CNN host Abby Phillip on Tuesday joined “The Breakfast Club” to advertise her new e-book, “A Dream Deferred: Jesse Jackson and the Fight for Black Political Power,” when she was requested concerning the “rainbow coalition” of politically various friends on her “NewsNight” present.
Frequent “NewsNight” panelist Scott Jennings staunchly helps President Donald Trump.
“This is a time in our political life where we have to really know what’s going on, and we have to know what everybody is saying on all sides of the issue, because I don’t think that ignorance has served anybody well,” she advised the “Breakfast Club’s” Charlamagne Tha God.
“I get a lot of criticism from the left, from people who are like, ‘Why does she have MAGA people on the show?’” Phillip added. “And it’s like, well, you should know what they’re saying because, just so you know, half the country voted for Trump and for Trumpism.”
Phillip went on to argue that “we need to have that debate” between folks from all sides of the political spectrum, and that it’s higher for these discussions to be “right there out in the open” as a substitute of being siloed away into completely conservative echo chambers.
When requested how she endures a few of the tougher conversations as one of many solely Black feminine hosts on CNN, Phillip famous that she controls her present — and attracts the road when she must. Phillip pointed to a couple notable controversies from current historical past.
The primary instance was Jillian Michaels, a pro-Trump influencer and creator who argued throughout a “NewsNight” look in August that Trump was proper about museums focusing an excessive amount of on American slavery, and that the perpetrators can’t be tied “to just one race.”
“But I’ll say honestly, Jillian Michaels crossed the line in the sense that she said something that was kind of embarrassing, and we addressed it — but we never said to her, ‘You’re not welcome back,’” Phillip mentioned Tuesday. “And I don’t think she crossed the line, either.”
She concluded, “I just think she just wasn’t informed.”
Evan Agostini/Invision/Related Press; DOMINIC GWINN/Center East Photos/AFP/Getty Photos
Phillip mentioned the topic was solely mentioned on her present as a result of the president himself had raised it on social media, “and then it actually became the policy that they’re trying to implement at the White House.” She then moved on to a different controversial visitor.
Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan appeared on “NewsNight” final 12 months alongside conservative panelist Ryan Girdusky, who implied Hasan was a member of Hezbollah and a supporter of Hamas — earlier than saying, “Yeah, well, I hope your beeper doesn’t go off.”
It was reference to the a whole bunch of pagers possessed by suspected Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, which exploded spontaneously final September, killing at the least 37 folks and injuring 1000’s in an assault that’s broadly believed to have been carried out by Israel.
“And that was an actual line that was crossed because you wishing death on a guest on the show is completely unacceptable,” Phillip mentioned Tuesday. “And he was told, and I said publicly on the show, that he was not invited back.”
“And so, there are lines that are crossed, and I think people understand that I’ll draw them when they need to be drawn,” she continued. “But I also think that we want to have real conversations. Sometimes they get a little bit messy and that’s OK.”
Watch the total dialogue beneath starting on the 14:32 minute mark:
