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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
Senate Fails To Kill Trump's "Anti-Weaponization" Fund; Dems Wrestle With Platner's Candidacy Amid Scandals; Teens Facing Worst Summer Job Market In 80 Years. Teens Facing Worst Summer Job Market In 80 Years; 1944: D-Day Invasion By Allied Forces In Normandy; Social Media Turns On Elmo Again. Aired 12-1p ET
Aired June 06, 2026 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: -- to the 17th century is meant to protect the young from evil spirits. Well, wishing anyone taking that leap and everyone lying beneath it, good luck or buena suerte tomorrow.
And that is all we have time for. Don't forget, you can find all of our shows online as podcasts at CNN.com/audio and on all other major platforms. I'm Bianna Golodryga in New York. Thanks so much for watching.
Christiane will be back next week.
[12:00:40]
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Hi everyone, I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to The Arena Saturday. This week, there was headline after headline that Republicans in Congress were standing up to President Trump on everything from funding for the ballroom to his $1.8 billion anti- weaponization fund, his nomination of Todd Blanche to be attorney general, the list goes on.
But when the time came to vote, most Republicans got in line with the President. So, is the Republican resistance to the President on things like this DOJ fund actually real, or is it all just talk?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN BILL CASSIDY (R), LOUISIANA: I want to make sure it's not mostly dead, I want to make sure it's completely dead.
SEN. THOM TILLIS (R), NORTH CAROLINA: We got to either eliminate it, streamline it, guardrail it, it can't go in its current form. And if that's the only choice we should have, we should eradicate it.
MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The President said that today --
REP. BRIAN FITZPATRICK (R), PENNSYLVANIA: Yes.
RAJU: -- he would not rule out this fund moving forward again. FITZPATRICK: I am. I'm ruling it out.
RAJU: So, does --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, my panel's here in The Arena. CNN Legal Analyst, Former Federal Prosecutor Elliot Williams, CNN Special Correspondent Jamie Gangel, Democratic Strategist, CNN Political Commentator Paul Begala, and former Republican Congressman and Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry.
Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for being here.
So congressman, what did we see from Republicans on the Hill and what did we not see? Not much --
PATRICK MCHENRY (R), FORMER SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE: In all fairness. There's a lot of hue and cry. This is in the nature of the Senate versus the House. This is my takeaway. In the House, in order to have any power, you have to have a collective, right? So if you have a group of ne'er-do-wells that can band themselves together with duct tape and pretend like they're friends, they're called the Freedom Caucus, right?
And it's like the misfit toys and they all kind of got together in this. And some of them are great friends, right?
MCHENRY: Been unleashed.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Patrick McHenry unchained is my favorite Patrick McHenry.
MCHENRY: Saturday Patrick McHenry.
WILLIAMS: No, but it's Saturday morning.
MCHENRY: He's much more relaxed (ph).
WILLIAMS: Wow.
MCHENRY: But in the Senate, their expectation is that they're superior, they're superior beings. So one is a shiny, shiny star and special and different. In the House, we know we're not special and different, right? And so in the nature of what happened in the Senate, yes, you have this YOLO caucus, right?
They're like, you only live once, now that we're free and not running again, Chairman Thom Tillis, for instance, of that group, the expectation is they're all going to band together and do something in order to stick it to the man. That's not the case because they also have an obligation to one another to get anything done.
And also, cooler heads prevail. So Thune is owed a great debt of gratitude by the White House to get through what was a very, very sticky two weeks. WILLIAMS: Just to add one point to that, about the Senate right now, there's 53 to 47 is the breakdown of senators. And there are about eight who have, for whatever reason, an incentive to vote against Donald Trump. Either they're up for reelection or they lost their last election and they're in their YOLO era, or they're just people like, for instance, Senator Susan Collins who have just always, or Senator Murkowski who have always sort of bucked the President.
So, yes, it's just tougher math in the Senate. But you're right, they do have a very inflated sense of their own selves and arc in the role in the arc of American history. So, you know, you get that.
HUNT: Paul, let's see you.
PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: They've cast a very bad vote going into reelection. Those who are up and on the ballot, Houston from Ohio, others. Democrats will say -- and they'll be right and accurate. Your senator voted for $1.8 billion for thugs who attack cops. 145 cops were injured. I know you know this.
Four or five lost their lives after -- as a result of those attacks. It was savage. And Donald Trump wants to hand them your money, your money, $1.8 billion. That's a terrible vote. It's an indefensible vote. When people can't afford to fill up the tank in their Chevy Silverado pickup truck, your senator is sending $1.8 billion of your tax money to these thugs.
HUNT: Jamie Gangel --
JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes.
HUNT: -- we can put up on the screen the eight senators who voted, Republicans, to bar DOJ payouts specifically to January 6th rioters and those who assaulted police officers. And they are, as Elliot was describing, you know, there's a series of reasons why these folks voted the way they did.
Senator Bill Cassidy, a member, I think, of what do you call it, Congressman, the YOLO caucus? The only good ones.
MCHENRY: Oh forgive me if I misstated Husted's vote then.
HUNT: Well, so this is --
MCHENRY: Forgive me.
HUNT: -- this is specifically on this. But, yes --
MCHENRY: OK.
HUNT: -- to your point. So Senator Jon Husted is facing a tough reelection challenge in Ohio. Susan Collins, of course, we're going to talk more about her race coming up later on.
[12:05:14] But, Jamie, all of these folks, Dan Sullivan of Alaska similarly up for reelection against a popular woman, Democratic woman, member of the House. They all have their reasons for doing it. They did take -- they were willing to take this stand. But at the end of the day, there weren't enough of them.
GANGEL: Right. At the end of the day, yes, John Thune did a great job. He got what he needed. But they blinked. And that's the bottom line.
When you look at those statements that we showed that it had to be done, dead, dead, dead, and then the vote went through. Look, at the end of the day, this should not surprise us because Donald Trump has shown he is not -- he doesn't care. He is not scared of this Congress.
And there's another thing that John Thune knows, and that is the midterms are coming. Some of these senators will be gone, but there will be new senators there. And Donald Trump can wait on a lot of these issues and bring them back next time.
MCHENRY: But, frankly, this is like the easiest layup for Republicans. We forgot what this bill was about. It was because the Democratic Party shut down, had the longest shutdown in American history. Long forgotten. Probably not relevant in the midterm.
And then the last two programs to reopen are around border security and internal enforcement, two things that President Trump rode back to the White House on and was very popular in his re-election, his third national election, on the same set of issues.
We've forgotten that. That was not covered in this. Events overtake. And what is an outrage at this moment, to Paul's point, may actually not matter by the time we roll around to November because the level of outrage, because the rolling set of issues --
BEGALA: Yes --
MCHENRY: -- that we deal with in Washington.
BEGALA: You know, but it's Trump who changed the subject. He used to win on immigration. He did. I think the border was too loose under Biden. Trump rode that back into the White House. The border is now secure.
But nobody wanted ICE to shoot Alex Pretti, the nurse from the VA. Nobody wanted to shoot Renee Good, a kindergarten mom. And he has collapsed on his strongest issue because of that. So he changes the subject to something just as bad, which is, I'm going to reward rioters who attack cops.
HUNT: Well, and he also put that out there as, I mean, they could have spent the last couple of weeks, to your point, talking about how they were continuing forward with immigration.
BEGALA: Right.
HUNT: And yet, instead, it's been about this. MCHENRY: No discussion about immigration.
BEGALA: Yes.
MCHENRY: When was the last time we heard the President talk about immigration? His -- one of his strongest issues. Like, this is --
WILLIAMS: And I was going to pick up on that. I don't think he can get it back. You know, it's -- he had a tremendous amount of goodwill with many -- with a big portion of the American people when he came in on immigration. But because of how much Minneapolis is seared, and even, I would say, many moderate Republican minds, not just the far left, it's -- I don't know where the President goes from there.
HUNT: But is that why the President's not talking about it?
WILLIAMS: No.
HUNT: Or is it just because he'd rather talk about other things?
MCHENRY: A lot of other things. It's very interesting things that are happening here in Washington, building the 250, everything else that is, like, really deeply entertaining to him at this point in time. I mean, I think -- and you know this advising with presidents.
I mean, you get the hell beat out of you year over -- day over day, week over week, month over month, and then there's this level of boredom that sits in. And then -- and so President Trump gets captivated in a number of issues that he cares about, and it goes back to his roots. So he loves talking about building in Washington --
HUNT: Yes.
MCHENRY: -- and restoring fountains and things like that. These are not things that the American people are going to go and vote on, but they're the things that have captivated his imagination because of a level of boredom on a certain level of politics around here, frankly.
HUNT: All right. Coming up next here in The Arena, the monthly jobs report this week, stronger than expected. So why is this year the worst summer job market in 80 years? But first, the newest story following the newest scandal in a critical Senate race. It's our quote of the week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRAHAM PLATNER (D), MAINE SENATE CANDIDATE: The fact that I was, you know, a bad boyfriend a decade ago, that's something I've talked about openly at length for quite some time in multiple places.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JOSH TUREK (D), IOWA SENATE CANDIDATE: If you're tired of this rigged system, only looking out for billionaires and leaving the rest of us behind, then join us. Whether you are a Republican, an Independent or a Democrat, there is room here for you in our campaign.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[12:14:15]
HUNT: Democrats now insisting there's a new state in play on the Senate map. Josh Turek, who you saw there, won the party's primary earlier this week in Iowa. That's a state that President Trump carried by 13 points in 2024. But it has also been hit pretty hard by the Trump economy.
And while establishment Democrats did get their pick in Iowa, the candidate in Maine, yes, it's another situation. The controversy- plagued Graham Platner was here in Washington this week meeting with senators. He does hope to be one. But right now, he's trying to calm their nerves, this time over a sexting scandal.
Some lawmakers expressed concerns, others shrugged it off. And the campaign, Platner's campaign, finding itself once again in damage control after a report from the New York Times. It detailed threatening behavior toward women that he had dated previously.
[12:15:10]
The story walked through allegations of heavy drinking, infidelity, demeaning behavior toward women, and one account of physical intimidation. Platner, who's a former combat vet, strongly disputes claims of physical intimidation or altercations. And he says that he's been, quote, "open" about what he calls a very dark period of his life, where he struggled with undiagnosed PTSD, too often self- medicated with alcohol, and was far from a perfect boyfriend.
That brings us to our quote of the week, which comes from Platner, who said, quote, "My journey is one of transformation."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PLATNER: That was a pretty dark period of my life after I came back from my combat service. And that's what that combat -- what that kind of life looks like. And so there are things in this that I absolutely will take responsibility for and have been speaking about openly for months now. But those serious allegations are just not true.
I want them to know about my struggles, because I firmly believe that if you believe in a transformational politics, you got to believe in the ability for people to transform. And my journey is one of transformation.
I do expect the Republican Party to fight as dirty as possible. And I expect them to try to create things. I expect them to try to drag stuff up consistently. But there won't be anything new.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, my panel is back here. Paul Begala, what is going on here? I mean, obviously, he has run a campaign that appealed to primary voters in Maine. You know, he did it with a series of videos that presented him as, you know, an authentic oyster farmer.
There's some questions there. But the establishment had to be convinced to get on board, in part because of all of this, right? Chuck Schumer wanted Janet Mills, outgoing governor. Platner is now trying to explain it in this way. Are voters going to buy it? Do you buy it? Where is the bar now?
BEGALA: Oh, no, I was for Mills, OK? I'm not a Platner guy.
HUNT: Yes, fair enough.
BEGALA: I'll just be honest, just to be transparent. That said, I thought he did a pretty good job in his interview this week when he was talking about it, because just as a politician, the campaign focused back on the one allegation of physical intimidation is coming from an activist Republican.
Doesn't mean she's not telling the truth. I have no idea. But that's at least a political edge that he can get in there. Here's the real problem, is that anything else? You know, he promised the senators there's nothing else, and before he practically arrived back in Maine, there was something else.
GANGEL (?): Right.
BEGALA: There's this great legend in Texas guy, Red Adair. He was the greatest oil well firefighter in the world. John Wayne made a movie about him called the "Hellfighters." And there's a line in there where he says, after we put that out, there are a few seconds where even if you run your fingers through your hair, which Elliot and I can't do, but Patrick can, and you all can, it will cause another fire, right?
That -- he's in that stage. And if he runs a comb through his hair and there's the slightest spark, it's going to blow up on him. And I have to say, that's because he hasn't been vetted. It's why a lot of us wanted Janet Mills, a popular, successful two-term governor. And I know that bores the young left, but let me tell you, I'd rather be bored right now and win.
HUNT: You would rather be bored and win --
BEGALA: Yes.
HUNT: -- than, yes, entertain -- than have your young left entertain --
BEGALA: Right.
HUNT: -- and have it lose a general election. Congressman, what do you think? MCHENRY: The New York Times story spent as much time on the woman making allegations as they did about the allegation. That should be a spark enough. You're telling me that the Nazi -- the guy with the Nazi tattoo turns out to be maybe a bad guy? I mean, that should be the spark enough for your party to say, this is too much.
Now, what's interesting to me is the justification from the progressive left, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, they'll justify anything. They don't care about diversity in the party. That's the last thing they care about. They care deeply about ideology and their socialist politics over everything else. They'd rather burn it down.
And they have a lot in common with the people that are on the opposite, on the Republican side, that have the equal set of stance, that they'd burn it all down just to have a narrow group, a rump group, rather than be in power. So this tells me a lot about both parties suffering from the same thing. And this is a fairly outrageous thing for any party, but especially the Democratic Party that I'm watching right now.
For them to justify this tells me there's no longer a set of morals or principles in your great party, just like Republicans have gone through the last couple of years.
GANGEL: So can I -- talking to Democrats all week long, they would say, you had me at the Nazi tattoo, right? That was the bridge too far. They were done. But to Paul's point, it's one thing after the next, after the next, after the next with this candidate.
This is really, I think Paul would agree, political malpractice. This is 101. When you have a candidate, you do oppo research on yourself so you know what's coming.
[12:20:06]
We haven't even had a primary yet. There's no question that I would doubt that there isn't something more coming down the road.
WILLIAMS: 100 percent. As straight politics, I think the redemption narrative is a powerful one. It's a bit of a dog whistle to religious folks that I am flawed inside, but I have been redeemed and here is how I'm going to move forward.
One instance, just like Paul said, one instance comes up in the future and he's blown all of that goodwill. And again, you know, I am curious to hear what Democratic women have to say about this. Folks who, quite frankly, stood by Bill Clinton back in the day or deeply flawed Democratic men over the decades and were willing to overlook some of their indiscretions. I just wonder how much of a pass this kind of conduct is going to get.
BEGALA: I will say these two very, very different young Democrats emerging. James Talarico, my beloved Texas, who I know, Mr. Platner, who I don't. Oh, they say, oh Talarico is no good because he's too forgiving and charitable and loving. He actually believes all that love thy neighbor stuff because he's a seminarian. He follows Jesus Christ, but that's too soft.
But Platner, oh, he's too mean. He's too hard. I think maybe, maybe it's that they both want to expand health care, take on the Mar-a-Lago elites, take on the billionaire class. It may be that this is not about Mr. Platner's allegations because Donald Trump and Bobby Kennedy and Secretary Hegseth all have been accused of far worse. Maybe it's really about power.
MCHENRY: So you had a senator resign and get effectively kicked out of the party for lesser allegations than Platner has, but now it's OK.
BEGALA: Wait, who?
HUNT: Al Franken.
GANGEL: Al Franken.
MCHENRY: Al Franken.
BEGALA: Oh, Al Franken. Yes, he shouldn't have quit.
MCHENRY: OK.
BEGALA: Eric Swalwell should have. Let me just say, Eric Swalwell was accused of something, I think, worse.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
HUNT: Oh, I mean, yes.
BEGALA: Yes.
HUNT: Al Franken was not accused of anything remotely close to (INAUDIBLE).
BEGALA: Right.
MCHENRY: But what I'm saying is --
BEGALA: But Swalwell, my party kicked him out. My party kicked Eric Swalwell out a few weeks ago when he was the leading candidate for governor.
MCHENRY: The New York Times spent more time discussing the person that was making the allegations. This has come a very long way from where we were just a few years ago with the Me Too movement. Substantially different. Now everything's political and being justified because you like your candidate.
I will tell you something. I've said about our candidate in Texas, Republican candidate in Texas. He's a bad dude. Now, you know what's going to happen? He's probably going to be a senator. I'll still think he's a bad dude, right, even though he's the Republican nominee. We've got to have some consistency and sort of balance here.
HUNT: Yes, hold on one second. I do want to play Congressman Jake Auchincloss, OK, who's a Democrat from New England, from the region where Platner is from, was on The Arena. And this is what he said about not the new stuff, the relatively new stuff, the sexting and then this New York Times story that talks about this instance of physical intimidation on Platner's part.
This is about a Nazi tattoo that Graham Platner says he didn't know was a Nazi tattoo. CNN's K-File did find him saying on the internet in 2019 that he did know it was a Nazi tattoo. So let's watch what Auchincloss had to say again about the tattoo, which we knew about before all this other stuff.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JAKE AUCHINCLOSS (D), MASSACHUSETTS: I find that tattoo and his commentary about it to be personally disqualifying. I hope Maine voters agree with me. I think there would be a mistake for the Democratic Party to think that Graham Platner's brand of the Democratic Party is what wins us durable majorities throughout this country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: I mean, Paul Begala, I think this is the piece of it that I really struggle to get my head around. I mean, you know, I listen to Democrats say of the sexting allegations and whatever. Well, he's apologized for it. Well, look, Donald Trump over here did way worse, blah, blah, blah. But, like, a Nazi tattoo is a Nazi tattoo.
BEGALA: I think you're right. I think Congressman Auchincloss is right. It's a very clear fact, right? It existed in the pixels.
HUNT: Why can't more Democrats say that?
BEGALA: I don't know. They should. For me, it's disqualifying as well and for a whole lot of Democrats. But Maine is going to pick who they're going to pick, and it looks like the Democrats are, next week, are going to pick Mr. Platner. That's for them to decide.
But I will say, my wing of the party, the Moderates, the story of my party this week, aside from Platner's, the Moderates are on the march, right? You had the Moderate, Xavier Becerra, leading among the Democrats in California. You have a Moderate, Rob Sand, unopposed for governor of Iowa. You have the more Moderate candidate for Senate in Iowa winning.
All of over the -- Rebecca Bennett is a helicopter pilot, a Moderate in New Jersey. She won her primary. So the Moderates are winning all across the country, and the one leftist out there is imploding.
HUNT: We got to go, but you're smiling for some reasons. Makes me kind of wonder.
MCHENRY: I think it's wish casting. I think it's wish casting.
BEGALA: Those are facts.
MCHENRY: That's great.
BEGALA: Those are facts.
HUNT: All right. Well, it's going to be an interesting midterm election season. We'll put it that way.
Coming up next here in The Arena, a longtime staple of the American summer. It's becoming harder and harder to come by. Plus, what is perhaps the biggest controversy of the week? And it was all started by a three-and-a-half-year-old self-described monster.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Elmo is stirring the pot this morning.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, while many are excited, there is one little guy who's facing some backlash.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Elmo saying I love you and giggling. Elmo is not a laughing matter, OK?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's crazy, man. New Yorkers are crazy. They're probably going to flip on the big bird.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:29:41]
HUNT: All right, welcome back. Believe it or not, it is already June, which means soon millions of American teenagers are going to be on summer break. Many of them, of course, hoping to make their first buck at a summer job. It's typically a rite of passage.
This year, though, a lifeguarding or ice cream scooping gig may be out of reach, with U.S. teens facing what could be the toughest summer job market for them in nearly 80 years, according to "The Wall Street Journal." The summer job has of course long been an essential coming- of-age experience, long memorialized in American culture. Today's kids have grown up watching that rite of passage on the big screen. Maybe they were inspired to work or save up for something big, like these folks in Greece.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where were you all summer?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you my mother?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm just asking.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was working, which is more than any of you kids can say. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Working?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right. I was lugging boxes at Bargain City, moron.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nice job.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eat me.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Save enough to get me some wheels.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Or maybe a more air conditioned option.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Have a nice day.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: As for me, well, I worked at the less glamorous staples. Those scenes that you saw there were set in the 1970s and 80s, at a time when the teen labor force participation rate was about 50 to 60 percent. Today it's down to just around 35 percent. I will say it's, I feel like the landscape, Elliot, has changed for American teenagers in recent years. I mean, I could not wait to be old enough to have a summer job, and it was the first thing that I ran out to do. Now kids have a lot of different pressures on them on the one hand, and also, you know, it's tough out there.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: The market's tough out there, and it's even worse after their teen years. There's -- "The Wall Street Journal" also did an interesting piece a couple weeks ago about the fact that trade schools have actually gotten incredibly expensive. So folks who were putting off, or just choosing not to go to four-year colleges, who were opting to be aestheticians or, you know, small engine repair or whatever else, are paying a lot of money for that too. It's just very hard to break in and find work now, and people, everybody, you know, of the working age is really confronting that right now.
HUNT: Yes, well, and listen, anyone that doesn't get to have this experience misses out on sitting perhaps on a T.V. set 20 years later and telling everyone what they did for their first job, and showing them pictures like this one of Elliot in his summer job. Elliot in the 1996 season, was a fan-stormer.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
HUNT: What's a fan-stormer?
WILLIAMS: Well, those are the clowns that run out with the Philly Fanatic and help shoot hot dogs into the stands. PATRICK MCHENRY (R), FORMER SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE: Shoot?
WILLIAMS: There's a giant hot dog stand.
MCHENRY: A hotdog in Philadelphia, I mean --
WILLIAMS: This is Philadelphia, man. It's a rough time.
HUNT: Do they not have this in every baseball stadium? I actually grew up going to Philly.
WILLIAMS: Yes, right. The 90s in Philly were a rough time. So it was to say, $40 a night, you got to watch the game, but also would just go out and make fun of people in inning breaks, and that's -- that is how I ended up here today.
HUNT: Congratulations.
WILLIAMS: Thank you.
HUNT: It all worked out very well for you. Jamie Gangel, what was your summer job? And you've got teenagers, or no, I guess they're not -- they're grown past teenagers.
JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Mine are all grown up now.
HUNT: Yes.
GANGEL: So this is, we're going back to, you know, when dinosaurs roamed the earth. But I will say, I looked at the article, and my summer job is actually going up, and that was being, OK, that was not my summer job. So I was a city kid, so you went to camp, and then you became a camp counselor.
HUNT: That's you in the middle right there.
GANGEL: That is me in the middle.
HUNT: Gorgeous hair, Jamie, I love it. It's beautiful.
GANGEL: And that's me in the middle down there. You just got shipped off to camp, and you never left. And you made no money as a camp counselor, but you got room, you got board, you were in a nice place in Maine for the summer. It's a pretty good gig.
HUNT: Pretty good deal. And I mean, Paul Begala, what is the -- what do you think this all means in terms of, like, the changing experience of American childhood? Because I know you had your own special summer job experience.
PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I had a big sister got me a job at Astroworld, where she was working, which was kind of the, you know, the white trash six flags in Houston. And I worked -- I started every day. My high school buddy Mike and I, before we started work, the first thing we did was ride that roller coaster, a test ride. It's the Texas Cyclone. And one morning, very humid, very humid morning, we were the test dummies, right? And so we were loaded. And at that very peak, 93 feet in the air, it stopped. It just stopped. So we're screaming down to the guys that run the ride, and they said, it's gravity, man. You got to get out and push. So we're 93 feet in the air. Mike and I get out. One, two, three, heave. We're 16. We jump back in and ride. Perfect preparation for a life in politics. Sometimes Patrick goes up, sometimes you're going up, sometimes you're going down. Sometimes you got to get out and push.
HUNT: You got to get out and push. Yes.
BEGALA: Greatest job I ever had, Astroworld.
HUNT: Right. Congressman, you -- what about you?
MCHENRY: Mowing grass. My father had a lawn service. I was obligated to work. I was the youngest of five kids. Congratulations. This is your summer job, which inspired me to do something else, which is great. Very great.
HUNT: Did they pay you for it at least?
MCHENRY: Oh yes, I got minimum wage. And my, thank you to the Democratic Party. My first wage increases were completely unjustified, but I started at $3.35 an hour. So fantastic work experience and did inspire me to actually work a little bit harder in school and leave and do something else.
[12:35:15]
HUNT: And so what do you think, when you look at the landscape today, I know you have younger kids, like, do you think they'll do something like that?
MCHENRY: Yes, I think they crave it. And I think that chart also tells you the big difference between generations. Gen X, the obligation, first latchkey kids, and you still had, you're in the workforce, right? So you learn a whole lot more in that experience. And you're a lot sharper coming into the workforce after your education. Those are all very helpful and good things. I think kids do crave that opportunity.
And I think what parents have done has pulled back some of these kids from actually participating in the workforce. That is a component of it. This is a larger question about the workforce, though. It is a very complicated time right now with the changing economy, the technological shift with AI coming on board, a great deal of economic uncertainty, not just about gas prices, but downwind from all of that stuff. And it's a very complicated American workforce.
WILLIAMS: Real quick, it's remarkable that none of the jobs we had are fancy internships or anything like that. We've learned so much as a waiter, as a summer camp counselor, and it pains me to see kids sort of on a different track now at such an early age.
HUNT: I mean, hey, I worked at staples because I loved office supplies. I had no interest because it's food service. WILLIAMS: But it's still not a fancy internship.
HUNT: And no, I mean, I, you know, it wasn't -- they also paid $8 an hour, which was higher than a restaurant, although I didn't quite understand just how much money you could make from tips. That said, hey, it worked out fine, you know. Here we are.
Ahead here in The Arena, the event 82 years ago today that literally changed the world as we know it.
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[12:41:23]
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Almighty God, our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.
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HUNT: D-Day, 82 years ago today, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt led the nation in prayer as Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy to liberate Europe from the barbarity of Nazi Germany, 2,500 Americans were killed on D-Day alone and more than 29,000 other Americans died in the Battle of Normandy that followed. Today, we remember all those who gave their lives, many of whom were laid to rest on the shores of France, and we celebrate the extraordinary lives of those who survived. We want you to hear from one of them. Jake Larson was 101 years old when he spoke to CNN two years ago.
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Did you know then what you were fighting for?
JAKE LARSON, WORLD WAR II VETERAN: Oh yes, oh definitely. That we knew. Every one of us.
AMANPOUR: Tell us.
LARSON: Every one of us was prepared to give our life to kick Hitler's ass out of Europe.
AMANPOUR: And you did.
LARSON: And we did. We lost quite a few of us. I lost friends. Everybody lost friends. I'm here to tell you that heroes are up there. They gave their life. They gave their life so that I could make it.
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HUNT: They sure as hell did kick Hitler's ass out of Europe and we lost a lot of really good men doing that. Larson passed away last summer and it's a reminder that with every passing year, fewer and fewer D-Day veterans are going to be here to tell us that their stories and it's going to be up to us to learn from their examples and to honor their legacies.
Jamie Gangel, this is something I think about a lot. My grandfather was fought in the Pacific Theater in World War II, but I think a lot about how the age that I am now will mean I'm one of the last sort of generations to hear these stories directly from someone who I loved, who was there. And it's something that seems to play, or at least it strikes me, that it seems to play a significant role in how we think about politics today. It feels in many ways we are forgetting the lessons that these men taught us.
GANGEL: Right. No question. And it's not hyperbole to say it was our finest hour. I mean, kids, the average age was like 21, 22 years old, came from every corner of our country. And imagine if that had not happened, if they had not stormed the beaches or scaled those cliffs. We would be living in a very different world today. And I covered former President Bush 41, you know, for many years. And just hearing the stories from him, he was shot down, he was also in the Pacific. I think the next generations that don't hear those firsthand are losing something.
[12:45:05]
BEGALA: They are. They need to visit, if they can, go to Normandy. I've had the honor to visit the American cemetery there, go to Pointe du Hoc, where President Reagan gave one of his most famous speeches. But you see the cliffs that these Rangers scaled. It's impossible. You can go into the pillboxes where Germans had fortified machine gun nests slaughtering Americans as they landed, the heroism, they kept coming. They kept coming. And the heroism is just remarkable and they saved the world. If you can't do that, at least watch Saving Private Ryan.
You're right. We have to keep these. I was a kid. One of my other summer jobs was at Quartz Hardware Store. And Mr. Quartz's Uncle Buster was on the Bataan Death March. He was our constable forever and a day. And he was a hero. He saved the world. And I was a kid and he didn't like to talk about it. But we all knew, I always called him Uncle Buster, Uncle Buster saved the world. And we really do owe those guys.
HUNT: Congressman, one piece of this, one of the realities of having kids, I mean my grandfather was 18 when he was drafted, right? He turned 18 in the spring of 1944. It meant that every American, and they were mostly men, obviously. There were, of course, women who served with distinction, but for the draft it was men. Everyone had the same experience of serving their country and of risking everything, putting everything on the line. And that commonality of experience of service is also something missing from our public life today.
MCHENRY: Yes, I think it is. And I think the results of, first of all, I mean, the level of uncertainty going into D-Day. Right? And what we know of Eisenhower writing the first admission that it had failed, like that was the note that he kept with him because he thought he was going to use it. So such high level uncertainty and the decision to send people into harm's way, very difficult.
But the men and women, the men on the front line there, their experience and what they brought home brought us unified politics. And what we saw -- we saw this in Europe and we saw this in the United States where we had, and as a result of, or to the collectivization of communist Soviet Union, we saw a century, well almost a century, of the most unified forces of nation states in human history. Meaning the European and U.S. experience was very unified that we should not have a war like this break out. That we were going to have some normative bounds on politics of what is acceptable.
And this was Nazis bad, communists bad, and we were within the confines of this, simplistically. And that made for a world order that was fairly well established. That has eroded, that has changed. The times have changed, obviously. This has been a long time since World War II. But that's what that generation brought us. And that's really the good for economic growth, human flourishing, to the whole world as a result of that generation.
WILLIAMS: There's a host of reasons why that's all eroded. We don't have time to get into all that now. I think there's a great tragedy that Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Afghanistan were just not on the same political footing as World War II. We were a divided nation around all of those wars. And I think people just, you know, it just caused greater political division. Yet, there a lot of young men and women lost their lives in the same way and paid the same price.
HUNT: Well, and to all of our veterans, all those who've lost, we thank all of them and we remember them, that sacrifice. But especially today, on this anniversary of D-Day, it's worth remembering what we as a country were united in fighting for and what those men who stormed those beaches were facing. This was President Eisenhower on that day.
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[12:48:47]
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
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ELMO: Elmo didn't realize that when you ask someone how they're doing, you have to be ready because maybe someone's not doing well or maybe somebody is. But it's an important question to ask, and Elmo's learned a lot about that.
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HUNT: The last time that Elmo was on CNN, he learned the hard way. Sometimes Twitter is not that great of a place. That was back in 2024, when he asked the Twitterverse how they were doing. He got an explosion of replies. A lot of them were not that nice. Now, the internet is turning on Elmo again. Again? I'm sorry, what?
To kick off the NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs, Elmo tweeted that he hopes both teams have fun, OK? Now, of course, Elmo does live on Sesame Street. Where is Sesame Street? New York City. So, naturally, Knicks fans not pleased.
Flooded Elmo's replies with messages like these, saying, it's not the time for sportsmanship, telling him to pick a side. Some people even called him a coward. Can we just remind everyone, Elmo is three and a half years old. OK, this says way more about New Yorkers than it does about Elmo.
GANGEL: Hey.
WILLIAMS: Hey.
[12:55:00]
GANGEL: Hey.
MCHENRY: By the way, aren't you from Philadelphia? Aren't you like a, all right.
WILLIAMS: Yes, I mean, Philadelphia, Philadelphia, they threw batteries at Santa Claus and you're getting mad at New Yorkers.
HUNT: You're yelling at Elmo, OK? That does not make, like, that's whataboutism, OK? Right?
WILLIAMS: All right, fair, fair, all right.
HUNT: The New York Department of Transportation even threatened to take down the ceremonial "Sesame Street" sign. OK. What? Just like in 2024, Elmo had to clean up after his tweet. A few days later, he wrote this, "Knicks, that last message. Wah, wah. Elmo didn't mean to spur you on." Very clever. All right, unfortunately we're out of time to talk about this.
BEGALA: Go Spurs, go.
HUNT: Thank you very much.
BEGALA: As I checks in here, I got to root for my search. I love the Spurs.
WILLIAMS: Remember Elmo, you're from Manhattan.
HUNT: Don't forget, you can see The Arena every weekday right here on CNN. We're at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. You can also catch up by listening to our podcast and follow the show on X and Instagram. We are at TheArenaCNN. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. The news continues next on CNN.
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