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The Situation Room

World Cup Action Continues; Trump Administration Conducting Arrests at Reflecting Pool?; Status of Iran Negotiations?; Republicans Target Biden Audio Recordings. Aired 10:30a-11a ET

Aired June 22, 2026 - 10:30   ET

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

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PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Happening now: Police in Chicago are investigating at least two dozen shooting incidents that left seven people dead and 38 others injured just over this last weekend. The violence prompted President Trump to renew his call for military intervention in the city.

And a deadly crash in Texas involving a Tesla is now under investigation. Security video obtained by CNN appears to show the vehicle speeding in a Houston area neighborhood before driving out of frame. Officials say the driver told officers he was operating the vehicle with an automated driving assistance system at the time.

The crash killed a 76-year-old grandmother right inside that home. You see the video right there where the car crashed into the home. Now, officers say that the driver showed no signs of intoxication and was cooperative during the investigation. CNN has reached out to Tesla for comment.

And caught on camera. Explosions ring out in one Oklahoma City after a fireworks stand goes up in flames. Firefighters in Broken Arrow had to dodge fireworks to put out the massive blaze Saturday night. Officials say it took about 20 minutes to extinguish everything. Thankfully, no one was injured and the cause of that fire is still under investigation -- Wolf.

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WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: And we have some breaking news.

The vice president, J.D. Vance, will soon head home from Switzerland, saying weekend talks with Iran created a foundation for an eventual deal to formally end the war. Vance also said a major milestone was reached and Iran will now allow nuclear inspectors back into the country.

At one point during the talks, President Trump appeared to threaten Iranian delegates over the potential closing of the Strait of Hormuz. Joining us now is CNN military analyst retired U.S. Navy Admiral James

Stavridis. He's also a former NATO supreme allied commander. And with us also is CNN global affairs analyst Karim Sadjadpour. He's at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace right now.

Admiral, let me start with you.

How important is it that Iran is letting international nuclear inspectors back into the country?

ADM. JAMES STAVRIDIS (RET.), CNN SENIOR MILITARY ANALYST: Certainly, it's a good thing.

But before we do high-fives and, as we would say in North Florida, where I'm from, before we get all liquored up about this, we ought to recognize that those inspectors have been inside Iran for years and years, and the Iranians are experts at least attempting and in some places probably deceiving them.

So, certainly, it's a very good thing. On the other hand, it is hardly a panacea for the big challenges that remain ahead for the nuclear accord.

BLITZER: Karim, the vice president said Trump's comments about Iran didn't derail the talks at all. What's your sense of how close those talks were to Iran simply walking away?

KARIM SADJADPOUR, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, Wolf, the Iranian regime on one hand does want to end the war in the near term, because this -- the naval blockade has been costing the country tremendously.

At one point, the costs were estimated to be $450 million daily. So getting a cease-fire is an economic win for a regime which is under enormous economic duress, 70 percent inflation, triple-digit inflation for food items.

But, at the same time, this is a regime which remains committed to its ideology of resistance against America and Israel. And the war gave them far more fodder for that ideology, given that the United States assassinated so many of their top leaders.

BLITZER: Admiral Stavridis, the U.S. says it is open to fundamentally changing the way it deals with Iran moving forward. How does that happen if the same regime stays in power and the hard-liners within Iran maintain a lot of influence?

STAVRIDIS: Difficult to see that happening.

Let's be honest. The regime that's in place is a new regime. That's the first news, but the bad news is, they appear at least thus far to be at least as radicalized. And, certainly, the supreme leader, we, the United States, killed his father, his mother, his wife, his child. I doubt there's a lot of quit in that guy.

And he's got the Revolutionary Guard now firmly in control. So, unfortunately, I think the idea of suddenly having a new cooperative regime like we do in Venezuela, which is an entirely different story, and a better one, but, here, given, as Karim just told us, this is a very dug-in, very committed, religiously driven regime.

So, I think it's unlikely we're going to sway them. All of this is unfinished business, in my view.

BLITZER: Karim, Vice President J.D. Vance said the two were also working on a mechanism to deal with the fighting in Lebanon that continues. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been consistently saying Israel won't fully withdraw from Southern Lebanon, despite a lot of pressure coming in from Trump right now.

Are we seeing the limits of U.S. influence on Israel right now?

SADJADPOUR: I think we will see those limits, Wolf, because, in Lebanon, the big dispute is over the question of sovereignty. The Iranian regime says that Israel needs to respect Lebanon's sovereignty and stop attacking it.

Israel says that Iran needs to respect Lebanon's sovereignty and not be operating an Iranian-backed militia, Lebanese Hezbollah, which launches strikes on Israel. So, I suspect it's going to be difficult for President Trump to tell Prime Minister Netanyahu not to retaliate if he's receiving incoming missile fire from his northern border from Lebanese Hezbollah.

BLITZER: Yes, that's an important point.

Admiral Stavridis, also, while I have you, I want to quickly ask you about the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, announcing his resignation today. Britain is a key part of NATO. You were a former NATO supreme allied commander.

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But it came under a lot of fire, the British government, from President Trump over its lack of participation in this war with Iran. Do you expect things to change once Starmer leaves office?

STAVRIDIS: I don't think we're going to see a big shift in terms of U.K. relationships within NATO.

By all accounts, tipped to replace him is the mayor of Manchester, Andrew Burnham, who was just elected to Parliament, clearing his path to take Keir Starmer's place. Andrew Burnham has a long history within the Liberal Party context of supporting NATO.

He's also talked about the need for thinking about defense spending in an industrial kind of way, cooperating with defense. He's also extremely supportive of Ukraine. Those are the key elements that we from the U.S. side would want to see.

Final thought, Wolf, yes, I think the allies should have provided us basing access, but it's no reason to denigrate the alliance and simply walk away from it. I don't think we will do that, nor should we. The new British prime minister can help hold it together. BLITZER: We will see what happens.

Admiral James Stavridis and Karim Sadjadpour, to both of you, thank you very, very much.

BROWN: All right, Wolf, new this morning, the Justice Department may soon get the go-ahead to share audio recordings of former President Joe Biden that renew questions about his mental acuity during his presidency and even in the years before.

These recordings are all part of conversations Biden had in 2016 and 2017 with the ghostwriter of his memoir. And then the then-vice president's memory appears to falter. Republicans have long accused Biden, his family and members of his administration of conspiring to cover up his mental decline.

Katelyn Polantz is here in THE SITUATION ROOM.

So, Biden is asking this court to block the Justice Department from sharing these recordings with the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee. One judge has already ordered the audio recordings be given to this conservative Heritage Foundation. Where do things go from here and what is the ultimate goal?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Pam, the goal, at least from the House Judiciary Committee, the Republicans there, Representative Jim Jordan, and The Heritage Foundation is apparently to get these into the public conversation, these tapes.

Now, what are these tapes? There's a lot of tapes about Joe Biden. We have seen him on camera before. We have seen him talking to a special counsel. We have heard him talking to a special counsel in that investigation previously.

But what this is, it's two hours of tape recordings of Biden in conversation with his ghostwriter. That ghostwriter ultimately helped him produce the memoir "Promise Me, Dad," which was about him deciding not to run for president in 2016 in that pivotal election after his son Beau died of brain cancer.

And in those tapes, they eventually became part of the investigation of whether Biden was mishandling classified information because he talked about national security and national foreign policy with the ghostwriter back in 2016-2017.

But the special counsel, when he reviewed these tapes, he said that Biden's recorded conversations with the ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries right after the vice presidency, before he became president.

And then The Heritage Foundation, they have gone to court and they're suing to get these into the public domain. They say that they want these tapes now public. They want to hear them. They want to see the transcripts of them, because it is important to them whether President Biden did, in fact, leak classified information that may be on the tapes, whether President Biden was, in fact, impaired, and whether senior members of the Biden and Harris administration later on covered up his apparent cognitive decline.

They think that will be important for the 2026 election. The judge here is saying that these can be in the public domain. Biden's privacy interests are essentially not as strong here to keep them private. And so there is a question of what the appellate courts are going to do, let these out.

It's going to be a really uphill battle for the former president.

BROWN: And what are his lawyers saying?

POLANTZ: Well, his lawyers are saying that the public interest over these tapes that Biden has, that shouldn't overcome his own personal privacy, that he was speaking at the time about very personal things related to his son's death especially.

But when Judge Friedrich in the D.C. District Court looked at these -- she even listened to the tapes in recent weeks -- she said that this doesn't really contain highly sensitive topics like illness or death. These tapes are things that eventually became part of the public memoir and that Rob Hur wrote about.

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So she's clearing the way for these tapes to eventually come out, though they're not out there yet.

BROWN: All right, Katelyn Polantz, thanks so much -- Wolf.

BLITZER: And coming up here in THE SITUATION ROOM: peeling paint, algae, and now arrests at the Reflecting Pool, as the Reflecting Pool saga continues to be in the spotlight.

What's next for the iconic landmark as we get closer and closer to America's 250th birthday?

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BROWN: Happening now: Algae filling the Reflecting Pool here in Washington and peeling paint are leading to vandalism claims from the president and criticism from Democrats.

Trump is now threatening vandals with a 10-year prison sentence for defacing the newly renovated landmark. Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley took his critique to social media, saying -- quote -- "After railing about waste, fraud and abuse, the Trump administration spent $14 million on a Reflecting Pool reno that's now peeling and chock full of algae. I'm pressing to get answers for this embarrassing waste of resources."

CNN correspondent Tom Foreman in THE SITUATION ROOM with the very latest. Tom, what do we know about these "vandalism" -- quote, unquote --

"arrests"?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Not much.

We know one person for sure, but the other ones, they're kind of in this legal never-never land. We can't get any information from the Park Police about who was arrested or why they were arrested. Their cases seem to be a little bit up in the air.

But, here, you have officials saying, yes, we're going after people who do this because we consider this damaging a national asset out there. Listen to what the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, said about these cases.

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JEANINE PIRRO, U.S. ATTORNEY FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: Anyone who was in a position of vandalizing or attempting to vandalize the Reflecting Pool will face the criminal justice system in D.C.

Look, the president has made it a priority to make D.C. not only safe, but beautiful. And there are several citations that have been handed out to individuals. And these are cases that will be prosecuted to the full extent.

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FOREMAN: Here is the problem, though. One of the -- the only name we really know is a former Olympian, David Hearn, a local guy here. And he said he went by and all he did was reach in. There he is competing in the slalom canoe for the United States of America.

He said he's a material scientist. He studied material science. He reached into the water just to touch this to see what it was like, to see what this material was like, where it was already loose. And then they came along and they arrested him for this.

And part of the question here is, if they're arresting him for that being damaged just because he touched it, as he said, the question is, what about the dozens and dozens of workers who have been in there day after day, walking all over it, pushing these little vacuum things all over it?

Potentially, that causes damage too. In any event, the algae is not under control. It's still there as of this morning, even though they're trying to get it cleared up. And now they're talking about maybe having to drain the whole thing and start over, literally putting tax money figuratively, I guess, down the drain.

BROWN: And I think it's worth reiterating, because there's a lot going on in the world, right, but this is something that the president and the administration had touted that this would be easy, it would last for a long time, and they have had this sort of confidence since the beginning, right? FOREMAN: Yes. Well, and he ridiculed all former presidents, saying

all their efforts were just foolish, a waste of money, and I can do it for less than $2 million.

It ended up costing seven times that much, and so far it shows no signs of working any better than anything that was tried before.

BROWN: All right, Tom Foreman, thank you.

We will be right back.

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BLITZER: Cape Verde stuns again, the World Cup underdogs making a statement against Uruguay in Miami.

And Spanish star Lamine Yamal shines early against Saudi Arabia, logging his first ever World Cup goal in the first 11 minutes of the match.

BROWN: CNN's Don Riddell joins us now.

Lots of World Cup action yesterday, and there's certainly more ahead today, Don.

DON RIDDELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it just keeps on going.

A massive day 12 of the World Cup ahead, the return of Messi, and Mbappe and Haaland to the stage, as Argentina take on Austria, France play Iraq, Norway take on Senegal.

You mentioned the 18-year-old superstar Lamine Yamal hot on their heels. He made his first World Cup start for Spain, scoring very quickly, setting La Roja up for a 4-0 win against Saudi Arabia. Lamine, who is so often compared to Lionel Messi, recording his first World Cup goal two weeks younger than Messi was when he got started back in 2006.

Vozinha's mom made it to the World Cup to watch her son play. You remember how the Cape Verde goalie went viral with his incredible performance against Spain, then revealed his mom hadn't been able to travel from the island nation. After so e help from the U.S. State Department, she was able to get to Miami, pictured cheering on her son against Uruguay, another really impressive performance from the tournament debutantes.

Kevin Pina scoring their first ever World Cup goal. And then they had to come from behind, earning a brilliant 2-2 draw to keep their hopes alive of making it into the Round of 32. That was just thrilling.

In other news, the 44-year-old Serena Williams is going to be playing singles at Wimbledon, her first singles appearance in nearly four years after stepping away from tennis in 2022. She has returned to play doubles in the last couple of weeks. This is a massive step, though, the seven-time champion given the final wild card.

So she will be back in the lady singles draw on the iconic courts of the All England club.

Big news in golf. Twelve months after being banned from Oakmont Country Club for smashing up the lockers in the changing room in frustration with his U.S. Open performance, Wyndham Clark is celebrating victory at Shinnecock Hills in New York.