CNN Anchor Abby Phillip Says History is Key to Understanding Trump at IOP

CNN anchor Abby D. Phillip ’10 said Wednesday that understanding history is essential to making sense of U.S. President Donald Trump’s political influence during an Institute of Politics forum on her new book about civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson.

“I’ve been covering Trump for the last 10 years. If you don’t understand the real history behind the forces that he motivates in our politics, you’re going to have a hard time really understanding him,” she said.

Phillip joined Harvard Kennedy School professor Cornell William Brooks, the former president of the NAACP, to discuss her first book, which examines Jackson’s political career and civil rights legacy.

The book traces Jackson’s efforts to mobilize Black voters and build a modern Democratic coalition centered on social justice and inclusion — a strategy Phillip said continues to influence leaders from former President Barack Obama to former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

“You know the name and he is a ubiquitous presence in our society,” Phillip said. “He seems to be everywhere all the time, to the point where it’s almost like the wallpaper.”

Phillip, a former Crimson News editor, also discussed the Supreme Court’s Wednesday ruling limiting the use of race in drawing congressional districts — a decision that is expected to make it more difficult to challenge some redistricting maps under the Voting Rights Act.

Brooks asked Phillip how she understood the ruling in relation to Jackson’s legacy, noting that Jackson spent much of his career organizing Black voters in the South and defending the Voting Rights Act.

Phillip pointed to the story of David and Goliath, an allegory she said Jackson often invoked when discussing voter mobilization. She said Jackson viewed voters as the “rocks” that could defeat powerful politicians.

Despite mounting federal pressure under the second Trump administration, Phillip said Jackson would not have viewed the ruling as cause to give up.

“I think that he would still say that there are still many rocks laying around,” she said.

Phillip said one of Jackson’s key political strengths was his willingness to go “into the lion’s den” and engage people who did not already support him. She said that kind of challenge to the party system should also come from within the Democratic Party.

Phillip ended the talk by urging young people to follow Jackson’s example and take action on the problems they see in the world, saying that doing so is “profoundly important right now.”

“They were not perfect people. They did not do everything right. They did not make all the right decisions, but they unquestionably all chose to get up to take the hard path, take the dangerous path, and go and do something about the problems that they saw in the world,” she said.

“And if there’s anything that you take away from his life — and when you read about the lives of all of the people in his generation, one of our greatest generations of Americans — is that they all chose to do the hard thing,” she added.