Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

FBI Investigating Los Angeles Protests Over ICE Raids; Musk Appears To Scrub Several Posts Attacking Donald Trump; "Good Night and Good Luck." Aired 6-6:30p ET

Aired June 07, 2025 - 18:00   ET

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

[18:00:00]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jessica Dean here in New York. We begin this hour with breaking news as protests erupt for a second day in Los Angeles over the Trump administration's immigration crackdown there.

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)

DEAN: We want to go now to CNN correspondent, Julia Vargas Jones live in Los Angeles, and Julia, the FBI says it is now investigating these protests. What more can you tell us?

JULIA VARGAS JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Jessica. We did hear from the FBI this afternoon, they said they were investigating this as these clashes have been happening with protesters and immigration officials. We are still monitoring the situation in Paramount, California. It has been going on for several hours where officials there showed up to carry out a raid and eventually started clashing with some of the locals.

And this is about an hour south of Los Angeles, where the day before, they had carried out raids as well, at least three different raids. The DHS has said that they have this week in Los Angeles, arrested at least 118 people. They say at least five of them are gang members.

After these arrests and as these raids started, the news of it started making way through Los Angeles. That's when we see the escalation of those protests last night. And then again today, just in Paramount, as with those images that we are seeing now.

We did hear from the Department of Homeland Security talking about these clashes, specifically, they said: "The violent targeting of law enforcement in Los Angeles by lawless rioters is despicable, and Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom must call for it to end. The men and women of ICE put their lives on the line to protect and defend the lives of American citizens." This is, you know, again from the Department of Homeland Security.

Governor Newsom did put out a statement. He called these raids reckless and cruel. Mayor Bass said she was angered by these raids as well. But there is no sign of these slowing down. We are expecting to continue to see these actions as ICE goes through California and resistance to continue from the locals -- Jessica. DEAN: Yes, and Julia, we spoke with the local assemblyman in the last

hour who was saying that he was present for some of it. He did say that he saw some more -- some peaceful demonstrators, some more that were more aggressive, that it really ran the gamut, but did confirm that they are continuing right now to see the flashbangs and those -- and the teargas as well.

JONES: Yes, it has been really an extraordinary show of force. The visuals even, Jessica, to see these military vehicles going through downtown Los Angeles and through residential areas, you know, they have been targeting areas that are mostly Hispanic, both in downtown and in Paramount, two of these locations were Home Depots where people are known to gather to offer up services; another one was a business that was allegedly using fictitious paperwork according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, but these are heavily immigrant areas in Los Angeles, which is, you know, in a very heavily immigrant county and heavily immigrant state.

So this kind of reaction should come as no surprise as ICE makes their way through these businesses in these raids.

DEAN: Okay, Julia, thank you so much for giving us those breaking news updates. We really appreciate that. We will continue to keep an eye on everything.

Also tonight, the world's richest man appears to be backing down from his explosive feud with President Donald Trump, deleting several posts attacking the President. But the question is, has the damage already been done? Trump warning Musk will, "pay very serious consequences" if he were to fund Democrats and continues to attack his so-called Big Beautiful Bill.

And joining us now, CNN's senior political commentator, Republican strategist and former Trump campaign adviser, David Urban and CNN political commentator and democratic strategist and former senior adviser to the Hillary Clinton campaign, Karen Finney, who is going to join us in just a moment.

David, I do want to go first to you.

Here we are Saturday. It has been a couple days since all of this really came to the forefront, and this feud spilled out into public view. What do you make of where we stand today in the sense that Musk has started deleting some of these posts and what the President did say earlier today as well?

DAVID URBAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, Jessica, I feel sorry for Elon Musk. I do agree with the President. I feel bad for the guy. I don't know exactly what happened to prompt this meltdown that he had.

But as you mentioned earlier, he has started deleting some of those posts. I think he probably thought better of it. They're not -- it is not what you -- you know, Donald Trump was actually, as you know, was kind of reserved at the beginning when Elon was kind of punching him in the nose, Trump, it was a good 24 to 48 hours before he started punching back. And it doesn't to anybody's benefit to have these two going at it, and

so I think, you know, a peace is going to have to be made someplace in the future. I don't think Elon's tweets or his actions are going to have any impact on the Big, Beautiful Bill. I think, you know, Congressman Massie said, listen, I trust the guy's math who lands rockets backwards. But, you know, Massie was never a big fan of this bill to begin with.

In the Senate, I think you only have Rand Paul saying he is going to vote against it at this point. So I anticipate the Big, Beautiful Bill will pass. My question is, when. I know the administration and the leaders in both the House and Senate are pressuring to get it done before the July 4th recess. I think that's a bit ambitious.

[18:05:10]

I think it is more likely to happen before the August recess, but you know, it is going to happen. It is going to be the biggest -- it will codify this Tax Bill and the tax cuts for all Americans, and if it doesn't get passed, it will be a huge tax increase.

So I think the Republicans' message on that point, they will get their senators on to vote and it will be a done deal.

DEAN: And I hear you on the bill on Capitol Hill. I am curious what you think about more broadly. We know that the President is pretty open and susceptible to whomever is talking to him, who he is spending time with, that that can really influence where he kind of comes down on things or thinks about things.

And obviously, Elon Musk, the leader of DOGE, really trying to cut the government, what he said was waste and spending, but really shrink the federal government in a meaningful way. Do you think that that continues to be a theme of this administration with Musk out of the orbit in this way?

URBAN: Oh, absolutely, Jessica, you know, the administration wants to kind of bend steel across their head. It is very difficult to shrink the federal government. It is hard and it is hard to cut spending and cut taxes at the same time.

I think this administration is getting that done. It may not be to the liking to the number, you know, that may be a $2 trillion number. I think they are going to try to work to get there, to a $2 trillion cut over 10 years, but we will see. It is going to cut. I think everyone wants less debt, less deficit, less government spending, and people like to pay less taxes.

So you know, that can't all happen at once. You can't grow the military, cut taxes and cut Social Services. There are so many cuts they are going to have. You know, you've got to do it with a scalpel, not a meat cleaver.

DEAN: Do you think that Musk does have a point, though? I mean, obviously, I hear what you're saying, like, at this point, you think the bill is going to pass and look, Speaker Johnson was able to get everybody to coalesce around it, even those in the House who were really concerned about the deficit.

But with by estimations from the CBO, it is a $4 trillion over 10 years deficit. Is that concerning, do you think in the long term, for the good of the country?

URBAN: Listen, Jessica, the debt is a huge problem. Republicans used to care about this greatly. The debt is a huge problem because it is a tax on everybody's future, our kids' future, our grandchildren's future. The more money -- it is like your credit card.

If you're paying the minimum balance due every month, you're never going to pay off the principal, and that's what America is doing. We are borrowing on our credit card money we don't have, paying the minimum due, and, you know, and mortgaging our kids' future.

If we reduce that spending, we will have more money to spend on education, on military, on health care. So we need to figure out how to bend that cost curve in the future, so we spend less.

And also, Jessica, it really does impact the dollar as the reserve currency for the world. As long as the dollar is the safest place to put your money, America is going to be a strong nation. When our debt keeps ballooning and ballooning, it really puts us at risk for not being the world's reserve currency and as we move towards more electronic payments and Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, there could be a point in the future where Bitcoin is the world's global reserve currency and not the dollar and that's scary. That's scary from a National Security perspective, it should be scary to all Americans.

We should want a strong dollar and a small debt and deficit is the way to keep it.

DEAN: Yes, and so, so for Americans out there that are like okay, yes, no, we agree with you. That is scary. We don't want that. What do you say to them then about this? Obviously, it has got tax provisions in it and it keeps peoples tax rates where they are and doesn't raise their taxes.

But what do you say to them if they are concerned about the deficit? How is the Trump administration going to fix that.

URBAN: Yes, I think -- listen, I do think they are shaving some numbers off. I think they are trying to shrink it, but it has got to be -- you know, Jessica, to your point and to Elon's point and to Massie's point and Chip Roy's point and a lot of the really conservative members of the House, it has got to shrink by more. The Republicans need to really tighten their belt and shrink spending, make some really tough calls on defense, across the board. There can be no sacred cows. Everything has to be on the table and you really have to cut it.

But really, Jessica, the big things are the, you know, the entitlement programs -- Medicaid, Medicare -- those are the big numbers, and unless you're going to address those, we are never going to shrink the debt. It is not going to shrink. Discretionary spending is a tiny, tiny bit. So the big, big fight is

on things that are really tough to do.

DEAN: And yes, and then you get a lot of pushback on.

David Urban, as always, good to see you. Thanks so much.

URBAN: Thanks for having me.

DEAN: We are back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:14:11]

DEAN: Coming up at seven here on CNN, for the first time, we will be broadcasting a live performance of a Broadway play. It is "Good Night and Good Luck," starring and co-written by George Clooney, who has the lead role of legendary journalist, Edward R. Murrow.

Now, the show chronicles Murrow's 1950 showdown with Senator Joseph McCarthy, and earlier this week, our Anderson Cooper met Clooney on set.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE CLOONEY, ACTOR/DIRECTOR: What's fun about the play is, although McCarthyism was bad, it wasn't anywhere near as pervasive as it is right now, the kind of fear that you see kind of stretching through law firms and universities.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER: 360": You think it's worse now than in McCarthy's time?

CLOONEY: I do think it is worse now, although there is one caveat that kind of gets ignored when people talk about this, which is when I was a kid, we did duck and cover drills. So overriding all of this was the threat of nuclear annihilation.

[18:15:02]

Very big deal. I mean, we were pretty sure we were going to all die of a nuclear bomb somewhere along the way. So that always kind of rode on top of the McCarthyism of it all. But McCarthyism, what's fun about doing the play is it reminds people that, you know, that we have been through difficult times, challenging times, and that we survived it as a country.

And we do find our better angels along the way. It takes a minute. We always do. We always have.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

DEAN: "Good Night and Good Luck" starring George Clooney live from Broadway tonight at 7:00, right here on CNN. And our special coverage starts next. I want to say thanks so much for joining me this evening. I'm Jessica

Dean. I am going to see you again tomorrow night starting at 5:00 Eastern. Enjoy "Good Night and Good Luck."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:20:52]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST AND CHIEF INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Live from New York City, the home of Broadway, you are looking at the legendary. Winter Garden Theater, where just moments from now, CNN will broadcast the five-time Tony nominated play, "Good Night and Good Luck" starring George Clooney live around the world.

I'm Pamela Brown here on the corner of 51st and Broadway in the heart of Midtown Manhattan.

This is the first time ever a Broadway play will be televised live, and you can really feel the excitement here. You can see the crowd filing in to be a part of this historic moment and I want to take you inside that theater.

Here is a live look right inside where you see the audience is starting to get seated. All the cameras are in place inside, 20 cameras inside to bring this to you live.

And "Good Night and Good Luck," George Clooney plays the role of the legendary journalist, Edward R. Murrow, who famously held power to account in the 1950s by exposing Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti- communist campaign.

And as we countdown to the start of the show at the top of the hour, we are going to take you behind-the-scenes of this Tony nominated production, and you'll learn more about the life and career of Edward R. Murrow.

But I want to begin with two very important people at the center of this production. The play's director, David Cromer, and Grant Heslov, who co-wrote and co-produced this play with George Clooney.

It is so great to have you both with us. It is such an exciting night. I know we are all kind of feeling the nerves here.

Grant, I want to start with you because this really is your dream coming true. Twenty years ago, you were thinking about this being a live broadcast. How does it feel for this to finally be happening?

GRANT HESLOV, CO-WRITER, CO-PRODUCER, "GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK": It's surreal. You know, we wrote it originally to do as a live teleplay on CBS and Janet Jackson did something on T.V. and we were told we couldn't do a live show anymore, so we turned it into a film.

But now here we are, and David has turned it into this beautiful production that everybody is going to get to see tonight.

BROWN: Right, because as the director, David, you were thinking of this as for the stage, and now this goes beyond the stage tonight. This is going on people's television sets around the world.

DAVID CROMER, DIRECTOR, "GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK": Yes, it is a couple of -- it is a couple of interesting steps. Yes. My job was to kind of walk the last, I mean, you've been with us so long. My job was to walk the last couple of miles with you all on the way into the theater, and then --

HESLOV: He is very modest.

CROMER: And then you guys -- you guys have created this. I was going to say, you know, this is great. You're finally getting to do it live.

HESLOV: Finally getting to do it live.

BROWN: And you actually, Grant, you co-wrote that script with George Clooney for a movie that came out in 2005. It was timely when it came out then, but could you have ever imagined it would be even timelier 20 years later?

HESLOV: Yes, I always knew.

BROWN: Really?

HESLOV: No.

BROWN: You had a crystal ball.

HESLOV: Depending on what you think, we were lucky or we were unlucky, but --

CROMER: Yes.

HESLOV: Yes, it is -- I think -- I think when you're writing about journalism and people speaking truth to power, there is probably never a bad time to talk about it. It just happens to be -- it just happens to resonate more right now. And then obviously, everything that's happening with CBS, yes, it is pretty timely.

BROWN: It is very timely. And so that leads me to my next question to you, David. You know, this is a play about broadcast news and the role it played in the 1950s. This is airing tonight again worldwide on a network that broadcast news. What do you hope the CNN audience will take away from tonight?

CROMER: It is always, always, always a good time to know our history. It is all -- it is always immediate to look at our history when we forget about it for a little bit, if we think now is the only time things have been rough or bad or confusing or scary, it is always -- this is an incredibly important part of our history, and it is an important part of our history in terms of how we receive information and to spend time with this is just a --

I think it is a good -- it is its always a good time for this.

[18:25:04] BROWN: Yes, and it is interesting you say that because in reading

about -- in other interviews you've done, you talked about how you typically don't do plays that have political overtones or maybe historical moments. So, what drew you to this play?

HESLOV: We paid him a lot of money.

CROMER: They paid me a lot of money.

BROWN: Well, there you go.

CROMER: No, I don't -- I try not to think that I am going to do anything that is really resonant in media. It might be immediate for people emotionally about their lives, about getting through the day and stuff like that. I don't end up doing things that are about history, but I am passionate about history, and it was thrilling to do that.

It suddenly felt like a new kind of resonance, a new kind of relevance to doing my work. So it was -- what drew me to it was, if I hadn't done it, and that I am never going back.

BROWN: Well, there you go, never going back and it has been breaking records in terms of sales, you know, George Clooney obviously, a starring role as Edward R. Murrow. But at the time when the movie came out, Grant, as you well know, he was Fred Friendly. He wasn't Edward R. Murrow.

HESLOV: Yes.

BROWN: He has said that he didn't feel like he had the gravitas to play it then.

HESLOV: He didn't.

BROWN: Really?

HESLOV: No. You know, when we wrote it, we rewrote it for him to play the part and at a certain point he looked at me, he is like, do you think I can play this? And I said, I don't know if you have it yet and he is like, yes, I don't feel like I have -- we always feel like Murrow had the weight of the world on his shoulders, you know? And David Strathairn, who played it in the film, that's who he is.

But now, George, with age and wisdom, he is ripe. The reason he played Fred Friendly is that was the only way we could get the movie made, you know. If you ever saw Fred Friendly, you know, Fred Friendly was like six feet eight. And he was a he was a big, hulking brute of a man.

BROWN: Right, but --

CROMER: He didn't look like George Clooney.

HESLOV: He didn't look like -- you'd think he wanted to look like George Clooney. BROWN: Well, there you go.

And, David, you say you get really emotional every time you read Edward R. Murrow's words. How important was it to make sure that emotion was captured and that your -- that you were true to those words from the 1950s?

CROMER: Well, it was there -- always their intent to be as accurate as we could. It is an entertainment, it is not perfectly lined up with every moment in history. But Murrow's words are Murrow's words very, very rigorously. And yes, very important.

George is an actor of enormous subtlety. He is very interested in a straightforward approach to it, as am I straightforward approach to theater and it is to deliver the words clearly and honestly and let them have their effect, and that's sort of the power of his acting, it is the power of those words and the intention was to do it as simply, purely straightforwardly, looking straight into the camera with as much integrity as we possess, as we can pull out of every one of our cells.

And that's just the approach to it, it was just to let the words do the work, make them clear. That's brought -- he was -- Murrow was, he became a journalist, he started as an educator. He was interested in education. He was interested in an enlightened population as -- you know, an educated population is an enlightened population and that is how we advance as a civilization.

BROWN: And it is actually -- I wonder if that weighed in on the opening speech for the play, because its less about, you know, what happened with Senator McCarthy and the McCarthyism and more about the television and the power of technology.

HESLOV: Yes. And particularly, even now, because we've gone beyond television, you know, now it is the internet -- with the internet and with these devices, everything is even more amplified and faster.

And so all of those things that he talks about in that -- the box of lights and wires speech was, is really his most famous speech, really, you know, did come to pass. And, you know, that's at the downturn of his career. You know, that's at the end of a guy looking back and saying, holy -- let's be cautious. Be careful.

BROWN: All right, thank you both, David, Grant.

HESLOV: Thank you.

BROWN: Can't wait to see it tonight. We are just moments away.

HESLOV: You need -- you need a ticket?

BROWN: I actually have already seen it. I did my homework. I went to see it, but we are just moments away from this historic live broadcast of "Good Night and Good Luck."

Ahead, just who was Edward R. Murrow? The man at the center of "Good Night and Good Luck." We will have a look at his life and career as we count down to showtime.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:30:00]