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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
Source: ICE Pausing Most Traffic Stops Amid Fatal Shootings; Trump Abruptly Abandons Plan For 20 Percent Strait of Hormuz Fee; Trump: Thursday Speech Will Focus On "Free And Fair Elections"; Two Supreme Court Justices Testify On Capitol Hill On Rare Appearance. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired July 14, 2026 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FELIPE CARDENAS, SENIOR WRITER, THE ATHLETIC: Controversial and that it would impact his teammates.
[16:00:02]
So I think Balogun, again, standing out as somebody that has been very professional about this, but now also revealing that it certainly did impact the United States in that loss.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Certainly didn't fare well for them on the field. Felipe, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for being with us this afternoon.
THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT starts right now.
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KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Hi, everyone. Welcome to THE ARENA. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's good to have you with us on this Tuesday.
As we come on the air, the Department of Homeland Security is making a major change to its immigration enforcement tactics as anger builds following two fatal shootings in less than a week. A source telling CNN that ICE has been ordered to halt most traffic stops. This comes just one day after the killing of Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year- old Colombian man who lived and worked in Maine.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR LIAM LAFOUNTAIN, BIDDEFORD, MAINE MAYOR: We can't have people killing people in our country like this, and what I'm calling for, as other Maine officials are, is a thorough, full and transparent investigation so we can find out the facts of this case and provide accountability to our residents and families impacted.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, so in neither of these recent fatal shootings were federal agents wearing body cameras. But we at CNN have pieced together footage of the moments that surround Guerrero's killing. We don't know yet when Guerrero was shot, but DHS claims that he tried to flee an attempted traffic stop. In this first video, you can see Guerrero's white car. It's driving in circles in an intersection as an officer follows on foot. That same moment, seen from a surveillance camera at a business across the street, the officer appears to attempt to open the driver's door. Moments later, an SUV rams into the car, which comes to a stop in the intersection. Multiple officers then approach the driver's side with at least one weapon drawn. Officers eventually open the door and the driver falls out onto the road.
We want to warn you that much of what you're going to see next is disturbing. From this angle, you see the officers pull the man from the car, his body falling limp face first onto the ground. In a later video, officers can be seen kneeling over the driver, appearing to attempt to treat him, although those efforts were ultimately unsuccessful.
In its first statement about the incident, DHS said that an ICE officer fired their weapon, quote, "fearing for public safety," end quote. They have not yet, however, said who they believed the man posed a public safety threat to or why. The man that you're about to hear from heard the gunshots, then ran to a window and witnessed what followed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DANIEL BOUCHER, WITNESS: He started coming down the street, again, driving, I don't know how. And then the SUV hit him again and he tried to -- and then that's when he stopped. ICE agent got out, tried to open the door and had a difficult time, but eventually opened it and pulled the guy out. His face was bloody, his head was bloody. And I clearly heard the victim say, "I tried to stop". Clearly heard him say that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Let's get off the sidelines, head into THE ARENA. My panel is here.
We're going to get started with CNN's Jason Carroll. He is live for us in Biddeford, Maine, which is the site of Monday's deadly shooting.
Jason, can you walk us through the latest on this investigation and what you're hearing there on the ground?
JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In terms of what we're hearing here on the ground comes from those who are in this community who are audibly upset, visibly upset, and pouring out their support for Joan Guerrero. You can see here on this fence, all of these messages written to him, written to his family. You asked about the investigation.
Well, in terms of that, a number of people out here, Kasie, as you can imagine, have a lot of questions about who will be heading up the investigation. And we have learned that not only that the DHS Office of the Inspector General will be heading up the investigation, but also the FBI and also the Maine Attorney General's Office will be involved in this investigation as well. So that's just the first part of this. Those who we have told about
who will be heading up the investigation still have a great deal of distrust against the federal government. Given all that has happened, they have a lot of questions that they're hoping will be answered in this investigation, namely, why were there the use of deadly force?
[16:05:01]
That's for a second. Why were the officers not using body-worn cameras? And why was this man targeted?
Now, also, obviously, we've been talking and hearing from a number of people out here on the ground, Kasie, all of them very upset that these ICE-involved deadly shootings continue to happen here in the United States, and now many of them upset that it has happened here.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You always knew it was a possibility here because there's been a heavy presence since January and especially in this area in Biddeford, and when you hear about this, it just surreal.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This could be happening to any one of us, any one of us. He's 26 year old with a child. He has a legitimate reason for being here. He had Social Security. It's horrific.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARROLL: And, Kasie, we're also learning more about Guerrero, 26 years old. He was a father. He was a husband. He had a three-year-old daughter.
His father speaking out to a Colombian radio station saying how terribly upset, as you can imagine the family is, saying the, quote, "He is a very good son. They have caused us immense pain taking his life so unjustifiably" -- Kasie.
HUNT: All right, Jason Carroll for us in Maine -- Jason, thank you very much for that report.
All right, my panels here in THE ARENA. CNN legal analyst, former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams; congressional correspondent for "The New York Times", Annie Karni; former communications director at the DNC, Mo Elleithee; along with CNN political commentator, Republican strategist Brad Todd.
We're also joined by CNN security correspondent Josh Campbell.
Welcome to all of you. Thank you very much for being here.
And I want to dig into the politics of this in just a second. But, Josh, let me stick with you first on this tactic change, because they, of course, have now announced this moratorium on most attempts to stop people in vehicles. As someone who's worked in law enforcement and grappled with people in situations like this, what does that actually mean? I mean, why were they doing this to begin with and what does not doing it imply?
JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESEPONDENT: Well, this is a major shift. And, you know, to state at the outset, this is something, a tactic, a vehicle stop, that ICE immigration officers are just simply not equipped to do with extensive training. And that's not to disparage the often dangerous job of the men and women of ICE and other immigration enforcement efforts, but they don't receive extensive training in this.
In fact, law enforcement officers from coast to coast are often trained that one of the most dangerous things that you might ever do is attempt to pull over another vehicle. And that's because they're trying to stop someone that is essentially in control of thousands of pounds of steel. If they decide to flee or if they panic, that could present a threat to themselves, to the officer, to bystanders.
And interestingly, Kasie, you know, people might not realize that agencies like the FBI, the ATF, the DEA, they almost never conduct traffic stops like this. That's essentially a last resort. They prefer to surveil people, to locate them whenever they're preferably on foot and alone before they move in to make an arrest, because they're to remove the vehicle out of the equation.
The thing that we've seen here so often with these ICE arrests is that they are doing just that. They have these roving patrols, and then they're trying to pull people over, and oftentimes this has turned very dangerous and deadly. People might wonder, well, why are they continuing to do this?
I've talked to law enforcement sources who say that immigration officials remain under intense pressure from the administration to meet these arrest quotas. If you're the FBI or DEA, you have the luxury of spending hours and days and weeks surveilling someone. It's labor-intensive. But these so-called turn-and-burn operations that these immigration officers are engaged in, where you go out, find someone, arrest them, bring them back, detain them, get back out on the streets, that doesn't allow the luxury to spend days and hours.
And so I think that's why we've seen this type of posture. Of course, this is a major step now, with DHS now saying they're moving back from these type of vehicle stops unless under specific circumstances, including trying to execute some type of criminal warrant.
HUNT: So, Elliot Williams, when we walked through that video, I mean, we've obviously talked at some length about the legal implications of this. And there are, of course, so many scenarios where law enforcement has a lot of leeway to try and do their jobs.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Right.
HUNT: What did you see in that video there? I mean, it's very hard to watch.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, I see a great argument for body cameras on law enforcement so that we are not in the position, once again, of having to almost litigate someone's death through cell phone video. You know, it is not -- law enforcement, federal law enforcement are not required to wear body cameras. It's an agency by agency determination and agencies have different reasons for doing it and not doing it.
Certainly, this would be a circumstance in which many of these questions would have been answered.
Now, just to be clear, to remind everybody what the law is, law enforcement is empowered to use deadly force if there is an imminent threat of death or serious injury to the public or someone else.
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Now, they've issued a statement broadly saying that in the interest of public safety, this is why they took the action. What does that mean? And I think certainly, these videos leave open questions as to whether there are a lot of open questions from these videos as to whether they truly felt that their lives or someone else's lives were in danger. But I just want to underscore the most important thing Josh said, which is why law enforcement typically surveils people rather than try to chase them down in an automobile.
It has long informally been the policy of DHS up until last year to not engage in these kinds of traffic stops for exactly this reason. There's just an increased risk of all kinds of trouble happening. This is why it is typically much as Josh had said, to surveil, follow the person, and apprehend people. There's a lot of people unlawfully present in America. You probably just don't have to chase them down in cars, as we're seeing today.
HUNT: Yeah.
Annie Karni, you've seen members of Congress interacting with the administration. Angus King was clearly in touch with Markwayne Mullin. Shelley Pingree, congresswoman from Maine, told our John Berman that this man's daughter was still in her Bluey pajamas and saw some of what happened.
How is this reverberating on the Hill? I know there's also some blame already being cast about the body cameras, or lack thereof.
ANNIE KARNI, CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, and then another, notably Susan Collins, a Republican, also told Markwayne Mullin that she wanted this halt, this temporary halt, and she's up for reelection. So that should be factored in.
What I'm hearing a lot, Democrats across the board, from Chuck Schumer to AOC, are saying this temporary stop is just not enough. It's not transparent, just like an internal memo saying, we're going to review our policy. And they're saying, if you remember, the government shutdown was about Democrats trying to negotiate with the White House about the tactics of ICE and not wanting to fund ICE until there were real reforms.
So they're saying that a temporary pause is far short of what they've been demanding for months and months. When I first saw the headline about the pause, though, I did think immediately, this is a blow to Stephen Miller who -- and it's going to be harder for this administration to meet the quotas of people they are stopping and deporting. And even a temporary pause is an admission that this has gone too far, and even Republican senators are saying this is not OK.
HUNT: Yeah, it's an admission that they have a problem.
KARNI: Yeah.
HUNT: Brad Todd, I'd be interested to know what you're hearing behind the scenes from the Republican senators you talked to, because, I mean, there was a neighbor who said that they heard the officers telling him to park the car. There were shots. He went outside. He was there on the ground.
His wife was there screaming and crying. His daughter was there, too. And Pingree told us that the daughter was still in her Bluey pajamas. People are leaving Bluey items at this memorial.
I mean, it's absolutely heart-wrenching. The realities of it underscore why this has become such a problem.
BRAD TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think you have two potential policies that are in conflict with each other and partly driving what's happening here, and they're both unpopular. If the administration has a hard and fast quota, that's going to be unpopular in the middle of swing voters. I don't think they've ever acknowledged that there is one, but it's been widely discussed.
Secondly, Maine is a sanctuary state. The local government basically helps aid and abet people continuing to be illegal in the country despite having final deportation orders. Sanctuary laws are not popular with swing voters. They're popular with Democrat-based voters, but not with swing voters.
But those two things coming together, where ICE has no help from the local law enforcement officials, and then also is under pressure under a quota, if that's in fact the case, that's driving this sort of higher stakes, higher risk confrontations.
HUNT: It's worth noting, though, that -- I mean, in this case, the confrontation wasn't with the person that they were going after.
TODD: Right. Well, and the question is whether there's still things to come out. ISIS said that the person they were after had a final deportation order. You know, if there is a quota policy in place, then that's probably driving agents to take chances they wouldn't take otherwise, which is bad policy. But if Maine was cooperating, and if Maine was helping ICE get people who have final deportation orders toward deportation, there'd also be less pressure on this.
WILLIAMS: Can I just say one thing just about this idea of quotas? But just to put a finer point on what these numbers actually mean, when we talk about 100 -- I guess, a million deportations or removals a year, at the time when I was working for ISIS under the Obama years, which was the height of immigration enforcement, frankly, in American history, you're looking at 400,000 removals a year. When they speak about 3,000 a day or a million a year, it is a vast increase in ICE enforcement activity that these agents and officers simply are not equipped to do.
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They are not certainly funded to that level, but also just not prepared and trained in the way they ought to be.
And so, look, if they wish to have an immigration quota, that's a perfectly fine thing. But I don't think the public really has a sense of exactly how vast and exactly how aggressive they're moving in incidents like these looking at will keep happening if that's the way it's going to continue.
MO ELLEITHEE, FORMER DNC COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: I mean, this is the second one in a week, right? Second fatal shooting by an ICE agent in the last week, one in Maine, one in Texas. So, we can't really point to Maine's cooperate -- Texas cooperates fully with federal agents. And we had a shooting there also of a gentleman who was not the target of ICE enforcement. So something clearly is not working.
To Andy's point, that is what Democrats said back during the government shutdown, that ICE just is not working, so let's institute these reforms. DHS said it was going to institute some reforms, but they didn't, right? When it came to the body cameras, they did not institute the body cameras, even though they said they would.
When they say that they're now going to temporary pause, I think it gives a lot of people pause, because they have told us things before that they did not do, and we keep having the same problem.
HUNT: Josh Campbell, let me give you a quick last word. Go ahead.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, no, I agree. And obviously, we're talking about two people who are dead, and there will be investigations into those incidents.
The one thing that is notable, however, and this is a point that our colleague Aaron Blake just made in THE ARENA text changes now, which is so important, and that is just think about the noticeable change in tone and posture so far under the new leadership at DHS, where in Minneapolis, they were very combative. It was essentially these officers can do no wrong. You know, we're going to back them up no matter what.
And look at what we're seeing today, where they're actually throttling back, at least temporarily right now, this tactic that has been so controversial. Moving ahead, where do we go from here?
The last thing I'll note is that, you know, this is wonky and maybe not get won't get enough attention. But you look at the amount of training that ICE agents, ICE officers receive right now, sometimes as little as 47 days. That is obviously going to be a big focus.
Do they need more training? And I can tell you, someone who's gone through law enforcement academy, through the FBI academy, people don't, they may walk out the door highly trained. They didn't walk in that way. And it's these law enforcement academies that allow time to fail, to fail over and over again as you're training and practicing these tactics. But that takes time.
Forty-seven days, you know, that essentially what you're doing is sending them out with a badge and a gun and expecting them to do things that are right when they may be doing their failures out on the street.
HUNT: Right. And of course, that's the whole point of learning is to do it in an environment where you can make your mistakes without the fatal consequences that we've started to see here.
All right, Josh Campbell, thank you. Always appreciate you.
Everyone else to stay here. Coming up next in THE ARENA, something we haven't seen in more than seven years, not one but two Supreme Court justices in public testifying before congressional lawmakers. What they're saying today, including telling a story not previously known.
Plus, we're going to talk live with Republican Congressman Don Bacon as the president resumes a blockade on Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz while abruptly backing off a plan that he had announced just a day ago.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't think anybody should be able to charge a fee for the strait or for any other strait relationship in terms of other sections of the world. I don't think anybody should be really in that position.
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HUNT: All right. Breaking news out of the Middle East. The United States now carrying out more strikes in Iran. That's happening at the same time as President Trump resumes the U.S. naval blockade of ships going to and from Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz. The latest escalation in the on-again, off-again war.
The president today also reversing course on another plan, abandoning his proposal to charge a 20 percent toll on cargo moving through the strait after calls from several Gulf nations who offered this alternative.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: They said we'd love to do it a different way. We would like to invest tremendously in the United States, as opposed to charging a fee. And I like that, actually, because I don't think anybody should be able to charge a fee for the -- for the strait. But we were doing it as a reimbursement. The Gulf States are going to invest a tremendous amount of money into the United States, and that was very satisfactory to me. I think it's actually much better.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Joining us now, Republican congressman from Nebraska, Don Bacon. He spent nearly three decades in the Air Force and deployed four times to the Middle East.
Congressman, thank you very much for being here.
REP. DON BACON (R-NE): Thank you.
HUNT: I always appreciate it. I want to play for you something that the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, had said about whether or not charging a fee or a toll in the Strait of Hormuz is ever appropriate. Let's watch, and we'll talk about it on the other side.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That's existing international law. That's the way it is in international waterways all over the world, and that's the way we expect it'll be here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So, given that, was this the right move to change this plan?
BACON: The president was right to change this plan. Marco Rubio was correct. We want no country to be charging tolls anywhere in public. Waterways are in our oceans and our straits. And so I think the president maybe got out ahead of his team, and he -- I think it was -- anywhere in public. Waterways are in our oceans and our straits. And so I think the president maybe got out ahead of his team and he -- I think it was very correct to back it up or back up and fix that.
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HUNT: Congressman, do you think that that memorandum of understanding is something that helped the United States here considering that we are now resuming this blockade?
BACON: I think we were too premature to try to have peace negotiations and a truce with Iran. I think Iran perceived America is wanting a peace more than they did. And so I think they thought they could play with the president, push him around, and make him sort of beg for a peace deal.
We really needed to keep the pressure on militarily on Iran up until the point that they said, hey, we've had enough, uncle. But we were like the first one sticking out our hand. So we should continue putting military pressure on Iran until they say they've had enough and that they want the peace.
When they perceive that we want it more than them, they will abuse us. And that's what they were doing. By the way, the president had no choice to really to restart these operations. Iran has been targeting ships every night. They've been hitting Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE. And so, it can't be a one-way truce. They were violating it and I think we had to respond.
HUNT: I want to talk a little bit, too, about developments here at home specifically what the president is doing around elections here in the U.S. We expect a primetime speech from the president on Thursday evening that is going to be focused on election results. You've, of course, been hearing from both senators from Georgia in the last 23 for hours about the results of their elections.
What would you say to the president? Are our elections free and fair?
BACON: I think they are. It doesn't mean we can't work on doing better. Most Americans like voter ID. It's already law that you have to be a citizen. It's a worthy discussion to ask states, how do you verify that?
But we should be looking forward, not backwards. The fact is, if you look at Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan during the 2020 election I believe the primary factor in that election for why Joe Biden won versus President -- or Donald Trump was that he asked Republicans not to use mail-in ballots and yet the Democrats were using mail-in ballots and that what they were able to do is they ran up the score legally, and Republicans were being told not to vote early. And so, they weren't able to get low propensity voters out.
I think if you look at the results, that single action precipitated by the president causes a lot of those states. We could have won those states if we would have played on a level playing field and went to our low propensity voters and got them to vote early using mail. I just think we're missing the boat here. It wasn't not a fraud, it was the Democrats taking advantage of the rules legally and the Republicans unilaterally not doing it. And I think that's the point that the president's missing.
HUNT: When you talk to Democrats about this midterm election, many of them will raise concerns about what they believe the administration is doing, whether it's laying the groundwork for declaring a national emergency and calling the results into question, or raising questions about whether the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, will be willing to seat the new Congress according to the rules that everybody expects.
Are you confident that the House Speaker will seat the next Congress in the same way we've seen Congress's past be seated?
BACON: In the end, Mike Johnson is a constitutionalist. He will respect the election results. And just say, hypothetically, if he did not, there's enough Republicans who would stand up and insist that we follow the rules that we've done for 250 years.
It's very important that we respect the election results and we respect those who win. And after the election, you stick your hand out, you shake hands, and you promise to work together to the best of your ability to solve problems. And so we work hard in a campaign, then you shake hands after the election.
I believe Mike Johnson will always -- will do the right thing here, no matter what the outcome of the elections.
HUNT: And, are you confident that every member of the Congress right now, even given all of the doubts the president is sowing, is every member of Congress duly, freely, and fairly elected? Did they win their seats fair and square?
BACON: I believe they did. And, you know, normally after an election, the governor, they authenticate the results or certify them, and that's the law. And so I don't think we go backwards and second guess that. I always think we should consider how we could make them safer and better, more secure.
But I do believe everybody who's been elected, they've been rightfully elected, and they're serving as their constituents want them to serve.
HUNT: Sir, before I let you go, I do want to ask you to weigh in on the tragic shooting in Maine, the ICE agents that shot the 26-year-old father. There, of course, was news that now the administration is saying that ICE should no longer pursue vehicles. and that they're going to put a moratorium on that policy.
[16:30:10]
Susan Collins, the senator from Maine, has suggested ICE shouldn't be allowed to investigate itself.
What is your view on the change in that policy? And do you think ICE has a problem?
BACON: Well, Secretary Markwayne Mullin is a good man. I served with him in the House. Doesn't mean I always agree with him, but I think he tries to do the right thing. I think he'll look at this and try to be fair and transparent. So I believe that number one.
But secondly, I tend to want to give the benefit of the doubt to law enforcement. But anytime there's a death, whether it's a shooting, whatever, whatever caused that death, there should be an investigation and there should be some kind of independent ability to do that. We have that most of our police departments, an independent authority that looks at these shootings. So that's what we need here.
We should do due process, do the investigation and be transparent. And I know that I believe Secretary Markwayne Mullin feels the same way. And I think most Americans want that. We want a fair, transparent process to investigate any of these shootings, whether it's at the local level or at the ICE, state troopers, whatever law enforcement.
HUNT: All right. Congressman Don Bacon, thank you very much for spending your time with us in THE ARENA.
BACON: Thank you.
HUNT: I appreciate it.
All right, coming up next here, the only Democratic senator up for reelection in a state that Donald Trump won in 2024 is escalating his criticism of the president as the White House teases news on election security.
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SEN. JON OSSOFF (D-GA): He is reheating debunked conspiracy theories and launching bizarre new lies because he fears losing these midterm elections. This is a failed and disgraced president.
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[16:36:16]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: But I'd rather save it, but it's really big news. It's really, really big news, and our country has to shape up. But what we're going to be talking about Thursday is it doesn't get bigger, because without free and fair elections, you don't have a country. We'll be discussing other things, too. But it's going to be a very big announcement. Yeah.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: President Trump confirming his Thursday night primetime speech will focus on elections. The president, as you know, has long been fixated on election integrity and continues to insist there were irregularities in the 2020 election that he lost and that Joe Biden won.
CNN's Manu Raju is on Capitol Hill for us.
He just spoke to Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff. So, Manu, Ossoff is, of course, the only Senate Democrat who is running in a Trump state. What is he saying about this amid, of course, considerable buzz around him and his future?
MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, because there have been some reports, particularly in the conservative media, that the president may come out and say that the elections in 2020 that led to John Ossoff becoming a senator and Raphael Warnock becoming a senator were invalid somehow.
Now, we don't have that in our own reporting. The White House has not gone that far in saying that's exactly what the president has said. But Senator Ossoff is -- went and really launched a preemptive strike against the president's upcoming remarks, especially the president's fixation that he won the election in 2020 in Georgia, even though investigation after investigation has yet to bear out what the president has said.
And court cases, of course, have yet to actually come down on the president's side, despite those repeated efforts to try to say that he won somehow in the 2020 election. But nevertheless, Jon Ossoff came out and took a swing at the president, saying the president's concerned about losing in the midterms, and then went after his Republican opponent, Mike Collins. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OSSOFF: Privately, most elected Republicans in this building think the president has lost it and is dooming them to dismal losses this fall. Thank you all so much for your time.
RAJU: Mike Collins agrees with them, though. Mike Collins agrees with them that the election was stolen.
OSSOFF: Let's see how Mike Collins handles this now. Mike Collins launched his general election campaign, doubling down on 2020 election denialism. Now he not only has to defend doubling health insurance premiums for more than a million Georgians, he has to defend these conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that Georgia voters have rejected time and time again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: Now, Mike Collins, in an interview with me about a couple of weeks ago, told me that he believes that it was Donald Trump who won the 2020 election in Georgia. He does not believe the election results, that it was Joe Biden that won in Georgia. So that is what the senator is saying there.
But Kasie, as you can hear from Jon Ossoff, he views the president's speech as an opportunity to run, to create a wedge in his race, to go after Mike Collins and underscore the kind of campaign that Jon Ossoff is running, which is against Donald Trump to try to juice energize the Democratic base.
So even though the president may have a primetime address to sow doubt on Ossoff's election, Ossoff believes it will help him in his re- election in November -- Kasie.
HUNT: All right, Manu Raju for us on the Hill -- Manu, thank you very much for that.
My panel is back.
Annie Karni, what do you make of all of this? I mean, it's fascinating to watch how Ossoff has sort of exploded into the zeitgeist as a, you know, once and future candidate for Democrats, but especially on this, the president has been obsessed with election security around his own loss in 2020. They have, of course, seized those election boxes in Fulton County, Georgia, and now he's teasing this major announcement.
How does it all add up, in your view?
KARNI: I don't think -- I'm not surprised that he's going to do this primetime address. This is the issue he's going to obsess about through November. I mean, they are on track to lose the House. The question is, by how much?
And the Senate is up in up in the air. So he is going -- Democrats are assuming he's going to make a stink about the election results. One thing I interviewed Hakeem Jeffries last week in New York. He's the minority leader right now in the House. He will be speaker next year if they win it back.
And he said the thing that gives him confidence is that 20 of the states where the most contested races are in the House are controlled with Democratic governors, Democratic A.G.s, Democratic secretaries of state. So it's going to be hard to contest those election results, where, like, the main pickup opportunities are controlled by Democrats.
That being said, they are fully prepared that this is going to be what is said. And I think that it will be entertained unless Democrats can make this such a huge wave election that it's just clear to everybody that these are lies about election interference.
TODD: You know, the Democrats contest plenty of elections themselves. I remember in 2020, in Iowa, Mariannette Miller-Meeks won, and Democrats took six months to get her seated because they kept denying that she had won, even though the Iowa Supreme --
KARNI: She won by six votes down there. So it was very close.
TODD: The Iowa Supreme Court validated the election, though, but DC Democrats tried to deny her seat.
KARNI: I'm saying, that's why I'm saying it needs to be a wave when you win by six seats.
TODD: Contesting goes both ways. And I would -- battle of the House is not over. Republicans have to win nine out of the 26 seats that are up for grabs. We very easily can do that.
I think both chambers are in play, though. Senate chamber's -- Senate's in play more than we thought it was. But I do think the president's obsession over an election that was six years ago is detrimental to our ability to win one that's just four or five months from now.
We will not win looking in the rearview mirror. You never do. You only win when you look in the windshield. And the president has to project how Republicans would solve people's problems and how Democrats would make them worse.
It's that simple. That's how you win.
ELLEITHEE: I agree with Brad. I mean, I'm still waiting for the president's primetime address on affordability, on high gas prices, on the cost of groceries.
HUNT: I think we're going to be waiting for --
ELLEITHEE: We're not getting that. And that's what the American people voted --
HUNT: Staff would love that, too.
ELLEITHEE: Right. I mean, but that's what people voted for him to do, because that's what he said he was going to focus on. Instead, as Brett said, he's looking in the rearview mirror, continuing to push conspiracy theories, trying to invalidate the election of two sitting United States senators.
Let's say that he is going to focus on election security. He's going to have to answer a lot of questions about why he gutted the entire election cybersecurity infrastructure, cutting the task force, cutting the cooperation between the federal and the state and local election officials, at a time when even Republicans on the Hill are saying, no, this is important, when the head of Cyber Command is saying -- U.S. Cyber Command is saying, foreign actors may try to meddle in our elections and break in with technology but there's no one answering the phone in the federal government.
So, the president's going to have to answer questions about that if he wants to talk about this but I think people want him to answer questions about gas prices and grocery prices first.
WILLIAMS: Question -- just a question for Brad. Who cares about this issue other than Donald Trump? And I'm genuinely curious, is it congressional Republicans? Is it Senate Republicans? Is it a subset of MAGA? Is it actual primary? Like who --
(CROSSTALK)
TODD: Well, election performance is something that people in both parties care about.
WILLIAMS: No, no, time out. Not election reform. I mean, literally that --
TODD: You're talking about the Georgia election in 2020?
WILLIAMS: Georgia and the elections are rigged. So like who actually? And it's --
TODD: The president cares about it.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, I'm curious.
TODD: I think that's about the end of it. You know, I mean, Georgia Republicans passed election reforms in 2021. Now, Democrats said those were Jim Crow 2.0. They required a voter ID for an absentee ballot, said you couldn't mail out unsolicited absentee applications.
They said it was Jim Crow 2.0 and guess what happened? Turnout went up and it went up with every demographic. So, it was not Jim Crow 2.0.
That kind of thing people care about. Who won 2020? I don't think people care.
HUNT: All right. Coming up next here, two members of the Supreme Court making a rare appearance on Capitol Hill, telling lawmakers their safety is at risk and asking Congress for more security.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JUSTICE AMY CONEY BARRETT, SUPREME COURT: Maybe I lack imagination, but I didn't expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:49:07]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN, SUPREME COURT: For some of us, those threats have come very close. And all of us live with the knowledge that they may, again, materialize.
BARRETT: They have required me to -- my children, to think about and see things that children should not have to see or think about.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett today testifying before both chambers of Congress, making a plea for more security funding. In a rare appearance before lawmakers, the pair painted a vivid picture of the heightened threat environment the justices and their families now face.
Justice Barrett even recounted a chilling moment when her son asked her why she needed a bulletproof vest.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARRETT: A few years ago, around the time of the Dobbs leak, my security details sent me home with a bulletproof vest, and I carried it into my house, put it into my bedroom, dropped it down on a table, turned around, and my 12-year-old son was standing in the doorway of my bedroom.
[16:50:08]
And he wanted to know what it was and why I had it. And I didn't know how to respond, because maybe I lack imagination, but I didn't expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Annie Karni, I mean, this is part of a bigger story about political violence in our country and the way that service has come to make people targets in a way that you know and hearing from Kagan and from Amy Coney Barrett I think underscores that this is you know, very often, we hear our politicians try to present this as a one side or the other side problem. This is an all sides everybody problem right now and I think that was on display. KARNI: Yeah, look, having a conservative and a liberal justice come together -- and by the way, the hearing was really bipartisan. Everyone agreed they need more money for security, Republicans and Democrats alike. It was a moment where everyone agrees.
And if you talk to lawmakers on the Hill, Republicans and Democrats, if you really spend time with them, their safety is a huge part of what they think about all day. The death threats they get are real. Some who are more in the public eye get more. But they don't get security details. They have to pay for their own security if they want it out of their campaign funds. And they're scared.
And this has become a real defining part of the job that's just hard to think about, hard to deal with for them, and deters people from maybe wanting to serve in public office in this moment.
HUNT: Yeah, I mean, Brad Todd, do you encounter it when you're working on recruitment efforts and things? Because it seems like this is something -- and I know from having private conversations with lawmakers who've left, it has certainly prompted some of our most promising public servants on both sides of the aisle to say, "I'm out, I'm done with this."
TODD: It weighs on their families a great deal, and particularly when it happens within a delegation. There are members of Congress who get credible death threats on a fairly regular basis. And when, you know, when that happens -- delegations within a state tend to be close, even across party lines, and when that happens within a state, it affects everyone in the state's delegation, partly because there's a crazy person on the loose in your home state in targeting members of Congress.
And most of the people who do this are people who might go after either side. You have to be nuts to do this.
And, you know, Brett Kavanaugh, we had an assassination plot, someone traveled all the way across the country and got to his neighborhood. Supreme Court justices, the fact that they roam in freely in their neighborhoods on evening dog walks and there's not like 10 marshals within 15 feet of them is a real problem. And if we will have a constitutional crisis if we lose a Supreme Court justice, or in the case of the president, with the President Trump, who -- there have been three attempts on him. It's a real problem.
HUNT: Yeah, let's watch a little bit of what Amy Coney Barrett also said, because she was -- she and her family were a victim of a so- called swatting incident where someone calls law enforcement, heavily armed law enforcement, to a scene where they're actually not needed, and it can create very dynamic, difficult, potentially dangerous situations.
Here's what she said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARRETT: It's also been reported in the news that roughly six weeks ago, I was the victim of a swatting incident. At that point, my teenage son, one of my teenage sons, opened the door to go out with friends and saw in our street -- it was full of police cars-- who had responded to a false report of gunshots and raised voices in my home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: I mean, Mo, the implications of that -- I mean, you're a parent of teenage kids. Mine are little. But can you imagine having a child open a door? And what could -- I mean, the number of things that could go wrong in this kind of an incident are just -- I mean, the way that she's very calm in her delivery of it. But that -- that is a horrifying situation.
ELLEITHEE: You know, this is -- you're absolutely right. This is a both sides problem. But it's not just people who are in public service, it's people who are anywhere near public arena at all right I'm a washed-up has-been political hack who now works in a university.
HUNT: Oh, come on, Mo. We would -- first of all, you would not be allowed to sit on my set if that was --
(CROSSTALK)
ELLEITHEE: But because I sit on your set, because I do television, because I do commentary, I get it, right? Charlie Kirk was not an elected leader, disagreed with him vehemently on a lot of stuff. He was not an elected official but he was in the public square and we saw what happened to him.
So there is a growing tolerance of intolerance. And what exacerbates it are the very people who are under threat, public officials, who fan the flames at the same time. And if there's anybody who should be stepping up right now to turn the temperature down, it's them.
[16:55:00]
Maybe they need to look -- they should have as much security as they need 100 percent, but they also should be doing as much as they can to turn down the temperature.
TODD: There's one good moment in that hearing, though, when Elena Kagan complimented Lindsey Graham. And I thought that was a thing that's been overdue this week, and I was glad to see her do it.
HUNT: All right. On that note, we'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUNT: Thanks to my panel. Really appreciate you all being here.
Thanks to you at home for watching as well. We really appreciate having you here in THE ARENA every day.
But of course, do not go anywhere. Jake Tapper is standing by for "THE LEAD".
Jake, I'm sure you've got a great show planned today.
