CNN’s Abby Phillip warned that corporate executives who pander to President Donald Trump are making a “colossal miscalculation.”
Speaking on this week’s episode of The Daily Beast Podcast, Phillip discussed attempts to appease Trump as he goes after his enemies—across media, law, government and big business.
“The price of entry for the corporate people and corporate entities… is some kind of capitulation to Trump on things that are important to him,” said Phillip, 36, who anchors CNN NewsNight.
“But the question I have for the people who are running these companies is: ‘When do you think it will be enough?’” she continued. “At what point do you think you would have given enough to Trump that he will leave you alone?”
Reflecting on her time covering Trump through two presidencies with co-hosts Samantha Bee and Joanna Coles, Phillip said, “the Trump 2.0 mode right now is like, ‘Let’s destroy it all.’ And I’m not sure that he would be satisfied until CBS, The Washington Post and all of his other—as he describes it—his enemies are essentially destroyed.”
(Trump is currently suing CBS over a 60 Minutes interview he claims defamed him. The show’s executive producer Bill Owens resigned this week, saying network executives had tried to interfere with his leadership.)
Phillip questioned whether executives appeasing Trump have truly considered the consequences. “I doubt they’re thinking this all the way through,” she said, adding that Trump and his allies appear set on a “complete overhaul of the system that we live in.”
Phillip, a Harvard alumna, pointed to her alma mater’s recent pushback against Trump’s attempts to control its hiring, admissions, and curriculum as an example of institutional resistance.
“That particular legal fight is extremely important,” she said, “because it is going to test what happens when the only people who can push back actually push back.”
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