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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip

Musk, Ramaswamy Face MAGA Backlash For Pushing H-1B Visas; Trump Ally Laura Loomer Slams Musk For Not Supporting Free Speech; Teamsters President Says, Harris Message To Us was Get On Board; CNN Remembers Two Giants Who Passed Away This Week; Troubling Report On The State Of Homelessness In The U.S.; CDC Releases New Bird Flu Warning. Aired 10-11p ET

Aired December 27, 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 HOST (voice over): Tonight, MAGA versus MAGA. The right turns on itself over immigration, over what America first really means, and over censorship by Trump's wealthiest billionaire backer.

Plus, big labor and big demands, a new interview pulls back the curtain on what Kamala Harris tried.

SEAN O'BRIEN, PRESIDENT, TEAMSTERS: Who does this (BLEEP) lady think she is?

PHILLIP: And failed to get from the Teamsters.

Also a record of the unwanted kind, homelessness hits a new high, spotlighting a three-front crisis crashing down on the United States.

And a raw warning, a new bird flu bulletin about a new mutation and what RFK Jr.'s raw milk fixation may mean for stopping its spread.

Live at the table, Scott Jennings, Mondaire Jones, Coleman Hughes and Madison Gesiotto.

Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening. I'm Abby Philip in New York.

Let's get right to what America is talking about. It's Tech Bros versus the MAGA base, as President-elect Trump looks to enact an aggressive immigration agenda, tech billionaires Elon are defending H- 1B worker visas. And in particular, it's Ramaswamy's comments about American culture venerating mediocrity, in his words, that is rallying up the far right and MAGA base.

Nick Fuentes wrote on X, the H-1B push has nothing to do with American culture but about whether we want 500 million Indians to move here. Laura Loomer writing, stop watching Boy Meets World and turn on Bollywood so you can watch rape culture steal your job culture. And someone else calling India a filthy third world hellscape and writing, if it's so exceptional, why doesn't its tech talent want to stay there?

Notable also that Laura Loomer and some of the other people making these comments have a long history of racist, xenophobic comments about immigrants, but about a lot of other people. And now it's out in the open, Scott. One of the things -- one of the people who's been kind of at war with Laura Loomer over this is Elon Musk, and he commented on a post today, the contemptible fools that he's referring to in a previous post are those in the Republican Party who are hateful, unrepentant racists. They will absolutely be the downfall of the Republican Party if they are not removed.

Has this debate revealed that there are, in fact, a lot of people in the, you know, MAGA coalition who just don't want non-white people to come into this country?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Oh, I wouldn't say that. I think it is revealed that there is some elasticity in the party on its ability to debate the immigration issue. Certainly there are hardliners on immigration who have supported. He himself has been a hardliner, but he has also said repeatedly publicly that he wants immigration reform, that he wants to do something for the DREAMERs. He has also talked about the need for people to come in to the country to do certain kinds of things.

And then you have these other new supporters of Donald Trump who understand that if you're just recruiting like the top 0.1 percent of the best and most talented, you know, say, engineers from around the world, that's probably a good thing. I think where there's great alignment is on the need to eliminate the fraud in the program. And I think some of these visa programs are being used to bring people in for no other reason than to displace American workers and to do things more cheaply.

So, I think that the common ground and the way forward is bringing the people who are the GOATs, you know, of engineering from around the world, bring those people here and then focus on American workers, American students for everything else. And that would be a good blend of how I think this is going to move forward.

PHILLIP: That might be the case, but Laura Loomer is saying, don't bring Indians into America. I mean, she's pretty clear about what she's saying.

COLEMAN HUGHES, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I don't know if she's watched many Bollywood movies, but not only are they very good, but they're actually a lot more modest than Hollywood films. So. that comment was a little bit off base.

But I think, you know, what we're calling the tech right versus the MAGA right is really a longstanding split in the Republican Party between Libertarians and Conservatives. The Republican Party has been holding together those two groups for a long time, and they agree on about 70, 80 percent of stuff.

[22:05:06]

This is a thing they've always disagreed on. Libertarians value economic growth and efficiency and free markets above all else. Conservatives go halfway there. But at the end of the day, we'll side with protecting American workers from foreign competition.

So, you know, you have to give credit to Donald Trump for holding those two coalitions together throughout the entire campaign so that this fissure didn't actually come to light until after they won. Now you're seeing it.

FMR. REP. MONDAIRE JONES (D-NY): So, where did the significant contingent of ethno nationalists fall within the conservatism and libertarianism frame? I mean, to me, that doesn't necessarily fit within either of those two. And I think it is a significant thing within the MAGA coalition, but it also, this debate reveals something broader. You've got, I think, a very incoherent MAGA coalition for years now where you've got business elites driving the policy discussion, setting the policy agenda as working class people are oftentimes getting screwed. I mean, the top priority for this incoming administration is going to be tax cuts for the wealthy. And we now see this conversation about immigration not even taking shape the way that white working class people thought it would.

JENNINGS: So, if I may ask the question, Madison? So, you think working class people have been screwed by the immigration policy of the last four years where people are coming into the country and displacing American workers?

JONES: No. So, I don't agree with the framing of that, actually.

JENNINGS: I'm just asking because you said it, and I just wonder how they're being screwed.

JONES: No, I didn't. I said white working class people are being screwed by the Republican Party, whose top priority is tax cuts for billionaires and for billion dollar corporations.

JENNINGS: But you would agree that the flood of immigration has also screwed working class people?

JONES: Opposing minimum wage increases, opposing universal child care, and efforts to expand healthcare to make it more affordable.

JENNINGS: We're talking about immigration. We're talking about immigration.

PHILLIP: But hang on, if I may, Scott and Mondaire, I mean, I actually think we're veering way off course here because the thing that Donald Trump apparently ran on predominantly is stopping the flow of illegal immigration into the country. When we talk about H-1B visas, we're talking about 85,000 a year of legal immigrants, okay, legal immigrants. So, there are plenty of Republicans right now who are waging an internal war within their party, not about illegal immigration, not about millions of illegal immigrants, but about fewer than 100,000 legal immigrants a year? I mean, I think that is what is catching people off guard who have, I guess, more recently joined the MAGA coalition.

MADISON GESIOTTO, FORMER RNC NATIONAL SPOKESPERSON: Right. And I think President Trump has been very supportive of legal immigrants. I mean, his wife's a legal immigrant. He's expressed this sentiment many, many times. You look at Elon Musk being a great example of someone who came here on an H-1B visa himself. And so I think this is very important that we continue to have the H-1B visas. We want to be competitive in the global economy. But the reality is, and President Trump has also talked about this on many occasions, we don't want to see people coming here being educated in our institutions being that top 0.01 percent that Elon Musk or that Scott mentioned earlier in engineering or in other fields and being sent to work for Chinese companies are being sent to work for these other companies.

And so we want to make sure that we can continue to have those people coming here, working here and helping us grow, which helps American workers. But at the same time, we've seen a lot of issues with the H- 1B visas. We've seen these workers exploited and American workers hurt in this process. And so I think there's a lot of things and a lot of questions that are coming up in this debate that are legitimate questions. And so I think on both sides, there's a lot of positive coming out of this and I think it's something that needs to be hashed out, not just by Republicans, but by people across the country.

PHILLIP: Let me -- I mean, I think, obviously, it's a good debate, but I do question this idea that when we're talking about the scale of this particular immigrant visa program, whether you're actually really talking about something that -- you know, you were talking about harm to American workers that is happening on a scale that is far greater than the H-1B program. I think you have to acknowledge that.

HUGHES: Oh, no, absolutely. I mean, like the percentage of people in the country right now that are foreign born is the highest it's been in over a century. That's not a H-1B visa problem. That's a southern border problem. So, that's really -- that's, you know, if not 99 percent, at least 90 percent of the immigration problem we're talking about.

And, you know, Trump -- if you recall actually when Trump went on the All In podcast, which is the most popular podcast on the tech right --

PHILLIP: By a lot of immigrants on that podcast.

HUGHES: Oh yes, absolutely, yes, mostly immigrants on that podcast, yes, successful tech entrepreneur immigrants. They asked him right at the beginning of the podcast, this H-1B thing, are you for that? And Trump said, you know what, I think that is a good idea, I think we need to bring those people. But after that podcast, he had to walk those comments back. But he was able to manage that during the campaign. But now that they've won, this is a deep fissure within the party that --

PHILLIP: Well, Ritchie Torres wrote this, the far right backlash against Indian immigrants confirms what we in the Democratic Party have long known, that the far right is implacably hostile to all forms of non-European immigrants, regardless of legal status.

[22:10:05]

It's not about status, it's about race. The far right prefers purity over prosperity.

JENNINGS: That's totally false. And I think on these, on any of these visa programs, what any Republican ought to be looking for here is, are they being abused? You know, you mentioned the number of people coming in on H-1Bs. I'm pretty sure not all of them were coming here under the auspices of the program as we would want it. Meaning, are we using it and other visa programs to get the absolute best and brightest engineers? That's the occupation that keeps being thrown out.

So, to me, the way forward for Trump is very simple. I want to eliminate the fraud in any of our visa programming. I want to absolutely control the southern border because I think Coleman is right, that's where the major problem is. We can walk and chew gum at the same time here. If we're recruiting top talent from around the world and eliminating all of the illegal immigration at the southern border, my suspicion is everybody would be quite happy with this after the next couple of years.

PHILLIP: Not everybody. I think that's the point, Scott. I think you're continuing to ignore that there are plenty of people who are saying pretty clearly they don't want this. immigrants to come to this country, whether they are legal or not. They're just -- I mean, they're, I'm not making that up.

JENNINGS: We're going to have a -- look, I hate to disappoint it. We're going to have some legal immigration. Trump has said we're going to have some legal immigration and he's the commander-in-chief and that's what we're going to do.

GESIOTTO: And the majority of the country, I would say, obviously supports that.

PHILLIP: Yes.

JONES: Just on the issue of race here, the only time you see Republican leaders sort of vilify illegal immigration is when you see like black and brown faces crossing the border. I never, and people never really hear about like European immigrants coming here illegally and how horrible that is. And now we're having this conversation about legalized immigration and people are saying, wait, we don't want -- we don't even want that.

GESIOTTO: I think when you look at the southern border, for example, and we've had this conversation on this show many times, I don't think it matters whether it's a white person, a black person, a brown person, what country they're from, where they're from. If they're coming here, and they're a criminal crossing the border, especially when we look at the numbers of convicted criminals that we have that have come into this country, we want them gone. I don't care what color they are.

PHILLIP: So, let me just -- one of other subplots of all of this is what's been going on X, because, you know, Laura Loomer, Elon Musk having this fight, has resulted in him apparently, allegedly, according to her, banning her from certain features of Twitter, basically closing off all of her subscribers. She's saying that this is basically cancel culture, that Elon Musk doesn't like what she's been saying and has basically locked her out of the platform. It would not be the first time that he's been accused of doing something like that.

HUGHES: Yes, I mean, if that's true, it's worth remembering that he bought the company as a principled stand on free speech. And I think he was right. Twitter did have a free speech problem in the other direction before he bought it. And I certainly hope that he governs it in line with his principles rather than becoming a hypocrite.

PHILLIP: Well, the free speech apparently doesn't apply to criticizing Elon Musk.

JENNINGS: Do we know if this is true or not? I mean, I've heard the criticism, but is it true?

PHILLIP: We do know that her blue checkmark disappeared, and she's been tweeting all of this evidence. And there were also several other accounts that were allegedly affected by this.

I want to play really quickly another thing that she said about Elon Musk, but this has to do with his influence on Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAURA LOOMER, FAR RIGHT ACTIVIST: Why does this guy have unfettered access to President Trump? And what are these, the national security implications of this? I know that you've spoken out about this and we really need to have an honest conversation about this. At what point do we say, thank you so much for supporting President Trump and donating to his ground game, but these conflicts are inappropriate and they're going to create a potential controversy for President Trump and his nominees in the Trump administration? We need to have an honest conversation about this that isn't blinded by people's love for a technocratic billionaire. We need to protect President Trump from a conflict.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JENNINGS: She sounds like any Democrat that could be sitting out here.

PHILLIP: I mean, you're right. I mean, but does she have a point? She's apparently suddenly woken up to the fact that Elon Musk runs a company that has substantial interests overseas. Does she have a point that should be something that should be looked at?

JENNINGS: Look, I think Donald Trump having a relationship with one of the greatest innovators of our time across multiple sectors and having that person be as invested in the United States and the success of the United States as he can be is unequivocally a good thing. And I'm sorry if people had their feelings hurt by that, because he we need, this country needs people like Elon Musk to create, to innovate, to participate in our civic affairs. This is a good thing.

JONES: To run government policy by tweet, though?

HUGHES: He's not running anything.

JENNINGS: He's not running anything.

HUGHES: The president's allowed to have advisers and aides, and, you know, some of the best accomplishments from his first term were by, you know, non-cabinet aides. Like, you know, Jared Kushner ran point on getting peace between Israel and five countries. And Elon Musk, he's been very successful in many domains.

[22:15:02]

And, you know, I think --

JONES: He just blew up an effort to keep the government open by tweet. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about running government policy.

(CROSSTALKS)

GESIOTTO: He's going to help us cut waste, fraud and abuse, which we should all be able to get behind when you look at how much money the government waste.

JONES: -- that were taken out, including money to shore up the health fund for victims of 9/11 here in the great state of New York. So, there were things that he has already done that have caused harm by tweet and by influence.

And so I think it's fair to say that he is helping to run the government, even before the incoming government takes office.

PHILLIP: All right. Guys, stick around.

Coming up next for us, hear what a labor leader says, Vice President Harris said when she was seeking the union's endorsement. A special guest is going to join us in our fifth seat to react to that.

Plus, new data shows a sharp increase in homelessness in the United States. What is causing this surge? My panel is going to discuss that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:20:00]

PHILLIP: Tonight, what the Harris campaign wanted and what Labor didn't give them. A new interview from the Teamsters' president essentially accuses the vice president of doing what you do when you assume things. Just listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Teamsters? You better get on board. You better get on board. You better get on board soon, says it to my vice president.

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST, THE TUCKER CARLSON SHOW: To her face?

O'BRIEN: To her face.

I thought I was arrogant.

CARLSON: That's really arrogant.

O'BRIEN: Who does this (BLEEP) lady think she is? Like if I want to support from any organization, I am not going to point my finger and someone's face and say you better get on board or else, but that's the attitude of this whole party.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Joining us at the table is Michael Harriot. He is the founder of ContrabandCamp.com. That is definitely an eyebrow-raising sound bite. There's a little bit more to it. But, first, Michael, what's your reaction?

MICHAEL HARRIOT, FOUNDER, CONTRABANDCAMP.COM: Well, first of all, we don't know if that actually happened. That could be his interpretation of what happened. I mean, we know he is a Trumper.

But, you know, what's interesting about this whole conversation about unions and Trump and Harris is that, you know, the union support for Democrats isn't really a roadie. We saw that under Biden, the Democratic Party really got made measurable gains. You know, they got that new AFL CIO contract. They got a million new contracts. And it's interesting because the Trump -- the people who vote for Trump, though, you know, typically are union workers, white -- majority white, majority male, largely uneducated white voters.

And it's funny to see them kind of fall away from the party that gave them that support because of this, you know, because -- and go towards Trump, when he, you know, specifically has been doing the things that will tear down labor, right? You talk about Elon Musk, you talk about this whole billionaire class that's supporting him, right? The only thing that those guys have in common, Musk and Zuckerberg, is that they want to tear down labor, right?

PHILLIP: And Trump actually, in an appearance with Elon Musk basically said, you know, fire them if they go on strike. But I actually want to play what Shawn Fain said shortly after he spoke at the RNC about President Biden's labor record. And just remember, obviously, Vice President Harris served in the same administration as President Biden. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: You were there when he announced a $36 billion rescue plan for pensions for 350,000 Teamsters, and yet you are the first major union to -- or the last major union to endorse and you haven't endorsed him. Why is he not automatically your pick?

O'BRIEN: Well, because look, I mean, he is definitely the most pro- labor president we've ever had, we've ever seen, and you're correct, he did fund -- he did fix pensions nationwide, not just the Teamsters, with a hundred billion dollars. So, he has done a lot of work on behalf of the Teamsters Union, and we're very proud of the work that he did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: I mistakenly said Shawn Fain. That was Sean O'Brien, of course. But he lays it out there, this administration, who he then declined to endorse Vice President Harris, he called the Biden administration the most pro-labor in history.

JENNINGS: Okay. Well, there's more to it than just economic policies of an administration, A. B, this anecdote we heard at the top of the segment underscores just how arrogant Biden and Harris were. C, it shows just what a terrible politician she turned out to be. I mean, she was extremely deficient as a candidate. She gets into a race late and is showing up and, you know, pointing at people and demanding that they get on board. I mean, she has to earn that support like any other candidate.

Top all this, though, is that there's something going on in the rank and file union class out there, they have different views on our culture and on American exceptionalism than sometimes their union bosses do.

And we're seeing a break between the leadership of these institutions and the rank and file of these institutions. There's more to it than just the economy. There are lots of cultural issues at play here.

PHILLIP: I think that's exactly right. I mean, it's not really actually about the policy toward unions at all.

JONES: Yes. Look, I think it's certainly the case that the union membership within the Teamsters is significantly pro-Trump and it's difficult for any union leader to overcome that. But I would ask the question in response to what Scott said earlier, is if it's not about economic policy, then what the hell is it about?

I mean, this administration --

PHILLIP: Culture, vibes, I mean, there's a lot of --

(CROSSTALKS)

JONES: So, to be clear, it should be about a pro-labor agenda.

[22:25:03]

That is the purpose of advocacy at the federal level when it comes to unions. This has been the most pro-labor administration, Sean O'Brien said it himself, certainly in his lifetime, arguably in the history of America.

I was part of the Congress that voted for a bill that allowed this president to give $36 billion to bail out a pension that was grossly mismanaged by the Teamsters. And I don't regret that for a second. But it was despicable to then see Sean O'Brien draw some kind of equivalency between the pro-labor record of the Democrats and, frankly, the abysmal record that the Republican Party has had on the issue of labor.

GESIOTTO: But you had a candidate who wouldn't even answer the questions about it. They said she answered one fourth of the questions they wanted to ask her, whereas Trump came in and answered everything.

JONES: You know what's more important?

GESIOTTO: She wasn't giving them the respect that they felt they deserved and not the members of that union did deserve.

JONES: It's an actual record that you can point to.

HARRIOT: You have to wonder why --

GESIOTTO: But does she want to be attached to the record of Biden or not, because it seemed to be up and down?

(CROSSTALKS)

HARRIOT: -- if that happened, is more offensive than Trump saying, let's disband the entire policy agenda of these people and fire them all.

HUGHES: I'll tell you, and I'm borrowing this thought from the political scientist, Yasha Mounk. There's this cliche that people vote for the candidate they want to have a beer with. But what's actually true is they vote for the candidate that would want to have a beer with them. And working class union workers have gotten the vibe, to your point, from the Democratic Party, that people like Kamala Harris, Democrats in general, just don't like them very much.

GESIOTTO: And they expect their support, they don't want to earn it.

(CROSSTALKS)

PHILLIP: I do think what Coleman is saying is really important to underscore. Because, I mean, I think politics is about the art of persuasion. It's not just about numbers on a page. It's not just about -- you know that, right? You know that.

HARRIOT: Part of that though is we can't overlook the dynamics of that. The other side hasn't shown really anything.

PHILLIP: Yes.

HUGHES: I just want to have an honest conversation. HARRIOT: Why do they have (INAUDIBLE) onone side and the other side says they'll fire you?

PHILLIP: I'm not just agreeing with you that on paper, none of this makes sense, right?

HARRIOT: Out of their mouth.

PHILLIP: No, I'm saying like, on the policy, right, on things that unions care about, on things that unions care about --

HUGHES: The PRO Act, for example.

GESIOTTO: Look at his secretary of labor nominee.

(CROSSTALKS)

PHILLIP: Even Trump's -- but, Scott, even Trump's nominee for labor secretary who Sean O'Brien loves. Here's what Republican Senator Bill Cassidy says. I look forward to speaking with Chavez-DeRemer about her vision for DOL, I will need to get a better understanding of her support for the Democrat legislation in Congress that would strip Louisiana's ability to be a right to work state and if that would be her position going forward.

This is a Republican Party that does not support unions, Scott, and you know that.

JENNINGS: Well, this is a Republican party that supports working class Americans. And the thing about union members in America is that they have to live in America just like everybody else. And they lived through the last four years just like everybody else. And they lived under inflation just like everybody else. And they lived under the government condescending to them just like the rest of us. And they lived through COVID and they were told all these things and their jobs and their businesses were displaced because of it.

They lived through the biggest failures of Biden. And to say, well, we'll give you the PRO Act, which is an abysmal piece of legislation for the entire country's economy, by the way, is not sufficient. These are working class people. They were hammered by Biden and they knew it and they voted for Trump because he does not condescend them and tell them that it's -- you know, that the conditions are getting better when they're not.

PHILLIP: Maybe this is the end. Unions are hastening their own end. Because they're basically saying, look we as an entity, we don't actually represent the economic interests of our membership. So, then the question is, why have unions if that's not the case? It's not a social club.

JONES: Well, I do want to be clear that the vast majority, the point Michael made earlier, the vast majority of labor did support the Harris campaign.

JENNINGS: Vast? JONES: The vast majority, absolutely. You had a problem with, in the building trades.

PHILLIP: Trump won 45 percent of labor.

JONES: Certainly the largest.

JENNINGS: I wouldn't call it vast.

JONES: Well, objectively it's vast when you look at the numbers and the membership of these respective organizations. She had challenges in the building trades and with the Teamsters and other similar organizations. However, overwhelmingly, labor supported this past campaign. Obviously, she lost.

I don't want to paint with broad strokes what's happening within the labor movement because most labor union members understand that the Democratic Party is the only major political party invested in lifting working people out of the problems that they're facing right now.

HARRIOT: And the other thing is that when we talk about labor unions, we're talking about such a broad swath of the economy. Now, it used to be like auto workers and manufacturers, but now we're talking about professionals and teachers and, you know --

PHILLIP: Amazon workers, I mean, people who want to unionize --

[22:30:00]

HARRIOT: And what we saw kind of with labor is kind of what we saw with the country, right? There is a class of, you know. Let's be honest, like, let's not college-educated whites that supported Trump and that is kind of who supported her in the -- within the labor movement, and it's not very different from the larger demographic.

GESIOTTO: But I mean, you saw Trump grow with many minority demographics across the country in this cycle. And then of course, he also grew with non -- or with white, non-college-educated labor union members.

And so, you saw the growth, I think, in many areas that were, I guess, somewhat unexpected for Democrats but very expected for any of us who were on the ground speaking to people about how they felt about their lives, about how they felt about the border, about how they felt about the economy, who were going to the grocery store buying eggs, buying milk, buying bread for their families.

I mean, I've been on the show many times talking about that and had Democrats laughing about, oh, how are you going to bring this up again about grocery prices? That's what people were worried about and that was reflected in the results.

PHILLIP: All right, guys. Everyone, hang on coming up next, a new surge in homelessness in America. Did the Biden administration's policies make the problem worse and will the Trump administration do anything about it? My panel will discuss that next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:35:20]

PHILLIP: Tonight, a troubling report on the state of homelessness in this country. The Department of Housing and Urban Development finding an 18 percent increase in homelessness in 2024 with more than 770,000 people without a home of their own. Among the causes driving this surge is a lack of affordable housing, a rise in migrants seeking shelter and natural disasters.

So, what are the Trump administration's plans to address this crisis? You know, I -- this is a real sad state of affairs for this country and it should be a black mark, honestly -- almost 20 percent surge. I should say, HUD says some of it is driven by a surge earlier in the year of migrants into the United States, maybe that's the case, as well. But there's a problem going on in this country with homelessness with mental health with drug use and it's showing up on our streets.

HUGHES: Absolutely, I mean you see it on the streets of New York City. You see it in cities all over the country. What I think the lesson of the homelessness crisis is -- especially for liberals and progressives who believe that it's fundamentally a problem of the price of housing rather than of necessarily mental illness and -- and drugs, is that we need DOGE not just at the federal level, but we need DOGE in every state.

We need a DOGE in every city because the reason housing prices are so high is because the housing market is so overregulated, you can't build more supply. So, you've -- we've got to look at zoning laws that are unnecessary.

We got to look at multi-family housing and that's going to upset people. You know, it's difficult to run on that because I've got a nice view out of my apartment and I don't want them building a Skyrise, you know.

So, I support those laws that disallow people to build. But we've got to look at the regulations at the state and local level and get rid of the ones that are preventing people from building houses. That's the only way housing prices are going to come down.

GESIOTTO: And on the campaign trail, President Trump talked a bit about potentially selling federal lands to developers. If they are required to have a certain percentage of that land that's developed ultimately go to affordable housing. So, we have 650 million acres of federal land that could potentially, some of that be sold off to these developers, that's something that's been talked about for this administration.

Obviously, there's only so much the federal government can do. They continue to give money. They could give more. They could maybe look at potentially having certain restrictions on the money and how it's spent. I'm having some accountability. They -- you know, increased I think 11 percent last year and the federal money given to the states, but yet we saw that 18 percent increase. So, finding strategies that work on where that money could go to

actually decrease what we're seeing in the homeless numbers. And then, of course, one of the other things that many people have talked about is banning encampments. They can only do that on federal land. So, there's not much they can do that's been done at the state and local level.

PHILLIP: Go ahead.

HARRIOT: But as an actual economist, right? We have to separate two things, right? The homeless problem is not a problem of the housing supply, right? Like, they're all actually more empty houses in America than there were 10 years ago and 20 years ago. So, it is the corporatization.

Like, all of this stuff that Republicans talk about privatization of the industry and less than regulations -- all of that has been gone like the housing -- the increase in homelessness is taking place outside of large cities where it's not a -- and we know that it's not a problem of affordability, right? It is a problem of the capturing of the housing supply by corporate entities.

PHILLIP: But isn't that also an affordability issue? I mean if the corporate entities -

HARRIOT: And the other part of that, right, is mental health care and addiction. And we've always been fighting it in the wrong ways, right? But I think we have to separate those two things. I think we should be careful because the homelessness problem is not a problem of not enough houses.

GESIOTTO: And not enough affordable houses.

PHILLIP: It's not only a problem of housing, for sure. But I think the cost of housing is part of --

HARIOTT: Which has been driven not only by the corporatization.

JONES: It's not only a problem in urban areas either. It's also a challenge in the suburbs. And I would say, don't throw regulations completely out the window because HUD had a regulation called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing that would have incentivized --

Thank God it was put back in place under this administration after the Trump administration rescinded it, it would have incentivized suburban communities to desegregate, change their own local zoning laws to desegregate and therefore, allow for more development of affordable housing in those communities, like including parts of New York State.

[22:40:00]

So, I think it's really important to be creative and using the regulatory process to encourage development in a smart way that's not just going to --

PHILLIP: Let me play what Trump has said. He -- this is a campaign video that he put out last year about what he would do about the problem of homelessness.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (R): When I'm back in the White House, we will use every tool, lever and authority to get the homeless off our streets to address this crisis in our own country. Under my strategy working with states, we will ban urban camping wherever possible. Violators of these bans will be arrested but they will be given the option to accept treatment and services if they're willing to be rehabilitated.

For those who have addictions, substance abuse and common mental health problems, we will get them into treatment. And for those who are severely mentally ill and deeply disturbed, we will bring them back to mental institutions where they belong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: So, there's a lot -- there's a lot in there and it was a much longer video. But one thing I just want to highlight because we haven't really talked about it except glancingly, the severely mentally ill are the biggest chunk of the population here -- 139,000 people. There, right now, really is not much out there for them. We don't have a social safety net for people who are mentally ill and that is why they end up on the street.

JENNINGS: Well, they don't need a safety net. They -- I mean, we need more mental health institutions. I mean, I guess there was a point in this country where we decided that -- that institutionalizing people was stigmatizing, so, we stopped doing it.

We need mental health institutions. There are going to be people who are going to have mental illness all their life and if you they're going to live in an institution or they're going to live on the streets, that's number one. Number two, I do think the permissive drug culture in this country, which is getting more permissive by the day is real problem.

I mean, you go into homeless encampments and you're going to find largely two things -- mental illness and drug addiction. And right now, we seem to be on a bent towards drug culture and drug permissiveness. And we're going to rule today. We're going to rule --

PHILLIP: Is it permissiveness or is it addiction?

GESIOTTO: But I think it is both.

UNKNOWN: Both of those things are --

JENNINGS: Permissiveness is leading to addiction.

HARRIOT: Well, both of those things can be addressed as a health care issue, right? Like when we talk about severely mental ill, they don't, like, immediate people -- most people don't become severely mentally ill. We've ignored parts of the population for so long and didn't give them -- didn't treat it as health care, didn't treat addiction as health care.

And then you get severely mentally ill and say, wow, we just lock them up into institutions where we know that we can address the problem. We can't solve the entire problem, but we could address the problem better than we have. And the removal of that social safety net -- the campaigning to dismantle the little safety net that we have with Medicare, Medicaid and even Obamacare will increase that problem.

And when you talk about politics and this issue, right, aside from the economic part of it, it is a problem of what we believe in and what we value as a country. And what do you value? You want homeless people not in your neighborhood or do you want to fix American citizens and give them the care that they need. And those are two different things. When you -- when you base the campaign on just -- we don't sweep them out so you won't have to see them.

PHILLIP: Well, I mean, that's why I wanted to play that because I do think, just, if you're being fair to what he is saying here, he -- he is laying out treatment for people who need it. He's laying out help for people who are down on their luck. I mean, it's -- it's in there.

HARRIOT: But it's interesting that --

PHILLIP: But he also talks about removing -- but no visibility of it.

JENNINGS: Look, I mean these encampments and what they have done to urban areas all over this country -- it's driving the residents crazy and it's vexing the local officials. They don't know what to do, but I'll tell you something else. You talk to people who run urban hospitals and emergency rooms, you homeless people walk in. You can't deny them services and -- and they're taking up a lot of bed space and it's affecting the local health care.

So, for people who, you know, show up with actual problems, you know some actual emergency. So, it's another area where we just -- we don't -- we don't have the infrastructure to just deal with these people going through these revolving doors which is why I think the Trump plan -- more mental health facilities, more drug addiction, treatment facilities and a less permissive drug culture would be a good thing.

PHILLIP: All right, guys, Michael Harriot, thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate it. Everyone else, hang on. Coming up next, a new alert from the CDC about bird flu in humans. Will RFK Jr., Trump's pick for chief health official and a raw milk advocate be prepared for it? Another guest is going to join us in our fifth seat to bring us the latest on this outbreak.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:48:55]

PHILLIP: Tonight, a new bird flu warning as Centers for Disease Control analysis says of the first severe case of bird flu shows a mutation. That rewiring of the virus could potentially make H5N1 more likely to jump into humans and that's a scary thought. And one that's not exactly made better by the thought of RFK Jr. and

his preference for unpasteurized dairy. The virus has shut down dairy farms and triggered recalls but RFK Jr. is a long-noted fan of the raw milk in which the virus lives.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., TRUMP'S PICK TO HEAD HHS: And so, it's here last year I only drink raw milk.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Joining us at the table is CNN medical correspondent Meg Tirrell. She has been covering the spread of bird flu. So, first of all, Meg, I mean, where are we at with bird flu and, you know, what is being done to sort of keep the virus away from humans?

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so, right now, this is concerning. So, this patient in Louisiana, they are the first patient to have a severe case in the United States of bird flu and they're also the first patient to catch bird flu from a backyard flock.

[22:50:00]

And what's concerning about the news that we heard from CDC is that while this patient was hospitalized, the virus appears to have mutated and acquired mutations that could make it better at infecting our nose and throats. So, the bird flu isn't very good at infecting us which is why we haven't seen person-to-person spread, so far.

The good news about this Information, though, is that this patient has not spread this to anybody else and it doesn't appear they caught the virus in this form from the birds. So, it's really just in this patient. So, we don't have person-to-person spread of bird flu that we know of right now in the U.S. But we are starting to see the federal agencies start to ramp up their response more.

To a lot of criticism that they haven't done this sooner, the USDA, of course, is doing this national milk testing The CDC is recommending testing of workers and people who are at high risk, but there is criticism that these agencies are not moving fast.

PHILLIP: Let me play some of that criticism from Dr. Deborah Birx. You might remember from the COVID-19 pandemic.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEBORAH BIRX, FORMER TRUMP WH CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE COORDINATOR: We're not testing enough and we know from other viruses that a lot of the spread can be asymptomatic. So, we're kind of have our head in the sand about how widespread this is from the zoonotic standpoint, from the animal-to-human standpoint. I flash back to January of 2020 and I'm hearing the same words come out of the CDC.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Like what?

BIRX: Low-risk. Low-risk of human-to-human transmission. Now, agencies are making the same mistakes they made with COVID.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: So, the CDC has responded to this, right?

TIRRELL: They have. They pushed back, actually, pretty firmly. In a statement they gave us tonight, a spokesperson called these comments particularly about testing out-of-date misleading and inaccurate. The CDC says they changed their recommendations in November to recommend broader screening particularly of people even who are asymptomatic.

And that they also kept up their flu surveillance through the summer. So, typically, you might wind that down when you're not in seasonal flu season. But they kept that going and that actually may have caught a patient along the way.

PHILLIP: So, this is all happening while Trump is considering RFK Jr. for a top health job. He's --he's announced that appointment. One of the people that RFK reportedly is considering for a job in the federal government is his raw milk supplier Someone who is an advocate for raw milk. This is not funny, Coleman. I mean, this is a real thing.

I think the question here is, are we going to have, you know, a public health regime that is going to be controlled by people who don't believe the basic science that's actually done a pretty good job thus far of keeping us safe.

JONES: Yes, look, so I think there's a very real risk of that. I think RFK is a very scary nominee to lead HHS and I've been a little surprised that his nomination has -- hasn't gotten more attention. I think it's been sort of subsumed or whatever by all the attention on Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard. But you want to talk about a guy who can actually in impact our day-to-day lives through Implementing any one of his crazy ideas that are at odds with the scientific research. That's RFK at the Health and Human Services.

HUGHES: Yes, I think I mean one of Trump's great successes in the first term, which I think still Democrats haven't given proper credit for was Operation Warp Speed which was enormously -- it was -- got us a workable vaccine extremely quickly saved tons of lives. If, God forbid, there were a bird flu, Public Health would depend a lot on getting a really fast hyper speed vaccine.

And RFK -- whatever you think of him, his priorities are exactly in the opposite direction. He would want a slow roll of vaccine to make sure it's perfectly safe and to put tons of red tape in front of -- before the rollout of the vaccine, which would -- it's not the set of priorities I think you want in a pandemic. But we don't even really have to go to RFK to see the mismanagement because there's already been mismanagement.

Correct me if I'm wrong Meg, but the first case of cow to human transition for this was in March, right? And yet, they let eight other states see similar cases before they said let's stop selling the cows Interstate which again seems like a very -- it does seem like a kind of repeat of -- of the kind of complacency we saw in the early days of COVID. So, I hope things --

PHILLIP: We are in a very perilous moment, I think, as someone -- Scott Jennings who has a backyard flock here saw.

JENNINGS: Yes, I have a lot of chickens.

PHILLIP: Yes.

JENNINGS: And we you know, we've enjoyed raising them. I have like 30 of them. It's a great hobby. I do -- I do worry about this to some degree. I do think on the issues of the public health regime in the country being less than trusted right now, RFK has really nothing to do with that they have only themselves to blame for lack of trust and what they did do during COVID, what they said -- some of the things they told us it turned out not to be true.

We need to rebuild that trust and it's going to take some time. I mean people -- people are going to have to be convinced that they're actually being told the truth. This is like how damaging it was to be told six feet. We know it for sure. Masks. We know it for sure.

[22:55:00]

UNKNOWN: Mask (ph) your toddlers.

JENNINGS: Yes. You know, all this stuff that came along that has driven the trust down, now you got this -- other things hanging out there. You can see why this was a problem.

GESIOTTO: And we have vaccine-injured people which is a big group of people that, really, on the right haven't supported President Trump as much as they did before because of the vaccine following COVID, now, they did background in '24 but they saw that after --

JONES: To be clear, the science or research doesn't establish that it did slow down the transmission of COVID to do masking and social distancing.

PHILLIP: We're going to have to leave it there. Meg Tirrell, thank you very much for joining us late at night for this one. Everyone else, coming up next, remembering a pair of icons. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[23:00:00]

PHILLIP: Tonight, we are remembering two giants who passed away this week. Business executive Dick Parsons has died. He was known for helping big brands navigate big problems and that included Time Warner, the former parent company of CNN. Parsons was 76 years old.

And Sports broadcaster Greg Gumbel has died, as well. According to CBS, that is where he spent decades covering football basketball and more. Former colleagues like TNT's Ernie Johnson are calling Gumbel "a pro's pro and a gentleman of the highest order". Gumbel was 78 years old. Thank you very much for watching "NewsNight". CNN's coverage continues

right now.