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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
CNN, MS NOW, & Politico Sue Trump Over White House Access; Judge Sets Hearing On Trump's Ban Of Three News Organizations; Trump Now Says His D.C. Arch Will Serve As "Military Complex"; Lawyer: Man Shot By ICE At Detention Center With Bullet In His Back". Aired 4-5p ET
Aired September 21, 2026 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[16:00:00]
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Going to keep going on.
All right, Omar, thank you so much. Obviously, a very busy day.
And THE ARENA WITH KASIE -- or go on.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: It's Brianna's birthday. Sing with me. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday.
KEILAR: "THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT" starts right now.
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Hi, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to THE ARENA. It's great to have you with us on this Monday.
Right now, a courtroom showdown now set. Federal judge now scheduling a hearing and asking the Trump administration to explain why the president abruptly banned three news organizations, including CNN, from the White House. That's in response to a lawsuit that was filed just hours ago from this network, as well as MS NOW and "Politico".
In a statement today, the three outlets say, quote, "This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes. Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists' credentials because it objected to our reporting. Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public's right to independent journalism free from government interference."
Right now, President Trump is in New York. He's just arrived to meet with the mayor, Zohran Mamdani, before beginning a week of events around the United Nations General Assembly. And for the first time, the traveling pool of TV cameras, which CNN was scheduled to lead today, is not with him.
The five networks that make up the presidential coverage pool, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC, also released a rare joint statement today saying this, quote, "The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting."
The attorney that is representing the three news organizations calling the president's actions, quote, "a direct assault on the First Amendment and a blatant violation of due process. The president has been explicit that this ban is intended to punish reporting he doesn't like and to intimidate journalists and news organizations covering him and his administration."
And that is something that the president himself laid out pretty plainly right here live during THE ARENA on Friday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: What do you envision the ban works on the media outlets?
DONAL TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Oh, the ban on the free press, right? A very simple ban. I don't want them in my office. I don't want them here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, let's get off the sidelines, head into THE ARENA. My panel is going to be here, but we're going to get started with CNN crime and justice correspondent Katelyn Polantz.
Katelyn, always good to see you. Walk us through this lawsuit.
KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kasie, this is a lawsuit that's already moving very fast in federal court in Washington. It's been assigned to a judge today, Judge Tim Kelly, a Trump appointee. And there's going to be a hearing on Wednesday. At that hearing, the judge could be ruling from the bench as early as Wednesday afternoon.
This is a lawsuit. It is about the free press. It's about access for any media organization, not just the three organizations coming together today, CNN, MS NOW, "Politico", fighting their own prohibitions from accessing the White House and becoming part of the national media coverage, the pool, the TV pool, the print pool.
This is a larger case because it really is about whether the White House is discriminating against news organizations because of what they write or broadcast, the type of stories they're telling. There's also another big question here of whether these news organizations have had a violation of their constitutional due process. That would be the type of thing in this context where there's a White House press pool, press badges, where the White House needs to tell journalists or news organizations if they're going to restrict their access.
Why? They're supposed to get notice. They're supposed to have a process. They're supposed to have warnings. There has to be a good reason, like national security.
Those are the arguments that the news organizations are making, that their constitutional rights are being violated.
Judge Kelly is very likely going to look at this quite quickly. He's not a judge that's unfamiliar with this. In fact, he had to deal with this very issue in 2018 when CNN's own Jim Acosta at the time had his press credential revoked. There was a very similar schedule that Judge Kelly had set up then where there was a complaint on one day and two to three days later, there was a hearing.
Judge Kelly ruled ultimately in favor of Jim Acosta on an emergency basis and then at that ruling soon after it the White House restored the press credential of Jim Acosta. It's very similar in there have been many other cases that have played out basically the same way and the violation there that the White House was having was that they were violating someone's due process.
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They couldn't just revoke arbitrarily and suddenly a press credential.
We'll see how exactly this plays out. There's a lot of time still between now and 3:30 PM on Wednesday when this hearing is set to begin. Let's watch and see how things might change.
But the law on the books, it will not be changing between now and then. It's pretty clear you can't just revoke White House press credentials because you don't like what someone reports -- Kasie.
HUNT: Yeah.
All right, let's bring in CNN chief legal analyst and anchor Laura Coates.
Laura, always good to see you.
So, the case centers here on this First Amendment legal concept. It's known as viewpoint discrimination. Can you explain that and how this could play out?
LAURA COATES, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: It's so important to think about this concept. It means the government cannot decide what rights or privileges are going to get to somebody, whether it's going to honor someone's right based on what it's like you had to say. Imagine if you will, you're a government entity and you walk around and say, tell me what you're going to say before I allow you to say it.
Oh, you have to say, you get to speak, but you open --
HUNT: I'm sorry to interrupt you here, but we can't hear you very well.
So, Katelyn, if you wouldn't mind just picking up a little bit while we work on that, just finish that thought quickly and then I think we're going to bring in the panel, Katelyn.
POLANTZ: Yeah, the viewpoint discrimination issue that really is about restricting someone's ability to continue doing their job or pulling them out of the press corps because you don't like the viewpoint that they're putting forward. Trump has already been on record so far since announcing this ban, saying he didn't like the negative stories that CNN, MS NOW, and "Politico", that he perceived those news organizations were reporting. That will be very core here.
The other thing that's important here is that Trump is out on social media already just a few minutes ago saying that he will appeal if Judge Kelly rules against him. We are really far away from that. The only thing that is happening right now is an emergency request to Judge Kelly to step in and restore the press credentials of these journalists.
That's -- even if he were to do that alone on what's been filed, it might not be something that the administration can appeal right away or that they would want to, given that the federal appeals court, the D.C. Circuit, has over and over again said that you can't just abruptly pull someone's press credentials because you don't like the viewpoint that they're publishing.
HUNT: All right. Katelyn Polantz for us -- Katelyn, thank you. Really appreciate that.
My panel's going to be here in THE ARENA. CNN chief national correspondent John King; the publisher of "The Bulwark", Sarah Longwell. She's got a new book out. It's called "How to Eat an Elephant". We'll talk about it a little later.
We're also joined by CNN political commentator, former Biden White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield; and former Republican Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry.
Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for being here.
John King, you obviously have spent many years in the White House press pool over time and really understand how it works, why it's important. I think it's worth noting that the other four networks declined to take CNN's place today when we had pool duty and were, of course, unable to fulfill that duty. What does it say that this is where we are?
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Number one, I covered the White House for 10 years, as you know. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush Four years of Clinton, six years of George W. Bush, two very different presidents.
Two presidents who on certain days probably wished we were not on the same planet, the news media, but never did anything like this because they understood, valued, and cherished the sometimes adversarial relationship between the politician, the principal, in this case the president, and the press.
My question for President Trump simply would be, number one, you're against free speech.
There are some things on primetime on MS NOW or primetime on Fox News, and even every now and then, primetime on CNN that I might say, oh, that's not my cup of tea. But it's the First Amendment. That's what we live. We live in a great country where you can have these debates.
And number two, what is specifically, what is he trying to achieve here? His base, Sarah understands this better than I do, but his base might like this for about five minutes. Oh, yeah, he's standing up and fighting the press again. But the price of diesel is $6.49 today. It was $3.72 when he started the war six and a half months ago.
The price of gas was $2.98 a gallon and it's $4.48 now. It's 7.24 percent on average 30-year mortgage today. It was under 6 when he started the war.
His approval rating was above 40 when he started it. It is in the mid- 30s. Some polls have it even under 30 as of today.
Those are facts. That is the truth. Who covers the White House is not going to change those facts. Or the other fact that he's in a very tough midterm environment and if he thinks this is going to help him, okay.
HUNT: I mean, he could use a distraction, I guess.
Sarah?
SARAH LONGWELL, PUBLISHER, THE BULWARK: Yeah, I do think it's part of a distraction, but also this is just Trump goes to the well on these things. He's only got a couple of moves. And as you note, when he doesn't like what the news is, when he doesn't like the fact that what people are hearing about, including his voters, are the fact that his performance on the economy is in the toilet, his performance on immigration is underwater.
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The Iran war is something that voters are actively rebelling against. They're frustrated by all these things.
And so, Trump, when he finds himself in this mode either usually blames immigrants. Right now, that's not really working because people don't love him on as much right now. So, his next move, the media.
And I think he knows that his base will always come to his defense if he's beating up on the media. But again, I don't think it saves him from the fact that $7, you know, for diesel and costs rising, like, doesn't get him out of that.
The news -- people will still know about that, whether these guys are reporting it or not.
HUNT: Congressman, how do you see this?
PATRICK MCHENRY (R), FORMER SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE: This is the biggest consumer of news media to ever sit in the White House, staff --
KING: That's true.
MCHENRY: I mean, John, wouldn't you say that? KING: Yes, absolutely. He consumes more news than any president I ever understood.
MCHENRY: And critiques the news media, written and visual.
HUNT: He has -- the banners. I mean, he would call control rooms earlier in his career.
MCHENRY: And probably still does.
So, my point here is that he consumes the media. He is focused on the media. And the reason why he's president is because of the media. In 2016, he controlled the Republican narrative because he was on CNN, Fox News, right, all these networks flooding the zone. And his expertise -- and Sarah, you mentioned this -- he's got a couple of techniques, yes, but flooding the zone is the key Trump technique.
And that flooding the zone, I think in many ways in 2016, broke the media, and therefore broke the coverage of him and his White House.
What we're dealing with is downstream of this. Every president has had a tussle with the press, from access to certain parts of the White House to certain rotations of the pool. It's all inside baseball. No one cares about it when you're at election time.
On this, though, the courts have always stepped in and had a say here. And the say is not about whether or not the president likes the coverage. This president absolutely hates the coverage and it's quite negative. But it is about access for the American people.
But on behalf of the president, the reason why it's in their interest to have a pool covering them is that the sound works, the lights are on, and you've got a way to communicate with the American people, and that is through these sources that are there to cover them.
HUNT: Well, and it's interesting because we've been seeing some outlets that are trying to cover today the president's activities airing events that have no audio because we're not there to provide it.
And, Kate, there was this reporting from Maggie Haberman in one of her books about how President Trump felt about the pool, because she writes this: By late January 2021, just days into Trump's unhappy new life as a former president, his world had shrunk to a size he could not abide, self-exiled in Florida, twice impeached, boiling. His social media bullhorns had been silenced after January 6th, Twitter citing the risk of further incitement of violence.
His circle had dwindled to a smattering of junior aides who were straining to keep him on the fairways and away from the television. Get the pool, Mr. Trump instructed at one point, referring to the hive of reporters who had trailed him daily as president. I want to make a statement. And he was told that he did not have one anymore.
I mean, this is a president who knows this so intimately. KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, and cares tremendously about it and clearly views being able to dictate who comes in, who's in the pool, what the rotation looks like, who covers him, as some sort of expression of power, right?
And I would argue that's sort of a despotic expression of power if you are dictating, I'm not comfortable with this outlet interrogating me in a tough way or asking me tough questions, therefore I will not allow them to cover me. That's actually pretty anti-American as far as journalism, democracy, and kind of the tenets of a free and open society go.
But the reality is, as you were saying, when you tell the pool, we're going to cut -- we're going to not allow access to these networks, and the pool says, fine, we stand together, we won't allow this, we're not going to cover you. You lose an enormous amount of coverage. They had an event today, you could not hear the audio.
So, any American who would have otherwise seen this event on television, on weather networks, because the pool, of course, provides -- or clipped on social media. Exactly, provides coverage. You know, it's not just, so when CNN is the pool camera, it's not just CNN, people should understand, it's not just CNN getting that footage, it's the entire news media, it's essentially CNN covering --
HUNT: All of the networks that you watch across the --
BEDINGFIELD: And I would just say Just quickly, as somebody who sat in that chair, people should also understand the White House does not dictate the pool rotation. The White House doesn't say, I want Fox News to cover this day, I want NBC to cover this day.
There were times sitting in that chair, I sure wish I could have made that decision. But it's the Correspondents Association, it's the news media who set that rotation themselves.
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HUNT: And the White House tried to do it today. They tried to get a different network to stand in.
MCHENRY: We once had this debate about having a press conference with the president and the control of that. I mean, what President Trump does for media availability in a month's time is more than President Biden did in a years' time. So, in fairness, every president tries to control the narrative.
BEDINGFIELD: Of course.
MCHENRY: This is a very specific thing that this president is doing. But his media availability is now basically three or four times a week sitting in the Oval Office taking all the questions from all the press that's there. So I think we've got to balance this out a little bit, in fairness.
BEDINGFIELD: Listen, I would also argue, I mean, Biden took questions from the pool that covered him almost every day, shouted questions. Now, we can have a whole debate about his communication strategy. That's fine. That is substantive very different than the president of the United States telling an outlet you cannot come in and cover my administration.
MCHENRY: I got it. I hear it. And to I mean, you know, I have enormous respect for you. To equate those two things is ludicrous and a little dangerous.
HUNT: John, we have some new reporting. We just put this story out on CNN.com that Natalie Harp, who is, of course, that close Trump aide occasionally referred to as the human printer, was showing Trump coverage clips right before he issued the ban. There was a graphic from "Politico" we are reporting that was among the material that is believed to have infuriated the president.
How does this play into it?
KING: Well, he has a team of people around him who are sycophants. He has a team of people around him who try to keep him in his parallel universe, that all is great, you are wonderful, and the people who say your approval rating is down or Republicans are breaking from you or Republicans are worried or Republicans are worried they're going to lose their midterms and they think you're responsible for a lot of their problems. He has a whole bunch of people who tell him that's all fake, that's all out there.
Now, he has other people who get into the Oval Office who tell him, sir, the Iran war's killing you, sir, you promised to end inflation like that on day one. It was all Biden's fault and it is still persistent in America.
But there's a small group of people around him who try to keep him in whatever world he wants to live in, and they feed this to him. But it's not just that. He's the president of the United States, so let's not blame aides for any of his actions or his conduct. And at night, he sits himself and consumes news and watches the overnight news.
So, are there a team of people who reinforce his parallel universe view of many things? Yes, he's the CEO and head of the operations, so his decisions are his decisions.
HUNT: Well, and of course, I think this just raises questions as this lawsuit proceeds. We're looking at evidence for why this happened and does it represent discrimination. Him having viewed clips of specific reporting that then he's decided he wants to ban may of course be relevant for this. conversation.
All right, coming up next here in THE ARENA, new developments in the latest shooting involving an immigration agent. We're going to show you a video of the moment an ICE officer shot a Venezuelan man in Austin that's now prompting major protests in the Texas Capitol.
But first, we'll discuss the president's attack on the First Amendment with someone who has covered been there to see the American presidency up close and personal. A former White House chief photographer will be here live.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I started covering the White House back in 1996, and we've never had a day here like the one we have today. For the very first time, in my experience, the president of the United States will have no television network cameras with him when he leaves the office. This is unprecedented, and it's a result of his decision to kick CNN and MS NOW off the White House campus, what he himself called a ban on the free press.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I was just looking for a warm meal somewhere. Thanks for inviting me to dinner. We will win because our cause is just. We will win because we will stay on the offensive. And we will win because you're part of the finest military ever assembled.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: As the Trump administration continues to block CNN and other outlets from the White House, it's worth remembering that moment from Thanksgiving 2003 when then President George W. Bush spoke to U.S. troops after he made an unannounced clandestine trip to Baghdad. With Saddam Hussein still at large and the Iraq war ongoing, the trip was kept so secret that ground crew believed that Air Force One was simply on a maintenance flight.
Few people, however, who did know the president's true whereabouts, that small group of reporters, including members of the press pool, who accompanied Bush as he became the first U.S. president to visit the country and bore witness on behalf of the American public back home.
Joining our panel now is the Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Hume Kennerly. He was the chief White House photographer for President Gerald Ford and spent six decades documenting the American presidency. He's also the author of the forthcoming book "In the Room: 60 Years on the Front Lines of History."
And David, it's great to see you. Thank you so much for joining us.
And you, of course, had a particularly special vantage point, one that members of the press typically do not enjoy the privilege of seeing because you were working directly with presidents and with their families.
But you also understand intimately what it means to have members of the media, members of an independent press, be able to get a close view of a president of the United States, what they're doing every day, especially as they confront potentially historic moments in any given mundane moment of the United States, what they're doing every day, especially as they confront potentially historic moments in any given mundane moment that they might come across.
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Talk a little bit about what this ban means to you considering your deep experience.
DAVID HUME KENNERLY, PULITZER PRIZE WINNING PHOTO-JOURNALIST: Well, I think your sign off with George W. Bush is good because he was quoted at one point as saying a free press was indispensable to democracy. And I think President Trump didn't get that memo that said the press is not there just to write good things about you. I don't think in history there's been a president who's loved the press. I mean, I would almost guarantee John King was kind of on that track.
And President Ford, who was a very mild-mannered guy, understood the press's responsibility in a democracy. And he didn't like it. Sometimes he would get really mad about something that was written, but he would never blow off in public. He would never ban the press. These are just thoughts that didn't cross his Yeah.
HUNT: Yeah. Are there other times that you remember seeing presidents or members of their family get really angry about their press coverage?
KENNERLY: I can't talk about that, but yeah, of course. I mean, like, you don't like and I've had a lot of back in the days when people cared about what I was doing, apparently, I had some pretty tough shots taken at me, but you have to look at it with a sense of humor. I think what Trump needs to do is get a humor implant of some kind, because you can't expect you're going to get good things written about you.
And he's very thin-skinned. It shows. He lashes out. He's going to take it out on CNN and the other -- at "Politico". I've worked for both of you and Politico, and I think that It's ironic that CNN had a sue to get into the White House pool.
In 1981, CNN sued the Reagan administration and the other three networks because they didn't want them to be as part of the pool. CNN won and CNN has been a part of that ever since. It sounds like you're going to start suing to get back in there again.
HUNT: Yes, well, we did this morning, in fact, sue the White House or sue the administration along with "Politico" and MS NOW as well.
Can you just give us a little bit of insight into what it is the public can gain from having this kind of press coverage of the president day in and day out, why it matters that those people who are doing it are independent?
KENNERLY: Absolutely. The whole point of an independent press is to hold public servants to account. I mean, one of the problems in the country right now is a lot of small papers have gone out of business, which means that a lot of small town news doesn't get reported and that affects the people who are living there. To me, I've been doing this now for 60 years, and that has been the most sacred responsibility to honestly show people what I'm seeing.
I'm not making stuff up. My pictures, of course, we didn't have AI and all that back then, but having people who are truthfully reporting what they're seeing is essential so we know what's going on. And I seriously don't think it's at risk, but Trump would like us all to go away and be evaporated.
HUNT: Yeah, and we can put up some of the photos that you've taken over the years. And again, worth noting, you had in many cases access that the press doesn't necessarily have, but this moment of President Obama and Michelle Obama in an elevator on inauguration night, something that you rarely get to see from our public officials.
You also photographed the Bush family on election night in 2000. which, of course, you can honestly see the tension in their faces as these votes are being counted. And of course, Gerald Ford, just with his feet propped up on the desk -- this was back in 1974. These are some of the moments that, of course, David has been privy to.
I want to bring John King into this conversation as well, because John, you know, a lot of the press pool, I mean, listen, I did press pool duty for "The A.P." A lot of it's really dull. It's really boring. You drive in a van, you sit, you take pictures of the president while I used to go to church and go biking with George W. Bush.
But you never know when you're going to wake up and find yourself in a situation that is not mundane. And this is our colleague Ann Compton, who you were at the White House on September 11, 2001. Ann Compton, then of ABC News, was traveling with President Bush on 9/11.
Here were her reflections on that moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANN COMPTON, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, ABC NEWS: It was the look on President Bush's face that gave it away to those of us, the pool in the back of the room with the children listening.
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He couldn't reach anybody in Washington. He didn't know other than a hazy picture on the TV screens we could see. He didn't know what was happening.
We made two pit stops, one to refuel. There was such chaos and planes were landing and people were scared. He looked into the camera in the bunker and he said, "Okay, I'm coming home." And Condi Rice said, "We advise you not to do that." He said, "Fine. I'm coming."
(END VIDEO CLIP) HUNT: Really remarkable. And let's put up the video that she was talking about, because there is, of course, because of the press pool video of President Bush in that classroom being told there by Andy Card that we've since learned the second tower had been hit. They had initially thought that perhaps it was an accident or something in the first tower.
John?
KING: The second plane has hit the second tower. America is under attack. Those were the words of Andy Card on that day. I've done a number of those events. I was at the White House that day, not in Florida. But you go to those events, the president's out, he's promoting his education agenda. He's probably not going to make national news or it's going to be a very short national news story. That's your job. You show up and then something like that happens.
To your point about the secret trip to Baghdad, I took a second one of those. Shortly after I left covering the White House, I got a call from Dan Bartlett one day, the White House communications director. He asked me to lunch and I said, "Okay, what's going on here?"
And Bush was taking another secret trip to Baghdad and they didn't want so they assembled another sort of outside the pool, but they took a pool. David's point, yeah, he was hired sometimes by the presidents to be there to shoot their family in private moments when the press is not there. But sometimes you're just there. You can tell what mood the president's in. You can see who's in the room, who's in the back of the room, who are they interacting with.
You get invaluable insights into our democratically elected president. The American people deserve those. Sometimes what you learn on a given day you don't think means anything. And then a week later something happens and that little light bulb goes off back here and you say, aha, and you bring it all together. So it's absolutely essential that we have eyes on all our public officials everywhere.
HUNT: Yeah, absolutely. Very well put.
All right, David Hume Kennerly -- sir, thank you very much for being here. I hope you'll come back soon. All right.
KENNERLY: Thanks.
HUNT: Of course.
Coming up next year in THE ARENA, would you like drones with that? A new justification for the president's golden arch.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:36:42]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We're building what's called the Triumphal Arc right opposite the Arlington Memorial Bridge, right by Arlington Cemetery. It's beautiful. The Arc de Triomphe would be the one that you would probably know in Paris. It's one of the most beautiful.
It's a very similar size, slightly larger. We're doing -- we have to do slightly larger. It doesn't have to be a lot larger. Otherwise, you'd all be disappointed in me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: President Donald Trump's triumphal arch is getting a military makeover. Over the weekend, the president announced on Truth Social that the 250-foot structure would double as a, quote, "top grade military complex that would deploy drones, position snipers, and store ammunition."
Right now, it is still unclear how the president's new justification for the arch will affect the project's approval process. because this new plan was not included in the designs that were submitted to the two federal agencies that oversee design and architecture changes in Washington, D.C.
All right, my panel is back.
Congressman McHenry, is this what the president should be focusing on? How many weeks out are we? Six weeks? He wants to put a giant arch in between Arlington Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial.
MCHENRY: Okay, so beautifying Washington, D.C., probably not in the playing cards on election night of 2024, that this was going to be something key to the president's interest. But I will say this, Washington, D.C. is a safer place, it's a cleaner place, and it's a more beautiful place because of the work they put in.
And the celebration of the 250th anniversary is popular with the American people. That is true.
Now, if this becomes all the administration is focused on, that is a problem that is not a good election year or midterm message. Talking about your successes and what you want to do for the American people to justify another term in office is what people care about on Election Day. That is an important message to close with.
Now, I am for the arch, I'm for the building program. I think it's great. I'm also for us having a solid message on energy policy and national security policy, us talking about how you win the tariff war and how you have a reset with China. These things are of substance to the American people, and that's how you win on election day, not these other side quests.
LONGWELL: So here's how the American people see this, because I hear it come up all the time. You might ask, well, do the American people really notice about the arch or do they really care? Not exactly. They do care about the contrast. They'll say, my grocery prices are still really expensive. Gas prices are going up. We're in this war, he promised he wouldn't get into, and he's focused on his ballroom. focused on his arch and that makes them furious because they know it is about Trump's narcissism and not about their issues that he was elected to attend to.
BEDINGFIELD: Yeah.
HUNT: Well -- and one of the things too about this this new twist that he wants to put you know drones and sniper positions is because they're pushing as hard as they can to be allowed to do it because it's that important to him.
BEDINGFIELD: Right. It -- this is -- this -- he is telling the American people, this is where I'm focused. This is what I care about. I would wager there's not a single Republican running in a purple district who is talking to their constituents about the potential of the arch being built in Washington, D.C. They're just not.
But they're getting constant incoming from their constituents about the fact that gas prices are so high. And the real killer for Trump on this is that people -- people directly correlate their high gas prices to his war in Iran.
[16:40:08]
So, it's not just prices are high, you came into office saying you were going to bring them down, it's also he has actively done things that have made my life more expensive. And you combine that with him focused only on his vanity projects. It's a great message for Democrats.
KING: To Sarah's point first, everywhere I have gone, voters, including independents critical in the midterm elections, and Trump voters, whether they show up and vote or not, say, what are they doing? Not just the president. Congress as well.
My life is stressful and they're talking about anything but or they're not talking at all because the Republican Congress is largely hostage to what the president will do.
To the other point, if -- if we need snipers and drones in the arch at Memorial Bridge, they've made it that far. D.C.'s in trouble. Do you know where that is? Do you know where that is?
HUNT: Yes. Yes, of course, I know where it is.
KING: If we need snipers and drones feet from National Cemetery and a couple hundred yards from the Lincoln Memorial and the White House --
HUNT: Right on the National.
KING: Right near there and the Capitol's up the street, then it's already over, if that's the last line of defense. I'm not trying to make a joke about this.
If this was actually important -- the Congressman's not in Congress anymore. The House Armed Services Committee or the House Intelligence Committee or the Senate Armed Services or Intelligence Committee would be having hearings saying there's some new threat to D.C. and we need to fortify the area somehow, someway. What are the best ideas? This is a -- this coming from the president at this moment, forgive
me, is just a farce, number one. And put a military expert in this chair tomorrow and ask, you need snipers and drones there? What does that tell you?
BEDINGFIELD: Also, we've heard nothing from the Pentagon on this, right?
KING: Of course, you haven't.
BEDINGFIELD: Unless there was a report today that I missed. But there's been nothing from the military experts who work at the Pentagon. There's been nothing even from the political appointees at the Pentagon who are nominally there to back the president. They haven't come out and made any case for this either.
HUNT: Well, and also, it's worth noting that there are it is not without risk to build this arch, because the other thing that is right near this area that we were talking about is National Airport, OK? DCA is right down There have been concerns. They're talking about putting an eternal flame on it, concerns about what issues that may present to incoming aircraft.
Let's -- Congressman Don Beyer, who represents this area on the Virginia side of the river, weighed in about it. Let's watch what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. DON BEYER (D-VA): First of all, there's an enormous number of men and women buried there that serve our country, including my grandparents, my mother, my father, my sister are all there. And so, the veterans groups have really been objecting to it. The air traffic controllers and the airplanes are very concerned because they fly right over that spot. And that was before the drones. If you put drones off the top of that thing, it's going to be very dangerous for the flights.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: That's another point, John, right? Drones, okay, yes, your point is very well taken, okay, that if the enemy is there, we're toasted. But --
KING: If you can justify some national security, then you'd have to shut down Reagan. Again, if you have the case to make, fine, then change everything, like we did after 9/11, right? We changed so much. But make the case, don't put something on Truth Social that says, oh, I'm not winning this, so I'm going to change the argument, or oh, I'm at 34 percent and we're about to get wiped out in the midterm, so I'm going to ban the press.
Let's be very clear about what the president's doing. When he is struggling or losing or not getting his way, he just finds another flashing red light to try to get you to talk about, move over here. LONGWELL: But it's not just trying to distract us. In this case, he only cares about this narcissistic stuff. He only cares about his ballroom. He only cares about an arch. He only cares about tearing down the Kennedy Center. He only cares about putting his name on things.
He does not actually care about the American people struggling. He doesn't. Because if he did, he would actually -- the way for him to do better in the midterms is to address voter substantive concerns. He doesn't even try to do that. He doesn't even bother.
HUNT: All right. Coming up next here, protests erupt after a Venezuelan DoorDash driver is shot by an ICE agent on the street in Texas.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KATE LINCOLN-GOLDFINCH, LAWYER FOR WILBER RAFAEL GARCES PEREZ: What he told us is that when he was discharged from the hospital at four o'clock yesterday, he had a bullet lodged in his back, and they told him they wouldn't remove the bullet. They sent him to ICE with a bullet in his back, without pain medication, and he slept overnight in a processing center without a bed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:48:42]
HUNT: All right, welcome back.
A Venezuelan man who was shot and wounded by an ICE agent in Austin on Sunday has been taken from the hospital and is being detained at an immigration facility in Texas. His lawyer tells CNN he still has the bullet from that shooting in his back and is going without pain medication. A source tells CNN that ICE officers were conducting immigration operations using license plate checks when they came across a car registered to Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, who had a deportation order.
Officers stopped the car and questioned him. After a brief exchange, Garces Perez, who works as a DoorDash driver, drove away, fleeing the scene. Moments later, the shooting happened. It was captured by a driver who was live streaming on Facebook. Watch.
(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)
HUNT: All right, CNN senior law enforcement analyst, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe joins our panel.
Andy, thanks so much for being here.
Can you talk a little bit about what we see there in terms of what the training is for officers in these kinds of situations?
[16:50:06]
Worth noting, of course, that he was fleeing and that what they were concerned about was a deportation order, to our knowledge, not a previous violent crime.
ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Yeah, so there are a number of things that really kind of jump out here. But I should say that it's hard to evaluate this at this point because we still haven't heard anything officially from the Department of Homeland Security. Now we have seen photographs where some of those agents are wearing body cameras, possible they have cameras in their vehicles, but we've seen none of that footage if it exists at this point, which is a marked difference from the way that they have responded to previous shootings.
Typically, they get right out in front and accuse the victim of being a terrorist or some sort of thing. So maybe this is a change in policy for them. But initially, what you, you know, the use of another vehicle to stop the subject vehicle by seemingly hitting it broadside, which is apparently what the victim has said and the damage to his vehicle seems to bear that out is -- that is not according to following any sort of reasonable law enforcement tactics that I'm aware of.
The fact that they have referred to it as a targeted operation in which they were reviewing license plates -- it's not a targeted operation if you're just going out and running license plates of people who appear to have brown skin and arresting anyone who shows up with a warrant or a deportation order. A targeted operation is one where when you leave the office, you know the identity and location of your target.
This is a operation basically scouring traffic for license plates that come back to individuals with immigration issues. So, that doesn't quite line up either.
And then, of course, leaving a position of cover, running towards a vehicle that you perceive to be a threat, firing at a vehicle that is driving away from you. These are all things that you are trained as a law enforcement officer not to do. You're not supposed to fire at a vehicle to stop it. You're not supposed to put yourself in harm's way by approaching a vehicle that is trying to get away, essentially.
So, it reveals a lot of potentially problematic issues for the agents involved. And I have to say is probably what you expect to see from people who we now know from whistleblower testimony and others are not particularly well selected or trained well for these jobs.
HUNT: I was going to ask, what's the connection between the policy that's being set by the White House, by the Department of Homeland Security, these quotas for detentions, as well as the recruiting challenges? How is that potentially playing out right here on the streets?
MCCABE: Yeah, that's a great question case. That's really like the third log on this fire, right? So, you start with people who are maybe not well selected. We know from whistleblowers that in many cases, they're not even completing rudimentary checks like criminal records checks before people are offered jobs and start training at the academy.
We know that their training time has been truncated significantly. And then they're put out on the street, and they are put out under the pressure of an almost unattainable goal to arrest thousands of people every day. There's enormous pressure being placed by the White House on DHS to affect, to achieve these numbers, and that -- that pressure comes to bear on the men and women on the ground, boots on the ground, out there trying to do a job that they maybe weren't trained well for, maybe aren't really well prepared for.
But now, against all odds, they have to put their hands on as many immigrants as they can. And so, they find themselves sitting in a car running license plates and chasing after people, DoorDash drivers, to take them into custody to get another notch on the belt.
HUNT: Briefly, Sarah Longwell, I mean, your new book, "How to Eat an Elephant", you call what we've been living through under Trump authoritarian populism. And of course, immigration is the issue that really, you know, was at the forefront when he went down that golden escalator. And this -- and he ran on it. He was ahead of Biden on the wall, but then now this is the policy we're seeing implemented. What are you hearing from voters on it?
LONGWELL: Yeah, look, I mean, voters did want somebody to take the issue of immigration seriously, and they do want a president who's going to take the border seriously.
And voters always say sort of the same thing. They say we want people to come the right way. They don't really know exactly what that means, but they mean lawfully, they mean that there's a fair process.
What they didn't want, and this is why Trump has gone from being immigration being something that really works for him to something that now he's not doing so well on, is voters wanted criminals deported. They said that over and over. And that's what they thought Trump said.
They thought what Trump was saying was we're going to deport criminals, we're going to keep you safe. They did not want them shooting DoorDash drivers.
[16:55:04]
They didn't want them going and grabbing grandfathers who'd been here for, you know, 30 years, deporting people to countries they've never known. Those excesses are the reason he's underwater.
HUNT: All right. Andy McCabe, thank you very much for joining us. I really appreciate it.
All right.
MCCABE: Thank you. HUNT: On that note, of course, we'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUNT: Thanks very much, my panel. Really appreciate all of you being here. Thanks to all of you at home for joining us as well.
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