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CNN This Morning
Today's Next Phase Of U.S.-Iran Peace Talks Postponed; Obama Presidential Center Now Open To The Public In Chicago; Supreme Court Allows Some Marijuana Users To Own Guns. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired June 19, 2026 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[06:30:00]
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The edits. It's also my fault because I've watched it four times now. Four times. Four times all the way through. At this point in time, I think I need some serious help.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How are we getting Garrett Graham out of our heads? Because I'm a married woman and I cannot be thinking about another man this frequently.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: OK. So needless to say, the numbers are good. You look at a show like "Heated Rivalry", the book, sold 1.3 million, streams per episode, 10 million. A show likes the "The Summer I Turned Pretty" on Amazon. The book sold 4.5 million copies and on the first seven days of airing, 25 million streams.
The money's there.
ARI SHAPIRO, CO-HOST, "ENGAGEMENT PARTY" PODCAST: The money's there. And what I think is really interesting, which we discussed in the latest episode of Engagement Party, is the way these romance shows depict masculinity and the male heroes. And it is not the kind of tough guy, stuff your feelings down, punch a wall depiction.
It's actual communication and consideration of people's feelings. And it doesn't feel dutiful. It still feels romantic and sexy, and clearly it's working because people are watching these shows, but it's a different kind of depiction of male --
CORNISH: Yeah, and also there's male fans. Like, I remember during the "Heated Rivalry" thing, like, all the hockey guys who got into that show, which was, you know, a vibe.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: It's for everyone. I mean, I think this is a tale as old as time, frankly. I mean, where do you get these stories? And -- and --
CORNISH: But romance novels were sort of in the ghetto of genres. Like, people were like, ugh.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: They were. They were, but I think that that was a misunderstanding. As a longtime romance reader and a longtime reader of romantasy --
CORNISH: Are you pounding the table right now?
(LAUGHTER)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I am because I feel very strongly and I'm very invested in this.
Female rage is something that doesn't get enough stuff.
(CROSSTALK)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But you know, I do think that this is a genre that gets pooh-poohed by in elite circles, but has always been the engine of publishing. Women read. Women are the biggest readers, book clubs. And these are the stories that, you know, that we enjoy for all sorts of reasons.
SHAPIRO: But we have seen Hollywood as invested as they are now.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I agree, but I don't think they understood how to make them in the way that you get the nuance in the books, right? In the books, you're getting character development, and then it all would get flattened off into Harlequin romance type stuff.
The big subtext here is the social media is everything, right? I don't know if we wouldn't be here at all without these folks on TikTok. But again, you're talking about literally tens of millions of people promoting books and sharing them and so on. There we go.
CORNISH: Okay.
MICHAEL WARREN, POLITICS, THE DISPATCH: What's old is new again. Sex sells. This is, like, a shocking idea.
WILLIAMS: It's not just sex. It's the romance.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's Ari's point.
CORNISH: And we end the segment with the men arguing about how much sex is in the romance genre.
Ari, thank you so much for being here.
SHAPIRO: Thanks, Audie.
CORNISH: Love it.
We've got new episodes of "Engagement Party" every Friday. Check us out.
And in the meantime, we're going to lawyer up. Elliot's talking about guns and marijuana, why this latest Supreme Court decision could reach far beyond one man's case, and today's talks with Iran, the formal signing ceremony that's been canceled at the last minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:38:00]
CORNISH: Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. I want to thank you for joining me on CNN THIS MORNING. It is half past the hour.
And we're following this breaking news. Overnight, today's planned talks between Iran and the U.S. canceled. Vice President delaying his trip to Switzerland at the last minute because of what the White House is calling unresolved logistics surrounding the next phase of negotiations.
And U.S. boat strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats still happening. The latest was yesterday, and three people were killed. At least 211 people have been killed in the Trump administration's war on alleged drug boats. Some lawmakers are calling for an investigation, saying the administration is not offering enough evidence to support its claims.
And today, on Juneteenth, the Obama Presidential Center is set to open to the public. Yesterday, the Obamas celebrated the grand opening. Former Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Biden were there to support.
And the former first lady kicked off the celebration honoring what she called her husband's dedication to the American people.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHELLE OBAMA, FORMER FIRST LADY: Yeah, you were unflappable at every turn, always focused, always calm, always looking at the long view.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Democracy can be frustrating. It can be slow. It can be inefficient. And yet, more than anything, I hope this center will serve as an affirmation of just how special, how precious our democracy truly is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: Now, general admission tickets for the center are sold out through the end of October.
And the Supreme Court expanding gun rights to some who light up. The High Court siding with a Texas man who argued that he shouldn't be criminally charged for owning a gun just because he smokes marijuana.
[06:40:01]
The decision, loosening a federal ban, but the ruling is not so cut and dry, which is why it's time to lawyer up with CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams.
Okay, you started out a baby federal prosecutor once upon a time.
WILLIAMS: Baby federal prosecutor once upon a time.
CORNISH: And I kind of think of prosecutors liking a good drug charge here and there.
WILLIAMS: And one of the more common things that young prosecutors prosecute is this kind of case, which is a prohibition case where an individual is prohibited from owning a firearm based on the class of society that they belong to. The big ones are felons that's a very common one, but also drug users someone who is a drug user or an addict of any controlled substance can be barred from owning a firearm.
Well, this individual who was a casual habitual marijuana user said he used it a few times a week had his firearm taken away and brought a lawsuit saying that -- well, the Second Amendment should not bar someone like me from using a firearm.
CORNISH: Can you talk about how this is complicated by the moment we're in or recreation racial marijuana is everywhere? I don't even know how you define a casual habitual user.
WILLIAMS: Exactly right. And that was exactly -- so it's a unanimous decision, but Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson picked up on that point exactly. She says that the state of our jurisprudence on firearms leaves open these open questions. So how do you define what a casual user of marijuana is?
Now, the way they use it is that, number one, it is increasingly in a different class of substance than cocaine, heroin, whatever else, and it just had its classifications level lower. That's what Justice Gorsuch said. But it's a vague standard.
And I just think what we're seeing here is the convergence of two big areas in American law, relaxing laws on cannabis, but also relaxing laws on firearms. And the Supreme Court has been heading in that direction in both areas, and they really came to a head.
CORNISH: Yeah. And so that's the legal part. The political bedfellows of this is also, it's just like really interesting because I think even in Republican circles, there is, let's say, a more relaxed attitude in so many ways towards cannabis for sure, but even the punishment aspect of that.
WARREN: And look, I think that if you look at all the different, you know, the opinions and then the concurrences and you had different viewpoints all coming to the same conclusion and I think that is reflected in the fact that it was an 9-0 decision.
And it's a reminder as well that a lot of controversial or supposedly controversial issues that there can be and there often is in in the Supreme Court, a lot of nine or eight decisions.
CORNISH: The more shocking thing.
WARREN: No, but I think it's actually it's less shocking than if you follow the court and look at a lot of the reasoning. I mean, even Elena Kagan, a liberal appointed justice, as you know, we're all originalists now, as she said several years ago.
I think that there is oftentimes those don't get as much attention. But on an issue like this, I think it does get attention because --
CORNISH: Can I add this legal footnote?
WILLIAMS: Sure.
CORNISH: This is the same law used against Hunter Biden --
WILLIAMS: Yes.
CORNISH: -- when he was convicted of buying a gun while being a cocaine user in 2018. Now, of course, he was pardoned for all the things.
WILLIAMS: There's a few things --
CORNISH: But it's interesting that this law has been deployed in a very public way.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, there's a few things going on here. One, to your point, it's the strange bedfellows of pro-gun folks, but also people with different types of drug convictions. Now, they're very careful to say this is just for casual users of marijuana, other people with different sort of substances will still have the prohibition apply to them.
I think the Supreme Court was trying to find a way to carve marijuana out of the law. Like the other prohibitions, like being a felon, either you are or you aren't. Either you have a conviction or you do not.
Here, it's a vague standard of how do you ultimately define when someone is sufficiently dangerous based on the type of substance they're using. And it is a pretty vague standard that they follow.
CORNISH: All right, you guys stay here. Next, we're going to talk about something else. There's a former late-night host with a hot take. We'll talk about why Jay Leno is saying that podcasters are the new king of talk.
Plus, there's this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm not saying we're perfect because we're not.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: An interview, the fellow Catholic takes a turn. Vice President Vance pressed on whether the administration practices what it preaches.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:48:44]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROSS DOUTHAT, NEW YORK TIMES: Let's be honest, the tone of the administration is not consistently a Christian tone. There is a tone of aggressive uncharity to people who aren't on board with the administration's policies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: So Vice President Vance sat down for what he probably thought might be a friendly interview with Catholic conservative writer Ross Douthat, but the administration's Christian values were quickly called into question.
And here's how Vance pushed back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: For every clip that you could show me of me or the president or some cabinet secretary saying something that, in your view, is unchristian, I could show you another few clips of us doing something or saying something that is like very Christian. I'm not saying we're perfect because we're not.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: Group chat is back. I wanted to talk about this.
Michael, you had like a pretty interesting take where you found his answers evasive, which is interesting, but also a poor Christian witness.
WARREN: Look, if I were to walk into my confessional and tell the priest, oh, I've committed these sins, but you wouldn't believe all the great stuff that I was doing as well.
CORNISH: It doesn't work?
WARREN: It doesn't work. I never tried it because I'm afraid.
CORNISH: You don't get fewer Hail Marys --
WARREN: No, no, no. In fact, I'd probably get a lot more.
Look, I think, you know, I can't know what's in JD Vance's heart. I just think --
CORNISH: Well, he purports to tell us. I mean, he's on a book tour called for this book called "Communion" --
WARREN: Yes.
CORNISH: -- which he is trying to show his heart.
WARREN: Well, and I think that's admirable. And I know that, you know, as myself, as a work in progress, Christian and Catholic, that it is something you have to do every single day. But I find the sort of dismissal of the question about tone, of the words that the administration uses, and even J.D. Vance himself, I've written about this from the beginning of this administration --
CORNISH: Yeah.
WARREN: -- toward the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, about the sort of immigration policy, that the words matter, the sort of things that we do every single day.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It's the words that matter. It's the policies that matter.
WARREN: Well --
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I mean, I think my colleague Ross Douthat, that an opinion was obviously pressing on what is -- what are Christian values. And that becomes central why, because this is an administration that really wears its Christianity front and center controversially. You know, many are worried that they are trying to push a kind of Christian nationalism in this country that we traditionally have not seen.
And so when we see J.D. Vance sort of front his religion and his own religious journey, and, of course, you know, I've interviewed him about his conversion to Catholicism. he wears his faith very -- you know, I believe in the sincerity of his faith, but those public expressions of that are important politically. Why? And what do we mean when we understand Christian values?
CORNISH: Yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And this has become an issue with the pope himself.
CORNISH: Exactly. And was an issue with the prior pope.
One of the things I learned in researching this is that when J.D. Vance made this comment about the sort of the order of love, like kind of ranking the things you should care about, citing Catholic doctrine, the letter and the response from Pope Francis was actually penned by a person who became Pope Leo.
So, he's well-acquainted, right, with the real response from the Vatican in terms of outlining these things publicly.
WILLIAMS: Right. I think what we're seeing is the problem when we try to graph politics onto religion or vice versa. And I think, you know, from my own --
CORNISH: No, that's very American.
WILLIAMS: It is very American, but I just think -- fine, and people founded the country were proud Christians and I understand that, but the problem is that when churches start wading into politics, my own Catholicism when there are certain aspects of American politics that tend to come up much more in Catholic churches than others. You know, I don't -- I did not hear priests talking as much about war as they did about abortion and I understand that it's a big political issue.
CORNISH: Maybe the age you came up in too, right?
WILLIAMS: Yeah, fair, fair.
CORNISH: And, obviously, like certainly, civil rights era. There was a lot of pushback --
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But immigration is the real central issue here.
WILLIAMS: Right.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: This the central issue of this administration, and Catholic teaching on this is pretty clear, which is why you have so many Catholic --
CORNISH: It depends on what doctrine you're following.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: No, no, no.
WARREN: But, actually, I want to -- I want to -- on this point of the question of the tone.
WILLIAMS: Yeah.
WARREN: I think if we go back to what J.D. Vance was saying about what the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was criticizing the Trump administration for --
CORNISH: Yes.
WARREN: -- on immigration and JD Vance hit back on them and saying that they're essentially advocating --
CORNISH: Making money off of migrants.
WARREN: -- they're making money and advocating for this because they make money off it. I think that's extremely -- it was extremely uncharitable at the time, and I think that's what Ross is pressing him on.
He's pressing him on the way that he's speaking about people who disagree with the administration is itself what is unchristian and I think that's what's -- what's most important from -- not from a necessarily political point of view but from a from a faith point of view. It's how we talk to -- about people who disagree with us.
CORNISH: Because people are talking about this in the context of 2028 as well this book tour.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah. It's like rebranding.
CORNISH: So the idea is if you're going to do a rebrand then people are probably going to look -- they're going to kick the tires on that --
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah.
CORNISH: --and find some inconsistencies if you're fronting with your values driven policy.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: One of the responses to this has gotten a lot of traction specifically on the right and the left was him sort of pushing back and saying that the language that -- that some of the language that's used is class-based, right, and that the elite spaces are pushing back on this language because they're not used to the rough and tumble of the F-bombs being deployed which -- and, you know, those on the right and the left have looked at this and said, like, this could have been, like, a hard left response to some of these issues.
WARREN: It was a horseshoe there.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It was a horseshoe thing, but even so, it elided some of the responsibility to this. All politicians have to respond to how they deploy language.
CORNISH: I see, I see. It took me a minute.
So, basically, he was saying, like, look, just the fact that you're asking this question reveals your kind of elitism, but y'all aren't used to the rough-and-tumble language of the hillbilly elegy and everyone's like but.
WARREN: I find that so condescending frankly --
GARCIA-NAVARRO: A hundred percent.
WARREN: -- and acting as if he can speak for how working class people accept you know what's acceptable to them.
[06:55:04]
CORNISH: Yes, but that's also been part of his brand for a long time.
WARREN: Yeah. It's very, very uncharitable and I would say unchristian --
CORNISH: All right, I want to talk about another thing, which Jay Leno, you may remember him, absolute cold take. Late night TV is dead, he says.
So, in an interview with 'Deadline", the former late night host said, quote, "I mean, podcasts really are the new talk shows. Joe Rogan is the new Johnny Carson."
And he credited this to Rogan not having to deal with the FCC. And a younger generation, honestly, not that interested in watching TV and instead turning to YouTube.
So the group chat is back. I thought this was interesting because people have been using poor -- Joe Rogan as a proxy for every ill around the death of, I think, monoculture. The idea that how did this person sort of rise? The left wants a Joe Rogan. The right wants to hold on to a Joe Rogan.
The late night guys are like, well, wait a second. Did I have to wear a tie?
Can you talk about why you think this is such a deal?
WILLIAMS: Think about one of the enduring questions out of the 2024 election. Should Kamala Harris have gone on Joe Rogan? Why did that not happen?
And it's because of that Johnny Carson point. We are now in a world in which YouTube is king. We were talking a little bit earlier about books in the program, about how TikTok sells books.
It is just a different world than the one that any of us grew up in, and it almost makes sense to get on board rather than try to fight it.
CORNISH: I want to show you guys just some images of the talk shows that are doing well. You're going to be familiar with, like, Hot Ones or The Therapist, Chicken Shop Date, Subway Takes, Royal Court. These are all shows that are bite-sized. A lot of people take them in, in their virality.
But I'm also interested in the fact that, frankly, they're longer than your average late-night show. Like, their ability to talk and hang out for a while feels like maybe that's what people are responding to?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I mean, as the host of an interview show where, you know, you do sit down with people for an extended period of time, it's just a different beast. It's a different animal.
It -- you know, you nowadays have to make a show and have it go everywhere all the time, you know, on all the different platforms. And so --
CORNISH: Because it's replacing broadcast.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Because it's replacing broadcast. But the way people consume it, you know, people are going to see it on their TikTok feed, on their Instagram feed, and then if they like the clip, maybe, although --
CORNISH: Yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Versions aren't great, but maybe they'll go to YouTube. Maybe they'll sit down and watch the whole thing, but sometimes people are -- you know, people are sitting with these people, and they're getting to see them in a different way.
If you're a long-form interviewer, the first 20 minutes are always, like, people getting comfortable, people --
CORNISH: Yeah. Can I show you the face of a long-form interviewer, okay? Because TV could have done this a lot longer than they did at Dick Cavett. It's a great example of like the period of time where people would do long winding political kind of going all over the place chats, which honestly could be a podcast that works today.
Whereas I don't think you could have a Johnny Carson today because each one of these guys has picked out Elaine based on ideology. Since there are no collective facts, you pick Elaine and you start poking jokes at the ideologies.
WARREN: I wonder if it's more technological, right? I mean, I think the point Jay Leno was trying to make here is that that sort of -- he was complaining actually about the way that ads kind of have broken more into late night and you know, it went from -- you know, a very --
CORNISH: (INAUDIBLE)
WARREN: Yeah, exactly, and that there's a lot more sort of freedom and people can sort of choose what they want to watch with these long- form interviews.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But is Call Your Daddy, is Hot Ones, is Subway Takes ideological?
WARREN: I don't think so.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I don't think so. So I don't know that that actually holds as a premise. I think --
CORNISH: No. I mean, like a Jimmy Kimmel is, right? A Colbert was. They picked lanes.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And they -- they picked lanes they did well by it, you know, in this very fragmented culture that we live in.
CORNISH: Yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I mean, if you look at what's replaced Colbert --
CORNISH: I'm going to show the numbers now what's happened Colbert has left CBS.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It hasn't done so well.
CORNISH: All right. Ellie, you haven't been here for a while. Can you tell me what's in your group chat?
WILLIAMS: My group chat is about America. There's nothing more American than July 4th and eating hot dogs, and the criminal justice system, Joey Chestnut.
CORNISH: That is the opening to Law and Order.
WILLIAMS: Yes. Joey Chestnut, this champion hot dog eater, is on probation and will be able to compete on July 4th in the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest from probation for an assault. God bless America.
WARREN: There's nothing sacred.
CORNISH: Warren, for you? WARREN: We've been talking about this father who brought his two little girls into a gas station bathroom. He brought them into the women's restroom, and he began filming it because a man, another man, sort of broke in to say, there's a grown man in the women's restroom.
The young father's trying to explain, I'm here to help my kids, to help my little girls. And it's just caused a lot of conversation.
CORNISH: I get it. It's a viral moment.
Last word to you, Lulu.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: My one is about a tree that is sadly RIP, 1,200-year- old tree that was there during the days of Robin Hood, 1,200 years old and is now, sadly, no longer alive.
CORNISH: Okay, that is a timeline cleanser.
Stay here. The headlines are next.
