Transcript of CUOMO Town Hall on Trump’s First 100 Days

So much horsepower, I can’t handle it alone.

So I have two heavyweights with me, the one and only Bill O’Reilly and the shooting star that is Stephen A. Smith.

Town Hall Format and Polling

Best part? Tons of time. Tons. Why? Our sponsor, American Hartford Gold. Thank you for allowing us limited commercial interruptions. It makes such a difference. We’re going to be taking questions from you.

We’re going to be having the remote wall audience of all these people there pretending to pay attention to me right now, which is very nice. And we have a wall of questions that are feeding in on a steady stream from X. You want to ask a question? Great. Get on X, use the hashtag CuomoTownHall or scan the QR code on the screen to submit your questions online.

Now to set the table, NewsNation commissioned a special poll for tonight from DDHQ, the outfit that we partnered with that allowed us to call the last election first. We just put it public. Here’s the new polling. 44% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the job. Historically, that puts him middle to the bottom. It’s not a great number.

But then again, it is in line with where he was during his first term. You’ve got to measure it relatively, not just for a headline. Nearly 60% say the country is on the wrong track. Huge majorities of Americans are concerned about a recession and inflation. But here’s the most interesting part of the poll for me that I haven’t heard anywhere else.

DDHQ also found that on the question of the need for a third party in America, Forty Percent of Americans want one. Only 17% say the two party system is effective. Think about that. It is the best harbinger for change I’ve heard in my almost thirty years in this business, that finally Americans are waking up to the fact that our political system is about two parties, not all of us.

Introducing the Panel

So let’s bring out the better minds that will help me for the duration. First, author and journalist, the one and only Bill O’Reilly. And the best dressed man in television, Stephen A. Smith. Thank you, my brother.

All right, gentlemen. Thank you for being with me. As always, would you like to have a seat give me a quick take on the state of play?

BILL O’REILLY: I’m glad I’m an American. That’s number one. I don’t think there’s Armageddon on the horizon. So we have President Trump on the phone. And, I was able to book him because President Trump isn’t afraid of anything. I don’t think. I’ve never seen him be afraid.

And he gives a press briefing every day from the Oval Office, every day. And he knows that most of these people hate him. They want to see him embarrassed, and we’re not going to do that tonight. There’s no gotcha. What I’m trying to get across to NewsNation audiences is this is not confrontational.

This is informational. We’re trying to get as much information as we can from not only the president, who I’m going get to in a second because I don’t want to waste his time, but also from the other guests. Now there may be some heat, all right? And I’m the bouncer. They’re paying me to be the bouncer here. And I will enforce no personal attacks, no sleazy comments that are hooks for the Internet. We’re not going to do that.

Now President Trump. So I’ve known him thirty five years. And, sometimes he likes me and sometimes he doesn’t. My job is to call him as I see him, and that’s why I’ve been successful. And I am also a historian, as you know. So my latest book is confronting the president.

So I can tell you that in the first hundred days, no president has attempted to do more than Donald Trump, Not one. The second one, number two, is George Washington. Today is the anniversary of his inauguration in 1789 as the first president of The United States. And Washington had to do it because there was no country. He didn’t have anything. So he had to, in the first hundred days, get the bathrooms working.

But Donald Trump has tried to do more than every other president. And it’s not even close, but there’s a downside to that. And Pope Francis is your best example. He tried to change the church. Boy, did he, he got whacked. Okay. People don’t like change.

Interview with President Trump

So with that set up, let’s bring in the President of The United States who’s working in the Oval Office right now. Mister President, how are you tonight?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Hello, Bill. How are you?

BILL O’REILLY: I’m the same, which is tragic for everyone. You know, people hope that I improve and I never do. So I’m gonna ask you a few questions, and then Cuomo’s got a few. Then, Steven A, you ready to go?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yes. I can.

BILL O’REILLY: So, a series of rough polls this week, and I’m wondering how you process that. Does it hurt your feelings when you see numbers come in that are not what you’d like them to be?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, first of all, they’re fake polls. And if you take a look at the polls, they interviewed more for the most part, they interviewed more Democrats than they did Republicans, which is ridiculous and unfair. And Democrats aren’t voting for Trump.

And you look at him, John McLaughlin, who’s the most respected pollster, said I’m at fifty-five and maybe even higher than that. And he said that these polls are largely fake. When you look at The New York Times, when you look at The Washington Post ABC, they predicted I was going to lose Wisconsin by 17 points, and I ended up winning Wisconsin. They predicted I was going to lose the election, and I ended up winning the election. They’re fake polls, number one.

And I think it’s a very important thing to know that and to understand it. Because polls are no different than fake writers or journalism, and it’s not a pretty thing when you watch. So when you say, am I bothered by it? If I was, I’d be really helped by the fact that in the election, we won in a landslide. We won the popular vote. We won the swing states. We won the districts, 2,750 to about 505. And, the election took place just a short while ago, November 5.

BILL O’REILLY: What’s different now is the tariffs, and that’s what’s driving your numbers down, that some people are panicking because the stock market is so up and down, in and out. Would you agree that that has been a perception problem, the tariffs?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah. But I’m an honest guy, and we have to save the country. We were losing $5 billion a day with this man that we had as a president, the auto pen president. Nobody even knows who the president was. We’re losing, think of it. We’re losing $5 billion a day, and a big chunk of it was from China.

Now China is sending its boats back. The boats are not being unloaded because they have a 145% tariff, which is, you know, a record setting type tariff. And, they can’t sell their product here. And because of that, think of it, if you’re losing all of that money, maybe you’re better off not doing business with them. But I took $5 billion a day and cut it way, way down, way, way back, and I did that within a very short period of time.

BILL O’REILLY: When do you think, though, it’s gonna turn around economically so that people aren’t frightened? Do you have a time line on it?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah. I mean, it’s a very fair question. Building plants, building equipment, building so much right now, you probably heard it could be $8 trillion. It could be more than $8 trillion of new investments. Outside in one of my offices waiting for me is the president and chairman of Eli Lilly. And I just left. You take a look. IBM was here today. IBM was here. They’re spending billions of dollars.

I had some of the biggest, the biggest Apple, as you know, is spending $500 billion. They’re building their plants, and they’ve already started in The United States. As you know, they built most of them in China. We had the biggest companies in the world. They had a conference here just about an hour and a half ago, and some of the people are still here. They remain. Some of the people are watching your show tonight.

But they’re spending, it could be close I think we’re over $8 trillion of new investment. That’s unheard of. It’s never been anything like that.

BILL O’REILLY: Most people want to know what time to avoid the tariffs. They’re doing that to avoid the tariffs. But do you have a timeline yourself? Do you say, look. It’s gotta stabilize by this time, fall. Because remember, if it doesn’t stabilize this time next year, Democrats may win the midterms. So there is risk here, big risk.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: That’s true. It is true. And I just think that I’ll be able to convince people how good this is. This is what other countries have done to us. We’ve been the laughing stock and the whipping post. We’ve been ripped off by every country practically in the world. Just ripped off on trade. And by the way, ripped off with NATO and the military too because we supported NATO to a tune that was almost at one point until I became president, it was close to a 100%. We were spending.

So we’re spending on NATO to protect Europe. And then on Europe, they’re ripping us off in trade. But if you look at the European Union, they’ve been brutal to The United States. We lose $300 billion, 350 billion dollars a year to Europe. They don’t take our cars. We take 10 million of their cars. That’s getting better. Farm products. We take their farm products. And it has to change.

So, you know, I’m willing to be the one that does that, but, it has to change. And I’ve been given a lot of credit. I got an editorial today by a group that I won’t mention, but a group that’s a very, sort of a semi anti-Trump group. And they said whether you like it or not, he’s the most consequential president that we’ve ever had because he’s doing things that if you don’t do it, we won’t have a country.

BILL O’REILLY: And that’s a legitimate point. One more question for me, then Cuomo, and then Steven A. You signed a deal with Ukraine to harvest minerals today. What were you and Zelensky talking about when you were nose to nose in the Vatican?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I was telling him that it’s a very good thing if we can produce a deal that you sign it because Russia is much bigger and much stronger. Russia is just chugging forward. It’s a big, strong country. By the way, not nearly as strong as The United States because I rebuilt our military in my first term.

They gave a lot of it away in Afghanistan, and Afghanistan is one of the reasons the incompetent—we had an incompetent president, grossly incompetent. He should have never been president, but we had a man that didn’t know what the hell he was doing. And Afghanistan showed the stupidity of our leader and the weakness of the military. We have a great military. I knocked out ISIS in three weeks. They said we’re going to take time to do it.

BILL O’REILLY: You got the deal with Zelenskyy on the minerals. That means The United States is gonna have a presence in Ukraine. Is that gonna inhibit Putin, do you think?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, it could. But the reason I did that is that we’re in for $350 billion or close to it, whereas Europe is only in it for $100 billion. So we get some of our investment back.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I felt very foolish. You know, they loaned the money, and Biden handed them $350 billion in between cash and military equipment. 350, we got nothing. And I felt very foolish being the head of a country where Europe gets their money back, and it’s a much smaller amount, and we get nothing. So I went to them and said, look.

We gotta get rare earth. They have great rare earth, meaning certain minerals, materials. They have things that a lot of places don’t have. It’s a big asset that they have. And we made a deal today where we get, you know, much more in theory than the $350 billion, but I wanted to be protected.

I didn’t want to be out there and look foolish. And this is not my war. This is Biden’s war. I’m just trying to stop it. But okay.

The reason I want it stopped is they’re losing 5,000 young soldiers every single week on average, Russian and Ukrainian. They’re not American, but they’re human beings. And it’s so sad to see it. So I want to stop the war. Let’s get Cuomo in here.

CHRIS CUOMO: Mister president, it’s Chris Cuomo. Thank you for taking the opportunity.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Good.

CHRIS CUOMO: Appreciate you doing it. A couple of points of uncertainty. You’re talking about, you just said a moment ago that you believe you can convince the American people about what you’re doing. One of the things that keeps coming up in polling is that they don’t know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, that there doesn’t seem to be a plan. What does that mean to you in terms of how you have to make the case to the American people to have them deal with the period that it takes for a turnaround?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, the problem is I have, Chris, is I have to be flexible. Because as you do things in life and in business, you need flexibility. You can’t just be hardline, and I’m going to run right through a wall, and I’m never going to go over it or around it. I’m going to go straight. You have to be able to dodge and move and be flexible and especially in business.

Now with the cars, I’m getting a 25% tariff for the people. We’re taking in billions and billions of dollars, but they’re hurt because they can’t switch over a 100% of the content of the car within a very short period of time. So they came to see me. I understood their problem, and I gave them a period of a year where I brought it down and then another year. So I gave them a short period, two years, where they have to be switched over 100% where every single part in the car is made in The USA. Now if I didn’t do that, it would have been very, very tough for them.

And so what I am is flexible. And if I didn’t do that, it would be very tough for these companies. And these companies, it’s a transition period, Chris. And transition is an important word because as you do things, you’ll say, well, it’s like being on the battlefield. You’re on the battlefield. Sometimes you’re going to move to the left flank, but then you end up moving to the right flank.

And it’s very much like that in business, and frankly, it’s very much like that in life. But we’re taking in hundreds of billions of dollars. And if you look at China now, they’re not look. We lost a trillion dollars on trade with this Biden. China was just taking us out to lunch. There’s never been anything like it the way we were ripped off. We were ripped off by China, but we’re ripped off by everybody, but really by China. They were the king of ripping off The United States. Now they’re not doing any business here. Because I don’t want them to do business.

So I set a high tariff. I don’t want them to do business. Now will we make a deal? There’s a very good chance we’re going to make a deal, but we’re going to make it on our terms.

CHRIS CUOMO: Mister president, gotta be fair. Mister president, in the upcoming budget negotiations, another point of uncertainty is what happens to entitlements. Whether or not not waste, fraud, and abuse, I think everybody’s in favor of seeing that identified and exposed but that Social Security benefits or the adjustments or the application of it may be compromised or Medicaid, may be compromised in terms of who gets how much in benefits. Do you have a commitment for the American people in terms of how much you will protect those programs?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We’re not doing anything with entitlements. And if you look at Social Security and by the way, I think I’m better to say this than anybody because I did nothing with entitlements that would hurt people for four years. I could have done that. If I was going to do that, I would have done it, five years ago, six years ago, or seven years ago. I’m not doing anything.

The only thing is, you know, you say don’t talk about waste, fraud, and abuse. There is a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse. There are a lot of illegal aliens that are getting Medicaid that shouldn’t be getting it. And nobody objects to taking people off Medicaid that aren’t allowed to be there. But we are doing absolutely nothing to hurt Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. Nothing at all.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: Mister president, how are you, sir?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Steven. How are you? I remember you from a long time ago, Steven.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: Yes. I do. Been. He’s the same, Mr. President. He hasn’t changed at all. I’m done. Trouble morning, night, and afternoon. Congratulations, Mr. President.

Honest talk to Here’s the deal. You talked about, obviously you’ve introduced aggressive tariffs and significant budget cuts aimed at federal spending. Many critics say these policies disproportionately impact lower income Americans. How do you address concerns that your economic policies primarily benefit wealthy Americans while harming working class Americans?

Trump on Economic Policies

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It actually creates jobs for the middle income. It’s going to be better for the middle income. It’s going to save our country because we’re going to become rich again. Steven, we lose so much money on trade. It’s unbelievable. And instead of losing a lot of and they did to they did to us for years what I’m doing to them right now. They charged us tariffs.

They wouldn’t let us build anything in our country. They said, you want to sell a Ford or you want to sell a General Motors car or anything, you come to China and build your plant in China. You come to, the European nations and build your plant in Germany. You build it in France. You build it where we have no interest in letting you as an example, we don’t sell any cars virtually in China.

We don’t sell any cars in Europe, any. And yet Europe sells millions of cars, Mercedes, BMW, Volkswagen, millions and millions of cars. They won’t take our agricultural product. It’s great product. They won’t take almost anything for us, but we take their cars. We take their agriculture. Those days are over. We have to have fair trade.

We’re losing billions and billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars, and it’s not fair. And it’s time for the American people to be properly protected by somebody that knows what he’s doing. And I know what I’m doing perfectly. It’s a little complicated subject. I’ve got to explain it. I’ve gotta have people that can explain it.

But I can tell you that right now, we have over a hundred countries that are calling us, like, morning, noon, and night, dying to make a deal. We’re in a great position of strength. We’ll make great deals. And where we don’t make deals, Steven, we’re just going to set the deals. We’ll say that country is going to pay a 20% tariff. That country is going to pay 15%. Another one’s going to pay 30 or 40% because we have a big, you know, deficit with a certain country. They’re going to pay thirty, forty, 50, 60 percent.

So we’ll just set those deals. I could set those deals tomorrow and do away with negotiating, but we’re negotiating with South Korea. We’re negotiating with Japan. We’re negotiating with a lot of different many, many — India is a very big — they want to make a deal so badly. I’m not telling anything out of school. We’re going to make great deals for America instead of bad.

And if I didn’t take this hard line, India, as an example, had no interest in negotiating with anybody in Biden or, frankly, anybody with us. They had no fear. They were ripping us really badly, one of the highest tariff nations in the world. They were taking advantage of us. Now they’re calling us, and they’re saying, please, let’s make a deal.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: When are you going now? You I understand you have a deal with South Korea, Japan, and India. You already got it. When are you announcing it?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, we have potential deals with them. Yeah. But I’m in okay. I’ll tell you this. I’m in less of a hurry than you are. We are sitting on the catbird seat. They want us. We don’t need them.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: Alright. Remember, the folks are nervous, though.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: But they’ve been ripping us. Let me just tell you. They’ve been ripping us off.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: We got that. The folks South Korea has been ripping us off.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We pay for their military. You know, when I was there, I got them to pay billions of dollars for the military. We pay for their military. We take they take advantage of us on trade. Now these are friend and foe. We often do better with foe, meaning the enemy, than we do with the friends. The friends have been brutal to this country on trade.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: But remember, once you announce the stock market is going to go up 2,000 points and people will relax a little more.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It can wait two weeks. It can wait two weeks.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: Alright. Okay.

Trump on DEI Initiatives

STEPHEN A. SMITH: Mister president, an additional question that might require an explanation. Your administration has issued executive orders dismantling DEI initiative across federal agencies, including revoking equal opportunity mandates and slashing funding for minority owned businesses. Critics argue these actions reverse decades of civil right pro civil rights progress. So how do you justify these measures and what message do they send to the marginalized communities in the country?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, it was one at the civil as you know, it was won at the Supreme Court. And what we’re doing is we have a country that’s based solely on merit now. And that’s the way it is. If somebody’s out there doing a great job, and this includes getting into colleges, if you’ve worked really hard, we don’t look at race, we don’t look at color, we don’t look at height or shortness or weight.

If somebody is doing a good job and they worked and they got great marks and they got great board numbers and they get rejected at this this, Harvard, which has been so disgusting, so horribly. I mean, so think of it. They hired Bill DeBlasio and Laurie Leifman, the two worst mayors in the history. They pay him a fortune.

BILL O’REILLY: But that was the course, though. They’re teaching management.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Let me just tell you that The course was they announced, Steven, on merit.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: The course in Harvard, though, mister president, was how to be a bad mayor. That was the course.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: So they had a Harvard be good. Zendaya would be terrific.

BILL O’REILLY: Laura, I got a studio audience question from Lee Shapiro. Lee’s a tough guy. Lee says, what’s the biggest mistake you think you’ve made in the first one hundred days?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I’ll tell you that’s the toughest question I can have because I don’t really believe I’ve made the decision. We’re in a transition period. We’re in we’re in a transition period.

CHRIS CUOMO: Think Lee is reassured.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I think you’re going to see tremendous economic victories over the next period of a year, like far greater than ever imagined. Right now, as I said, we’re losing billions and billions of dollars on trade. We’re going to make billions and billions of dollars, but it takes a little while. That doesn’t happen overnight, but it will happen much faster than people understand.

BILL O’REILLY: Alright. Cuomo, it’s got one more. Alright. Let me get Steven Smith in here, then I got a question for you, mister

STEPHEN A. SMITH: Well, I appreciate your time. Mister president, thank thank you for your time. It’s interesting that you brought up Harvard because when people think about Harvard, what they’re basically talking about is they’re what do you say to those who view your actions as an attack on academic freedom rather than a defense of fairness. What do you say to that?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I say this. We had riots in Harlem. And, frankly, if you look at what’s going on and people from Harlem went up and they protested, Steven, and they protested very strongly against Harvard. They happened to be on my side. You know, I got a very high black vote. You know that. Very, very high black vote. It was a very great compliment to I did criminal justice reform. I did opportunity zones for one of the greatest economic deals ever for the black and Hispanic community.

I got tremendous. They agree with what I’m doing with respect to Harvard. Harvard gets $4-5 billion a year from the United States government in the form of grants. And they have $53 billion, and yet they don’t treat the people right. They take foreign students. Nobody knows where they come from, and they viciously hate our country. And I’m saying if we’re going to give grant money, we want people in that school that are going to love our country, not people that are going to hate our country. They run a bad operation up there, and and we have to get to the bottom of it.

On top of that, they said they want to teach their students remedial mathematics. That’s basic math. Two and two is four. And you say, well, Harvard’s supposed to be so great. Why do people have to have remedial? That’s that’s basic, very simple mathematics. So, we’re looking into Harvard, but we give them billions of dollars a year, and that may very well stop.

HBCUs and Federal Funding

STEPHEN A. SMITH: Mister president, I’m a graduate of Winston Salem State University, which is an HBCU, I’m fully aware of the contributions that you’ve made to HBCUs in the past. There is a concern, however, that with all the things going on in this day and time, that there will be a cut in federal contributions to HBCUs. Should HBCUs be very concerned about you making cuts in that regard?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Not at all. And let me just tell you, I’m glad you brought in historically black colleges and universities. I saved them, Steven. They were going out of business. They came to me, about 50 people that headed up. And they came to me the first year, and I took care of them. I took care of the black colleges and historically black HBCU. I took care of them.

You know that better than anybody. Then they came to me the second year, and I said, wait. Wait a minute. Why do you keep coming back? I saw you guys, and they were great guys. Some of them, to this day, are still really friendly. And by the way, they love Trump, every one of them.

They came to me the second time. They came to me the second time, and I was surprised to see them. I said, “What?” Just to finish it. They came to me the third time, I said, fellas, you need long term. I got the HBCUs, I got the historically black colleges and universities. I got them more money than they ever dreamt possible, and they’re in great shape now, and they have long term financing. Nobody did that but Donald Trump.

Stephen A. Smith’s Political Future

BILL O’REILLY: Stephen A. Smith may run for president, as you know. Do you have any advice for Stephen A, if he launches the run?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No. Stephen A, he’s a good guy. He’s a smart guy. I love watching him. He’s got great entertainment skills, which is very important. People watch him. You know, a lot of these Democrats I watch, I say they have no chance. I’ve been pretty good at picking people and picking candidates, and I will tell you, I’d love to see him run.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: Not me. I like him too much.

Unity and Legacy

BILL O’REILLY: Mister president, we’re going to let you go. Thank you very much. I just wanted to ask you something because I know that for you, legacy matters. You talk about it in house. You talk about it out of house.

When you got shot, I reached out through family. I wanted to talk to you, and I wanted to tell you a couple of things. One was that I hope that you were okay and that your family was dealing with it all right. And the second one was that I was embarrassed by how it was being covered as if maybe it didn’t happen.

And I told my audience that I spoke to you. I didn’t talk about the details of the conversation because they didn’t matter. But there was a lot of heat that came my way as if I shouldn’t have been making a comfort call to Donald Trump. We’re very divided. You know this.

You want to be remembered as one of the greatest presidents in America. You know our history. Every president who’s considered great was seen as a unifier. What do you need to do to be remembered as someone who could bring this country together?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I think I will be a great unifier. That’s what I want to be, and it’s very important to me. Hispanic vote, I got the highest Hispanic vote maybe, I think, ever for a Republican candidate. If you look at the border between Mexico and Texas, I won every single border state, and it was all Hispanic vote. I won Miami. I won Florida.

I think I am a unifier. I think I have votes that Republicans have never gotten before, and that’s why I was able to win the election in such a big fashion. With all of that being said, what I have to do is save the country. The country was going down the tubes. This country was in big trouble.

You had a border where millions of people were pouring in from jails, from prisons. They were pouring in at levels from mental institutions, gang members, terrorists, and we’re getting them out. You can’t have a country with these people there. We had 11,888 murderers. Many of these people killed more than one person. More than fifty percent of them killed more than one person. We gotta get them out of their country. I don’t know if that’s unity or disunity, but I have no choice. You know, some things you have no choice.

But, I do remember your call. I appreciate your call, and I actually appreciate your family. I’ve known your family for a long time. You know that.

BILL O’REILLY: Mister president, I want to thank you very much for taking the time on a very busy day. Our audience here. And it was very kind of you to do it, I think people got a lot out of it. Thanks again.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you much. Thank you very much, everybody.

CHRIS CUOMO: Alright. Thank you, mister president.

BILL O’REILLY: Thank you, mister president.

Panel Discussion on Trump’s Responses

CHRIS CUOMO: So we’re going to go to break, but I want to get your take on this. Steven A, you know, Bill and I have interviewed the president multiple times. Meeting him in conversation, dealing with the issues, as you know, they exist. What do you think about the answers?

STEPHEN A. SMITH: I had no problem with the answers. I mean, obviously, he was long winded in saying what he was saying. It was hard to dispute some of the things that he was saying. He is a person that obviously thinks that this country was in a very, very bad state prior to the election. He has his belief system. He has his constituency to answer to.

He’s very, very big on saying that he’s trying to fulfill the promises he made to the people who put him in office. I think that when you look at an elected official, if that’s their approach, fact of the matter is we kind of wish that most politicians were like that in terms of “I’m going to do what I said to my constituents I was going to do.”

Having said that, it’s a lot of talk and I hope that it’s backed up. These deals that have been announced – well, when you’re to announce them, who are they with? How real are they, etcetera? I’m not questioning. I’m not saying that it’s not. I’m saying we want to see it. Just like they said, we’ve got over $2 trillion in commitments from companies everywhere. Well, who are these people? And when is it going to come to fruition? We have a right to ask those questions just like I asked him about HBCUs. He said what he said. I was very, very pleased with his answer. I hope he’s true to his word.

CHRIS CUOMO: Let’s take a break and we’ll come back and you and I will talk with Steven and James Carville about what he heard. Listen. Told you tonight was going to be special. It already has been. When we come back, we’ll start getting impressions on what was heard from the president and what you need to hear in this country. James Carville, Bobby Kennedy Junior, Chris Sununu, Steve Bannon, stay with us.

James Carville’s Analysis

CHRIS CUOMO: Welcome back. I’m Chris Cuomo joined by Bill O’Reilly, Stephen A Smith, and we have a big special night for you here at News Nation for a town hall to mark President Trump’s first one hundred days and to get a take on what the president said, what it means to us as a country, Democrat legend strategist James Carville. It’s good to see you, sir. The basic premise you heard from the president is we were getting killed on trade. Somebody had to do something. It’s risky, but I’m all in for America.

JAMES CARVILLE: Right. You know, as we’re saying in hurricane country, he was speaking 200 words a minute with gusts up to 350 words a minute. But he sounded like a guy that lost 15 points on his job approval and is presiding over 0.3% negative economic growth. So he says we were losing $5 billion a day to trade. Okay. The market lost $5 trillion. Now I’m just using Cajun math, but I think $5 trillion is more than $5 billion if I just take him at his word.

BILL O’REILLY: That’s not a permanent loss, though. And it can come back in a heartbeat.

JAMES CARVILLE: You may. But if you lose, if it goes down 12% and then you come back 10%, you’re still down 2%. Then he loses the midterms. We’ll see. We’ll see what happens in Virginia. We got plenty to follow-up.

BILL O’REILLY: The foremost question is, look, he’s trying to right some wrongs. And when you do that, you’re gonna run into headwinds. You know that.

JAMES CARVILLE: Wait a minute. We had what the economists call the economy that was the envy of the world. Okay? Does anybody look at the US economy now and say, we’re the envy of the world? We’ve lost all of this. Morgan said we have negative economic growth. We’re installing a policy that hasn’t worked yet. And so we’re starting a trade war that have no idea what he’s doing. Now he said, well, maybe you’re only gonna get $2 for Christmas and it might cost you a little bit more. Okay. Well, I’m 80 years old, so I’m not worried about the price of dollars that much right now. But what’s working here? Nothing.

BILL O’REILLY: So what would you do?

JAMES CARVILLE: Well, first thing, I would have never started a trade war.

BILL O’REILLY: So you’re okay with $1 trillion going out when it comes in.

JAMES CARVILLE: A prosperous nation is always gonna buy more from an unprosperous nation. We’re always going to buy more T-shirts. Let me finish, man.

BILL O’REILLY: Go ahead. I’m just giving you the rule of play.

JAMES CARVILLE: We’re gonna always buy more T-shirts from Sri Lanka than Sri Lanka is gonna buy trillion aircraft from us. And the fact that you do have a trade deficit is an indication that you have a prosperous country and you’re buying things.

BILL O’REILLY: So you’re fine with it. You’re fine with the trillion dollar deficit and Biden was fine with it because he didn’t do anything

JAMES CARVILLE: I’m not – Well, first of all, I am not fine with starting a trade war. It’s an utter disaster. You know, when my guy was president, I always tell people what made y’all worse? The peace and the prosperity. There is not a single economic indicator where Democratic presidents do not massively overperform Republican presidents. You look me up. You check me out on every possible thing from GDP growth to job growth to stock market growth to anything you can think of, including deficits. Democratic presidents take any time frame you want. I have no idea why anyone that cares anything about the economy would ever vote for a Republican president.

CHRIS CUOMO: Jimmy, let’s deal with what we’re dealing with. Let’s set the table with what the problem is. Because I think that the space that’s being made for Trump is that he’s picking on the right problem. I’m not talking about trade. In this country, the fastest growing socioeconomic group is billionaires. This was a middle class motivated country. I never liked that word. I think you should just say the majority. The imbalance is real. Okay? It’s felt by people. It makes them angry. What do you do about it if not what Trump is doing? So Trump, you don’t like what he’s doing. Right. What would you do because the issue beats you?

JAMES CARVILLE: It’s an excellent question. The first thing I would do is I would not extend these billionaire’s tax cuts, and I would not pay for them by clobbering the middle class and the lower middle class by cutting Medicaid expenses of which he said he was gonna cut Medicaid. Watch the budget that’s been submitted. It’s already got 600.

BILL O’REILLY: There’s nothing about cutting Medicaid in the budget.

JAMES CARVILLE: Did he say it?

BILL O’REILLY: No, you can’t say it’s in the budget. There’s a Medicaid cut when there isn’t.

JAMES CARVILLE: Excuse me for thinking while you’re interrupting me.

BILL O’REILLY: I am. This is ridiculous. And he does it every night.

JAMES CARVILLE: Can I make a point?

BILL O’REILLY: Yes. Go ahead.

JAMES CARVILLE: He was gonna end the Ukraine war on day one.

BILL O’REILLY: Oh, come on. What did Biden do for four years in there? Nothing.

JAMES CARVILLE: He said he was going to end the Ukraine war. Fact check me. Somebody help him help out. Did Trump say I’m gonna end the Ukraine war on day one?

STEPHEN A. SMITH: I’m not asking as if I know the answer. I’m asking you. There’s a $37 trillion deficit. Chickens don’t come home to roost. Eventually, the American citizens will have to pay for it. What level of culpability do you attach to the Democratic party in contributing to that national debt?

JAMES CARVILLE: 35%.

The Tax Debate

JAMES CARVILLE: You can go back and look at deficit growth of the Democratic presidents and deficit growth under Republican presidents. It’s actually a figure that you can see, and you can look at it over seventy-five years. You can look at it over fifty years. You can look at it over twenty-five years in any time frame that you want. And I’m sorry, but they are facts out there, and they’re indisputable. No one can dispute that. There’s been volumes of research done on this. And right now, extending these tax cuts are going to easily be 4 and a half trillion dollars. Easy. And then where are they going to get the money? It’s a billionaire bailout. That’s what they’re doing.

CHRIS CUOMO: Or not. And here’s why I say that. That in television is called a segue. Steve Bannon is going to join the conversation. The reason I do it on this point, is because when I was talking to Steve most recently—you can pop him up. Steve, thank you very much.

We all know him from the War Room. I call him affectionately—I wonder why he got that name—Spirit Animal of MAGA because I do believe a lot of what he is about and what he argues for is what is being projected by Trump’s policies. So what we’re talking about, Steve, and why I needed you now, thank you for joining us, is Carville saying the tax cuts for the billionaires, the tax cuts for the top, that’s what Trump’s about, and that’s killing us. You say, not this time.

STEVE BANNON: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, when Biden and Schumer and Pelosi ran things in January, February, March, April of 2021. Did we see a tax hike on the billionaires? You most certainly did not. It never even got a committee. Why? The Democratic Party is owned by billionaires. That’s why you have a billionaire class, a credential class. James, they’ve abandoned what used to be Clinton’s base. They abandoned the working class folks in this country. They abandoned Democratic families like mine. They abandoned it.

And that’s what President Trump is trying to reverse is what really started with Bush forty-one and Clinton, this globalization. And then it was Bill Clinton that allowed the Chinese Communist Party into the World Trade Organization. By the way, both parties did it, the neoliberal neocon establishment. And that’s why both parties are responsible for this. President Trump, this is a revolution. You’re one hundred days into this. And that’s what he’s trying to do is redo the entire commercial relationships of the world that focus not just on America First, but American citizens first and particularly working class and middle class to bring high value added manufacturing jobs back.

CHRIS CUOMO: So Steve says that he’s going to raise taxes on the rich to help pay for the tax cuts for the middle class this time.

JAMES CARVILLE: I hope that Steve is right. I don’t think he is. Why? Well, because I think they’re going to keep the tax cuts for the billionaires. If he’s right, if they raise taxes on rich people and help middle class people and they keep expanding health care for middle class people and subsidies to help so people can buy insurance, if they keep doing that and they tax billionaires, you know what? I’m going to come on your show, Chris, and say, you know, I got it wrong. I got it wrong.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: But do you agree with Steve Bannon when he says the left is sold out to the elitist on that side of the aisle? The same thing that your key or the Republican Party are doing that the Democrats have been doing. Do you agree with that?

JAMES CARVILLE: I don’t know. I don’t. I think the Democrats have their own problem. I think that Trump’s election was self-engineered by the Democratic party. I think it was a horrible mistake to embrace the language of the identity left. I think it was a horrible mistake not to speak up and say Biden shouldn’t be running for reelection. And, Steven, you did that, and I congratulate you on that. And you were there early.

And I think it was a further horrible mistake in July when he dropped out, and President Barack Obama was trying to call people and said, well, I have a contested operation here. We got to get these people front and center. So I think the Democrats, and I’ll blame them, made three terrible mistakes that made this possible. If we don’t make any one of those three mistakes, then Trump doesn’t win. So I’m not here to defend the Democratic Party existed.

But what I’m saying is the Democrats have an incredible opportunity to stand up to these billionaire tax cuts and to stand up to these cuts of health care for ordinary people. And if we do that, we don’t have to trust the American people.

CHRIS CUOMO: Let’s take a break. Let’s keep the conversation going. Steve Bannon, it’s great to have you here. Who would ever think that Steve Bannon and James Carville are in the same place in terms of what has to happen with tax reform? That guy. Now that guy is one order. What happens, we’ll see. But I told you it was going to be a special night. I told you. We’ll be right back. Stay with NewsNation.

The Conversation Continues

CHRIS CUOMO: Everybody, welcome back. Welcome back to NewsNation. It’s a big night. We’ve got over a hundred radio stations. Remember the movie Anchorman when Ron Burgundy says, we’re on live TV right now? I don’t believe you. And then he drinks a big bottle of scotch. That’s not me. I’m Chris Cuomo. Welcome back to NewsNation, our big town hall. Stephen A. Smith, Bill O’Reilly, James Carville, Steve Bannon.

Now NewsNation’s going big. We’ve got CW is covering this at the same time, a hundred radio stations, SiriusXM. We have Twitter involved. Why? Because to have an actual conversation about how we get to a better place instead of just going like this about who’s worse is at a premium, and America wants it. So tonight, you get it.

James and Steve were just talking about something that they agree on, which is Steve Bannon. You know him. I call him the spirit animal of MAGA. Right? Many of his populist ideas are what we’re seeing motivating the Trump agenda. They both say it is time to raise taxes on the top to pay to help the middle class. So I want to push my luck. Bill says, this is going great. Bring up DEI.

The DEI Debate

CHRIS CUOMO: Okay. When it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion, I want to see where you two guys are in terms of the government’s role or lack thereof on this issue? James, when you think of DEI, of course, we know what the Supreme Court ruled in terms of admissions. But the extended policy now of eradicating it everywhere in favor of a meritocracy, do you believe that that’s the trade that’s being made?

JAMES CARVILLE: I don’t know what the trade is being made, but I’ll tell you something. I’m 80 years old. I worked one time in government. I worked for the city of Baton Rouge in 1980, and there was not a single black fireman. So you’re going to say, gee, let’s just let everybody go and get the more meritorious person, and then we’ll hire one every year. And by 1990, we might have 10 black firemen. Or do you say, you know what? We’re going to go out and adjust for this.

So anything you do, you can take to an extreme. But you know who really likes DEI? The United States Military Academy, the United States Naval Academy, the United States Air Force Academy, the United States Coast Guard Academy, because they know that you have to have broad based leadership in the armed forces. And they specifically said, we don’t want—we want to have these programs, and they still have these programs.

But like anything else, you can overuse something. You can use it for nefarious purposes. But do I think that a diverse workforce is a good thing? Yeah. I do. And I think there’ve been certain inequities in our society that are still trying to resolve themselves out. And if we can do some things, not go crazy, but we can do some things to help resolve this, I think it’s a good idea.

I think corporate boards that are diverse can better serve the customer base that they have. When I fly on Delta Airlines, the people that fly on there, the flight attendants, they’re all different ethnic groups, different races, and that’s great. And the Delta board should have some reflection of that. Not the idea is to give everybody some SAT test, and then you said, gee, that’s just where it is. But I think diversity, if properly done, is a very important tool in the United States, and I think it should be done.

CHRIS CUOMO: So Steve, when you hear what James says, what lands, what misses?

STEVE BANNON: I think it all sounds and feels great, but this is the problem. It’s all about feeling. That was the sop thrown to people. You want strength in the minority and black and Hispanic community? Let’s get high value added jobs back here. 10 million illegal aliens were allowed in this country to drive down wages of blacks and Hispanics. The Federal Reserve is very open about that. Wall Street bragged about that. That’s the biggest thing that’s affecting black and Hispanic lower income families right now.

What President Trump is trying to do is level the playing field, get wages back up. This entire reorganizing the global trade system is to bring high value added manufacturing jobs back here, not these service jobs, manufacturing jobs. So you can have a healthy middle class, but more importantly, a healthy working class with high paying jobs. And that’s where Trump’s focus is.

DEI? No, no, I’m—this is what Wall Street and corporate America always do. They throw you some sock. That’s a shiny pony to divert your attention of how they’re screwing the working class and middle class in this country every day.

BILL O’REILLY: It’s two different things. As President Trump just said—did you hear his interview here?

STEVE BANNON: Yes, sir.

BILL O’REILLY: Okay. It’s two different things. Yes, you want to provide as much opportunity for Americans to make as much money as they can, and manufacturing will do that. But you dodged the question, Steve, about preference. See, I’m fine with diversity. Okay? I agree with Carville on diversity. It’s a strength. And I’m fine with inclusion. I think everybody should have an equal pathway to pursue happiness.

I hate equity because equity then favors one group or gender over another. Donald Trump, the president, was very clear on NewsNation tonight that he does not want that, that if you are going to be admitted to a school or be accepted for a job, you do it on merit, not on gender or skin color. What do you think about that?

STEVE BANNON: I agree with him 100%. And he also went out of his ways to make sure the historic black colleges and universities were well financed and has sound financial footing, so people get opportunities and get access to college. If they can’t get into these other colleges, they get in college. Some of those are some of the greatest. Hampton Institute in my home state of Virginia is one of the finest colleges in the country, right? President Trump has gone out of his way to do that. President Trump is somebody for every American. It’s about being an American citizen and he’s fighting for that every day.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: Steve Bannon, Stephen A. Smith here. Good to see you again. Thank you again for coming on my show a few weeks ago. You bring up DEI and you talk about it on merit. And one of the things that you and I debated that we went back and forth about it. I said, first of all, my definition of DEI is “didn’t earn it.” Let me put that out there.

Secondly, what I’m pointing to is the neglect in recalling why some of these policies were implemented to begin with. So when we talk about the eradication of DEI initiatives, what it leads me back to is, okay, there was a white male power structure that existed throughout history before these policies were implemented that didn’t operate based on equity, didn’t operate based on merit rather. They operated based on—use your word, Bill—preferences. What in God’s name are we seeing in this day and age that tells us that America or this administration or Congress, whomever, that their preference is going to be diversity as opposed to a return to the quote unquote “good old days.”

BILL O’REILLY: The diversity is merit.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: No, but you’re supposed to expose it. That’s a journalist.

BILL O’REILLY: No. I think the journalist—if you have a company that’s not going to hire any minorities, then every reporter in that town should be standing outside that company going, hey, what the deuce are these people doing? But what everybody has to understand is you don’t correct historical wrongs by creating modern wrongs. You don’t do that.

CHRIS CUOMO: Hold on. I want to Jimmy, I want to get you in, and then we’re going to pivot to a different topic because I got Secretary Kennedy, and I don’t want to lose his window. Go ahead, sir.

JAMES CARVILLE: I just want make a point about DEI. I taught college for sixteen years. I taught nine years at joint. You know how you would get in my class if you were black or you were conservative? You know why? Because we didn’t have many, and I wanted a diverse class, bro. So if you came in and you saw me and said, professor Carville, I want to get in your class, I’m a conservative Republican. I said, come right in. We would actually go out—we would go out and look for black students to be in the class.

Discussion on Diversity in Education

You know why? Because I wanted a diverse class. I wanted diverse opinions. And if you just sit at a major expensive private university, you know what you’re going to lack? You’re going to lack sufficient number of black students because there’s a huge economic barrier to go to these $75,000 a year colleges.

And it’s secret. These colleges are overrun by liberals. I wanted other people. I practice diversity. I practice, whatever you want to call it. I actually solicited black and conservative students because I thought it made for a better education for everybody else. It made for a better classroom.

Interview with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

CHRIS CUOMO: Let’s bring in Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior.

Bobby, thank you for being patient. I’m sorry about that. It’s a lot of talkers up here. It’s good to have you, Secretary. I just wanted to set the table with a news event that you’ve had to deal with.

I don’t know if you can explain to the audience how concerned we should be about measles. But it is an interesting conversation around the vaccine, and there is criticism that comes your way. Now your messaging on it, you’ve been telling people to get vaccinated. But there is criticism of you, Bobby, that, oh, now you’re saying get vaccinated. You weren’t saying that during COVID. That’s why people aren’t getting vaccinated. And now it’s a problem. How do you deal with that issue, and what responsibility do you have in terms of how people feel about getting vaccinated?

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: We’re doing better in managing our measles epidemic in this country than probably any other country in the world that has outbreaks right now. We have about forty-two cases, Chris. In Canada, they have about the same number. They have one eighth of our population. Europe has 10 times that number. Our numbers have plateaued.

So you’re still seeing added measles cases, but the rate of growth has gone down. Now there are populations in our country like the Mennonites in Texas who were most afflicted and they have religious objections to vaccination because the MMR vaccine contains a lot of aborted fetus debris and DNA particles. So they don’t want to take it. So we ought to be able to take care of those populations when they get sick. And that’s one of the things that CDC has not done.

CDC has said the only thing that we have is vaccination. There’s all kinds of treatments when people do get sick and those people should be treated with compassion. And we ought to have good treatments for them. And that’s what we’re developing at the CDC right now, protocols for treating measles.

I want to say this, we’ve had four measles deaths in this country in twenty years. We have 100,000 autism cases a year. We have thirty-eight percent of our kids now are diabetic or prediabetic. That should be in the headlines. When I was a kid, the average pediatrician saw one case of diabetes in a forty or fifty year career. Today, one out of every three kids who walk through his office door is diabetic or prediabetic.

That should be getting the headlines. When I was a kid, there were two million measles cases a year and none of them got headlines. And we had four hundred deaths. We had deaths about one between one in twelve hundred, one in 10 thousand. We have so many kids now who are afflicted by chronic disease and the media never covers them.

They only want to cover measles. And what I’ve been saying to people is let’s pay attention to other illness as well. And the illnesses that are really, really damaging our country, that are existential for our country. We now spend almost $1 billion a year on diabetes and metabolic disorder. By 2035, we’re going to be spending $1 million a year on autism.

Autism in 1970 was one in ten thousand Americans. Today, it’s one in thirty-one. In California, it’s one in every twenty kids, one in every twelve point five boys. This is what the media ought to be focusing on, and it’s not. And because of that, we don’t have the solutions and we don’t have the cures.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: Mr. Secretary, Stephen A. Smith here. Thank you for coming on the show. HHS reduced your employee status from 82,000 to 62,000 employees, if I remember correctly. Cut about $1.8 billion. But nevertheless, you got a lot of American citizens wondering how on earth are you going to ensure that we’re going to become a healthier society with over 20,000 less employees to look over things and purview things to some degree. What do you say to that?

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: Well, I would say during the Biden administration, my agency grew by 38% and Americans got sicker. So it’s not throwing money at it or hiring people that is solving the problem.

We have so much redundancy in our agency. We have 100 communications departments. We have 40 IT departments. We have 40 procurement departments. What we did is we’re streamlining the agency and we’re recalibrating its trajectory so that people there are narrowly focused on one issue, which is how do we end the chronic disease epidemic?

When my uncle was President, three percent of Americans had chronic disease. Today, it’s sixty percent. It’s costing us $1.6 trillion a year, about ninety-five percent of our healthcare budget is going to chronic disease. When my uncle was President, we spent zero on chronic disease. Seventy-four percent of our kids cannot qualify for military service. So this is an existential threat to our national security. It’s an existential threat to our economy. And we have to narrowly focus on that. And that’s what the new HHS is doing.

BILL O’REILLY: That was an excellent answer. That was an excellent answer. I mean, let me tell you, you talk about a disease you were able to cure. That’s right. I’ll go further. I’ll go further. Most political appointees are pinheads, all right, in my [fifteen years experience in journalism. They don’t care about improving things. They care about their job title, their prestige, their expense account. But Stephen A’s question was right on the mark. I go, Oh, that’s a good question.

You had an answer that everybody could understand, and that’s what more people should do. And you know me, Kennedy, I wouldn’t kiss your butt at all. I’m telling you the truth.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: You never have, though.

CHRIS CUOMO: All right. Bobby, on that note, I’m going to let you get back to work. Thank you very much. You’re always welcome here at NewsNation to make the case to the American people. I look forward to seeing you taking on some of the most rich and powerful interests, which are the food companies and the drug companies in this country if you’re going get after chronic disease. And you have a place here to make that case whenever you want it.

Good luck doing the work of the people, Bobby. We’re going to take a break. We’re going to bring in more names for more perspective. Former New Hampshire Governor, Chris Sununu, former Chair of the RNC, Ronna McDaniel and my friend, Patrick Bet David.

Panel Discussion on Tax Policy

CHRIS CUOMO: Welcome back. I’m Chris Cuomo joined by Stephen A. Smith, Bill O’Reilly, James Carville, Steve Bannon, and the panel keeps expanding because what we are desperate for here is perspective. So welcome to NewsNation’s town hall.

We’re a hundred days in to President Trump’s second administration. It’s not long enough to know where things are going to wind up, but it is time to take a look at how we got here and where we need to go from here. So joining us now, former New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, former chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel. It’s good to have you both. So Steve Bannon is in the war room standing by.

There was a point of agreement with him and Carville. It is time to tax the top to pay for tax cuts and give relief to the middle class. Do you two agree with that idea? And do you think it will happen? I start with you, Ronna.

RONNA MCDANIEL: I said backstage while I was listening, I do think it’s going to happen. I think President Trump is very serious about this. It’s something I’ve heard him say before when he was president. I think he wants to get his promise made to have no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime. They’ve got to find a way to make that happen, and I think this is the path that he’s going to choose.

CHRIS SUNUNU: Yeah. Again, I think what you’re going to see later this year is a few of these rescission bills come where they start talking about the DOES stuff. DOES proposes ideas. Russ Vogt is going to bring some of these bills up towards the end of the year.

You could see some of this stuff in those bills. But I’m with Ronna on this. I think the President’s path is to make sure that if we’re cutting taxes, it’s on Middle America, right? It’s on the working class. It’s bringing those manufacturing jobs, making sure that all those folks that supported him in November kind of get their payback by making America stronger again.

And you got to pay for something. I’m a fiscal hawk. It drives me crazy that no one in Washington wants to actually balance budgets and all that sort of thing. So at some point, the math has to work. It’s not politics. It’s math.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: So what about this notion that if he does that, they will have to punish or tax the rich and that’s something he’s not prone to do? If they give any kind of resistance, he might end up capitulating to their desires as opposed to what his desire may be.

CHRIS SUNUNU: So the give and take, I think will be all the regulatory reform, right? All the regulatory reform is going to allow all these companies to make bigger investments faster, develop quicker. Instead of ten year projects, they have eighteen month projects. So it’s kind of give and take. We might not give you the tax cut that you want up here, but we’re going give you all these other benefits over here.

JAMES CARVILLE: When’s the last time in a Republican administration raised taxes on the top? Don’t answer it.

RONNA MCDANIEL: I don’t know. But listen. Trump’s administration has said it’s about Main Street. Trump won Michigan with UAW workers.

JAMES CARVILLE: I was with you. Ronna was with you. But you got to look at it in the context of what we just lived through.

BILL O’REILLY: Bush, the elder is the answer to your question. Bush, one.

RONNA MCDANIEL: Bush, the elder. So I mean, older Bush. He did it when I was 37.

BILL O’REILLY: And he got…

RONNA MCDANIEL: I wasn’t born yet. No. Just kidding.

CHRIS CUOMO: What I’d like to say is I may be getting older, but I’m not smarter. The thing we just lived through is with tariffs, when the big dogs came to Trump, he backed off. He started off doing what I thought was very brave. Did a lot at once. I don’t know who advised him to do that. I don’t know whose idea it was, to do it all at once, fight with everybody at once.

RONNA MCDANIEL: That was Navarro and he’s an idiot. And that’s why he’s not in the White House anymore. When the big dogs came, his donors and the automakers and said, hey, you’re starting to hurt us now, he backed off all the tariffs.

CHRIS CUOMO: Why won’t the same thing happen with taxes?

RONNA MCDANIEL: But he’s also talking about the consumers when the big dogs come. When Target goes and says, we’re going to not have toys on our shelves and the consumers are going to pay more or when you’re going to pay more for a car in Detroit. Right. He’s caring about the middle class and the average working class American, and that’s what’s moving the needle.

CHRIS CUOMO: Hold on. I’m not letting that slip. You just finished saying Peter Navarro, sir, was an idiot.

CHRIS SUNUNU: Yeah.

CHRIS CUOMO: Why is an idiot your top trade advisor?

CHRIS SUNUNU: No, he’s fine. I’m talking about Trump.

CHRIS CUOMO: Why isn’t a quote unquote idiot in that position? And how should we feel about that?

CHRIS SUNUNU: So, okay. The problem is the messaging. Right? I’m not really a tariff guy. Right? Republicans traditionally are not on the tariff thing. I think we’re willing to see where this plays out over the next year, and it’s gonna take a year. The benefit that Trump has given us is he said, look. I’m gonna give myself ninety days.

He’s putting himself in a box. I got ninety days to renegotiate 70 to a hundred deals with a hundred different countries. That wasn’t Navarro’s idea. That was Trump’s idea because he said we have to show America that there’s an expectation that this gets resolved. Right? That this doesn’t go on forever and ever. And if it goes on for a long time, it’s gonna simply be with China long term. So I think he had bad advice early on. I think there’s a lot of loyalty there that he had. God bless him.

But bad advice early on, bad messaging long term. So I’m willing to give the ninety days. I think as you brought up, we don’t know where a lot of this is going to end up. I think China is still going to be the biggest problem because those are the products that we need to see on the shelves. America has about ninety days of pre-buy in it, right?

BILL O’REILLY: Why do we need to see Chinese products on the shelves? I don’t buy China. Don’t buy it.

CHRIS SUNUNU: Everyone in this audience is wearing a piece of clothing.

BILL O’REILLY: Well, don’t want to then. Run BillOreilly.com and you can buy anything you want. Okay? And very hot is not woke moms for Mother’s Day. And we get them all made in The USA. I won’t buy anything from China.

And I went in to buy socks. But I don’t know. Wait, I bought it to Macy’s socks. Okay? Polo, Ralph Lauren, all made by China.

Economic Impact of Tariffs

I left the store barefoot. I know. I’m not buying it. How much are your t-shirts? How much are your t-shirts online?

$25.30 bucks? Average Americans are not paying $25.30 for a t-shirt. Well, they want to be patriotic. They don’t have to be that much. But listen, people are patriotic to their families first and they watch the “Don’t buy China stuff.”

CHRIS SUNUNU: If you sell to the American people, you’re going to pay more, have a good time in the midterms. Buy American. But listen, I’m fine with Buy American, but people are on very tight budgets. Most people are like two paychecks away from being underwater. They can’t pay for a major medical event. They can’t live their dreams. They can’t have any of the things that their parents had. And you want to live in it anymore? You don’t want sounding like you’re some extensive shopper. That sounds like a rich guy.

That sounds like a rich guy who’s not price sensitive. Goes in, and they shut down the men’s store just for him. Listen. Okay. I’ll tell you what they should do.

CHRIS CUOMO: When the conservative will look back and say, we don’t know about these tax cuts to the top, you say, great. I have an alternative. Trump should say instead, let’s put up that, you’re banned from trading stocks while you’re in office. Let’s start with that. If you don’t want to raise taxes on the rich, let’s start with you not trading taxes.

You’re the only people who are allowed to insider trade. They get forty-five days. I can’t wait. The guy at Quiver Quantitative, we have him on at NewsNation on a regular basis. He tracks members of Congress.

You know how many of you think members of Congress aren’t smart like that? You’re wrong. And you know how I know? They are killing it in the stock market. Their rates of return are so high. If I weren’t so money stupid, I would call my guy and say, want you to trade like Pelosi.

And then Pelosi would say, I don’t trade. It’s only my husband. I don’t know what he does. Okay.

Citizen Perspectives

CHRIS CUOMO: Mark Mendenhall, now I love you. I love what you’re doing. You got your thing? I’ll give you a microphone.

So Mark is part of Gen X Speaks. Okay? You look it up on Instagram. He has these great dialogues with his kids and he’s passing on virtues and he’s talking about Gen X and he’s talking about life with his kids and I love it. And I love talking to him to kind of get a take on how the people that we need to believe to invest in what’s happening in this country are feeling about things.

When you hear what the president said tonight and you hear about this balancing of who’s got to pay more, who’s got to pay less, maybe you need to pay more for stuff because you got to love your country a little bit more than you love cheap stuff. Where is this landing with you as a father? I’m talking about… How many kids do you guys have again? 18?

MARK MENDENHALL: Eight.

CHRIS CUOMO: Alright. Don’t exaggerate. Feels like 27? What do you have, Mark?

MARK MENDENHALL: Okay. We are not talking about raising taxes. You’re talking about tariffs and where that money goes and how much you have to spend. Okay?

CHRIS CUOMO: Works for you and what doesn’t?

MARK MENDENHALL: Well, the tariff situation is scaring everybody, and everybody gets scared. Now I’m trying to sell my house, and I’m not getting offers like I should because everybody’s kind of like, well, let’s wait and see what’s going on.

I can’t wait. I got to move. I got stuff going on. I’m trying to build a small house in Dayton, in Nevada. Every one of my guys told me everything’s going up. All the prices are going to go up. By the time you get out here and do this, prices are going up. This is affecting me negatively. I got it.

What I don’t understand is you can make the case if you’re a Democrat or a median. You can say, hey. This could go bad. This could be a recession. This could… I got it. Once you say that, we understand. Okay. I heard the warning bells. This could not turn out because nobody in this room knows how this is going to play out. You know, no one knows. It could go great. It could go bad. I’m just a dumb mechanic in the middle of the desert. I literally don’t know.

But what I do know is that once you tell me, once you pound into me for a whole week on how bad it could go, stop telling me. Why can’t we all fall in line like we did years ago and say, look, Mister President, some people, I don’t agree with you. This could go bad. But you know what? You got my support.

Now I don’t know which way it’s going to go, but I’m patriotic. I will tell if Mister President, if President Trump was on the phone right now, I’d say, Mister President, this could go bad, could go good. I’m going to tighten my belt. I’m going to buckle down. I’m going to get behind you. I’m not going to sit there every day tearing you down and then point the finger and go, see, I told you so. I know it’s hurting.

I know this is going to take some course correction. It’s going to take… it’s going to get worse before it gets better. But I will tighten up. I will wait, and I will do whatever I can to support him. I’m just asking he does the best job he can. That’s all I’m asking. Do the best job you can, and I’ll be with you.

CHRIS CUOMO: Here’s my issue. Here’s my issue respectfully with what you’re saying. Yeah. We all should be patriotic. You’re absolutely right. The problem is who’s telling us to be patriotic? The people that we would assume hasn’t engaged in the level of patriotism we would have liked. I’m not talking about Donald Trump.

MARK MENDENHALL: Who said I’m talking about…

CHRIS CUOMO: Why does someone have to tell you to be patriotic?

MARK MENDENHALL: Let me explain. What I’m saying to you is that because you’re asking us to follow a vision. And so who’s speaking about it, who’s verbalizing that, who’s trying to encourage you while telling you you need to be patriotic is somebody’s patriotism you may question. That’s how Trump got elected if we’re being real about it because you looked at Capitol Hill.

CHRIS CUOMO: And it was a bar. I know. You’re going to bring in charts and graphs and I’m not. I got it. I got it. I’m not going to… But all I’m saying is that state your opinion. If you say, I don’t believe these are going to work. Okay. You tell Trump, I don’t believe these are going to work. Then you’re done.

Say, but I’m going to support you and do whatever I can to be behind you on this for as long as I can do it because that’s what we do. But I don’t want to do that anymore. We’re supposed to. Not anymore. I don’t understand that.

CHRIS CUOMO: I just… People are so sad. Profoundly disagree. Robert Kraft, the Republican senator of Ohio, has said dissent in a time of war, in World War Two, is a necessity in a democracy. Are you a patriot? If you have a president that you profoundly disagree with and you think he has profoundly bad policies, are you a patriot and say, you know what? You’re president. I’m just going to go along with you. Or are you a patriot if you voice your opinion? So I don’t agree with you, but I think we ought to go in a different direction. Did you just… you can’t equate patriotism with acquiescence.

MARK MENDENHALL: Did you just state the nature of the end of the world that you are able to a necessity?

CHRIS CUOMO: So I’m sorry. That’s the quote. That’s the quote.

MARK MENDENHALL: Oh, I did. Okay. That was a quote. Alright. Alright. Alright. That’s the nature.

And by the way, I have on six items of clothes, shoes, socks, jeans, skivvies, t-shirt, and sweatshirt. So how many of these were made in America? None. None. I don’t want to live in a country that makes t-shirts. I can buy them from somewhere.

CHRIS CUOMO: Wait, wait, wait. You don’t want to live in a country that makes t-shirts?

MARK MENDENHALL: Yeah. We don’t need to do that. We make airplanes. Make movies. Drill oil. We make all kinds of things. We don’t need to make TV. But I do want to live in a country that makes cars.

CHRIS CUOMO: Don’t… I’m driving more manufacturing. Do you think I know where the steering wheel is, Jay? More perspective. Do you think I know where the tires are?

MARK MENDENHALL: No. That’s right. They’re not bad. No.

Expanding the Conversation

CHRIS CUOMO: Let’s get some more stuff. Let’s get some more voices added to this. And if it seems like, wow, they’re really talking a lot tonight before commercial, we are. Thank you, American Hartford Gold, for sponsoring the town hall so that I don’t have to have as many commercials. Thank you very much for allowing the conversation to come first.

Nina Turner, you’ve been in state office. You have been so relevant nationally on multiple campaigns as a Democrat, but you are not afraid to question your own. When you hear the dialogue of what’s being done to help the people that you have fought for and you have always believed your party is for, one, how do you describe the shift where it seems like Trump is identifying what was the Democrat base? And what do you think about what’s being tried versus what should be tried?

Hold on. Let me turn this on. It’s off. Is it working now? Is this working now? Yeah. Yeah. Working now? Tech guy. Thank you. Magic. Go ahead.

NINA TURNER: I hardly understand how trade deals, master taxes hit the state of Ohio very hard. So those were neoliberal policies. So when the president talks about tariffs, tariffs should be used as a tool. It should not be done in a chaotic way. And the way that the president is doing it right now is a very chaotic way.

UPS just announced that they’re laying off 20,000 employees and they laid it at the feet of these tariffs. So you have got to understand that the everyday people of this country, people who live in places like Cleveland, Ohio, or people who live in places like East Palestine, Ohio cannot afford for this to try to slowly work out. They needed to work out right away.

If you are not making a living wage, so people who make lots of money can say, let’s wait it out. Ninety days is not a problem. That’s huge. But if you’re thirsty, you know, you need water right away. If you’re hungry, you need food right away. If you call 911, you need help right away. And so the president of The United States Of America has to understand that point. And I don’t think that he truly understands that point.

As far as living in a nation that makes t-shirts, I mean, so we go and exploit other nations, poor people. Yes. High speed rail is something that we need to do right here, right now in this country. Greening an economy right now in this country would bring back lots of jobs and not just waiting to shift to ship, so called ship. We’re not shifting, shipping jobs back over here to The United States Of America. And why is the onus always put on the workers instead of being put on the corporations that shifted those jobs over there to exploit other people’s poor people? Those are the kinds of things that we have to look at, Chris.

And so now the DEI thing, you know I want to jump in on that. Let me just say this. When people talk about diversity, equity, inclusion in this nation is just when you talk about merit, we’re to bring back merit. Where was that kind of talk when time and time again, it wasn’t black people who did qualify?

People lose sight of the fact that the systems in this country were built in such a way, and we cannot deny it because that is to deny history that made it harder for black people who are more than qualified. What is wrong with having diversity, equity, inclusion? When you say the words, we’re not going to hire based on diversity, equity, inclusion, you are making an assumption that just because somebody’s black or just because they’re brown or another or that they’re less than, that they don’t have merit to begin with. And that is a problem. You’re creating the other.

If the president truly cares about middle class people, then you don’t just go in there, just fire everybody or all these people within the federal government without taking a look at it, strategically look at what is happening, and then make the decision. But when you make federal workers the enemy, the last time I checked, when I go to the post office, I don’t see my postal worker as the enemy. I see them as a public servant. And that is what too many people in that administration are doing. They’re making enemies of other people who are our neighbors, our relatives, and our friends. And that should not be the case in The United States.

Entrepreneurial Perspective

CHRIS CUOMO: Thank you, Nina. Somebody who’s helped me understand this dynamic of tariffs, timing, what has to happen in terms of feeding the entrepreneurial spirit that is really the identity of American business and our economics. Right? It’s small businesses that drive the country.

I know a great entrepreneur who is an explosive podcaster. He’s got an amazing company called Valuetainment. His name is Patrick Bet David. And I love him as a friend. I love going on his podcast, and I love his perspective.

Patrick, thank you for joining me, my brother. I know you haven’t been feeling great, so thank you for rallying. And when you talk, and hear about the tariffs and the timing and holding on, what is your perspective as an entrepreneur and a mentor to entrepreneurs about how long is too long? What is the timetable here that people should be thinking about?

PATRICK BET DAVID: Chris, great to be on with the phenomenal panel that you have, and it’s been great listening to everybody.

Discussion on China and Tariffs

PATRICK BET-DAVID: I will tell you something. When it comes out to elections, whoever wins, they impose their policies. Whether you like the policies or not, they can pursue those policies. One of the main things he talked about, he didn’t surprise anybody. He kept telling everybody he believes tariffs are the sexiest word in the dictionary.

He says, I think it’s love. I think it’s religion. Maybe it’s God. Maybe number four is tariffs. There was no surprise.

Here’s the part that most of us forget very quickly. Do we forget what happened just March of 2020? What did March 12th of 2020 look like when COVID happened? What was America looking like? What happened to our economy?

Who was it to blame? Who caused that? What do we learn about manufacturing? What country did we learn that had all the control over us? Who was it?

Now we’re finding out that the lab leak was from China, but God knows for how long. If Trump would have said it’s China virus, everybody was upset. So do we forget that China was the enemy? Do we forget this quickly that China keeps stealing all the inventions that we have and they don’t do anything about it? Do we forget how quickly China wants us to use their apps, but God forbid Facebook and YouTube and this platform be in China for their people to watch?

Do we forget how they negotiate? How quickly do we forget what they did to the entire world? We are very quick to forget. So for me, the part that I’m most enthusiastic about understanding that small business owners, we run a consulting firm. We engage for 10,000 businesses from 60 plus countries.

We feel the pain. They tell us, Pat, I’m being affected by it. Had a meeting last week, and they’re telling me, here’s how it’s affecting us. Here’s how we’re being negatively impacted. However, if we take the entire tariff and we were to think about the 95 countries that we have in the world, what country do you think is the only country that we need to get tariff right with?

Is it Vietnam? No. Is it Mexico? No. Is it Canada? No. China. Is it Japan? No. It’s only one country. We know it. Right. It’s China.

So my entire thing with everything that’s going on right now, Chris, whether it’s the Panama Canal for us to get control of that with those two canals that we need, whether it’s the mineral deal that they just deal with Ukraine, which we know a lot of the good minerals are more on the Eastern side, the Donbas side, whether it’s the tariffs to figure out with China, the most important thing is we have to settle the issue with China so we don’t own they don’t own us like they showed five years ago. We can’t give that control up to China.

CHRIS CUOMO: Patrick, do you believe that the tariff is the main tool to get China to the table and get it in a better situation? Because they seem to have responded least to the pressure so far.

PATRICK BET-DAVID: Well, look at today’s Wall Street Journal report on what’s going on with their export. They’re not happy about it. How many manufacturing shops have shut down? How many manufacturing shops have shut down and told their employees, you don’t have any jobs for three to six months? How many of them?

Did you hear about what Apple just announced, the 60 million iPhones that they make per year that’s being moved to India? You think they like that? Don’t you see now that China’s poking the bear with India and Pakistan trying to instigate the proxy stuff?

Why do you think they’re doing it? They’re so worried because if the world realizes we can do a lot of this stuff elsewhere, they’re not going to be happy about it. I love the fact that this is taking place. But if you’re asking me the piece of leverage, the concern that I have is don’t forget China is very capable of stopping the entire world in many creative ways. We can never lose the level of paranoia with China.

This is how much sympathy they have for us. The board that we have at the bottom, the Panama Canal, the control steel, that canal, those two ports, is still owned by a company called CK Hutchinson that’s based out of China that the deal was about to be done, but China got in and said, wait a minute, you can’t sign it yet. To me, I don’t know if we have enough leverage yet. I’d like to think we’re getting in that direction. We’re not there yet.

CHRIS CUOMO: James, when you hear all this talk about China and what they represent as a threat and what needs to be done, what resonates?

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Discussion

JAMES CARVILLE: What resonates me is I’ll tell you a story. In 2015, under the Obama administration, specific nations knew China was an unfair part. I’m talking about Chile, Mexico, United States, Canada, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, I’m probably forgetting, New Zealand, Australia. They came together and they started something called the Trans Pacific Pact. Governors, you know you know what I’m talking about. And that was we were going to align with all the Pacific nations and deal with the unfairness of China.

The first thing Donald Trump went in office is he got rid of it. We actually had a plan that we were going to take all the Pacific nations and take all of that economic might, and we were going to stand up to China. And he never implemented it. It was a brilliant idea. And a lot of by the way, a lot of Republicans in Congress supported the Transpacific fact.

It was a gorgeous idea that we had where producing nations and consuming nations could come together and deal with the fact that China was not trading fairly. And they got us out of that, and it is one of the great economic mistakes that’s been made in The United States.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: See, this is where a little friendly neighborhood’s voice writer comes in. And he says, if all those things are true, especially what Patrick Bet David, my buddy, what he had to say and what you just had to say, why the hell did we put ourselves in a position where we have so much debt we owe to China to begin with? Didn’t we play a role in empowering them and building this monster?

JAMES CARVILLE: You’re asking the right guy because when China got into the World Trade Organization, President Clinton was fundamental in it and the Republican Congress. Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats were lukewarm cold on it. They didn’t give all the votes. The Republicans did with President Clinton.

CHRIS CUOMO: Why did he want China in the WTO, and do you think it was the wrong move now that you look at where we are?

JAMES CARVILLE: I think that if we would have done the Trans Pacific Pact, we would have dealt with that issue. There’s no way you’re going to keep China out of the world economy. It’s just it’s too many people. It’s the second largest economy in the world.

Good luck in keeping them out. We had a way to deal with that with some of the best countries. You know, I like hanging out with South Korea and Japan and Australia and Thailand and Vietnam and Mexico. I don’t like hanging out with Belarus and Russia and North Korea. Those are not my friends. Those are not countries that I admire. Japan is a country that I admire. I was just over there with my friend ambassador. So I think we had a chance to do it. Honestly, we threw it over the past.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: But just like you just brought up China, then I’ll pass it to everybody else. You’re a sports fan. So I’m thinking about the fact that if you’re a franchise, right, you want to hand over the keys to everything to one particular player at the expense of the collective whole. It’s problematic. You got China out there. If you know they’re going to be a problem, why are you doing business primarily with them in such a way where you end up being beholden to them or at their mercy when there were so many other countries to do business with so you didn’t have to be at the mercy of China? What about that thinking? Am I wrong?

JAMES CARVILLE: And I think the answer there is, look, back in the nineties, nobody thought China would be where they are today by 2024. Nobody knew that that economy was think.

CHRIS CUOMO: And what about the enablers? What about the corporations and the banks and the funds that ran over to China to take advantage of cheap labor, human rights that don’t exist, right? No environmental regulations and no other political concerns. And they made a ton of money, and they let all the jobs from here that were in that sector just evaporate.

And we’re past the point that Nina’s making about it. Point do the people who are growing the fastest, the billionaires, start to have to share more in burden than just benefit? And then you say that, and everybody says you’re a commie. Oh, I’m a commie. But when we bail you out in 2008, let all the homeowners go down, that’s capitalism. But that’s today. Right?

JAMES CARVILLE: Look. The main thing terrorists are going to hurt are corporate profits. That’s what’s going to really get crunched with these terrorists. And that’s exactly the burden that a lot of the corporations in America are now going to have to bear. God forbid they have to rethink coming home. Making $345 and they’re going have to do what they make versus their workers. God forbid they got to rethink.

Immigration Discussion

CHRIS CUOMO: I want to go to Chris. You will. Let me bring you Chris from Nevada, then you’ll come right in. Chris from Nevada, where are you? There you are. How are you, handsome? What’s your question?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Yeah. My question is about immigration. Specifically, I think the administration has done as much as they can in terms of ending birthright citizenship and setting standards for people who are in the country. But where is the Republican Party defending Trump in terms of getting people out faster? Because there were so many federal laws that were violated under the Biden administration bringing all these people in.

For example, we have a law in the books that say, if you go on welfare or you want to claim asylum, you have to go to the first country that will accept you. And all of those laws were ignored, every single one of them. So why is there a conversation now about due process to get these people out when the Biden administration for so long blatantly ignored federal law and no one even really stopped to talk about it?

CHRIS CUOMO: Well, two things can exist at once. Right? Due process is a legitimate concern. Okay? How much? In what ways? That that’s all debatable. When the Supreme Court puts down a ruling, unless you can change the basis for the ruling, you’re supposed to follow it.

That can be true, and it is, as well as the fact that there’s no question that the Biden administration and other administrations ignored laws at their own convenience when it comes to enforcing or not enforcing immigration policy. And it was a big reason the election went the way it did. Who wants to weigh in?

BILL O’REILLY: Well, the one thing I will quickly I want to say is that there’s an easy answer to that question. If the border is open, you will voluntarily show up to go across the border. If the border is now closed, which you already in, you’re to hide like hell and make sure you ain’t deported. It’s very simple.

SYDNEY WATSON: This is a huge part of why Trump won. And he said it in his State of the Union. He said, you know what? The Biden administration kept saying to you, oh, we need legislation. We’ve got this bill we’ve got to pass. We can’t do without all this red tape. And he said, no. It just took electing one guy. That’s all it took. And he showed that he could get it done that quickly. This is the promises made, promises kept part of Trump.

And I just want to say one other thing. Past is prologue. Trump came in in 2016. He got he did deregulation. He fixed the border, and he focused on energy independence and brought energy prices down. You’re seeing those same things happen now.

You know what happened in 2019 before COVID? Unemployment was the lowest in the black community since 1972.

JAMES CARVILLE: Respectfully. First term when he was 45, not fixed the border. Obama was the deporter in chief. He was deporting people. There wasn’t the border crisis that he inherited with Biden. That was not the case. But he’s fixed it now.

SYDNEY WATSON: He did hit the border. He did deregulation, and he focused on energy prices. And he’s doing the same thing now. So we’re seeing the seeds of that. And going into before 2020, before the pandemic, we saw real wages going up. We saw 400,000 new manufacturing jobs coming back. We saw the lowest unemployment in the black community since 1972. That’s under Trump. He was helping the middle class. He was helping people who were in poverty. We saw less people taking food stamps under his first administration, and he is planting those exact same seeds right now, and he’s taking on China.

JAMES CARVILLE: He didn’t do the tariffs though the first time.

SYDNEY WATSON: He did some. He’s thrown a monkey wrench to the economy.

JAMES CARVILLE: Sydney and Steven, we’re both sports fans. We’re talking about the world. The most popular sport in the world is what? Soccer. The second most popular sport. So we live in this world. You’re not going to get out of it.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: I don’t know anything about it. I know anything about cricket either. I didn’t know my first pitch resembled like I was…

JAMES CARVILLE: You would love the outfit.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: The only other thing I’d say…

JAMES CARVILLE: You would love the outfit.

JAMES CARVILLE: Listen. This is the constitution of the United States. All persons born or naturalized in The United States and subject to its jurisdiction thereof were citizens of The United States. It’s pretty unequivocal. If you’re born here, you’re a citizen.

BILL O’REILLY: That’s I have to agree with Carville. I’m agreeing with Carville. Okay. Alright. That’s not going to be overturned.

# NewsNation’s “Cuomo Town Hall” on President Trump’s First 100 Days

Panel Discussion on Trump’s Policies

BILL O’REILLY: Okay? That’s in the constitution. They’re not going to be able to do it. All the rest of the stuff, I’m not smart enough to follow any of this. I just want to reiterate to Patrick that David down there, I’m not buying any Chinese stuff.

I’m not buying Chinese food. I wouldn’t even call for takeout. I’m down on China. Made by Americans. I’m not doing it.

Made by Americans. And no one can force me to do it because they have to give me due process if I don’t want to buy Chinese stuff.

CHRIS CUOMO: Oh my goodness. So we got cricket. We got Chinese food. Chris, you’re losing control. Poor Patrick. Patrick’s been fighting for his—he’s like, what am I listening to right now? You already made the best point I’ve heard in the last hour, Patrick. You win.

Andrea, in the audience. Where are you?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Right here. Hello. I was wondering how you guys think President Trump has done with respect to combating antisemitism at colleges thus far.

BILL O’REILLY: Well, look, you have to understand the genesis of this is that the far left hates Israel. Okay? And they always have. Israel is a fascist nation. It persecutes Arabs. This has been there since World War II ended and Harry Truman recognized Israel. The students who come in who are far leftists, they buy in. You can’t be in that radical left group unless you promote abortion, not support it, but promote it, hate Israel, and there are about four or five other things. And the extremists, they control academia now.

Did you know that 82% of my alma mater, Harvard, the professors are left far left. They identify that way according to the Crimson newspaper, 82%. That’s not an accident. That can’t happen in a fair hiring system. It can’t.

Many moderate, many conservative, many traditional, many libertarian professors would love to work at Harvard. Right? They didn’t want them. So when Trump says, hey, we’re not going to pump billions of dollars into an institution that number one isn’t fair in its hiring practices and they’re not fair in—I don’t know how the hell I got in and neither do they. When I go to Cambridge, they go, how did you get in here?

All right? And so there you have a factual basis. But antisemitism, no president can stop it. If you have hate in your heart, you have hate in your heart. And I respect Donald Trump for trying to blow up this corrupt system in academia.

He’s trying to, he’s a disruptor. On Friday night on News Nation, I’m doing an hour with Leland Bitter about why Trump is doing what he’s doing. It’s a full hour based on history and things like that. Donald Trump is a disruptor. Teddy Roosevelt was a disruptor. Abraham Lincoln was a disruptor, but Andrew Jackson, Nobody else. Most of them were go along guys.

Wait just one second. And it’s important to understand that a president can do a lot of things, but he can’t change hearts. If you’re a hater, you’re going to stay a hater.

But a president can create a system of accountability. And that’s what he’s trying to do. And by the way, he’s not going after every university.

Right? I’m going to brag on Dartmouth. Dartmouth is in New Hampshire. Is he going after Dartmouth? No.

Why? Because the president of Dartmouth made sure that everyone had a voice, that Jewish students weren’t being spit upon and all that sort of thing. There wasn’t violence and disruption. A fair system.

CHRIS SUNUNU: Gentlemen, I worked with the President, but she deserves a lot of credit and Dartmouth deserves a lot of credit. And if every governor were like you, we wouldn’t have this message.

BILL O’REILLY: Fair. Well, know what I’m—

CHRIS CUOMO: Keep coming. No. But the point is, he’s not being indiscriminate about it. He’s not just going after higher education. He’s saying, if you let this go, if you—and many of these folks actually supported it. They were backing their students in terms of spitting on these—

BILL O’REILLY: Of course, they’re afraid of them. And look at Yale, just two weeks ago, what those Jewish kids had to go under. It was Yale.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: But here’s the problem. Neither of you are wrong with what you’re saying as it pertains to the specifics of the issue that you’re alluding to. The bigger issue is if he pulls this off and gets what he wants, his intent might be on the up and up based on what you two just explained, but they are going to be successors who follow him. And if you open that Pandora’s box, because this is how y’all have governed both sides. I’m talking about all politicians. You’ve taken into consideration the collateral effect that it will have on our system of government, on the American people. How many times have you all turned things down even when you knew it was right because you said, hey, wait a minute. We opened that Pandora’s box. We don’t want to empower future administrations to be able to pull off that. Because of that, you operated with caution. Now we’re supposed to throw that to the wind?

CHRIS CUOMO: But what’s the risk in what we’re talking about specifically? Because at Harvard, for example, they’re basically accusing him of trying to impugn on their ability to have free speech.

BILL O’REILLY: But Stephen, let’s talk—I’m not saying that right. I’m just saying that’s the correct—how many conservative speakers have these universities allowed to come on their campuses in the past four—

JAMES CARVILLE: That’s right. They have completely shut off conservative speakers. They have protests. They ban us.

BILL O’REILLY: But bet you told them you was going give them their federal funding because told them that they’d been saying, invite those speakers in there.

JAMES CARVILLE: Not the one who started this, though. This started on the left. They said, we are not allowing conservative voices on these campuses. And we’re going to protest them. And we’re going to shut them down. And we’re not even going to allow conservative professors. And if you’re a student, you’re going to be afraid to show your conservatism in the classroom because you’re going to be graded poorly. And that’s a fact.

CHRIS CUOMO: Listen, I hear it, but I think what we just lived through, I’d much rather be a conservative trying to get on campus than what we saw with these Jewish kids. Right.

BILL O’REILLY: Oh, 100%. I’m not comparing it.

CHRIS CUOMO: I think that when you go across a certain line, it becomes very obvious. And they let it happen.

BILL O’REILLY: I agree. In Colombia here in New York City, those idiots up there ran Colombia. Let it happen. Sometimes you wind up doing something which may not be the most important thing, but it gets a spotlight on you. These schools are ridiculously expensive. They go up faster than anything else. Their endowments are going up faster than anything else. And if you want to hear more of this, I got a note for you. Right now, I want to thank everybody who’s watching on the CW network. Thank you. You have to go. But you can come and find News Nation and keep watching because the town hall is going to continue right after this.

Bipartisan Congressional Discussion

CHRIS CUOMO: Welcome back. Welcome back. I’m Chris Cuomo. Welcome back to News Nation’s town hall. President Trump is a hundred days plus into his second administration. We’re taking a look at what’s working, what needs to be done better, and why. Great guests tonight. Perspective across the spectrum, Bill O’Reilly, Stephen A. Smith, Ronna McDaniel, Chris Sununu have been here. We have Steve Bannon. We have James Carville. O’Reilly, you know, kind of got out of line with Carville a little bit. He deserved it. And once it sunk in, he left. And we had Patrick Bet David.

And now we’re doing something for you, if you just switched over from wherever else you were watching us or listening to us, that only happens on News Nation. And I only say that because it’s not easy. Okay?

There’s one guarantee in political coverage right now. Members of the two parties do not want to be on at the same time. Okay? Now my show at News Nation has made this a priority because I know you need to see it. Okay? You need to see that Republicans and Democrats can talk. They may not agree, but they can be on the screen at the same time. Pretty low bar. But if you think about it, there’s no other show where you’re going to see it. We do it here, and I’m very grateful for it.

Alright? Joining me now are two friends of this show. I respect them both. Okay? Massachusetts Democrat member of Congress, Jake Alkenklaas, and Georgia Republican member of Congress, doctor Rich McCormack.

To those who are watching for the first time, I want to say to you guys, you’ve done this consistently and you do it well, and I thank you for it. You are showing people that you can disagree without being disagreeable. So thank you both. So I’ll start with you, Jake. What we’ve been talking about, don’t know if you heard the president’s interview, but he was basically saying, look, somebody’s gotta save the country, from these trade imbalances and America getting taken advantage of. It’s not going to be easy. It may not be quick. There may be some pain, but it had to be done. Your response.

JAKE ALKENKLAAS: Chris, thanks for having me on. Rick, it’s nice to be with you again. Chris, I have a trade imbalance at my grocery store. It doesn’t mean my grocery store is taking advantage of me. President is using talking points to obscure the fact that he has broken his core campaign promise. His core campaign promise was, I’m going to be good on the economy. He’s been bad on the economy. The economy contracted this last quarter. If it does that again next quarter, it will be a recession, the first man-made recession in American history. And there’s every indication that it will. Price expectations are surging. Private sector employment is contracting. And we’ve got Walmart and Dollar General CEOs saying that their customers don’t have enough money to last until the end of the month. The president is failing on the economy right now.

CHRIS CUOMO: How do you see it, doc?

RICH MCCORMACK: I disagree. First of all, I just came from a lectureship at the Library of Congress. They’re talking about Reagan. They were talking about a great president, what he did for America. One of the greatest things that Reagan did when he came in after the end of the Carter administration is give back America its mojo. Make you proud to be an American. Stand up to the bad guys. Talk about responsible government. Talk about common sense government where you don’t have 10 million people coming across the Southern border, where you’re not ashamed to make money, where you’re not relying on class warfare and racial baiting, to make your point, to pay off people to vote for you. Those days are over. Those days of hiring people for millions and billions of dollars to do the wrong thing here in America and overseas are over.

We’re going back to accountability. I think that’s something America wanted. That’s what they voted for. That’s what they’re going to get. Whether the economy falters or not in the short term, look at us in about a year. That’s when we’re going to be able to tell. That’s when the midterms are going to reflect on everything that happens. Because when you have 70 countries come to the table and say, let’s have zero tariffs, that is a huge win for America.

CHRIS CUOMO: Jake?

JAKE ALKENKLAAS: Chris, my friend from Georgia just set the world’s indoor record for MAGA talking points. I’m glad that he thinks people shouldn’t be ashamed to make money. I agree with his capitalism. The good news is no one’s going be ashamed because no one’s making any money. $4.6 trillion have been wiped off the value of the stock market under President Trump’s tenure. Okay? That’s people’s retirement accounts. That’s how they save for their kids’ college education. That’s how they ensure that they have financial freedom as they enter their golden years. And it’s gone because him and Howard Lutnick put together a PowerPoint slide calculated with first grade math.

Nobody in this world is taking us seriously right now. Russia is laughing at us across the negotiating table. China can’t even figure out what the tariffs mean. And Japan and Australia and our allies in Europe are wringing their hands wondering what happened to the country they used to be able to rely upon. Meanwhile, the cost of a vehicle in this country is going to go up by $7,500 with nothing to show for it.

BILL O’REILLY: Alright. You got a lot of people rubbing their hands on their pants. Okay. Look. Believe me. All due respect, congressman the biggest worry to anybody’s savings account is inflation.

CHRIS CUOMO: Oh, hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Party politics bores me to death. Okay? You guys are champions on—it’s not a MAGA thing. It’s a party. You can’t possibly think that within a hundred days, Donald Trump has wrecked the entire US economy. That’s absurd. Nobody would make that statement other than a partisan player. You’ve got to give. Now Trump may fail, and he knows if he does, his legacy is blown up, and he doesn’t have a long time. As one of our audience members made the point, this is some urgency. But to just say, oh, a trillion dollars is gone when the stock market could go up 5,000 points in two weeks if the trade deals that Trump is saying are going to happen do happen. So let’s stay in the real world and let’s try to put the party nonsense aside. Okay?

BILL O’REILLY: I would add party nonsense. It is nonsense, Congressman. And you know it. You’re reading off a script. You’re bringing in a script that you’ve said 50 times in the last three days. It’s nonsense.

JAKE ALKENKLAAS: Bill, don’t talk to me about nonsense. When I’m out in my district talking to small business owners who are laying off their workers, I am talking to social service providers.

Economic Debate Among Panel Members

CHRIS CUOMO: What’s the unemployment rate in the country, Congressman? What’s the unemployment rate in the economy that Donald Trump is creating?

CONGRESSMAN: You don’t know.

CHRIS CUOMO: At the same time as he is adding 17—

CONGRESSMAN: You don’t know what the unemployment rate in the country is. It’s too poor to give—

CHRIS CUOMO: Let’s remember back, you know, the congressman brings up a good point about Reagan. Eighty-one and ’82, the economy was in tough shape. Right? He had to make tough decisions. He said be patient. And in ’84, not only was it a huge electoral win, but the country’s economy was absolutely booming.

So these things absolutely do take time. And to Bill’s point, there’s only two issues. The terrorist—the jury’s out on the terrorist. We’ll see where it lands. But, politically, there’s only two metrics that Americans will vote on.

Do I have a job? Is the cost of living too much? So it’s unemployment and inflation. Unemployment and inflation. And depending on where those two things are, come November of twenty-six, will determine whether people are voting in or out for the Republican Party.

GOVERNOR: One more—

BILL O’REILLY: The Republicans do this too. I know it was hard on the congressman from the Democratic side. But the Republicans say, if you listen to talk radio, oh, this is going to be magic. The carpet is going to take everybody into prosperity. They don’t know that.

CHRIS CUOMO: They don’t know. That’s right. They’re just reading off the damn script. And I’m tired of the damn script.

BILL O’REILLY: Well, I’m tired of the damn script too.

CHRIS CUOMO: Good.

BILL O’REILLY: But I also understand why they’re doing it. And they’re doing it because—

JAMES CARVILLE: Because it said it. Listen. Because objective is to get reelected.

BILL O’REILLY: The objective is to remain—

JAMES CARVILLE: Not here. The objective is not here, but the point is you invited them here so you can—

CHRIS CUOMO: I didn’t invite them?

JAMES CARVILLE: Yes. You got to let them in. You got to go together.

CHRIS CUOMO: I went ahead—hold them. That’s what I’m trying to say. And I went ahead and I like the guys. I’m the only guy I invited with straw. I’m just—he invited all the other.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: Actually, actually, you invited me too, but that’s beside the point. The point that I’m trying to make too—

CHRIS CUOMO: And now your reputation is just shot. There we go.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: You’re trying listen. The Democrats only shot. They got to win the midterms. They’re going to do they must to win the midterms. It is up to us. It is up to us to deduce what they’re saying, what is valid and what is invalid to decide what direction we’re going to go in. They’re not—it’s not their job to do the homework for us.

Immigration and National Debt Discussion

CHRIS CUOMO: Listen. I’m with you. There’s nothing that’s been neglected more than what it really means to be a citizen. Okay? I blame the parties all the time.

I like Jake, and I like Doc McFarlane. I think that they’re fair brokers, they’re definitely members of parties. And that’s not a problem because you can’t exist in the system without it. And people use talking points. The president was using talking points.

It’s not an unusual—They all do it. I would argue that there’s a matter of degree, I think the president has set a new standard. Yeah. But be that as it may, the real problem that we have with congress, and the reason I invite you guys on, and I appreciate you so much doing it, you know, no matter what Bill says, is that without congress, none of the things that Trump wants to do are going to get done the way they need to. And I am so shocked that he did this tariff deal before he came to you guys to do immigration reform because you got to change the asylum rules and you have to change the standards of how things get done on the border.

And you have to really deeply consider how we deal with people who are in this country right now. The president doesn’t have the power to do it alone, and he’s going to try. Doc, this question’s to you first, and then I want Jake to weigh in on it. He’s doing it because he doesn’t think you will get it done. He doesn’t think you’ll get him a bill.

So he’s doing it himself, and we both know he’s going to get jammed up. Is there a responsibility within your party to make some legislation to motivate this agenda?

DOC MCFARLANE: Yeah. We’re going to have to confine a lot of things he’s doing. But as Stephen A. Smith referred to, what’s interesting is Obama and Clinton and Biden had the same laws we had before when we had immigration when Obama was the chief deporter.

These laws didn’t change when Biden came in, and suddenly, all of a sudden, we had to open the border. That was an executive order. That was him saying we’re going to open up. We’re going to accept tens of millions of people in America on your American dime. The question is, do the American people—this is a common sense question.

This is not politics. This is what lost the election for the Democrats in my opinion. As they said, it doesn’t make sense. I’m not going to pull money out of my pocket to have somebody come from nations and nations away going through Mexico because they’re unsafe—Mexico somehow—and come to America and stay in a four star hotel, get a free cell phone, get three squares on my dime when I don’t even have enough money for my family and the economy can handle because in the future, we’re going to have so much debt. America cannot sustain it and we’ll not be the world economic power, the industry standard of currency in the future if we don’t get more responsible.

That’s why they lost.

CHRIS CUOMO: Jake, what’s your take on this?

JAKE ALKENKLAAS: Chris, my take is that other than Governor Sununu on that stage, nobody who is on that stage right now has talked to an actual constituent in years. I have done 16 town halls in the last three months. I have talked to my constituents.

What I am hearing repeatedly is people are afraid. People are afraid—

DOC MCFARLANE: Representative. At how badly managed this economy is being. They are afraid at how weak this president is on the global stage. Sir?

And I would ask my question to my friend from Georgia here. You talked about the national debt. I agree with you. The last president to balance the budget, by the way, was a Democrat. The next president to balance the budget should be a Democrat too.

And my question for you is, did you worry about the national debt? Why did you just vote to add $7 billion to the national debt two weeks ago?

DOC MCFARLANE: Actually, I didn’t. And, you know, if you look at my voting record, I voted against the CR in December. One of 34 people that voted against the CR in December because a percentage of the Democrats voted for, and it was a bad bill.

If you look at the history revolutions. Everything trillion dollars is bad. You—

JAKE ALKENKLAAS: I’ll let you speak.

DOC MCFARLANE: We’re not going to do that. I’m going to—you’re going to let me speak now.

So if you’re going to talk about the debt, tell me one thing that the Democrats has seriously considered that would reduce debt in America. I’m one of the 34. I’m one of the holdouts. I’m the one that got—I will go to war with anybody over this debt crisis because I think it is the future of American state. It’s not a partisan issue.

I think we’re going to have to deal with Social Security. That’s a bipartisan issue. But I’m not going to play games on that. I cannot come up with one thing the Democrats have done to reduce—

Closing Remarks

STEPHEN A. SMITH: I’m going to interject to say this to the representative. That kind of attitude where you just said only one person on this stage has talked to constituencies other than you.

That’s why y’all lost. Because let me tell you something. Let me tell you something right now. I can go to an arena with 20,000 people or a stadium with 80,000 people, and I can run across tens, if not hundreds of people that speak on these issues. Just because you’re not speaking directly to politician doesn’t mean you’re not speaking directly to the issues that affect the American public.

You can’t say something like that, sir, respectfully. And he’s going to be president. I know. You saw how it—you, Jake, you can’t see Steven A. But when he was saying that, he had the thumb and fist.

CHRIS CUOMO: Looks like a politician. I’m telling you that right now. Jake, I got to jump. I’m out of time, but we’re going to continue this conversation. Jake Alkenklaas, you’re always welcome to make the arguments here, they’re often very cogent.

Doctor McCormick, same. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you for letting the new audience that’s watching us tonight see what we’re about. Thank you for being part of it.

Now, Chris, thank you. Rana, thank you. Steven A, thank you. Big Bill, thank you. I’m blessed with great friends who come to help me out and do the job for the people at NewsNation.

Thank you for being part of that. Most of all, thanks to each and all of you. I appreciate your patience. I appreciate your indulgence in being part of this. And to all of you, this is what NewsNation’s about.

This is what we do on a nightly basis. I don’t always have these big shots, but we do the best we can, and we do it for you. I want to thank everybody. I want to thank the team. And most of all, I want to thank our sponsor.

You don’t usually hear that from a journalist, but I’m telling you, I can’t have these kinds of conversations without that kind of corporate partnership. And Cuomo did a pretty good job tonight. Right? Thank you very much. Being with the leader is going to pick up our comfort right after the break.

Thank you for being with me, Steve.

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