In a 10-and-a-half-minute battle early Friday, CNBC’s Squawk Box co-host Joe Kernen dueled Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) over the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) work to address our unsustainable national debt and the left’s double standard in having refused to demand any accountability for Joe Biden’s deadly U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin having gone AWOL in late 2023 and early 2024
Kernen has been on a roll as of late. On Wednesday, he sparred with Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) over what’s become known as Signal-gate and Warner laughed at Kernen invoking Afghanistan. And on Thursday, Kernen exploded at Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA) for falsely claiming Medicare and Social Security are “efficient.”
Kernen started with Fox News Channel host Bret Baier’s interview Thursday with Elon Musk and other key DOGE members, specifically noting “the overriding thrust of what Mr. Musk and the other members were saying last night was that we are on a course in this country of insolvency in a lot of different areas, including entitlements if we don’t do something and including just overall government spending, the total debt at 36, 37 trillion and as a percentage of GDP by 2050.”
Asked if there’s “any empathy or understanding” to this, Coons refused with standard fear-mongering about depriving seniors and Americans in poverty of healthcare and denouncing tax cuts.
Kernen pivoted to the burden welfare programs like Medicaid bear vis-à-vis illegal immigrants (click “expand”):
KERNEN: But, Senator, Medicaid — I mean, this is just one story here. I mean, there’s plenty of things to look at with Medicaid. Every one of the — most of the 10 million illegal immigrants that entered during the Biden administration, if they need health care, it’s — it’s Medicaid. Not that you don’t want to give people health care, but it also is — it’s also been expanded. It’s also been expanded for constituents.
COONS; A quarter — a quarter of my constituents in Delaware —
KERNEN: Right.
COONS: — 250,000 of my one million —
KERNEN: It’s been expanded far beyond disabled —
COONS: — constituents depend on Medicaid.
KERNEN: — and — and poor people. It’s been expanded —
COONS: Correct.
KERNEN: — far beyond that.
COONS: It’s providing substance abuse treatment, mental health treatment, care —
KERNEN: Chest care lessons after school. It’s — it’s and the 800 billion that you’re talking about is — it’s — you’re not cutting Medicaid itself. You’re cutting the increases that are built in over the next ten years into Medicaid. That’s all — that’s all — that’s — it’s still growing every year, right?
COONS: Look, the priorities of our parties are fundamentally different in terms of where we’d like to reduce spending and where we’d like to invest One of the things that got broad, bipartisan support in the last Congress was investing in chips manufacturing here in the United States. The Chips and Science Act passed with bipartisan margins in both the House and Senate. Trump is determined to cut this program, to claw back investments in chip manufacturing. That both hurts manufacturing and hurts our competition with China.
The conversation turned to the recent government funding battle with Coons having gone against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and thus voted to shut down the government. Coons denied this, scoffing at Kernen’s questions as “inside baseball for folks at home” while maintaining his support for Schumer as the leader of Senate Democrats.
Kernen continued to fire hardballs with a seemingly simple question about who’s the leader of the Democratic Party, but Coons dodged by citing congressional Democratic leaders and new party chair Ken Martin.
Coons tried to claim the state Senate upset for Democrats in Lancaster, Pennsylvania was a canary in the coal mine (which is entirely false) in addition to negative polling about consumer confidence and what he deemed “widespread anger among” Trump voters.
The Delaware senator was hit with a fact-check by Kernen that Trump has seen his highest approval ratings as president (in either term) and the right track/wrong track polling was at its best in over 20 years.
Liberal co-host Becky Quick tried to save Coons by indulging him on tariffs, but that quickly went to the wayside as Kernen brought up the border crisis: “But [Trump] closed the border immediately, which you said you couldn’t do for four years, and you let in 10 million illegal al — a lot of our problems right now stem from a totally — the open southern border.”
Signal-gate came up thanks to Coons after Quick had asked how were Democrats trying to counter what she saw as a business community having doubted they would “get a fair shake at all under a Harris — a Kamala Harris presidency.”
After denying that was the case, he claimed business leaders were “also concerned about this Signal issue where the very top national security leaders were violating sort of the basics about classified information and the lack of truthfulness” and no “accountability.”
Coons played right into Kernen’s hands, leaving the latter to lower the boom:
You know what did have an adverse consequence was — and you know where I’m going — is Afghanistan. Did you call for Lloyd Austin’s resignation? Not only did we lose 13 service members, we left $70 billion worth of equipment that fell into the hands of the Taliban. A couple of years later, he was out of pocket for two weeks and didn’t tell the White House. Did you ask for him to resign at this point? Are you actually asking for Hegseth and Waltz to resign when you didn’t ask for Lloyd Austin to resign?
“There’s nothing that Lloyd Austin did by getting health care treatment that put our national security at risk,” Coons replied.
Kernen realized Coons was filibustering and suggesting there was an imaginative “statue of limitations” in place there, but heads must figuratively role because of what might have happened in Yemen. Coons even had the gall to blame Trump for collapse of Afghanistan (and thus the deaths of 13 Americans) (click “expand”):
COONS: Well, let’s deal with one at a time, though.
KERNEN: The statute of limitations is over for four years.
COONS: One at a time.
KERNEN: That’s what Mark Warner —
COONS: The fact that the secretary of defense was getting health care is fundamentally different from the secretary of defense sharing on an unsecure platform —
KERNEN: — it was —
COONS: — attack plans.
KERNEN: — you said it was a success. Afghanistan was not a success.
COONS: I am not saying that the attack on the Houthis was not a success. I am saying that he demonstrably violated a directive that was just shared in the Pentagon about — don’t use Signal for classified information. It is not reliably secure and one of the folks on that group that was in Russia at the time, that that information was being sent.
KERNEN: On a secure line, we now know.
COONS: Look, all of us — all of us use apps like WhatsApp.
KERNEN: Okay, you’re — you’re running out the clock on Afghanistan.
COONS: — and Signal, but have not sent classified information.
KERNEN: You’re running out— you’re running out the clock on — on Afghanistan.
COONS: It was a mistake for. Donald Trump to negotiate with the Taliban an agreement —
KERNEN: So, this was Donald Trump’s fault?
COONS: — for winding down the Afghanistan war.
KERNEN: Afghanistan was Donald Trump’s fault?
COONS: If you’d let me finish my sentence, I will actually come to your direction.
KERNEN: No, that’s what I’m — you did say that. You did say that.
COONS: It was a mistake to negotiate an end to that war that put Biden in a box. The execution of the withdrawal from Afghanistan was badly handled, and the loss of those 13 Marines was a tragedy.
KERNEN: Should you have asked for Lloyd Austin’s resignation from that, or —
COONS: I don’t know whether Lloyd Austin is the person who should have been held accountable for it, but there should have been accountability.
Kernen tried another example with General Mark Milley’s conversations with the communists in China after January 6, 2021: “When General Milley said he would tell China if we were ever going to launch an attack — on China...[Y]ou don’t have a problem with him giving them a heads up and telling the Chinese leaders, you’ll hear from me if anything’s planned?”
Coons argued he was “mischaracterizing that exchange” and then was saved by Quick agreeing Kernen lobbed “a whataboutism.”
With Coons being a rare progressive familiar with Christian theology, Kernen invoked an analogy Christ stated as recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke: “The point is that you’re going to complain about a splinter in one eye and ignore a two by four in the other eye.”
Things came to a fiery conclusion as Kernen introduced one more character to the mix with Biden Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s handling of the border, exposing Coons for demanding Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz resign while saying no one in his mentor Ole Joe’s regime should have faced the music (click “expand”):
COONS: I don’t think — Joe, the career of any military officer would not survive —
KERNEN: Do you think —
COONS: — what just happened —
KERNEN: — about this — what about —
COONS: — and it shows a blindness to concerns about informational and operational —
KERNEN: — how about Mayorkas? You let him stay for four years as 10 million people came across the border. Should you have asked for his resignation?
COONS: — look, what you’re trying to change the subject from —
KERNEN: Oh!
COONS: — is what just happened in the Trump administration —
KERNEN: Okay?
COONS: — that is a willful and demonstrable lack of accountability for violating basic —
KERNEN: You think they should go?
COONS: — requirements for confidentiality.
KERNEN: You think they should — are you calling for either Waltz or Hegseth to resign?
COONS: Yes.
KERNEN: You’re calling for both of them to resign.
COONS: I have.
KERNEN: But not Lloyd Austin?
COONS: Lloyd Austin is not the secretary of Defense.
KERNEN: You didn’t back then.
To see the relevant CNBC transcript from March 28, click here.
