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U.S.-Iran Talks in Switzerland Delayed; Reflecting Pool Plagued by Peeling Material, Algae After Renovation; Trump Admin Ramps Up Effort to Revoke Citizenship From Naturalized Americans. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired June 19, 2026 - 09:00   ET

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

DAVE CHAPPELLE, COMEDIAN AND ACTOR: Times that weren't as tough. But we didn't even know they weren't as tough. I'm looking at Bush today like, man, I can't believe I used to not like that guy. And then look, you know what I mean? It's fun to see him smile. It was fun to see four ex-presidents together smiling. And it reminded us in the subtext that we're all on the same team.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[09:00:22]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Dave Chappelle there. I got to tell you, there were a lot of tan suits, men wearing tan suits in the audience, an ode to a different era, as you heard there, including Stephen Colbert. Lots of fun, lots of love. And it felt like a family reunion for a lot of people who attended.

A new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, that didn't take long. Scheduled talks between the U.S. and Iran called off for now. Vice President J.D. Vance stays home. How much of a setback is this on day one?

At first it was algae. Now the new plaguing -- new problem plaguing the reflecting pool, chunks of something peeling off. Is that paint? Is that sealing? It's not good.

And lawyers for Luigi Mangione now changing their defense plan in a state murder trial away from what would have essentially been an admission that he killed the healthcare CEO.

Kate is out today. I'm John Berman with Sara Sidner. This is "CNN News Central."

SIDNER: This morning, new comments from President Trump amid this question. Is the agreement between the U.S. and Iran already in trouble? Vice President J.D. Vance abruptly postponed a trip to Switzerland today that was supposed to kick off the new 60-day negotiating period towards a final deal. And moments ago, the president posted this, and I'm quoting here, "We didn't meet out of desperation. Iran did. They are finished. We'll play out the 60 days. They get no money, not 10 cents.

And complicating matters. New violence overnight in Lebanon. The IDF says four soldiers were killed there overnight when a Hezbollah explosive device struck a tank. Israel struck back launching airstrikes that killed at least 18 people, according to Lebanon's health ministry.

A diplomat tells CNN that Iran is seeking guarantees that hostilities in Lebanon will end before it resumes talks with the U.S. in Switzerland. A source says the U.S. has relayed to Iran that Israel will not further escalate its attacks. The U.S.-Iran agreement had already prompted a revolt among some Republicans who say the U.S. gave up too much. The president had a different take in an interview he did with "Axios," calling it a display of his own power.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARC CAPUTO, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: What have you learned about not just the exercise of power, but the limits on your power as a result of the conflict?

DONALD TRUMP (R), U.S. PRESIDENT: There are no limits.

CAPUTO: No limits.

TRUMP: No, I haven't learned that lesson yet. I know there are, but you know, there are no limits.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: CNN's Nic Robertson is live this morning in the serene surroundings of Lucerne, but these talks are shaking now. Where do you go from here?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yeah, look, you go to pressure from President Trump on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, you go to pressure on Iran as well to get Hezbollah to agree to some kind of cessation. And look, I'm talking behind the scenes with sources here. I mean, look, if they were meeting, it would be up in the hotel on the mountaintop up there, an amazing, serene venue, as you say. They would be secluded from all the domestic pressures. But right now, that key question is Lebanon, Hezbollah and the IDF.

Can there be an agreement to stop the fighting there? Can that agreement be enough to get Iran, because this is what it's asking for, for a ceasefire in Lebanon, can that be enough to bring them to the table here? Certainly, the Vice President has indicated he is ready to go.

The sources that I'm speaking to behind the scenes seem confident that that can be pulled off. And they're pointing to look to the potential imminent announcement of a possible agreement between Israel, Hezbollah, both sides agreeing not to escalate against each other. Let's see where that goes. But that's what this particular source with a knowledge of the talks and knowledge of the situation is saying. So, it is possible that's the path to get back on track. But look how fragile it's been until now. You have presidents of both the United States and Iran on Wednesday night signing the memorandum of understanding. And barely 24 hours later, they could not get their teams together to that hotel up there to begin the talks on the really contentious issues because of what was happening in Lebanon.

[09:05:03]

And I think this does set the scene for the future of talks. Lebanon is going to be a difficult issue. But are we at a moment of crossing that temporary threshold again, a ceasefire there, getting Iran to the table? Possibly. That's where we stand.

SIDNER: Nic Robertson, thank you so much for your reporting there. I know you're watching all these details as they unfold.

John?

BERMAN: All right, Sara.

With us now is Congresswoman Madeleine Dean, a Democrat from Pennsylvania. She sits in the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Appropriations.

Congresswoman, thanks so much for being with us. I want to read to you a comment that the President just wrote on social media that apparently has to do with all of this, the fact that talks were called off, at least for now, between the United States and Iran. He wrote, "We didn't meet out of desperation. Iran did. They are FINISHED,' all caps there. We'll play out the 60 days. They get no money, not 10 cents."

So, what do you read in that?

REP. MADELEINE DEAN (D-PA): Utter chaos. It's just complete chaos. And this memorandum of understanding, if you read it, it's brief. It's 14 very vague points. But it is not a deal for peace. It is actually a deal that looks like Iran wrote it, because it is mostly entirely really in their favor. It's really a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which of course was open before Operation Epic Fury began.

What I thought immediately upon this sad surrender by the president was Operation Epic Fury really turned into Operation Epic Failure. And I don't say that with any joy.

Of course, Iran should never have a nuclear weapon. But think of what happened here. The president sent tens of thousands of American troops and their extraordinary service to this reckless war of choice without making the case to the American people, without making the case to Congress as required.

And now he has ended it in failure. I regret that. I wish he had shown strength. But instead he's sending $300 billion. He's opening these dollars now and negotiate later. It's a very failed agreement. And we mustn't forget what happened here. Hundreds of service members have been wounded, and 13 service members are dead.

BERMAN: The $300 billion fund presumably would be if Iran meets certain benchmarks. The money they would get now or will get now or are getting now, it's not clear to me, comes from the sale of oil that is permitted already under the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding.

I guess my question is, if there are no meetings, would you snap back the permission for Iran to sell its oil and lift the sanctions on them from selling their oil?

DEAN: Well, I was happy to hear finally some Republican members of the House and Senate saying, actually, Mr. President, you need to come to Congress in order to fulfill any kind of agreement with Iran following your reckless war.

So, yes, this is a piece of paper that is almost not worth the paper it's written on. So yes, they need to come to Congress. But what you see here is a failure of diplomacy. Where has the Secretary of State been? Nowhere. J.D. Vance was going to go today and continue the negotiations, the 60-day negotiations. What happened there? Pulled back.

It's chaos in this White House as the president is, I think, unwell. I think he's unhinged. And he certainly doesn't understand what it takes to cut a deal with Iran, somebody we have been working with, and they've been working against us, a murderous regime. And so, the president is in a very sad state. And what is reflected is the chaos all around him.

BERMAN: Just that specific question, though. Do you think Iran should be able to sell oil if face-to-face talks are not taking place?

DEAN: I think they shouldn't get any break on anything until this dispute is resolved. Sanctions should not be released, 300 billion dollars. Notice the 300 billion dollars is very unclear who that 300 billion dollars is. There should be no relief for Iran. As I said, a murderous regime.

Remember what the president said? Help is on the way. Well, it looks like help is on the way for the murderous regime, not for the Iranian people.

BERMAN: A much different subject, Congressman, if you will. A lighter subject, which is the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial, which I think everyone wants to be clean. I mean, everyone would love it if it were a clean, beautiful pool there.

The White House spent 14 million dollars to clean up the algae and whatnot and paint it blue. It doesn't appear to have worked so well, at least not yet. What does this represent to you? Does it represent just something, you know, we can all get behind to clean it up? Or is it a portent of something bigger?

[09:10:19] DEAN: Well, sadly, it reflects what is going on in this administration. Just algae and muck and failure. A simple reflecting -- he called it a reflecting pond. Well, now it's become an algae pond and what appears to be the peeling off of the surfaces that were put on it for a very expensive, no-bid contract. It is a reflection of this administration's failure on so many fronts.

Notice the president doesn't want to talk about it. He was boasting of the beautiful pool paint that was being put down. What it shows is this president doesn't understand much about history and the rhetorical setting that is the reflecting pond, pool, excuse me.

It is to be a reflection of our history. The Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the reflection of our history. What an important rhetorical setting has been for so many events. The president doesn't understand it. He sees it as a resort and a pool and his pool has turned into muck.

BERMAN: Congressman Madeleine Dean from Pennsylvania, thank you for your time this morning. Appreciate the discussion. Have a good weekend.

So listen, we're talking about the reflecting pool and there are these new developments there as chunks of something have been seen peeling off the bottom there. We've got our man on the scene this morning, CNN's Tom Foreman standing by there. How do things look this morning, Tom?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I got to tell you, John, we don't know exactly what that stuff is that's coming up off the bottom. It sure looks like it could be part of that sealant, but this is about as good as it gets. If you face the light just right up here toward the Lincoln Memorial, yeah, it looks pretty good here and the water has been most cleared here.

But this is the problem. You come up just a little bit and look at all the green still caked to the bottom of the reflecting pool. And it is not just here, John. This goes on and on up that way for the vast majority of this pool. There are real problems here, despite federal authorities trying to say there are not. And people just passing by are noticing it.

Listen to what a couple of them had to say about this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looks bad. I just see green, green slime.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Pouring all that peroxide into it clearly didn't help. I feel for the ducks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: They're trying to basically say from the federal standpoint that the water is clear. This is just stuff on the bottom that, as you can see, people out here are trying to vacuum up with these sort of water vacuums. And they have ozone being pumped in here to keep the algae from coming back, in theory.

But let's take a closer look. This water is not clear. You can see all the debris still floating through the water here. Lots of it. And I will point out that algae comes from microscopic spores. So, that does not offer any proof that the algae is gone.

What's more, that famous blue coating on the bottom, look, right there is some of it. And this is one of the areas that has been passed over some. Same all the way around here. I've walked the rim here over and over again. There are very few places, John, where you can see this famous blue color even at all, let alone in a big expanse of clear, shining water.

So, right now, John, we don't know if it's the bottom coming up. What we know is that there are big pieces of blue stuff coming up from near the bottom. We don't have any other explanation for it.

John?

BERMAN: It's so interesting. And Tom, I'm so glad you just showed us that look there really pushed in, because that's the first time you really saw any blue at all there. And you had to really focus and you could see, you know, it is hard to see. And those people behind you, they're just vacuuming full time. I mean, is this going to be a permanent thing? People standing in the pool vacuuming?

FOREMAN: Yeah, they've been -- they were out here. There were more than a dozen of them out here all day long yesterday doing just that, working steadily to try and clear it. There's no doubt that federal workers and the people who are out here are doing the best job they can to try to deal with this.

But the result is not this clear pool with this glowing, even though it was controversial, this glowing blue bottom that the administration said they were working toward. That absolutely has not appeared for $14 million. What has here is kind of what was here before in the eyes of many people passing by, and about as bad as it's ever been.

John?

BERMAN: All right. Interesting to see this play out sort of before our very eyes. It can be tough.

Tom Foreman, great to have you there. Thank you for giving us that really good demonstration.

[09:15:03]

Sara?

SIDNER: Thank you so much, John.

A surprise strategy shift by Luigi Mangione's defense team. White lawyers for the accused CEO killer are pivoting in their plan for his state murder trial. Plus, the White House boosted efforts to strip citizens from hundreds of naturalized -- citizenship, excuse me, from hundreds of naturalized Americans. What this all means and why?

Also, high water rescues underway for deadly floods that hit the South. The threat still ahead for millions of people who are under flood watches. Those stories and more, ahead.

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[09:20:14]

SIDNER: This morning, we are learning that the Supreme Court will take up a case on how long ICE can keep lawful permanent residents in immigration detention. This is as the Trump administration is ramping up its efforts to revoke the citizenship from people who were naturalized citizens in the United States. A senior official is telling CNN that the Justice Department plans to file at least 250 denaturalization cases by October. The previous annual average for these cases has been about 10. Behind the scenes, the Justice Department has pulled civil litigators from various divisions, including those assigned to investigating fraud, to go after these cases for denaturalization.

Joining me now is the former Acting Director of ICE, John Sandweg.

Can you just give me some sense of what you see is happening here, as this administration clearly wants to sharply increase the denaturalization cases and process?

JOHN SANDWEG, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, ICE: Sorry, Sara, I was muted. In the big picture, there are 250 cases in the country with 25 million naturalized U.S. citizens. So, it's not necessarily the biggest impact as it relates to the grand scheme of things. But on an individualized level, this is really significant. So, as you said, historically, we only see about 10 to 11 of these cases a year. Those cases typically were individuals that we subsequently discover had some nexus to a terrorist organization, or might have participated in a human rights violation in the past. They covered that up when they came to the United States, often as a refugee. And now 20 -- you know, 10 years later, we discovered that they were linked to those organizations. We moved to strip them of their citizenship.

This is different. This has been a wholesale effort where the administration has reviewed thousands and thousands of naturalization applications, looking for any technical basis to take away someone's citizenship. And as a result, we have people who lived here 20 years now, Sara, 20 years, lived their life as a U.S. citizen, suddenly finding out that their government has filed a complaint to strip them of that naturalization. I would say this as well. This is the first step for those immigrants. Once they get stripped of their naturalization, the next step is they will likely face deportation proceedings, despite the fact that they've lived now, lived most their life in the U.S.

SIDNER: So, you said that normally there is a nexus to terrorism when, you know, back when it was about 10 people who were getting denaturalized. Now we're hearing from the administration, from the DOJ, that this is includes -- their work includes people who committed fraud during the process. I mean, I guess the question is, why are they doing this with numbers that are so much bigger than they used to be? What is your take?

SANDWEG: You know, listen, this is part of a larger effort that's more, you know, we focused a lot on this mass deportation effort of this administration. But really this is a larger effort from the beginning of the immigration process to the very end of it to restrict migration in the United States. And so in addition to, of course, you know, everything we saw in Minneapolis and this larger deployment of ICE and this massive expansion of ICE, we've also seen these measures to really sharply restrict people's ability to get a visa in the first place.

There have been dozens and dozens of rules and new policies the administration has put in place that have made it much harder for people to immigrate here. And now they're tackling the back end of the system, right? So, if you look at the life cycle of an immigrant, Sara, of course, you typically come in on a visa, you end up getting a green card, and then you become a citizen.

So, you know, look, I view this as this kind of comprehensive effort where every single piece of this immigration system, the administration is trying to restrict the ability of people who are not born in this country to, you know, to stay here and ultimately live in the country.

I say one other thing about this, I think, you know, again, underneath all of this as it relates to the deportation effort, Sara, quickly is that it's very hard for us to deport the -- you know, roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country. Despite all these resources, their ability to do it is relatively limited.

So, I think a lot of what the administration is trying to do is send this kind of message of you're not welcome. And part of it's a self- deportation effort, right? Drive home this message that, hey, even if you become a citizen, you're not still safe. We might still come after you. This is not your home. It's time for you to leave. I think that's really what's part of the larger message they're trying to send here.

SIDNER: A scare tactic for people. I do want to just note this, that the Trump administration, it raised the refugee cap, but only for white South Africans. That back in May, the Trump administration said that it will admit about 10,000 more white South Africans into the United States as refugees. But historically, they have lowered that cap to the lowest that we've ever seen. What do you think is the message there?

[09:25:12]

SANDWEG: Well, again, it's the same message, right? And whether it's refugees who are being processed overseas, which as you noted, historically come from impoverished war-torn countries, or whether it's the asylum system in the United States, right? We've seen a wholesale reduction or, you know, really sending just this message, you're not welcome, right? Don't come here.

Now, admittedly, Sara, of course, over the last -- you know, beginning, really in 2017, we saw -- we saw widespread people coming across our border. And in many cases, yeah, some abuses, people claiming asylum who weren't necessarily entitled to it. But the reality today is we've seen almost an elimination of that refugee and asylum system. That notion that the United States provides safe harbor to people fleeing persecution. It's hard to say that that is true today, given where we are, both with the limitations on refugees and these new restrictions have been put in place on people seeking asylum.

SIDNER: Yeah, I can tell you from some of the refugees who I have met throughout the years that they see this as brown people not welcome sign.

John Sandweg, thank you so much. I do appreciate it.

All right, just ahead. Luigi Mangione was about to essentially admit to killing the UnitedHealthcare CEO, but then his team pulled his psychiatric defense. What we know about the major last-minute reversal here in his defense.

And, the Obama Presidential Center now officially today open to the public. I have more from the star-studded opening party. You're going to hear from a lot of folks who were there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's meant for the community to be able to come in here and use the resources. It has a garden. It has a beautiful outside area. The inside is full of history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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