right? WRIGHT: I know this is probably unpopular, but maybe people have so
much information about all the potential people they could date that they're just not jumping into relationships. And maybe they would have been bad relationships. I don't know.
LATHAN: This is the problem.
WRIGHT: OK, what's the problem?
LATHAN: This is actually the problem. OK, so every once in a while I go on the HBO Max app, right? And I go to the part where it's the live channel, where it's like it was in 1989, where HBO just tells me what to watch.
PHILLIP: I didn't know that was a thing.
LATHAN: You can do that. And it takes it takes all of the thought out of what you're supposed to watch. Meanwhile, if I don't do that, do I watch "Widows' Bay"? Do I watch "Ted Lasso"? Do I watch something black? Do I -- what am I doing? What am I doing? Like I'm just paralyzed.
PHILLIP: Decision paralysis.
LATHAN: And I think right now there's a lot that these kids are going through --
[10:45:00]
WRIGHT: Because of the apps.
LATHAN: Because of the apps.
ROTHMAN: That's what it is, right? I mean, the article was like, I can't figure out how to do this, but all her experiences are so mediated. It's an app, it's a coach, it's a facilitator. All of these people are getting in the way of what has been really studied thoroughly now as a psychological phenomenon, particularly among young people, which is aversion to risk, and aversion to risk and exposure to risk. What is vulnerability except risk?
PHILLIP: People are getting married later, but they're also getting divorced at lower rates because they're making fewer poor choices. So, I mean, there is a bit of a trade-off between, like, hastily marrying the person who knocked you up in your 20s and, and like, thinking about it and marrying the right guy in your 30s. I mean, I don't know. I'm just saying.
WRIGHT: Well, that's what I'm saying. They might have more information. They're being more careful.
PHILLIP: Some of these people would have been forced to get married to that person who was a bad fit for them.
FOSTER: I mean, I don't I wish I had great advice to give. I married the woman very young that I started dating at 16, and things are working really, really great. We've got two incredible kids. We waited to have them. I suppose I didn't know everything about her at the beginning.
WRIGHT: This is not what the singles viewers want to hear, about your very, very happy life.
FOSTER: I'll tell you, marriage is remarkable. It's incredible. I did -- my first instinct actually was not like to think about all of the choice, the panoply of options. It was to think about the fact that everyone approaches dating as this buffet where I can sample everything. And I worry that that might be more the problem than just being paralyzed by the fact that you have so many choices available to you. It's that you've spent so much time just kind of sampling everything, and really just sitting down, enjoying the meal, letting it digest, have the full courses.
PHILLIP: This is kind of speaking to what everybody has been saying. Here's what some of the people have said in this "Atlantic" article. One says "Dating is just a series of constant blows to whatever self- confidence I had. Being alone and lonely and wanting is safer than risking being put through emotional distress."
LATHAN: This is the problem.
PHILLIP: "I think romanticizing myself, treating myself kindly, doing nice things alone, like taking myself on a date and treating myself, has yielded better results. I feel like I'm being rejected by 4 million women at once."
LATHAN: OK, now this is what I would say if I was talking to him. Homey, you've got to grow up, OK? Like, like, seriously. Life is supposed to be hard. And it's very difficult to talk to the young people about this. I really hope that they get the world that they're trying to make. I sincerely do. But life is supposed to be hard.
Like, there's a movie from the 80s, "Roxanne", with Steve Martin. It's remake of Cyrano de Bergerac. The guy is a great guy, got a big nose. He gets his man to go talk to the girl. He goes through all of these things to get Daryl Hannah at the end of the movie. Love is about courage and about putting yourself out there. And it's only going to work once. Like you're only -- it's only going to work once, maybe twice if you can. So like, if --
ROTHMAN: And failure. So you talk about a lot -- there's a lot of failure.
LATHAN: Yes. Of course.
PHILLIP: Like for the, for the ladies, I think there's an idea that your man is going to be everything and all things to you, this perfect specimen of a human who is always going to treat you right and bring you flowers. I mean, we want you to be we want you to be --
(LAUGHTER)
PHILLIP: Right, right. But I also think like your partner doesn't have to be a perfect person. And sometimes people are selecting for that and waiting for that. And it will never happen.
All right, next for us, the panel will give us their unpopular opinions, what they are not afraid to say out loud.
This Sunday, you can also go inside the race to get back to the moon. The CNN flash doc "Eclipsing Power, Musk, Bezos, and the New Space Race" airs at 8:00 eastern on CNN or on the CNN app.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:53:30]
PHILLIP: We're back, and it's time for your unpopular opinions. Lauren, you're up.
WRIGHT: Oh, great, me. OK, OK. I love Guy Fieri. I think he's very cool. I think he's a very good chef. I will consume any content he puts out. I think the restaurants on --
PHILLIP: Did you say he's very good, chef?
WRIGHT: Yes. Like, I don't -- I think "The New York Times" is wrong.
(LAUGHTER)
WRIGHT: I see him in that reality show in his backyard. He has like the grill. He looks like a great dad. He seems like a nice guy. I love this.
PHILLIP: He's a man's man.
WRIGHT: I think people are way too hard on him.
PHILLIP: OK, well, that's respectable.
FOSTER: I feel safer now lobbing, lobbing this one out there. I thought this for a long time. I'm feeling more and more confident about it as time goes on. I'm pretty sure "Not Like Us" was never really a very good song. And Drake totally barred Kendrick throughout the entirety --
LATHAN: You bugging.
FOSTER: Throughout the entirety of the rap battle.
LATHAN: This is, no, this is this is an olive branch out to Drake. He going to be at OVO Fest and all that stuff.
FOSTER: Send me a chain.
LATHAN: Yes.
FOSTER: Send me a chain.
LATHAN: L.A. privileges, they're going to get you, bro.
(LAUGHTER)
PHILLIP: You got to get your friend over there. He's trying to start some trouble.
All right, Van.
LATHAN: I like America like this. Like, how we fighting and going at each other and all of this stuff like that. I'm hopeful. This is the unpopular opinion. I think on the other side of this is a version of us, a vision of us that knows each other and knows our country better than we do now. I think, I think better times are ahead.
PHILLIP: You know what, I like that take. Yes. We can't -- we can't know each other unless we disagree.
WRIGHT: I like that too.
PHILLIP: Yes, I agree.
ROTHMAN: From the grand and philosophical to the completely banal.
(LAUGHTER)
LATHAN: Let's go.
ROTHMAN: So get ready to be scandalized. Outdoor flower planters, fake flowers. Real flowers are subordinate to fake flowers and outdoor flower planters. Do you not notice the difference?
PHILLIP: No.
ROTHMAN: They die on you in August. You don't have to water them. And if you're just glancing at them, you don't stare at them, they look like the real thing.
FOSTER: Do you do this?
ROTHMAN: I do this. After years of failure. After years of failure --
PHILLIP: I see fake flowers in an outdoor flower pot, I will think I'm at a funeral home.
(LAUGHTER)
WRIGHT: Yes. It's depressing.
PHILLIP: Is there like a dead body in that vase?
ROTHMAN: Only one way to find out.
(LAUGHTER)
PHILLIP: Wow. All right, everyone, thank you for being here. Thanks for watching "TABLE FOR FIVE". Check out "Confessions and Obsessions." Stream it on the CNN app. And this week's episode is lively, I promise you. But in the meantime, CNNs coverage continues right now. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
