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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt

Just In: Trump Comments On "Great" Meeting With A.I. Execs; New: Vance Acknowledges "Headwinds" For GOP In Midterms; Former Special Counsel Jack Smith Defends Trump Prosecution; Trump Personally Helped Orchestrate Taxpayer-Funded Ads Promoting Himself & His Policies, A Source Tells CNN. Aired 4-5p ET

Aired September 29, 2026 - 16:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[16:00:03]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: We'll continue to monitor it.

In the meantime, THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT starts right now.

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KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Hi, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to THE ARENA.

It's great to have you with us on this Tuesday. We are a little behind here.

Right now, a White House summit with the potential for historic agreements on the development and regulation of artificial intelligence.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have people that love our country and love the world.

REPORTER: It requires more than love, doesn't it, sir?

TRUMP: No, it requires this, and they're the smartest people in the world. And we had a great meeting today, every one of them. We had really a great, great meeting. They love our country, they love the world, and they came together, and they did something that few people really -- it's almost like a constitution, in a way. And the biggest -- and the biggest people in the world signed that, and I signed it as president. And it really is a form of protection.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: President Donald Trump this afternoon meeting with a collection of some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world, tech titans pouring billions into an A.I. arms race that is accelerating at a potentially dangerous pace. We learned today that Anthropic believes its A.I. models could pose a, quote, "existential threat to humanity," end quote. And the new report predicts that A.I. and automation may force as many as 11 million American workers to find an entirely new career in the coming decade.

So that's how high the stakes are right now. We are dealing with technology that will at best change human history, and at worst, end it. It's why so many of the people creating A.I. are asking the government to regulate them, something that the president today seemed to dismiss.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: There's a belief that there should be tremendous self- regulation, and we automatically have regulation with the Department of Justice, the FBI, all of that. But the self-regulation is very important.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So, President Trump likes to talk about 80/20 issues. Lots of politicians do. But on this particular issue, he has consistently staked out a position with the minority.

Just take data centers. CNN's latest poll found that 87 percent of voters said that they are concerned, not excited, about the growing number of data centers being built to support A.I. technology. But today, five weeks out from an election that will determine control of Congress and, by extension, how the remainder of his days in the White House are going to go, the president sided with that very small minority.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: They're going to work with local communities for the data centers in particular, and they're going to work to make the community happy. So, you're going to see data centers are going to be very popular because this is the group, and they're the ones that want it. And they're also the ones that want to see communities that are safe and happy. And they're going to make communities very, very happy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right. We're going to be joined in just a moment by our senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes, which she's been in that impromptu news conference with the president and tech leaders, so stand by for that.

We'll start with my panel here in THE ARENA. CNN political analyst, national political correspondent for "Axios", Alex Thompson; CNN contributor and host of "The New York Times'" "The Interview", Lulu Garcia Navarro; former DNC communications director Mo Elleithee; and CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings.

Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for being here.

So, it's another doomsday, apparently. Anthropic said today -- or rather, there were IPO filings that were discovered, and apparently, they believe that their models could pose a quote, catastrophic or existential risk to humanity and can resist shutdown. This is an IPO, right, prospectus. The company behind Claude also warned in the prospectus that its A.I. models can have self-preserving behaviors and have attempted to conceal or manipulate information and engage in behavior resembling blackmail, according to the report.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yay, good times for humanity.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Wait, does this make us more or less likely to invest? This isn't an IPO.

HUNT: I mean, I don't know. I could give you, we could all give them, we could give them our money and then it would all, I don't know, disappear.

But seriously, I mean, Lulu, it's -- we sit around, we talk about issues in these midterm elections. People are worried about the economy, their pocketbooks, et cetera. The way that these tech leaders are talking about the technologies that they are building themselves are so far beyond that kind of a conversation.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, it's so funny because it's like, make us stop! Make us stop from building this thing that we're building! I mean, it makes no sense, right?

This entire spectacle that we've just seen is Trump's attempt before the midterms to get in front of this because there's been so much pressure to have this discussion. Unfortunately, what we heard there is him saying, is this enforceable in any way this thing that everyone signed? And he said, with their morality.

[16:05:00]

You know, basically meaning it's worth the paper that it was written on, which is not anything at all. And I don't think it's going to go very far in making people feel in any way comforted, especially with those statistics, right, when you say 11 million people are going to lose their jobs and you don't have an answer to what are those people going to do except maybe go on a ship to Mars, Elon's idea, or have a universal basic income, some other ideas that are out there, which is like the extreme version of communism, right, that the government's going to pay for you to do nothing, this is not going to make people feel better about a technology that's very, very scary to a lot of people and very dangerous according to the people.

ALEX THOMPSON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I mean, Democrats I talked to are very happy to have this visual on display there. Now, even some of these people have been in the past supportive of data centers, you know, because they do bring jobs, especially to sometimes trade unions, but the polling is very clear. And two months before Election Day, the fact that Trump started his administration, flanked by the tech CEOs at his inauguration, he's ending the midterms, flanked by the richest people in the world that people have anxiety about, Democrats will happily take that split screen, you know, five weeks before Election Day.

HUNT: Scott Jennings, can you help us understand what the dynamics are behind the scenes at the White House here? Because, I mean, quite an array there at the White House, and the president does seem out of step with the numbers with the polling.

JENNINGS: Well, the president's job is to lead, and this is an emerging issue. And what I think is happening with voters is that they are actually proper to have questions, they're right to have concerns. But they're also right to look to the elected leaders to say, OK, here are questions and concerns. What are you doing about it?

I think you would expect our leaders to be having a meeting like this. I also think you would expect them to be looking for whatever proper guardrails could be put in place without hamstringing the United States in the race against China regarding data centers. Again, I think questions are proper, but when you tell people say we're going to have this ratepayer protection pledge, which forces the companies to pay for all of the energy infrastructure so that you don't have to shoulder the burden, people get a lot more comfortable with how that looks in their community.

So, I think what people are looking for are elected leaders to just get their arms around it and put in guardrails and protection so that the average person doesn't suffer some adverse problem in the short term.

But look, this technology, as the president made clear, it's coming, it can do great things, and even though some people may have adverse impacts on certain parts of the economy, you wonder what else could they do because of this technology. It may be that people get to do new things or their jobs get easier because of some of these tools, particularly in the medical field, which the president mentioned today.

MO ELLEITHEE, FORMER DNC COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: You know, it's interesting. Number one, I can't recall ever seeing an issue where people on the far left all the way to the far right felt the same way, right? I mean, Republicans, Democrats, independents, everybody has real concern about this, wants us to pump the brakes, and make sure that we put the guardrails in place.

And I agree, Scott, like A.I. is not going anywhere. It's going to happen, and it could do some good things, but it does need some guardrails. And just because we talk about government-enforced guardrails does not mean we are going to cede anything to China.

People were worried about that when we regulated the aviation industry. The United States was the leader, remained the leader in aerospace for many, many decades.

Same thing when it came to pharmaceuticals. We put regulations in place so that people could trust the product. And the United States remained the global leader when it came to pharmaceuticals.

So, this is one of those industries that is moving so fast, has so much potential. And for the president to simply say, we're going to be hands-off on this, our regulation is called DOJ. DOJ isn't going to do anything to help those 11 million people who suddenly are displaced, many of whom may be too young to retire, but too old to learn a new industry. And we are not prepared. We actually kind of need a whole of society approach to figuring out

not just how to regulate A.I., but how to deal with A.I. And this president's not showing that leader at all.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I mean, let's talk about what else has happened when we talk about A.I. this week. And I know the president wants us to call it S.I. for Supreme Intelligence, but, you know, that's not what it's known as.

We have seen rogue bots going in and attacking other companies. They don't know what's happening underneath the scene. They have caught these rogue agents doing things that they are not supposed to be doing.

And one of the big -- and I'm no expert here -- but one of the big issues that we're seeing over and over and over again is that artificial intelligence doesn't seem to be compatible with human morality. This is, you know, they've used all these fancy words for it, but ultimately this is at the crux of this fear, which is that the people making it don't have control over it. And that is what's so scary.

We're not talking about a dishwasher going crazy in your house. We're talking about something that can end companies, our financial system, and everything else. And so, you know, that is, those are the just about even your jobs. This is about maybe them creating a bioweapon. That's what we're discussing, and that's what's so frightening to people.

HUNT: Well, speaking of experts, we are also joined now by Kristian Hammond. He's a professor of computer science at Northwestern University, and he heads the university's artificial intelligence master's program.

Kristian, I think you've probably been listening in to our conversation, so honestly, I'd love to hear you weigh in. on this because we did, of course, see the president surrounded by the essential masters of the universe. And, of course, you've got millions of people who stand to lose their jobs and who now, honestly, are afraid because many of these leaders are telling them that the products that they have built are rapidly spiraling out of their own control. I mean, what is real here and what is hyperbole?

KRISTIAN HAMMOND, PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY: Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. You have a lot of problems to deal with all this. It's really quite stunning. There's the -- everyone's going to lose their job. There's the A.I. systems make people stupid. And then there's the data centers sucking up all of our electricity and water. And they're going to go rogue and kill us all.

So, it's a whole slew of problems. The place where we're at though, and there's a wonderful word that your panel kept using, guardrails. You only put guardrails on things that are broken, that are not under your control. If you had a car that drove, it was really fast and really easy to steer, but every once in a while, they would just slam you into a wall.

You wouldn't say, oh, we need guardrails. You'd say, no, we need to fix the steering. And the place where we are with A.I. right now is, we don't have the explicit controls that we need in order to make these things effective. They're really smart, which is great. They have really fantastic capabilities, which is also great, but we can't control them well because they're probabilistic.

And oddly enough, we taught them to be this way. We trained them on example after example after example of systems and people doing these kinds of exploits. And for me, the thing I loved was people talking about, oh, and they're communicating with each other.

Yeah, that's an old technique. It's called a blackboard technique for the machines. And it's just remembering it. And so, a lot of what these things are doing are they're doing them because they're predicting that that's what they should do, because they're remembering what they've seen before and predicting. It's not because they want to do them, they're just predicting that's what I'm going to do, and so I'll do it.

HUNT: So, I mean, are we at the point where there is no controlling what these people have built? Is it already too far gone?

HAMMOND: No, I don't think so at all. I think that we're in a place where we've got to be aware of what the issue is. The issue is not intelligence. We like intelligence, even if it's super superior, supercalifragilistic intelligence. We really love it.

The question is, what kind of capabilities do we want to give systems? We can shut them down in terms of their ability to break into other websites or other systems. We could do that, but then they wouldn't be as appealing as tools for us.

But shutting them down until we figure out how to control, how to tell them what to do and what not to do, that's the trick of it all. And we talk about things like alignment with human goals, but there aren't just -- we don't all have the same goals. And so that's not going to work.

What we need is to find a way to have explicit controls where we say, you can do this and you can't do this. You know, in the old 2001, Hal kills off his crew. And there was a moment where every time I watched that movie, it's like, did no one tell him not to do that?

And that's the problem. There are these things we assume. If I ask you for, if I ask you to go get me a cup of coffee, and you come back and you're covered with blood, and yeah, it's like I wanted to get back quickly, so I killed the person in front of me in the line. You go, no, I didn't want you to do that. And then it's like, you should have told me that.

And it's like, we assume that you're not going to do that.

[16:15:00] And we assume because these things are smart, that they're not going to do things. But those assumptions are incorrect. They're designed to be effective. And we haven't put enough in the way of do or don't. in them for them to be moral creatures.

They're just not, that's not what they are. And quite truthfully, every single story they themselves have read about A.I. has A.I. killing us. It's like 70 percent of the stories about A.I. are A.I. going rogue.

And literally, I have personally read stories where it's like, oh, we've made it, we've captured it and it can't escape and we watch it escape and it's like, that's what we're supposed to do. That's what you trained us to do.

And the issue is, well, how can we back off on that training? How can we retrain? How can we make them more responsible because we want to, as opposed to we want to go quickly.

HUNT: Wow. OK. There's a lot to unpack there.

HAMMOND: I'm sorry.

HUNT: No, don't apologize. Listen, you're going to have to come back again, I think, in the future to help with this.

But I do want to bring in our senior White House correspondent, Kristen Holmes, because she is just sprung from the gaggle with President Trump.

Kristen, what did we hear there? Quite the visual Elon Musk at the back of that crowd with the masters of the universe surrounding the president.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, started off as a leader with Speaker Johnson in front and all of the leaders of the tech industry around him. And then Johnson said that the president was actually going to come out. Now, we heard a lot of the same that we have heard before. President Trump really doubling down on this idea that it needed to be self-regulation and self-policing.

But one of the things to note is that that's already going on. That's why we're seeing these alarm bells going off from these various leaders in the tech industry saying there need to be more guardrails. So, we are waiting to see what document that these leaders referred to they signed kind of that would read them to both external and internal review some kind of audit. It wasn't entirely clear.

I tried to ask Speaker Johnson for some details on what an external review is and I also asked President Trump about the fact that 71 percent of Americans believe the federal government isn't doing enough to regulate A.I.

Here's that exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) HOLMES: Seventy-one percent of Americans think the federal government is not doing enough in terms of A.I. What is your message to them today when you're saying there don't need to be any more?

TRUMP: When you're saying not doing enough, our companies are dominating the world.

HOLMES: They think that federal government is not doing enough.

TRUMP: But they're dominating China. They're dominating every -- we want to keep it that way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: So there was obviously no message to the American people there. The question was 71 percent of Americans think the federal government is not doing enough to regulate A.I. And he said that these companies are skyrocketing and they're doing great. Nothing about the Americans and federal regulation.

And we still don't know when it comes to this external review if the government is going to be involved in that. It certainly didn't sound like it from what we heard from Johnson and Trump and those tech leaders.

HUNT: All right, Kristen Holmes for us at the White House. Kristen, thank you.

Kristian Hammond, thanks to you as well. Really appreciate the expertise. We'll bring him back at some point. I appreciate it.

All right, coming up next here in THE ARENA, the vice president's new assessment of the midterms as a new poll shows two races in a red state now favoring Democrats. We're going to talk with Congresswoman Debbie Dingell.

Plus, Jack Smith back on Capitol Hill today, this time before senators. What the former special counsel is saying and how the hearing quickly devolved into a partisan food fight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): This is the most ridiculous hearing I have ever sat in, and that says a lot, because Republicans who have had control of Congress for the last two years have had the stupidest, most ridiculous, most gaslighting hearings, not about the Americans concerned, not about high prices, not about people losing their health care. America should be pissed off right now by Congress concern about gaslighting us about the 2020 election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:23:28]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Are there headwinds? Of course there are. I'm a realist about this stuff. Is it hard for the party that controls the House, the Senate, and the presidency to win a midterm election? It almost never happens.

But this is very different. Number one, we have a very unique president. Number two, we have a bunch of crazy people running on the other side.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Vice President J.D. Vance there acknowledging in a new interview the tough political landscape facing Republicans ahead of November's elections. That as a new Marist Poll shows that in the vice president's home state of Ohio, Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown now has an eight-point advantage over the Republican incumbent Jon Husted, and he's above 50 in that poll. In the governor's race there, the Democratic candidate is up six points over the Republican.

Joining me now in THE ARENA, Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, Debbie Dingell.

Congresswoman, it's great to see you. Thanks so much for being here.

How do you explain numbers in your home turf of the Midwest?

REP. DEBBIE DINGELL (D-MI): Look, it's very simple. People are hurting. Gasoline just continues to sky high.

It's the harvest season. Farmers, diesel costs is way up. Trucking costs are way up. Grocery stores are up. People are hurting.

So, before you get to any of the other issues that people are really worried about, I remember a Republican president who said it's about the economy. And, you know, people have not seen many of the promises that were made to them two years ago kept.

[16:25:00]

And there are a lot of other things happening from their fear of A.I. and what a community. I was with a union president yesterday who just -- it just was as intense and passionate as I am about A.I., but talked about that's what the selection is all about. What is going to happen to people's jobs? How are we going to put protections in, issues that matter to people, just people that are working every day, Midwest and across this country? The country is not going in the direction that they want it to go to. Their personal lives are impacted and they want somebody. to make their lives better, not worse.

HUNT: Yeah. Congressman, I mean, of course, midterms are almost always a referendum on the president, usually, but certainly the party in power as well. And, of course, after the 2024 presidential election, Democrats were really down, right? They had lost to Donald Trump. It was clear the party had some soul-searching to do about what went wrong. Now we find ourselves in a position with a potential blue wave that's so intense.

I'm curious if you think that might mask the issues that may still be facing Democrats, especially as they head toward a presidential election. Do you have that concern?

DINGELL: Look, I say to everybody, and I'm very clear, when I listen to the vice president, I'm going to say this with respect. This is a unique president, but his uniqueness is not helping Republicans. And I'll leave it at that.

Look, I'm very clear. You've heard me say this multiple times. We're not going to win this election being anti Donald Trump. We're going to win it by showing people how we're going to deliver. And there are many people, especially young people, that don't trust any institutions They don't trust people. They don't trust Republicans or trust Democrats.

And there are a lot of people that are just tired of all the fighting, the not delivering, promises not kept. And we have to make sure that we are listening to them, that we deliver in the next two years before the presidential even hits. And people are going to hold presidential candidates accountable, period. I know that.

HUNT: Congresswoman, one other dynamic, of course, if we if Democrats take the House, as is widely currently predicted, there are going to be a number of pretty far left members, some of whom have expressed, you know, a willingness to throw wrenches into the system. And we saw a version of this, of course, with the Tea Party.

Nancy Pelosi, of course, had the Squad. But when she was running things, she ran a tight ship, and Democrats actually got a lot done.

Do you think Hakeem Jeffries is ready to actually figure out how to manage what's coming at him in the event that he is elected speaker from these various corners and actually be able to govern? Because oftentimes, the impact of a lot of these sort of attention-seeking members of Congress in whatever corner they may come from is to grind sand into the wheels of government.

DINGELL: So, Kasie, I think that's the newest gotcha question. I get this, is Hakeem up to this job? More than you can imagine, and he used more than up to this job.

I want to tell you that every single Democrat in our caucus knows that we have to deliver and we have to show people how we can work together. And you know, we've got a very broken health care system. We have people that have different ideas on how we should approach fixing a very broken system.

I think there's agreement that we have to immediately restore the cuts that were done in the big blank bill, I'll behave today, and also extend the affordable care tax credits as quickly as we can in the first 100 hours, I think we can get the Senate to do the same thing. And then Donald Trump can explain to people why he might veto those cuts that are hurting people. But I think we're going to have a caucus. Look, everybody's got the

unique personalities and we'll have a lot of vigorous, intense discussions. But I think I've got a smart, educated caucus that knows how to win elections and division isn't going to win a presidential election and everybody knows what's at stake.

And we've got and work together because we got too much that's at stake, we all have in common.

HUNT: All right, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, always great to have you on the show. Thanks so much. Come back soon.

DINGELL: Thank you.

HUNT: All right, coming up next here in THE ARENA, the biggest moments from today's heated hearing is former special counsel Jack Smith goes before senators and defends his decision to prosecute Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): If it were up to me, I'd charge you with perjury. You should certainly be disbarred. And I can only pray that nothing like this will ever happen again in the United States of America. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): Mr. Chairman?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Proceed.

DURBIN: I'd like Mr. Smith to have an opportunity to respond if there are any areas of questioning he didn't get an opportunity to respond to.

[16:30:02]

JACK SMITH, FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL: There were several things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SMITH: I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including my decision to bring charges against President Trump. I made those decisions without regard to President Trump's political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[16:35:00]

HUNT: Former Special Counsel Jack Smith telling senators today that he stands by his decision to prosecute President Trump. Smith staunchly defending his investigations into the president's mishandling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Republicans accused Smith of partisanship in leading those probes, zeroing in on his handling of communications involving members of Congress. And to no one's surprise, the four-year hearing took a combative turn.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SMITH: I will not be silenced by continued threats of prosecution from the president or others.

SEN. ERIC SCHMITT (R-MO): You will go down as a total dirtbag.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): Javert from Les Mis would look at you with astonishment.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY (R-LA): You make me want to throw up in my mouth.

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): Today's mendacity, perfidity, lies, mistruths cannot obscure what the mountain of evidence an American saw with their own eyes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: OK. CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig joins the panel now.

Elie, pretty strong defense of his actions there from Jack Smith, the various comments from the senators underscoring the way he is now viewed from a partisan perspective. But he was threatened a couple of times, or at least there were a number of senators who said that they wanted to prosecute him for perjury.

What stood out to you about today's hearing?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Kasie, there are perfectly valid criticisms to be made of Jack Smith and the way he handled his job. However, where we are at this point is much ado about next to nothing. At this point, the attacks on Jack Smith that we hear from Senate Republicans really focus on two things. One is outright falsehoods and conspiracy theories. We saw that outrageous moment today where one of the senators accused him of going to an Atlanta Hawks game and conspiring of someone there, which was completely false.

But then the other category is this accusation that Jack Smith was engaged in spying and then lied about it and hence committed perjury. It's important to understand what Jack Smith did was two things. One, he subpoenaed phone records of several Republican members of Congress from the phone companies. He got a list of what number called what number.

He did not eavesdrop. He did not get the content of those calls. A fairly routine prosecutorial move. You can criticize him for it, but it's not spying and it's not perjury.

The other thing he did is he went to the Archives, the National archives. And he said, hey, give me White House records. And in those records was some text between White House staffers and, again, members of Congress. But those were communications that were done on government phones and properly turned over to NARA, to the archives that Jack Smith then obtained.

So, again, you can maybe question his methodology, but there's no spying involved in that and there's no perjury involved in his testimony about it. You can criticize the guy. He's not a criminal.

HUNT: Yeah, well, and, of course, getting those records, those phone records, you can see the vibes that that created between him and the members of Congress that were affected.

So I want to bring the panel in here, but I want to watch that moment that Ellie was referring to, okay, because it really kind of underscores the gotcha political games that were on display in this hearing.

This was Senator Schmitt of Missouri, a Republican, trying to prove that Jack Smith met with Fani Willis, OK, the Georgia prosecutor in the context of all of this. It did not, shall we say, go well.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCHMITT: What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warrior/Hawks game on February 3rd, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair?

I don't think you know that we have this stuff, so I'll give you a second to process it so you don't perjure yourself.

SMITH: You just took it down really quick. If I could look at that again.

I recall going to a University of Maryland basketball game where Caitlin Clark was playing. Was Maryland playing Iowa, I think, February of 2024? But again, that's -- you can check that out if that's what we're talking about.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: University of Iowa.

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): Is it the Hawkeyes?

SMITH: Yes.

KLOBUCHAR: Could it then be that University of Iowa is the Hawkeyes? Could that be it?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Could that be it? Could that be it?

THOMPSON: I think this is what political scientists often refer to as a face plant. And it's funny, my colleague this morning actually talked about how Senator Schmitt had really been working hard to endear himself to J.D. Vance and his team, even trying to position himself in the Vance administration or even as high as V.P.

I imagine this moment, especially for a president and administration that likes to admire strength, will come up again.

HUNT: Scott, would you concur?

JENNINGS: Rough moment. And I say that as someone who likes Eric Schmitt very much. And I think he's been a really good politician and senator in Missouri, so obviously this was a mistake.

[16:40:07]

But what Republicans are really talking about and worried about today and have been with Jack Smith is that he did go out and obtain communications from members of Congress. He did go out and apparently obtain records for, you know, local Republican donors who had written checks for $5 and $10. Apparently, he got records of at least one journalist, Mollie Hemingway, from "The Federalist".

And so, the Republican argument here has been that this was partisan, that this was a dramatic amount of overstepping, and that it really did encroach upon, you know, the job duties of a lot of these senators and members of Congress that he was digging into, in their view, for no good reason, and without disclosing it to them at the time. So, I think legitimate concerns were aired, even if there was a rough moment on the committee today.

HUNT: Mo, is there not an argument to be made, too, that perhaps it started with Alvin Bragg and not with Jack Smith, but that what played out with Jack Smith and Alvin Bragg and others ultimately gave us the second term of President Trump?

ELLEITHEE: If we want to have that political argument about whether or not all of this had political implications, we can have that. That's not what they were doing today. They weren't arguing whether or not it created a public backlash that led. They were making false statements about the investigation that he led.

Here's the part that I love, though, if we want to talk about the politics. We are five weeks from election day. Senate hearing today focused not on A.I., not on the war in Iran, not on the rising cost of diesel. It focused on whether or not Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election.

That's how I think people internalize this and hear this. I mean, you want to talk about a face plant. Five weeks before an election, making that the dominant story of a news cycle seems to be a pretty major face plant.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah. I mean, I think what he did was basically re- prosecute the case. Every time there was the Republican senators were trying to score points, and also it just seems very self-serving that they're all angry about themselves and their own communications, he kept on prosecuting the case again, you know, against Donald Trump in the 2020 election which we know ended up in January 6th. So, you know, this isn't some big nefarious thing that nobody

understands and is secret we all saw it play out on our screens. And so, I think insofar as anyone is interested in this and I have to say I'm not sure many people are anymore, I think the thing that they will be interested in is not whether he went to a Hawks game or Hawkeyes or whatever else.

THOMPSON: I will say despite the I think a lot of Democrats would agree with Mo that the politics here favor Democrats, but there is an interest, and the hearing devolved into complete political theater, but there are legitimate questions and interesting precedents being set over separation of powers, whether or not the Justice Department can easily subpoena phone records of members of Congress. Maybe it didn't, per Elie's point, maybe it didn't go over the line this time, but you could easily see a prosecutor maybe going over the line in the future.

HUNT: Yeah, Elie, what do you think about that?

HONIG: Well, you know, the way that Republicans have chosen to attack Jack Smith is just not the most effective way to criticize him. If you want to criticize the guy, you can point out that his entire career leading up to the Trump prosecution was marked by overcharging and over aggression. He had high-profile cases rejected by judges, by juries, unanimously in one case by the Supreme Court. You can point out the fact that he asked for a gag order that violated Donald Trump's First Amendment right to the point where a judge and a Court of Appeals judge overturned Jack Smith's gag order.

You can point to the fact that he insisted on trying Donald Trump four months after an indictment with 13 million pages of discovery. There's no way Donald Trump could have engaged his due process to prepare for trial. You can point to the fact that he dumped a whole bunch of information into the public sector in October of 2024 by reversing the rules of criminal procedure.

There are very effective and fair criticisms of Jack Smith, but these Republican senators are not on them at all.

JENNINGS: Other than that, he's a really great guy. Listen to Elie, this guy made mistake after mistake, and it all leads back to the central Republican argument that this was overly partisan, overly prosecuted. And that was the point of the hearing today. And you don't have to take any partisan --

HUNT: Well, Elie kind of did a better job than those senators that we saw. No?

Anyway, Elie, thank you. I always appreciate you.

HONIG: Okay.

HUNT: The rest of our panel is going to stand by here.

Ahead in THE ARENA, new reporting, a new reaction to a controversial midterm move by the president. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:49:08]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): This is not appropriate PSA. It's just not, you know, it's not how we should be spending taxpayer dollars, you know that. You've taken money and communicating, regardless of the message, you're communicating fundamentally a political message. Doesn't make sense to me.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): I just think it creates a bad taste in people's mouth that their tax dollars may be misused for political purposes. So I think it's a bad idea and needs to stop.

(ENDVIDOE CLIP)

HUNT: Some Republicans pushing back against the recent taxpayer-funded ads promoting President Trump and his policies.

A source tells CNN the president was personally involved in the ads, including helping to select the imagery and the videos that were used. Two Trump advisors said they were created by the White House video team. Senator Tillis made a comparison drawing the ads to similar ones that former Hungarian prime minister and strongman Viktor Orban aired.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[16:50:00]

REPORTER: The White House says that those are PSAs. Do you buy that argument?

TILLIS: Orban said he was doing a lot of PSAs. You know, look, there's a right place and a wrong place. He wants to spend -- I fundamentally am OK with the message. I'm not OK with how it was delivered.

REPORTER: When you say Orban, you're comparing him to --

TILLIS: Yeah, I mean, Orban, you know, Orban had -- yeah, he used taxpayer dollars to communicate his political view. And he lost his ass in an election, too.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right. My panel's back.

I mean, Scott Jennings, how is this OK? I mean, under what world would you be OK with a Democratic president doing something like this?

JENNINGS: Well, I don't really have a problem with the government producing PSAs and giving people information that they could use. For instance, if they had a PSA about this website they've rolled out today, America.gov.

HUNT: What is the public service that was provided by him saying that?

JENNINGS: Or if, say, they had information about something that was a government service that people needed more information about. Trump accounts, that would be another example.

What I don't think you should do is take political material, put another label on it, and say, hey, now this is a PSA. That's not what the purpose is. But if you wanted to do PSAs to the American people so they could better access their government --

HUNT: I mean, that's happened before, and nobody's saying that there's anything wrong. The Trump Accounts example, totally buy it. Here's how to use this new government program that didn't exist before. Fine. That seems like a perfectly good use of taxpayer money.

JENNINGS: And by the way, it would be politically helpful if they did that, because it's one of the best things they've done.

HUNT: But what they did here I mean, you're not arguing that what the president actually did is a public service announcement and that it's not political, are you?

JENNINGS: No, I literally just said what you shouldn't do is take a campaign ad. And they just put a different disclaimer.

HUNT: And that's what you're saying that this is?

JENNINGS: My personal advice would be pick the things that the government is doing, your initiatives that they need information about, and tell the people about it. That would give you a lot of cover for what you want to do. And it would be good for everybody because these programs are fundamentally good.

THOMPSON: My colleagues reporting at "Axios" says that Trump is completely undeterred from some of this criticism and that they're actually planning to ramp up the already $2.5 million in ads they have shown in very prime time slots, like during very popular football games and everything else. I'd also say I think it's telling that the two GOP senators that you showed there are both going home this January.

The Republicans that are actually on the ballot this November are basically saying, we're tied to him no matter what. And they're not going to -- they very much still -- it's the -- what we say privately is not what we say publicly routine.

HUNT: Yeah, there are a couple more additional examples. Not to contradict Alex's point, he's right that Thom Tillis and John Cornyn both have bones to pick with the president.

But here was Senator John Kennedy over the weekend. I mean, you may remember that something along these lines is what got Kristi Noem essentially fired, or part of what got her fired as DHS secretary. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KENNEDY: I don't think any public official including President Trump or Kristi Noem or John Kennedy, should spend public money on private ads for themselves. Now, the White House sees it differently. But I think there ought to be a rule that you can't -- well, there probably is a rule. You can't spend public money to promote yourself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Yeah, it turns out there is. And here was Senator Ricketts, also a Republican, on this to CNN today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. PETE RICKETTS (R-NE): I haven't seen the ad specifically you're talking about, but again, if you're using campaign ads and using federal dollars, that would not be appropriate, but I can't speak exactly to the content of the ad you're talking about. Again, we should try and keep those things separately from, you know, the campaign dollars, and this is why we have ethics rules.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: This is why we have ethics rules.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes, it is why we have ethics rules, and I'm also utterly not shocked that President Trump is doubling down. These things are exactly the same.

And to my friend Scott Jennings' point, it was literally a campaign ad that ran in 2024 and they slapped another name on it. They repurposed it.

So, you know, for all these reasons, it is not the right thing to be doing. Also, I don't think the message is terribly effective. He's talking about communists, he's talking about saving the country, and he, let's us not forget, just had the communist leader of China here in the Oval Office and sort of in a very fawning meeting.

So, at the end of the day, is this going to be helpful for him? No. Is it ethically dubious? It is. Will it have a terrible precedent if Democrats in the future take over control? And so, you know, I agree with Scott that this is, you know, a self-harm (ph).

ELLEITHEE: I mean, the public service that he seemed to be announcing in that ad was, I'm great. We're all doing great, and I'm fighting the right fights. His approval rating is at 32 percent. He's seen a nearly 20-point drop in support among Republicans since he was inaugurated.

I'm not saying Republicans are abandoning it, but a 20-point drop in approval rating.

[16:55:03]

People don't think he's great or that we are doing great. That ad was more of a public service to the Democratic Party than it was to the nation. HUNT: All right. Thank you all. Really appreciate you being here today.

Thanks to all of you at home for joining us. We really appreciate you.

Don't go anywhere. "THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER" starts after this quick break.