CNN’s Abby Phllip Calls Out Scott Jennings In Trump ‘Weaponization’ Debate: ‘You Didn’t Address Any Of The Things I Brought Up’

CNN anchor Abby Phillip called out Scott Jennings for evading her points about President Donald Trump’s “weaponization” of government, telling him “you didn’t address any of the things that I actually did bring up.”

On Thursday night’s edition of CNN NewsNight,  Phillip and Jennings were joined by Jemele Hill, Ashley Allison, and Batya Ungar-Sargon to discuss the news of the day.

Phillip opened with a commentary about Trump’s past rhetoric against “weaponization” and contrasted it with his own actions in the second term.

Jennings gave his take — that Trump isn’t “turning the government into a weapon. He’s turning it into a shield” — which Phillip found unresponsive:

PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening. I’m Abby Phillip in New York.

Let’s get right to what America’s talking about, Donald Trump’s weapon of choice. Tonight, the president is a potter and the government is his clay, and he’s shaping it how he chooses depending on whether he wants to help or hurt.

Now, if that sounds a little off to you that your taxpayer dollars shouldn’t fund crusades targeting people, well, it might be because candidate Trump and his allies warned about weaponizing government at every turn.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It’s called weaponization.

The radical left Democrats are turning the law itself into a weapon for partisan persecution. It’s persecution,

But we have a weaponized Department of Justice and weaponized FBI, including, of course, the raid on Mar-a-Lago.

We must not criminalize dissent or demonize political disagreement.

Pandora’s Box is open and that means that I can do it too, and I don’t want to do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: But now that Donald Trump has the power to weaponize government, he is doing it. He’s doling out punishment and presidential favors and equal turns. Take what he’s doing at the Department of Education, for example. That agency is asking schools to recommit to following the administration’s guidelines and threatening to withhold public school funding if they don’t. Or look at what’s happening at the IRS, where plans are being drawn up to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status, where DOGE is tapping into taxpayer data for immigration crackdowns, and where Trump’s people are asking the agency to take a second look at the MyPillow CEO and Trump ally Mike Lindell’s audit.

The Justice Department is another arrow in Trump’s quiver. They signed pardons for January 6th rioters, including those who had criminal records, and they are now tasked with considering a Trump demand to prosecute and jail members of the January 6th committee.

Then there is the list of media organizations that Trump is punishing, by starving some of them of access others of money that they need to cover the news, the A.P., PBS, NPR, CBS and NBC, so a lot there.

I think the main thing here, though, is that the ferry people who complained about weaponization are silent, now that Trump is openly signing executive orders saying, investigate this person, take away this tax-exempt status because I don’t like this entity. How is that not weaponization, Scott?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I totally disagree with the characterization of it. I think Trump supporters and the people who put him in office would say that he’s not turning the government into a weapon. He’s turning it into a shield. He’s shielding the American people from illegal immigration. He’s shielding the American people from having their tax dollars used for ridiculous purposes. All of these things that you mentioned, you may call them weaponization, but a lot of people would say, we need a shield against a lot of these bad actors and bad institutions.

PHILLIP: Well, you didn’t address any of the things that I actually did bring up. I mean, he’s saying to American universities you need to admit a certain number of conservatives. Yes.

JENNINGS: Yes, I’ll address the universities.

PHILLIP: Or you’ll lose your tax-exempt status. He’s saying that he is — he signed an executive order in the White House saying, investigate two individuals who told the truth about the last election and criticized me publicly.

That is weaponization.

JENNINGS: Regarding the universities, first of all, he’s creating, I think, a shield for the Jewish students on campus who have been the victim of horrible anti-Semitism. And he’s saying to these universities, you cannot simply screen out all viewpoints that don’t adhere to your anti-western civilization worldview.

PHILLIP: Absolutely, no one is doing that.

JENNINGS: Absolutely, they are.

PHILLIP: No one is — no, they’re not.

(CROSSTALKS)

PHILLIP: What evidence do you have that they’re screaming —

JENNINGS: I mean, I’ve been on a college campus recently and I can certainly use my eyes and ears. These are hotbeds of anti-American and anti-western civilization activity, and everybody knows it.

JEMELE HILL, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Based off what?

JENNINGS: And there’s no dissent on these campuses. Everyone’s afraid.

HILL: Now MAGA wants DEI?

JENNINGS: Everyone’s afraid.

HILL: Now, they want to be included. Like now, they want affirmative action for them. Like that’s cool now?

JENNINGS: So, you admit that you want universities to exclude everyone with the radical left?

HILL: No, because there’s no proof that they’re actually being excluded.

JENNINGS: There’s not?

HILL: No, there isn’t.

Watch above via CNN NewsNight.