Return to Transcripts main page
CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
White House Launches "Trump TV" And Runs Govt-Funded Pro-Trump Ad As President Battles First Amendment; First Lady: President Trump Is "Doing The Best That He Can"; New CNN Poll: Trump Approval Falls To Lowest Of His Two Terms; New CNN Poll: 27 Percent Approve Of Trump's Handling Of The Economy; AI Takes Center Stage At U.N., Xi's Visit As CNN Poll Shows Majority Concerned, Support Regulation. New CNN Poll: Majority Of Americans Concerned About Growth Of A.I. & Data Centers, Support More Regulation; 1960: First Televised Presidential Debate - Nixon Vs. Kennedy; Influencer Battles Humanoid Robot In MMA Fight. Aired 12-1p ET
Aired September 26, 2026 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN ANCHOR: -- to insist that the world leaders do to make life better for the people who really rely on it.
That is all we have time for though this week. Don't forget, you can find all of our shows online as podcasts at CNN.com/audio and on all other major platforms.
I'm Christiane Amanpour in New York. Thank you for watching and I'll see you again next week back in London.
[12:00:36]
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everyone, I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to The Arena Saturday.
This week as Election Day approaches and polls show his numbers plummeting, President Donald Trump chose to fight the First Amendment. We saw Justice Department lawyers defending his banning of CNN and others from the White House, while the President himself seemed to not understand that he doesn't call the shots everywhere.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's an honor to be here. I'm surprised that CNN is here covering me.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The United Nations allowed us in, sir.
TRUMP: You should not be here covering me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: A federal judge did eventually allow CNN, Politico, and MS NOW back into the White House under a two-week temporary restraining order blocking Trump's ban. But for days, the TV pool was shuttered. All of this occurring at the very same time the President Trump was hosting and praising the communist leader of an authoritarian country and using government money, taxpayer money, to run ads glorifying himself.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's toughest, most resilient person that I've ever met and nothing was going to stop him for fighting so hard for the country he loves.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, my panel's here in the arena. CNN Contributor and host of the Cari Champion Show, Cari Champion, CNN Political Commentator and Former White House Communications Director in President Trump's first term, Alyssa Farrah Griffin, Former Fox News Anchor and Founder of Lift Our Voices, Gretchen Carlson, and Former Trump Campaign Manager Bill Stepien.
Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for being here.
Alyssa, that ad that the President is running, you know, the White House defended itself this way. They called it a public service announcement reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending. The ad is educational and unapologetically patriotic. We should be proud of our country.
It does seem like it violates laws and rules we have about what you use campaign and government money for, but it says a lot about what the President -- just how bad things are for the President right now.
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, it's unusual on so many fronts. Of course, you've got President Xi here and the juxtaposition of having sort of American propaganda air on American airwaves. Well, you have the leader of the Chinese Communist Party here certainly stands out, but also Donald Trump has a huge war chest.
He has the money to fund political ads to be on TV. The idea that we're using taxpayer dollars to do it makes no sense and I think cuts to an issue that I find is breaking through ahead of the midterms more than I perhaps expected it to, which is this idea of the President profiting off of being in office.
I think people are saying, why is this priority seem to be, how can I get the most for me when so many people in the country right now feel like they're hurting and they're not getting what they need?
HUNT: Yes. Bill, do you agree with that, that that's a problem for the President?
BILL STEPIEN, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: A bit, yes. I mean, I do think that there's generally a gap between what people care about, the economy, affordability, putting gas in their car and what they think he cares about. To me, that's the biggest gap that exists and the biggest problem to fix. I was really encouraged to hear him talk at the convention a few weeks ago to start to acknowledge some of the problems that Americans are facing because I do think that gap is the biggest problem right now. GRETCHEN CARLSON, FORMER FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Yes, but the continuation of calling this all a hoax and, you know, not really feeling the pain of the average American, I think is really resonating with voters. We all know that economy is the number one thing followed closely by inflation and ironically, those two things that Trump used to pull the highest debt and that's why he won re-election, he's now in the tank, in 25 percent of people agree with him on inflation, 26 percent on the economy. It's just dismal.
CARI CHAMPION, HOST, "THE CARL CHAMPION SHOW": Well, the, to your point, the polls are saying exactly how the people feel. They don't feel like he's honest. They're just polling on that. They don't feel as if he's putting them first as a priority, polling on that. And then his response even now for our latest issue, which I guess we'll talk about later, is AI.
His response to that was not a big deal. No, let's not worry about it. And well, OK, well, all right, everyone take a beat. It always sounds like he's thinking about himself first because he quite frankly is, and then everyone else, second, third, fourth, and fifth. And that's not what he ran on and no one question that.
CARLSON: The irony goes he could have done so much --
CHAMPION: All unforced errors.
CARLSON: -- with all of them.
CHAMPION: All of them.
CARLSON: I mean, this will go down in history as like the most incredible effort to sabotage yourself.
CHAMPION: Correct.
GRIFFIN: One of the biggest fumbles I'd argue in like American political history. This man won the popular vote. He won a coalition that rivaled Obama's in terms of diversity, bringing out young and new and disenfranchised voters and on issues of the economy and immigration. And those numbers have just flipped on their head two years in.
[12:05:07]
It's honestly kind of hard to watch as somebody who was in his first term.
HUNT: Correct.
GRIFFIN: It's like there was an opportunity there. People believed in you. They put their faith in you, and you could be doing so much better.
CHAMPION: Well, there's -- these things that -- I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but these things that he's doing, like you could imagine people are asking him about the economy and then all of a sudden he's talking about the ballroom or what's going on. You're like, wait, how do we get to the ballroom this instance (ph)?
HUNT: Well, and Bill, I mean, the reality is -- and Alyssa, you and I were talking about this earlier this week on the air. The President's political team is actually very savvy and sharp, well-funded, right? James Blair is running a serious operation. What is the disconnect between the principal and that team? Because it seems significant.
STEPIEN: I mean, look, there's always been a little deviation of message, right, from what is being on the air and what's being said. I know I struggled at times as a campaign manager in 2020. You know, message discipline was not always the forte.
But the fact is, this is going to come down to a couple races in a couple states, right? The House could have swung back the other way in 2022 by just 1300 votes per district in five places. So this is going to be a close, close contest this fall, despite all these factors. I really believe it will be.
HUNT: Yes. All right. Let's let's talk again for a second on -- of course, we saw the President ban CNN, Politico and MS NOW. Then we saw, of course, a federal judge say that, no, you can't do that. And it took the White House some time to actually comply with that order once it came down.
But by the end of the week, it seemed to have been resolved for the moment anyway. And there were, of course, leaders who weighed in. The President then was hosting the Chinese President, President Xi. And the contrast between all of the Chinese reporters, many of them state controlled, in fact, probably all of them, allowed into the White House while American outlets were banned was quite something.
I want to watch what President Obama said earlier this week when he was asked about it. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, 44TH U.S. PRESIDENT: I am not surprised that the current President wants to ban. Newscasts that are critical of him because he's that guy. The issue is the brazenness with which any president could act like this. And the people in his or her own party would not say, no, you cannot do that. That's not acceptable. That lack of guardrails is what I'm most concerned about.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Alyssa, where do you think Republicans have been on this this week?
GRIFFIN: Shockingly quiet. It was a huge cell phone by the President, because first and foremost, this was always going to be overturned by the courts. We had the precedent of Jim Acosta's credentials being revoked. We knew that the President was ultimately going to lose. But it also meant that he didn't have media coverage for the beginning of this hugely consequential visit with President Xi.
He didn't have American cameras there. And this is a President who relies on the media to get his message out there and what he's focusing on. And I just -- I also think like if he was trying to sort of throw a wind to his base, his base would rather see him arguing with reporters in the Oval and being able to see him than just basically off air, which is effectively what he was.
CARLSON: Not according to my Twitter feed. I would say that, you know, a lot of them were like, they're getting what they deserve. You know, I do think this is 100 percent to gin up the base. He has nothing else to work with right now.
And one of the basic things that we all know is that you have to have enthusiasm on the Republican side because Trump is not on the ticket, although I'm not -- I think that's not necessarily a bad thing anymore now. He thinks it's a good thing if he's if he's on it.
But this was definitely, to me, a play to the base. We should also remember that President Obama didn't like how Fox News treated him, right?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
CARLSON: But --
HUNT: And the press pool stood up for Fox, I will say.
CARLSON: They did. And I was incredibly heartened to see Fox this week stand up for the rest, because that was the line in the sand. Like if they had not done that, we'd be having a completely different discussion.
CHAMPION: Yes, right now, that would have been uncomfortable. I agree with you. I don't think there has ever been a president alive who really agrees with the media, you know, or wants to see the media cover them in whatever way, critical or not.
HUNT: Presidents are always upset by the media (ph).
CHAMPION: They're always --
HUNT: Basically universally true.
CHAMPION: So I'm not even -- I have no issue with him being upset at the way he believes he's being portrayed. It is how he goes about it as Barack just said, President Obama just said. It's like, how brazen are you and where are the guardrails and who's saying that you're not allowed to do this?
And I don't think again, we said this at the top of the show, it was such an unforced error. Your base is tired of shenanigans. They want their money. They want to live a quality life. They don't want to spend a lot of money on gas. And you're running around here playing these reindeer games.
If you play silly, silly games, you get silly prizes. And this is just silly.
[12:10:04]
HUNT: Yes. Well, let's -- as we're closing this conversation, let's also just watch what our American pope had to say about this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you for having us on the plane.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just wondered if you had a word for some of our colleagues at CNN having difficulties at the White House. I mean, you have spoken at freedom of the press.
POPE LEO XIV, HEAD OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: Very happy that here you are all welcome. And good coverage I think is very important.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: God bless. All right.
Coming up next here in The Arena, a new CNN poll released this week shows President Trump with the lowest approval rating of either of his two terms. The First Lady's assessment of his performance? It's our quote of the week ahead.
Plus, this week in history, 1960 Vice President Richard Nixon faces off against Senator John F. Kennedy in the first ever televised presidential debate, kicking off a tradition that later gave us moments like this one.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, 43RD U.S. PRESIDENT: Man's practicing fuzzy math again. There's differences under Vice President Gore's plan.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE ROGERS (R), MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE: Michigan families are struggling with the price of everyday life. Groceries cost too much. We have to bring prices down. The war with Iran needs to end and end quickly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[12:15:42]
HUNT: That was Michigan's Republican Senate candidate, Mike Rogers. He is just one of several GOP candidates who this week attempted to put distance between themselves and President Trump. As the midterm cycle enters its final stretch, vulnerable Republicans seem to be waking up to the pretty tough political reality.
With President Trump at record unpopularity, Republicans are now facing an even bleaker economic landscape than they did ahead of the 2018 midterms. CNN polling from this week shows that just 27 percent approve of the President's handling of the economy, while only 28 percent would describe economic conditions as good.
And even within the President's party, relatively few remain enthusiastic. Fifty percent of Republicans disapprove of Trump's handling of inflation. Fifty-nine percent say that the Iran war has hurt their finances, and nearly half say that he has worsened or had no effect on their economic conditions.
Even First Lady Melania Trump weighed in on her husband's job performance, giving this, well, it's a little tepid assessment. It's our quote of the week. "He's doing the best that he can."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How is the President doing in Trump 2 as compared to Trump 1? How do you see him handling the job differently?
MELANIA TRUMP, FIRST LADY: He's very focused. He has a lot on his plate. It's very different what's going on around the world now. And -- but I think he's doing the best that he can.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRIFFIN: Not a ringing endorsement from the First Lady. You're doing great, sweetie. Hang in there. I think she actually alludes to something very important. She's like, it's a different environment around the world.
The war of Trump's own making is going to be his biggest downfall. Listen, I'm hawkish. I could support a war with Iran. I could support denuclearizing Iran. If you have a plan, if there's an end date, there's a goal in sight. And for the love of God, they were, of course, going to close the Strait of Hormuz.
That would have been the most predictable thing. And this President who ran on not getting us bogged down in forever wars in the Middle East did that and spiked gas prices. This is all his own doing. And it feels completely out of his control at this point.
CARLSON: I thought it was actually really refreshing because imagine if Jill Biden had been asked that question about Joe Biden, I mean, the answer would have been 10 minutes long talking about him, right? So it was actually an honest reaction, which we don't often hear from political operatives.
So I took it at face value. And keep in mind, Melania has on occasion come out against the President.
HUNT: Yes.
CARLSON: You know, on the abortion situation --
CHAMPION: Yes, her face tells everything.
CARLSON: Yes.
CHAMPION: Like, I --
CARLSON: He hated the question.
HUNT: She has her own mind.
CHAMPION: She has her own mind. She is -- to me, she is always 100 percent honest. You can just look at her and feel what she's feeling. And we have been very polite in the way in which we have talked about it and covered it. But she doesn't lie. Her face does not lie.
So her saying he's doing the best he can, she is aware of the reality. He is making too many mistakes. And I'm sure she probably has shared with that to him --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
CHAMPION: -- you know on closed doors.
CARLSON: But she could still during pillow talk, if that's happening. She could still --
CHAMPION: Awful (ph).
CARLSON: -- say to him a couple of things like, you know --
CHAMPION: Awful (ph).
CARLSON: -- you should improve the economy. You talk more about --
CHAMPION: I'm sure.
CARLSON: You know, she could play a role. Maybe she is.
CHAMPION: I wouldn't doubt it, but is he listening? It's a whole another clearly -- you ask this question earlier.
HUNT: He does listen -- I mean, he cares very much. It's very clear. We've seen a number of instances that he cares very much about what she is worried about. If she is worried about something, he is worried about it. Sure.
GRIFFIN: Well, and reportedly, she was instrumental in getting him to care more about Ukraine. It's been an issue that she's been more involved in and gotten forefront in front of him. So I credit her for that.
HUNT: Yes, Bill, the political environment, though, I mean, what she is essentially referring to there, right, and why those comments are so telling seems to really have taken a turn in the last week or two. And I'm kind of I'm interested in the -- we heard from a couple other Senate candidates, Jon Husted in -- current senator from Ohio, saying that the war needs to come to an end quickly.
Ashley Hinson running for Senate in Iowa, she says also Republican Iowans are being squeezed. We shouldn't have to foot the bill. Politico is writing about Florida, which has been a real Republican stronghold. And a lot of -- they quote someone as saying a lot of former colleagues are bracing for the worst there.
How bad is it out there right now for Republicans? And is it too late in the game for them to turn this around?
[12:20:07]
STEPIEN: When I was the White House political director in 2018, the last Trump midterm, we wanted to obviously retain the House. We actually picked up seats in the Senate. You gave candidates leashes to run their own races, to win their own races. If you need to create some separation and deviation, have at it. But you better know what you're doing.
I think there's a difference between running smart and running scared. I think you saw some ads in South Florida this week, which I think were people running scared.
HUNT: The Salazar ads that we talked about.
STEPIEN: Salazar ads. She --
HUNT: So there was a congresswoman from South Florida, the Miami area, looking straight to the camera and talking about immigration policy, really breaking with the President, right.
STEPIEN: Taking on the President by name. And I thought that was running scared. And I think there are candidates running around the country who run smart. Brian Fitzpatrick, where I live in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, his own brand. He keeps it local, breaks with the President when he has to. But the White House wants these candidates to win by any means necessary. That was the case in 2018. That's the case now.
GRIFFIN: But it does seem like there's something happening that might be seismic when you have even Byron Donalds, a diehard Trump supporter, somebody who's been in lockstep with him, removing references to the President from his campaign site. I think he put them back up afterward. But I mean, deep red Florida. If he's nervous, that's a big problem.
STEPIEN: Keep in mind, a lot of consultants run these same races, right? So if you see one candidate changing website, others are doing the same thing. They're being run by the same people.
CHAMPION (?): Yes.
HUNT: Yes. I mean, Bill, if there are -- the evidence that we walked in the beginning here talked about Republicans breaking with the President, because that is really the bedrock that we have not seen move for President Trump, right? Even through all of the, you know, travails in his loss to Joe Biden and what happened on January 6th, those numbers have really held for him throughout. Do you think that weakness is real this time? And why is it going to be different? STEPIEN: Like you see this in the second half, the second midterm of every presidency. You saw this in those six with Bush. You saw in Obama second midterm election. People are nervous. These candidates all want to be back. They think they want to survive the President last longer than he will.
This happens -- I think the story here is that Trump's support has been so historically strong, not that there's any deviation, because that happens every time.
CARLSON: Yes, but let's be honest here. The Republicans could have all done themselves a favor in these reelection bids had they come out against Trump on some of these ridiculous things that he has done, right? And we are all waiting for some of these Republicans to break with him on those issues.
HUNT: Well, but the thing has been, and this is the thing about the support that, Bill, that you're saying, right, the unusually high level of support for the President among Republicans is that these other candidates haven't been able to win with him, but they haven't been able to win without him.
CARLSON: Exactly.
HUNT: Right? They can't break with him because that would hurt them with the base.
CARLSON: Yes, but now when you're looking at these poll numbers and we've seen them cratering for the last six, eight, 10 weeks, you would think we would have more. I was actually expecting to see more of it, that you would have people who really want to save their own skin at this point.
GRIFFIN: I think by and large, a lot of Republicans lost their identity in the Trump era. And to your point, don't know how to win with him and without him. I think of the 2022 midterms when he was technically in his first post presidency, but Republicans did very, very poorly.
And it was like, do we align with DeSantis now? Do we try to go a different direction? But they ultimately went back to him because that's their safe space. And we'll see if that works this time.
HUNT: I guess we will.
All right. Coming up next here in The Arena, remember Al Gore's lockbox, Mitt Romney's binders full of women. Ahead, we're going to take a look at major moments in the history of televised presidential debates and the one that started it all.
Plus, artificial intelligence was front and center this week at the U.N. and during Chinese leader Xi Jinping's state visit. So is AI going to kill us after all?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SAM ALTMAN, CEO, OPENAI: It doesn't matter whether people put their risk of catastrophe at 10 percent or 1 percent or 12 percent or 0.1 percent. None of these levels are remotely acceptable.
DARIO AMODEI, CEO, ANTHROPIC: I believe that this is the most important global security issue facing the world today.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ALTMAN: It doesn't matter whether people put their risk of catastrophe at 10 percent or 1 percent or 12 percent or 0.1 percent. None of these levels are remotely acceptable. If AI is to be democratic, the most important decisions cannot be made by labs in San Francisco alone.
AMODEI: I believe that this is the most important global security issue facing the world today. No leader, no company and no nation can manage this alone.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[12:28:55]
HUNT: This week, two titans of artificial intelligence publicly urged the United Nations to come together for a global response to AI safety, urging nations to unite, despite their differences, to put guardrails in place before the technology breaks out of human control.
President Trump, who discussed AI during his summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week, remains resistant, however, to the idea of international governance. In his own speech to the U.N., Trump said the U.S. will reject any quote, unquote "globalist scheme" to control AI.
Now, whether or not global guardrails are the right solution, CNN polling from this week shows that U.S. voters across party lines overwhelmingly want to see their government to do more to regulate the technology's rapid growth. Americans are feeling far more fearful about AI development than they are hopeful or excited.
And, I mean, Cari Champion, the sort of big picture implications of this and the way that people are answering these questions and responding, it's showing up in different ways, data centers, et cetera. But there does seem to be fundamentally this sense that people feel like they are losing control over their own futures to this technology that they don't really understand.
[12:30:10]
CARI CHAMPION, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, the first is that a lot of people just don't understand the technology. People are using it as a replacement for Google, and that's fine, and that feels safe. But then you hear something every day or you watch how they keep references to old conversations that perhaps if you've been using it for the last two years, they can pull up something you said two years ago. That's just scary to me. The idea that someone can have all of my information available at their fingertips should concern everyone.
The other problem is that we have built an economy of skepticism. And when you see two titans in A.I. come together and say, hey, guys, we need global guardrails, everyone's like, well, hold on. What do you mean? Why are you actually now coming together? And I understand why it always feels that way. I don't -- I'm not saying that I'm afraid of it, but I do know what you don't understand fully. That makes you stop and pause and say, should I be concerned for my future, my kids' future? All of the things.
HUNT: Yes. Well, so Bill Gates, who you may know, is the founder of Microsoft, had a warning about how worried we should potentially be that was just flat out on its face alarming. Let's watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL GATES, CO-FOUNDER, MICROSOFT: A.I. is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths, you know. So even though it's pretty hard to get to 100 percent, there's never been a weapon as powerful.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: I mean, the way he says that.
CHAMPION: Cause a billion deaths.
HUNT: Hey, yes, totally.
CHAMPION: Just a casual billion deaths.
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: The way they talk about this so cavalierly, by the way, I would remind you that a lot of these guys have bunkers and are planning for futures. I would say this. There's a way to avoid being -- to avoid being alarmist, but being realistic. I worked in the Pentagon. I'm aware of the capacity that our A.I. capabilities had when I was there in 2019. That's advanced quite a bit since I've left.
But there is a need to keep up with China and the future economy in ways that A.I. is going to enhance all our lives. It could help find cures to cancer. It could help, you know, completely modernize the economy. But I do think when industry is saying we need regulation because we are actually scared of where this is going, that the government should listen to that.
But there's a right and a wrong way to do it. I'm actually very heartened by the Senator Klobuchar, Senator Cruz legislation they're working on. That seems like very narrow, specific, basically kill switch, you know, controls, some pauses on certain A.I. development. But what you don't want to do is just stop the competition altogether.
GRETCHEN CARLSON, FORMER FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I think what was so scary about this, though, in the last couple of weeks was that it seems like it just came out of nowhere.
CHAMPION: Yes.
CARLSON: Like all of a sudden it was like, A.I. is going to kill you. You know, and we had like a week to prepare for that, you know. And so I think to a certain extent, it really scared a tremendous amount of people. But I think it also had the same reaction of like, could that really be true? And so some people were skeptical of it. I think if you want to talk about it politically, this could have been a huge win again for President Trump.
He just had the Chinese leader here. They could have come out of these meetings and said that we came together on something, even though we're very far apart on many other things. And we're determining that we're going to work on this together as two world powers. He wants the Nobel Peace Prize. He could get it.
BILL STEPIEN, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: This is all about politics, right? You talk correctly about how this came out of nowhere. I think that coincides with President Trump saying that he does not want any regulation. I think the other side then popped their heads up and said, we want regulation. I think my concern here is you've got people with white hair and AOL accounts who are on the ballot this November, including Klobuchar in Minnesota, trying to make policy. And no good public policy comes in the six weeks before Election Day.
HUNT: You say it's all about politics. So this issue brings together Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders, right? Which is, you know, that sort of populist kind of horseshoe, if you will. President Trump is in some ways an outlier, right? I mean, you see politicians on all sides of both parties. You know, they are seeing what's going on in their communities with data centers. And in some ways, it's the most bipartisan issue that's emerged in recent years. Like, why is the President in such a different place from so many others?
STEPIEN: I think he understands the importance and how reliant the economy is on this, 3.6 percent of our GDP is driven by A.I. construction, data center construction. Back in the late 90s, fiber optics only consumed 1.1 percent of our GDP. So this is three times as powerful. And with the economy shaky as it is right now, even slowing down this, I think, is largely what's driving President Trump's policy.
CHAMPION: Critics will say it's because he's going to be able to make money off of it. He can monetize off this some way, somehow. That's what critics will say about why he is on the opposite end of this conversation. I think that when you talk about legislation and you say there should be a kill switch, I'm sorry, I just heard that they're rogue and they can do whatever they want.
And by the way, we're past that because they're just now telling us. Do you know how long ago this probably happened for it to finally reach this stage where they're deciding to bring the public into this conversation? We're probably late. It's probably, it's done. It's past the point of no return, if you ask me.
[12:35:07] GRIFFIN: But I also think that the President should separate two issues here. The data center conversation, he, by the way, needs to come up with a better message because there's a lot that you can lean into. It's brought down property taxes and communities they've been built in. It's necessary to fuel the future economy. You can have guardrails to protect environmental standards, all of that and say, but this super -- the super dangerous next generation frontier A.I. that could kill us all is something that we have to have guardrails on. There's a way to separate those issues. And I don't see him doing it right now.
HUNT: All right. So to come here in The Arena, 66 years ago this week, the first televised presidential debate in American history. Ahead, we're going to look at some of the historic moments that T.V. debates have given us since.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIMMY CARTER, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Governor Reagan, again, typically is against such a proposal.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Governor?
RONALD REAGAN, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There you go again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[12:40:30]
RICHARD NIXON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Through the years, I have sat in the National Security Council. I have been in the cabinet. I have met with the legislative leaders. I have met with the president when he made the great decisions with regard to Lebanon, Quemoy, Matsu, other matters. The president has asked for my advice. I have given it. Sometimes my advice has been taken. Sometimes it is not.
JOHN F. KENNEDY, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Abraham Lincoln came to the presidency in 1860 after a rather little-known session in the House of Representatives and after being defeated for the Senate in '58 and was a distinguished president. There is no certain road to the presidency. There are no guarantees.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Sixty-six years ago this week, Republican Vice President Richard Nixon and Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy squared off in the first-ever televised presidential debate in our country's history. The event perhaps most remembered for highlighting the stark visual contrast between the candidates. Kennedy, sharp, youthful, energetic. Nixon, pale, sweaty. Just look at this famous photograph of the then Vice President wiping his face with a handkerchief.
It is worth noting here that he was recovering from a knee injury. But still, the debate ushered in a new era in American politics where crafting that image on camera became a key, if not the key, ingredient to waging a successful campaign. My panel is back here. Bill, you have worked on debates with candidates. What did this moment, you know, it was such a fascinating one, and it really is a fulcrum for how our campaigns and our political life changed.
STEPIEN: I went back and looked. Eight minutes was the length of the opening statements from the candidates.
HUNT: Eight minutes.
STEPIEN: Eight minutes. Do you recall what the opening statements were in 2024? There were zero opening statements. So it was much more thoughtful, substantive, specific debate, actual debate back then. But I also think who was on the stage mattered, right? If that was Al Gore versus, you know, Bob Dole, we probably wouldn't remember this as the historic first, and maybe they would have canceled future debates.
HUNT: Yes. John F. Kennedy is a kind of unique figure for sure. Let's watch some of the most well-known or best-remembered moments from debates throughout our history. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CARTER: Governor Reagan, again, typically is against such a proposal.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Governor?
REAGAN: There you go again.
ROSS PEROT, POLITICIAN: And you don't care about anything but making money. There will be a giant sucking sound going south.
GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Man's practicing fuzzy math again. There's differences. Under Vice President Gore's plan.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No puppet. No puppet.
HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: It's pretty clear.
TRUMP: You're the puppet.
JOE BIDEN, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The question is, the question is, the question is, will you shut up, man?
Dealing with everything we have to do with, look, if we finally beat Medicare.
TRUMP: They're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets.
(END VIDEOTAPE) HUNT: Well, listen, we didn't even watch Binders Full of Women from Mitt Romney. How quaint was that?
GRIFFIN: I mean, the slow degradation of our politics. By the way, I was first struck by the fact that Richard Nixon actually looked young to me by today's politician standpoint. I was like, oh, that's a young, youthful man up there. Honestly, I mean, probably because I was covering it for CNN. The Biden-Trump debate actually stands out to me as one of the most significant historical.
HUNT: Yes. Probably the most consequential.
GRIFFIN: I remember Van Jones crying. David Axelrod had his head down. Scott Jennings was popping champagne. It was every emotion was there. But it is incredible that the visual matters so much, but the sound bites matter even more. No one's giving eight-minute speeches anymore. If you get your moment on TikTok, you win.
CARLSON: Except if you go back and look at the reactions from the 1960 debate, everyone said that Nixon won if they listened to it on the radio. So that was just sound. But if they watched it on T.V., Kennedy overwhelmingly won. And I would just say that we all know this was the beginning of how important the visual medium was to political campaigns.
I'll share a quick story about when I was first starting at "Fox News" and President Obama came in for his first book, "Audacity of Hope." And the aura that he had when he came in the room was something that you can't describe, but you visually understood. But more importantly, all of the young people at "Fox News" were lining up to get their book signed by the Democratic presidential candidate.
[12:45:03]
And that was the minute the light bulb went off in my head. Like, the visual, the aura, that's pretty much all that matters.
HUNT: Yes. Well, I remember actually the very first presidential debate that I covered was the first debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in 2012. And I was actually a member of the pool. I was working for the Associated Press. And so we had seats in the arena, right? A little bit far away, but still you could see the point being that we would be in the room if anything happened.
But what happened to me as a reporter, and this is what I learned, is that I experienced it in the room and America experienced it on television. And in the room, you could not see that the two men were next to each other and that Obama was clearly so irritated and annoyed throughout that it became the driving dynamic of the debate. And that is the fundamental reality of how television has impacted this over the years.
That if you -- and now I would never analyze a debate or cover it from a political perspective if I wasn't watching it on television. Never did it again. I never made that mistake again. CHAMPION: When I think about the moment that I believe Barack was, you talk about how you saw him come in and the kids were lining up to get an autograph and have him sign their book. I remember when he gave that impromptu press conference because his then pastor at the time had been going on camera and saying that he's not the man that I thought he was, and he was kind of selling out. And he had this really honest conversation.
At this moment, I'll be candid, I thought Hillary would be the nominee. And he just had this very candid moment about how his mom is white, his dad is black, and I got in the elevator and I know what it feels like for people to judge me by what I look like. He said, but I just got to be honest with you. And here's the thing about race. And he talked about race in such an honest way. And I was like, well, there's our next president. Because that's what the country needed at that moment. And you can feel that special. He changed my opinion right away.
Whatever I thought was going to happen, I knew. And it was a visual moment. And you can feel how honest he was. And the same could be said for Biden. As you said, you know, Van Jones is crying. David is like, we were in and Scott's popping champagne. Yes, you're like, we're all at home like, cringe. This is so awful.
GRIFFIN: And the juxtaposition. But also, it's interesting that most modern presidents are six feet or taller. There is something to that commanding presence. I mean, Donald Trump's very tall. He's a big guy when you're standing next to him. Barack Obama, 6'2. George Bush, 6'1. There's something in the American psyche. We want that projection of strength and of power. But I also wonder if that's worked against women.
We've yet to elect a female president. And I've interviewed Hillary Clinton many times. She's got aura about her.
HUNT: She's got a very commanding presence. Yes.
GRIFFIN: Yes. But it is remarkable we have it.
CHAMPION: Well, you know why? Because I feel like women, there's something, even another level, in my opinion, about the vanity of it and the aesthetic.
GRIFFIN: Yes.
HUNT: Yes, the aesthetics and also the line you have to walk because --
CARLSON: You're too pretty. You're not pretty enough.
HUNT: The command presence becomes potentially a double-edged sword as well. It's very, yes, lots to -- it sounds like we could talk about this for quite a while. I'm sure we will.
[12:48:05]
All right, coming up next, something totally different, man versus machine.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUNT: All right, welcome back. Right now in The Arena, it's man versus machine.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For the first time in history, a human faces off against a six foot tall robot. I'm scared too. Yes. You know, I'm scared for you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: This week, a human man took on a humanoid robot in a cage match fight. I am sorry. What? Have none of you -- do none of you remember the "Terminator"? OK, the man, this guy, I guess, is a TikTok personality and he is known for his wild stunts. The robot is, of course, a robot. It's remote controlled. It's six feet tall, 165 pounds. And it is made of pure aviation grade metal. The robot is made by a company called Wreck. As you can see from the viral video, the human definitely got wrecked, as the kids say. Like, OK, like we did the segment on A.I. killing us all.
CHAMPION: Meanwhile.
HUNT: Meanwhile.
CHAMPION: Let's watch this robot pummel this man.
HUNT: Like why -- like who thinks this is a good idea?
STEPIEN: If we could train A.I. people on influencers first, that would be great.
CARLSON: I was going to say what people will do for fame. Like get beat up now. I don't get it. That's ridiculous.
CHAMPION: It's like, what is the point? And I guess like, as the kids say, it's something that's fun and interesting. This comes from the world of gaming. I'm assuming this would give life to this. So people want to see it in person. So you take it from, you know, doing it in front of your television to watching it in person. And there is an appetite for this. But of course, I just maybe out of our genre, our age bracket, I'm not quite sure.
HUNT: I'm definitely not cool.
CHAMPION: I'm saying, to me, it's just like there is a world where and I fear not that it will kill us, but I fear that this will be more normal than not, you know, because remember, who thought we ought to be dancing on TikTok?
GRIFFIN: Yes.
CHAMPION: I mean, who thought -- GRIFFIN: We could get a lot of money there.
CHAMPION: I'm not. But my point being is that at any given moment, people are dancing every day to a routine on TikTok.
HUNT: People have been dancing in fairness longer than they've been fighting robots.
CARLSON: I heard the creator of this robot say that humans like watching other humans get wrecked. And I was like, we do? Like that's a young thing.
HUNT: I mean, it's a man thing.
CARLSON: Or maybe I don't -- like I love sports, but not boxing. Like, I don't like to see.
HUNT: But a lot of people love boxing.
[12:55:00]
CARLSON: I know. OK.
HUNT: And MMA. I mean.
CARLSON: Well, I'm not going to be watching.
HUNT: I'm with you. I'm with you. But like, you know, some of the greatest, like --
CARLSON: I guess.
HUNT: -- sporting events in American history have been like boxing matches, right?
STEPIEN: Could replace a mechanical bull.
GRIFFIN: Yes, exactly. That's the new thing to prove.
CHAMPION: OK. So there it is.
HUNT: I just don't trust the robots. OK, whatever the robots, robot people, robot taxis. Like --
CHAMPION: You don't want any of these?
HUNT: None it is for me.
CHAMPION: Have you gotten in the car that drive?
HUNT: Absolutely not.
CHAMPION: You haven't tried it?
HUNT: No way. Absolutely not. All right, guys. Thank you so much. Thanks to all of you at home for watching. You can see The Arena every weekday right here on CNN at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. You can also catch up by listening to the arenas podcast. You can follow us on X and Instagram. We're at TheArenaCNN. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Thank you so much for spending part of it with us. The news continues next on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
