Return to Transcripts main page
CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
Vance: ICE Agent In Minneapolis Shooting Has "Absolute Immunity"; Trump: "My Own Morality" Is Only Limit To My Global Power; Trump Tells GOP It's Time To "Own" Health Care As Midterms Loom. "I'll Get Impeached": Trump's Message Of GOP Loses Midterms; Steve Jobs Unveils New Apple Product Called The Phone; Hollywood Star Reveals Break-Up Among "Toxic" Mom Group Chat. Aired 12-1p ET
Aired January 10, 2026 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:00:00]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN ANCHOR: -- of the Venezuelan people have long spoken out against Maduro's dictatorship, but it's unclear when they will actually be free of it, as his actual regime remains in power, with President Trump saying he'll be running Venezuela along with them for many more years into the foreseeable future.
And that's all we have time for. Don't forget, you can find all our shows online as podcasts at CNN.com/audio and on all other major platforms. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London, thank you for watching, and I'll see you again next week.
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to The Arena Saturday. Once again, America finds itself bitterly divided. The fatal shooting of a woman by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, leading to protests and dueling narratives over what happened and who's responsible. It all raises the question, what does accountability look like?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JD VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The precedent here is very simple. You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action. That's a federal issue. That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job.
The idea that Tim Walz and a bunch of radicals in Minneapolis are going to go after and make this guy's life miserable because he was doing the job that he was asked to do is preposterous.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, my panel's here in The Arena. CNN Legal Analyst, Former Federal Prosecutor Elliot Williams, CNN Political Commentator, Co-Founder of The Dispatch Jonah Goldberg, CNN Political Commentator, Former Communications Director of the Biden White House, Kate Bedingfield, along with former Republican Congressman, Former House Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry.
Thank you all for being here on this Saturday morning. Elliot Williams, let me start with you just on this accountability --
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes.
HUNT: -- question, because that was the vice president of the United States. And obviously we've seen other federal officials throughout the past week, essentially prejudge --
WILLIAMS: Yes.
HUNT: -- what happened. What does that mean from a legal perspective? I mean, they're saying this person is going to have complete immunity. Is that accurate?
WILLIAMS: It's so inaccurate. It could not possibly be more. OK, it's like kind of accurate, but not even close. But not accurate. Law enforcement enjoys a great amount of immunity. That's a good thing.
We want law enforcement officers to be able to carry out their jobs, not have all of them be second guessed and not constantly be fearing being sued or prosecuted for everything they do. That extends to a point. They have limitations on their immunity.
And if an individual is a law enforcement officer and clearly violates state law, federal law, local law, they can be prosecuted. If someone shows up to work drunk and kill somebody, of course they can be prosecuted for that. And I just think this idea of absolute immunity simply by wearing a badge is just simply not accurate.
HUNT: Right. Well, and Jonah Goldberg, constitutional reader extraordinaire --
JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes.
HUNT: -- or you should you should tell me what you want your title to be when I introduce you this way, because I keep doing it to you. But, look, the way that law enforcement interacts with American citizens is a foundational part of the founding of our country --
GOLDBERG: Right.
HUNT: -- and has a lot to do with the rights that each one of us possesses. How do you see what has played out over the last week and this particular incident in that context?
GOLDBERG: Yes. So, look, I agree entirely with Elliot. Like, law enforcement needs qualified immunity to some extent. It can't be total and complete immunity because if that were the case, it would mean that a police officer can say, get the F out of the car. And if they don't do it quickly enough, you can shoot them in the head. And I don't think that's the country we think we want to live in.
And I think what's disturbing, particularly, what I thought was one of the most indefensible press conferences by any, you know, vice president or president in my memory was this JD Vance thing this week. This idea that, you know, President Trump has gone around for a very long time saying that he is the chief law enforcement officer in the land. He has a total power over the Justice Department.
The attorney general does what he says to go out and prejudice this in the way that they have and say that state investigators can't even look at it. It gives the vibe that ICE agents and other federal law enforcement officers are basically essentially a personal army of the president of the United States. I don't think that that would hold up in courts.
I don't think that's actually true. But they like the vibe. They like to get that message out there. It scares the crap out of a lot of people. They like scaring the crap out of a lot of people.
Normally, the response from government officials is to say, let's wait for the facts. Let's have an investigation. I don't think a lot of Democrats did that. And the White House definitely didn't.
WILLIAMS: And, you know, the most measured statements to come out were from Tom Homan, who's the White House border czar. Now, I worked with Tom for a long time at ICE. He's as aggressive or hardline on immigration as pretty much anybody there.
[12:05:05]
But he's the one cop up there who actually knows. When you look at a video and you don't have all of the facts, just keep your mouth shut. Who knows what emerges over time. But Tom was incredibly responsible here. And we should actually --
HUNT: Well, I'm glad you mentioned it.
WILLIAMS: -- amend (ph) that.
HUNT: Let's watch that and then I'll let you jump in. Take a look at what Homan said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you seen any examples of clear excessive force displayed by ICE agents and officers in the field?
TOM HOMAN, WHITE HOUSE BORDER CZAR: No.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: During the whole administration.
HOMAN: Things that I've seen?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
HOMAN: No, I have not seen ICE act outside of policy. And if there are acting outside of policy, I'm not aware of it. There'll be an investigation that we hold accountable.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So that's a little bit different from the bite that I was thinking of, which Homan ultimately kind of walked back. But Kate Bedingfield, you were going to jump in.
KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I just -- you know, to Jonah's point about sort of creating this vibe, I mean, part of creating the vibe of ultimate authority is to try to dissuade and discourage opposition, to discourage protests, to discourage people who would stand up and say, you know, this action wasn't wasn't legal. It wasn't the way I want to see law enforcement policing my community.
I mean, Americans have a right, a foundational right to stand up and say that. And so for, you know, for JD Vance to stand at the podium at the White House and declare absolute immunity for law enforcement and to do so in a way that is intended to discourage opposition, but also just intended to throw another match into the tender box of our politics in this moment.
I mean, yes, traditionally elected leaders would say we need to wait until we have all the facts before we pass judgment on this, both to allow an unprejudiced investigation to play out, but also to try to keep people calm and to keep people from, you know, from leaping to, you know, frantic demonization of the sector (ph).
PATRICK MCHENRY (R), FORMER SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE: Well, the frantic demonization, we could just look at the the mayor and the governor and their response. And you have the governor who was almost vice president, you know, national figure giving really was a haphazard, really stupid approach for a governor to try to turn down the temperature. He was lighting the thing on fire.
Now, the debate here is about Washington, right? And the impact of the Vance press conference. What I would say about the Vance conversation was it was a statement by the White House that we're going to defend law enforcement. The default of saying the law enforcement officer is in question here. They have tried to turn turn this around.
That is the default position, number one. Number two, the White House always takes these things from a respectable seven on a 10 scale to an 11, right? And that press conference we saw from JD Vance was not 11, but a 12. And they are trying to turn this volume up on what was a terrible incident.
HUNT: Is that good for the country?
MCHENRY: Well, but that is also what is happening in Minnesota. It's drawing in all these professional protesters that go into these hot button issues. You see this from provocateurs and in so-called media. You see this from organized protesters on the left and the right trying to use this as the opportunity for their case on a broader set of politics. And that's what we're seeing in the streets --
GOLDBERG: In economics, they call this dynamic Baptists and bootleggers, because both Baptists and bootleggers benefit from prohibition.
MCHENRY: Yes.
GOLDBERG: And you have the situation where the president of the United States, the White House, they -- from sending the National Guard to these various cities, they want civil unrest because they think it gives them permission structure to do all sorts of things. And I think the professional protesters that is talking about, they all benefit.
People who suffer are the rest of us. This woman was not a domestic terrorist and this wasn't cold blooded first degree murder. That's the only thing I'm willing to say from the facts that we already have.
HUNT (?): Yes.
GOLDBERG: And nobody else wants to -- none of these -- the supposedly responsible people want to wait and do the responsible thing.
WILLIAMS: Domestic terror thing was -- sorry.
HUNT (?): Yes. No, no, that's OK. Go ahead. Go ahead.
WILLIAMS: Domestic terror thing was really striking. That's a legal determination based on information that's -- that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who said this woman was a domestic terrorist, simply did not have. In order to find that, you have to say that she was using force or threats to coerce a civilian population or change government policy. Does she have a manifesto? Does she have -- you know, so it's just --
BEDINGFIELD: Yes.
HUNT: Yes.
WILLIAMS: -- irresponsible.
HUNT: All right. Baptists and bootleggers.
GOLDBERG: Baptists.
HUNT: I think I'm saving that one.
All right, coming up next here in the arena, the first primaries of the 2026 midterms, now less than two months away. What the president is telling Republicans about how they should run their campaigns and what will happen if they lose.
Plus, from Venezuela to Greenland and beyond, Donald Trump escalating global threats and the so-called Donroe doctrine.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Don't ask me who's in charge because I'll give you an answer and it'll be very controversial.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What does that mean?
TRUMP: It means, we're in charge.
(END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[12:14:27]
STEPHEN MILLER, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR POLICY: We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: If 2025 was all about President Donald Trump flexing his power in Washington and across America's cities, 2026 is shaping up to be the year he takes that brazen approach to the world stage from that daring operation that captured the Venezuelan president to an uptick in seizures of so-called shadow tankers and refusing to rule out deploying the military to take Greenland from Denmark.
[12:15:19]
It makes you wonder, is there anything on the world stage that could stop President Trump? And that brings us to our quote of the week. It is how he answered that question when it was put to him by The New York Times.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Yes, there's one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It's the only thing that can stop --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not international law?
TRUMP: -- and that's very good. I don't need international law. I'm not looking to hurt people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Patrick McHenry, my own morality, my own mind. It's the only thing standing between the world and Donald Trump's decision to potentially take over Greenland, among other things. Do you find that at all concerning?
MCHENRY: I don't find it surprising, right? And I don't find it surprising. It fits with what Stephen Miller said. And there's always this great question of, does Stephen Miller speak for the president when he does media interviews like that? And he absolutely does. He has a major piece of the president's mind, or represents a major piece of the president.
GOLDBERG: He's more persuasive in the original German, but anyway.
MCHENRY: So --
GOLDBERG: Stand by (ph) it.
MCHENRY: OK. So it's always great to have Jonah on. It's always great to have Jonah on. But -- so what the president's saying is the question of international law is any limiter on American president's actions. And the answer is emphatically no from the president's perspective, and I think from most presidents' perspectives, frankly.
The question of how he says it is the one that is intended to be inflammatory, is absolutely intended to be inflammatory. Not to message here at home, I believe, but to message globally that he can do what he wants. That he's a strong man that can stand against Putin and Xi and have equal standing, that he can do what he wants unfettered.
That's the message he wants to project globally, and that's what they want the message to be out of this administration about the Venezuelan, I would say, snatch and grab of Maduro. And so I think that's -- that is a strongman message that is sort of deeply questionable in a republic like the United States.
WILLIAMS: How do you feel about that? Like, when we start using the term strongman -- and I'm genuinely asking you, particularly as a Republican former member of Congress, like, when we start using the term strongman to describe the president of the United States, how ought that to sit with us? Because I just wonder --
MCHENRY: We have checks and balances.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
MCHENRY: And everyone -- the question of the destructive of the state that the republic won't stand, I think is absurd, right? We've been through much larger challenges than this. And because he's projecting this power does not mean there aren't limitations on his power through the courts, through the checks and balances we have through the Intel Committee and through our division of government, the way we divide government.
BEDINGFIELD: Hasn't Congress given that up, though?
MCHENRY: No, they haven't.
WILLIAMS: Largely.
BEDINGFIELD: Really?
MCHENRY: They haven't --
BEDINGFIELD: They've abdicated a lot of it.
MCHENRY: You saw -- you've seen four discharge petitions pass this Congress. And in the last 30 years, you haven't had more, a total of four discharge petitions happen in this Congress, going counter to what is Trump policy and the Republican majority.
BEDINGFIELD: At least one driven by Democrats, though, not Republicans. I --
MCHENRY: But what I'm saying is there's a bipartisan majority on the Hill against certain action.
HUNT: But the president didn't feel like he needed to tell Congress about this, right?
WILLIAMS: And I just think other than Jeffrey Epstein, where have you really seen it? That has been the issue that brought Republicans and Democrats together to some extent.
HUNT: I mean, and this is not just --
WILLIAMS: What is the Republicans advising (ph) to the president?
HUNT: This is not just a Trump thing, by the way. I mean, Congress was doing this when Barack Obama was trying to get somebody else to be able to, like, you know, take some of the political heat for him striking Syria. And Congress basically said, sorry, we don't want any part of that.
MCHENRY: So this has been longstanding, not with this president, not just with this president. You can see this with Reagan's actions. You can see this going back through the 50s and 60s with the intel community. This is not a new phenomenon.
GOLDBERG: So I love Pat. I pretty strongly disagree on a lot of fronts. Look, I agree. Congress has been gelding itself for a very long time, and they've been doing it under Democrats and Republicans. They've given up trade authority. They've given up all sorts of authority.
They haven't formally declared war since World War II. They even sort of declared war since the AUMF. But you've had Mike Johnson just cravenly hand off all the trade authorities to the president of the United States with this tariff stuff to the point where he's sneaking in rules to keep Congress from even being able to review the things Trump is doing under things like IEPA.
It is an incredibly --
HUNT: This is why we have Jonah.
GOLDBERG: -- gracious -- it is incredibly subservient role that they have. And I don't think it's because Mike Johnson is a quisling or anything like that, I think it's because the primary system is such that Trump can destroy all these people in their primaries, and they're all terrified to take them on except on those rare issues like Jeffrey Epstein's thing where the primary voters are more on their side of this.
[12:20:23]
And the last point I'll say, look, I agree with you about what Stephen Miller thinks he's doing. And I agree with you about what JD Vance thinks there's messaging and Marco Rubio about the strongman stuff. But I think everybody who talks about how Trump has embraced the Monroe Doctrine have gotten the causality entirely backwards.
Trump likes the Monroe Doctrine not because he agrees with it, but because he thinks it agrees with him. He likes any of these powers and these arguments and these pretextual rationales, going back to the Alien -- with Alien Enemies Act, that militate towards him having unconstrained, unrestrained, unilateral power.
HUNT: Right.
GOLDBERG: And those are the arguments he makes. Those are the arguments he likes. And if the law isn't with him, he comes up with new ones because that's the only thing he really cares about. He doesn't care about messaging to Putin about being a strongman.
HUNT: Correct.
GOLDBERG: He just wants to seem like a strongman.
BEDINGFIELD: Yes, it's a statement of ego. I mean that's -- it is an expression of ego when he's asked, you know, what are my limits on the world stage? He doesn't -- it's very telling, not that, you know, he's been in our public life now for a decade, so it's not surprising. But it's very telling that, you know, he doesn't use that as an opportunity to talk about what his foreign policy is going to do for the average American or talk about his view of America's role in the world order.
He gives a purely a statement of ego. That is the lens through which he sees everything. That is the lens through which he makes these kinds of decisions. And that is the vector that I think Democrats have as we start looking toward making midterm arguments.
Like, this is not a guy who's making decisions for you. This guy is making --
GOLDBERG: That's why he's putting his name on everything.
BEDINGFIELD: -- a statement (ph) about ego.
HUNT: What is Trump's morality?
GOLDBERG: I think it's a -- look, as Nietzsche said, when you look into Trump's soul, the danger is his soul will look back into you.
HUNT (?): Yes.
GOLDBERG: I think he is almost entirely absent of an ethical framework.
HUNT (?): Yes.
GOLDBERG: He has very little interior life other than it and ego.
BEDINGFIELD: There's somebody who has shown us that the limits to his morality are endless. So in some ways, when I first saw the statement, I thought, like, well, hell, I mean, this means, you know, like, take your pick of things that Donald Trump's going to try to do on the world stage. Because if his limit is his morality --
HUNT: OK, on that note, coming up in the arena, the announcement nearly two decades ago this week that changed quite literally everything.
But first, House Republicans break ranks on a critical health care vote as the party scrambles to find a solution to one of voters' top concerns ahead of the midterm elections.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Do you politically, if you voted against this, this would have been a problem in your race?
REP. DERRICK VAN ORDEN (R), WISCONSIN: Manu, when's the last time you think I took a political vote?
RAJU: I'm just -- I'm asking you.
VAN ORDEN: I don't care.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: Do you think politically, if you voted against this, this would have been a problem in your race?
VAN ORDEN: Manu, when's the last time you think I took a political vote?
RAJU: I'm just -- I'm asking you.
VAN ORDEN: I don't care. Like, I didn't get elected to get reelected. I got elected to help my people, and there's a lot of people in the third congressional district that depend on these programs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[12:27:41]
HUNT: So that's Wisconsin Congressman Derrick Van Orden. He is one of 17 swing district Republicans who voted with Democrats this week to pass a bill that would extend Obamacare subsidies after Republican leaders let them expire at the end of 2025. That bill now heads to the Senate, where it's not expected to fail, but the public defections in the House are notable, especially after what the president told House lawmakers this week in a speech meant to lay out the GOP roadmap for this year's midterms.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Very important issue. All of these issues are very important issues. But you can own health care. Let -- figure it out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, our panel is back here. And of course, this is expected to fail in the Senate. Congressman, let me start with you on what Derrick Van Orden said there and like, help us understand kind of the layers here. I mean, there is pressure on Republicans in the House who are facing tough races in the fall to do something about this.
MCHENRY: Yes, affordability is a trigger word for Republicans now. And it has a real impact to the ballot box, the way people feel about the economy. One of the direct expressions of that we see when we go fill up the pumps. Another direct expression of that is a rising cost of health care, which has been the case before Obamacare and even more so after Obamacare.
And Republicans are trying to fix an issue that has been a political loser for Republicans for the last 30 years, which is health care. There's not a lack of ideas or policy on Capitol Hill from Republicans on health care. There's not a lack of it. But there's a lack of a singular plan, which Republicans can never figure out how to offer.
They haven't figured out today. They have not figured out my 20 years in Congress. So we have all this divergent set of views on what to do. So the default is more government subsidies to go fund something that is increasing at a higher rate than inflation in our lifetimes.
And so, Republicans are trying to answer this question with a Democratic solution in order to get through the midterms. This is tough. It's always been tough for Republicans. But what you saw is a break of those most vulnerable Republicans in the House siding with the Democrats on this solution because they see the impact of the ballot box in November.
[12:30:00]
HUNT: Yes, I mean, it seems pretty clear that Democrats are on track, at least right now, for a pretty significant gain in the House of Representatives. One of the other things the president said this week, which is, you know, often how politicians in circumstances like this will run if they're not winning on the issue of affordability, right, as we were just discussing, they, you know, convinced their voters, well, you should be afraid of what will happen if the other guys are in charge. Here was President Trump talking about what Democrats, what he thinks Democrats are going to do if they take back the House. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You've got to win the midterms, because if we don't win the midterms, it's just going to be, I mean, they'll find a reason to impeach me.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HUNT: They'll find a reason to impeach me. So that, of course, is something that Democrats are going to have to answer for. And you can see how some swing state Democrats are having trouble, Kate, or, you know, they're going to be faced with this question, right? Are you going to impeach Donald Trump? I actually, I asked Congressman Jason Crow about it earlier this week. Let's watch that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Is he right that Democrats would potentially impeach the President if they controlled the House after the elections this year?
REP. JASON CROW (D-CO): Well, impeachment is something that I happen to know a lot about, because I was a prosecutor in Donald Trump's first impeachment trial, one of two. So that is a tool that Congress can use. But there are other tools that Congress can use.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So Kate, why not just say no to that question?
KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think there is demand amongst at least a sector of the Democratic base for Democrats to use every single tool at their disposal. And they don't want to see a Democratic elected say, I'm going to take a tool off the table. I think politically it would be a foolish thing for Democrats certainly to campaign on the idea that they're going to impeach Donald Trump if they take the House.
I mean, this is obviously a tried and true strategy for Trump. We've seen him politically beat these efforts multiple times now. What Democrats have in front of them is an electorate in the United States that is frustrated with the cost of living, frustrated with what they think are -- is Donald Trump's focus on things that are not directly impacting their lives day in and day out.
There's a huge messaging lane for Democrats to run in in the midterms. And making this about, you know, a process argument would I think be a mistake. But yet there's no question that they're going to have to navigate this over the course of the next months because there's a loud sector of the base that doesn't want to see them put any hand behind their back at all.
HUNT: Well, and regardless, it does seem as though, Jonah, the president has some idea of what's likely to befall Republicans in the midterm elections. Let's watch what he had to say on Sean Hannity this week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: If you go back a long way, the sitting president, whether it's Democrat or Republican, always loses the midterm, even if they've done well, almost always. And, you know, you think it would be like a 50-50 deal, even if the president's done a great job. I think we've done a great job. We've done maybe the best job ever in the first year, but they always seem to lose the midterm. There's something down deep psychologically with the voters that they want maybe a check or something. I don't know what it is exactly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, maybe the voters want to check, right? Like that's only been the pattern of American politics for all of our lifetimes and beyond. What I find amusing about it is this idea that anyone could maybe want a check.
Like Trump has a really hard time and he said a bunch of things recently about how he -- he just doesn't understand why Americans don't think everything is going perfectly. And so he can't get his head around this idea that maybe people want to check on what he's doing. And I think this ties into the impeachment thing.
Right now, it is in the interest of the Democrats more than anything else to be the stop the drama party, right? All of this stuff is freaking people out coming out of the Trump administration. They don't like how much politics is in their headspace, how much Trump is in their headspace. They don't like all this talk about strongman stuff.
And the Democrats, if they go around saying we're going to impeach Trump, which I think they probably will. I don't think it'll be hard to find a reason. But if they go around saying that we're going to -- we're running to play our inside the Beltway game rather than do the affordability stuff and like get government to respond to you, I just think it's really stupid. It will cost -- I still think they win the House, but it'll cost them seats.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: And it's a reminder of the fact that there's no clear leader of the Democratic Party right now. Like there are people who have very important jobs and very important roles, but there isn't a presidential candidate or a former president who's still in the game on a day to day level.
And I think those questions like that, like should we impeach Donald Trump? Someone who can tamp that down doesn't exist. And I don't see Hakeem Jeffries right now, I mean, he hasn't spoken out, I believe, on the impeachment issue or at least tried to avoid it.
[12:35:04]
BEDINGFIELD: To his credit. He did just force his health care discharge petition through and keep Democrats together on it. So and he is making substantive steps forward that I think are good for the world. But yes, no question.
WILLIAMS: But whoa be to him for this year, yes.
BEDINGFIELD: But we're also not up to the point in the presidential cycle yet where -- but I would all the other thing I would quickly say is Trump is also just doing his own punditry here. He's doing expectation setting. He's, you know, we're going to get wiped out. That motivates their base. And tale as old as time, correct.
HUNT: All right.
Coming up next here in The Arena, we're saying happy birthday to the teenager that many argue is really ruling all of our lives.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE JOBS, CEO, APPLE: What we want to do is make a leapfrog product that is way smarter than any mobile device has ever been and super easy to use. This is what iPhones. OK? So we're going to reinvent the phone.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[12:40:22]
JOBS: An iPod, a phone. Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device and we are calling it iPhone.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: That was the legendary Steve Jobs introducing the world to a new device he said would change the world. Well, it sure did. Thanks so much, Steve Jobs. At the time, it did take some getting used to.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's not here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Who's not here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The groom.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What's happening?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Big's not here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But we're 25 minutes late.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, did anybody call him? Well, give me phone. Somebody give me a phone. Oh, I don't know how to work this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: The iPhone turned 19 on Friday. And in that short time, it is virtually impossible to imagine life without some sort of smartphone in your hand, in your bag, maybe in your hand and a second one in your bag. I mean, I got two of them sitting right here.
Recently, though, in recent years, lawmakers, parents, communities have started to push for a loosening of the grip that all of these devices have on all of us. About two-thirds of states, and they're led by both Republicans and by Democrats, have some sort of ban on personal devices like phones and tablets in the classroom. Late last year, Australia became the first nation to ban kids from social media.
And, you know, I have to say, I mean, this was -- we started having this conversation in the break, right? I mean, this is something everyone is talking about. I mean, I have a kid in kindergarten. He's already on a Chromebook, right? He can log in to an e-mail on a Chromebook.
It's like it took over our lives without any of us being able to stop and think about whether we wanted to have that happen to us.
GOLDBERG: Yes. No, we talked about this on the regular show, too. And I think this is one of these issues that like the Australia school ban thing, like not to get all super punditry about it, but, you know, one of the reasons why the Whigs collapsed is that when -- no, seriously, it's that when slavery, when Andrew Jackson left, slavery became the issue of the day and divided the Whig Party. There are some issues that run that divide parties that could really drive realignment. There is a mom coalition from crazy left wing moms to crazy right wing moms about the phone thing.
HUNT: I am not partisan at all, but I am telling you that like moms like Kate and my age, like under no circumstances is my -- are my kids having phones before at least 14.
GOLDBERG: And I just think it's a political issue that is so ripe for one party to grab. And then the other party sort of has to defend it. But I think we're going to see bans like Australia pretty rapidly.
PATRICK MCHENRY (R), FORMER SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE: So is this also an anti-minivan coalition as well?
HUNT: Absolutely not. I already have a minivan.
BEDINGFIELD: No, no, pro-minivan.
WILLIAMS: I'm anti-minivan. They're really nice.
HUNT: You know what I love about the minivan actually? And I've started doing this. I had tablets for my kids. They -- the company that made the tablet wouldn't give me enough control over whether I could shut off the stuff they wanted my kid to see. My minivan has a DVD player. I bought a collection of movies.
BEDINGFIELD: Yes.
HUNT: I bought them $40 DVD players for the plane. And now I get to control what they see and what they don't.
BEDINGFIELD: Yes, yes, yes.
MCHENRY: So the movement here is anti-tech for our kids. And we have to look at the great tech leaders that are creating these groundbreaking technologies and seeing what they're doing with their children. And what they're doing with their children is focused on creativity and the basic type of principled learning on how to think, right? And that is a foundation stone for our society is that capacity to think and that creativity around thing is not driven by devices.
You see this with a move on home phones, installing the home phone, reinstalling the home phone, which we're doing in our house.
HUNT: I want to do it, too. My kids are quite old and going back.
MCHENRY: So Taylor Swift's big release of her latest album, I have an 11-year-old and an 8-year-old, was on CDs. So we went out and got a CD player, which is so much more in the control of the child rather than put them on devices that can take them into places we don't wish them to be at such a young age.
[12:45:02]
HUNT: Well, she also released it digitally. Let's be fair. But anyway.
BEDINGFIELD: I don't think it's -- I don't think it's --
MCHENRY: She made us buy a DVD player. I mean, there's power into this well, so.
BEDINGFIELD: Yes. Oh, yes. Well, no question. No debate here. I don't think it's purely I will say, though, I don't think it's purely anti- tech. I do think it is acknowledging some of the, we'll call it predatory. Maybe that's a little too aggressive. But some of the manipulative tactics that social media companies, the tech companies used --
GOLDBERG: Certainly. The modification of your child.
BEDINGFIELD: Yes. Yes. To keep you hooked, to keep your attention. It works on adults, too. We were just talking about this in the break. I mean, and we've seen study after study that shows that these companies are optimizing their algorithms and their technology to keep you hooked and keep you lured in. That's hard enough for adults. Again, I was just saying my kids call me out all the time for being addicted to my phone and they're right. And it's a problem. And I'm working on it. Leave me alone. I'm working on it.
HUNT: It's a problem in Washington.
BEDINGFIELD: But yes --
HUNT: So this time --
BEDINGFIELD: But children particularly are vulnerable to some of these tactics, these predatory tactics. And that, I think, is an issue that will absolutely be salient for people who are smart in the presidential primary in '28.
HUNT: Well, and one of these things, too, Elliot, is I mean, the research is increasingly showing that there is a particularly vulnerable time for adolescents, free adolescents, right? Because, yes, I mean, when I go on vacation now, it takes me a couple of days. I'm a big reader. I love to read books. It takes me a while to get deprogrammed from the speed of this and actually be able to finish full chapters of books. I feel it in myself, but also I was able like my prefrontal cortex was built before this iPhone came out, right.
WILLIAMS: Yes. So Kate's and my kids are almost exactly the same age. And what's interesting is watching two different kids and their relationships devices because not even everybody's brains are wired in the same way. Just watching how one can sort of just not turn it off and one can and just even at an early age. And part of it is because of this is back to your point, Kate. These machines and algorithms and apps were designed very well. They've improved humanity in immeasurable ways.
Many of what -- much of what a lot some of what social media has done has improved our lives. But it's designed to keep you hooked. And if you are 11 years old and just not able to regulate and just not able to turn it off, your brain can't do it. It's very toxic.
MCHENRY: And this is before the wide deployment of A.I. in all devices.
HUNT: Right. No, I mean, clearly we can talk about this forever and we're going to continue to, I'm sure.
All right. Coming up, something totally different. Disney stars, you may remember them from your childhood, your adolescence. Now they're moms and they've got a quote, toxic group chat. We'll explain.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:50:04]
HUNT: Breaking up is hard to do, especially when it's with your mom friends. I'm sorry. What? OK, so if you're not up to speed on this, Ashley Tisdale of Disney and high school musical fame, she published an essay in "The Cut." It was titled "Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group." In it, she wrote about forming a group chat with friends to talk about being new moms. She says that she had believed she found her village.
That is until she writes this, "I remember being left out of a couple of group hangs and I knew about them because Instagram made sure it fed me every single photo and Instagram story. I was starting to feel frozen out of the group, noticing every way that they had seemed to exclude me." Tisdale said it took her back to her teenage years.
She thought, well, maybe I'm not cool enough. So she sent the group chat this text, "this is too high school for me and I don't want to take part in it anymore." So the Internet quickly came to the conclusion that Tisdale was talking about a mom group that includes the fellow actresses and child stars that include Hilary Duff. You may remember her as Disney's "Lizzie McGuire." And this is where it gets messier.
Hilary Duff's husband posted this on his Instagram story, a photo of himself mocking Tisdale's essay using the fake headline reading, "When you're not -- when you're the most self-obsessed tone deaf person on earth, other moms tend to shift focus to their actual toddlers." Yikes. OK, so who here's ever had to break up with a group? I mean, Kate, like mom groups. OK, moms, I have to say.
BEDINGFIELD: Mom groups can be intense. They can be intense.
HUNT: I love that.
BEDINGFIELD: I do, too. I was thinking about this. I don't think I've been fortunate. I don't think I've ever had to break up with a mom group. I think what happens more often is as your kids age and start to have different, you know, tastes and interests as they get older, you kind of naturally splinter. I can't -- I definitely cannot think of a particularly dramatic moment that matches the gory -- glory of Hilary Duff's husband, by the way, like, standing up and riding forth. I mean, what a --
WILLIAMS: We ride it on.
BEDINGFIELD: You know, I don't -- I can't I can't determine whether Ashley Tisdale's in the right here or the group chats in the right here. But Hilary Duff's husband, what a dude, man. That's a ride or die.
MCHENRY: For all of us, Instagram and think you have like a little bit of envy about the lifestyle you see when you see Hollywood celebrities get envious of their peers via Instagram. Like, who are we? But to befall the challenge --
WILLIAMS: The stars of "High School Musical." They're just like us, you know.
BEDINGFIELD: I mean, definitely a universe of people who are intensely, this is not fair. And like all the actors are going to come for me on Twitter, but like an insecure, generally insecure group of people, right?
WILLIAMS: Yes.
BEDINGFIELD: People who are seeking external validation. So you can see how seeing these things on Instagram, like, yes, hurtful for the average person, maybe even so for the sensitive actor.
[12:55:07]
WILLIAMS: If only they'd embraced my approach to such things, which is just rank passive aggression and just stop responding which is how I live my life. Just don't say hi back.
BEDINGFIELD: Oh, my gosh. OK.
HUNT: All right.
BEDINGFIELD: Elliot's a ghoster on that note. Got it.
HUNT: Thank you guys very much for being here. And thank you all at home for watching as well. Don't forget, you can see The Arena every weekday as well right here on CNN, 4:00 p.m. Eastern. We also have a podcast. You can follow the show on X and Instagram or at thearenacnn. Do enjoy the rest of your weekend. Don't go anywhere. The news continues next on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:00:08]
MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN HOST: Two wrong don't make a right.
