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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
NTSB Investigators Now On Scene Of Deadly LaGuardia Collision; Hours-Long Security Lines At Airports Amid Staffing Shortages; Trump Says U.S. Will Postpone "All Military Strikes" On Iran Power Plants Following "Very Good And Productive" Talks. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired March 23, 2026 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[16:00:05]
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Breaking news, new details and shocking new footage of a deadly disaster at one of America's busiest airports.
Hi, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to THE ARENA.
We here at CNN have just obtained video showing the moment that a passenger jet collided with a fire truck at New York's LaGuardia airport. And of course, we do want to warn you, it is disturbing. It's hard to watch.
You will see here the plane coming in to land. And then just seconds later, the deadly collision, despite desperate pleas from an air traffic controller.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
FIRE TRUCK: Truck 1 and Company, LaGuardia Tower?
TOWER. Truck 1 and Company.
FIRE TRUCK: Truck 1 and Company, LaGuardia Tower, requesting to cross 4 at Delta.
TOWER: Truck 1 and Company cross 4 at Delta.
FIRE TRUCK: Truck 1 and Company 4 at Delta.
TOWER: Frontier 4195, just stop there, please.
TOWER: Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, Truck One, stop, stop, stop!
TOWER: Stop Truck one! Stop! Stop Truck One! Stop!
TOWER: JAZZ 646, I see you collided with the vehicle. Just hold the position. I know you can't move. Vehicles are responding to you now.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
HUNT: The pilot and copilot of the Air Canada jet were both killed. Dozens of other people were injured.
Just moments ago, transportation officials provided their first update on the disaster and the unfolding investigation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEAN DUFFY, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: When these incidents happen, you see politics fade away and people work together. And that's why you have people with very different political views coming together, standing together to respond together to an incident like this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, let's get off the sidelines and head into THE ARENA.
CNN's senior crime and justice correspondent Shimon Prokupecz joins us now from LaGuardia airport. He attended that news conference with the transportation secretary. We also heard from the FAA administrator and from others.
Shimon, what more did we learn from these officials?
SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, they weren't saying much. And I think it's striking. I'll tell you something, Kasie. You know, we cover a lot of these press conferences, and this administration doesn't always respect the process, right? It's really interesting to watch Secretary Duffy respect the process here. And he's going to leave it up to the NTSB, which is running this investigation, to speak later and give some information. And I thought that was really interesting here.
And there were a lot of questions about air traffic control. I certainly asked whether or not there was enough staffing in the air traffic control in the tower that night. He wouldn't really get into those details.
Also, one of the things that I found striking was when he opened the press conference and he said that this was sad. And of course, it is sad. And then he also said that it was troubling.
But when I asked him to explain, what he found was troubling here, all he would say was that, you know, it's troubling that a plane collided with a fire truck. So those things are probably the most notable for me right now. Certainly, he is saying and he's calling on congress to fund give them more money so they could hire more air traffic controllers. That's a whole other issue.
And we really don't know yet if any of the staffing levels or what was going on inside the air traffic control at the time inside that tower to really, really make any kind of sort of informed provide any kind of informed information, let's say here without knowing more from, let's say, the NTSB or other officials, there are big questions here about what was going on inside the tower. You know, that air traffic controller desperately, desperately tried to stop that fire from moving once the controller gave the firetruck clearance to move. And then within seconds, within seconds, you can hear the air traffic
controller just realizing what's about to happen and saying, stop, stop, stop. But that didn't work. The plane was coming in at over 100 miles. An hour was coming in for that landing. And then you hear the passengers talk about this, about how they could feel and they could hear the pilots of the plane trying to brake and trying to stop the collision, but they couldn't do anything.
And then the pilots, sadly, would die. And the passengers would have to take matters into their own hands and rescue themselves out of that plane, taking off the emergency doors. You know, we sit in this plane, the planes, and we hear about those announcements about where the emergency doors are and what to do. And it seemed to have worked in this case, the passengers knew what to do.
[16:05:00]
There was a flight attendant who was strapped in her seat and was thrown from the plane. She was thrown from the plane just off of the impact.
And so that left one flight attendant there on that plane. We don't know exactly what that person did, but in hearing the stories from the passengers it's really remarkable here that more people weren't hurt.
And one final note, I was really struck because I was talking to sources also about this. You know, these were young pilots. They're behind the control of a regional jet. We take regional jets all the time, whether from D.C. or some of the other areas that we all travel to. And it's always young pilots usually.
And that's what we have here. And I thought it was notable at least, that the officials here mentioned those pilots to say that how young they were, and they were just really in the beginning of their careers.
HUNT: Yeah, indeed. Just really devastatingly sad. But as you note quite -- quite something that of course, the passengers ultimately were able to figure out how to get off the planes and that we didn't lose more of them.
Shimon, standby for us. We want to bring in more of our experts here.
CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien, CNN's safety analyst, former FAA safety inspector David Soucie. And we're also joined by former vice chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, Bruce Landsberg.
Welcome to all of you. Thank you for being here.
David, I want to start by playing the moment of this crash again, this video that we're just looking at. Can you just tell us what stands out to you about the nature of this collision as our -- as our viewers are able to see here what happened in these early morning hours?
DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Yeah, you can see that the that the truck, the emergency vehicle was coming across that runway. But you'll notice to the angle that it's trying to cross the runway wasn't going directly across. So, to be able to see this airplane coming, they would have had to look back over to the right. The driver -- there's no way that the driver could have seen this airplane coming.
So, you know, I've driven a lot of vehicles on the runways across runways and gotten approvals for this. And as you do, you have to make sure that you're always looking to see what's happening, to second guess what's -- what you're being told.
But in this scenario, they were already of the mindset that they're trying to get across to another emergency across the airport. And so that's where they were focused on. And you can see here that as that as that truck was coming across the runway, it would have been nearly impossible to look all the way back around, not just 90 degrees to the right, but they'd have to look all the way back around behind them to see this aircraft coming.
So, they were relying on -- I'm pretty sure they were relying on exactly what the air traffic controller told them. And when he starts yelling, stop, stop, stop! They were already on the runway by that time. So, whether they stop or whether they were trying to outrun the jet coming in or not, it's hard to tell. There's too little information at this point, but as an investigator, that's what I would be looking for to see if there was some system change that can be done as to how they crossed that runway, whether it was 90 degrees or not.
HUNT: Huh. Really interesting point. So, Miles, the FAA administrator, says that the visibility at the time of this collision was about four miles. I mean, what does that tell you about how that may or may not have impacted things? And how quickly is visibility ruled in or out as the cause of something like this?
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: It's one of the first things you look at, Kasie, the weather situation, the visibility. In this case, it was what we call visual flight rules, VFR, not a problem whatsoever. This is, you know, when you look at it specifically and listen to that, really difficult to listen to recording sounds like an individual's mistake.
But what I would suggest to you is this is a systemic failure. Each and every day in this country, we rely on air traffic controllers to perform heroically just to get everybody to and from their destination safely, and relying on heroism is not a prescription for safety. They have to work in spite of a system, a system that's really set up for failure for them.
The layers, the redundancy, the backups that they need to do their job, and for that matter, just the personnel so that they're not working mandatory overtime are not there. We have reached the actual end of our rope and the layers of redundancy and the safety of our system, and it's time to get very serious about that. How many times do we have to go through this? A year and a half ago, or a year or so ago, it was Washington National Airport and a mid-air collision. It's high time that there was a systemic rethink of how this works and maybe reducing the tempo at these airports. HUNT: Bruce Landsberg, I mean, to that very point, the transportation
secretary, Sean Duffy, he dodged at least two questions about control tower staffing at the time of the incident. And of course, it's worth noting that the controllers work for the FAA, falls under the Department of Transportation.
I mean, Duffy did say that the rumor there was only one staffer in the tower at the time was inaccurate.
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But again, he wouldn't then answer questions about it. What does that say to you?
BRUCE LANDSBERG, FORMER NTSB VICE CHAIR: Well, it follows the time honored tradition of Washington that if you don't want to answer the question, you -- you don't. I mean, when you look at this thing, it's in its entirety, we're trying to get into the whys and so forth early on. But I think it becomes pretty obvious from the recording that the controller had possibly lost situational awareness, if you will.
And he first cleared that firetruck across the runway and then attempted to rescind that clearance. And it sounds, from what I can tell, the same person doing it. Well, that's something of an unusual configuration because normally you will have two people in the tower, one, managing ground control and the other managing the runways. And they have to kind of coordinate in that area.
The other distracting factor is that there was another emergency going on simultaneously, which was with the United aircraft that had aborted a takeoff and reported fumes in the runway. So, people are now rather than their normal sense of, of really looking and taking time to check things, they're now in a hurry to try to address this other emergency.
And as it's been said many, many times, we do not multitask well. So, I think there are lots of questions. We don't have any answers at this point. Anything that we say at this point is purely preliminary and speculative. And the NTSB will be looking at what the staffing was, what the fatigue of that controller was, what level of distractions.
And looking at the effect that the previous emergency may have had on their decisions.
HUNT: Right. Well, and David, of course, to this point that, you know, were still speculating, we have heard the audio from the tower, but we're still waiting on the black box from the plane.
What clues might investigators lie on? Need benefit from when it comes to that audio?
SOUCIE: Well, when it comes to investigation, at this point, it's all about the sequence of events and how it synchronizes with the other events. So, you have to get information from the truck itself as to when it was moving and where it was going. You have to get the overlay as to when he said stop versus not. Could be that he was already on the runway when it happened, or maybe he didn't get the message. So, to break this down into pieces, the investigators are going to
have to know exactly what happened when. And again, like you mentioned, the flight data recorder and the voice recorder and the airplane is going to add those clues to it.
But again, at this point, as miles said, and also was said that they'd be looking at systemic failures as well, pointing a finger at one person and saying this was that person's fault is not the way that we do safety any longer. And so, we need to look at why the decisions were made when they were made at that time.
And so, investigators will have a lot to deal with here. But again, like you mentioned, we'll need to have more information from the aircraft before we could proceed with that investigation.
HUNT: Fair enough.
So, Shimon, I -- you're at LaGuardia. The airport just reopened a couple hours ago. And what are you hearing from travelers? Of course, there's a lot else going on that we're also going to talk about here. But this kind of thing, as the mayor noted, hasn't happened in a number of decades at LaGuardia.
PROKUPECZ: Yeah, I -- most of the passengers here, there were some who wound up spending the night here and then some who started. They were they found out what happened here, and they didn't come to the airport. So the airport was empty for most of the day.
But you could start to see people streaming in here in the afternoon, around noon and 1:00. You know, and I think people are really shocked by what happened here. You could just feel it, you know, people are sad over what happened here and they totally understand but, you know, they have a lot of frustration here right now because traveling is just such a pain. And we did see the TSA lines here start to build as the afternoon went on.
So there's a lot of frustration, but I can tell many of the New Yorkers who are traveling here, you know, their hearts go out to these families and to these officials and over what happened here.
HUNT: As do ours.
Shimon Prokupecz, Miles O'Brien, David Soucie, Bruce Landsberg -- thank you all very much for bringing your expertise to us today.
Coming up next here in THE ARENA, the standoff over DHS funding reaching a new level today. The White House is deploying ICE agents to more than a dozen airports and promising more are on the way. Administration officials say their job is to help with massive security lines as staffing shortages pile up and TSA workers continue to go without paychecks.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There are so many staff shortages, we can't really ensure that everybody's, you know, where they need to be or doing what they are supposed to if they're handling all these different things. One person is doing the job of like five people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AARON BARKER, TSA WORKER: Just throw them on the checkpoint like that, I think that that is a recipe for disaster. It's going to create chaos.
GEORGE BOREK, TSA UNION LEADER: I guess the question that now has to be asked, is this going to be the new norm? You know, is every weekend, you know, going to be a five, six hour wait at the checkpoints to get -- get on your flight, if you can even make it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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HUNT: TSA workers reacting to airport security lines that are growing longer by the day, as more and more employees call out after weeks without pay. Right now, ICE officers are at airports across the country that at the direction of President Trump, they've gone to some of the busiest in the country, including Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, JFK, Newark, LaGuardia.
At this point, though, it's unclear just what these immigration officials are doing and how it will help cut down on lines at security.
CNN's Ed Lavandera is at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. It is, of course, one of the busiest airports in the country.
And, Ed, the wait time is over your shoulder there. I understand you have not yet seen the level that it just hit.
ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: No. We have not seen this number. I'll get to that in a second. But I want to give you a sense of what this line is like, because it is simply the craziest line I have ever seen in all my years of traveling in this country.
This is the main lobby of terminal E, way back there in the distance, there's an escalator that takes you down to the arrival level, where there are hundreds of yards of lines that snake back and forth, and people come through there, but that's not where the line starts. You actually have to go another floor down into the subterranean level where -- between the yard there as well. Check, check, check --
HUNT: Just lost Ed Lavandera's mike there. So, we are going to work on trying to get that back. As you can see, he's trying to tell us that it's 270 minutes. Okay? You can do that math in your head, it's like four-plus hours I think.
All right. My panels here in THE ARENA. Former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, Marc Short; the co-host of "The Interview" podcast from "The New York Times" and a CNN contributor, Lulu Garcia- Navarro; Democratic congressman from Virginia, member of the Oversight Committee, Suhas Subramanyam; CNN political commentator and Republican strategist Brad Todd.
We also have CNN senior law enforcement analyst, the former deputy director at the FBI, Andrew McCabe, is with us as well.
So, does anyone have to fly? Has everybody -- I'm like thinking about canceling my flight for spring break. Like this is a total disaster. And I mean, who's going to take the blame for this, Marc? Because I mean, it does seem like there was a solution on the table to fund everything except for ICE, which is, of course, the reason why DHS is not funded, but somehow the president doesn't seem interested.
MARC SHORT, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF TO VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: Well, I don't know if we're going to start breaking up departments deciding we're going to now instead of just instead of 12 appropriations bills, we're going to instead take each one and break up each department, decide what we're going to fund and what we're not going to fund.
HUNT: I mean, the idea that we're funding anything by any sort of normal process at all, ever, that seems to have failed.
SHORT: Congress has failed for decades now, actually passing appropriations bills on time. But the thought that you're actually not funding department of homeland security when were at war with Iran, I think is particularly alarming. I know our focus is on the lines of TSA, but I think there's a national security component, too. And I think that -- I do think that Democrats are clearly the ones who stopped it. But I think the average American looks at it and just blames Congress, in general.
HUNT: We had, Congressman, I will say there was a sound bite. We played late last week of a woman who looked at the camera and said, Donald Trump, president Trump, like, fix this problem because, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of blame to go around, but bring us up to speed on kind of where these negotiations are in congress and like why we're here.
REP. SUHAS SUBRAMANYAM (D-VA): Well, he has two options. The president does. We can fund everything but border security and CBP, and we can get TSA and FEMA funded, and then we can work on the other stuff, or we can fund the whole thing and just agree to some of the reasonable common sense changes we want to make on ICE and ICE enforcement.
So, he has two pretty good options on the table. Even Republicans are asking him if he'll move forward with something. And it's really in his -- in his court. And the reality is, you know, what could you possibly do to make things more chaotic in an airport? Why don't we throw ICE in there? Because what are they going to do? They don't have any experience actually screening people. There's going to be walking around looking intimidating and creating more confusion. So, it makes no sense what he's trying to do right now. And he's alone
in this. I think Republicans even on the Hill are fed up with this and want this to move forward.
HUNT: Brad, do you think -- do you agree? You talked to a lot of Republicans on the Hill. Are they over it?
BRAD TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I -- Republicans want to fund the Department of Homeland Security, all of it. And then they'll be willing to listen to Democrats concerns on ICE afterward. We were told in the 2013 shutdown by Democrats that it was completely improper to hold government hostage, even when agency hostage during.
HUNT: The Republicans have been talking, though, about making changes to ICE in this process.
TODD: For sure, Greg Bovino is gone. Kristi Noem is gone. They're out of Minneapolis, out of the streets. Minneapolis Democrats have gotten a lot of what they wanted. And some of those things were good, by the way.
But now they need to be able to take that victory and then come and redress the rest of their complaints in the authorization process.
HUNT: Lulu?
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I mean, yeah, you know, lovely world where there's rainbows and sunshine and unicorns, where people do their job. And yet that isn't the world we live in.
And so, you know, what Democrats feel having been burned several times in this process is that, yeah, well take it under advisement, doesn't actually cut it because in fact, when that gets to that point, what Republicans who let us remind everyone, control the presidency, the Senate and the House don't actually commit to that. And so, they feel like they've got the leverage right now.
Now, one could argue --
(CROSSTALK)
SHORT: -- you need 60 votes in the Senate to get a bill passed.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, yeah. I do know that.
TODD: You guys have the leverage. It takes --
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I understand that. But at the end of the day, you know, both are going to have to come together. And you know, of course, when you talk to Americans that are dealing with this, they don't care. They just want this to be fixed.
The problem here is that the incentives for both sides aren't there. Democrats feel that at this point, you know, it just adds into the general sense of chaos. Youve got to warn Iran gas prices are going high. So, let's -- so the president is going to carry the water for this. And Republicans feel that it's Democratic obstruction and that essentially, they're going to cave like they have in the previous shutdowns. And so, what we're seeing is this carrying on and on and on.
SUBRAMANYAM: But President Trump can end the shutdown tomorrow by just funding TSA.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So, can Democrats, though.
(CROSSTALK)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: If we end up with the same argument --
(CROSSTALK)
SHORT: The same fallback position, the Democrats will fund everything but border security.
TODD; Right.
SHORT: I mean --
SUBRAMANYAM: We'll fund border security if you stop letting ICE shoot American citizens, right? Come on.
SHORT: You said these are two positions you had. One is you fund everything but border security. That's where you started this conversation. And that's where Democrats --
SUBRAMANYAM: Well, he's got another option.
SHORT: To go right back for Democrats --
SUBRAMANYAM: -- on ICE enforcement. The American people want that, too.
TODD: There's a great chance for that in the authorizations this coming spring.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Can I just say one more thing though? When you say let's not fund border security, that's not true.
TODD: That was his words.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But that's not -- but that's not true. As you know, the Big, Beautiful Bill passed a lot of money for border security. And they -- and they are happily spending away. So this is not --
HUNT: And CBP are actually --
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Very different. So this isn't fair. That is not.
HUNT: All right. I want to bring Andy McCabe into this conversation because, sir, you know, the unfortunate reality of this, of course, and we've been focusing on TSA lines. Okay, why are we all, as Americans going through these TSA screenings? Why are we doing all of this?
I mean, it's because we had major security issues September 11th. I mean, obviously, we always had security for airplanes, but the bottom line is, and Mark raised this, that there are threats that we are we don't know about, right. The Homeland Security Department is, in theory, supposed to be out there protecting the homeland from those threats. And it is not operating at peak capacity because it's not currently funded.
When you think about and, you know, you know more about the threat landscape than all of us, certainly more than I'm sure you can say on television. But what worries you the most about where we are as this drags on and on?
ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Yeah, sure. Casey. Well, first of all, absolutely. We are in an elevated threat environment right now. We are at war with Iran, one of the probably the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the last 50 years. We are concerned about how those threats are going to manifest here in the homeland. This is not the time to start doing airline security worse.
And to be clear, these TSA agents, they are law enforcement officers, but the job they do is very, very specific. The technology they work with -- this is like very, very detailed, very, sensitive instruments that have to be particularly calibrated and the way they work is they look for weapons and explosives in our luggage, in our carry-on bags, and they produce an image of what is contained in those bags.
And our TSA officers, because they've been trained for months and months and months and have been doing this for many years, are able to look at those images as they pass by quickly on a screen and determine what is dangerous and what is not. This is not the kind of thing you want an ICE agent who has never looked at that screen before, to suddenly be responsible for doing. They cannot perform this function.
So -- and this is where the lines are created, right? You don't have enough TSA officers, which means you don't have enough lanes going through the security screening. And therein lies the lies, the delay.
So the chances that the ICE and CBP and DHS agents who are being sent out to these airports on 24 hours notice, chances that theyre going to be able to ameliorate the situation are zero, while at the same time we we run consistently higher risk in terms of, you know, jeopardizing potentially the lives of hundreds of people as they finally get on and off of airliners around the country. This is a bad situation going nowhere but worse.
HUNT: Yeah. On that cheerful note, thank you very much, sir. Always appreciate your time.
And we also want to remind everyone you can see much more of Andrew McCabe in the CNN original series "Stand Off: The FBI, Power and paranoia". It's sunday nights right here on CNN. It's absolutely worth watching.
All right. Coming up next here in THE ARENA, the latest he said/they said in Iran,
[16:30:03]
President Trump claiming new productive talks with Tehran in an effort to end the war. But Iran denies that a conversation even happened.
We're going to talk with Senator Chris Van Hollen, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, about that DHS standoff, as Democrats say that the border czar turned down their latest request for a meeting.
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SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): We will fund TSA, just say yes. But instead of saying yes, what is he doing? Hes bringing that reckless agency that he has said is needed in our city. Suddenly, theyre going to come here and do TSA jobs. Every American knows that's absurd.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The price of oil will drop like a rock as soon as a deal is done. I guess it already is today. No, we have a very serious chance of making a deal. That doesn't guarantee anything. Im not guaranteeing anything.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Oil prices dropping today, stocks rallying amid signs the war with Iran could be coming to an end. The Dow ending the trading day up more than 630 points as oil dropped below $100 a barrel.
The market moves, all coming off an announcement by President Donald Trump that the United States will pause attacks on Irans energy infrastructure for the next five days, while negotiations play out.
But it is unclear who is talking to whom. The speaker of the Iranian parliament tweeted this, quote, "No negotiations have been held with the U.S. And fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets," end quote. President Trump, meanwhile, claims that not only are talks ongoing, but theyre going so well that Iran has agreed not to pursue a nuclear weapon.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We are now having really good discussions. They started last night a little bit the night before that, and I think they've -- you know, I think they're very good. They want to -- they want peace. They've agreed they will not have a nuclear weapon, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But we'll see. You have to get it done.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HUNT: I see. Do you see? Joining us now in THE ARENA, Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. He is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
And, Senator, let me just put that to you. Who do you think is telling the truth?
SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD): Kasie, unfortunately, we've learned that Donald Trump has been lying to the American people from the start, and he keeps lying to the American people, which is never a good thing that the president --
(CROSSTALK)
HUNT: So, you believe the Iranian officials over the president of the United States?
VAN HOLLEN: I believe that based on all the information that's available and Donald Trump's track record of lying, including the big lie, which he told the American people during the campaign that he was going to keep us out of war in the Middle East. He broke that promise. He lied about Iran being an imminent threat to the United States. And Israel launched this strike. He lied about Iran being on the precipice of getting a nuclear weapon. We know that because Tulsi Gabbard just testified just the opposite recently.
And yes, we know he's lying when he says that the Iranians are talking with us and theyre about to give Donald Trump everything he wants. Yes, that's a lie.
HUNT: Fair enough. What is, in your view, the ideal outcome here?
VAN HOLLEN: Well, the ideal outcome is that Donald Trump should end the war, that he should never have started in the first place. I mean, this is making us less safe. We've already lost 13 American service members, hundreds wounded, over 2,000 civilians killed in the region, including over 100 Iranian schoolgirls. Its costing American taxpayers about $2 billion every day. And oil and gas prices are going up. And they will keep going up unless the president decides to stop the war that he started.
This is an illegal war. It's a war of choice. And he and Prime Minister Netanyahu should not have launched it. And certainly Donald Trump should not have committed the United States to this war.
HUNT: You say it's an illegal war. You also posted this today, "Let's be clear: Targeting civilian infrastructure is a war crime under international law. The world has called out Russia for doing exactly this in Ukraine. If Trump and Hegseth follow Putin's playbook, they must be held accountable."
Now, you were talking about targeting Iran's power grid there.
So, if the president goes through with this, what would the appropriate sanction be? VAN HOLLEN: Well, that would be a war crime if the president just goes
and targets Iran's infrastructure, civilian infrastructure. They're very narrow circumstances where a country can target infrastructure for military purposes. But the president has said here is unless you open the Strait of Hormuz, we're going to blow up all your civilian infrastructure, which is clearly a violation of international law. And so, the president should be held accountable in international tribunals or in the United States.
But when people commit war crimes, we need systems to hold people accountable. Hopefully, the president will back off of this idea. He obviously is backed off of it for five days. Hopefully, he'll put it behind him.
HUNT: You say that we could have a way to hold him accountable here in the U.S. I mean, what would you suggest that should be in the event he were to go through with it?
[16:40:02]
VAN HOLLEN: Well, there are ways that people can bring cases. You know, against individuals in the United States who have committed war crimes, obviously, while the president is in the White House, this Supreme Court has made it much more difficult to hold the president accountable. But when he leaves office, he could still be vulnerable to accountability through the courts. And obviously, theyre international tribunals as well.
But again, hopefully, Kasie, we won't get to that point. We should also have an investigation into exactly what happened when a U.S. Tomahawk missile killed over 100 Iranian schoolgirls. I mean, we have a secretary of defense who said he wanted to get rid of what he said were stupid rules of engagement. Those rules of engagement are designed to uphold international law and prevent civilian harm.
HUNT: Senator, while I have you, I also want to touch on the ongoing DHS funding issue. Of course, theyre not currently funded. The department is shut down. This is leading to we were just talking about long lines at airports. The call out rate at BWI Baltimore-Washington is 38 percent of TSA agents are calling out sick. And the president has now said h hes going to send ICE to some airports to try to support a TSA employees.
What will it take for Senate Democrats to get to the point where theyre willing to sign off on changes to ICE policy and fix this problem?
VAN HOLLEN: Well, Kasie, the fastest way to fix this and we could do it today would be just to vote to fund TSA, make sure all those TSA agents get paid on time, and we should do the same thing for FEMA and the coast guard. We could get it done tonight as we then continue negotiations to try to rein in a lawless ICE operation, which of course, is responsible for the killing of two American citizens in minneapolis.
And there are important changes we need to make to ICE. But obviously, ICE has enough money for now. So does customs and border patrol. I mean, after all, Donald Trump is deploying ICE to airports. Obviously, theyre getting paid. Why dont we just bring TSA back and pay them and do it now?
HUNT: All right. Senator Chris Van Hollen, thanks very much for spending some time with us today, sir. I appreciate it.
VAN HOLLEN: Good to be with you. Thanks.
HUNT: All right. Still to come here in THE ARENA, President Trump says the U.S. and Iran held, quote, "very good talks", talks that could bring the war to an end. But big questions remain over what the president will do next. We'll discuss.
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[16:47:13]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: They're not going to have a nuclear weapon. That's number one. That's number one, two and three. They will never have a nuclear weapon. They've agreed. We're doing a five-day period. We'll see how that goes.
And if it goes well, we're going to end up with settling this. Otherwise, we'll just keep bombing our little hearts out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: An optimistic President Trump earlier today telling CNN, the U.S. and Iran had reached 15 points of agreement after what Trump described as, quote, productive talks with Tehran over the last few days, negotiations that Tehran is denying entirely.
Trump also saying any deal with Iran would need to give the U.S. possession of Iran's highly enriched uranium.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We want the nuclear dust. We're going to want that, and I think we're going to get that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Joining the conversation. CNN global affairs analyst, former Middle East and North Africa coordinator at the National Security Council, Ambassador Brett McGurk.
Sir, I just want to pick up on what the president said there where he said, well, we're just going to keep bombing our little hearts out. I was, you know -- is this typically how presidents talk about an operation of the magnitude that we are seeing in Iran?
BRETT MCGURK, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: No, Kasie, we've never had a like a commander in chief who you just, you constantly hear the stream of consciousness going like day by day. So no, we're in very uncharted, unprecedented territory. And the way the war is being described, I think fits within that category.
HUNT: And, sir, who do you believe? I mean, I was just asking Senator Van Hollen this question. We're getting totally conflicting accounts from the president of the United States and the Iranians. Do you believe what Iran is saying or what the U.S. president is saying?
MCGURK: So, nothings ever totally black and white? I think what happened here is you had brinksmanship over the weekend. You had President Trump saying, if the Strait of Hormuz is not open by in 48 hours, were going to hit all energy infrastructure. And Iran said if that happens, were going to turn the lights off across the Gulf in the Middle East.
So you've had a lot of messaging going on from Turkey and Pakistan, as I understand it. Backchannel unclear. So, that's been happening.
So maybe there's a diplomatic opening that we can take advantage of through the pakistanis or others. But, Kasie, I kind of go back on something like this. Do you have competing hypotheses to Occam's razor? What is -- what -- what would require the limited number of assumptions to be true?
And I think here, this is the president buying some time. So calming the economic situation in markets and energy prices because that buys you time. And that is the one tool the Iranians are playing and buying some time to get forces into place.
[16:50:00]
We still have forces moving as you try over this five-day period to see if diplomacy has a chance. I hope it does. I hope an Iranian can come up and say, im speaking now for whats left of our system, and were prepared to sit down and do a deal. I'm just -- I don't see that happening.
So, I suspect by the end of this week, the military campaign is continuing. We're not hitting energy sites, but were hitting everything else that was on the target list. So that will continue through the week. And by the weekend, we might be kind of back to where we started with, you know, a marine expeditionary units moving in and other things that give the president a number of options.
So, I don't see this ending anytime soon, Kasie. I'm just trying to analyze it as best I can in a neutral way here.
HUNT: Yeah. Marc Short, you've obviously been in the highest level rooms with this president during the first term when you worked for his then vice president.
What do you get the sense about where he is politically on when this needs to end? Because, I mean, as ambassador points out, I mean, gas prices are a serious political problem for this administration.
SHORT: I think Brett's analysis is pretty spot on. I mean, I think that the president -- and I say this as somebody who I think -- I support the president's actions here against Iran, but I -- in a lot of ways, it reminds me of roughly a year ago, liberation day, where the president bought himself time because he saw what was happening, not just equity markets, but the bond markets.
And I think you saw that since Friday with his statement of of we're going to give him 48 hours. And you saw the reaction, the markets and then giving himself five more days I think was really a reaction. What was happening, but he's not basically saying were necessarily pulling off. He's giving himself five days and see if any negotiations happen.
HUNT: Yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do you know what frustrates me so much? Im so appreciative of everyones concern about the bond markets and the, you know, the equity markets. But you know who's not getting their money back, all of us who pay gas at the pump. That is not actually going to solve all the money that goes out of our pockets for the past weeks while this is all playing out.
And, you know, at the end of the day, you want to have a president that you can trust. And it is astonishing to me that no one has been able to say, yeah, Donald Trump is telling the truth. No ones been able to say that.
SHORT: If Democrats are really concerned about the cost of gas, they would have allowed more exploration in America. That's never been your priority until now.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, first of all, I'm not a Democrat. I'm simply saying --
HUNT: Let's give it to the Democrats.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Let's give it to the Democrats.
SUBRAMANYAM: Look, if the presidents asking us for $200 billion more dollars, that's money we could have spent on health care. That's money we could have spent on lowering costs. And it's not about production in the United States. That's not the problem, because global oil markets are all related. And so the price of oil goes up even when theres a disruption in the Middle East here in the United States.
So, you're not fixing the problem there. A great way to fix the problem is actually try to address whats going on with the American people here. Instead of spending all this money and time abroad and fighting this war that seems to have no end at this point.
TODD: Higher supply would lead to lower costs. That's -- and Democrats did everything they could to constrain the supply of oil. They said it was necessary. In fact, Jennifer Granholm, secretary of energy, said it was necessary. But I think the politics of this is that sooner is better than later for the president and for Republicans.
If you look at survey research, Republicans and many center right independents really support whats happening in Iran, but they want it to be fast. When he said he wasnt for forever wars. War is not the key word. It's forever.
And so that's the way people in his coalition understood it. We're not going to get mired down in long years, long conflicts, but they do want to project American power abroad. He's going to keep Republicans in congress so long as it looks like this is a fairly fast action to put America ahead.
HUNT: Brett McGurk, is it your sense that we were essentially taken by surprise in terms of the Iranian regime's ability to dig in and clearly kind of prepare and be willing to do this for a long period of time with their drones and with what theyve done with the Strait of Hormuz.
I mean, if you read, you know, if you read "The New York Times", you might have questions about whether the Israelis were right about the willingness of the Iranian people to step in to avoid that the Israelis and the U.S. thought they could create.
MCGURK: Yeah. Kasie, I've wargame the Iran war plan a number of times across multiple administrations. And I think what the administration said earlier here, four to six weeks military campaign was about right. If youre going to degrade Iran's defense industrial base, the missiles, the drones, everything, it takes a long it takes four to six weeks.
The one thing that usually did not happen in those war games was on night -- on day one of the campaign, you took out the entire Iranian leadership. That kind of brought this to a whole new level. And therefore, the fact that Iran's turning everything on, I think, is not particularly surprising. But we're only about halfway through from where it was originally planned.
HUNT: All right. Fair enough. Brett McGurk, thank you very much. Always appreciate you. Do come back soon.
We'll be right back.
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[16:59:40]
HUNT: All right. Before we go, one point of clarification from a segment that aired on THE ARENA saturday about online prediction markets. In the segment, we suggested you can bet on anything on online prediction markets such as Kalshi, including when U.S. forces will enter Iran. To clarify, while this is a subject matter in other prediction markets, it is not on kalshi, which is regulated by the CFTC. Kalshi has a partnership with CNN.
All right. Thanks very much to my panel. Really appreciate you all being here. Thanks to you at home for watching as well.
You can now stream THE ARENA live, catch up whenever you want in the CNN app. Just scan the QR code below. You can also catch up by listening to THE ARENAs podcast. You can follow the show on X and Instagram @TheArenaCNN. But don't go anywhere. "THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER" starts right now.
