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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Judge Upholds Conviction, Making Trump First Felon to be President; Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) Reelected Speaker, Defeating GOP Revolt; Leader of House Democrats Admits America is Too Expensive; U.S. Surgeon General Gives An Alarming Warning; Republican Steve Scalise Sees A Clear Reason For How A Terrorist Was Able To Kill 14 People In New Orleans. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired January 03, 2025 - 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 VIDEOTAPE)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST (voice over): Tonight, phoning a friend. Mike Johnson keeps the speaker's gavel after appearing to lose it by getting an assist from the president-elect.
Plus, paycheck-to-paycheck, the top Democrat in the House wears two hats, cheering cooperation --
REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): -- to put down our partisan swords.
PHILLIP: -- while making fun of MAGA.
JEFFRIES: There are no election deniers on our side of the aisle.
PHILLIP: Also, woke-enabled terror? A top Republican lawmaker says agencies aren't focused enough on protecting the homeland because they're too focused on something else.
And Pinot Morte (ph), the surgeon general recommends your bottle of wine is served with a revised warning about your health.
Live at the table, Bryan Lanza, Jordan Kaye Colvin, Mondaire Jones, Gail Huff Brown and Adam Kinzinger.
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, upheld. Tonight, Donald Trump is still a convicted felon after a New York judge said his convictions were lawfully made. But for Trump, he may still wear that title of criminal, but he will not suffer any of the consequences.
This decision from Judge Juan Merchan spares Trump of jail time, quote, a sentence of unconditional discharge appears to be the most viable solution to ensure finality and allow the defendant to pursue his appellate options.
In our fifth seat tonight, Attorney Donte Mills, he's also professor at Temple University's Beasley School of Law.
Donte, is this a kind of Goldilocks decision by the judge here to give people who want Trump to have consequences, a conviction that is upheld but not have to deal with, you know, a sentence, which, frankly, was unlikely to actually happen given that he's about to be the president of the United States?
DONTE MILLS, NATIONAL TRIAL ATTORNEY: No. And I don't want to sugarcoat it. I think this is a slap in the face to the judicial system. We tell the jurors when they come into that room that your job is very important, this is very serious. We expect them to pore through the information, which they did. They came back with the decision and now the judge is saying, essentially, it doesn't matter. You found them guilty, but I'm not going to assess any penalty at all.
I'm not saying you had to put Trump in jail. That's not likely or reasonable, but there are fines that could have happened, up to $170,000 in fines. Why not assess that and say, you were found guilty? Here's a consequence so America can know that if you do something wrong, there will be a penalty to pay.
PHILLIP: Bryan?
BRYAN LANZA, PARTNER, MERCURY PUBLIC AFFAIRS: Listen, I think what we're going to learn through this case more than anything else is the most helpful the President Trump's election. Because when you saw the indictment take place, you saw a lot of money come in, you saw the party consolidate against -- you know, around President Trump, and that was a good thing.
And, remember, the original purpose of what at least Trump World felt that this was happening was to try to damage President Trump in his presidential run. Hopefully, this will take him off the sideline. Democrats were all over the country saying if you look at the polls, he's going to lose this much Republican support if we can just get this conviction, just this conviction, and it backfired on them. So, I'm not surprised when we get to the very end that it just turned out to be a farce from -- you know, it's a farce at the end just like it was a farce from the very beginning.
GAIL HUFF BROWN, (R), FORMER NEW HAMPSHIRE CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATE: It was a witch hunt from the very beginning.
PHILLIP: To Donte's point, there was a jury trial.
BROWN: Yes.
PHILLIP: He was convicted,
BROWN: But he was convicted in what really was a witch trial. I mean, the whole thing from the very beginning was politically motivated. And like you said, I mean, during the election, we saw how the American public felt about it. They felt that it didn't matter.
And my question is why even have him appear if the judge has already made a decision that there isn't going to be any kind of fine, there's not going to be a probation, there's not going to be any jail time? What's the point?
MILLS: He said it can appear virtually, which again, you're giving that concession. I understand it's the incoming president of the United States, but I don't want to get the -- I don't want the point to be lost, that there was a jury trial, where that jury sit through and heard evidence. And whether or not Trump should have been charged, that's not what we're talking about. He was, and he was found guilty based on the evidence. So, you can't ignore that and say it was a political witch hunt because a jury said he did something wrong, but now the judge is saying he won't be punished.
[22:05:04]
PHILLIP: Donte, the judge -- I mean, he is not saying that the jury's verdict is invalid. He is just saying, of the options I have available to me, I'm going to choose the one that has basically no penalty. Isn't that an option that would have been available to him anyway?
MILLS: No. I mean, I don't know of an option where someone is convicted of 34 felonies and at the end of it you say, okay, all right, we got you, but there's nothing that's going to happen to you as a result. That's just not how our legal system works. And we don't want people to think it works that way.
PHILLIP: First time offender, no priors?
FMR. REP. MONDAIRE JONES (D-NY): For all of the talk of Donald Trump being the victim of the weaponization of our criminal legal system, he has consistently been treated more generously than the average American would. To the point just made, who do you know who's been convicted on 34 felony counts, doesn't even have to pay a fine, to say nothing of some prison time?
LANZA: Well, who else would have ever been charged with these in the circumstance?
JORDAN KAYE COLVIN, POLITICAL CONSULTANT: But this is how we treat white collar criminals in our country. They walk away scot free. This has been traditional. This isn't any surprise to us.
JONES: After they've been convicted, they don't walk away scot free. They have to have some -- there has to be some consequence, whether it is a financial or some combination of financial --
COLVIN: But it's like small than any other crime (INAUDIBLE).
JONES: Or some prison time.
And so here's a classic example. And, by the way, this has been appealed on at least one occasion. I mean, he was convicted of things that a court has found beyond this trial court to be a perfectly valid thing to be convicted of in the state of New York.
And so for all this talk about a witch hunt, weaponization, no one can plausibly dispute that he committed the crimes that he was convicted of. They may not like that he was prosecuted, but the fact is he did the things that he was convicted of.
PHILLIP: So, Steve Cheung is saying --
LANZA: He wouldn't have got convicted in any other city that is a Republican city or even slightly leaning moderate city. It is a jury of Democrats. It is what it is.
PHILLIP: Doesn't that undermine your very point? If you're suggesting that Republicans would have let him off, isn't that, in itself, political?
LANZA: It's very, very political. But my point is Trump has broken all these barriers and he continues to do it, but now the Democrats try to do it with the weaponization of our judicial system and it just backfired.
PHILLIP: My question is, why not just take the win? There's no consequences to this. Just take the win and move on. Trump's team is saying, there should be no sentencing. President Trump will continue to fight against these hoaxes until they're all dead. But at the end of the day, to Mondaire's point, Trump is coming out on the upside of this in the sense that there are no consequences here. So, why not just --
BROWN: Except he still is a criminal. Because he wants to erase the criminal, you know, from his record.
JONES: What about the other three jurisdictions in which he was indicted, right? The dozens of other felony counts for withholding -- refusing to produce classified documents that he stole from the Oval Office, the January 6th? Those were voluntarily dismissed after he won the election. And it became clear that pursuant to a DOJ memorandum, which has never really been tested in the court of law, that he wouldn't be able to be prosecuted in any way because he was about to return to the White House. That is not to say that those felony indictments were somehow without a basis.
And throughout any -- all of these prosecutions, no one has plausibly refuted the fact that he didn't commit the crimes that he has been indicted. These are Republican talking points.
MILLS: That those cases -- we don't know if he committed those crimes or not, because they're not going to trial. Actually, in this case, we know he committed the crime.
(CROSSTALKS)
JONES: To be clear, we actually do know he did that thing on January 6th.
MILLS: Well, and until he's found guilty, we can't say that. But here, he was found guilty.
JONES: We saw him refuse to produce classified documents that he took from the Oval Office. I'm just saying some of this stuff is going to (INAUDIBLE).
MILL: A jury found him guilty on this case, and there will be no penalty. I think that that's a slap in the face of the justice system.
And you did make a point, and this was talked about all day, even on this network where they say, giving him a fine wouldn't have made a difference because he has so much money. That's a ridiculous argument, right? If you get a speeding ticket and I walk in with thousands of dollars and say, how dare you fine me $200? I have so much money. That won't matter to me. They're going to suspend my license if I don't pay that ticket. You have to have a consequence.
So, there's no reason why a judge couldn't have said, all right, I know I can't put you in jail. I can't put you on house arrest, you have 34 felonies, but here, even $1 fine, so it can be clear that you are being penalized and there's a consequence for your actions and it would have been done.
COLVIN: But the martyrdom that would come out of him being penalized and having to pay any sort of fine, in my opinion, is worth him just walking away and us never having to hear about this again, and focusing on the issues that American voters care about.
PHILLIP: So, speaking of that, I mean, we were just talking about whether he would -- he doesn't have to come to New York for the sentencing, but do you think he might consider it?
LANZA: Yes, it's a spectacle. Absolutely, you're going to have every camera in the country, probably nearly every camera in the world focused on the American president going before the court.
PHILLIP: Ten days before the inauguration?
MILLS: And he knows he's going to walk out unscathed.
LANZA: Exactly.
[22:10:00]
He's going to walk out with his T.V., absolutely, he's (INAUDIBLE).
COLVIN: It's a victory for him.
LANZA: How very Romanesque.
MILLS: Imagine a victory walk after being convicted of 34 crimes.
COLVIN: Oh my gosh.
PHILLIP: Okay guys, well we'll see what happens. That's going to be January 10th. So, that's coming up very soon.
Donte Mills, thank you very much for joining us, as always. Everyone else, stick around.
Coming up next, Mike Johnson keeps the speakership after a failed revolt, but is this a sign of just how much MAGA is going to resist him? Another special guest is going to join us in our fifth seat. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Tonight, the slimmest margin. Mike Johnson survived a test of his leadership after it seemed like the Republicans he leads had taken his gavel away. Johnson initially did fail to win the necessary votes on the floor, but the vote stayed open, and it took some convincing over the phone, including from President-elect Trump, to get the votes to flip to Johnson's side.
[22:15:02]
Now, Johnson will once again lead the House, but its most narrow divided version of it since the Great Depression. Adam Kinzinger is here at the table. He was once one of them. He's with us now, former Republican congressman and a member of the January 6th committee.
ADAM KINZINGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I'm glad I'm not one of them now. I will honestly say that.
PHILLIP: What say you about the spectacle today? Actually, honestly, it wasn't so bad. It could have been a lot worse.
KINZINGER: Well, it's not bad compared to what we've seen over the last year or two with all that speaker drama (ph). Now, had this been in real Earth 1, had this happened, people would be like, apoplectic, this is insane. But, look, I mean, the reality is it's a really bad start, to be honest with you, for the Republican majority. This is not how you want to start because they're going to have to do some big, they're going to want to extend the tax cuts or want to jam everything into reconciliation.
And the problem is when one or two people can hold a speaker vote hostage or any vote hostage, they basically have made it clear, they have the power of a U.S. senator. They can basically make one demand, shut the whole process down, and the speaker then is left trying to basically finagle as many votes by making as many promises. You promise somebody something here, this person over here that's already voting for it or for you is going to be mad.
So, it's going to be a tough battle.
PHILLIP: I'm just confused. How has this strategy worked? You know, we've been dealing with this for some time now. I'm straining to see, you know, what are the impacts of all of this brinksmanship from the handful of people who continue to do it over and over again?
JONES: I mean, it seems like he was this sort of ragtag group of renegade Republicans last time around. They were able to extract concessions in the term, in terms of, for example, motion to vacate the chair, which was to just allow it to be one person, right, which was a gun to the head of, well, Kevin McCarthy.
PHILLIP: Concessions to increase their power, but doing what for the American people?
JONES: Oh, it's -- listen, by my estimation, the vast majority of the Republicans are not there to make government work. I mean, they disagree with so much of what government does. They do support tax cuts for very wealthy people. And many of them support our military. But beyond that, I think they are perfectly fine like not passing legislation.
COLVIN: There's even questions regarding our military because they almost didn't pass a budget which meant that service members would have not gotten and their families would have not gotten paychecks. I think also something to consider is the dear colleague that many of this ragtag bunch, dear colleague letter that they sent out and the sort of random assortment of issues that they discussed in it, one of which including Make America Healthy Again, which I think is fascinating, coupled with border security, you know?
PHILLIP: I will say the one thing in that letter, it's a letter from 11 House Republicans after they allowed Mike Johnson to become speaker. Those things, they don't want bills that violate the 72-hour rule, okay, fine. They want border security, okay, fine. They also want a five-day work week, which I have to say, these people need to work five days a week. I don't understand why not. I think that's actually a pretty decent idea.
But the question I had reading this letter is there's something called a legislative process by which if you have these kinds of demands, you work with your colleagues and you go to committee, you put them in bills and you pass said bills. Why is it that that is not the method by which some of these members want to operate?
LANZA: You know, listen, I think because President Trump has shown over the years that he rewards those people. If you look at the first part of his first two years as president, you had Jim Jordan, you had Mark Meadows that were sort of the disruptive freedom party that tried to push President Trump's policies into a more conservative position. Where did Mark Meadows end up? He ended up chief of staff.
So, what you've seen over the years, at least if you're a house member of Congress, that you can hold the place hostage. And because the speaker's so weak, you're not negotiating with a president of the United States, who's Donald Trump, and he's with your own party. So, you're not having you -- you now feel that you're having an impact for your constituencies. You now feel you're having an impact for your issues because you're not talking to the most powerful man in the world, whereas those three members, they'd never ever have that opportunity.
So, I think because of what took place today, and Trump had to save Johnson, it almost puts President Trump in a more dangerous position going forward because now anybody can raise their hand and say, I object, Speaker Johnson says, what do I need? He goes like, I want to talk to Trump. That's what's going to happen. KINZINGER: (INAUDIBLE) point on that, because it's also important to note this isn't new. So, the whole time I was in there, there was always a group of people that were trying to hold this hostage, but when we had the majority, we had a large enough majority that we could kind of ignore them or maybe they'd come into play and we'd have to cut some deals. But, obviously, last Congress, this Congress, is so close that, again, they have unspeakable power, probably more power than any one congressman should have, and it's going to be tough for Trump's agenda, I think.
BROWN: But I think that today was a win for the president, for President Trump. I mean, it's a win for Trump. It's a win for the Republicans and for Americans, because he was able, through his calls, through the negotiating.
[22:20:00]
I mean, negotiating is part of the process of politics, no matter how you look at it, and they were able to turn them and get it through.
JONES: Typically across the aisle, not when you're with a bunch of likeminded people who should be acting in concert to elect the speaker.
BROWN: And everyone fell in behind Nancy Pelosi, right?
PHILLIP: They actually did.
JONES: Actually, yes, we voted for her on the first round.
PHILLIP: They actually did.
JONES: Democrats had (INAUDIBLE) together when it comes to this kind of stuff.
COLVIN: Her subordinates fell into line when they needed to.
PHILLIP: All right. Adam, before we go, I want to ask you about this, as you know, yesterday, President Biden gave Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson a presidential medal. Trump lashed out today and he said this, Liz Cheney, crying Adam Kinzinger, that's you, Bennie Thompson and the rest of the dishonest thugs have gotten away with horrible things under the pretense of January 6th. They have destroyed the lives of many people and are rewarded by getting a Biden fake medal. This is not America. What's your response?
KINZINGER: Look, I mean, it's almost humorous. You know, he talks about deleting evidence, by the way, if you Google January 6th evidence, govinfo.gov has all of the evidence there. This is a lie he's been getting away with. The people that said he was responsible for January 6th were people like Kevin McCarthy. He said that on January 12th, people like Leader McConnell, most Republicans, all the people that came into January 6th to testify, with the exception of one or two, were all Republicans.
So, I get it, he's embarrassed because we exposed how, for 187 minutes, he sat there and did literally nothing, then claims that somehow Nancy Pelosi is in charge of the National Guard when actually the D.C. Guard is -- the person in charge of that is the president of the United States, not the D.C. mayor, not the speaker of the House. He can continue to lie, that doesn't mean it's true.
And so from my perspective, if they want to re-litigate January 6th, four years later, after this election, I said, look, we put this in front of the American people, they reelected Donald Trump, I respect that. If they want to bring this back and re-litigate it, trust me, it's going to remind the American people how poor they acted four years ago.
PHILLIP: Right. Everyone stick around.
Coming up next, an admission from the leader of the House Democrats after Election Day, Americans don't think that the economy is doing well. My panel is going to discuss that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:25:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, an admission. Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries addressed the House chamber today telling the nation that Democrats are committed to bipartisanship. And after the message voters sent Democrats in the last election, Jeffries' speech made it clear that he heard it loud and clear.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEFFRIES: It's fair to say that in a democracy, there's a time to campaign, and a time to govern.
Housing costs are too high. Grocery costs are too high. Childcare costs are too high. Insurance costs are too high. Utility costs are too high. America is too expensive. It's time for us to come together and finally lower the high cost of living in the United States of America once and for all.
And we will work with anyone of any party to get that done.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Absolutely no ambiguity there, Gail.
BROWN: None at all. That was wonderful.
PHILLIP: There was probably unanimous applause in the chamber.
BROWN: Absolutely. That was wonderful. It is too expensive. It's too bad for the Democrats that somebody hadn't come out and expressed it that vocally and that succinctly five months ago.
PHILLIP: Well, I mean, before I let you in, Mondaire, let me, just to Gail's point, actually, play Hakeem Jeffries from just a year ago on the same occasion, essentially. And this is what his message was then. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEFFRIES: House Democrats will always put American values over autocracy, benevolence over bigotry, the Constitution over the cult, democracy over demagogues, maturity over Mar-a-Lago.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: You don't need a political science degree to see what he's doing there differently. He didn't mention democracy but once in that section that we played earlier today. That message is really to the wayside. It's all about the economy.
JONES: I don't want to be overly dramatic about this. I don't think there was anything revelatory about what Hakeem Jeffries said today in his speech. There have been a lot of resources in campaign has and certainly a lot of time spent by Democratic House candidates and Senate candidates acknowledging and speaking to the economic pain that Americans have been feeling.
And, in fact, if you look at what Democrats in the majority did when I was in Congress, in the 117th Congress, we actually had plans for how to bring down the cost of childcare, how to bring down the cost of healthcare, and so on and so forth. Social Security and Medicare was a big theme in this past election cycle. It just sucks for it to be a change election and to be the party in power.
PHILLIP: But I think -- I mean, I do think it's -- first of all, his -- when he talked about the economy last year, a lot of it was a, you know, thank you President Biden for all the things that you did and a laundry list.
JONES: which he did today, by the way, at the end of his speech.
PHILLIP: Yes, he did. But my point is that what he did today is exactly what everybody's been saying. He should have been and all the Democrats should have been doing very forcefully, so that it wasn't just sucks for us, it's a bad year, but to take this issue on head on.
COLVIN: I think that we have to look at the Republicans' mandate now on this, the cost of, you know, a gallon of milk, 20 percent of that goes into the processing, the logistics, the admin behind getting that gallon of milk.
[22:30:01]
Republicans answer to that is give everybody raw milk, just completely deregulate the thing. And for those of us who would like pasteurized milk, I know controversial takes on that. We want to be able to buy that gallon of milk without the exorbitant cost, that pasteurized gallon of milk, and finding that happy medium, and Republicans need to get to work, figure out how to reduce those costs for everyday Americans.
LANZA: I think -- here's what I've missed from the 2024 campaign is, you know, and I was on this set talking about affordability, and Democrats said, everything's great. Inflation's down, unemployment's down, and I'm saying, no, affordability's the issue. Oh, wages are up.
Like, there was a huge disconnect with the Democratic Party and what actually ailed America at that time, and that was America just became unaffordable, whether it was milk, whether it was rent, whether it was insurance, and it became an affordability issue.
And the Democrats, because they had to prop up Biden and his horrible economy and the policies that led to a horrible economy, sort of put their head in the sand and didn't talk about the prevailing issue, was America during Biden became unaffordable.
King Jefferson's finally there, I think, you know, 12 days or 10 days before President Trump gets elected, a little too late, but it's always going to be their policies that are going to continue to make America unaffordable, because they didn't do anything to say everything was wrong this last time. They said everything was great, and it wasn't great.
KINZINGER: It's really tough to fight against inflation because if inflation goes up, obviously, if it goes down, prices don't go down, they still go up. They just go up a little slower. And people have this memory of five years ago eggs were this, now they're this. So, it was tough to battle against.
Democrats can talk about affordability and democracy, and people are kind of pooh-poohing the democracy thing, and I get it, that shouldn't be the number one issue. But that did gin up the Democratic base that still turned up and could have voted less without a message that ginned them up.
You know, people talk all the time, you know, Donald Trump is talking about the border, because that gins up his base. Democracy is an important issue to Democrats, and I think this year, even though they lost, look, a bird sneezing differently a week before the election, and that one-point victory by Donald Trump would have been a one-point victory by Kamala Harris. It was a win by Donald Trump, but it wasn't the blowout that people are trying to get.
PHILLIP: And just to your point about prices, I mean, let's remember, Donald Trump very recently acknowledged that prices are not going to go down. He said that. He was like, well, I campaigned on things getting less expensive. They're probably not going to get less expensive.
JONES: I also distinctly remember Kamala Harris, who, to be sure, could have done an even better job of doing this, calling out the fact that prices with respect to groceries and gas are about 20 percent higher than they were several years ago, and identifying corporate greed as the main culprit when it comes to that.
Because, again, the rate of inflation is actually close to where it was before the pandemic. But you've seen concentration of industries, and you've seen companies just, like, jacking up prices, and they're getting no accountability.
LANZA: Why do you think they charged everybody? JONES: So, one of the best things that she talked about was taking on
corporate greed, which is always a popular idea with the American people, but I think she could have leaned more into an economic populism. I do agree with that criticism of the campaign.
PHILLIP: I'm going to play this -- what Hakeem Jeffries had to say also about the border, which is another big issue that Donald Trump ran on and won on.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D), HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: We will work with anyone to secure our borders, and we will work with anyone to fix our broken immigration system in a comprehensive and bipartisan manner.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: You know, I mean, look, again, some of this is just, it's good politics at the start of a Congress. It really now is actually, the ball is in Republicans' court. Will they actually work with Democrats on some of this stuff? Because on immigration, they have to, really, to get to some kind of real result.
BROWN: They will have to. First of all, they have such a small margin that there's going to have to be a bipartisan effort. So, in that respect, Jeffries was correct, you know, when he came out and said, we're going to have to work together.
LANZA: Yes, but comprehensive is amnesty, and the voters do not want amnesty.
PHILLIP: Is it?
LANZA: One hundred percent it's amnesty.
PHILLIP: So, is that -- do you -- this is very interesting. I mean, do you think that comprehensive is now a dirty word for Republicans?
LANZA: Yes, 100 percent.
JONES: Well, I'll say it's -- it's -- and it should be a dirty word. Why are we going to reward bad actors?
PHILLIP: So --
KINZINGER: No, the easy way to hit it is to call it amnesty, and that's what happens. The reality is, because then you have to get into the details, one of the things that was pushed a few years ago is like, look, you're not going to deport 20 million people, OK? Donald Trump thinks he's going to, you're not going to.
So, what do you do with that? You have this -- let's look at people as capital. This capital that's underutilized right here, that it would be nice if they could enter the work system and pay taxes. So, you can put them at the back of the line for legal status and citizenship way down the road. That's not, amnesty is saying everybody here is now a U.S. citizen,
we're good to go. But the problem is -- and I'm agreeing with Brian here, the nuances are hard to explain, and it seems like amnesty, and they're going to have to do a better job of explaining it.
PHILLIP: So, it sounds to me what Brian is saying, Brian, I mean, you tell me.
[22:35:01]
Republicans are not interested in actually fixing the immigration system.
LANZA: No, they're 100 percent interested in fixing the immigration system but in a conservative way. They want to secure the border. They want to make sure that, you know, the people that are coming here, whether whatever the H-1B visa discussion is, is that we're having people that are contributing to our economy.
It's no longer sort of the Bush policy or the Reagan policy of family unification. It's now the policy of meritocracy. What are you bringing into the country?
JONES: Well, what about the 11 million plus people who are here? Like, you have to address that. What -- are you for or just mass deporting all 11 plus million of those people, or a pathway to legal status, which you would describe as amnesty?
PHILLIP: You know, the immigration system is not just H-1Bs and people crossing the border. There's like a lot of other aspects of it that are also broken.
LANZA: The whole thing is broken.
JONES: I mean, what about our dreamers? God bless our dreamers who are brought here through no fault of their own. These are children who only know America, but because their parents brought them here, I mean, it's not, we shouldn't punish those kids.
COLVIN: Republicans from rural districts who have farmers and agriculture and factories are going to be very, very, very upset if they find out that their workforces are going to be deported. They depend hugely, in a huge way, on that workforce for them.
PHILLIP: So, I mean, that's a really fascinating thing.
LANZA: I would add, you know, Trump ran on deporting, you know, 10 million, 20 million, whatever the number he threw out. He said 20 million on a high end. I don't think it's 20 million. But he ran on it. And the voters affirm that's what they want. Now, he's going to, now the process is going to be staged.
You know, the first year -- the first year is probably going to equal the first million and a half people that have already been targeted. That's going to happen. You know, then the second phase is going to come in. You're going to assess what were successful in the first phase. What changes can you make? And then you're going to have the other targets.
But you're also going to have some people that are going to, you know, I hate to use the word, but self-deport. People are going to say, wait a second. If I want to become a citizen, which is the goal of why I'm here, Trump is laying out this process of how -- to me -- to become a citizen. It requires me to go back to my home country and do this process. Maybe there is a Bracero Program or a temporary worker program that exists. There's going to be avenues for it to take place.
PHILLIP: All right. Well, let me just, if I can, control room, can we play the moment? It was almost a funny moment with Hakeem Jeffries at the end of his speech nearly.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEFFRIES: Two months ago, the American people elected Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States of America.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you for that very generous applause. It's OK. There are no election deniers on our side of the aisle.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: January 6th is just a couple of days away. I think this year, Lord willing, it will happen without any acrimony in Washington. Everyone, hang tight. Coming up next, first, Republicans falsely blamed the border for the terror attack in New Orleans, and now they are blaming DEI and wokeness of all things, as we learn disturbing new details about what the attacker used in his bombs.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:42:16]
PHILLIP: Tonight, Republican Steve Scalise sees a clear reason for how a terrorist was able to kill 14 people in New Orleans. Here's what he told WWL Radio.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. STEVE SCALISE (R) MAJORITY LEADER: Some of these agencies have gotten so wrapped up in the DEI movement. You know, you call it wokeness, call it whatever you want, but where their main focus is on diversity and inclusion as opposed to security, and they're two very different things.
And we've got to get back to that core mission. And this has happened in the DOD as well, and we've pointed that out in DOD, we've pointed it out in Homeland, we've pointed it out in the FBI. You know, if nothing else, let's get back to these agencies focused on keeping Americans safe, period."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Here's my question. Where's the evidence of this?
COLVIN: There's absolutely none. There's 14 families that are grieving the loss of their relatives right now, and he has completely changed the conversation with absolutely no evidence. I would call this Republican wokeism, you know, blaming -- blaming the other. I mean, the next thing you know, what, is it going to be trans women athletes are responsible for what happened there?
KINZINGER: Look, and I think, here's the thing. He's going to come out and say it's DEI, and FBI should have done more. These are also the same people, not necessarily Scalise, but Republicans making this argument are the same people that say we need to get rid of all these FBI overreaches and all their investigation tools, and we need to actually disband the FBI now.
Senator Kennedy, we need to disband the FBI. And then he also says the next day the FBI should have done more. They should have been better qualified to stop this. So, you got, I mean, honestly, if your position is get rid of the FBI, OK, it's a defendable position like in American politics, but stick with it.
Don't just constantly say, well, now they should have done more, or they should have been reading this guy's emails or something and known that he was going to come and do this, and then -- and then blame DEI for it.
That's where I think Americans and me -- like, I get annoyed by, like, just be consistent in what you're saying. Take a position, be consistent, quit trying to stoke the outrage of the day because it's going to get you your head on a certain other news network or whatever it is.
JONES: In fact, Adam, to your point, in the winter of 2023, then -- the speaker, actually, who was Mike Johnson at the time, I got, you know, losing track, maybe it was 2024, did a press conference in which he talked about how his budget would take away money from the Department of Justice, which, of course, includes the FBI.
And so, they succeeded in reducing funding for the FBI, and they're now going to criticize the FBI's focus, in their words, on diversity, equity, and inclusion as a reason why they couldn't effectively prevent this terrorist attack from happening.
[22:45:00]
COLVIN: Could that be said to defund the police?
JONES: Yes.
COLVIN: Oh, my goodness.
JONES: Absolutely.
COLVIN: It certainly is.
PHILLIP: I mean, don't we have real problems in this country? I mean, seriously, like, we had a terror attack on New Year's Day. Don't we have real problems that have real solutions? A member of Congress ought to be saying, let's really get to the bottom of what we're missing here, how we can find these lone wolves, how we can do more, as opposed to just saying, well, it's all about the woke.
LANZA: Veteran mental health. I mean, listen, I think it's an unforced error on Scalise to sort of dismiss it as a DEI thing. You know, listen, I remember an era, and Republicans are huge with law enforcement. You know, the reality is that Rudy Giuliani changed the New York police force by including a diverse set of people in the New York Police Department.
He used people from specific neighborhoods who grew up in these neighborhoods, which were diverse neighborhoods, to become law enforcement officers, live in those neighborhoods and serve in those communities.
So, I think DEI, you know, gets conflated into a lot of things, especially with the military because that's pushing other things. But DEI, you know, I don't know what the right word to use, but we've used diversity in law enforcement, and that's worked, and that's what Republicans sort of, you know, tout.
So, I think Scalise is - I think it's an unforced error. We shouldn't be having this conversation. We should be talking about the victims. We should be talking about the military, you know. These people served in the U.S. Army. How do they get the training, and then they get to use it against us --
PHILLIP: -- You know --
LANZA: -- ten to 15 years later?
PHILLIP: I wish that more Republicans would acknowledge what you just did because it's actually a common-sense kind of pro-law enforcement message. I mean, I'm just going to show you this posting from the FBI's recruiting event.
This is probably the sort of thing that if you're an anti-woke person, you automatically will say, this is terrible. There are brown people in an image recruiting for the FBI. But to Brian's point, we had a former FBI agent sitting right at this table yesterday.
The kind of law enforcement work that they need to do, and that they need to do more of, according to this agent, is to go into communities that don't look like Adam, sorry to call you out here, but where people look different, where they have different cultures, where you understand their background, and where they trust you to give you the information that you need.
HUFF BROWN: I think there's a legitimate conversation to be had about DEI and, you know, where it's right and wrong but probably not in the conversation, at least right now, over New Orleans. And I think that's what, you know, all of us are basically feeling, that it's just, it's misplaced. And when I say I think there is a conversation to be had, there is a
perception that there is too much of the DEI initiatives in federal agencies, in the military. I mean, this is one of the things that President Trump is bringing Pete Hegseth in for, because he's somebody that wants to get rid of these DEI initiatives in the military. He feels that they don't make soldiers more ready for mission.
PHILLIP: But don't you think you could make the same argument about the military? I mean, look, the military is, you know, a war-fighting --
LANZA: It's a killing machine.
PHILLIP: --machine, yes. But the United States military, you know this, they do a lot of things. They do a lot of intelligence gathering. They have a lot of -- they have a lot of roles in the military, OK?
COLVIN: We were at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, where we couldn't talk to 50 percent of the population. And we had to, Team Lioness, 2003- 2004, we brought in women to serve with special operations groups because we could not talk to 50 percent, more than 50 percent of the population in those countries.
Women were not acknowledged in their combat roles. Now, there's a hit television show on it, I encourage you to read the book "Ashley's War" which discusses this entire conversation about the military bringing in women to these roles. And women are crushing combat roles now.
Women are crushing the physical capabilities for these roles. That has only increased our strength and our readiness. We have a recruiting problem in this country, and if we can't bring in strong, capable women, we're going to lose.
KINZINGER: I was going to say, I think this is the big point, is DEI is great if it's to make it a more effective combat force. If it's just so that you can go and say you're doing it, then it's not great. And that's where we had the conversation. But in this case, wrong place to talk about it.
PHILLIP: All right. Adam Kinzinger, thank you very much for joining us. Everyone else, hold on. Coming up next, an alarming warning from the Surgeon General. Even one drink of alcohol could increase your risk of cancer, and he wants you to stay away from the bottle. A special guest is going to join us in our fifth seat at the table to sort out the facts around that.
[22:53:51]
PHILLIP: Tonight, do you wind down with a beer or a glass of wine or a martini with an olive snack? Well, the Surgeon General wants you to rethink drinking, as in don't do it at all.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VIVEK MURTHY, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: Even drinking within the current guideline limits, one drink a day for women, two drinks a day for men, we see an increased risk of cancer. It's hard to avoid the fact that one of the things we need to do now as a country if we want to reduce cancer risk is reconsider how much alcohol we consume.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Joining us in our fifth seat at the table is Dr. Chris T. Pernell. She is the Director of the NAACP Center for Health Equity and the Regent-at-Large at the American College of Preventative Medicine, the perfect person for this conversation.
So, Dr. Purnell, this is something that I think in the scientific world they've known for a long time. Most regular people didn't understand this connection between cancer and drinking. Do you think it will work with this like it did with smoking?
CHRIS T. PERNELL, DIRECTOR, NAACP CENTER FOR HEALTH EQUITY: It can. Let's start there, right? So, I'm a preventionist, right, so I'm always talking about prevention is key, prevention is life.
[22:55:01]
And increasingly we're having conversations about how do you promote good health, how do you save lives, and we're looking for modifiable risk factors. This is where this conversation can begin to resonate.
So, the Surgeon General coming out today and issuing the advisory that he did and saying, look, there is a direct link between alcohol consumption and cancer. I think really is going to saturate at some point the public's understanding and we'll probably see modified behavior.
PHILLIP: So, we're already seeing changes in sort of a large scale at the population level in behavior here. I mean, look at this. Drinking levels, especially if you're young, have gone down. For the rest of the population, it's almost stable. Older people, they're drinking a lot. There may be a lot of reasons behind that.
Let me show you this other thing, though. Daily or near daily consumption of marijuana versus alcohol. Look at the end there. As alcohol goes down, marijuana consumption is going up. That is so interesting to me because this is my personal experience. I know a lot of people, especially young people, who are like, I don't like alcohol, but I'll smoke or I'll have an edible or whatever. Young person. I'm going to go with you.
JONES: Listen, of course, no personal experience with this, but I, too, know a lot of people who will like disavow drinking, but will swear by cannabis, weed, let's just call it what it is. And so, I'm not surprised, even before you did that chart, I was like, that's because they're smoking more. They are replacing that behavior.
PHILLIP: So, are we just trading one vice for another here?
PERNELL: The data is not clear that that's all that's happening, right? So, if you look at the population that is drinking less and perhaps using cannabis more, they're coming of age during a time when, one, the drinking age was elevated from 18 to 21. They're also coming of age during the time in our culture where drinking behavior is being socialized differently.
We have dry January. I was just having dinner with a friend who's doing dry December. We have damp January, but why are people doing that? Let's go back to that conversation about risk and what can we prevent?
Look, we know smoking, leading preventable cause of cancer, right? Obesity, second leading preventable cause of cancer. To hear that drinking is the third or alcohol is the third leading preventable cause of cancer, I think that is starting to resonate and will resonate the more people know it. But not enough people understand that connection.
HUFF BROWN: I think it's shocking. I mean, when I heard what the Surgeon General had to say today, I was shocked by it. The cancer link.
LANZA: The cancer thing. That wakes you up.
HUFF BROWN: And this recent survey that was done, 69 percent of the respondents, many of them Gen Xers, said they preferred marijuana to alcohol because it was healthier for them.
COLVIN: I believe the term for that is California sober.
PHILLIP: Right. Yes.
LANZA: I'm a Californian.
PHILLIP: I have to say, before you jump in, Bryan, you do some lobbying for cannabis.
LANZA: Yes, listen, I represent the U.S. Cannabis Council and yes, I mean, cannabis has seen a tremendous, you know, rise in usage over the last decade, which is, which is, you know, it's another vice, right? And it'll be regulated just like any other vice is going to be regulated in the U.S. They'll get more studies. There'll be more reviews. There'll be more peer reviews and stuff like that.
But the -- but the jarring thing was, for me, that I've heard for the first time ever today was the direct link to cancer. Because I think everybody has a relationship with somebody who's had cancer at one point or another. And we sort of know the damage and the pain that that causes a family.
And for you to sort of think that you're going to do that to yourself, that is shocking. I mean, you know, two drinks is not a lot. You know --
PERNELL: No.
LANZA: It's not a lot.
COLVIN: That's for men.
PHILLIP: And they used to tell folks, oh, you know, you can have a glass of wine, the Mediterranean diet or whatever it is and that would be fine.
PERNELL: Right, but if we look at how that messaging has evolved, right? That's because originally when we were looking at data, public health data, we're saying, is there a cardioprotective effect related to alcohol? Does it help your heart?
And originally, we were comparing non-drinkers or abstainers with drinkers. So, it was exaggerating the benefit that alcohol probably served, because those people who were non-drinkers were usually not drinking because of a health reason or condition.
So, if you just look at true-true, right, just look at those who are exhibiting drinking behavior, we already know that alcohol is not good in the setting of heart failure. Alcohol is not good in the setting of AFib, right? A bad rhythm. Alcohol is not good in the setting of hypertension.
But what today's news says is that there isn't any necessarily safe level of drinking when it comes to cancer risk. And I want to take you all back. I'm the public health physician here to safe versus safer sex, right?
[23:00:00]
We talk about safer sex. And so, when I want you to think about drinking, you want to think about doing it as little as possible.
PHILLIP: Yes, last thing, we've got about 20 seconds. A warning on alcohol bottles saying this could be next. Is that the right move in your mind?
COLVIN: I think that people are going to have to make individual decisions for themselves. I think much like cigarettes, I think the stigma behind things. I think generation --
PHILLIP: Cigarettes have that warning.
COLVIN: They have that big old ugly warning label. I think it's generational. I think "Emily in Paris" and talking about sober curious was probably a more influence on it than the label.
PHILLIP: Dr. Chris Pernell, thank you very much. And thank everyone else for joining us. Thank you for watching "NewsNight". "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
