Trump Says He’s Banning CNN from WH “Effective Immediately”

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0:56Tonight, he took an oath to uphold the Constitution. and all of its freedoms. And now, Donald Trump is trying to ban CNN and other outlets for not being nice enough. I will get a good story out of these people. Plus, did AI almost start a war? The chilling incident that nearly led to an American military operation against China. Also, J.D. Vance campaigns in Iowa for a candidate who didn't attend. I know she couldn't be here today. As Joe Rogan says this about MAGA voters. Trump supporters are nuts, man. They're rabid. And as one senator calls Don Jr.'s gift from a Russian oligarch corrupt, the president reveals this.

1:38I understand that he paid him back. Live at the table, Keith Boykin, Amy Robbins, Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland, Arthur Idola, and Jeff Jarvis. Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here they do.

2:07Good evening. I'm Abby Phillip in New York. Tonight, as the pressure mounts on Donald Trump, he's taking his frustrations out on the First Amendment. The president says that he's banning this network, MS Now, and also Politico from the White House, with others to follow. Here's what he says is why. I don't think that a court should allow fake news to be written day after day after day. I think that somebody has a right to keep them away. Are they going to write false stories all the time? How is this action legal and constitutional considering the First Amendment? I don't think somebody should be allowed to come in and write fake stories.

2:45They're fake news. And that's why they have no credibility. It's all been a victory. And I won the election like nobody's ever seen anything like it. I get no, they never write a good story. There's something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories. Now, if they want to write them, that's fine. But I don't have to let them into my, into the people's house. CNN has released a statement defending its fair and accurate reporting and calling his move an illegal assault on the Constitution. And just to be clear, this is nothing new with this president, as you may remember.

3:26What he calls fake news are just headlines that he doesn't like. And his decisions have created the headlines like this. Despite Trump declaring the economy the greatest ever, a rising majority of Americans don't agree. And for good reason. Diesel just hit a record. Regular gas is nearly nearing 450 a gallon. Inflation is so worrisome that his own handpicked Fed chief just raised interest rates for the first time in three years. His own handpicked Supreme Court justices blocked him from an effort to limit all mail-in ballots. And with 46 days until the midterms, Trump is underwater on virtually every issue in recent polls, especially when it comes to the Iran war, which he has promised for eight months now has been won and is almost over.

4:13Now, the Republican-led House just voted to end the war in another rebuke. And a Republican is the one who's leading the charge to impeach Trump's own defense secretary. A Republican candidate is leaving him out of campaign ads. Dozens of them are. And a Republican called him out directly in one of her ads. And what seems most important to him this week, judges are blocking him from putting his name on the Kennedy Center. They're also blocking him from demolishing it without warning. And so, yes, it's been a rough week for the president. Before we open it up here to the table, we invite you at home to join the debate.

4:54Go to CNN.com slash Abby and weigh in. We'll get to some of your comments as we go throughout the show. And Jeff, we have seen this movie before with this president. Is it meaningful to you this time? Well, first, Abby, let me give you credit for giving him a whole menu of headlines he'll hate even more. and that you didn't back down. I'm sure he's seen them. So thank you for that. If he can't get his friends to buy the media, he will ban the media. It's the story we've seen again and again. It is authoritarianism, pure and simple. It is fascism. It's what we know. But what I think has to happen now is that your colleagues in the media have to stand up by you.

5:30I'll look straight at New York Times and MS, why MS Now is also banned, Washington Post and Associated Press and Reuters. Walk out. Walk out in solidarity, not just with CNN, MSNOW, and Politico. Walk out in solidarity with the Constitution and a free press. If you leave the press room, you're not missing anything. We can watch it all on TV. We can read his insane socials, whatever you want to call it. You can go out and you can cover the nation more and listen to the people, not him and his insane rantings. So let's see journalists finally have some spine and stand up with you. What was striking to me, Amy, that the president said in that clip that we played was that he's like, what kind of country allows you to print negative stories?

6:20And the answer, Mr. President, is this country. This country explicitly allows you to print negative stories about presidents, about congresspeople, about senators, about whoever. Why doesn't he understand that? Well, I mean, you're absolutely right. This is the bedrock of this country is free speech. And I believe that that extends to everybody and that we should not be stopping that. But we also have to remember that the First Amendment allows them to publish. It's not necessarily just unfettered access to the White House. So in that regard, I still think President Trump is going to come up against some legal battles because of the language that he used with the bias, with his exclusionary viewpoints.

7:00I think he's going to have problems with that. But he does have legal standing on some point because the courts have already recognized it doesn't just give you free access to the White House. Well, I don't even want to argue the legal point because who knows what this Supreme Court will do. But the Constitution says that the government should not infringe on the freedom of the press. Let's just leave it there. But I do know this, though. Why is this happening right now? He even was asked the question, why is he doing it? I haven't seen anything on CNN or MSNOW or political in their past week to justify this.

7:32You know what's happening? Donald Trump is in trouble. He's underwater in the polls. He needs a distraction. And so he decided, I don't want my base to not turn out the polls. I definitely need them. They're upset about the Epstein files. They're upset about energy prices and gas prices and diesel fuel especially. They're definitely upset about inflation and the war in Iran. So how do I distract my base and get them to focus on their common enemy, the press? So this is what this is all about. It's a huge distraction. It came out of nowhere because Donald Trump wants the American people, particularly his base, not to focus on his multiple failures as president.

8:07But to be fair, I don't think his base is watching the outlets that were being banned from the White House anyways. But they're watching Donald Trump say, the press is the enemy. That's the enemy. And so now they have another distraction instead of focusing on Donald Trump and the Epstein files, Donald Trump and the war in Iran, Donald Trump and the high gas prices. He wants them not to focus on his failures. And another thing, too, is that look at who is not part of this ban. Fox News isn't part of this ban. And so when you talk about what Keith just mentioned, the disastrous economy, the tariffs, the war, which, by the way, is opposed by Democrats, Republicans and independents.

8:41So this is not just about a president being underwater with his party. He's underwater with the entire American public, and he knows it. And so it's just another distraction, which is what they do. Something's going badly. You get bad press. Let's manufacture another distraction so that people don't pay attention. And this will pass as well. And again, in addition to trying to ban media outlets, he loves to litigate, too. And so where's CBS on this list? Where's Fox News on this list? Ari Fleischer, a former George W. Bush press secretary who often sides with Trump, He says, I agree with POTUS that several media outlets covering the White House are biased and unfair.

9:19Banning them from the White House is not a solution. Open the pool and the briefing room to conservatives. Challenge liberal reporters, argue, and defeat them. Don't ban them. Or one day they'll ban us. And I should note, I mean, the briefing room and the pool are already open to conservative reporters. and there have been instances in the past where President Obama didn't even do this, by the way. I don't even want to equate it because it's not the same thing. They tried to exclude Fox from an interview with an official. And to Jeff's point, the rest of the press corps said, we're not going to sit for this interview if Fox is not included.

10:00So there is a risk, I think, that some future president, a Democrat, could say, okay, well, you know, Fox is a propaganda outlet. Let's get rid of them. Well, the only reason why I don't think that's going to happen is there's precedent here. Like, I'm enjoying the conversation, but you started off the whole thing, this whole segment, by saying this isn't the first time it's happened, and it isn't. So the lower federal court and an appellate court have ruled on this. And you are correct. Because Trump said, not that they're inaccurate, But they're lying. It's fake. It's based just on their point of view.

10:38You can't ban them based on their point of view. If you could ban them, if they said something that was absolutely, totally inaccurate. But if it was based on their point of view, you can't do that. You can. The courts have ruled. You can limit their access in the Oval Office or in very limited spaces. The president does have a choice as to say, OK, you four people are coming and you four people aren't coming. but he can't say that you're not coming because I don't like your viewpoint. So there is the lawyers around the president of the United States will say, Mr. President, I'm glad you got a lot of media attention.

11:12But if we go, we're going to lose because they've already ruled on this. What's very interesting and not surprising about President Trump is I've been very fortunate to be pretty close with all the New York City mayors, the last four, and all of them had a blanket rule that they didn't read the newspapers. They didn't watch the media. They just did their job. And President Trump is just the opposite. He's so focused on the media, and you're correct. But I don't think the MAGA folks are watching MS Now, so he's not concerned about that. But yes, causing a distraction, a little disruption before we go into the weekend may not be the worst.

11:44The Associated Press case is still out there, right? But the Associated Press won. They got back in, so they got the access. But the President isn't parsing the legality of this. He needs a distraction. But I think he also is, I think there is some awareness, though. He's aware that legally this is not on solid ground. He doesn't care, but he's aware. He made a comment saying, let's do it as much as we can or as much as we can. He threw a little throwaway line in there to cover himself. And, you know, Alyssa Fair Griffin, who's a contributor here, she was working in the White House when behind the scenes, they were trying to ban Caitlin Collins in the first Trump administration.

12:20So, and they talked, his staff actually talked him out of it on the grounds that it would not stand up legally. So he knows a lot of this. But what's also interesting is this is also in the context of the president about to host President Xi Jinping from China, right? And first of all, he had a lot of positive things to say about Xi today in the Oval Office. And then he was asked about China's repression of journalists. And here's what he said. President Xi coming here next week. Great honor. China is one of the most repressive countries for journalists in the world. What signal does it send? Well, I don't know about that.

13:01I think we're repressive also. We get fake news. We don't repress, but they write fake news. He'll be here next week. I can tell you this. It's too bad we don't have the ballroom open because if we did, we could have thousands. We could have 2 ,000 people having dinner. He almost seems envious of what China is able to do that he can't do. It does. He admires authoritarian figures and dictatorial leaders, not just China, but Russia. And this is obviously happening at an odd time because just yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission approved Saudi Arabia and three other countries or two other countries actually taking a stake in Paramount, the company that is trying to take over CNN.

13:51And Trump knows this, and he wants Paramount and the Ellicons to be able to do his bidding. And it's also happening at the same time we just learned today that the Pentagon was hiding or didn't fully reveal the number of American fatalities in the Iran war. So this is exactly the time we do need the press to be out there and to tell the truth, because we can't trust this administration to do that. I mean, is he mad about the headlines, or is he mad about the reality? me? That's a good question. You know, I don't know. I don't know what, you know, gets under President Trump's skin. But I do want to say one thing about the media, because I am unashamedly all for the First Amendment.

14:28I like having the opposing views. I like the fact that you're going to you can get news from CNN. You can get news from Fox. You can hear on Fox News things that you may not hear on CNN. You know, there's some times that I would like to see good border numbers. I would like to hear more stories about illegal immigrants that have murdered women and how we can keep women safe. I don't hear that a lot of times from certain networks, but we do hear it from Fox News and other networks like that. So, you know, I don't want to see this happen because I want to keep the free flow of information going.

14:57I want to keep the dialogue and the discussion going because I think that is one of the most important things that we can continue to do. Even if we don't agree at this table, we can still continue to have discussions and debates and have outlets that we can go to to get the information that we hope is accurate. What's beneficial, though, is to be able to triangulate. We have CNN. We have MSNOW. We have Fox. I don't think Fox is terribly journalistic. In the year 1900 in New York City, we had 46 daily newspapers. And that's the more natural state of media, I think, is that media covered various communities, spoke for various communities.

15:27You had the publication that spoke for you. And that's what the Internet, I think, is bringing back. That's what Trump can't understand, I think, in the age of mass media. He wants it all to be the same. He wants it all to be positive to him. And he wants to control it. He wants to control it. Which is the key part of it all. All right, next for us, one of the stories that Trump may not have liked. The U.S. military used a faulty intel report assisted by artificial intelligence that nearly started a war, according to our sources. Plus, Joe Rogan calls Trump supporters rabid and effing nuts. We'll discuss.

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17:14Tonight, did AI nearly start a war? In the midst of the war with Iran, an intelligence report circulated throughout the military that set off alarm bells. It said that a Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program, and it needed to be intercepted and fast. Sources tell CNN that the military sprung into action. Planes were scrambled and armed service members were ready to board the vessel. But only hours before that operation, officials dug deeper into that intelligence. According to a source, the report was entirely false, a potentially catastrophic miscalculation.

17:52And officials determined that the report had been generated with the help of AI, and the chatbot that an analyst was using misidentified the cargo that the ship was carrying. It almost started a war, that source said. As the military under Pete Hegseth pushes to weave AI into nearly every facet its work, the close call underscores the profound risks of using poorly understood technology in the theater of war. U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific and the Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment on this CNN story. Congresswoman, this is crazy. It is. And it's scary. What do you make of it?

18:31So when we think about artificial intelligence, and there are a lot of people in Congress trying to come up with laws and guardrails. But I think we have to focus on what problem are we trying to solve? Do no harm. Look at national security, because this is what this issue is about, and make sure that we are protecting people. And when I think about what happened here with this military instance, it's another example of we may have AI and it can do things for us, but you still need to put human eyes on it. And you talk to people in the industry And they will tell you, AI can do a lot of things, but there's no substitute for critical thinking and analyses that humans can bring to this conversation.

19:08And in the report. I mean, is Congress even equipped to handle this? I mean, I believe that it's become urgent, especially given the news that came out of the industry where they said we need guardrails. But the question, again, is what exactly are we solving for? And for me, it's safety, doing no harm, and national security. And we're not going to solve this with one piece of legislation. But I will say this, too, and this might be a little controversial for people. Public officials alone cannot solve this. Industry has to be at the table. And some people don't trust that because they say they're only going to come up with laws and rules to their benefit.

19:42But they are the experts. And so we have to talk about this in a comprehensive way. And we need a global standard. The fear is, you know, regulatory capture and all that. I get it. Just try to make rules that they want. That they benefit from. The problem here is, I think, in this case, it's whoever the idiot was who used the AI. And they shouldn't have used it in this case. How the AI would have known what was on the ship, I have no idea. That was a human mistake that was terrible. The really bad news, I think the AI does some amazing things. The conversation of the last couple weeks has been crazy and wrong on all ends.

20:19Hyper on the fear, hyper on the utopianism. But the real problem is going to be this. It's a general machine. It can do anything that you tell it to do. And that means that it's impossible for any company to predict and prevent every malign use to which it can be put or bad accidental use. So this notion that we can have guardrails or a kill switch is simplistic. We have to deal with the fact that this is a powerful tool in the wrong hands, as in the case of the Pentagon. It can do bad things. And that's what we judge against. It's also on the Pentagon, too, right? I mean, yes. Maybe this analyst did a dumb thing, but he shouldn't have been able to do a dumb thing.

21:04And one of the reasons for it is because of this big push by Pete Hegseth to use AI in every possible way as quickly as possible. And weirdly, I mean, the DOD's, like, meme bots or whatever have entered the chat. They've entered the chat on this. And the posts from this week say, Americanism, not effective altruism. The United States will continue to be AI dominant. The United States will never be an effective altruist country. I'm like, did AI write this? First of all. And secondly, again, this is also about using it smartly. And it seems like there's such a rush to be, oh, we're first, that, yeah, actually, dumb, dangerous things like this can happen.

21:49Okay, here's this point. So I think that as we are in the rush to be first and to do this, while we're trying to wait on all of this legislation to come out, while we figure out how are we going to regulate this, I think this could have been solved with a simple process, an order of command. It almost seems like there were no processes in place. I mean, couldn't it just be very easy for them to send out a memo on Monday that says, hey, let's stamp this as AI-assisted. Let's make sure every line is sourced. Let's make sure every single piece gets signed off by a human before anything moves. So that necessarily doesn't take the legislation piece.

22:24I think that we can start moving forward and putting some of these guardrails in place just by simple processes. Yeah, I mean, that's about the attitude, the predisposition in the government, right? And this is a White House where the president has the top down, right, has basically said, look, we don't believe in the idea of guardrails. It's go, go, go. Go, go, go. And how much can I profit from it financially? Well, he strongly believes, and there's been a lot of reporting this week about this, he strongly believes that if there are any constraints put on AI, that it could lead to economic recession or depression even.

23:03So he's worried about that, and he doesn't mind whatever the downsides might be. Yeah, and I think it's really reckless. It's dangerous for the president to act this way as though there's no possible downside. And yes, we are concerned, and we should be concerned about whether other actors are Different countries might use AI for malevolent purposes. But it's also possible that our government could use it for malevolent purposes. And I think this cannot be solved by federal legislation. It has to be solved by international coordination. All countries have to get together and figure out what we can do to stop this from becoming a greater threat.

23:37And that requires leadership, something we have not seen from this president. The same thing, it feels to me like we're going down the same road we were in with COVID, where the president just denied, denied, denied. The same road we continue to go down with climate change, just deny, deny, deny. This guy cannot, for the life of him, decide to get ahead of an issue that is a potential threat and deal with it honestly and tell the American people in a level enough way what's going on. His tendency is always just to lie, lie, lie instead of tell us the truth and let us handle it honestly, Mr. President.

24:10And he's surrounded by people who are just there to say yes to everything he wants to do. So, Arthur, you probably paid attention to this when it happened. You know, when Mamdani said in New York that he was going to ban the use of AI and the instruction of basically elementary age kids, it was kind of controversial and some people said, oh, he's being sort of like a dinosaur. But it kind of seems prescient now. I mean, there was an MIT report that was reported on this week that said that AI was causing cognitive surrender. in these brilliant kids who are at MIT. They found that the technology caused major shifts in campus culture.

24:49It isolated students who were skipping office hours, ditching communal studying. Answers from the bot can create an illusion of learning for students who reach for AI at the first hint of struggle. And now I think we can add to that an illusion of a complete hallucination of things at the national security level. We are definitely at a very dangerous point. And it affects, it really affects almost every area. Because when you're talking about education, it's also socialization. Yes. So, like, in my firm, we don't do a lot of AI. But I have no problem telling you, Abby, and telling the whole world, like, we're falling behind because.

25:28At your firm specifically. At my firm specifically, we're not doing a lot of advertising on AI. So the search engine optimization, the AI stuff, we do a lot of hand-to-hand combat. We do a lot of, Abby, you know, someone in your family's in trouble, we'll help you out. Not, you know, put it in the system. But we're falling behind. And even the lawyers, the young lawyers who are in their 20s and 30s in my office, I have them do their own research. But in other places, in big law firms, they're putting it in, here's the facts, here's the issues, write the motion. Now, we've represented, I think, four lawyers who asked AI to write the motions.

26:02And they had cases in there that just didn't exist. They were absolutely made up. And federal judges called him to the carpet, and we got all these people out of trouble because it's such a new technology. The judges kind of smacked him on the wrist. But, you know, Keith, when you talk about an international thing, that sounds great. But, you know, it's a lot easier said than done. Who decides what the rules are going to be, what the rules aren't going to be? I never said it was going to be easy, but I said that's exactly what we have to have, presidential leadership, because it's not easy. Who knows how quickly this thing could go out of trouble, go out of whack?

26:37We just saw today there was a story from Gemini that they were hacking into three different companies. Three different companies. We saw another story. I just saw today OpenAI was being used to erase its own memory. But what she said, which is accurate, just because you're elected to an office, whether it's president, congressman, or city councilman, that doesn't mean you have all the answers. No, I'm not saying. Or the reaction. Right, that's what I mean. The United States is supposed to be the leader of the free world, allegedly. That person should at least try to get the people who are the players involved at around the table.

27:11It's the convening. Which players should be? I don't know who they are, but just let's convince them. It is the convening power. Academic, scientific. Look, we are the most powerful country in the world. We are not utilizing the convening power that we potentially have. And no, the president who doesn't use a cell phone and never has is not going to be the person to write the AI regs. But there are a lot of smart people who know what they're doing on this. The problem, Abby, is it's a really undercover story out there, is that the faux philosophies that guide these AI boys, and they're mainly boys who are in charge of these companies, are Looney Tunes.

27:47This whole notion of doom and existential risk comes out of a set of fake religions. And so when we say let's have the leaders sit at the table, if it's from Anthropic and OpenAI and God help us SpaceX, they're the people who shouldn't be in charge of this technology. The technology can do amazing things. It may help us cure diseases. But they are in charge of the technology, though. But we need to have others. We need to have journalists and sociologists. That's what I'm saying. We need to get them involved. Right now, only one group of people. The Elon Musk of the world are the ones who control everything.

28:18How do we get everybody else to the table? And one of those people that you described, I mean, they are working in, you know, nonprofits and looking at the ethics of this stuff all the time. The question is, who's going to bring them to the table? And so far, nobody has done that. King Charles tried. All right. Jeff Jarvis, thank you very much for being with us. Your new book out now, Hot Type, The Magnificent Machine That Gave Birth to Mass Media and Drove Mark Twain Mad. Ooh, that sounds interesting. It's out right now. Next for us, the vice president hits the campaign trail in Iowa again, but one Republican candidate wasn't there for the photo op.

28:54We'll discuss.

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29:40Tonight, J.D. Vance is in an awkward position. In a state his boss won by double digits today, the vice president found himself campaigning for a candidate who wouldn't even show up to his event. Listen. First, I want to make it a shout-out to an amazing public servant. I know she couldn't be here today, but are we going to elect Ashley Hinson, the next United States senator for the great state of Iowa? Thank you. In the deep red state of Iowa, Republicans are facing unexpectedly competitive midterm contests, and that includes three-term Congresswoman Ashley Hinson, the GOP Senate hopeful whose spokesperson told The New York Times that she had a scheduling conflict today.

30:22In recent days, Congresswoman Hinson has joined a growing number of Republicans distancing themselves from the administration ahead of the midterms. She's spoken out about Trump's beef policy, and her campaign released an ad highlighting her efforts to reach across the aisle. Now, all of this comes as new CNN analysis shows that Republicans are keeping Trump at an arm's length. They are effectively icing him out of their campaign ads. Now, Vance appeared to return the favor. He only mentioned her once in his 30-minute speech. Contra to what the president says, and again, this is probably one of the headlines he doesn't like.

30:59But contrary to what he is saying, his candidates don't want to treat this election as if he is on the ballot. Look, I don't think it is going to shock anybody when a candidate keeps a president off of the ads or from talking about them. You know, they did that. They tried to hide Joe Biden from the campaign, too. So, you know, we've seen this happen both times. But J.D. Vance did have to show up in Iowa. This is no one thought Iowa was going to be in play. And this is an extremely important election, not just for the House seats, but also for the Senate. So it's J.D. Vance's job to go there and to remind the Republican base what good things have happened in this economy so far.

31:40You know, the, hey, you know, it's extremely important to the people of Iowa to get the tax cuts on the tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime. They pulled very high that the border was extremely important to them. They're still pulling that they like the way that President Trump is handling it. But it is up to each of the candidates to start tailoring the message with or without President Trump on the ballot or in any of their ads. They have to start tailoring that message for how they're going to work for their people after the midterms. I think Iowa is a canary in a coal mine. Iowa, it's Texas, it's Kansas, it's even Florida.

32:18There are places all across the country where Republicans who should be in great shape are struggling. That's a sign of just how toxic Donald Trump is as the president, as the figurehead of the leader of the party. And I think, actually, I hate to move forward beyond 2026 because I still think we should focus on 2026. But I also think that it's a bad sign for 2028 because I don't see how Marco Rubio or J.D. Vance or any Republican candidate is going to be able to campaign in 2028 for president of the United States when Donald Trump is still around. He's going to make the entire campaign about himself.

32:48He will never leave the center stage. And that's going to be a problem. Keith, I saw the last poll I saw with Trump was approval rating was like 38 percent, which is the lowest apparently of anyone. You know, the second lowest was the second time in the midterms, right? It was Barack Obama. He was at 42 percent. No president at the midterms of the second term. So and if you want to talk about people not hooking on to their president, Al Gore, in my opinion, if he campaigned a little closer with Bill Clinton, he would have been the president of the United States. Wouldn't have lost his own state of Tennessee.

33:20So these are calculated decisions. You realize that, right? He lost his own state of Tennessee. He distanced himself from Bill Clinton. I understand all that. I was there. I was in the Clinton administration. But I don't understand what you're saying, because my point is that Donald Trump is so toxic and so unpopular, widely unpopular, that I don't care what happens in the next two or three months. Nothing is going to change Donald Trump's behavior. He's going to continue to be toxic. But does most of his candidates win? Abby, you know these statistics. They win their primaries. They don't win their general election.

33:49I mean, exactly. So I think Trump's record in terms of endorsements in primaries is pretty good. Some people have lost, but most people have won. But that's because, A, he picks people who are likely to win, and B, these are Republican primaries. But, you know, one GOP strategist said this in a CNN piece today. The president is not the best message or our best messenger at this point. this is not just about who he is, but also what he does when he is let loose on the campaign trail. He cannot stay on message. And he will not exit stage right. No, ever. And any time he's campaigning for a candidate, if you're campaigning for a candidate on the road with him, you make it about the candidate.

34:31Donald Trump makes everything about himself, no matter what the topic. And so they know how toxic that is. And there was a time when Donald Trump's endorsement was a highly sought-after endorsement among Republicans. It's toxic now, so they have to distance themselves. And it's interesting how I see women who are Republicans actually being more aggressive and the most aggressive when it comes to distancing themselves from President Trump. There was that congresswoman in Florida, Maria Salazar. But this is not a woman, but it is a man who I believe voted for Trump. He helped Trump get over the finish line.

35:05But Joe Rogan really has turned on the president lately, partly because of Iran, partly because of the economy. Listen to this. Supporters are nuts, man. They're rabid. He represents something other than just a person to them. Oh, it's Christ. Yeah. Well, he represents something, a leader that they wish they had, you know. Yeah. Which is a real problem in our society in general with leaders. We look to them as if there's something different than every other person that's ever been a leader before. Like, this is the one. This is the one that's going to save us. I don't know if I agree with that.

35:43I mean, I don't know if I agree with that, that we look at every leader like, this is the one who's going to save us. This is the one who's going to save us. But do you think that's true of Trump supporters? Well, I think certain Trump supporters feel very strongly about him. But, you know, Abby, if you look at history, every president, people distance themselves from. You think John McCain was like all excited to run under George W. Bush's umbrella? No, not at all. As I said, Al Gore distanced himself from Bill Clinton as much as he could. And as I said, Barack Obama's midterms, they weren't right.

36:14So this is not so unique to Donald Trump. That's my only point. There have been plenty of presidents who have been in office and the people who are running under their umbrella really don't want anything to do with them. Do I do I remember anything as embarrassing as the vice president of the United States coming to your state and you have a scheduling conflict? I mean, unless it's open school night for a kid, I can't think of a scheduling conflict. It's not even the first time that's happened in this cycle. I mean, and he went to Maine. Susan Collins didn't show up. But but in Trump world, and I think part of this is what Rogan is implying, is that there is not as much room for that kind of dissent.

36:54They don't take it well. The president doesn't usually take it well. Look, I kind of I got something completely different from the whole Joe Rogan clip because there's a part that we left out, too. He didn't just say the Trump supporters were rabid and crazy. He also said he used to be a far leftist, but the covid mandates were crazy, that the censorship got crazy. So I don't think he was actually speaking out just against the Trump supporters. I think that he was saying, look, I think there is room to criticize people. I think there's room to criticize our government. That's the only way that we move forward.

37:23But I don't think he was lumping everybody together saying that they're crazy. There's crazies on both sides. There are crazy things that happen on both sides. But he has to be able to come out and criticize things so that we can actually take a look what's wrong within the party and move forward. I agree with a lot of what Joe Rogan said. I do think that people place too much faith in leaders of both parties. But I've never seen anything like Donald Trump before. I mean, I like Barack Obama. I went to law school with Barack Obama. I know most black people love Barack Obama. But, you know, we weren't making out posters of him portraying him as Jesus.

37:55We weren't building golden statues. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. We weren't people who walked around the city with the whole thing and changed things. We were not creating golden statues about Barack Obama. We weren't treating him like he was the cult leader. Trump's doing that to himself. Trump supporters aren't doing that. Trump's doing it. But I want to talk about what Joe Rogan said because he said that they're effing nuts, right? And in many ways, the people who are his hardcore supporters who are described as effing nuts, they see what's happening. They see how unpopular he is. They see what a disaster he is on every topic, but they don't want to be wrong.

38:30So they just want to cling to it. These poor people got bamboozled and hoodwinked. And they're just determined to cling to this idea that I was right. We've got to leave it there next for us. The president says that his son, Don Jr., is giving back that money that a Russian oligarch paid as a gift for his wedding party. We'll discuss next.

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40:04The president says that his son, Don Jr., is paying back Umar Kremlev, the Russian oligarch who funded part of his wedding. I understand that Don's paying him back. I actually heard that when I heard the story, I asked about it. He said, no, I'm paying him back, Dan. So, and that was a while ago. So I heard he's paying him. I have to say, though, you know, giving a wedding party is pretty common. Don Jr. and his new wife called the oligarch with close ties to Putin. Dear friend, when reporters reports of this lavish gift broke in ProPublica, this is actually a rare acknowledgement that they know that this was wrong.

40:47Right. Right? Like, they're pulling back. I think it's sort of an acknowledgement because Trump is trying to pretend like it didn't happen or that he's paying the money back, allegedly. But where's the proof that he's actually paying the money back? Trump says a lot of things that aren't true, so who knows if this is really happening or if it ever did happen. But the question is, why did this happen in the first place? Why would you invite or allow a guy who's a Russian oligarch, friendly with Vladimir Putin, who just got a state honor from Vladimir Putin, who was just palling around in China, why would you ask this guy?

41:22Why would you want to get bankrupt at your wedding? You're the son of the president, and you just had this whole campaign to complain about Hunter Biden. It's the nerve of you people. They're trying to bring together the international coalition to deal with AI. I mean, this is so obvious. Keith, what's the matter with you? You've got to be friends with these people. At the wedding in the Bahamas, they were talking about AI. Listen, man, more work gets done on the golf course than anywhere else. Come on. That's a good one. I mean, I don't know what winning gifts you got at your wedding, but I mean, we were loaded.

41:49Let me play. This is what Senator John Curtis, a Republican, said about this whole fiasco. Listen. Another low, believe this, a Russian old guard paid for a lavish wedding after party for Donald Trump Jr., which to me, it just stinks. It's corruption. I don't like it. Simple as that. It's corruption. I mean, But is it? He's a private citizen. There's a difference between Don Jr., private citizen. So it's Hunter Biden, right? So he can, well, of course. So I guess in that vein, if we are going to say that this is corruption and this is, you know, giving preferential treatment to a president, are we going to use that same litmus test for Hunter Biden getting on the board of Burisma, which he was not qualified for?

42:35You guys spent two years complaining about Hunter Biden. Let's not get distracted by Hunter Biden. What is your justification for Don Jr.? He's worth$300 million accepting a gift like this from a Russian oligarch who he apparently met so recently that his own brother, Eric Trump, says Eric has absolutely no clue who this person is, nor has ever heard his name. I don't think it matters if I accept it or not. But I do think that there's a difference between tacky and treason. And I wouldn't put this in the treason category. What do you think Umar Kremlev wants from Don Jr.? I don't know. What do you think the people that put Hunter Biden on the board of Burisma wanted from Hunter Biden what the Biden was vice president?

43:21Here's the thing. Donald Trump ran on a campaign explicitly saying he was going to drain the swamp. How do you say that when you come and become the swamp? But that wasn't the swamp he was talking about. Oh, the other swamp he was going to drain. The only reason that Donald Trump is saying that his son repaid this oligarch again is because he knows that his approval ratings are low. The economy is in the tank. There's an unwanted war and things aren't going well for him. So otherwise they would just say, yeah, we took it. So what? But he knows things are going so badly that he even had to pretend that his son repaid this oligarch.

43:58Well, I would be interested in some proof. I'm with you, Keith, on this. I think we ought to know from Don Jr. if what the president said today is actually accurate. All right, everyone, thank you very much for joining us at the table tonight. We'll be back in a moment.

44:22Have I Got News For You is back to help you laugh through the headlines with this week's guests, journalist Kara Swisher and Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger. Here's a preview. The story is gas prices are soaring, the economy's in shambles, preventable diseases are running rampant, climate regulations are being destroyed, and it's all the fault of one man, Joe Biden. If you don't believe it's Joe Biden's fault, just listen. We're digging out of a massive hole that Joe Biden left us. A massive hole that Biden left us. We inherited an absolute disaster. I inherited that war. That was Joe Biden.

45:01I inherited all these high prices. It was Biden's thing. Do you remember, you know, affordability? I inherited that from the Biden administration. Biden, Biden, Biden. You know, if you say Joe Biden name five times, he appeared. What's so weird is this is the one inheritance he hasn't squandered.

45:29You can catch an all-new episode tomorrow at 9 p.m. on CNN and streaming the next day on the CNN app with an all-access subscription. Thank you very much for watching Newsnight. Laura Coates Live starts right now. When you spend enough time around great companies, you notice that the best ones treat trust as a growth strategy, not a box to check. Vanta helps companies build and prove trust from day one. Its agentic trust platform connects compliance, risk, and trust at enterprise scale. Vanta delivers a 526 % return on investment over three years and pays for itself in just three months. Learn why over 16 ,000 of the fastest growing companies use Vanta at Vanta.com.

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