Abby Phillip Torpedoes Claim Trump ‘Specifically Helping Black Americans’: ‘Black Unemployment Skyrocketed’

CNN anchor Abby Phillip torpedoed a conservative panelist’s claim that President Donald Trump and his policies are “specifically helping Black Americans” — and her other guests joined in.

On Wednesday night’s edition of CNN NewsNight, Phillip hosted a panel that included Tara Setmayer, Horace Cooper, Ana Navarro, Noah Rothman, and Kmele Foster for a discussion of embattled Senate candidate Graham Platner (D-ME).

When Phillip observed that support for a flawed candidate is “also about the impact that they have on people’s lives,” Cooper chimed in with his praise for Trump policies.

Phillip immediately noted that “the Black unemployment rates skyrocketed, basically, as soon as Donald Trump got into office” and several others gave examples of their own:

PHILLIP: I think you’re right about that. One thing I will maybe, to some extent, give to both sides is that politics and policy are not just about the games that we play rhetorically. It’s also about the impact that they have on people’s lives.

Republicans believe that their policies make their lives better. Democrats believe their policies make their lives better. That’s what allows people to justify moral inadequacies, because they believe the policy is worth it, that the outcome is worth it.

That Susan Collins voting a certain way on a HHS nomination has real impacts on real people.

ROTHMAN: But then you don’t have an inviolable–

PHILLIP: It’s not just rhetoric. It’s life and death.

ROTHMAN: But you don’t have an inviolable moral frame there. You have a flexible moral frame.

COOPER: Well, that’s my case.

PHILLIP: Listen, I agree with you.

COOPER: That’s part of the problem–

PHILLIP: — things of hypocrisy all around, but that’s the why of it. That’s why we’re all comfortable saying, I’m fine with it in this case, but not in that case.

COOPER: Abby, in my case, I represent one of the largest conservative African-American groups in the country, and we believe that the kinds of policies that we’re seeing under this administration is specifically helping black Americans. I was so convinced of it, I actually wrote a book about it.

SETMAYER: And look, I mean–

PHILLIP: I will just note that the Black unemployment rates skyrocketed, basically, as soon as Donald Trump got into office.

SETMAYER: And they decimated DEI programs.

PHILLIP: You would have to address that as well.

ANA NAVARRO, CNN SR. POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, AND PODCAST HOST, “BLEEP WITH ANA NAVARRO”: Black generals have been disappeared–

Watch above via CNN NewsNight.

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