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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
Housing Official Who Targeted Trump Enemies Named Intel Chief; Now: High Stakes Primaries Across Six States; Blanche Testifies Amid Questions Over $1.8 Billion Fund. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired June 02, 2026 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Perhaps getting sick from the water that they were forced to drink, just that underground tunnel water.
[16:00:07]
But fortunately, it seems like they're okay. Still hoping the best for their two friends.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Yeah, hoping.
THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT starts right now.
(MUSIC)
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Hi, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to THE ARENA. It's great to have you with us on this Tuesday.
Right now, new tests for the White House mantra of trust in Trump. Any minute the acting Attorney General Todd Blanche will testify before House lawmakers. This testimony unfolding exactly 24 hours after the DOJ said it was backing off the president's controversial $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund.
The question today, is the fund actually dead or is it just on hold?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), HOUSE SPEAKER: I believe that it is off the table for consideration.
REPORTER: Did you tell them to drop it?
JOHNSON: Well, I told them that it was a difficult prospect right now given our vote tallies and -- look, I understand the intent behind it was a very noble thing.
REPORTER: Speaker Johnson just told us it's his understanding that this fund is off the table. Is that your understanding as well after speaking with the acting attorney general?
SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD), MAJORITY LEADER: True.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HUTN: The House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune both saying this afternoon that they've got assurances from the president and the acting A.G. that the fund is off the table. Notably, though, there's been no official comment or definitive statement from either the president himself or from the White House.
All right. Let's get off the sidelines and head into THE ARENA. My panel is here.
CNN contributor, host of "The New York Times'" "The Interview," Lulu Garcia-Navarro; CNN political commentator Jonah Goldberg; former DNC communications director Mo Elleithee, and Republican strategist, former RNC communications director Doug Heye.
Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for being here.
Jonah Goldberg, I mean, do you trust that this fund is actually dead? I mean, here's what -- let me actually play for you what Thom Tillis had to say today about this because it's not clear to me that Tillis, for example, trusts the president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): I think the mere fact that it would have been a legal action that the administration could take suggests that we should make sure that it cannot be done by future president.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: And here was Ted Cruz -- this was a couple weeks ago back on May 22nd. Watch.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): I got to tell you, the Republican senators were pissed. People were -- the entire meeting, they were screaming at the acting attorney general. I don't know exactly what will happen, but we will see the administration announcing at a minimum a modification of this, because if they don't, they've got a full-on revolt in the Senate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: What do you think the story is?
JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: So I think one of the most underreported or misreported things about the administration is they actually don't have that big of a winning percentage at the Supreme Court. They only have a winning percentage among the cases they decide to appeal to the Supreme Court when they think they're going to lose they chicken out and don't do anything and it looked like this was going to run into big legal trouble. And Todd Blanche didn't want to go ahead with it.
I think the more interesting question in some ways about this is what the Senate will do or say about the immunity for all of his tax returns and the tax returns of his family going forward. They're talking about getting rid of putting a halt to the fund and I think it's Tills is absolutely right -- to paraphrase Miracle Max -- that worry that this is only mostly dead rather than entirely dead.
But that no one's talking about this absolutely bonkers, you know, carve out from the acting attorney general that says no one in the Trump Organization can be --
HUNT: Why is that? Why is no one talking about it?
GOLDBERG: I don't --
HUNT: They don't seem to have as big of a problem with it?
GOLDBERG: I think it's a bigger -- the bigger headline is the fund and that's what they think they've stopped, but we need more clarity. I think Congress -- we haven't seen the enormous amount of courage from the Congress, but we've seen less cowardice and that should be applauded.
HUNT: Okay. We also heard from Enrique Tarrio who, of course, you may remember was convicted of seditious conspiracy around the planning of January 6th. This is what he said on Monday this week about the fund.
Sorry. It's a full screen here.
"I believe that even if this fund is killed in courts or at a congressional level, the president will find a way. There are other options."
Lulu, do you think the president is going to find a way? Because, again, the big question, the reason why this fund is such a problem is because they refuse to rule out that it's going to help people who planned, you know, the cop beating at the Capitol.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: And not only that, Enrique Tarrio is one of the most kind of vilified people in the pantheon of January 6th and just generally speaking in terms of his own views on many, many controversial issues.
Listen, this is toxic for the president at a time when he is facing a lot of challenges -- the war with Iran, the affordability crisis, which is now a full-blown crisis.
[16:05:10]
I was just in California, and let me tell you six to seven bucks for a gallon of gas is not pretty. You know, it just seems like things are mounting up one after the other. And it's interesting to me that this is the Hill that Republicans are willing to die on, because there's just like a lot of other things that they could be focusing on.
But this I think for them is an easy one. Why? Because it's illegal it's patently self-dealing and I think ultimately they will prevail.
HUNT: Doug why do you think this is the one for them? DOUG HEYE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Look, Trump -- Trump said something
a week or two ago that was 100 percent true, when he said I don't care about the midterms and sure he couched it in the terms of -- you know, what he was trying to do in Iran and so forth. But everybody who's on the ballot heard that and said, "My God, he's right."
And at certain point, there's not going to be a President Donald Trump and maybe we can start to push back on capital T Trumpy things. Republicans have always pushed back on administration priorities that they may not have disagreed with. Marco Rubio, super tough on in the first administration on China, for instance. Lindsey Graham, really tough on Trump on a Tuesday as long as he can get to a good place to be at the tea time on Saturday.
They will push back but not on the capital T Trumpy things. This is different because their names are on the ballot. They're in the tough spot because of where Trump's approval is. And so, they've got to push back here to tell their constituents, we want to focus on the things that are important to you while Donald Trump has press conferences in front of ballrooms and things like that.
Voters are saying, we don't care. We don't need ballrooms. We don't need weaponization funds. We need lettuce to be affordable. We need gas to be --
GOLDBERG: They're also pissed about Cornyn, right?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Right.
GOLDBERG: There also -- on a real just what -- he was a popular guy he raised a lot of money for her colleagues, and it was seen the endorsement of Paxton was seen as a deliberate spiteful act.
MO ELLEITHEE, FORMER DNC COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Yeah. I mean --
GOLDBERG: Senate Republicans.
ELLEITHEE: This hit right at the same time as when Trump knocked out two of their colleagues.
GOLDBERG: Right.
ELLEITHEE: Right? Both in Louisiana and in Texas. So, they're raw to begin with.
Add to that and I think Doug's absolutely right here -- I mean, you listen to the message that is crystallizing from Democrats right now for the midterms, it is the double whammy of affordability and corruption, right?
That prices are too high. He promised he was going to bring them down. Instead, he's helping himself and helping all of his cronies.
This episode -- like the ads write themselves. It's the perfect crystallization of them. HEYE: And, by the way, that's the ad that has just come out in North Carolina for Roy Cooper. I was in the state over the weekend. Democrats are feeling really good about not their chances right now but more than that, and Republicans are caught flat-footed. Why? Because Trump is not allowing Republicans to focus on what they need to focus on and that's prices first and foremost.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Because Trump wants everyone to focus on personal loyalty for him and he is now in a position where we are moving out of the primaries where he can exercise a lot of control and we're moving into the general where he is now a big fat anchor on his party.
HUNT: All right. So while we wait for the acting attorney general to figure out exactly what's going on, the president is also testing his relationship with Republicans on the Hill, with Senate Republicans specifically, with another controversial decision. He picked a housing official to be acting director of national intelligence. Bill Pulte, most widely known for playing a leading role in the president's retribution campaign in his role at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and he's pushed the DOJ to investigate people like the New York A.G., Letitia James, Senator Adam Schiff, the Fulton County D.A. Fanni Willis, among others.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Pulte's experience in the housing agencies was only to weaponize them and politicize them. That's not what we should be looking for in a DNI.
SEN. PETER WELCH (D-VT): You're putting in a person whose qualification is that he's blindly loyal to Trump.
TILLIS: I don't know of any national security experience he has. So I'll be looking at that first and foremost.
SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): I see no -- no evidence of any qualifications for that job.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: The aforementioned John Cornyn seen there.
The Senate Majority Leader John Thune also tells our team the country doesn't need a, quote, "weaponized" DNI.
And the top Democrat on the House on the Senate Intelligence Committee has this warning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MARK WARREN (D-VA): Mr. Pulte has absolutely no intelligence background. He has no national security background. The law was written to prevent this kind of appointment. What he does have is a record manipulating public information even as the housing zone to try to pursue attacks against President Trump's enemies. So the idea that President Trump picked this guy, I fear, to use all
the information in the intelligence agencies to potentially go after Trump opponents, or the law says he can stay for six months, and six months conveniently takes him through the election. Our intelligence work has always, always been bipartisan. Are we going to finally hit the gag reflex? I hope not.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Joining our panel conversation now is CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst, John Miller, who, of course, it's worth noting, previously worked for the director of national intelligence.
John, thanks for being here.
What's your reaction to the announcement that Pulte was going to be put into this job, and what do you think the fallout's going to be?
JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, I mean, Pulte is known for two or three things, right? Expertise in housing, expertise in finance, and a talent for being the president's number one attack dog when it comes to going after critics, and even finding a way to do that from the housing job, which doesn't necessarily lend itself to it, but he's been very adaptive that way.
So the reaction is, if you take a housing guy and you put him into the intelligence, he's not there for his intelligence experience, but he's probably there for the intelligence. And people are very concerned that if you weaponize the intelligence community, the way many people accuse this administration of weaponizing the Justice Department, now you have a whole separate arsenal of ways to misuse classified information.
HUNT: John, do you have a sense of what the possibilities are for somebody like this? I mean, considering what we saw him do with the information that was accessible to him in the role that he has now, what information he might have and how it might be used?
MILLER: You know, that's a really interesting question, because the DNI doesn't hire and fire the other directors. He's not in charge or she's not in charge of their budgets, but they do have access to almost all of their intelligence. And one of the things that could come from this is, especially as you go through the midterms, the ability to cherry pick certain pieces of information and say there either was election interference if they don't like the outcome or there wasn't if they do like the outcome.
And frankly, the Trump administration has gone to some trouble to dismantle the verification infrastructure to prove whether or not a claim like that is true or not by weakening CISA, the infrastructure protection people at DHS who watch the computers, getting rid of the foreign influence fusion cell at the DNI, weakening and displacing the foreign intelligence, counterintelligence squads in the FBI.
So it gives somebody an opportunity to have access to all kinds of secrets and not much way to check out any particular claim they might make.
HUNT: Jonah Goldberg, the -- we played a little bit from Mark Warner, the top Democrat, number two on the Senate Intelligence Committee, notably the vice chairman, the way that committee is set up. It is supposed to be, as he says, bipartisan.
He wrote an op-ed a couple months ago in "The New York Times", and if you talk to him privately, he is sounding the alarm about the possibility that there may be a push to declare an emergency around the midterm elections and that it might involve some of the infrastructure that the DNI might have control over. How seriously do you take that kind of thing?
GOLDBERG: Well, look, I mean, given that there is absolutely no credible argument for why you would make this appointment, it does make you wonder why this appointment, right?
I mean, Chelsea Gabbard did meddle with, remember, the counting of ballots in Georgia.
HUNT: Well, she was in Fulton County when the FBI seized ballots.
GOLDBERG: Right, well, she was at the scene, I should say, right. And one of the things Trump likes to do is he just wants the press release. He wants the headlines. He says, you know, he tells, you know, Zelenskyy in his first term, you know, just say you're investigating something.
He tells Bill Barr, just say you're launching an investigation. Bill Pulte's the guy who's perfectly willing to give you a headline that just muddies everything up. I mean, he's as qualified to be DNI, which I think is a bad office that never should have been created, but he's as qualified to do it as, I don't know, as Jeffrey Dahmer is to be a youth soccer league coach.
I mean, it's just like there's no plausible reason to have him there. So you have to think of what are -- it invites that kind of speculation.
HUNT: Doug Heye, this is -- obviously, he can act in this role for a while through the midterm elections. I do think it's worth noting that. Is there a snowball's chance in hell he gets confirmed by Republicans on the Hill?
HEYE: I think the silver lining for a very dark cloud for Republicans in the Senate is that they won't have to vote on this. Certainly you have a few more free agents after these primaries than you had before.
What they might do is interesting, but this isn't going to come up for a vote. And I think this nomination, we can sum up in another sentence that Donald Trump has said that is very true. I am your retribution. That is this topic. That's our previous topic as well.
HUNT: Yeah, all tied together.
All right, John Miller, thank you very much, sir. [16:15:01]
Always appreciate your expertise.
The rest of our panel is going to stand by.
Coming up here in THE ARENA, we're going to talk live with Democratic Senator Tim Kaine. He was one of the lawmakers questioning Marco Rubio today in the secretary's first congressional testimony since the start of the Iran war.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): You keep telling us how we're winning this war. The president keeps saying --
MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, the war is over now/
BOOKER: -- completely annihilated. The war is not over. And yet the American people see how we're losing at the pump and with their costs. And yet this thing still hasn't been resolved.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BOOKER: We are the strongest nation on the planet Earth and we're in a stalemate with Iran.
[16:20:00]
And now, we're begging to get back into a deal that you all trashed in the first place.
RUBIO: We're not begging. There's no one begging.
BOOKER: You keep telling us how we're winning this war. The president keeps saying --
RUBIO: Well, the war is over now.
BOOKER: -- completely annihilated. The war is not over.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, appeared before Congress today for the first time since the start of the Iran war, a war that, as you heard there, Rubio insists is actually over.
Now, Rubio, who used to sit himself on this very committee when he was a senator, testified that talks with Iran are ongoing, although negotiations specifically around Iran's nuclear program would be, quote, "highly technical, could take months and would be predicated on the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz." (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUBIO: They have to commit to very specific negotiations on highly enriched -- the disposition of the highly enriched uranium that still is buried deep in a mountain somewhere. Obviously, these are highly technical matters, so I don't think you could work those out in five days. That would require a team of experts to meet over a 30, 60, 90- day period and work out the details. But they have to commit to their willingness to do that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Joining me now, one of the senators who questioned Rubio today, Democratic senator from Virginia, Tim Kaine.
Senator Kaine, thank you very much for being here. It's always great to see you.
SEN. TIM KAINE (D-VA): Thanks, Kasie.
HUNT: Are you clear on whether the war with Iran is over or not, based on what Secretary Rubio said today?
KAINE: It is absolutely crystal clear, Kasie, that the war is not over. We're still blockading all their ports and stopping shipping in Iran. And if somebody was doing that to us, we would consider it a war.
There's still firing going on between Iran and the United States and military positions in neighboring nations and commercial shipping. So there is still an ongoing war. The ceasefire has brought the temperature down, but it hadn't stopped the war, not by a long shot.
So that was maybe the most surprising thing that the secretary tried to get the committee to buy today, that the war was over. Nobody believes that. If that's the case, how come everybody's still paying dramatically higher prices for gas than they were on February 27?
HUNT: Sir, Secretary Rubio has enjoyed a degree of credibility on Capitol Hill that some other Trump administration officials have struggled to bring to the table --
KAINE: Yeah.
HUNT: -- in no small part because he was one of you. And he had a lot of respect on both sides of the aisle in that role.
Do you think he still today retains that level of respect among both Republicans and Democrats on the Hill or not?
KAINE: Well, look, I think we understand the role of a cabinet secretary. You are not a free agent. You're carrying out the positions of the administration.
And a lot of the things that Secretary Rubio has been asked to do by this president are contrary to earlier positions. I mean, he was the chief spokesperson for the rights of Cuban dissidents, even those maybe seeking refugee status in the United States.
He's presided over a State Department that has shut down those programs while opening up refugee admissions for Afrikaner farmers. We all notice that.
But again, a cabinet secretary does what the president tells him to do. Secretary Rubio is doing what the president tells him to do. And it's the president's decisions that are so awful with respect to Iran, starting war with no clear rationale, no clear plan, no consultation or vote in Congress, no allied support. No wonder the war was unpopular from the very moment it began.
We've seen enough war in the Middle East in the last 25 years. The American public doesn't want more of it. That's on President Trump.
And at least this senator, I don't expect a cabinet secretary to come sit and look us in the eye and dramatically disagree with the president they're serving.
HUNT: Sir, you, of course, have been a leading voice for many years around war powers, right, and Congress's right to have them.
This has been a vote that that keeps coming up.
KAINE: Yeah.
HUNT: That Democrats continue to force Republicans. You've seen them kind of inching toward where you are.
Do you anticipate that -- considering some of the things that have gone on politically with John Cornyn, with others might get you farther down that road?
KAINE: I do, Kasie. I mean, when we started to challenge this illegal war in Iran, we had one Republican vote, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Eight, nine, 10 weeks in, we've now got four Republican votes and we passed our war powers resolution, at least the first procedural step last week.
The House is going to do the same thing likely tomorrow. And then next week, I think both houses will look at where we are.
But I do think more Republicans will get on board because their constituents are telling them this war, we never should have started it. And the war is punishing the American public.
And today in the hearing with Senator Rubio, I put on the table, the administration won't even share with Congress the legal opinion justifying the war.
[16:25:01]
Get this, Kasie. They did that about the boat strikes. We could agree with the legal rationale or not, at least they shared it with us.
They did it about the Maduro raid. We could agree with it or not, but they shared the legal rationale with us.
At day 92, why won't they share the legal rationale from the Justice Department saying there's legal authority for this war? There's something in it that they're embarrassed for even Congress to see. I pressed the secretary on that and he said that he would go back and in his role as national security advisor, take that back to the administration.
But things like that are making this war more unpopular every day.
HUNT: So speaking of politics, there -- today, Graham Platner, the likely nominee for Senate in Maine, was meeting with Democrats after additional revelations. There have been some in your caucus, including Cory Booker and John Fetterman, notably, who have criticized Platner and raised questions about whether he's the right nominee in that race. Do you think considering everything on the line, control of the Senate, that could come down to that race in Maine, is he the right person for Democrats to put forward?
KAINE: Kasie, here's my thought about this. I almost never get involved in primaries outside of Virginia because I think Maine Democrats should pick their candidates. And I don't think national figures --
HUNT: But we're pretty far down on the primary road here.
KAINE: Well, yeah, there's three candidates on the ballot next week. And I am not going to say a word that will tilt it one way or another.
Maine Democrats are going to make the decision. Once they make the decision, I may have some things to say about it. But I'm not going to say anything now because Maine Democrats need to pick who they think would be their best representative.
HUNT: But are you comfortable having a potential colleague with a Nazi tattoo that he knew was a Nazi tattoo in 2019, took him years afterward to get rid of it?
KAINE: Kasie, I'm just going to answer the same way I just answered you. Anything I say is going to be played somewhere in Maine. Maine voters need to make this call. Once they do make the call, I'm sure I'm going to have some things to say.
But as far as next Tuesday goes, that's the primary day. There's three names on the ballot. Maine Democrats will decide.
HUNT: So if you come back on Tuesday of next, or sorry, Wednesday of next week, we could ask you, you might answer?
KAINE: When you ask me, when the primary's said and done, I'll tell you what I think.
HUNT: Okay. I mean, just -- again, I mean, for a symbol like this, is that not, is it not irrelevant when an election is timed as to whether or not that's okay? KAINE: No, it's -- look, this is all very relevant stuff, but it's
relevant to the voters who are voting. And I don't have a vote in Maine.
And again, I don't like it when national Dems go into primaries in other states and try to Bigfoot primary voters and tell them who they should support. And I frankly think the Democratic Party has often gotten that wrong.
I have colleagues from Washington who, you know, urged the governor to get in the race. I have colleagues from Washington who are rooting on Graham Platner. I have been asked by --
HUNT: Isn't this Chuck Schumer's whole job?
KAINE: I have been -- I have been asked by multiple candidates on this ballot to get involved in this race.
And I've said, it's up to the primary day, it's for Maine voters to decide. And they don't need a Virginian telling them what to do.
HUNT: All right. Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, I appreciate it. In our now all politics is national world, you know, it is what it is. But thank you very much for entertaining my questions today.
KAINE: You bet.
HUNT: I appreciate it.
KAINE: Absolutely.
HUNT: All right. We'll talk to you soon.
Coming up next here in THE ARENA, it's primary day in six states, including the nation's largest California voters picking a successor to Governor Gavin Newsom and deciding whether to keep the Los Angeles mayor in her job or perhaps give it to a former reality TV star.
Plus, Graham Platner meets with Senate Democrats today as another scandal threatens to derail the party's hopes for flipping a key Senate race -- Senate seat, excuse me.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: The Democrats (INAUDIBLE) Graham Platner. Does that hurt the credibility in attacking Ken Paxton?
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY), MINORITY LEADER: We're going to take back -- we're going to beat Susan Collins. Take back the seat.
Any other subject you're not with -- any other subject?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:33:30]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL HEDLUNF, IOWA VOTER: Affordable housing, affordable -- going to the stores and all that, all these things, groceries, are a factor.
DARIAN HATCHER, CALIFORNIA VOTER: Tired of reality stars into offices.
JAFFA MESHULAN, CALIFORNIA VOTER: You live in Los Angeles, you see what you've got. You've got the homeless, you've got the encampments right outside of the college.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Some voters there in Iowa and California on the issues that are on their minds as they head to the polls. They're among the thousands across the country who'll be voting in a number of key primaries in Iowa, California, New Jersey, and beyond.
This, of course, all set to shape the landscape for the 2026 midterm elections. Some of the closest margins that we'll be watching could come out of California. There's a pair of pretty wild races, one for governor and one for mayor of L.A. They both feature a splintered Democratic field with insurgent Republicans.
In Los Angeles, Republicans are hopeful about recent momentum from the former reality TV star Spencer Pratt.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SPENCER PRATT, REALITY TV STAR: What I wanted to do and say to you, dear, I didn't because I was praying.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Best known for his days on MTV, Pratt has surged in recent weeks by harnessing the city's anger over the slow wildfire recovery, homelessness, and, of course, affordability. This message has been amplified online through viral A.I.-generated videos like these.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please, I just want to rebuild my home. It's been over a year.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Spencer wants to force me to get treatment and turn my life around instead of dying on the streets. What kind of bully forces people to do things?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As a busy mom running away from the crazy drug addicts in our park is the only exercise I get. Spencer wants to get rid of them. Does he want me to be fat?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A vote for Spencer is a vote for change. Why would you vote for change when everything is fine? Stay the course with Karen Bass.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: My panel is back.
Jonah, I mean, political ad-making in the age of A.I. allows for some creativity.
GOLDBERG: Yeah, I have to admit, I find most of the ads, not all of them, at the minimum, very entertaining.
And, look, I actually -- I don't want more reality TV stars in politics and all that kind of stuff. I'm very sympathetic to Spencer Pratt. California, L.A. are hot messes, and one of the useful things about California is, and one of the reasons why there's this whole movement of abundance Democrats that's come along, is because California cannot blame their problems on Republicans. Republicans haven't run that state, run that city in ages. These are California- created problems, and I'm just for getting outsiders in.
And so I don't love populism. I don't love all the reality show stuff. But I think in some ways this is healthy.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I was just in California, literally just got back this morning. And what I'll say is supermajorities are bad. I mean, I'm so sorry, supermajorities, they're bad in Texas, they're bad in California.
GOLDBERG: One-party rule is bad.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: One-party rule is bad. And so I think what you're seeing in Los Angeles is a lot of frustration at persistent problems that have plagued California and Los Angeles in particular for a very long time.
And in this age of everyone getting their message on social media, that has captured the imagination.
Do I think Spencer Pratt is going to be the next mayor of L.A.? I do not think that that is going to be what's going to happen. But he's garnered a lot of support from some very unlikely corners, including in Hollywood, including among the money class, because people are legitimately frustrated.
HUNT: Yeah, I mean, Mo Elleithee, how would you grade Karen Bass' performance as mayor in the wake of the Palisades fires?
ELLEITHEE: Look, I get why people are so frustrated. I truly do. I think people right now are impatient at best, right? People have been saying now for decades they want a government that's more responsive and reactive to their needs, and they just don't see it, and they don't see it when Republicans are in charge, and they don't see it when Democrats are in charge.
So it opens the door for people like Spencer Pratt. It opened the door for someone like Donald Trump 10 years ago to come in and say, you know what? The whole system isn't working for you. Bring in someone from outside the system.
Now, 11 years later, we see how well that's working out for people as he has proven that he's not up to this task.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But it's a failure of the parties. I mean, it's just a failure of both parties. And I think what I hear over and over again from different parts of the country, I was in Maine, and it's the same story. Why are you seeing the rise of a Platner who has so much baggage?
People do not feel that the parties represent them.
HEYE: Well, I'd say it goes back further. I think Mo and I would agree as people who work for the parties, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party do not exist in the way that they used to, and that decrease in power has had a negative effect. But I look at that Spencer Pratt video, and, yes, it's entertaining. It reminds me of a today's technology version of the Jesse Ventura campaign with the little action figures.
And every one of those campaigns, whether it's Spencer, whether it's Trump, whether it's Ventura, whose message was retaliate in '98, sort of like retribution. Voters are mad because politicians aren't doing their jobs. And it invites people like that, and it obviously invites Platner.
And what we see then is voters will justify anything. So we see Democrats, Bernie Sanders, talking a lot like Republicans did the day after the Access Hollywood tape. Yeah, it's bad, but what we need are results, and that's what voters want.
HUNT: I'm glad you mentioned Bernie Sanders because he, of course, was an early supporter of Platner and has stood behind him, was campaigning with him just days ago as some of these news stories were breaking.
Here is what he had to say today about Platner. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): Now, why do the richest people in this country want to defeat Graham Platner? That should tell you everything you need to know because he doesn't stand up for working people. Is he a saint? I guess not. I don't know too many saints here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: He's pointing at the Capitol. He said that. I don't know too many saints here at the Capitol.
Jonah, I mean, Bernie's not somebody who -- he hates being asked questions like that, having covered him in 2016 when there were some controversial people campaigning on his behalf. I mean, Bernie's not somebody who -- he hates being asked questions like that, having covered him in 2016 when there were some controversial people campaigning on his behalf, and he had no interest in trying to answer questions about that. But it's telling, right, that he's defending him.
[16:40:03]
GOLDBERG: Yeah. There's a dynamic here that I cannot stand. There's a Republican version of it and there's a Democratic version of it.
You get hardline, base, fringe, radical, whatever terms you want to put on it, people who say, we've got to get rid of the establishment, got to overthrow the establishment, right? Janet Mills was a perfectly normie former governor of Maine, and they said, we've got to get rid of them.
And then the second they get in a position of opportunity, as with Ken Paxton in Texas, they then demand that the establishment rally around these fringe people and say, aren't you going to be a loyal Democrat? Aren't you going to be a loyal Republican? We need the seat, right?
So they demand their fringe, really damaged candidates get all the support from the establishment, while at the same time condemning and damning the establishment.
And I agree entirely with Doug. The problem, all of this stems from the fact that it's not that -- you get strong partisanship from weak parties. The parties are so unbelievably weak, they cannot pick their own candidates, they cannot police things, and they end up outsourcing things to the most radical fringes that control the primaries.
HUNT: Yeah.
Mo, I want to play also what John Fetterman had to say about Graham Platner, because, I mean, especially in light of what Tim Kaine in our interview just a few minutes ago, refusing to say anything at all, he is -- that is not a position that many of his other Senate Democratic colleagues are taking.
Here was Fetterman, who, of course, let's be real, has kind of turned himself into an outcast in the Democratic Caucus because he has opposed them at a number of different turns, Israel being particularly one of them.
Just watch what he had to say about Platner.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): What kind of a creeper has been on a decade on a platform like Kick and send a dozen explicit kinds of messages and who knows what else? Who wants to defend those things? I don't know, but I wouldn't.
MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Would it be better for Democrats if he was not the candidate here?
FETTERMAN: All I'm saying, it's like, you know, when I was growing up, if someone had a clear Nazi tattoo on them, you probably could conclude that there's a Nazi sympathizer. The last time Democrats defended a guy that sent those kind of messages, like, you know, like Swalwell. So, you know, just be careful. And, you know, he claimed months ago that there aren't anything more.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: I mean, fair?
ELLEITHEE: Sure, it's fair. But, you know, to what Kaine was saying, right? Kaine clearly didn't want to answer this. A lot of senators clearly don't want to answer this question.
But he's right in that the voters are going to decide. And I don't think there's anything that the D.C. establishment can say that will talk voters off of whatever cliff they may want to be on.
And so, sure, it's fair to raise those concerns. I've got a lot of those concerns. But to angry Maine Democrats who want nothing more than to defeat Donald Trump and to overthrow the establishment, Platner looks appealing to them. And what's amazing is over the past decade how much base voters in both parties are willing to forgive sins by people on their side in an attempt to win a seat.
HEYE: The ultimate horseshoe politics is watching Paxton supporters and Platner supporters going to the exact same place.
HUNT: I don't want to cut anybody off, but we do have to come in with this breaking news. We just heard directly from Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, on the weaponization fund saying that it is, in fact, dead.
Let's watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TODD BLANCHE, ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL: We're not moving forward with the fund. You're right that there's a date in the case in eastern Virginia in June. But we are not moving forward with the fund, period.
We -- the reasons for the fund is something that President Trump talked about for a long time, which is the fact that there were a lot of people in this country who had their government weaponized against them.
The reasons for the fund, I think, remain as important as they were before. But we are not moving forward with the fund.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, Lulu, you were trying to jump in, so I'll give this one to you.
I mean, notable that they felt like they needed to be so definitive.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I think they needed to be definitive. I think they saw a revolt, especially in the Senate. They just don't have the support for anything else they may want to do. And so I think they're being definitive.
However, as we've seen with the Trump administration, I wouldn't take them at their word, necessarily.
HUNT: Would you?
GOLDBERG: No. And as I said earlier, maybe it's in the fuller clip or something, but we didn't hear anything about the IRS, you know, immunity for all audits for anything that's happened on it.
Donald Trump has made an enormous amount of money while president. The IRS should look at that.
HUNT: Yeah.
Doug Heye, I -- you sort of were giving us a little bit of context for this here. But, I mean, I think it's just worth kind of reminding everyone what this fund was supposed to be. It's direct payments to people potentially who beat cops on January 6th with taxpayer dollars, right?
[16:45:06]
So it's not even taking a taxpayer dollar and building a ballroom that may or may not have a giant bunker underneath that will save your government officials in the event of a nuclear attack, right? I mean, it's literally money from your pocket to these people's pocket.
And, I mean, it's also worth underscoring that the Trump administration and Donald Trump specifically is not a person who backs -- likes to back down or is often willing to. So it makes a moment like that noteworthy.
HEYE: It does. And I go back to two things. One, again, I am your retribution. This is what this fund was for.
And ultimately, elections matter. How often have we talked about how slim the Senate majority is, the House majority is? So Donald Trump has cost Republicans how many Senate seats in Georgia? Todd Akin in Missouri, Richard Murdoch in Indiana. We lost a seat in Alabama, of all places, during Trump's term.
Elections matter. And what we've seen is Donald Trump has cost Republicans in the Senate so many times. It's why I wonder why there's any loyalty to Trump in the United States Senate at all at this point anyways.
ELLEITHEE: At the same time, they make this definitive statement that they're not going to pursue this weaponization fund. They put the chief retribution officer of the Trump administration in as DNI, right? Like, if you're looking for reassurances, they're still not giving them.
They are still giving you reason to pause that, you know, the mechanism may be different, but they are still pursuing this agenda of retribution.
HEYE: There's nothing to see here, but maybe we're here and here and here. Absolutely.
HUNT: Paula Reid, our chief legal correspondent, is with us with a little bit more here.
Paula, can you read us in at all to the back story and why we saw, of course, the acting AG there be so definitive?
PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, this is an interesting about-face because from the moment this fund was announced, it was controversial. It faced bipartisan blowback.
But I sat down with the acting attorney general a little over a week ago. He doubled down defending this, insisting that taxpayers would want to support this. A few days later, he faced a firestorm on Capitol Hill from Republicans pushing back on this.
But the Justice Department was holding firm. But over the last week, it became apparent to some people inside the White House that this was going to be a political liability and could be something that was still hanging over Republicans in the midterms. So it's sort of the political faction, not so much the lawyers who had negotiated this, that convinced the president and other top officials that they needed to back off of this.
Now, yesterday they released a statement saying that they were going to comply with a judge's order and they were going to put this on pause. Now, you don't really get a medal for complying with a judge's order. That's what you need to do.
So that's why this is so significant, that Todd Blanch is now coming out and confirming not only are they going to pause work on this fund, but they're not going to move forward with it at all. But again, while they believe this was legally sound, it was the political blowback that eventually took a while, eventually got them to swerve on this.
HUNT: Paula, did they really believe it was legally sound?
REID: Yeah, if you talk to both the lawyers who represented the president outside of the administration and those inside the administration, they did believe that this would ultimately prevail.
While it could be delayed momentarily or for a little while by court challenges, they faced that with many of their policies, and they were confident that this was within the president's power, even though it really was something that was unprecedented in terms of being a way to resolve this lawsuit. They said there was a comparable arrangement under the Obama administration, but it was clear that the fund they were pointing to there was different.
But they did believe, not only did they believe this was legally viable, they believed this was something that needed to happen and something that taxpayers would support, and it was clear from what they were hearing from their colleagues on the Hill, that just does not reflect reality.
HUNT: All right, Paula, stand by for us. I know you're watching this live right along with us.
We're going to listen into this hearing for just a minute.
BLANCHE: Do you want an answer?
REP. ROSA DELAURO (D-CT): Yeah.
BLANCHE: Okay, so not yes or no. You gave me three documents. The only document I said we're not moving forward on today is the first document I identified, which is the anti-weaponization fund.
There was still a settlement agreement, and there's still -- the second document I signed is not an addendum. It's a separate attorney general order.
DELAURO: Okay, but you're not -- you're not going to rescind the addendum, not an addendum, the second order?
BLANCHE: No.
DELAURO: The only thing you're talking about here, so the blanket immunity is not something that you're going to vote back on?
BLANCHE: It's not blanket immunity. It's not true.
DELAURO: It is.
BLANCHE: No, it's not. I'll read it.
DELAURO: Okay. The United States releases, waives, acquits, and forever discharges each of the plaintiffs from, and is hereby forever barred and precluded from prosecuting or pursuing any and all claims, counterclaims, causes of actions, appeals, requests for any reliefs.
[16:50:00[
I mean, this is -- this is an order from you, but you're not prepared. You are prepared to say that the president and his family will be barred -- are immune from, that's a yes?
BLANCHE: No, it was not a yes. I had not answered the question. I can't answer if you want me to.
DELAURO: What are you doing with this?
BLANCHE: Okay, so there was a settlement, which is one of the documents you showed.
DELAURO: Yes.
BLANCHE: Okay. Part of the settlement included the second order that you just held up, and that is still -- nothing has changed with that. What I said today, what I've said a couple times today, as what we talked about yesterday, is we're not moving forward with the anti- weaponization fund.
DELAURO: Okay. But you are moving forward with this second order.
BLANCHE: It's not moving forward. There's a settlement -- there's a settlement that the IRS entered into with President Trump and others, his family and his companies. As part of that settlement, as is customary in IRS settlements, there's a separate A.G. order.
DELAURO: Friends, listen to what is being said here today. This is really pretty extraordinary, that we are going to forever barred and precluded from examining or prosecuting the president, his sons, and the Trump Organization's current tax filings.
Simply put, you just gave the president and his family a tax immunity to the tune of about $100 million.
BLANCHE: Not true.
DELAURO: Well, yes you have, my friend.
BLANCHE: No, that's not true.
DELAURO: You know?
HUNT: All right, we're going to continue to listen to this hearing with the acting attorney general, bring you any news out of it.
But in the meantime, Anthony Scaramucci has been on standby. He joins us. He was, of course, former White House communications director in the first Trump administration.
Sir, always good to see you. Thank you for being here.
I want to get you to weigh in here on this anti-weaponization -- on this weaponization fund, which, of course, the president had gone all in on. They wouldn't rule out that it could help people who beat cops on January 6th. And now they've had to do a complete and very public about-face.
Why?
ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Well, finally, the people in his own party, particularly John Thune, stepped up and said, this is ridiculous and absurd, and we're going to pull our support and denounce it. And so most of the things with Donald Trump, he's a paper tiger. And so, if they would just get the courage up and go after him the way that people do when they no longer are going to be reelected or they've lost the primary, Kasie, we would be resolving a lot of this nonsense.
And so I think this is very good news, and it augurs for the back half of this administration, the two years left in this administration, where there'll be a lot more pushback to this sort of nonsense. So that's basically what happened.
I think Thune got the gumption up to push the buttons necessary to make sure that this thing got blocked.
HUNT: So why do you think the -- I understand the opposition to this among Republicans, but one point that's been raised on the show today is that we've seen a lot less anger around the idea that the president and his sons will be protected from the IRS when, of course, they are continuing to make an extraordinary amount of money during this period of time when Donald Trump is in his second term. Why that?
SCARAMUCCI: Well, listen, I don't -- you know, I think that's next, by the way. I don't think we're done with that discussion, and I don't think we're done with -- and by the way, there will be challenges in the court the same way there were challenges to getting Trump's name -- President Trump's name off of the Kennedy Center.
What that actually is prima facie unconstitutional, because you can't put a group of people above the other people as it relates to due process of law here in the United States. It is a republic, and we're all slaves to the law in order to be free. And so you would give the president and his family monarchial status by doing that.
And so there will be somebody that has a cause of action procedurally that will bring that to the court and block it if it doesn't get snuffed out in the Congress. So I think the thing that the president is very good at is flooding the zone, Kasie. And so if you've got 20 things going on at the same time, you know, you're trying to block each and every one of them, and some of the things slip through.
I think that one looks like it's slipping through, but I predict that it won't.
HUNT: All right, we'll have to see.
You know, sir, I'm interested in your -- and especially, I mean, listen, you've been in the public eye, right? You understand what feeds this president in terms of his interest in celebrity.
[16:55:00]
SCARAMUCCI: I was 6'4" when I met Donald -- Kasie, I was 6'4" when I met Donald Trump. Look at me now. It's rough.
HUNT: Hey, you're still here, right? You're fighting. You're still here.
SCARAMUCCI: I'm still here. I think of my hair. I think that's the most thing I'm most happy about.
HUNT: It's honestly very impressive, I have to say.
No, listen, what I'm trying to say is you understand celebrity, right, and how that kind of powers the moment that we are in now as a country. And you're seeing that kind of play out in other places, not just with Trump, although obviously the list of things that he wants to do to try to literally cement his celebrity on buildings here in Washington is quite long, as you alluded to.
You have Spencer Pratt in the conversation for L.A. mayor. You have Graham Platner, whose celebrity is a little different and more based strictly on politics, but also around sort of the authenticity that people seem to be looking for when they're doing politics on their phones.
I mean, what does that say? And are we at a moment where being famous is the thing you have to have if you want to be in politics?
SCARAMUCCI: And I mean, where does that leave us, if that's true? I don't think we're at that moment. I think we have been at that moment.
And I think the number one thing that you need to be president of the United States is name recognition.
HUNT: I mean, that's been true forever, yeah.
SCARAMUCCI: Yeah, this would go back to the Roosevelt family. It would obviously be Dwight Eisenhower, a tremendous name recognition.
HUNT: Sure, but he was famous for, you know, World War II, right? Like, that's different than being famous for reality TV.
SCARAMUCCI: I understand that. So I'm just going to shift it a little bit so I can try to explain myself.
HUNT: Sure.
SCARAMUCCI: Name recognition is number one. But in this world that we're living in now with these smartphones, it's the short bites of attention now. And where Ike (ph) was a hiring process, or even the Kennedy-Nixon debates, if you look at the depth of their policy discussion, that was a hiring decision and a hiring process. This has become a popularity contest.
So the American people want to be entertained by their politicians. And so what you're going to have to do, hopefully, is find a transformative leader that can be both consequential in terms of policy and almost a policy wonk, but also entertaining. And so I think it's going to be tough to do.
But if you're making the point that we've lost the plot and we're no longer hiring people based on their credentials and what they could do for the country, and it's more about who's got the name recognition and the pizzazz or the rizz on Instagram, yeah, we're definitely in that category now.
And so that's dangerous. And that's something I think we should be worried about.
HUNT: I have to say, you're older than I am, and I am too old to use the word rizz on television for whatever that's worth.
(MUSIC)
SCARAMUCCI: I'm not young, Kasie. I mean, I'm pulling this out of that generation.
HUNT: That's true. And mine are too little to make me cool again. So I will give you that.
I mean, as I listen to you kind of talk about this, the other thing that occurs to me that is so central to this and that is something that has defined the Trump era is even if you are someone who has the necessary charm, you know, John F. Kennedy certainly like was beloved by the television cameras, I'm wondering if we've lost the ethos of service to others and replaced it with service to yourself.
SCARAMUCCI: Oh, there's no question. I mean, this is a whole self- aggrandizement business now. This really -- if you trace it back to Citizens United, there's a money circuit going into Washington. The Congress has a 14 percent approval rating, slightly above Kim Il-Jung, the North Korean dictator. Yet if you're an incumbent, you have a 95 percent approval rating.
They've also rigged the system. Let's just tell everybody the truth. It's now a bipartisan cartel or a duopoly. They've strained their adversaries out of their districts. We've got 435 congressional districts. Less than 30 of them are contestable. That's embarrassing to the country.
We're in a stage in the republic now where the politician is picking the voter. In a real democracy, the voter actually picks the politician.
So the system has gone awry. It needs a reset. It needs reform. But because of the circuit of money flowing and the self-interest, there's nobody stepping out of the window of self-interest and saying, OK, wait a minute, to serve the public and actually serve the people that are the most sore, the ones that have the affordability issue, the ones that are worried about their children, who were once economically aspirational, now economically desperational, to serve them, I have to go against my own self-interest.
We've yet to see that leader enter the fray. The Platners, you pick the people, they're none of those people. They just want to aggrandize themselves.
HUNT: All right.
SCARAMUCCI: And so this is a problem for us, until we can make that crossover, Kasie. But I predict we will, because it's a good country and we always have a way of reviving ourselves.
HUNT: Right. God bless the USA.
Anthony Scaramucci, thank you very much for your time today.
SCARAMUCCI: Thanks for having me.
HUNT: Thanks very much to the panel as well.
Don't go anywhere. "THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER" starts right now.
