CNN host Abby Phillip shut down ranting fitness influencer Jillian Michaels after she lost her cool over pushback to President Trump’s efforts to curtail birthright citizenship.
On Thursday, a judge in New Hampshire temporarily blocked Trump’s motion to do away with the constitutional right that grants the children of migrants citizenship if they are born on U.S. soil. Trump sought to curtail the right, enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, via an executive order on the first day of his second term, sparking a protracted legal showdown.
This made for lively debate in the NewsNight studio Thursday evening, with right-wing Michaels, who appeared on the weight-loss reality show Biggest Loser, clashing with the show’s Democratic cohort.
Her passionate defense of the Trump administration became so lively that Phillip had to cut her off. “Okay, everyone, just stop talking for just a second,” the host began as Michaels continued to speak over her.
“Jillian, please stop talking,” Phillips added. “You all are all talking at the same time. It‘s impossible to hear or understand. When I say stop talking, please stop talking.”
Phillip then asked Michaels about “the scope of these raids,” referring to the way Trump’s goons at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are sweeping up immigrants from Home Depot, parking lots, and the streets.
The debate had been amicable up until the point that SiriusXM host John Fugelsang asserted that Trump “hates” immigrants and the Bible. Token CNN conservative Scott Jennings nibbled, and the panel descended into chaos.
Bickering and cross-talk reigned supreme for a few moments as the panel debated border crossings, with Phillip attempting to steady the ship with a flurry of polite demands: “Hold on a second. Hold on, please.”
The second flashpoint came as former Hillary Clinton advisor Karen Finney compared ICE’s racial profiling of immigrants during sweeps to the Jim Crow era, when young black men were frequently “disappeared.”
Michaels watched like a hawk as Finney spoke, her mouth ajar in disbelief. “I don’t even understand what you’re for,” she said, “Are you for immigration?”
Enter Fugelsang.
“Anyone standing on American soil is allowed to claim asylum. And we call the, excuse me, we call these people ‘illegals,’ but they‘re Christian refugees,” he said, with the former reality star barking, “What?”
“I have this crazy thing I do with the Bible. I read it, and Jesus is emphatic about saying that we will be judged, nations and individuals, in Matthew 25,” he said as the crosstalk intensified.
“We’re a nation of laws,” Jennings asserted as Michaels chimed in: “Are we talking about the Bible, the Constitution, or laws enacted by Congress?”
“How did you just pivot all the way over to there?!” she added.
She then accused Democrats of “selective outrage,” bringing up the high rate of deportations under President Barack Obama.
Fugelsang and Michaels then clashed over whom illegal immigration actually “hurts.”
But the spoken version of a cartoon fight cloud persisted, with mutterings about “murder rates” and “the economy” barely heard over the din.
That was when Phillips delivered her withering headmaster-style rebuke.
Michaels broke out as a personal trainer on NBC’s The Biggest Loser, appearing on 12 seasons of the show before calling it quits in 2014. More recently, Michaels has become a proponent of both the MAGA and MAHA (Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again”) movements. She even tried her hand as a White House correspondent in May.
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