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The Situation Room

Amazon Prime Lawsuit; Trump Orders Attorney General to Target Political Enemies; New Pentagon Media Rules?. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired September 22, 2025 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:31:10]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Well, new this morning, one key Jimmy Kimmel staffer is hinting at more developments after ABC pulled his late- night show indefinitely.

Here's "Jimmy Kimmel Live's regular Cousin Sal, who serves as a writer on the show, speaking on "The Bill Simmons Podcast."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAL IACONO, WRITER, "JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE": No, I can't really say anything. You and I -- I know too much.

BILL SIMMONS, HOST, "THE BILL SIMMONS PODCAST": Yes. We both know too much.

(CROSSTALK)

IACONO: I wish I could say anything. There are a couple bombshells still there. So, I'm feeling good. We're going to be all right. Everything's going to be just fine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Kimmel has yet to speak publicly on the matter, and there is no timeline for potential -- a potential return of the show. The staff will continue to be paid as discussions between Kimmel and Disney executive, ABC's parent company continue over the show's future.

Right now, we have news CNN reporting about a potential legal battle between the news media and the Pentagon. Several news organizations are pushing back against new rules that could sharply curtail how reporters at the Pentagon report on the U.S. military.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called for reporters to sign a pledge not to obtain or use unauthorized material. But President Trump doesn't seem to be on the same page. Listen and watch this.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

QUESTION: Should the Pentagon be in charge of deciding what reporters can report on?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, I don't think so.

QUESTION: Are you OK with them...

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: ... that?

TRUMP: Nothing -- listen, nothing stops reporting. You know that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: CNN's chief media analyst, Brian Stelter, is joining us right now.

Brian, this seems to be more mixed messages between the Department of Defense and the Trump White House. What can you share?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Yes, my best guess is that President Trump didn't know about this new Pentagon plan because that answer makes him sound like he's on a very different page from his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.

All year long, Hegseth has been trying to limit independent news coverage of the Pentagon and of the U.S. military. Hegseth's press office has booted some news outlets, including CNN, from longtime Pentagon workspaces, and has brought in pro-Trump news outlets instead.

We have also seen efforts to restrict where reporters can travel within the Pentagon complex, but now this new memo is by far the most severe restriction yet. According to a memo from the Pentagon's press office, beat reporters who have press credentials to be at the Pentagon will now have to sign a pledge not to obtain or use unauthorized material.

And the definition of unauthorized is so broad that it could basically punish reporters for doing their day-to-day work. Courts have long upheld that journalists are able and free to report on government secrets to inform the public what is going on with their taxpayer dollars.

But this new Pentagon policy really tries to stop that. It really tries to stop leaks by going so far that it would threaten basically all the members of the Pentagon press corps with having their press credentials revoked at any given time.

So we are likely to see media outlets push back strongly against this.

BROWN: Right. I mean, there's a thing called prior restraint, right? Tell us more about the legal aspect of this. STELTER: And that's what a spokesperson for the Freedom of the Press

Foundation brought up to me over the weekend, Pamela. He said, this policy operates as a prior restraint on publication, which is considered the most serious of First Amendment violations.

"The New York Times" also cited the constitutional protections of the free press in a statement over the weekend. "The Wall Street Journal" called this new policy deeply disturbing. And NPR's editor in chief said he will be working with other news outlets to -- quote -- "push back."

Right now, media lawyers and newsroom leaders are evaluating this memo and they're figuring out the next steps because it is likely there will be some sort of legal battle over this Pentagon attempt to restrict reporting. After all, the U.S. military, the people who work in the Pentagon, they are there working on behalf of the American people.

And journalists at the Pentagon, they just want to report on that so we're all better informed.

[11:35:04]

BROWN: And for those who don't know what prior restraint is, it is defined by the government taking action to censor speech or to block publication, for example.

Brian Stelter, thank you so much.

BLITZER: Thank you, Brian.

And this is a subject very close to me.

BROWN: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: I spent several years as a Pentagon correspondent during the first Gulf War, and it's hard for me to believe that Pentagon reporters would lose their credentials, lose their opportunity to report from the Pentagon, even if they reported some innocuous statement or whatever that hadn't been formally announced by the Pentagon.

Forget about classified information. This is unclassified information. They would lose their press credentials if they reported it. Only what the Pentagon puts out publicly in press releases could reporters report, and that's not journalism.

BROWN: That's not freedom of the press. That's for sure.

BLITZER: No, it's not.

BROWN: All right, just ahead: President Trump is praising his attorney general after giving her a new order to get more aggressive with his political foes. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:40:19]

BLITZER: Happening now, President Trump giving a vote of confidence to his attorney general.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Pam Bondi is doing a great job. I think Pam Bondi is going to go down as one of the best attorney generals of the ages.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: The day before, he was calling Pam Bondi out in his social media posts for not going after his political enemies, saying this.

And I'm quoting now: "We can't delay any longer. It's killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice and indicted me five times over nothing. Justice must be served now" -- end quote.

Last hour, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, told us it's politically motivated. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): This is all a political witch-hunt being led by a president who is bent on revenge. And that statement that President Trump made initially is exhibit A for why this is a malicious prosecution.

And it would be my expectation that if, in fact, they can convince a grand jury to bring charges, which I don't believe they will be able to do, and if in fact you have attorneys violating their oath to actually administer justice in a fair and impartial way and indict these members, I believe any charges will be quickly dismissed and that everybody involved should be held accountable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: With us now is CNN's senior political and global affairs commentator Rahm Emanuel. He's the former mayor of Chicago. He was White House chief of staff under President Obama.

Rahm, thanks so much for joining us.

As you know, President Trump campaigned on stopping what he claimed was the weaponization of the U.S. Justice Department. So what do you make of him telling the attorney general to go after his political opponents?

RAHM EMANUEL, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: Yes, I mean, what's ironic here -- and I don't think anybody's drawn the contrast that I think sharpens why this is so wrong.

In the same breath that they're saying, I want you to go after -- quote, unquote -- "my political enemies" and directing the Justice Department, they drop a case from the border czar, Tom Homan, who accepted $50,000 in hard, cold cash. They dropped that case.

Now, there is -- I'm not a lawyer, Wolf, but there's this Lady Justice who's supposed to say -- indicated with the blindfold, that justice is blind to everybody. Nobody's above the law. Nobody's below the law. It is applied equally. It seems like Lady Justice now needs an eye patch, where she can only see basically to the left where she's going to apply the law.

This is crazy, in my view. And you literally have the president of the United States, forget the norms and all this, telling the Justice Department that is who you're going to prosecute. And they have now -- basically, the guy retired, but the U.S. attorney down in Virginia said there's no case here.

Said, get out of here. We want somebody that's going to prosecute this case. And then another person takes $50,000 in a hard, cold cash, and because he's the border czar, they drop the case. Now, I'm from Chicago. We have a high standard around here when it comes to that. Like, that's unbelievable. I have never seen anything like that.

BLITZER: We're seeing President Trump escalate his attacks against Democrats and his political foes in the wake of the Charlie Kirk murder. Listen to what Hillary Clinton told CNN's Fareed Zakaria this weekend about this. Listen and watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, I think this is right out of the authoritarian playbook. They're taking a terrible crime, this awful murder of this young man, and they are trying to use it, along with others of their rationales, to go after their political opponents.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: What can Democrats, Rahm, do to push back against what she calls the authoritarian playbook?

EMANUEL: Well, let me get to that in a second. And I want to take a step back because I think this is an important point.

All -- look, the president of the United States is failing in the job of providing leadership. The office comes with this quality called the bully pulpit. And the presidents decided it's all bully, zero pulpit effort here.

I think it's incumbent upon all of us to try to exercise a little -- on our citizenship and our members of a society a little empathy for others. Charlie Kirk's children are going to grow up without a father, an empty chair at the kitchen table. I disagreed with everything he said. I think it was a horrific act of killing him and assassinating him for his political views. Yet it's clear he meant something to people and we can have some empathy for that.

[11:45:01]

I think the president showed zero of the qualities of not only leadership, but zeros of empathy. And I think the way Charlie Kirk's wife was gracious in her soul, I'm not sure I would have it, to the killer of her husband, her loved one, is a quality that that's what we should draw to.

And I think, on the authoritarianism, it's not just what Democrats do. It's what we do as Americans and citizens. This is a country of the rule of law, not the rule of one. It doesn't tell the Justice Department who to prosecute and who to drop cases from. It doesn't tell -- it doesn't allow not only the media or other entities or universities to literally be squashed under the thumb of a president of the United States.

And it's not, what do Democrats do? And I understand it's a fair question from a political standpoint. But what do we as Americans do? This is America. And these are the very qualities and principles that have withstood Democrat and Republican administrations and other parties when we didn't even have that kind of juxtaposition of Democrat versus Republicans.

And it's crumbling upon us. And I would say -- you asked me that question. I'd say this to the senators and specifically like somebody like Chuck Grassley, who used to lecture all of us about inspector generals and importance of justice to the FBI. You're 93 years old. Your silence -- the Senate Republican Caucus has become basically a caricature of what has -- they have decided they're more Republican than they are senators.

And so it's not just on Democrats. It's on all of us. We're Americans. And this and what's happening now in these actions are un-American.

BLITZER: And as you know, Rahm, the future of Jimmy Kimmel's talk show is still very much up in the air right now. ABC is facing a lot of backlash over its decision to take the show off the air, at least temporarily, after the apparent threat from the FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, including from some Republicans.

What do you see potentially is the long-term impact of this movement?

EMANUEL: Well, a couple things. One is, what all the media should do -- and I'm not here to give them advice -- but the president and the administration is picking them off, CBS over here on "60 Minutes," ABC over here on Terry Moran, George Stephanopoulos, now on Jimmy Kimmel.

And then the president says next NBC. They should join forces because they're more stronger united. And the fact is, I think this will grind to a halt and they will put Jimmy Kimmel back on because of the pressure not only on ABC, but the pressure on the FCC acting like a mafioso and an attempt you -- something you would see literally in some other kind of dictatorship or -- not dictatorship, but a Third World country, authoritarian government.

They're telling the media who to keep, who to fire. So I think, in this case, ABC is going to backtrack because I think the pressure on the leadership, of the corporate leadership is so intense for having actually given away their First Amendment protections.

BLITZER: All right, we shall see.

Rahm Emanuel, thanks, as usual, very much.

EMANUEL: One other thing.

(CROSSTALK)

EMANUEL: Wolf, one there thing.

BLITZER: Yes.

EMANUEL: One other thing. I actually think the world is going to start moving towards YouTube and some other type of medium, and you're going to see that the broadcasters don't have the power, don't have the audience unless they stand up in some capacity.

So I actually think what they're going to do is not just lose in the court of law. They're going to lose in the court of public opinion and people are going to go to other types of alternatives, and those exist today that they didn't 20 years ago.

BLITZER: All right, Rahm Emanuel, thank you very, very much -- Pamela.

BROWN: Yes, I have talked to people since then who have canceled their Disney subscriptions.

BLITZER: Yes.

BROWN: They don't want to watch ABC. It's certainly interesting to see the response to that.

Coming up: Amazon says millions of people sign up for its Prime service because it's a good deal, but a federal lawsuit going to trial today claims the reason is more nefarious.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:53:12]

BLITZER: Happening today, a trial over Amazon's Prime membership gets under way. A government lawsuit accuses the company of tricking people into signing up for Prime and then making it very hard to cancel.

BROWN: But Amazon denies the accusation, saying people sign up because it's just a good deal.

Let's go live now to CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich, who is here with us.

What is the potential impact of this trial, Vanessa?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pamela, if a jury in fact finds that Amazon made it really difficult for people to cancel their Amazon Prime membership, a judge would decide exactly how much Amazon would have to pay up.

And it could be a big paycheck if in fact the jury finds that Amazon was guilty of breaking the law. Amazon has an estimated 200 million customers that use Amazon Prime. It's about $139 a year per customer, about $15 a month. It is incredibly lucrative for Amazon, bringing in billions of dollars.

This complaint by the FTC was launched under the Biden administration, but essentially says that Amazon created a labyrinth of a cancellation policy for customers. Amazon has denied any wrongdoing here, but the FTC complaint actually refers to the process of canceling as the Iliad Flow. This is something that the complaint says that Amazon used internally, calling it the Iliad Flow.

And it's really a nod to Homer's epic and this long arduous journey and the Trojan War. It's a very interesting way to describe a cancellation process. But essentially, in the complaint, it says that it was a four-page, six-click, 15-option cancellation process.

And that made it incredibly difficult, according to the complaint, for customers to cancel. I will note, to sign up for Amazon Prime, according to the FTC, it was just two clicks. So since then, Pamela, Amazon has launched a cancellation page that makes it a lot easier for people to pause or end their Amazon subscription.

[11:55:19]

But jury selection is today, gets under way today, and opening arguments are set to take place tomorrow. This should last about a month. This trial should last about a month.

But, really, this puts into perspective, Pamela and Wolf, this really sort of premium product that Amazon has here, this Amazon Prime membership, and a jury will ultimately decide, did they break the law and make it extremely hard for users to go ahead and cancel?

BLITZER: All right, Vanessa, thank you very, very much for that update.

And to our viewers, thanks very much for joining us this morning.

BROWN: "INSIDE POLITICS WITH DANA BASH" is next after a short break.