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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt

Just In: Court Pauses Ruling That Blocked Trump's Tariffs; Harvard Wins Initial Court Fight Over Foreign Students; Just In: Jury Dismissed For Day In Sean "Diddy" Combs Trial; Musk Leaves Trump Admin After Contentious Tenure. Aired 4-5p ET

Aired May 29, 2025 - 16:00   ET

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


BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: And they had this entirely impromptu beatboxing and dance session that broke out.

[16:00:09]

Listen.

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Okay. So, they say that music has long been a powerful tool to help people in need. They're dedicated to helping young people struggling with addiction, and this viral video has now been seen by millions. No word yet on what they're going to be named.

We have some ideas. Nun-stop beats. You don't want nun this. Sister Act two.

SANCHEZ: Catholicism is so hot right now.

KEILAR: It really is.

All right. "THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT" starts right now.

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: It's the White House versus the courts.

Is this the end of President Trump's trade war?

Let's head into THE ARENA.

Multiple judges ruling against the president's reciprocal tariffs, but breaking news, the White House just got a big boost from an appeals court.

Plus, a big day for Harvard. A federal judge hands the university a major if temporary victory, as commencement speeches there take a defiant tone.

And then the DOGE days are over. As he says goodbye to Washington, what's next for Elon Musk, his companies, and his mission to take a chainsaw to the federal government?

(MUSIC)

HUNT: Hi, everyone. Welcome to THE ARENA. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us on this Thursday.

This just in, a federal appeals court is reinstating President Trump's reciprocal tariffs. This decision overruling a lower court. That ruling that the president does not have the authority to. Use emergency powers to enact sweeping global tariffs. This appeal, coming only after the Trump administration threatened to go to the Supreme Court, where this case may soon end up no matter what.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The courts should have no role here. There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process. America cannot function if President Trump or any other president, for that matter, has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Also today, coincidentally, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, he met with the president at the White House. For the first time in this second term, Powell's office saying that he told Trump that the central bank will continue to make monetary policy based on nonpolitical analysis.

Now, why would the Fed chair need to tell the president that? You may remember that Powell and the Fed are finding themselves at the center of a very public pressure campaign, similar to what's going on with the courts, with Harvard, with any institution that has been refusing to follow Trump's designs.

In the case of the Fed, it is lowering interest rates that Trump wants. He thinks it would help offset the economic pain that comes with the trade war. In fact, the last thing that the president posted to Truth Social was a link to an article about a Trump administration official arguing for a rate cut.

Earlier this month, President Trump even called Chairman Powell a fool and claimed that tariff money was, quote, pouring into the U.S. Today, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Trump told Powell he was making a mistake by not lowering interest rates to help the United States compete with China.

That brings us back, though, to the tariffs. These court rulings aren't just a blow to President Trump's trade agenda. They are a challenge, a direct challenge to what is perhaps the only policy position that Donald Trump has consistently held throughout his entire adult life.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The fact is that you don't have free trade. We think of it as free trade, but you right now don't have free trade.

I say you put a 25 percent tax on everything that's made in China. Every car and every truck and every part manufactured in this plant

that comes across the border, we're going to charge you a 35 percent tax.

We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries, making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs.

We will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So there you have it.

Our panel is going to weigh in in a moment. But first, we're going to start with CNN's Phil Mattingly and Jeff Zeleny.

Phil, I want to start with you just to take us through the economic implications of what has played out today. And if you could especially help us understand this latest ruling, how it interacts with the previous two, and where this all actually stands right now.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDEN: Yeah, Kasie, how many times over the course of the last couple months have you and I spoken about kind of the pervasive sense of uncertainty that's led to a level of paralysis throughout markets for business owners, for foreign leaders as well.

Yet, the last 21 hours haven't helped on that front. It's been a slightly discombobulating.

[16:05:05]

So, I'll do my best to give you a cliffs notes version of things, which is basically where we stand right now is the cornerstone of President Trump's expansive tariff regime is alive. It's alive because of an administrative stay put on by a U.S. circuit court that isn't a ruling on the merits. What it allows for is both sides to make their arguments about the necessity of an appeal.

That appeals process, or that process of the stay will play out through a briefing schedule that goes until June 9th. We will see kind of where things land from there. As you noted, the administration moved extremely fast to try and appeal what happened last night, which was essentially a court ruling to strike down the vast majority, really the most sweeping and expansive tariffs that President Trump has rolled out over the course of his first five months inside the administration. It was a direct shot to the executive authority.

The president has made clear he believes he has. But it also throws a very clear wrench into ongoing bilateral negotiations he's had with 18 allies over the course of the last several months.

So where do things stand now? There's a wrinkle here. There's actually, as you noted, a second judge, a district court judge who earlier today also found that the president didn't have the authority to impose these sweeping tariffs on an emergency basis. That ruling, however, applied to just two companies in the

administration's ability to charge those two companies those tariffs. It was not expansive. It was not a nationwide injunction.

The judge also gave 14 days for that ruling to come into place. That would give the administration time to appeal, as they've done with the ruling last night as well.

So, we'll have to keep an eye on that one. But for now, the most expansive ruling and the biggest threat that we've seen really at all to the president's tariff regime and his view of his expansive executive authority is frozen for the moment as the administration continues to pursue its urgent efforts to try and keep them in place.

HUNT: Yeah, for sure.

All right. So, Jeff Zeleny, help us understand how the White House is taking all of this in. And, of course, you know, President Trump is supportive of the tariffs we showed you. You know, why and how he has been throughout his entire political career.

However, there are competing forces advising him right now. We've already heard from Peter Navarro on this. But of course, the markets really looking to Scott Bessent as someone that they want guidance on.

Can you take us behind the scenes and help us understand how this is playing out?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, to Phil's point, they are frozen for a moment. That is the most important thing here because yes, that ruling last night, which really was jarring. Of all the legal rulings the White House has had to contend with, and there have been a lot of them. This was the most jarring because it hits directly at the heart of the administration's agenda. So that for now, is on hold.

But also, as Phil said, the merits have yet to be decided. So that is where this fight is going to play out. If you think about it like this, yes, the president, as you played there, has long believed in the idea of tariffs. It has been a consistency. One of the few consistent policy views. However, many observers thought at the very beginning of this administration he was kind of doing an end run around this by using the Emergency Powers Act of 1977 to impose these.

Well, that is now at issue. The court last night, the International Trade Court ruled that he does not have the power, the White House does not have the authority under that act. So, they also ruled that the White House cannot subvert Congress.

So those challenges still remain. So, the bottom line now is, for all the huffing and puffing from the White House podium from advisers, this is now a legal case. The arguments have to be made in a court of law. And yes, this could still end up at the Supreme Court.

It likely will end up at the Supreme Court. The advisers I have talked to, just in this short period of time as we've been digesting this, have said, but the at the heart of all of this is more than the presidents long standing view on tariffs. It's the method in which he has enacted all of this.

So -- and we should also point out, even if the legal cases was not this complicated, the tariff case on their own has been so complicated, as Phil was just saying, every country trying to negotiate. Now, this essentially gives all of them a bit of time also to pause. So, the tariff deals will not be negotiated, most likely, as this legal case is playing out.

So, yes, it buys the White House some time, but again, they have to hone their argument here about why he imposed this in the first place.

HUNT: Yeah, for sure.

All right. Jeff Zeleny, Phil Mattingly, thank you both very much. Always great to see both of you.

Our panel joins us now. CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams, White House reporter for "The Wall Street Journal", Annie Linskey, Democratic strategist Adrienne Elrod, and CNN political commentator and Republican strategist Brad Todd.

Welcome to all of you. Thank you guys very much for being here.

Elliot Williams, got to start with you. Based on the analysis of this complicated, you know, all over the place, legal stuff.

I mean, the bottom line here seems to be that they are saying that they cannot use this emergency authority, right? Like that is the most critical piece here. So can you play out for us what's next on that?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Right. If you'd asked me a while ago that the most exciting place on the planet would be the United States court of appeals for the federal circuit, I would have said you're crazy, but that's where things are right now.

[16:10:08]

So, really, the central question is what authority did the president use in implementing the tariffs? Not -- and the court was very careful to say this, not whether the tariffs are good or bad, not whether they're sound economic policy, not whether we agree with them. Simply what was the basis for the president implementing them?

Now, the president had used this emergency authority that the court had said was improper, and that there are other ways that the president and the administration can seek to implement tariffs, but just not this one.

So right now, you know, as Phil had said, the federal circuit is looking at it. They -- the parties will have a few weeks to brief up the issue. There will be arguments in a hearing, but yes, this one is going to the Supreme Court at the end of the day. It's where it's going to end up. HUNT: So, Annie Linskey, you obviously spend your days at the White

House covering this president, you know, up close and personal, and there are a lot of these forces kind of converging on the White House today. I realize that the courts, in some ways have overshadowed this meeting that the president had with Jerome Powell. But in many ways, I mean, that sort of personality drama has the potential to really impact Americans economic lives. What do we know about that meeting and how it plays into this broader story?

ANNIE LINSKEY, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Yeah. Well, I mean, first I have to say that when it rains, it pours in this White House.

HUNT: Yeah.

LINSKEY: And there's just -- we've been juggling so many news stories.

HUNT: Basically, all the time.

LINSKEY: Just in the last time -- all the time. Yes. So that news is just coming out today.

Look, I think one thing to remember with Powell and I think this gets lost a lot. Theres a lot of concern and focus over you know, the president pressuring Powell to lower interest rates and potentially trying to fire Powell. But I think what gets lost here is that the body that sets interest rates, it's not just Powell. There's a -- there's an entire board that he leads.

And you know, my sense is that that board is not going to just go along with Trump if Powell is fired. So, there is a -- there's a, you know, the idea of Powell in his future is one that is something that we focus quite a lot on. But it's more than just him.

And I think that's a little bit why Trump has been unwilling and hasn't taken that that move to get rid of him. It's just -- he's just one piece of a sort of a broader decision.

HUNT: A puzzle. Yeah, for sure.

So, Brad Todd, we have to talk about tacos, apparently, if we're going to really understand the conversation here.

Why don't we start with what's the top of the Drudge Report right now? So, I mean, for those of you who are not political junkies like me, the Drudge Report has been around a long time. It's been a, you know, a tip sheet.

I know, I know, here it is. Okay. So, this is obviously an A.I.- generated image, right? We want to be very clear about that. They put this at the top of Drudge report. This is what's up there right now.

Now, Matt Drudge has historically been conservative. He is not pro- Trump by any stretch of the imagination. But basically, TACO stands for Trump always chickens out. And this is something that's been going around on wall street. And Trump was asked about this yesterday by reporters in the Oval.

Let's play the TACO question and bite and see how Trump responded to this. And then we're going to ask Brad about it.

Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called the TACO trade. They're saying Trump always chickens out on your tariff threats. And that's why markets are higher this week. What's your response to that?

TRUMP: I kick out?

REPORTER: Chicken out.

TRUMP: Oh, isn't that nice? Chicken out, I've never heard that.

We had a dead country. We had a country people didn't think it was going to survive. And you ask a nasty question like that, it's called negotiation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So, what is it, a nasty question, or is it -- you know, I mean, clearly this is something that seems to have gotten under Trump's skin a little bit. This idea that he chickens out, but basically it's a -- it's an explanation for what investors have started to do, which is to buy the Trump tariff dip. He announces the tariff, the markets go down, people buy stock. And then inevitably he changes his mind and then they sell it at a higher price.

BRAD TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: April 4th I wore a bow tie to this show when everyone was freaking out about the markets going down, and I said, now's the time to buy. Just like to remind people of that.

I have seahorses today.

(CROSSTALK)

TODD: Yeah, yeah.

You know, I think first off, tariffs are the thing he really believes in most. He believes that the United States is being treated unfairly, and most Americans believe that. They don't think that a Corvette going to Kentucky should to Germany should be taxed or tariffed at four times what a Porsche's tariff when it comes back here. He's right. He's trying to reset that.

And I think most Americans are with his objective. They may not always agree with his tactics, but I think they're with his objective on that.

His first term, he did steel and aluminum tariffs on China. In fact, Joe Biden kept them and expanded them. So, I don't think he's chickened out on tariffs. I think he pushes the

envelope, pulls back when he doesn't get what he wants, pushes it again the next time he has an opportunity. I think he's trying -- this is a very clear through line there. If all the things he's done, this is the thing he's most consistent on.

HUNT: Adrienne Elrod, this obviously all presents a relatively significant opportunity for Democrats because of the economic uncertainty here.

[16:15:10]

We're talking yesterday -- I mean, Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director, was out there talking about we should worry about the deficits. You know, it's kind of like the world has turned upside down in terms of which side are talking about how to deal with taxing and spending.

But what is your sense of where we should be on tariffs? Where do you think Democrats are on this? Because, I mean, let's be real. Theres a lot of working-class voters in Michigan, who don't hate this idea to Brad's point about the Corvette.

ADRIENNE ELROD, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Yeah, sure, no, absolutely. And I think, you know, there have been Democrats from Elizabeth Warren to, you know, some of the more moderate wing of the party who have come out there and said there are some tariffs that are good. And I think, you know, to the point you made, I mean, President Biden, there were -- you know, there have been past Democratic presidents who have enacted tariffs.

I think the giant difference here, of which there are many in the way that Democratic presidents have handled tariffs versus Donald Trump is number one, he didn't really -- he did not seem to come into this with a plan, which is why you saw, you know, there was no explanation by his cabinet, there was no okay, sitting down with investors and explaining why this is actually a good policy and how they think eventually this will lower prices, there was none of that.

It felt like there wasn't a plan. It felt very erratic, and that is why you're seeing this topsy turvy going back and forth in the market. But I will say this, Kasie, Donald Trump has said you just played a bunch of clips from 30, 40 years ago of him saying, like, I want to enact tariffs, like that is something that we talked about on the campaign a lot on both President Biden and Vice President Harris, the campaign that he said he's going to do this is going to be a tax on Americans. He's actually doing it. So, we tried and we warned.

HUNT: Well, here we are. All right. I guess we're just going to have to wait around for the Supreme Court to see how this all how this movie ends.

But coming up next here, we're going to have more on this battle over the president's economic agenda. Republican Senator John Kennedy is standing by to join us live. Plus, Elon Musk now officially out of the administration. The White

House is again, though, defending the president's tax bill after the very public criticism from the world's richest man.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEAVITT: He gave a comment. I give a comment. Just because you don't like that comment doesn't mean it's not a comment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:21:36]

HUNT: All right. Welcome back to THE ARENA.

We continue to report out this breaking news. A federal appeals court has restored President Trump's ability to levy tariffs in certain circumstances with emergency powers.

Joining me now to discuss, Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana.

Senator, thank you so much for being with us.

You have previously said that the only good tariff is a dead tariff. So, do you think the court that said you cannot use this emergency power to levy these reciprocal tariffs across the board was correct in their decision?

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY (R-LA): Well, I haven't read the decisions yet, but here's what I think. And I'll answer your question, Kasie. It's a good one.

I don't understand really why everybody's all moved up about this. You didn't have to be clairvoyant, or a senior at CalTech to see this coming. Federal courts have enjoined everything else. I expected them at some point to issue an injunction on this.

It -- decisions will be appealed. It will end up with the Supreme Court. In the meantime, it's not going to change anything. The negotiations will go on. What hasn't changed, it seems to me, is the overarching policy and the overarching politics.

Policy first, the president has articulated a multitude of reasons for his tariffs. The one I find compelling is reciprocity.

Our goal here, and this is what I meant when I said the only good tariff is a dead tariff. Our goal here should be to have our foreign friends lower their tariffs and trade barriers as close to zero as possible, and then we ought to do the same thing. And less freely exchange goods and services and be the best price at the best product win.

In the long run, that will be good for us and it will be good for the global economy. But in the short run, you have to consider the politics. If these tariffs or even the talk of the tariffs in the short run leads people -- either leads to higher prices. And I'm not saying it necessarily will, but if it does or if people's expectations are that they're going to be higher prices, so they raise their prices higher, that's going to create a political problem for us.

That's going to create a problem in the midterms, because I think President Trump, in my opinion, won because he represented hope. While Vice President Harris represented more hurt. And I think people were thinking about their pocketbooks.

Now, the White House is kind of -- they're kind of touchy on this tariff business.

HUNT: We don't --

KENNEDY: They go from -- they go from zero to screw everyone pretty quickly. But I think that's a pretty accurate assessment of where we are. And were going to have to explain to the American people why we're doing these tariffs.

HUNT: The White House said today that the courts have no role in addressing economic, this kind of economic policy. Do you agree with that statement?

KENNEDY: No. Under the Constitution, congress has tariff authority. We gave -- for better or worse, Congress gave some of that authority to the presidency.

[16:25:02]

The president has been exercising that authority.

The issue before the courts and our courts are -- it's appropriate for them to decide is whether he has exceeded that authority. I don't think he has. But that's up -- that's up to the courts to tell us.

But in the meantime, nothing's going to change. These talks are not going to stop, nor should they.

HUNT: Senator, I also want to ask you about the One Big, Beautiful Bill. Elon Musk criticized it over the weekend. He said, if it's big, it's not beautiful, essentially. Do you agree with that assessment?

KENNEDY: Well, it's not -- it's not as beautiful. It's certainly big. It's not as beautiful as it can be right now.

The purpose of the reconciliation bill, which is a form of a budget bill, is to renew the tax cuts. In my opinion, if we don't and we raise taxes to the tune of $4.3 trillion on the American people, our economy is going to go on a journey to the center of the earth.

But as a result of President Trump's and Mr. Musk is at work, I think most Americans also expect us to reduce spending. And I think we should reduce spending. I think Mike Johnson and his team made a good start. I don't want to

take anything away from them, $1.5 trillion over ten years, but I think you're going to see an effort in the United States Senate to do better.

How will it end up? I have no idea. My feeling is I'm in the camp that wants to do more spending reductions, but I want to do I want to cut spending until we run out of votes. I also want to pass this bill because I want to -- I want to -- I want to renew the tax cuts. But we'll work as a team. You know, teamwork in the senate is essential because it gives you somebody to blame if something goes wrong.

HUNT: Well, I appreciate the legislative honesty, sir, as someone who has covered the body in which you augustly serve. Your political analysis is much appreciated here. Senator John Kennedy, thank you very much. I appreciate your time. And I hope you'll come back.

KENNEDY: Thanks, Kasie.

HUNT: All right. Coming up next here. The caps, the gowns and the courts. Harvard's class of 2025, celebrating graduation today as the school faces a key hurdle in its ongoing legal battle with the Trump administration.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The purpose of our time here really starts today as we leave campus, and especially as we leave a much different campus than the one we entered with Harvard at the center of a national battle over higher education in America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:32:20]

HUNT: All right. Welcome back.

Today, a federal judge in Boston blocked President Trump's efforts to prevent Harvard university from enrolling international students. This temporary court victory came as students walked the stage at Harvard's commencement ceremony.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz joins us live from Cambridge, which is, of course, it's a place outside Boston. As many people who attend Harvard like to say, somewhat, apparently. Self-deprecatingly.

But, Katelyn, tell us a little bit about this court fight, what happened today and what it portends going forward for Harvard.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, the court fight was over by Boston harbor with a view there. So not in Cambridge. Very close though. Lots of lawyers from Harvard showed up. There were students there. There were onlookers. There were a lot of press. What happened was the judge. She decided to protect the international

students of Harvard, the ability for them to come from more than 140 countries to the U.S. and study at this university.

Now, this summer, in the fall, what she said she was doing with her order today is that I want to maintain the status quo. But, Kasie, this judge says, Allison Burroughs, she made very clear in this hearing that even if the administration wanted to give Harvard a 30- day window to talk to them administratively or anything else, she didn't want funny business.

So, she sent both sides, the Harvard lawyers and the Justice Department, to hash out legal language and come back to her before that order is in place, she said. It doesn't need to be draconian, but I want to make sure its worded in such a way that nothing changes, meaning international students have no fear to come here to the U.S. and study at Harvard.

But there's already ongoing concern. Harvard is saying that there are students that are looking at transferring, maybe not coming in the fall. They're also saying that there are students in U.S. embassies trying to get visas to come to Harvard. Just in the last couple of days, when the administration indicated they wanted to pull this program and they're not able to get visas.

So, the judge had some questions about that. She doesn't want that fear to overcome the international student body of Harvard, this population of more than 7,000 students. But, Kasie, this is a win for Harvard in the battle, but not the war. The administration continues to fight in court against Harvard over grant funding. They're trying to pull more than $2.2 billion filings to come on that next week -- Kasie.

HUNT: All right. Katelyn Polantz for us, Katelyn, always grateful and lovely to see you. Thank you very much.

Our panel is back.

Elliot Williams, the sort of legal front in that I think it's worth noting, too. She's talking about grant money. Their international students also bring in a ton of money to American universities, right?

[16:35:03]

They're full-pay students. They're often from wealthy families who become donors, et cetera, et cetera. So, some of this is about money as much as it's about some of the other things that the administration says that it's about.

What do you see as the future for this case? Like, what kind of legal ground does the Trump administration on here?

WILLIAMS: They're not on very strong legal ground. Now, they have moral ground, but not very strong legal ground. And they have two problems, free speech and free enterprise. What the president has done is potentially step in the way of Harvard's exercise of free speech. And, you know, in the way of who it hires, how it hires people, things that happen in classrooms, even wanting to audit viewpoint diversity in the classroom.

Now, again, I will be the first person to say viewpoint diversity is a good thing. You want a mix of ideas at a major university. Theres no question about that.

But the president of the United States or presidential administration can't wag its finger and say that you need to have 30 percent of every classroom being members of the Republican Party or whatever else. That's silly. And that violates the First Amendment when it comes from the government.

So, I -- just, you know. I -- they just don't have a great legal ground to stand on, even if the place they're coming from is defensible.

HUNT: Yeah. So, Brad Todd, I have to say, I take Elliot's point in terms of viewpoint diversity and the First Amendment, but isn't this kind of the central complaint that conservatives have about a lot of these institutions was that there was sort of a dictating of the viewpoint you were going to have if you were going to come into the institution, and they declare that to be problematic.

TODD: It's broad-based. I mean, Harvard has had speech codes. Harvard has not been exactly great on student free association. A lot of these schools have not been good on whether you could join a fraternity or sorority. A lot of them have tried to disband those. Those are all First Amendment rights as well.

But I think the bigger thing here is the mastery of Donald Trump depict this political fight. He is baiting the Democrats into defending 7,000 of the world's richest children to go to Harvard in place of American students who got rejected. It's brilliant.

Now, he may win or lose in court, but he's going to win the court of public opinion.

HUNT: What do you think about that, Adrienne?

ELROD: Well, look, I'm not going to disagree with what you said about picking Harvard to go after first. I mean, it was smart because it is the wealthiest college in this country. It is known as you know, a college is very difficult to get into. So, I think he was politically smart to do that.

But here's the problem -- the bigger problem here is that and you're seeing this in polling when you start explaining to the American people if he is successful with Harvard, what is he going to do to the public institution in your neighborhood? What is he going to do to, you know, the University of Arkansas? Or if he decides he gets mad at a governor in a blue state, is he going to go after every single university in that state?

I mean, that is what you have to look at here. The precedents of this case sets. And I think that is why, you know, the American people are smart and they're looking at this and they're saying, we have a real problem with the way he's approaching this.

LINSKEY: I just -- on the -- on whether this is popular or not. I mean, I was surprised "The Washington Post" did poll this in April. They asked, you know, are you on Harvard's side or Trump side? And 66 percent of voters were on Harvard's side. I remember telling Harvard's lawyer this number, and he was surprised by that.

You know, it was like, I think 30 percent of Trump voters were on Harvard's side. So I don't know that -- you know, I think it seems like, oh, this is an elite institution. We don't like Harvard, but at certainly at the beginning of this fight, the, you know, the public opinion was behind Harvard.

WILLIAMS: And, you know, Brad, to your broad point, certainly maybe Harvard had questions with fraternity enrollment and things that were said in classrooms and so on. Harvard is a private institution.

TODD: Sure it is.

WILLIAMS: Can do -- no, no, no, no. But the way the First Amendment works is that when the government begins to dictate how people should speak, how people should behave, or how private institutions, even if they receive government funding, ought to behave, that's a clear violation of law.

Now, again, it might be popular with people, but that does not make it legal.

TODD: But other institutions have chosen to opt out of their connections to the federal government to limit how many strings the federal government can pull. Hillsdale College in Michigan is one of the top 30 liberal arts colleges in America. They don't take a penny of federal money because they don't want the federal government messing in their business.

Harvard has a $53 billion endowment. If they want the federal government out of the way they operate Harvard, they can afford it.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, but you and I both know that's not the way endowments work. And you can't just write a check out an endowment to pay for research.

HUNT: They're doing a lot of cancer research that helps everybody.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, oh, and national security research. I mean, the bombs --

TODD: We want a strong Harvard. We want a strong Harvard, for sure. Everyone does. Sorry. Everyone wants a strong Harvard.

HUNT: Really?

WILLIAMS: Everyone wants strong universities in America.

ELROD: I don't think Trump does. TODD: No, you don't want a strong Harvard. That Harvard is not going

to be a strong Harvard if its tolerating antisemitic protests in its quad, and not doing anything about it, it's cracking down on student speech, that otherwise were speech quotes. Will they allow that? That's not a strong Harvard.

ELROD: Well, look, the bottom line is Kasie just made the point that the research that comes out of Harvard is mission critical to improving our public health, to improving the way we tackled diseases, and this funding is also taking away that research, too, and I think that's something that the American people understand. And we're researchers saying, you know what?

[16:40:00]

We may not go to Harvard anymore because we're worried about whether or not we're going to have the funny to do what we want to do.

WILLIAMS: It's national security, not just public health.

ELROD: Exactly.

WILLIAMS: Literally critical to national security research is being done at these major universities.

HUNT: All right. Coming up next here, what's next for DOGE after Elon Musk takes a bow and leaves the stage here in Washington? The White House giving an answer today sort of, kind of. We'll show you that.

Plus, gripping testimony today from one of Sean "Diddy" Combs' former assistants. What the woman known to the public only as Mia is saying.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUNT: All right. Welcome back.

The jury has just been dismissed in the Sean "Diddy" Combs sex trafficking trial.

[16:45:04]

Today, they heard from another one of Diddy's former employees who testified under a pseudonym that her boss, physically and sexually assaulted her multiple times.

CNN's Kara Scannell joins us now from outside the federal courthouse in New York City.

Kara, really tough stuff today. It sounds like. Take us through this testimony.

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This former personal assistant to Sean "Diddy" Combs testified under a pseudonym using the name Mia. And the judge allowed her to do that because some of her testimony involved sexual assault by Combs. She walked the jury through that just at the end of the day before they broke. And it was very difficult for her. She was struggling to get the words

out through most of her testimony. She had her head down, her face almost hidden by her hair, as she was sort of whispering out some of the details of what happened to her.

And she testified that she was assaulted by combs sexually a number of times. She said it happened sporadically over the years. And the first time it happened, she said she was celebrating his 40th birthday party. They were in the penthouse suite at the Plaza Hotel.

They were in the kitchen. The two of them did two shots of vodka. She said it felt different than any other time she did shots. She said that Combs leaned in, kissed her and stuck his hand up her dress.

Then, she testified about another time that she said she woke up in her room in Combs L.A. home, with someone, the weight of someone on top of her. It was Combs, and it was then she said that he raped her.

She gave another example of a different time. She was in his bedroom, in his closet, organizing things as she would. She said she turned around. Suddenly, he was there naked, and he forced her to have oral sex with her.

She testified that she didn't say no because, as she said, I couldn't tell him no about a sandwich. I couldn't tell him no about anything. Theres no way I could have tell him no.

She also said she never reported it to the police because she was afraid he would ruin her future in the industry and ruin her career. She said this was before the #metoo movement, and people wouldn't believe her.

Earlier in the day, she also testified about times that Combs had physically assaulted her herself, including, she said he threw a bowl of spaghetti at her. He threw computers and phones at her, and he once threw her into a pool.

She also provided some testimony about assaults that she had seen between Combs and Cassie Ventura. She said there were multiple assaults, too many to count, that she had witnessed, and she said that there were two that occurred when they were on vacation in Turks and Caicos. On one of them, she couldn't remember what started, but she and Cassie ran down to the beach, jumped on paddleboards, paddled out.

She said Combs was running back and forth on the beach screaming. The sky had turned dark, and she said they were weighing whether it was scarier to face mother nature or to go back to puff.

She'll be back on the stand tomorrow -- Kasie.

HUNT: Okay. Kara Scannell for us today -- Kara, thanks very much for that update.

And coming up next here, just what's next for Elon Musk? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [16:52:46]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I want Elon to stay as long as possible. Number one, I like him. Number two, he's doing a great job. Number three, he is a patriot. That's why he's doing this.

And he's, you know, it's very costly for him. But I want him to stay as long as possible. But there will be a point where he's going to have to leave.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: That point has come. The White House officially offboarding Elon Musk from his role as a special government employee in 129 days, Musk fell well short of cutting $1 trillion in federal spending.

His companies are reeling. Tesla sales have dropped here in the U.S., also in Europe, and the political ramifications for Republicans across the country have not necessarily been easy for them to deal with. Much of it probably chalked up to moments like this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELON MUSK, TECH BILLIONAIRE: Some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected, so nobody's going to bat a thousand.

TRUMP: He said, you know, they're trying to drive us apart. I said, absolutely.

MUSK: This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. Chainsaw.

So, if you have a pulse on two neurons, you can reply to an email.

Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.

It's literally like no part that goes really fast.

This person, you know, they say, I wear a lot of hats and that's true. That's true. Even my hat has a hat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: And, of course, we didn't even see the part where he said that they accidentally canceled Ebola prevention. And they put it back.

Here in this "thank you" post, Musk says this, quote, the DOGE mission will only strength over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.

Our panel is back.

Brad Todd, I have to say, you know, I'm old enough to remember when Tom Coburn would put out a list of things that should be gone from the federal government on a basically annual basis, like this is not a new idea. What has been new, of course, has been Elon and his team kind of rampaging through the government. He does seem to be kind of going quietly into the night after a very loud couple of months.

TODD: Well, I had a Substack post on this a few weeks ago. I think the enduring legacy of Elon Musk is the insertion of fear in the federal bureaucracy, and I think it's a very healthy thing.

The customers of the federal bureaucracy don't think the government is doing a good job.

[16:55:01]

And so far, all the people who work in bureaucratic jobs are totally insulated from that disappointment that their customers feel. That's not true anywhere else in the economy.

And so, if Elon Musk has injected some fear of accountability, it's going to be good for us. We're going to get more turnover in the bureaucracy. We're going to get new faces. We get new people. We're going to get new striving. I think that's a good thing.

HUNT: Adrienne. I mean, is it -- I mean, Elon became like, you know, public enemy number one for Democrats who are trying to run against even more than Trump himself.

ELROD: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And lots of ads were run in some of these special elections featuring Elon Musk as the villain. And it helped Democrats win some of these specials.

I mean, look, the bottom line is this -- I think there's a lot of Americans who believe that government is a little overly bureaucratic. And they -- he came in with some goodwill, but he totally botched it. And he got rid of people who were doing mission critical programs across the board, completely obliterating USAID, you know, cutting people from HHS who are doing mission critical work in the areas of research to, you know, you name it, things that we use in our everyday lives.

And I think he was not able to really come out of this with a lot of goodwill. And I think there's a lot of people, probably a lot of people in the Trump White House who are happy to see him go.

HUNT: I mean, Annie Linskey, and I think one group that Adrienne didn't mention, but that, you know, I've sort of picked up on in talking to sources, Brad does a lot of this like -- of this type of work, is the cuts to the government didn't stay here in Washington, right?

They impacted states. They impacted a lot of veterans. Right? Like there are a lot of federal employees who work inside those bureaucracies. It rippled in a way that I think a lot of people didn't necessarily expect.

What do your Trump administration sources tell you? I mean, are they -- are they glad to see the, you know, the door Musk on the way out? LINSKEY: I think Elon Musk certainly rankled a lot of the White House

senior staff. He did not make a lot of friends and allies, you know, with the White House chief of staff and all the way down. There are just sort of anecdote after anecdote about --

HUNT: So, Susie Wiles and Elon Musk --

LINSKEY: Well, there were -- there were there were fights within the administration and Susie Wiles had to come in and closely manage him. They were -- they were in frequent touch, but in a way that is different and distinct from how she was managing other members of the staff and other cabinet members. There's a lot of friction between various cabinet members. So he -- he didn't come in. And, you know, his sort of disruption that he was doing to the federal government, that was also happening behind closed doors with his colleagues at the White House.

And that is not a recipe for success in any White House. And, you know, the other thing that I think was really quite striking here is it wasn't just Elon Musk who left as CNN reported, that Katie Miller, one of his top deputies, left to work for him and also Steve Davis, one of his, you know, sort of big implementers at DOGE is also departing rather abruptly.

So, it's not just, you know, a sense that Musk was had his 130 days and was going to leave. But there's a sort of what feels a little bit more like a larger purge going on.

HUNT: A breakup. Yeah.

WILLIAMS: Yeah. I mean -- and I think Adrienne's spot on, even if people believe that there are things that are too big about the federal government, this was not the way to do it. It's not injecting fear into the federal. It's injecting hostility with the way they treated federal government workers.

There's in your home state of Tennessee, there's 100,000 people that work for the federal government. Do we want them all losing their jobs and being treated in a manner where they only get 15 minutes to clean their desk out after having served the country for years? It was just meanness that sort of works in Silicon Valley, but not in government, which is not a business. It's a government.

HUNT: All right. Now, it's time to turn to something totally different. Police in South Africa were led on a not so high speed chase. The suspect was a two-ton elephant seal. I'm sorry, what?

Surveillance video shows the seal flopping through a suburb near Cape Town early Tuesday morning. Oh my gosh, there it is. Look at it. He's moving very slowly.

Okay, so officials estimate that this young male weighed more than 4,000 pounds. Officials cornered him. You see this here with their patrol cars. But this did not work. He wiggles his way over the hood of the cars, and he keeps going. Officials were very worried that he was too far from the ocean, that

he might become exhausted and dehydrated because, again, he weighs two tons.

A team of marine wildlife specialists did manage to sedate him and return him to his natural habitat at a nearby bay. I guess this is what happens in South Africa.

I mean, in Florida, it tends to be, I don't know, alligators, or something else.

TODD: Rats in Washington, though. They're not quite 4,000 pounds, but they're large.

WILLIAMS: Well, 4,000 pounds seal, you otter be killing me.

HUNT: Oh, gosh. Elliot Williams, you can see yourself out.

Jake Tapper is standing by for THE LEAD.

Hi, Jake.