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Grand Opening Ceremony for Obama Presidential Center in Chicago; Trump Lashes Out at Conservative Critics of U.S.-Iran Agreement; Interview with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR): Trump Says Iran Agreement Prevented International Depression; Trump Administration Plans to File 250 Denaturalization Cases by October; New York Prepares for Millions to Attend Knicks Championship Parade. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired June 18, 2026 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: A garden from the first lady, for example, that is inside of this complex.

VALERIE JARRETT, CEO, THE OBAMA FOUNDATION: And in addition, inside of the museum, we have a lot of interactive displays where people can see, tell their stories and feel and see the connections of their stories, not just to the Obamas, but to each other. And I'll tease it, but you got to come in and see how we connect it all. And really, the point here is, is that we do have a lot more in common than we have differences, and that our differences can be debated without being disagreeable.

And so we're trying to bring out the best in America here and have people appreciate the fact that we all have a role to play in making our country stronger and better, and that we shouldn't erase our history. We should look at it through a very realistic lens in order to learn from it and do better.

SIDNER: Valerie Jarrett, it is such a pleasure to be able to sit here with you on a day that I know means so much to you, but also to the country and to Chicago, certainly the South Side as well. Thank you.

JARRETT: Thank you.

SIDNER: I do appreciate your time.

JARRETT: Appreciate you.

SIDNER: All right. A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking this morning, they say he surrendered. Some Republicans, that is, withering criticism of the agreement the president signed with Iran. And before dawn, the president went after these critics.

And is the water really crystal clear after $14 million? The new claim by the Interior Department about the reflecting pool and why they're comparing the situation to the Iranian Navy. OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN HOST: And we are live in New York City as people are already lining up. They're already here, ready to celebrate their hometown champs, the ticker tape parade, more than 50 years in the making.

Kate is off. I'm Omar Jimenez with John Berman and Sara Sidner. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BERMAN: All right, the breaking news this morning, the president is waking up to scathing criticism on the agreement he signed with Iran. And much of it is from Republicans. And from what he has been writing, he does not seem to appreciate the feedback.

The criticism includes the sanctions relief to let Iran sell oil immediately that could bribe them with billions of dollars right away. Vague language about nuclear weapons, the possibility of Iran charging tolls in the Strait of Hormuz, the $300 billion reconstruction fund Iran could get access to.

Nikki Haley wrote, "It's a huge mistake to pay to rebuild the threat we just destroyed." Eric Erickson writes, "This is American surrender." Mark Thiessen, "$300 billion to Iran under any circumstances is a disaster, like if the Marshall Plan offered to rebuild Germany while the Nazis were still in power."

The president does not like this. Around 4:30 a.m. this morning, he wrote, quote, "These fools who think I haven't been tough enough on Iran are either jealous, bad people or stupid." The president also says that without the agreement, the U.S. economy could have collapsed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So rather than possibly going into a depression, rather than having your favorite president be Herbert Hoover, I was always the one I didn't want to be. He raised taxes too fast and he raised interest rates too fast, all at the same time. And it caused the Great Depression.

So I don't think I'll make mistakes like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: With us now is Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon. He is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. You heard the president there saying he didn't want to be Herbert Hoover.

The country had the risk of going into a depression. How much credit do you think he deserves for saving the country from economic collapse?

SEN. JEFF MERKLEY (D-OR), FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: Well, this is the humiliation of Donald Trump. Everything Republicans have railed about, the JCPOA agreement since 2015, this is such less achieved and so much more harm inflicted on the United States. As mentioned in that series, Iran gains access to $24 billion unfrozen funds. They proceed to get the sanction on their oil lifted. They get an American commitment to help organize $300 billion Marshall Plan. They have nothing in this about their proxies operating across the arc all the way to Lebanon.

There is nothing in this about their missiles, their cruise missiles or their ballistic missiles. And meanwhile, the United States has been injured in every possible way.

[08:05:00]

Our farmers by higher prices, our families by inflation and higher prices of gas at the pump, our alliances deeply shattered, our munitions depleted. And here's Russia enriched by it as well. So in every possible way, this is an epic failure and a massive humiliation for Donald Trump.

BERMAN: Do you agree with the president that the country risked a depression by not signing this agreement?

MERKLEY: I agree that the president created a nightmare for American economy by starting this war of choice. And I agree that this war of choice was a massive mistake.

BERMAN: Do you think that given the circumstances without being backwards looking, because I know you weren't in favor of it to begin with, but given where things were, was this the best deal that he could have gotten?

MERKLEY: This was probably, I mean, this is like the skunk dog slinking away. You find out that you started something, you got backed into a corner, you didn't have the cards you thought, he liked to talk about, hey, you don't have the cards, when he uses a kind of a poker analogy. In this case, Iran had an ace up its sleeve.

It had control of the Strait of Hormuz. And what is the message sent to the world now is you mess with Iran, they can inflict massive harm on the world economy. That will continue to be true as long as oil -- the majority of oil flows to the Strait of Hormuz.

So they've gained something massive. He backed himself into a corner, he was in big trouble. He had to bring an end to this.

And that's what he did. But it's on Iran's terms, not his.

BERMAN: Oil prices now down below $80 a barrel and dropping even more. Gas prices down below $4 a gallon for the first time since March. The stock market had a blip yesterday, by and large has been doing quite well.

Are things headed now in the right direction, these economic indicators?

MERKLEY: Well, we're going to see, I think, a pretty slow retreat on the inflation because it takes a lot of time. It takes months for the actual oil economy to get back up and running and affect the price at the pump. Remember, these prices that are coming down are prices, they're futures, they're not for the immediate acquisition of oil or immediate translation to the pump.

John, here's something I am very worried about that I want to interject here. And that is you have an angry, humiliated President of the United States. What is he going to do to distract from this moment?

Is it going to be Cuba? What else is it going to be? I think we need to be having kind of great vigilance right now about other trouble that Trump could get us irrationally into.

BERMAN: What do you mean? Talk to me more about that. The president was just at the G7.

MERKLEY: Yes.

BERMAN: These moves were greeted warmly by other G7 leaders. You have concerns, though, about what he might do next?

MERKLEY: Yes, yes, I do. I think this is a president when something goes wrong over here, he's going to try to create something else happening and distract America from this moment. This is probably his worst moment.

I mean, you think about how Republicans have spent more than a decade criticizing Obama because he provided $1.7 billion to Iran in a side deal to the JCPOA. How does $1.7 billion compare to $24 billion of unfrozen funds and compare to a $300 billion reconstruction fund? I think you're just going to hear a voluminous commentary that undermines Trump from his own side of the party.

And I think that creates a humiliated, angry president says, well, let's do something to distract. Is there another Venezuela? And maybe in my head, the first thing that comes to mind is Cuba.

But that's what I'm concerned about, a pretty unstable president looking to distract America from this deal.

BERMAN: Senator Jeff Merkley from Oregon in Washington today. Thanks so much for being with us.

MERKLEY: Thank you.

BERMAN: We have a CNN exclusive this morning. The White House dramatically stepping up efforts to strip U.S. citizenship from some naturalized Americans.

Today, the Obama Presidential Center holds its official opening ceremony. A star-studded event gets underway shortly.

And then Kevin Bacon wants a new name. Why he's looking at Kevin Bean as a possibility.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNER: We are live here in Chicago, waiting for the opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center. The band has been warming up this morning. We heard Stevie Wonder's band. They were rocking out.

There are going to be a lot of dignitaries here. The former President Bill Clinton and former First Lady Hillary Clinton. We're also expecting the Bidens.

But there will be one president that is absent. And that is President Donald Trump, who was not invited, as you can imagine from the nasty rhetoric that he's been using against Obama all these years, including just a day ago. He will not be here, nor will the First Lady.

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But there will be all sorts of dignitaries and stars, including, as I just mentioned, Stevie Wonder, Christina Aguilera, Bono. There is so much energy. You can feel it.

It is palpable here, especially as the band starts to strike up. This is a huge complex, one of the most expensive in history. It took more than a decade to build. And there's so much history here.

We will explore all of it throughout the next few hours and at our special coming up in the next few hours.

But let's go to the news this morning. We have exclusive new reporting this morning. The Trump administration boosting efforts to strip citizenship from hundreds of naturalized citizens. A senior DOJ official telling the CNN Justice Department plans to file at least 250 denaturalization cases by October.

Our Priscilla Alvarez is all over this. She broke the story. What are you learning about this?

This is terrifying to many immigrants who went through the process and became naturalized.

PRISILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Sara, this is certainly an unprecedented push by this administration to revoke citizenship from naturalized citizens. Now, I should note that the senior DOJ official did tell me that they're focused on people that had criminal history or committed criminal acts in the course of their naturalization process. And so far, that's what the complaints have borne out.

But as a point of comparison, you mentioned there at least 250 denaturalization cases by October. Well, between 2008 and mid-June of this year, there were only 166 denaturalization complaints that were filed. That was about 10 a year on average.

During the Biden administration, over the course of four years, there was 24 cases that were filed. So you can see how massive an undertaking this is for the Justice Department and how much they are ramping this up to achieve 250 cases filed by October, which hasn't even been done over the last 18 or so years. Now, there have been indications of this just over the last two months.

They already filed 29 cases targeting foreign born Americans who they say committed or fraudulently obtained U.S. citizenship. As I mentioned earlier, what we are seeing in these cases are those who have committed fraud, sexual abuse of a minor, or expressed support for terrorism before or during the naturalization process. And I want to emphasize that because this does not apply to someone who committed a criminal act after they obtained U.S. citizenship. This is very focused on the process itself.

And the federal government does have the authority to do this in federal statute. What they do not have the authority to do, however, is to do it unilaterally. In fact, this all has to work its way through the courts, which is why I was mentioning complaints.

They have to file these in district courts across the country, and that is where a judge will ultimately decide. Or if it's a criminal, if it goes down the criminal path, a jury will decide if an individual is denaturalized.

Now, I want to read to you part of what a senior DOJ official told me. They said quote, "This is a lawful tool that Congress has had on the books for decades to protect the integrity of American citizenship and make sure people who are present in this country and have enjoyed the benefits of citizenship are doing so lawfully and the right people are acquiring citizenship." Of course, this is naturalized citizens.

This does not apply to birthright citizenship. So those who were born in the United States. I've talked to experts about this and they say, look, historically, the cases have been so rare because they're so time consuming, they're difficult.

They focused only on war crimes and terrorism. This is a much more stepped up approach that is going to look at many more cases and bring them all to the fore for them to file in court. But again, Sara, even when filed, these cases may take months, if not years.

SIDNER: Priscilla Alvarez has some great reporting there, despite the details of that, a lot of people very concerned about what citizenship means in the United States now. I do appreciate it.

And I just have to mention, you're hearing a lot of loud music behind me because that's Stevie Wonder's music. We are here live at the presidential center that is going to be opening the Barack Obama Presidential Center. And we will be live here with much more on all of this coming up -- John.

BERMAN: We may hear a live version of that song a little bit later. One of the songs we heard most covering the Obama campaign back in 2008.

In the meantime, the streets here in New York already full, fans filling trains overnight just to get here. The Knicks parade is about to get underway.

And then a group of officers and firefighters jumped to the rescue to save pets trapped inside a burning home.

[08:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: All right, everywhere you look in New York City right now, it is blue and orange. The Knicks parade getting started very shortly. Everyone coming into this studio and everyone gets here overnight.

We're sort of mobbed by people already trying to get here so they can see the parade. Let's go to CNN's Omar Jimenez, who has got a prime seat right at City Hall. Omar, what are you seeing?

JIMENEZ: Oh, man, you know, you can hear the cheers of people trying to make their way in from every single entrance possible. I mean, it's been a while now at this point since the NYPD has essentially closed the viewing pens off. Why?

Because they are already filled with people. And again, we are still a little more than an hour from the start of this actual parade. When you talk about the massive scale of this, the NYPD, for example, is preparing millions of people to show up.

And on top of that, it's why they've deployed more than 10,000 police officers on this apparatus of this, which, again, for perspective is almost the size of the entire Chicago Police Department. But then on the celebration aspect of this, you can see why people are so excited. This is something the city has not seen in more than 50 years.

And just the way that the NBA finals played out seemed to attract more and more New Yorkers as they realized that they would be closer and closer to that pinnacle of actually winning this NBA championship.

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And then we've now talking to folks just over the course of the finals about what this means to the people here. One thing that's unique about this particular finals run in this particular championship is that based on how the finals appearances for the Knicks have been set up over there in the '70s, they won twice. So if you're here in New York, they might remember seeing the Knicks during that time. Then the Knicks are back in the finals in the '90s.

Get there twice. Don't. They aren't able to pull it out.

That could be your parents. And then here you are 27 years later. You witness the actual New York Knicks get over that mountaintop.

So for a lot of generations of folks of New Yorkers here, this is (INAUDIBLE).

BERMAN: All right, I think we lost Omar's mic there, but maybe I cut it off because he made me feel very, very old because he said my parents are the ones who remember the Knicks being the finals in the 90s when I was certainly alive for that. Let's go to the streets. Shimon Prokupecz, I think we have your shot

up, Shimon, in there with the people. Wearing the tank top, Shimon. You really should have gone pure tank, but we'll talk about that later.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we could talk about that, but I don't really want to show off too much. Right. So but anyway.

Yes, people have been gathering here since what, five in the morning. Right. What time did you guys get here?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We got here about five thirty.

PROKUPECZ: Five thirty. How important was it for you to be here?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, really important. I mean, it's been many, many years since they won. And it means a lot for me and the boys.

PROKUPECZ: However, how excited are you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm really excited.

PROKUPECZ: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's been 53 years. All these people just waited for this to happen. And they won.

PROKUPECZ: What about how excited were you when they won?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was me and my brother were --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were excited.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- like, we were jumping, screaming and we fell asleep. And now we get to go to bed in peace.

PROKUPECZ: And what are you most looking forward to seeing? What do you guys want to see?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want to see Jalen Brunson, O.G. Anunoby and Carl Anthony Towns. I want them.

PROKUPECZ: Who's your favorite player?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Favorite?

PROKUPECZ: Hard to say, I see already.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I would say --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jalen.

PROKUPECZ: So what happened? You let them skip school today?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, of course. Once in a lifetime opportunity. So they got to play hooky today. For sure.

PROKUPECZ: Happy about that, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I 3D printed this right here.

PROKUPECZ: Who printed this? You did?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

PROKUPECZ: Oh, wow. Oh, wow. So you guys made these?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

PROKUPECZ: Wow. And you guys are from Brooklyn, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

PROKUPECZ: Awesome. OK. Yes, I grew up in Brooklyn, too.

So. All right. But I will see you guys all day.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No problem.

PROKUPECZ: So, John, we're sort of closer to, I guess, the end of the parade. So we're about it's going to be about a mile here. There are people who've been lining up (INAUDIBLE) morning, some people here overnight and just waiting.

I mean, there are people stacked. Just you can't even see the sidewalk in some of these areas. It seems that they have stopped letting some people into this area.

There are so many people here that the NYPD said we could only fit but so many. So at some point, they're going to stop letting people in.

50 floats. Think about this. 50 floats are expected.

It's only about a mile. So we should start seeing some activity here very quickly. People very excited.

They want to get going. I'm sure as we get closer, we're going to start hearing a lot of cheers. Everyone's just waiting.

It's really just another exciting moment for the city after the win. And people just want to hold on to that moment and that joy that they're all feeling right now.

BERMAN: Shimon, before I let you go, if you can still hear me, there seems to be something going on with your fingernails. Can you can you show us your fingernails?

PROKUPECZ: There you go. Yes, here. There you go.

It's been this way since they clinched since they won the Eastern Conference finals. There they are. So I'm a fan.

I'm a huge fan. And I wanted to show my support. So there you go.

BERMAN: Orange and blue. Shimon Prokupecz, you are the best. And I love the fact that 11 year old kid had been waiting 53 years for the Knicks to win.

PROKUPECZ: Yes. I know that was the best, wasn't it? Good kids. So cute.

BERMAN: All right, Shimon, have a blast down there. We'll talk to you again. Appreciate it.

All right, breaking overnight, the Department of the Interior suggesting kind of that they're at war now with the algae in the reflecting pool, saying they're treating it like the Iranian Navy. I'm not making that up. This is what the Department of Interior said.

And we're only halfway through 2026 and Rolling Stone crowns the best songs of the year so far. What are the hits topping the list?

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