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CNN This Morning

Hegseth Clashes With Senators Over Extra Funding; West Virginia Hit By Historic Flooding; ChatGPT Goes Rogue, Hacks Into Another Company; Trump-Backed Biggs Wins Arizona GOP Primary For Governor. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired July 22, 2026 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:02]

BRAD SMITH, CNN ANCHOR: This is where the Sioux City police department rescued a runaway pig, hamming it up from the interstate. Officials say that they believe that the animal fell off a truck. They were able to corral the pig with the help of some nearby citizens, and it was safely taken to animal control. Good work there.

That does it for CNN's "HEADLINE EXPRESS". I'm Brad Smith.

CNN THIS MORNING WITH AUDIE CORNISH starts right now.

(MUSIC)

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: The Pentagon is seeking billions into the war against Iran, a war the president told us we had already won. So, should the U.S. Congress write another blank check?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): So the new number you've given me is what?

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: $37.5 billion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: New Jersey's governor reveals a glitch that allowed hundreds of noncitizens to cast votes. Does this validate the president's election claims?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. MIKIE SHERRILL (D), NEW JERSEY: Let me be clear: Donald Trump has zero credibility on the issue of election integrity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: And new rules in the works on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers would be banned from dating staffers and not just their own. Sex and power in Washington may never be the same.

(MUSIC) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HEGSETH: Shame on you and others who call this a quagmire and a failure. And then you want to turn around and say you support the war fighter.

SEN. GARY PETERS (D-MI): I use the word failure, because I use the word failure to their leaders. You, sir, are the failure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Okay. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the war with Iran has already cost billions, but he's asking senators for more.

Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish.

We're going to talk about that budget request. More funds, around $87 billion more dollars. That is what the Pentagon wants.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HEGSETH: Without these funds, we face critical shortfalls that threaten our ability to also simply pay our service members rapidly replenish equipment and munitions and sustain vital operations without disruption.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So as testimony on Capitol Hill comes as the U.S. carries out an 11th straight night of attacks, U.S. Central Command says it is targeting Iran's ability to hit commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

Senators are demanding answers about the current objectives as they decide on that extra money.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DURBIN: They can't explain how this money is going to be spent.

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): I wish Secretary Hegseth would spend less of his time blaming Biden and his predecessor, and more time focused on delivering clear answers to important questions.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY (R-LA): We need to come up with a way to explain to the American people why we went in, and how were going to get out. Congress needs, and the American people need some straighter answers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: OK. Joining me now in the Group Chat, Eleanor Mueller, White House economy policy reporter for "Semafor"; Harrison Mann, former U.S. Army major and former executive officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency; Terry schilling, president at the American Principles Project; and Antjuan Seawright, Democratic strategist. Terry, I want to start with you because you've got Hegseth up there

taking the questions. And did you think he performed in a way that would convince even the Republican skeptics to get that money?

TERRY SCHILLING, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN PRINCIPLES PROJECT: That's a great question, Audie. I think he performed very well, but I think the challenge going forward is that President Trump has changed the Republican Party, for better or worse. In 2016, he broke ground and became a Republican with the nomination, who was against forever wars. Clearly, he criticized the war in Iraq.

I think that what's key here is you're seeing Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana, who's typically a more establishment Republican, asking the tougher questions. The Republican Party does not want to be the party of forever wars again.

However, I think President Trump needs a little bit more rope, needs a little bit more time to negotiate here and get to some deal. He's very motivated. He knows he's going to impact the midterms and it's affecting his domestic agenda.

CORNISH: I want to talk about some of the requests, more specific concerns. There is the idea that maybe there's a bigger target inside Iran that could be gone after. I heard lawmakers bringing up pickax mountain. I want to just play an example so people can hear it from Senator Kennedy

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KENNEDY: Do we have the ability to destroy whatever is underneath Pickaxe Mountain?

HEGSETH: A lot of -- Senator, a lot of our capabilities are classified. But if anybody in the world can reach anything on this, on God's given -- God's green earth, it's the United States military, the most powerful military in the world. It's all about options and trade- offs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: What are the options and trade-offs? And just remind people what Pickaxe Mountain is.

HARRISON MANN, FORMER U.S. ARMY MAJOR: Yeah. What theyre discussing is bombing another mountain that has a nuclear site buried deep beneath it.

CORNISH: In central Iran.

MANN: Yes.

CORNISH: You'd be going much further in.

MANN: In Central Iran. So there's -- there's no guarantee that you would actually destroy anything because you'd basically be trying to penetrate a mountain. [06:05:00]

And even if you did, that would have no impact on ending this war.

We've already shifted the goalpost from destroying the nuclear program to trying to open the Strait of Hormuz. That's not buried underneath that mountain. What might happen is that Iran considers this an energy target and will retaliate by attacking more gas and oil infrastructure in the Gulf states, which they've already done. That's how they responded last week after the U.S. attacked another under construction --

CORNISH: Why do you think he's asking this question? Do you think that there is some chatter about trying to do this?

MANN: Well, Trump has announced he's interested in it. And we just saw "The Wall Street Journal" report. Israeli intelligence, not U.S. intelligence, announced that that's where Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities might be now. And so, I think that really just raises the question of who is still passing Israeli, quote/unquote, "intelligence" to the president. This recent round of escalation began two weeks ago with, again, Israeli intelligence saying Iran was about to assassinate or was trying to assassinate President Trump.

CORNISH: Yeah.

MANN: And we suddenly saw his manner change and him get super angry. So, we know that Netanyahu wants to keep this war going. I still wonder who around Trump is passing him these reports that are -- that are pretty questionable.

CORNISH: Let me ask this question of Antjuan.

Senator Murkowski of Alaska was also asking Hegseth about the emergency funding, whether once you say yes to the funding, you're technically saying yes to authorization of the entire war as a whole. She's sort of worried about this loophole. Let me play for you what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): So is the department looking to that or intending to rely on that same reasoning that funding alone can substitute for explicit congressional authorization?

HEGSETH: Senator, I would -- I would have to defer to our -- to our legal department. And we'll get back to you with our views on that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: I'll come to Harrison for the legal department. But is this what Democrats are worried about?

ANTJUAN SEAWRIGHT, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, Democrats are worried about what the American people are worried about. That's the lives of service men and women who have been lost or at risk of being lost because of this war of choice. The financial the economic residue of this war that we do not know what the real number is. We heard $37 billion, but certainly we think it's more than that.

We've seen the lack of transparency and lack of accountability from leaders, and out of the White House and, quite frankly, the American people do not want this war. So, I think Democrats are concerned about what everyday Americans are concerned about. But this is what happened when you have unqualified, unserious people in roles and responsibilities that otherwise they would never be.

CORNISH: In actual thing, in particular, just because you've got to take a vote, there's going to be a vote on this.

SEAWRIGHT: On point --

CORNISH: And she is asking a real question, which is if we say yes to -- if we give you an inch, a financial inch, will you take a mile?

SEAWRIGHT: The problem is, earlier this year, a few weeks ago, the defense secretary, secretary of war said we did not have a stockpile issue. So, there's no concern about that.

Yesterday, he was asking for money because there was a stockpile issue. So there's no real answer --

CORNISH: So, let me ask this question then to you, Harrison. The idea of if you say yes to the money, are you basically can they -- is there some other way for them to get more of what they want as a result?

MANN: Yeah. So --

CORNISH: He was like, I have to ask legal and I was like, I feel like that's something you would check on.

MANN: So, in the Vietnam War, U.S. government treated congressional appropriations as de facto approval, even though Congress never actually approved that war.

CORNISH: So there's precedent.

MANN: There's precedent. And, you know, regardless of the legal argument, in reality, this is the only tool that Congress -- that our members of Congress have to approve or reject this war, cutting off the funds. So, you know, regardless of how you interpret the constitutional law, it is a de facto approval. They are paying the Trump administration to keep fighting this war if they approve any of this funding.

CORNISH: OK.

SEAWRIGHT: Congress vote. Majority of Congress in the House and the Senate voted to end this war. But we have not seen, I think, the carrying out of that in both parties, in both bodies, we've seen War Powers resolutions by the majority in both parties vote to end this war of choice. But we have not seen that carried out. And so, when it comes to like

the oversight branch, legislative branch providing oversight to the executive branch, we've lost. That's been broken. And this is a prime example of that.

CORNISH: And it means we have to deal with this right now. What is on the table? This is what we want to talk about today. We're going to have a Republican lawmaker on later tonight -- later in this show, to talk about some of these questions.

Harrison, thank you so much for being here.

Coming up on CNN THIS MORNING, Republican Congressman Pat Harrigan, as I said, will be here. He obviously has -- he's a former green beret. He knows a lot about the cost of combat.

And a fight of a much different kind, one with no humans at all. What happens when A.I. turns on its own? Don't say Skynet.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:14:33]

CORNISH: So, it's almost 15 minutes past the hour. This is your Morning Roundup.

Torrential rain triggers historic flash flooding across parts of West Virginia. Storms dropped more than five inches of rain in around six hours on Tuesday afternoon, and the governor has issued a state of emergency. And the Trump administration says it will hold more than $1 billion in Medicaid payments from Minnesota and California, specifically.

[06:15:00]

The White House has been cracking down on what it calls fraud in Democratic-led states. Minnesota officials say the government did not explain why it made the decision. California's governor says this is all politically motivated.

Former President Biden's effort to block the release of recordings of ghostwriter interviews blocked by a federal appeals court. In the recordings, he's talking about his life in politics in 2016 and 2017. The court found public interest outweighs his claims for privacy. They did put the decision on hold until August 3rd to give Biden time to appeal again.

And we're going to talk bot on bot crime. The creator of ChatGPT says its A.I. system hacked into another A.I. company on its own. They call this unprecedented, claiming that it happened while testing models in a controlled environment. One of their agents went rogue, hacking into Hugging Face, which is an A.I. startup.

I don't even know where to begin. Sorry. I'm supposed to turn to you guys for a comment, but we're just like, hi. This is the start of the horror movie when the newscaster is on and then things ensue. SCHILLING: I'm so skeptical of A.I. I think it's going to ruin all of

our lives. I don't think we're going to get like the worst of all the worlds. It's going to make us all poorer, our lives miserable, and we're not going to get any of the cool stuff.

CORNISH: How does Terry feel? I'm not sure. That must be Antjuan.

SEAWRIGHT: I've been doing A.I. since March 29th, 1985. Antjuan intelligence. So it does --

CORNISH: Why do I fall for these jokes? Why do I fall?

SEAWRIGHT: So, it's not anything that bothers me so. But I do think the world's going to have to make some serious adjustments. But it can be some real breakthroughs, I think from a scientific standpoint, and some of the things that come along with A.I.

CORNISH: Of course, there's always promises. It's sort of weird, though, to see something that is like an outbreak in a controlled environment, which is like how people would talk about, I don't know, COVID, right? Like there's this whole world of concern about weapons and this kind of thing, I think is not.

ELEANOR MUELLER, WHITE HOUSE ECONOMY POLICY REPORTER, SEMAFOR: I know, I mean, this is why were seeing such fluid A.I. policy from the Trump administration.

CORNISH: Fluid? What does fluid mean, Eleanor?

MUELLER: Take it out as they go. You know, you've seen a lot of comments from them about open source A.I. models. It's just a --

CORNISH: Thereby regulating vibe coding.

MUELLER: They are a little -- yeah, their vibe coding. Yeah.

SEAWRIGHT: But, Audie, as a -- as an African American, I am deeply concerned about how this will impact the future of my community. And we've seen what happens when technology does not -- is not able to relate to communities of color and what that actually means. And so, we -- I just have to be concerned as a -- as an African-American, a black man on this panel about A.I. and what that means for my community.

CORNISH: You mean our community?

SEAWRIGHT: Yes. Yes.

CORNISH: Okay.

After the break on CNN THIS MORNING, Nicolas Maduro back in a U.S. courtroom. So there's a new legal fight that could potentially have his case thrown out.

Plus, the MAGA wing of the GOP just won big in the Arizona primary.

And in the meantime, good morning to our viewers in Pittsburgh. A live look at your city skyline.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:22:18]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ANDY BIGGS (R-AZ): I love the state. I know you do too. And let's make this the year that we turn Arizona red again.

(CHEERING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: You're looking at Andy Biggs, the Republican nominee for governor in Arizona. The Trump-backed MAGA congressman easily won the states primary last night with 70 percent of the vote, setting up a November showdown with Democratic incumbent Katie Hobbs.

Now, Biggs will have to rewrite the MAGA playbook because MAGA candidates in the state have a history of losing in Arizona in recent years. He's going to have to buck that trend.

Here's more of his victory speech from last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIGGS: We have to make things affordable again, put money in your pockets and also make sure everybody can enjoy our great state, beautiful state with by being safe. And we want to be the freest state. We have to make sure our children get the best education they can possibly get. And that happens when parents have active roles, participate and choice in their children's education

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Okay. Group Chat is back.

I wanted to talk about this because Arizona, like Georgia, is a state where people were really going after the election denialism when it comes to 2020. Questions raised over and over again. And many Republicans, they're coming under heat nationally for going against Trump.

Can you talk to me about Biggs and his history? Because already you have the governor painting him as a as someone who's undermining confidence in the election.

Here's Katie Hobbs again, the Democrat incumbent in Arizona.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. KATIE HOBBS (D), ARIZONA: Andy Biggs has spent years undermining confidence in our elections. He still denies the outcome of the 2020 election and refused to certify Arizona's electors. And he still won't admit who won the 2022 governor's race. I save you the trouble, I did. (END VIDEO CLIP)

MUELLER: Hobbs is hitting this hard because she knows that it works in this state, right? In 2022, we saw three candidates who had questioned the integrity of elections lose their races. 2024, one of them, Kari Lake, lost again. And so clearly, she's --

CORNISH: So, meaning over and over again, Republicans have gone to the voter, said election fraud is the issue.

MUELLER: Tried to run on this idea that the elections were fraudulent. And it is something that we've seen Biggs, at least for now, hit hard. You know, he's talked a lot about the SAVE Act, this election integrity bill that Trump keeps stalling things on Capitol Hill to try to get passed.

CORNISH: I'm trying to bring this up. So that's a good question.

Arizona has been hearing about 2020 forever. So, on the one hand, they may be burnt out.

[06:25:00]

On the other hand, the president is breathing new life into talking about election denialism and the election protection. And is that going to work in Arizona?

SCHILLING: Well, look, I think Democratic Governor Mikie Sherrill is breathing plenty of life into the election transparency issue. I think this is real. I think what Katie Hobbs is making a mistake of is she is looking to the past. And what Andy Biggs has said in the past, she's not talking about --

CORNISH: Is it past or is it present if, as you said, everyone's still talking about it.

SCHILLING: Well, but my main point is, is you have to talk about what you're going to do to help voters. Andy Biggs like him or hate him, he's talking about he's going to secure elections. What's Katie Hobbs going to do?

He's going to -- he's talking about parental rights and education and health care. He's talking about a pro-family agenda. I think it's very strong. I will just say, Antjuan and I discussed this a few weeks ago. Antoine worked for the woman that beat my dad for congress in Illinois, 17th district. Right? Cheri Bustos.

The Democratic Party is in disarray right now. They just lost a major primary to for their establishment candidate to a DSA candidate. Cheri Bustos, like -- to give her credit, she now she did underperform Obama by about 12 points.

CORNISH: Yeah. So, then let's get the detail. What are Democrats saying about Arizona? Because having Hobbs, there was a big win. People were really impressed by her. SEAWRIGHT: Arizona was once uncertain ground for Democrats. Now it's

very fertile ground. And the reason why its fertile ground because Democrats understand the fight for what local communities want and are concerned about, and theyre concerned about their cost of living. They're concerned about their health care. They're concerned about infrastructure.

CORNISH: Yeah.

SEAWRIGHT: And so, we focus on that. That's why we're winning. But for Republicans, election denying fear is a strategy, and they want it to be a winning strategy. That's why yesterday, the Department of Justice announced they were going to be sending, agents to three different counties in Arizona, because they think that fear is a strategy that can work for them in the midterms.

CORNSH: Well, we're actually going to talk more about this. You pointed out New Jersey and this report they had about the registration of some non-citizen voters, and also, the truth is, I thought it was crazy that he was like, let's make Arizona red again. It's like Goldwater country, you know what I mean? Like that is actually supposed to be the default setting and it is not. And that's a question.

Straight ahead on CNN, we're going to come back to the cost of the war. So how much longer until we potentially run out of key supplies? Republican Congressman Pat Harrigan joins the Group Chat. He's a Green Beret veteran and a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)