Return to Transcripts main page
CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Immigration and Big Business on Trump's First Day Agenda; Biden Looks Back on His Political Career Before End of Term; Biden Says He Doesn't Regret Debate With Trump. Trump Wants An Immigration Crackdown; Companies Cozy Up To Trump; Netflix In The Victory Formation. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired December 26, 2024 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight on the first day of office, Donald Trump gave to the a long list of promises. But how many are serious? How many are just talk and how many may damage the American economy?
Plus, regrets, he has a few. Joe Biden thinks back on his four years in office and hints at how he would like a mulligan on one of the biggest decisions of his presidency.
Also big corporations, big checks, big access. New reporting on the huge money being spent on Donald Trump's inauguration, who's spending it and why.
Live at the table, Scott Jennings, Nayyera Haq, Solomon Jones, Congressman Mike Lawler, and Coleman Hughes.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Good evening, I'm Abby Philip in New York.
Let's get right to what America is talking about. The countdown is on, with less than a month until Donald Trump takes office, and the then president-elect has laid out a number of things that he wants to do on day one, carrying out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, enacting 25 percent tariffs on U.S. trading partners, like Mexico and Canada, and banning all things diversity, equity, and inclusion within the federal government. But could this all just amount to more typical Trump hyperbole?
Congressman Lawler, Trump tweeted about a month ago on January 20th, one of my many first executive orders, I will sign the necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada with a 25 percent tariff on all products coming into the United States. Is that a negotiation or are you expecting to see that?
REP. MIKE LAWLER (R-NY): Look, I think it's a negotiation, but as he showed during his first term, he is willing to use tariffs to crack down on what he deems as unfair trade practices. And I think when you look at the United States, you look at, for instance, prescription drugs. Europe puts price controls in place on American drugs coming into Europe. It's part of the reason why we pay more here in the U.S.
So, there's a lot that I think can be done from the standpoint of using tariffs as a negotiating tool to crack down on unfair practices. But I think that is but one part of what he is going to do. Obviously, he campaigned heavily on the economy, on the issue of affordability, on obviously extending many provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and securing the border. And I think that's going to be job number one when he gets in.
NAYYERA HAQ, FORMER OBAMA WHITE HOUSE SENIOR DIRECTOR: Here's the challenge that we get with this though, right, when campaign rhetoric meets the reality of governing. So, you had the American toy manufacturers today announcing that their perception is that even a 10 percent increase on tariffs with China will be almost an 80 percent increase in prices here in the United States, and here was their logic, that toys are designed in the United States, but they're manufactured in China. The majority of them that people are buying here are manufactured in China. So, that is almost an immediate price hit that Americans are going to face, while, yes, people want American strength, they want to see a president who is standing up to the foreign powers of the world, they also wanted to see prices go down. And some of these policies are going to hit home.
SOLOMON JONES, AWARD-WINNING COLUMNIST, THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: When you talk about cracking down on other governments, I mean, really what tariffs do is crack down on the American people. We end up paying the price at the end. And our companies also pay the price because now you start a trade war where they put tariffs on our stuff and our companies have even a bigger problem doing business internationally. It's just not good policy.
PHILLIP: In addition to the toys that might be on the chopping block here, there's also the issue of Panama and Greenland. And Trump has been talking pretty much incessantly recently about acquiring Greenland, like literally buying it, and retaking the Panama Canal. Reporting from CNN says that his fixation over wanting to take control of the Panama Canal and his revival of his desires to purchase Greenland are part of a larger effort to try and force the foreign leaders to the table in ways Trump believes are beneficial to U.S. trade, as well as curbing China's and Russia's global influence. That's according to a Trump adviser. But you also talked to national security experts who say there's also a risk that this could do exactly the opposite and drive away these countries, drive Panama even more into the arms of China who isn't threatening them, but is giving them money that they need and want.
[22:05:00]
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, you just identified the problem, encroachment of Chinese influence in the western hemisphere, really encroachment of Chinese influence around the world.
I think Donald Trump is sending a message. He's not going to stand for it. I think, for the last four years. Joe Biden's been asleep at the wheel on this issue as China goes around the world spreading money, promising things. We cannot have them in our backyard. We are the preeminent world superpower and we got to act like it.
On the Greenland issue, I wish he'd already somehow did it in the first term. They got rare earth minerals, we have a space base there.
PHILLIP: Wait, but how is this supposed to work? I mean, I think that's part of the question here. I mean, I get that --
JENNINGS: We've acquired land before in our country's history.
PHILLIP: You're totally right about the nature of the problem. I think Trump is right about the nature of the problem. The question is, how do you get there? And what is he going to do? Invade Panama?
JENNINGS: Invade Panama? I don't think we need to invade Panama. I think we need to convince and tell Panama we're not going to stand for the amount of Chinese influence that apparently exists in this country. This is a unique place in the world. A lot of stuff happens and goes through there. We are directly responsible for having built the Panama Canal. But more than that, we are not going to put up with Chinese encroachment in the western hemisphere. We shouldn't put up with it anywhere, but we got to start right here.
HAQ: Here's how this translates into policy, though, right? The reality once again is that the Panama Canal belongs to Panama, according to a treaty. So, absent some kind of massive military intervention, it requires negotiation. The second part about the Chinese encroachment, that is a challenge that the Biden administration and members of Congress have been working on, and, in fact, this is now something that I think Democrats can openly embrace is that Biden kept Trump's tariffs and effectively most of the China policy, and expanding relationships so that we are not dependent on China for all of our basic inputs and supply chain issues.
The challenge though is this goes to a broader Trump ideology, of this idea of taking land, right? There's negotiations, there's purchasing, but when Greenland says, no, it's not up for sale, and Panama Canal is like, what are you guys talking about? You're going to dishonor a treaty from 50 years, what is the there, there?
JENNINGS: There are provisions in the treaty that they may not be keeping.
PHILLIP: I guess he likes that idea, but, I mean, again, like Trump might like the idea of threatening them into what he wants them to do, but how is it actually going to work?
LAWLER: Well, respectfully Biden's approach of appeasement didn't work. Look, China is our greatest geopolitical threat. 60 percent of international trade, for instance, goes through the Strait of Taiwan. And we see what China has been doing to the island of Taiwan with the threats circling the island, launching missiles. It has been a major problem with respect to international trade. You see what's happening in the Red Sea.
Trump is making a very important point both to Panama and to the world that we are not going to allow China to use economic coercion. You pointed out, China is paying Panama. This is part of the problem. China has been using economic coercion to take control of ports around the globe. They've been using economic coercion and military threat to take control of large areas of water.
Donald Trump's point is very clear, we built the Panama Canal, it is critical to the United States in terms of trade, and we're not going to allow China to take control.
JONES: Why is it bad for other countries to use money to buy influence but it's not bad for the United States to do that?
JENNINGS: Why is it bad for Communist China?
JONES: No, why is it bad for the United States -- why is it bad for China to buy influence when the United States has always bought influence around the world?
JENNINGS: Wait. Are you -- I'm just making sure I understand.
JONES: No, I'm going to make you understand. This is what I need you to understand, that we spend money in order to influence policy around the world. Why is it wrong for other countries to do the same thing?
JENNINGS: So, your position --
JONES: Because our country is better. Okay, I see. We're the only ones who have the right to spend money --
(CROSSTALKS)
JENNINGS: Hold on.
JONES: Nobody else can spend money.
JENNINGS: I just want to make -- we have one person here tonight who thinks it's good idea for Communist China to spend money around the world to defeat U.S. influence, is that your position?
JONES: No, that's not my position. That's your position that you restated in another way. I didn't say that. What I said was that the United States spends money around the world, always has, in order to buy influence. That's what the whole thing in (INAUDIBLE) now, right, to make sure that we are buying influence and making sure that Russia does not (INAUDIBLE) Ukraine.
PHILLIP: Maybe this is ultimately what I was trying to ask in the first place, which is Trump has decided, rather than use actually a pretty tried and true tactic the United States has used historically, he's going to just threaten these countries. There is something -- a way to go about foreign policy that isn't threatening your allies, but is helping them along, is beating China at its own game.
The reason China is winning on the global stage is because the U.S. has basically stopped investing in our own hemisphere. We don't even care about foreign policy in this hemisphere.
HAQ: And our investment -- let's be honest, our investment in the 1980s used to be, well, let's, you know, support some guerillas and radicals, right, as opposed to developing projects, infrastructure, and making it more appealing and cheaper to go with American manufacturers or American interests rather than Chinese.
[22:10:05]
And so the Chinese have been outcompeting us on the world stage. We can outcompete with them.
JENNINGS: And how are they able to do that?
HAQ: We can outcompete them by investing, actually, in American resources. Congress recently, for example, stopped DJI, the drone manufacturer that essentially can spy on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party from being able to distribute in the United States. So, there's a lot of work that can be done and actually has been in a bipartisan fashion.
PHILLIP: I want to get to another thing that's important because we can't talk about Trump's first day without talking about immigration, because this is going to be the biggest thing. His border czar pick, Tom Homan, he's been doing a lot of interviews. Let me just play this, what he said on News Nation about how much all of this is going to cost.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TOM HOMAN, TRUMP'S PICK FOR BORDER CZAR: I think this amount of money in the beginning of this operation, again, it's expensive, but in the long run it's going to be a tax savings, because this is what needs to be done.
What price do you put on our national security? I don't think it has a price tag.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: It does actually have a price tag and he has acknowledged that in other interviews. One of the things, I've heard him give a lot of interviews and I know he understands the problem that they want to solve, but he doesn't seem to have a sense of the scope of what it's going to take, what it's going to cost. And that's a critical question.
COLEMAN HUGHES, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, it may end up being a prohibitive question in the fullness of time. But Trump's mandate, more than any other single issue, I'd argue, arguably more than the economy, was about illegal immigration. So, I don't think there's any way that he can slow roll or make a half effort on that question and do justice to the mandate that elected him.
PHILLIP: I think that's exactly right. But you would think that under those circumstances, it would behoove them to really wrap their arms around what they need in order to do it. And it really -- it does not sound like that is happening right now.
LAWLER: I actually had a meeting with Tom Holman the other day along with a number of my colleagues, and we talked about this very issue. Look, it's already costing states, like New York, billions of dollars of taxpayer money to provide free housing, clothing, food, education, and healthcare to illegal immigrants. Then you have the situation where you have criminal aliens committing violent crimes, just as we saw a woman being burned alive on a subway by a man who was previously deported and then came back into the United States illegally.
The fact is that what Tom Homan is going to do is start the process of deporting criminal aliens out of the United States. And sanctuary states and cities, like New York, need to cooperate. This idea that you're going to violate federal immigration law, that you're going to use taxpayer money to provide all of these free things, by the way, while Kathy Hochul in New York is charging New Yorkers $2,500 just for the privilege of driving to work in Midtown Manhattan. It's a joke. This is the stuff that needs to stop.
So, yes, there is a price tag. Yes, it's going to cost money. But the reality is, we cannot continue to have this massive influx of illegal immigrants coming into the country since Joe Biden took office, over 10.5 million people. That's unsustainable, and it's costing us billions of dollars.
PHILLIP: Meeting the needs of illegal immigrants will then fall on the federal government. And one of the other things Homan talks about is what he's going to do about families. He says he wants to house families together in soft-sided tents. He's talked about deporting parents, whether they have young kids or not, and asking them to make a decision about whether they're going to be deported. There are court cases that say you can only keep children in detention for a certain amount of time, I have yet to hear Tom Homan and talk about how he's going to get around that to expeditiously deport these families, or if he's going to defy the court and hold young children in detention longer than courts require it?
JENNINGS: Well, if he can find the ones that Joe Biden lost, that would be a step in the right direction. There are tens of thousands of children that our current administration cannot account for. Look, we have to do something. We cannot send --
HAQ: The family separation policy under Donald Trump in which 2,000 children were lost.
JENNINGS: 2,000?
HAQ: 2,000 children still lost to the foster care system. Is that what you're blaming on Biden? JENNINGS: I'm talking about the hundreds of thousands of children that Biden cannot find today.
PHILLIP: Well, let me clarify what you're talking about. What you're talking about are people who are not in touch with the system. They may or may not be, quote/unquote, lost, they may be with their families, they may be intentionally not communicating with immigration officers. So, I don't think it's fair to describe them all that way.
LAWLER: But when you're releasing 10.5 million people into the country, it's just a problem.
PHILLIP: But I want to go back to the actual question that I asked you, which is, how is the Trump administration going to get around court orders that say, you can only house children for a certain amount of time, you cannot just house children indefinitely?
JENNINGS: I mean, look, I'm not a lawyer and I don't have the answers.
[22:15:00]
My assumption is they're going to try to deport families and people who shouldn't be here as quickly as possible so that you don't have to warehouse them for too long. I mean, I assume that's what you could do under current law. It may be that they need executive orders and we may need some legislation to help expedite all this, but we cannot continue to send a message to the rest of the world that if you come here illegally and then do certain things, we will then just wipe it all away. That message has to stop. Biden sent that signal, which is why all these people came here.
HAQ: Here's what this translates to, is that in order to defend one law, which is the border and how immigration is supposed to go, there'll be several others that will be broken. And it'll be taking court cases many months, if not years, to catch up with the reality of what will happen. And that's the power of the executive. That's the power of a police force. They can get away with a lot on the front end. And when you later on try to catch up legally, whether it's reuniting families that were separated under Trump, or whether it's figuring out if the right people were deported, or the right people were incarcerated, it's already too late. The damage has been done.
PHILLIP: All right, guys, stick around for us.
Coming up next, what President Biden says he does and doesn't regret about his term in office. Our panel is going to discuss his picks.
Plus, big business reversing itself when it comes to Donald Trump and his inauguration, we'll talk about the companies who are now pouring money into the inaugural celebration after criticizing him four years ago.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00] PHILLIP: These are his reflections. Just when we thought that he said all he could say, Joe Biden tells us in so many words, he's got one more message on the way. The president is leaving office by planning a visit to see the pope and leaving breadcrumbs about his regrets.
Toward the top of the list, not putting his signature on COVID relief checks that went out to Americans during the height of the pandemic. That one is a little bit of a nod to Donald Trump. And maybe he's right about that. I'm not sure it would change necessarily how people saw what happened over the last four years economically.
JONES: A lot of people believe that those checks came from Donald Trump. The reality is that a Democratic Congress approved those checks. Trump fought it until he couldn't. And then he stopped it and said, wait, let me put my name on it, so everybody thinks it comes from me. It's another one of these misleading things that he does in order to make people believe something that's not true.
And so Joe Biden trying to change his point of view, his morality in order to match what Donald Trump is doing, I think, is a wrong move. I think that he's, you know, dealing with the regret of losing the election and knowing that there are going to be consequences for that. But in terms of trying to put his name on a check because Donald Trump did it, I think that's the wrong way to do it.
PHILLIP: That sounds like old school politics to me. I mean, you look at, you know, back in the day, if money came from the government to you, the politician wants you to know it came from them.
HAQ: Democrats have had a hard time taking credit when their economic policies are working, right? It's always the let's explain the fundamentals of the economy. And you have, for example, George Bush, when he put his name on a check, handed that out, you know, during the whole bailout process and then-President Obama, and I was working in the Treasury Department at this time, had the making work pay tax credit could have been a hundred dollar check with his name on it, but instead it's like, oh, let's boost consumer spending gradually, and everybody's going to be great, ended up being $10 a paycheck. Do you think anybody noticed that $10 a paycheck?
Right, so take credit for the good work when you do it.
HUGHES: By the way, people call them Biden bucks colloquially. So, similar to Obamacare, he didn't have to label it because people spoke of it that way anyway. So, the idea that this was some big tactical screw up for him is a bit weird. It kind of smacks of like a non- apology apology, when someone's like, oh, I'm sorry you were hurt by that. It's like you asked Joe Biden what he regrets, he could have chosen a lot of real mess ups. What he chose was a pure tactical non- error.
PHILLIP: Let me tell you one thing he does not regret. This is according to The New York Times. The president does not regret debating Mr. Trump in June, an appearance that created a slow bleed in his support among Democrats and ended with his ouster. Mr. Biden has privately told allies that he only regrets not changing the timing because he had a cold and believes he would have performed better if he had been in better health.
LAWLER: That was not the problem. The bottom line is Joe Biden never should have run for reelection. You know, this is someone who, over the past two years, really has struggled in public. I don't think putting his name on a check would have made one hill of beans here. The fact is the American people looked at this economy and said it's not working. They couldn't afford their grocery bills. They couldn't afford their mortgage bills. The average mortgage in my district went up $1,000 a month. That's over $12,000 a year under Joe Biden.
So, this was not a function of just handing out a check and hoping people say, yes, everything's great. The reality is people could not afford to pay their bills. They saw the disaster at our southern border. They saw one international crises after the next, and they saw a president who was incoherent at best and couldn't articulate anything on, from the economy to the border to the international crises, that's why he's not going to be president come January 20th.
PHILLIP: The debate, yes, I mean, to be fair, the debate is not the issue. The debate is whether he should have stepped out of the race earlier.
JENNINGS: Well, of course he should have. I mean, he should have never run for re election. Mike is exactly right. When he got asked about regrets, the fact that he didn't say, I regret that 13 American service members lost their lives in Afghanistan, to me, that he can't muster the courage to say that now is a disgrace.
Beyond that, he's leaving office in disgrace. I mean, you know, you got less than 20 percent of the American people now that think the country's on the right track. That's a lower number than it even was on Election Day. And what's happened since Election Day? He pardoned his son, Hunter. He commuted the sentences of a bunch of evil killer thugs on federal death row.
[22:25:02]
Not all of them, just the ones that he wanted to, didn't even make a principled stand on that. And then he went on vacation, which is where he is right now.
This is a failed, disgraced president and he has never ever owned up to what happened in Afghanistan and the role that played in destroying those families' lives and destroying his own presidency.
JONES: So, I think Donald Trump needs to say I'm sorry that a million people died in COVID while I was telling people to shine light in their bodies and take disinfectant.
JENNINGS: That's false.
JONES: No, that's exactly what he said.
JENNINGS: It's false.
JONES: He said you should shine light in your own body, right, and take disinfectant.
PHILLIP: All right. Let's -- we can fact-check now.
JONES: He needs to say he's sorry for that.
PHILLIP: He speculated about the effect of light on the virus and disinfectant.
JONES: Right, while the doctors stood behind --
(CROSSTALKS)
LAWLER: And you know what? People told us to stand six feet apart and wear masks, and that didn't exactly solve anything.
So, look at the end of the day here, you can make this all about Donald Trump. Donald Trump got reelected because Joe Biden was such a disaster on so many fronts. But the fact is, as Scott pointed out, and we had Antony Blinken testified before us finally about the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan just two weeks ago, and I showed him the report, the 300-plus page report, and I said, sir, this is your legacy. This is your legacy. You own it. You own everything that has resulted from that disastrous withdrawal, starting with the 13 U.S. service members who died. And the fact is, Kamala Harris, the vice president of the United States, still has not met with those Gold Star families.
That is the legacy of this administration, and everything that followed from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the terrorist attack on Israel, the threats in the Indo-Pacific from China, the illicit oil trade to the tune of $200 billion between China and Iran that funds Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, that is their legacy, and Joe Biden owns that. And Scott's right, that should be his biggest regret.
PHILLIP: I want to switch gears just a little bit, because there's one other kind of odd but interesting thing that Biden mentioned at one of his recent appearances. Here's what he said at the Brookings Institution about his own personal wealth.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: Stock market hits record highs. I wish I owned a lot of stock. You know, the worst part of all this, I acknowledge at Brookings, for 36 years I've listed the poorest man in Congress. What a foolish man.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I should add, he's also come out against Congress people trading stocks in the same time period. It is an interesting reflection for a man who spent basically his entire adult life in public service, and he's not exaggerating. He has been actually one of the least wealthy people in the Senate for most of his career.
HAQ: Yes. The Senate has gotten older, record age. It's a gerontocracy right now and in Congress. The average age of a senator is 67. And it has also gotten richer and wealthier, right? It is -- you have to effectively buy a Senate seat. Yes, there's still a competition. There's a ton of money involved in campaigns and government. What we're seeing right now is if you are one of the richest men in the world, you can go right to the top and advice the president United States.
So, the message of the sense to the rest of us is money matters, pay- to-play, and that's going to be how you progress in American society going forward. And I don't love that message, but it's pretty transparent at this point.
HUGHES: I think Biden should not talk about money at all. I think the Biden family has got away with murder in the sense that -- metaphorically in the sense that they've really escaped a lot of close scrutiny over their foreign business deals, Hunter Biden, Jim Biden, et cetera. So, for Joe Biden to say, I haven't been making any money my whole life, the natural question is then, well, why did your brother, Jim Biden, who's been working in the private sector forever owe you like $40,000 that was supposedly a repayment of a loan, but it was probably some nefarious China deal stuff.
JONES: I'm trying to figure out why we're talking about corruption when you've got a convicted felon that you're sitting here defending who's getting ready to be the president of the United States. I don't think we can talk about corruption without talking about Donald Trump and talking about the fact that this is a guy who's a convicted felon, who's talking about criminals that we need to put out of the country while at the same time talking about other criminals from January 6th that we need to pardon.
PHILLIP: Look, Coleman I hear what you're saying, and I've told this to Scott too, all of that you're saying is very speculative. I am still waiting --
JENNINGS: Speculative?
PHILLIP: -- after four years of Donald Trump --
JENNINGS: Did money not change hands?
PHILLIP: Scott.
JENNINGS: Did it not?
PHILLIP: Four years of Donald Trump, four years of a Joe Biden DOJ looking into these very things, I'm still waiting to see --
JENNINGS: Well, he can't be charged. He's the president.
PHILLIP: Right? I'm still waiting.
JENNINGS: Joe Biden can't be charged.
PHILLIP: I'm just -- you don't -- I'm not talking about charges. I'm still waiting to see the proof of Joe Biden enriching himself.
[22:30:01]
I take his brother and his son perhaps, but I think that is yet to materialize.
LAWLER: I'll give you the direct line.
PHILLIP: Otherwise, your colleague, James Comer, could have produced the evidence and he didn't.
LAWLER: He did. A Chinese company transferred money to a Shell company owned by Hunter and Jim Biden that then transferred money directly to Jim and Sarah Biden's Shell company that then transferred the money to Jim and Sarah's personal account who then immediately wrote a check for $40,000 to Joe Biden.
PHILLIP: Congressman, listen We have to -- we have to --
LAWLER: So, to say that there was no evidence is not true. It's not true.
PHILLIP: What I'm saying is that Trump was president for four years. He wanted to charge Joe Biden. Why did the charges not come? And I think that still remains an open question. If there is something illegal happening here, there should be charges on the basis of what you're saying and there have not been.
LAWLER: Well, he just pardoned Hunter for an 11-year time period. In an 11-year time period. He just wiped the slate.
PHILLIP: Hang on, guys. Hang on, guys.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Jim will be next, by the way.
PHILLIP: We're waiting -- we're waiting for the charges and when the charges come, we'll have a conversation about that. I promise you that. Solomon Jones, thank you very much for joining us. Everyone else, hang tight.
Coming up next, we talked about the Trump administration's day one immigration priorities. While Trump's advisers, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, are now defending one specific type of immigration. A special guest is going to join us in our fifth seat to discuss that debate next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:40]
PHILLIP: Tonight, a battle of the billionaires. Donald Trump wants an immigration crackdown. We talked about that. But two of the Uber wealthy tech bros that he wants to be a part of his administration are hoping that he overlooks a very specific kind of immigrant. High skilled engineers. Like Elon Musk, who made his social media post defending tech companies hiring practices, including saying this, "There is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America."
With us now is CNN global economic analyst, Rana Foroohar. She's joining us in our fifth seat. I should start by saying, Elon Musk is right about the nature of the problem. That there is a problem with high tech skills in the United States.
His solution is to immigrate more of these people. And that has got him on the outs with a lot of people on the right in Trump's coalition, who say Trump -- he ran on this idea of cracking down on immigration and also building up American workers, not foreign workers.
RANA FOROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYST: Right, and I think that this issue, like so many that I expect we're going to see in the next few years, really illustrates the gap between these two blocks in the Trump coalition. The -- I would put tech bros and Wall Streeters in one corner and the MAGA folks in the other corner. And there is going to be this juxtaposition.
Now, I think that you can actually have it both ways. I mean, there is a way to crack down on illegal immigration, you know, secure the border, those things a lot of people are for. And also make it easier for high-skilled immigrants to get into this country.
Because the fact of the matter is, and I think folks on both sides would say, there are a lot of labor shortages that are actually the biggest problem to growth, productivity, and really the future of the country.
And that is going to require more immigration. It's always been America's benefit, you know, value add, particularly compared to Europe or a lot of other places in the country. It's why we have had historically higher growth.
PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, I'm curious, Congressman. I mean, why -- I can never figure out why is it that when, on the right, some of these anti-immigrant folks talk about this, they're not also talking about what it actually is going to take to bring American workers to these jobs.
LAWLER: Right.
PHILLIP: Whether it's raising their skill levels, et cetera, because I guess they don't want the government to be involved in that. But don't you think it has to be at this scale?
LAWLER: Look, this, I think, is one of the biggest issues that we have to tackle in this Congress. Yes, we need to secure the border. We need to stop the massive influx of illegal immigration. But the fact is, we have a population decline in this country, and we have a workforce shortage. We have a shortage of doctors, nurses, engineers, home health aides, ag workers, construction workers, hospitality workers.
We need to not only have an immigration system that works, that has a legal process that people who want to come here and enrich our community, our culture, our economy, can do so. But we need an education system that is ensuring that we are building the workforce that we need.
It's not just about having a pipeline to college. We need a pipeline to the jobs that need to be filled, which means our K-12 system needs to be reevaluated. We need vocational schools. We need to get kids started at an early age, on the path to STEM, so that we actually are creating engineers and the workforce of tomorrow, especially from a technological standpoint, from a biotech standpoint.
We are the greatest force in the world, and our economy is the most powerful. And we have the most innovative and entrepreneurial people. But the fact is that we do have a shortage in the workforce, and we need to deal with this.
PHILLIP: So, OK, what you just said is the thing that got Vivek Ramaswamy in some trouble, OK? So, here's his post.
He says, "The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born and first-generation engineers over Native Americans isn't because of an innate American I.Q. deficit, a lazy, wrong explanation. A key part of it comes down to the C-word, culture. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers." Sounds a little embittered, maybe. Is it American culture that's the problem?
JENNINGS: Somebody got stuff in a locker. I'm not going to say who.
[22:40:00]
Look, I think there's a way to solve this and talk about this that doesn't denigrate all of American culture. I mean, I'm now understanding more and more how he got 100 votes in Iowa or whatever it was he got during the Iowa caucus.
The reality is, and Elon, by the way, clarified or further explained his position later and was talking about saying, I want to bring in the top 0.1 percent of engineering talent from around the world. It's like bringing in a Jokic or a Wimby on it to help your whole team if you want to make a comparison to the NBA.
So, I think -- I think, we can bring in the absolute top talent from around the world, and at the same time not insult the rest of the United States of America and our culture and the way we do things here, and also lift up the American students who have the talent and who have the interest and put them in the right educational opportunities.
I think what he did today was to over-talk it. A lot of MAGA people are not happy. A lot of Republicans are not happy and this is why Donald Trump's in the Oval Office, and he's a volunteer.
PHILLIP: And he is saying something that a lot of people apparently believe that it's about the jocks being celebrated, the football stars being celebrated, and not the nerds. NAYYERA HAQ, FORMER OBAMA WHITE HOUSE SENIOR DIRECTOR: It also
challenges, well, actually raises the idea that many immigrant families have when they come to the United States that if they just get the right grades and they follow this meritocracy path, everything's going to work out and they'll be great.
And the reality is that innovation, creativity, emotional intelligence are a huge part of success and innovation in the United States. American innovation is what sets us apart from the Communist Party of China. But this idea that immigrants often come with also has a baked- in racism to it.
It's this idea that, well, we as immigrants are the right kind. We're educated. We're not like those other minorities in America, and that distinction is made very clear within minority communities. So, for example, you have - most people would not know that the richest and most educated immigrant population is Nigerian-Americans.
People would think it's Indian-Americans. Yet Nigeria was put on the Muslim ban list, right? There is a -- this idea of the -- who the mild minority is, you know, breeds that kind of challenge that we have with Korean grocers in black neighborhoods.
FOROOHAR: I think you're getting at something else important here, which is that we need all different kinds of learning and we need all different kinds of cultures. I mean, you made a great point about vocational schools. It's not just about math or the jocks, you know, which is social skills, frankly, which matter.
Actually, it's interesting that most CEOs come out of state schools and aren't necessarily the straight-A students. You need to change education in this country. You need to value different kinds of skills. I actually think the idea of a meritocracy built just on, you know, who gets the best SAT scores.
You know, I'm the child of immigrants, don't get me wrong. I grew up in rural Indiana, though. I was also a cheerleader. You can do both, you know. I think that you do need a system to be revamped in a way that we haven't done since the post-World War II period in this country.
PHILLIP: I mean, OK, I have to get you in on this because I think Rana's talking about something very important, which is there's a movement to sort of say, let's give everybody points for their grades and their SAT scores and their I.Q.s, and then let's put them in college based on that.
And if you did that, you would not actually get to the most successful people, the people who have the best potential. So, how does -- that seems to honestly undermine this idea of a pure meritocracy, which is what Vivek Ramaswamy is talking about here.
COLEMAN HUGHES, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, so there's a bit of a paradox here because the point about I.Q. and SATs and entrance exams is not necessarily that they are -- that they measure the inherent worth or the full 3D capacity of a human being, because as you say, there's all these other important skills in life, and we all know this, right? It's that they are objective. And what we saw, for instance --
PHILLIP: Well, you think that they are objective.
HUGHES: They're more objective than the alternatives, right? There's no such thing as perfect objectivity on these tests, right? But when you look at what happened at Harvard with affirmative action, you had -- they were judging on all these soft skills as well, and their conclusion was that Asian American applicants had worse personalities, right?
So, the test is never going to do that. The test, you know, it's never going to tell you unfairly that you got this math problem wrong because if you got it wrong, you got it wrong. And there's something very attractive about that, especially to people from immigrant communities coming to a new country saying, they may not like my vibe, they may not like my culture, but they can't argue with my skill.
PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, it's very attractive, but I mean, as we've been discussing, you could very well miss the point, right? You can miss the boat. The people who are the most successful are not all the people with the highest I.Qs. They're people who have all kinds of other skills.
And again, Vivek Ramaswamy, he is a hard and fast believer in a pure meritocracy, and he's getting raked over the coals for it by the right, by his own people. We have to leave it there. Everyone, stay with me.
[22:45:00]
Coming up next, companies are lining up to fund Trump's inauguration festivities, even though many of them were slamming Trump after January 6th. We're going to discuss that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:49:22]
PHILLIP: Tonight, companies are cozying up to the president-elect. Those opening their pocketbooks to the Trump inaugural include Ford, Toyota, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and AT&T. These companies once balked at anyone or anything that cheered on the January 6th insurrection.
Now, Rana, they're singing a different tune. They're going down to Mar-a-Lago. They're proverbially kissing the ring, having dinner with Trump. And they're really opening their pocketbooks to a much greater degree than they did eight years ago for Trump's first inaugural.
FOROOHAR: Yes, I mean, I think that what this says is companies are transactional. They're self-interested. I mean, this happens to be a very transactional president, as well, I would argue.
[22:50:00] But the idea that companies wouldn't be looking to ingratiate themselves with power is, you know, would be surprising, let's say, if they were going to take a different stand. And I actually also think, and I'm not arguing for the stand that they're -- that they're taking at the moment or the way that they're trying to ingratiate themselves.
But it doesn't surprise me. What did surprise me, actually, over the last few years is how companies were willing to wade in, you know, in various ways, in conservative issues, liberal issues, into political waters. And I think that that actually, we're seeing a pullback from that now because I think it backfired.
PHILLIP: I mean, do you think that, I mean, I don't know how you get more political than, you know, cozying up very transparently to Trump. I mean, some of this is not just going to see him. I mean, there's, you know, there's Jeff Bezos, who's basically sending out tweets, praising Trump all the time. I mean, it's pretty transparent what's happening.
HAQ: Well, I mean, why -- why bother paying, you know, lobbyists in D.C. when you can just, as a billionaire, talk to the president directly via tweet or telegram?
PHILLIP: Very efficient, actually.
HAQ: It just saves all of that energy and effort. And listen, if anything came out of this election, it's that old school pay-to-play capitalism won out. And everybody is recognizing that, that that is how this is going to play out.
I have to say that the foreign governments, the autocracies recognized that in the first administration. They just knew, buy out a whole row in the Trump, now bankrupt, Trump Hotel in D.C. And you would get the meetings that you needed. A big chunk of the world does work like that.
PHILLIP: Right.
HAQ: And that's part of how America is going to work now.
PHILLIP: It's very easy to kind of transfer what they've done in other countries to the United States now because Trump operates very similarly.
JENNINGS: I mean, he's the president of the United States, president- elect. These are some of the biggest companies in America that employ millions of people all over the country. Don't we want them to have a relationship with the president? This inaugural is functioning the way every other inaugural has ever functioned.
And frankly, I think this and everything that's happened at Mar-a-Lago since he won -- since he won the popular vote, since he won overwhelmingly in the electoral college, since this transition started, there has been signal after signal that people are desperate for a couple of years of political peace in this country. Can we have the American president working with American employers?
Can we have the American president with his party that also won the election, given a chance to govern instead of being harangued and dragged down the way he was the first two years of his first term? I think people are desperate and companies are desperate for political peace, political stability, and a little bit of progress on immigration and the economy.
PHILLIP: I have to say, it's hard -- it's hard to describe what Trump ran on as political peace, but he also ran on political retribution, so I think that should be noted, as well.
FOROOHAR: I think --
LAWLER: Well, I think -- I think he was very clear. His retribution will be America's success. And the fact here is that when Donald Trump was president, the economy was better, it was stronger. American corporations did bring back operations from overseas to the United States.
I think, obviously, there's no question over the last few years we've seen corporate America get way too involved in politics. Everything became political. I hope they pull back from that and focus on what it is that their companies do best and focus on that.
But the fact is that we need an American economy that is growing, that is vibrant, that is employing Americans. And the best way to get there is to have corporate America working with the president, working with Congress, to enact policies that actually are pro-growth, pro- American, pro-business, and pro-worker.
FOROOHAR: Well, are they going to be able to do all of that at once, though?
LAWLER: You can. Why can't you? Why not?
FOROOHAR: We'll see. Well, I'll tell you what happened in the first Trump administration. You got a big tax break. The idea was to bring back so much capital that was being held overseas, it was going to go all into new businesses. Guess where it went? It went into share buybacks and dividend payments, which enriched the top of the population. That's what companies were looking for in this term, as well.
They're looking for tax cuts and deregulation. That's shareholder value. But it's not necessarily -- it's not necessarily --
LAWLER: If you ask the average American -- if you ask the average American, their wallet was a lot fuller under Donald Trump than it was under Joe Biden.
HAQ: The average American is a consumer, not a CEO.
FOROOHAR: Asset prices are not the same as income growth.
PHILLIP: We got to leave it there. Rana, thank you very much for joining us. Everyone else, hold on. Coming up next, new tonight. Millions of Americans watched Netflix's stream of NFL games. And let's not forget the most important thing, Beyonce. We'll discuss what that says about the future of sports and streaming. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:58:59]
PHILLIP: Tonight, Netflix is in the victory formation. Nielsen announcing that 24.2 million people on average watched two NFL games the company streamed on Christmas. The peak was 27 million during Beyonce's half-time performance. That was the biggest ever viewership for a streamed NFL game. But less than last year's broadcast games. Let's get some quick reaction to this. I watched it. I thought it was spectacular.
HUGHES: Me, too. I thought it was great. I loved that it was on Netflix. And you know, I'm 28 years old. I'm -- we're of the generation that, like, a lot of people don't have a cable box.
PHILLIP: Yes.
HUGHES: They just have streaming. But I still want to be able to easily watch the game in the same situation. And then flip to a show. And it's fantastic. I think they should go all in on this strategy.
HAQ: I love Beyonce her Cowboy Carter era. I mean, listen, country music makes a ton of money. Like, Shelton makes something like $60 million a year. I mean, this is deep Americana music. But she brought the roots back into it of where -- where country music really comes from.
PHILLIP: Is this the future of sports?
[23:00:00]
JENNINGS: Yes, the days of just flipping on a game on your local broadcast channel I fear are going away sooner rather than later. Because Amazon's in the game on Thursday night. Netflix now.
PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, they're going to do it. And the NBA's not too thrilled about this.
LAWLER: It's just a reality at this point. You know, I cut the cord years ago. I got tired of seeing the attack ads against me. So --
PHILLIP: All right. Well, to the audience at home, don't cut your cord just yet.
JENNINGS: Yes, get cable boxes. We need cable boxes. We like cable boxes.
PHILLIP: Everyone, thank you very much. And thank you for watching "NewsNight" on CNN. Our coverage continues right now.