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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip

Jimmy Carter's State Funeral Set for Jan. 9 in Washington; Trump Sides With Musk on Support of H-1B Visa Program; Musk's Foreign Connections Complicate His Closeness to Trump. "NewsNight" Tackles Congressional Futility; "NewsNight" Panelists Talk About What's In And What's Out In 2025. Aired 10-11p ET

Aired December 30, 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, is past prologue? Jimmy Carter's death prompts a second look at his life and his presidency and provokes a question about the current president. Will time make American hearts grow fonder of Joe Biden's four years?

Plus, the president-elect picks a side. Donald Trump crosses his ultra conservative base and throws down with his billionaire backer in chief on a thorny immigration issue.

Also, Congress turns in a most unproductive year. Will a Republican- controlled Washington result in more laws or just more gridlock?

And exfil, the federal prosecutors who led January 6th prosecutions plot how to get out of the crosshairs before Donald Trump takes office.

Live at the table, Solomon Jones, Scott Jennings, Jordan Kaye Colvin, and Doug Heye.

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

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening. I'm Abby Phillip in New York. Let's get right to what America is talking about. Jimmy Carter, his passing echoing around the globe today as we're learning more about the plans to honor his life. Carter will get what's only offered to the most prominent figures in American life, a state funeral, a motorcade that will snake from Plains, Georgia to Atlanta, and then Carter will take one final flight to Washington, where he'll lie in state at the U.S. Capitol before a final service at the U.S. National Cathedral.

The plans underway for a sacred ceremony crafted for a president is also prompting the country to reconsider what is charitably described as Carter's complicated legacy.

Joining us in our fifth seat is the presidential historian himself, Tim Naftali. He's the former director of the Nixon Presidential Library.

Tim, do you think that time has been good to the Carter legacy?

TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Oh, there's no question that time has been good to the Carter legacy. Keep in mind that for the first couple of decades after he left office, and he left office at the age of 56 and kept himself in very good health.

He only wanted to talk about his post-presidency. He himself didn't want to talk about his presidency. He didn't really care much about the museum at his library. He cared about the library, but not the museum. He focused all his energy on the Carter Center, and that's all he wanted to talk about. Well, when a president himself doesn't want to talk about his presidency, you can understand how he thinks about it.

The very fact that in the last, I would say, five to eight years, a number of biographies have come out. Stu Eizenstat, who was a major domestic adviser to President Carter, has written two important books. The fact that people are looking at his domestic achievements and finding that he laid the basis for some of Ronald Reagan's achievements, and indeed that Ronald Reagan himself recognized that, and Bob Gates recognized it, is giving people a pause. They're thinking maybe we should reconsider how much of a failure his presidency was.

And what's interesting here is that, you know, Jimmy Carter thought his presidency was a failure because Jimmy Carter was very ambitious. In fact, Rosalynn Carter said to him, don't try to do so much. So, he set the bar very high and he didn't meet the bar. But when you look at what achievements he had domestically -- his foreign policy legacy is a different story. You see that he had a lot of them. And, of course, that raises the question of how will people view Biden's legislative victories and successes in the first two years of his term, will that change the entire narrative for him later on?

PHILLIP: I do think that, first of all, the fact of being a one term presidency, I think, makes a lot of people feel like that is inherently a failure. You don't get the second term that you wanted. He wanted it. George H.W. Bush wanted it. Joe Biden wanted it. But when you do look at the four years that he did have, to Tim's point, there is -- it's a complicated picture and I think some people look back on it and say -- and the discreet things that he wanted to do and that he tried to do he -- it wasn't as bad as I think the political view of it is.

And, Scott, I know that you're getting ready to disagree with me, but there is a political view of history and then there is a view of history that takes it into context.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, let me preface my take by offering condolences to the Carter family on his death. He was obviously one of the most unique post-presidency's we ever have because he lives so long any and he did so much.

[22:05:02]

That having been said, he was a terrible president. That's why he lost in a landslide after his one term. And if it's possible, I think he was even a worse ex-president because of his meddling in U.S. foreign policy, because of his saddling up to dictators around the world, because of his vehement views, anti-Israel views, and more than dabbling in anti-Semitism over the years. He often vexed Democrats. Obama didn't even have him speak at his '08 convention. He put Bill Clinton in a terrible foreign policy box on a North Korea nuclear issue. I think he was a guy who had a huge ego and believed that he was uniquely positioned to do all these things even after the American people had roundly and soundly rejected his leadership.

So, I respect people who run for president and get elected president, but in his particular case, I think he, time and again proved, why he was never suited for the office in the first place.

PHILLIP: Before you jump in, Tim, I mean, I just want to show this. I mean, this is what the economic picture was when Carter was president. How much of it is this, just the fact simply that the consumer price index was all the way up to the top of the screen, practically, and the only other time it really made that kind of jump was during the pandemic? And similarly to Biden, the economy is often what drives these decisions by voters.

NAFTALI: I don't, I don't often say this, but. Scott, I agree with you to a certain extent. President Carter was meddlesome with his successors. He forgot sometimes that he still wasn't president. But that alone shouldn't mar the record of global humanitarian good that he did.

Let me tell you a story. I only met -- I only had the privilege of meeting President Carter once, and it was because I was with a group of presidential library directors, and he had changed his mind, he had decided, he had been pushed a little bit, to revitalize the museum, and he and Rosalynn Carter gave us a personalized tour of the museum. And he talked about the his political career, and he talked about his presidency, and he showed some satisfaction.

But when he lit up was when he was talking about guinea worm, and talking about what the Carter Center had done, and wanted to be sure that the folks in the global south or the developing world would be without this scourge. And he was 86 at the time. And I saw that what animated this man, was pure humanitarianism.

For all the meddlesome behavior as a post president, which is well documented, I don't think that it outweighs the contribution that he made as a global citizen after he left.

JENNINGS: Can I just offer one retort which is, this in the run up to the Persian Gulf War, he wrote letters --

NAFTALI: Yes, I know about this. JENNINGS: -- to all of our allies and to Arab states asking them to abandon their cooperation and coalition with the United States of America. If it's not treasonous, it's borderline treasonous.

And so I hear what you're saying about the humanitarianism, but when you're an ex-president and you have served in that office, I think you have a duty to the United States and only to the United States. And when he did that in other instances to me, it showed that he cared more about his own legacy than he did about the country, and I think that is wrong.

NAFTALI: I respect that, but I just wanted to remind you --

SOLOMON JONES, AWARD-WINNING COLUMNIT, THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: Carter was a decent man. I think that's what it really comes down to. He stood on principle, whether you agree with it or not, whether the president agreed with it or not, whether the party agreed with or not, he stood on principle and that's how he lived his life. He represented a political swing of the pendulum from the most corrupt administration we'd ever seen in Nixon to somebody who actually believed that he wanted to help people. That's what Jimmy Carter was about.

DOUG HEYE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: If you ask any American what they think about Jimmy Carter's post-presidency, any random American, they're going to tell you they like him because they saw his great work, with Habitat for Humanity. And, you know, if an image tells a story, we all saw the image repeatedly of he and Rosalynn doing that very good work. It doesn't change the fact of how he cozied up with dictators in the global south and certainly in the Middle East. That is very troublesome.

But I'm also reminded one thing is, you know, you showed the graph earlier and the ad that Jimmy Carter ran. Jimmy Carter is a really smart guy. And when he ran in 1976, he said, the fact that inflation is at 6.5 percent isn't what matters, that's just a number. This is about people paying their mortgage and making their lives work on a day-to-day basis. Hello Biden campaign, hello Harris campaign. You should have learned from Jimmy Carter. Whatever his other mistakes, he was right on that issue even if he couldn't solve it.

PHILLIP: But he wasn't -- I mean, he really couldn't solve it and perhaps didn't have the political --

HEYE: But he understood how to talk about it.

PHILLIP: But let me 60 Minutes where he talks about the political game that, in some cases, he was very much unwilling to play.

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Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY CARTER, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: There were times when a Congressmember would try to blackmail me, or when a Congressmember would make a demand that I thought was inappropriate. And --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And they would say it's the normal give and take of getting legislation done. But you considered it blackmail?

CARTER: In a few occasions, yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: One of those occasions, he essentially told some members to, you know, go to hell, essentially, for a request. I mean, he had good intentions, but there was clearly an unwillingness to play a certain political Washington game. This is from a man who came from a completely different world and went right back to that world after he left the presidency.

JORDAN KAYE COLVIN, POLITICAL CONSULTANT: It's an interesting juxtaposition with the current president that we -- or the president- elect that we have versus the current president, Joe Biden, who is a Washington insider, who's been in the Senate, who's a legacy of D.C. for many years. I also think something interesting, a contrast between Carter and Biden, is that both of them have had American hostages held in foreign places during their presidency. And we continue to have seven Americans are still held hostage in Gaza as of right now. And I believe it is longer than it was in Iran.

PHILLIP: That's an interesting historical anecdote as well because that contributed to his inability to get a second term. And it turns out we know now that Reagan allies had something to do with the fact that those hostages did not come home.

NAFTALI: You know, I think it's important when we observe presidents, because it's a tough job and they're all human and they all make mistakes, and you know what, it's an almost impossible job, is to see those moments when they show political courage. And I think of one of my favorite presidents, George Herbert Walker Bush, and when he recognized he had to raise taxes.

Now, the Democrats forced him to raise them higher, but that was actually Newt Gingrich's fault. That was -- no, but it was Newt Gingrich's fault because he, the point was, President Bush, the first President Bush, knew he had to do it. That largely cost him the election.

Jimmy Carter brings in an independent Fed chief in Paul Volcker, and Volcker makes clear he's going to lift interest rates to -- the U.S. had double digit inflation. Well, that certainly cost Carter the election. But as he wrote somewhat, you know, unhappily, but truthfully in his diary, he understood that there was no way he was going to tell the Fed chair what to do.

There are moments in our history when presidents make really tough calls, and often they pay for it by not getting a second term.

PHILLIP: Does President Biden have anything to learn from what happened with Jimmy Carter, both good or bad? I mean, there are many people today saying that Jimmy Carter's presidency was not the caricature that a lot of conservatives, maybe Scott included, painted as, and that only with the passage of time we see that. Do you think that will be the case with Joe Biden?

JONES: I think Biden has to take credit for what he's done. He passed a huge infrastructure bill. It was a bipartisan bill. The same Republicans that claim to be against it go back to their districts and say, look what I did in this bill, you know?

And so I think he has to take credit for what he did. I think that he has to understand that you know, there are some forces outside of his control that that led to him, you know, losing this election or even being booted out by his own party. His age, of course, one of those forces, but I think that Joe Biden did some things that, quite frankly, I don't expect to see the next president do in reaching across the aisle and doing so for the benefit of all Americans.

NAFTALI: I have to blame, though, the White House for covering up the extent to which he was not the same man. And I think that will hurt his legacy.

HEYE: How many times were you and I on T.V. and we said Joe Biden isn't fit to serve and we were told you can't say that? That's unfair. Pretty much every time?

JENNINGS: It happened a lot.

PHILLIP: I don't know. Okay. Well, we'll just leave it at that. We've talked a lot about Joe Biden's fitness to serve on this program and on many others. Tim Naftali, we appreciate you very much. Everyone else stick around.

Coming up next, Donald Trump siding with Elon Musk and against some of his MAGA faithful when it comes to special visas for skilled workers. So, what does that supporter split mean for the president-elect?

Plus, here's what's next. on the heels of one of the most unproductive Congresses in history. What can the country expect from the New Year? Our panel will debate that next.

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[22:15:00]

PHILLIP: Tonight, Donald Trump chose the billionaire over his base. The MAGA fanatics who hang on his every word are reeling now from the sting of rejection after the president-elect sided with billionaire Elon Musk in a critical immigration issue.

Trump's decision already causing a riptide of anger among the MAGA faithful and questions like this about how near and dear Elon Musk should be to the incoming president of the United States.

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LAURA LOOMER, FAR RIGHT ACTIVIST: I don't think that it's acceptable for billionaires to have this much power and this much access so that not only are they going to have government access to our money and government influence as we saw over the spending bill by threatening primaries against people who don't comply with his wishes, but this is a guy who gets government subsidies for defense contracts and now wants to silence people who challenge him online.

Does he really support MAGA and the America First agenda, or is he trying to push this neo-reactionary political movement?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Yes, that is Laura Loomer, and she's got a lot of problems. But on this one, she's pointing out something that actually a lot of people have been pointing out about Elon Musk.

HEYE: So, in fairness, my audio is out, so I didn't hear anything that she said, but I wouldn't listen to what Laura Loomer said anyways. This is a general rule.

PHILLIP: Let me --

HEYE: So this is all -- it's very consistent.

PHILLIP: Let me play them, even though you won't be able to hear this, but hopefully we'll get it fixed. This is Vivek Ramaswamy talking about the same thing, but actually a couple years ago.

[22:20:02]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VIVEK RAMASWAMY, FORMER REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Markets are war. And what they do is they get companies that become beholden to China. And I think Tesla is increasingly beholden to China. If China then pulls the rug, or even threatens to pull the rug out, all of those people turn into pawns.

You have no reason to think that Elon won't jump like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping call the hour of need.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Again, I mean, this is why generally at one point we thought it was okay to have, you know, ethics around businesses and how they can influence the government. That's all out the window. But are there not concerns about Elon Musk's business dealings that nobody's saying he can't do business in China, but should he also be right next to the president of the United States at every waking moment?

HEYE: Yes. I think the answer is it depends on who you talk to. But also one of the things that we know with Donald Trump is you're side by side with him for as long as you're going to be until he decides you're not. And the one thing we don't know is if he is a first among equals. Is he going to be pushed aside like Sean Spicer was? Is he going to be left on a tarmac the way Reince Priebus was? That's what Donald Trump does. But Elon Musk is an entirely different creature in this regard, and Donald Trump knows that. So, they may not be joined at the hip constantly for four years, but unless there's a major fallout in which we'll talk about nothing else for weeks and weeks, I think they're going to stay as close as they can. Policy sort of comes second in that regard.

PHILLIP: Well, I mean, it's also about the, you know, almost quarter of a billion dollars that Elon Musk spent to elect Donald Trump, which is a huge -- yes. I mean, in any other world, you would call that someone being beholden to another person.

JONES: Yes, money gives you access, but I think they also share common interests. Elon Musk personally benefited from the HB1 visa. He hires people who benefit from the HB1 visa, people who have these special skills and talents who come from other countries. And Donald Trump, of course, his wives, at least two of them immigrants, one of them, Melania Trump coming over on the EB1 visa, right, which is supposed to be this Einstein visa for people with specialized skills and gifts and talents.

And so she gets here on that visa. She brings over our whole family. I mean, it's good work for him. And so, you know, it's fine with them as long as it benefits them. But if it's for somebody else, well, then that's when it's a problem.

JENNINGS: So let me just simplify this for everybody. The person whose name was on the ballot was Donald Trump. He won the election. And his position on H-1B visas is that he thinks it's a good program that can have some benefit. His position on illegal immigration and the crisis on that in the country generally is that it has to stop. And I don't think it is impossible for the Republican Party, led by Donald Trump, advised by Elon Musk, and supported by a bunch of other Republicans out there, it's not impossible for this group to find its way to a common ground.

H-1B visa program is reformed, fraud is eliminated, we find a way to bring in the smart people, the people that help America, and then on the southern border, we find a way to close it, stop the illegal immigration crisis, stop the drug crisis, stop the crime and the criminals. We can do both at the same time, and that's what Trump and Elon are for, and the vast majority of Republicans are going to support that.

PHILLIP: Real quick, do you have concerns about Elon Musk's business dealings in other countries, including American adversaries, and the level of influence that has over his own behavior and his interests.

JENNINGS: I have no concerns about Elon Musk. I have been looking at pictures of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden meeting with Chinese political leaders lately that we were told didn't exist. So, for all the people who are really upset about Elon Musk having a very successful international business that actually produces things, actually produces vehicles or rockets or whatever they're doing, the Bidens produced nothing, aAnd yet we're also doing business in China. So, I don't accept this criticism.

PHILLIP: I don't want you to change the subject because it's not really about whether he's a successful business person or not. It's about whether his material interests as a business owner are in conflict with the United States' national security interest.

JENNINGS: My view is his prospects and interests as a business owner and most of the things he's into, electric cars, rockets, the internet that we're using all over the world, it's good for the United States to be the warehouse for that. It's good for our national security to have this kind of technology.

I just -- the idea that there is somehow a conflict in the United States having this kind of a businessman and that's somehow bad for us, I totally reject.

PHILLIP: Here's Marco Rubio, 2022, right after President Biden's signed Rubio's Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act into law, by the way. He said, Tesla opened a store in Xinjiang. Nationless corporations are helping the Chinese Communist Party cover up a genocide and slave labor in the region. He specifically name check Tesla there.

COLVIN: This is why it's going to be so important for the Department of Justice to not be politicized. This wouldn't be the first time as it's been ruminated that there's going to be rumored that there's going to be a politicization of DOJ to go after enemies, retaliation, but it's going to be so important that DOJ has energized prosecutors who are ready to look into American business dealings with foreign entities, and making sure that those foreign entities are not in any way meddling with American data, with our intellectual property.

[22:25:21]

It's going to be a very key part of it.

And Elon has a direct benefit to the government contracts, as Laura Loomer was talking about, that he receives from the federal government. His product goes into American government systems. And this is important national security concern.

JENNINGS: I would just say thank goodness he has contracts because we have astronauts in outer space right now that we can't bring home. I guess he's going to bring them home in February. So maybe thank goodness somebody built a space company that can actually bring people back to the Earth.

PHILLIP: I mean, it is incredible what SpaceX has done and even actually what Tesla has done in jumpstarting the electric vehicle industry. But this is going to be awkward for Marco Rubio, who is going to be probably the secretary of state.

HEYE: He'll get in line very quickly. It won't be awkward. It'll be awkward conversation on television, but it won't be awkward for Marco Rubio.

PHILLIP: And what does getting in line mean, do you think? Just Forget about everything, forget about the Uyghurs, all of that? HEYE: Yes, absolutely. Yes. And, look, people, I think, forget when you get outside of Washington and New York, people love Elon Musk because what he does with these rockets and then they land exactly where they're supposed to, and they see these incredible Star Trek, Star Wars things happening in front of their eyes that we can all watch, you know, it makes him somewhat heroic. The challenge becomes then when you sort of merge that with government where real questions exist and should exist. But for most voters, they're not looking at those secondary questions.

JONES: I think people love Elon Musk until he starts talking. And then you realize like how strange some of the --

PHILLIP: I think most Americans have never heard Elon Musk --

JONES: Well, I think they're seeing him on Twitter now since he paid $44 billion for that.

I think it's interesting that we talk about the business interests of Elon Musk, but we don't talk about the business interests of Donald Trump, who refused to divest, refused to kind of hand that stuff over in his first term. What's he going to do in his second term? You've got all of these billionaires around him. You've got all of these people with all of this monetary interest. I think we should be more concerned about him given that he is the president-elect and what are his business interests in this whole thing?

COLVIN: I think it's also interesting that Elon is -- you know, he said in his tweet that he's going to go to war over the H-1B visa issue, which subsidizes the tech industry. Silicon Valley lobbies very heavily, one of the most powerful lobbies in D.C. The machine goes after that visa because it subsidizes their profit and their margins. Without it, they would not be able to import the cheap labor that they do.

And one of the big controversies around this is talking about the American workforce can't sustain this, that we don't have the workers. Do we not have the workers, or we're just not willing to make the investments?

JONES: Not willing to pay them.

COLVIN: Yes, and we're not willing to pay them.

JONES: This is actually an interesting point.

COLVIN: We have American workers training their foreign replacement coming in on an H-1B visa.

JENNINGS: I think what Trump and his team want to do is make sure we're getting the best and brightest from around the world, but that the visa programs that we have are not being used to undercut American workers to, you know, do exactly what you just said.

So, I think what you're going to see is an emerging idea here is to reform these programs, get the talent, stop the undercutting of American workers.

PHILLIP: I understand the point about the H-1Bs, but it still seems just completely out of whack to villainize this one actually relatively small visa program in the scope of immigration and blame it for all the ills that America is experiencing in terms of employment. But that's just my two cents.

Everyone hang tight. Coming up next, Speaker Johnson is looking to keep control of the house after a historically unproductive congressional session. We're going to discuss that very session and the speaker's chances of hanging on to the gavel. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight, what congressional gridlock looks like in one picture. Look at this chart. You see that tiny little bar at the very end? Well, that represents congressional futility. The 150 laws passed by the 118th Congress, the fewest passed in a session in decades. How many of those do you wager are post office renamings and the like?

JORDAN KAYE COLVIN, POLITICAL CONSULTANT: Seventy to 80 percent.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Still too many for me, Abby.

PHILLIP: It's too many for all of us.

JENNINGS: I mean, I don't -- I don't judge. No, I'm saying that's too many bills.

PHILLIP: Too many bills.

JENNINGS: I don't judge the productivity of a Congress based on the volume of bills passed. I judge it based on how few they passed, but it's what they do that matters. And, you know, I guess some of the stuff was -- they had to do, some of it was post office renamings. I'm more excited about the future than I am the past, though, because Republicans will actually have a chance to execute these.

PHILLIP: You know, I don't want to get hung up on the number, but I do think that, you know, Congress has work to do. They have important work to do for real people's lives. And it's the stuff that we don't talk about that they fail to do that I think makes the biggest impact.

This Congress is now going to be -- they're going to be into a new session where Republicans are going to control both Houses. But in the House, they don't have the Trump mandate that maybe Trump got from winning the popular vote and winning the electoral college by a huge margin. So, how are they going to govern? Are they going to be able to govern?

COLVIN: I think Republicans are going to be in a dead gridlock right now. The margin is so small for Johnson with those votes. And the hardliners have already said, you know, with the debt ceiling, anything like that, that they're not willing to move on that. So, I don't think that it's going to be a productive time for them. I

think that the narrative is going to be driven by President-elect Musk -- I'm sorry, I mean Trump. And that will be a huge indicator of how things are going to go.

DOUG HEYE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: You used the phrase, what we don't talk about. So, let me tell you a story that happened to me over Christmas. I was home in Louisville, North Carolina, just outside of Winston-Salem, with two friends from high school. Smart guys, both college graduates. What we would call, it's a phrase I otherwise don't like, high-information voters.

[22:35:02]

And my friend Paul, I'll use his name, Paul, had a lot of opinions about the six or eight, ten members of Congress that we always talk about. But why aren't we getting things done? And I said, well, what do you think about Patrick McHenry? And he said, who's that?

Now, Patrick McHenry, not only was the financial services chair, worked very well in a bipartisan way with Democrat Maxine Waters. Obviously, far to the left Maxine Waters is. Also at one point, Patrick McHenry represented that town of Louisville in Congress. And he didn't know who Patrick McHenry was.

He knew who Matt Gaetz was. He had definite thoughts about AOC and Nancy Mace. And we can go on down the line.

That is a failure of our political incentive structure. That is a failure of our media. That is of local media, national media. If you live in a district and you don't know who your member of Congress is, because they're not one of the loudmouths, how are we supposed to get things done?

PHILLIP: It may also be a product of the margins that, you know, Speaker Johnson, if there is a Speaker Johnson, will have. I mean, he has this vote coming up for a speakership. Trump has now endorsed him. So, things are looking up. But he can only lose two votes. There are so far by our count at least four hard holdouts, so far.

And if you're Speaker Johnson, right, those one or two or three or four people, everybody's going to know their names, because they're going to wield basically all of the power on Capitol Hill.

SOLOMON JONES, "THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER" AWARD-WINNING COLUMNIST: Yes, the question is, do they care more about the American people and getting stuff done for the American people, or do they care more about keeping their seats? Now, if they care more about keeping their seats, they'll get in line when Trump says, I need you to do this. And they'll do it.

If they care about the American people, though, they will look to work across the aisle. They'll look to actually get stuff done. They'll look to do more than investigate and argue and search for porn on the floor, whatever it is that other folks were doing there.

COLVIN: Not Speaker Johnson.

JONES: Not Speaker Johnson.

COLVIN: Because he has that app on his phone.

JONES: Well, maybe Matt Gaetz. But, I mean, you know, the bottom line is, do you care more about the people or do you care more about the seat? That's what it's going to come down to.

PHILLIP: Speaker Johnson was on Fox tonight. He was thanking Trump for his endorsement, but he had this message to his conference.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: He recognizes that what we need right now, I think my colleagues recognize this, as well, is a proven fighter and a true MAGA conservative, but also someone who can work with every single member of our very diverse House GOP so that we can get President Trump's priorities over the line.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Do you think they have it in them, Scott Jennings? I mean, you've been here for a lot of these fights. We've talked about them. Some of these -- some of these members, men and women, they don't want to support anything at all.

JENNINGS: Yes, the message for Johnson that's going to work best is teamwork. And it's the message that's coming out of Donald Trump. He supports Johnson because he trusts Johnson and thinks Johnson's going to support his agenda. But more than anything, a path to nowhere here is to just fight amongst yourselves.

And when you have a divided conference like this and you have a closely divided chamber, there is only one way to get things done for the American people, and that's for all the Republicans to stick together. And we saw some division on this at the end of the year, and the Democrats were able to stick together for the most part.

Republicans have to learn to stop fighting with each other and listen to their coach in this case, and their coach is Donald Trump, and he obviously wants to hit the ground running. I know Johnson wants to pass legislation between January 3rd, January 20th, so Trump can begin to sign things into law. None of this happens if you have a protracted leadership fight.

PHILLIP: Yes.

JENNINGS: So, the best reason to elect Johnson, he's smart, he's done a good job under difficult circumstances, and more than anything, teamwork here helps Trump, and that's what Republican voters ask for.

HEYE: Scott's exactly right, but I go back to 2011. You're exactly right. Early 2011, we just had the Tea Party wave come into Congress, and at a House Republican conference meeting, Raul Labrador, then a freshman from Idaho, stands up and says, I didn't come here to be a part of any team.

Well, good luck getting anything done then, and there are enough members in the House conference who don't want to be a part of any team. They've shown that, or they'll be their little clique of misbehaviors, and that's how they get their influence, that's how they raise money, that's how they get media attention.

PHILLIP: And that's how they become famous.

HEYE: And that's how they become, exactly.

PHILLIP: Look, what's the over-under on how many Kevin McCarthys that Speaker Johnson's going to have to go through in January in the Speaker vote?

COLVIN: I don't know, but I think it's going to be really interesting if you look at the Senate and what happened with the Secretary of Defense, the Department of Defense nomination process, and how Senator Ernst was expressing her concerns about that nominee, and how she was quickly welded into submission. I'm curious to see if that'll happen around the House side.

PHILLIP: On the House side, I mean, there's much less cooperation than on the Senate side. And I think that when you're talking about a two-vote margin, it almost feels inevitable that this is not going to be a one-ballot-and-done kind of situation.

JONES: There's going to be a Joe Manchin that's going to jump out on the Republican side, and is going to get all the attention.

[22:40:01]

PHILLIP: A moderate, meaning, or just a maverick?

JONES: No, somebody who's going to be against whatever the president is trying to do in order to get attention for himself. Somebody who is, you know, willing to do whatever they need to do in order to be the center of attention.

PHILLIP: I think your definition of a Joe Manchin is different from some of us.

JONES: By the way, that's my definition, because Joe Manchin killed Democratic legislation by, you know, being the guy on the other side.

HEYE: Remember, there's no House of Representatives until we have a Speaker. And when that vote goes on, the first thing we looked at in John Boehner's re-election campaign for Speaker in 2013 were, who are the no-shows?

And we got to Bachman. No Bachman. We got to Blackburn. No Blackburn. So, you're going to have members who are going to be back in their offices watching and waiting to see, and then they'll very courageously make their decision.

PHILLIP: So, here are the words of Congressman Jason Crow, a Democrat. "We're not going to take an all-or-nothing mentality, because we know that when people take an all-or-nothing mentality, the Americans end up with nothing. That's just not acceptable to us." He's probably right about that, right?

JENNINGS: It will not be acceptable to Republicans, broadly, if the Republican Party that they sent to Washington spends all of its time fighting with each other and not worrying about how to enact the Trump agenda. I think a lot of these members sort of get it in their mind that their voters are looking for them to put their interests, meaning the members' interests, above Trump.

They voted for Trump. They want what Trump is selling. If they don't get to what Trump is selling, there will be anger about that, and Trump knows that. And his putting his shoulder behind Johnson tonight, to me, is the first step in making this go more quickly than not.

PHILLIP: Where things go haywire is when some of these members think they know Trump better than Trump, and they start to say to him, well, you're being influenced by all the wrong people. That's when we start to see trouble with the Republican conference.

HEYE: There's your deadline to conversation.

PHILLIP: Yes, exactly, exactly. We literally just saw that happen. Well, everyone, hang on. Coming up next, Justice Department lawyers, they're reportedly looking for the exits, and they're bracing for retribution as the Trump administration takes form. My panel is going to discuss what's next for them.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:46:17]

PHILLIP: Tonight, exit strategy. We are witnessing a real-time reaction to President-elect Trump's campaign trail promises to punish those who were involved in January 6th prosecutions. U.S. Attorney Matt Graves says he'll resign just four days before Trump takes office. Graves oversaw the sprawling January 6th insurrection investigation, and he prosecuted Capitol rioters.

Now, this is not exactly anything surprising. This happens every four years when there is a new administration that comes in. The old U.S. attorneys, many of them, leave their jobs, they resign before they're fired.

The presidents have the ability and the right to appoint their U.S. attorneys, but the ones who were involved in these critical cases to punish the people who were involved in the riot are also seeing themselves to the exits because they have a target on their backs at this point.

COLVIN: I think it's a really not unique problem. We've had a politicized DOJ before in our history, and to act like we haven't would be naive. However, we have very big things to face as a country, and we need our prosecutors to feel energized and excited about the work that they're going to do, both going in and going out, because we have foreign adversaries that are operating through different financial entities.

DOJ has an enormous, enormous mandate, and so much of that is critical to our national security. And the idea that resources and taxpayer dollars would be spent on investigations into former personnel trying to find wrongdoing with their work when they were operating as U.S. prosecutors is egregious and really unfortunate. It would be such a waste.

PHILLIP: I mean, you know, and we've talked about this ad nauseum, Doug. But I think it is incredible and quite sad that instead of talking about why a January 6th can never happen again, we're going to be focused on breaking some of these folks out of their punishment that they've gotten to through a legal process and maybe punishing the people who prosecuted them?

HEYE: Yes.

PHILLIP: That's insane.

HEYE: I walked around the Capitol just over the weekend, and they're putting up fencing. Now, that's normal. Well, they're doing it in advance of the speaker's --

PHILLIP: For an inauguration.

HEYE: -- election, which is not normal.

PHILLIP: Yes.

HEYE: It will be normal in front of the inauguration. But if you work in and around the Capitol, the fencing gets very personal to you. If you remember, Republicans were calling, and I think rightly, for Pelosi to bring down the fencing because it was up for a very long time, and it was sort of like a Berlin Wall for people who work in and around the Capitol.

But this is the challenge, I think, that we face here in the country is that we're scaring off good people who are there, and we're scaring off good people who may want to come in and work in the federal government in the future, Republican or Democrat, or neither.

PHILLIP: And were attracting people who have the wrong motives, potentially.

JENNINGS: Is it insane, I mean, to think about whether or not these people acted fully properly? Because we know in the FBI and other investigatory agencies that have looked into Trump around the country that there was wrongdoing. People did take unethical actions. And so, look, I think if you work in the government --

PHILLIP: I was talking specifically, just to be clear, about the January 6th part of it. The people who prosecuted the rioters at the Capitol. That's the part that's insane.

JENNINGS: Well, look, I think if you work at any level of government, you have to be held to the highest standards. And so, if wrongdoing is apparent or is uncovered by some investigation, we shouldn't be mad about that. We should be happy that it was uncovered.

I also think on the people who worked there that prosecuted Trump specifically, you know, with all due respect, you know, Donald Trump is the president-elect. He's going to be the president. Those people should not be in the federal government while he's the president.

[22:50:00]

I mean, if you're the president of the United States, you should not have employees who have been actively trying to throw you in jail. I just -- common sense to me, they need to find something else to do until there's another administration.

HEYE: Well, U.S. attorneys leave all the time. I mean, they leave when there's a new administration. These people are going to leave. The difference is that you now have a president-elect who's talking about targeting these people for doing their job. That's wrong.

And that's where I think about Jimmy Carter, and I think about the swinging of this political pendulum. Think about it. He comes in on the heels of Richard Nixon, who was this corrupt president, we all know that. And then he gets replaced by a conservative on the other end.

It's the same thing with Joe Biden getting ousted, you know, winning the election after Donald Trump sent people to Capitol Hill to storm the Capitol. He said, fight like hell, or you're not going to have a country. I think that's the right quote. And so, these people go, and they injure 140 police officers.

I talked to Harry Dunn, who was one of the officers who was there, and he said he could not believe - he had tears in his eyes when the FOP then goes and endorses Donald Trump after he did that to his fellow officers. No, these people needed to be prosecuted. They did their jobs, and they should not be punished for doing that.

COLVIN: And, Solomon, to add to it, two D.C. police officers died as a result of that. And as a former D.C. police officer, I take it very personally what was done that day. D.C. police had a lack of munitions. They had a lack of resources and tools.

And those individuals were prosecuted very justly. And I think very few of them actually met the real consequences of what they did to police that day and to everybody's feeling of safety and security in D.C.

PHILLIP: Absolutely. Everyone, stay with me. Coming up next as we head into 2025, wow, 2025, we're here. What's in and what's out? Our panel has a few ideas, and they're going to share them with you next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:56:18]

PHILLIP: We are back, and tonight, with New Year's Eve right around the corner, we're asking our panelists, what's in and what is out? You all will have 30 seconds to say your piece. Scott, you're up.

JENNINGS: In America, the USA, the red, white, and blue, in 2026, we'll be having our 250-year anniversary. But I think in 2025, we'll be preparing for this moment. So, I think what's in is celebrating the fundamental goodness of the United States of America.

Out, silos, and not the grain variety, but the information silos we put ourselves in. I think, Abby, we've proven here in 2024 that when we break these silos, good things happen. So, I think out are information silos, and in is more constructive dialogue among Americans.

PHILLIP: OK, I can live with that. Solomon.

JONES: Ok, so health is definitely in. It's always in this time of year, because everybody's going to go to the gym, everybody's going to get on a diet, everybody's going to exercise, everybody's going to live right.

By January 6th, health is going to be out, because we're going to have an insurrection where people run to the junk food store and do everything that they've been wanting to do for those six days that they kept that resolution.

PHILLIP: Dang. Now, you've got to sabotage us like that.

HEYE: I didn't know where I was going with the word insurrection on that.

PHILLIP: Right, he got you on that one. Jordan, you're up.

COLVIN: So, speaking of yours, in, you're going to need those crew socks if you're going to be doing any, you know, activities for the first six days of the year. So, no more no-show socks. It's all about the crew socks that are going to be necessary.

PHILLIP: Oh my God.

COLVIN: I know, it's definitely a hard transition for some of the elder millennials, myself included, but that's what all the young kids are doing. What is out are going to be Sheen or Shine, I don't know, I think it's still a debate on TikTok and the internet, how it's pronounced, the hauls from them, where you order a bunch of stuff. Shein.

PHILLIP: Oh.

COLVIN: Yes, the hauls from them that are influencers love to do because the tariffs, if these tariffs go into effect, all of a sudden that cheap clothing that you buy, that you forget what you purchased because you bought so many things at the same time, not that I've ever done that, comes in and the tariffs are going to be too high to have those anymore.

PHILLIP: The end of fast fashion.

COLVIN: Fast fashion over consumption.

HEYE: That's a big issue for me.

PHILLIP: Can I just say that on the sock situation, the fact that I have to change my socks because Gen Alpha or whatever decided that they're not cool anymore. I don't know.

COLVIN: It's really hard for me.

PHILLIP: You don't wear socks?

PHILLIP: Apparently crew socks are in, no-show socks are out. Scott Jennings.

COLVIN: No-show socks, show your age.

JENNINGS: Oh, I don't even know what that means.

PHILLIP: OK.

JENNINGS: What does that mean?

JONES: You can't see them above your sneaker.

PHILLIP: Yes.

JONES: You have on low top sneakers.

COLVIN: This conversation just might happen.

PHILLIP: This is why we're doing this.

JENNINGS: Some of what you said appeared to me to be in a foreign language, I'm going to be honest with you guys.

PHILLIP: All right, Doug, what you got?

HEYE: Mine will be short. I don't have one. I wasn't clever to come up with one, but my out is a very serious one and that is people who are FaceTiming and using speakerphones in public. I was at dinner tonight --

COLVIN: Amen. Amen.

HEYE: -- at Lenny's Clam House at Howard Beach.

PHILLIP: Don't do it at the gym either.

HEYE: It's an amazing place. And there's a guy next to me FaceTiming the whole time using language that's inappropriate, whether it was appropriate or inappropriate.

PHILLIP: Wow.

HEYE: Don't do it. My New Year's resolution, America, I'm going to do this for you. I'm going to work every day to get rid of people who are FaceTiming in public. I promise you. Every day.

PHILLIP: OK, my in is, let's bring back original movies. No more sequels. No more part two, three, four, five, six. Just something original. My out, this is for you, Scott Jennings, no more backyard chickens.

JENNINGS: I'm sorry, what?

PHILLIP: We got a bird flu.

JENNINGS: I'm sorry.

PHILLIP: We got a bird flu -- we got a bird flu coming.

JENNINGS: You are coming after my flock? These are my girls.

PHILLIP: I think we are done with backyard chickens. They're spreading disease.

JENNINGS: They're not. They're spreading goodwill and eggs. I don't understand.

PHILLIP: I love fresh eggs, but I think we have to.

[22:55:00]

COLVIN: Get the flock out of here, you know. It's just not working anymore.

JENNINGS: You guys, you guys still have a long way to go to understanding middle America. That's all I'm going to say. We love our chickens.

PHILLIP: We do love our chickens. Everyone, thank you very much. And tomorrow night, the boys are back for the biggest party of the year. Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen will be here for New Year's Eve. Live coverage starts right here, 8 P.M. Eastern time on CNN. And thank you very, very much for watching "NewsNight" and all year round. CNN's coverage continues right now. Happy New Year.