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Thursday’s CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip — perhaps the most toxic show on television after ABC’s The View — beclowned itself with an opening block of host Abby Phillip, CNN political commentator Bakari Sellers, and the cartoonishly faux journalist Catherine Rampell of The Washington Post lectured former GOP Senate candidate Jeff Bartos and the great Scott Jennings with claims about the border and economy being wild successes under the Biden-Harris regime.

The lunacy began with a peddling of the lie first spread by The Bulwark’s Sam Stein that President-Elect Trump admitted he won’t be able to bring down grocery bills and Rampell smirking in delivering this defense of the Biden economy:

Phillip stacked the deck in going on Jennings, lecturing him that Trump lied about the Biden economy, leading Jennings to set the record straight by defending voters (whom Rampell and Phillip seem to loathe) and arguing costs around energy will help the overall economy:

Rampell was incensed and clapped back about the greatness of the Biden legacy on energy, saying “oil production is at an all-time high” while Phillip denounced Jennings for not speaking “from a factual perspective”:

Jennings had enough, threw his arms up in frustration and said he wasn’t going to participate with Rampell constantly berating him.

Phillip didn’t care about the lack of decorum and let the juvenile-behaving Rampell shout at him that she’s the one who “care[s] about the facts” and thus has to “interrupt him and correct him because our job is to inform our audience” when “[h]e says things that are wrong”:

Phillip joined in this rhetorical waterboarding with more lectures about the supposedly roaring Biden economy and demanding Trump tell “the American people the truth” about that and how his tariffs would supposedly undo that. Jennings wasn’t amused:

Bartos gave it his own shot, talking about “real wage growth under the first Trump administration” and global trade would improve under a Trump presidency once the Houthis are thwarted from blocking the Suez Canal.

Rampell obviously snipped the whole time, lecturing he will make the country’s economy “worse.” Sellers finally joined in, blaming Trump for inflation over the last four years.

The Post columnist pivoted to the border, going full Confederate slave owner in predicting the economy will suffer mightily and inflict pain on the American people if illegal immigrants are deported and thus a cheap source of labor is taken away (click “expand”):

RAMPELL: I would love to talk about what Trump plans to do about this, and how not only will he fail at his promise at bringing grocery prices down, he will probably drive them up higher for a number of reasons. One of which is that he wants to deport most of our farm labor force. Not only the people who are here who are without authorization, people who are undocumented, but actually we have a lot of workers here who are on visas, temporary, basically seasonal agricultural visas who are here legally, a visa program he wants to end. He wants to deport lots of people from other parts. processing system, people who work in the packing plants again, people who here legally and who are not here legally. Beyond that, he wants to raise tariffs on the food that we bring in from other countries. We get 90 percent of our avocados from Mexico and something like two-thirds of our fresh tomatoes. These things will drive prices up, you know? So, it’s not only a matter of, it’s hard to get them back down —

BARTOS: We — we had four years —

[JENNINGS SIGHS]

RAMPELL: — it’s easy to get them up higher.

BARTOS: — we had four years of President Trump and we had the best economy in our lifetimes.

RAMPELL: That’s — that’s not true.

SELLERS: That’s completely inaccurate. 

BARTOS: And we had four years —

SELLERS: I mean — but we — but we —

BARTOS: — of Joe Biden —

SELLERS: — that’s not true.

BARTOS: — we had a terrible economy.

SELLERS: No, because —

RAMPELL: That’s not true.

SELLERS: — we can go back — look, you can go to George Bush 1, left a terrible economy. Bill Clinton fixed it. You can go to George Bush 2. [JENNINGS LAUGHS] What are we laughing about? I mean, everybody know — this is not — we — you can talk about any economic indicator from job growth, to job creation, to wage growth.

BARTOS: Are we going to count the bounce back jobs from Covid?

SELLERS: Or — but — but — but you can —

PHILLIP: But — but Jeff —

SELLERS — the budget —

PHILLIP: — I’m gonna — I’m gonna once again —

SELLERS: — the deficit —

PHILLIP: — I’m going to ask you to respond —

SELLERS: — the budget —

PHILLIP: — directly to the facts that she put on the table, which is explain to me how Trump — a key pillar of Trump’s economic policy are tariffs. Let’s just start there. Explain to me that, how that helps average working people who are going to the grocery store and they want to know why the price of their avocados is doubling.

BARTOS: Well, of course, as, I mean, the President and his entire team have talked about during the campaign and since the transition started, these are all negotiating postures, right? Tariffs are an opportunity to say to Canada, to say to Mexico, to say to China, to say of all our partners in the E.U., you can’t put a 100 percent tariff on our cars or we’re going to start putting a tariff on your cars. Mexico, if you allow Chinese vehicles to come in under the USMCA, and you try to do that, we’re going to put tariffs on your vehicles. Canada, if you don’t shut your border down, we’re going to put tariffs. The president will sit and negotiate with all of these, as he did during his first term. There’s a record here.

Jennings stood up for Americans who want to see order restored to our immigration system and dangerous criminals deported, wondering to Rampell, Phillip, and Sellers “what’s it worth to anybody to actually get these other countries..to get their attention on immigration and drugs and everything else” and if they’d dare be “willing to pay a quarter more for an avocado to fix this mess.”

Unsurprisingly, Rampell falsely claimed things are just peachy:

Rampell was disgusted at Jennings, whining he was “shaking [his] head” at her and said it’s “the absolute truth” the border is secure and not “a mess” as Jennings argued.

Bad-faith Phillip whined Jennings wasn’t listening to expert Rampell:

Scott, I want us to address the facts that are on the table…What is it to the American people to pay more to address the border issue? Why isn’t Trump transparent about that? Why won’t he tell the American people, you know what, we want to address the immigration issue, so deportations are going to cost you more — tariffs are going to cost you more? Why isn’t he transparent about that?

Jennings countered that he doesn’t “remember a massive spike in grocery prices during the Obama administration when they sent — what — five-plus million people out of the country,” but none of the liberals wanted to hear that.

Later, Phillip’s disingenuousness reared its ugly head again when she painted a doomsday scenario (click “expand”):

PHILLIP: [L]ook, I think Trump ran on what he ran on, but I think the question — we started this conversation about honesty or lack thereof. If Trump had told the American people what he told them today, that would have been honest and true. If he tells the American people, you’re going to have to pay more for your avocados, you’re going to have to pay more for whatever, because —

RAMPELL: Everything you buy at Walmart.

PHILLIP: — everything you buy at Walmart, because deportations are important and because negotiating and forcing these other countries to be right on trade is important, that would be a different conversation, but that’s not what he is saying.

BARTOS: And real wage growth. Let’s not forget real wage growth.

PHILLIP: But, Jeff, that is not what he is saying. He is not being honest —

SELLERS: But wages have grown more.

PHILLIP: — with Americans that prices might —

BARTOS: Not having kept pace with inflation.

PHILLIP: — because of his policies, prices might go up.

SELLERS: But wages have grown more in Biden than they did under Trump.

JENNINGS: I think —

BARTOS: They have not kept pace with inflation.

RAMPELL: They have! They have in the last few years.

SELLERS: But they have grown more, Abby, can you act — because he keeps throwing these —

JENNINGS: Wages are up — wages are up 22 percent.

PHILLIP: Hold on — hold on, Scott.

SELLERS: — wages are actually up more under Joe Biden than they were under Donald Trump.

BARTOS: Real wages. Not — not wage — wages as measured with inflation, right? You have to exceed inflation, otherwise you can’t keep up.

With time running out, Jennings stated one last time the reality most of the panel refused to accept:

Democrats are underestimating the anger about the immigration system, the anger about the border, the crisis that it is, and what Americans are willing to do to fix it and I think there may actually be some elasticity in the American people on accepting certain short-term issues here — economic issues if it means this can be solved.

To see the relevant transcripts from December 12, click here and here.