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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt

Now: Awaiting Expected DOJ Filing In Epstein Investigation As Trump Rails Against WSJ Report On Birthday Letter; New Insight ON CBS' "Agonizing Decision" To Cancel "The Late Show". Aired 4-5p ET

Aired July 18, 2025 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:00]

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN HOST: Well, some dogs cuter than others. I don't want to discriminate, but that dog, at least Ozu, very, very cute.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Now you've seen the movie.

JIMENEZ: Yeah, I have seen the movie.

KEILAR: Don't spoil it but --

JIMENEZ: I'm not going to spoil it, but Krypto --

KEILAR: -- could I see it? The dog?

JIMENEZ: You should see it, not just because James Gunn, DC, Warner Brothers, CNN, whatever the relationship is, but also Krypto actually has a really big role in the movie. So, I can see why people are like, you know what, maybe I want something like that.

KEILAR: That really inspires them. It's a dog forward flick, which I think we can all get behind.

JIMENEZ: I'm more of a cat guy, but that's a discussion for another time.

KEILAR: Me, too

Omar, thanks for being with us.

JIMENEZ: Of course. Good to see you.

KEILAR: THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT starts right now.

(MUSIC)

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: The White House goes on offense and tries to seize control of the narrative around the Jeffrey Epstein case.

Welcome to THE ARENA. Kasie Hunt is off. I'm Dana Bash.

Right now, we are awaiting an expected filing from the Justice Department asking a judge to unseal some of the grand jury material from the Epstein case. Now, as that happens, the president now says he plans to sue "The Wall

Street Journal" over their report on a letter allegedly sent to Epstein on his 50th birthday. "The Journal" says it included body language, a drawing of a nude woman and the signature of Donald J. Trump. According to the paper, that letter concludes with this message, quote, happy birthday and may every day be another wonderful secret, end quote.

Now, in response, the president issued a full denial, telling "The Journal", quote, this is not me, this is a fake thing. It's a fake "Wall Street Journal" story. I never wrote a picture in my life. I don't draw pictures of women. It's not my language. It's not my words, end quote.

My panel is here, along with CNN chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid and CNN senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes.

Paula, I want to start with you. What are you hearing right now about where this DOJ request is?

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, I'm told by a Justice Department official we should still expect this request to come in today. What is not clear, however, is what the government is going to say to this judge to convince him to release any of this grand jury material. This kind of material is by default, confidential. This is what a prosecutor presents to a grand jury to convince them to indict a much lower bar than what you have for conviction.

So investigators, prosecutors, they don't present all of their evidence. I mean, what well find here in these transcripts represents just a tiny sliver of everything the Justice Department has. Eventually, once the judge gets this request, he'll likely want to get buy in from other people who could be impacted by the release of this material. So, victims, accusers, other folks involved in the case.

So, this will take some time. And it's definitely a long shot request for this to be released. And even if it is released, it doesn't resolve the question of why the attorney general is not releasing more of the material, tens of thousands of documents that she has within her power to release.

BASH: Yeah, it's true. It doesn't answer that question.

So, let's go to Kristen Holmes.

Kristen, the president just wrapped up a signing ceremony at the White House. He didn't mention anything about this topic. What are you hearing from sources inside the White House about how they feel and more importantly, how the president feels about where this saga is right now at almost at a little after 4:00 Eastern on Friday.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Dana, not only did he not mention it, but he ignored questions that we were shouting at him. He actually stopped, seemed to listen to the questions, all of them, unsurprisingly, centered around what he was going to do with "The Wall Street Journal".

I particularly asked, why not go further than just trying to unseal this grand jury testimony, particularly as Paula said the courts might balk at that. And plus, his own supporters have been calling for him to do more.

He clearly did not want to talk about this. But when you do talk to people at the White House, they are feeling better today than they were two weeks ago. They have been nothing but on the defense since this memo came out, since President Trump essentially laid into his own supporters, several days ago when this memo came out saying, why are we still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? He's dead. He was a creep. I don't know why people won't move on.

And I was told at the time by his supporters, by MAGA loyalists that he was trying to signal to them to go to a different topic, but they weren't ready to do that, and they weren't going to do that.

And now the White House feels and how President Trump feels is they feel like they are on the offensive. They feel like they have had so many of their supporters now rally around him. And this article. They have a common enemy in this fake story that they say is fake. And they can fight against that together.

Now, where this actually goes seems unclear. We do not know for sure that he is actually sued "The Wall Street Journal". We also still have a lot of questions. What are they going to do if the courts don't unseal those documents? Does it end here? What happens next?

And I can tell you from talking to these people who are big supporters of President Trump, but also even bigger personalities online and podcasts, they want more answers, and they're not going to stop pushing on this.

[16:05:05]

BASH: Yeah, that is pretty clear. Kristen, thank you so much.

Paula, stand by.

My panel here joins me in THE ARENA. Senior political correspondent for "The Wall Street Journal," Molly Ball; CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein; former communications director for the DNC, Mo Elleithee; and senior adviser for the Trump 2024 campaign, and many more Trump campaigns and events, Bryan Lanza.

I want to pick up where Kristen left off about the strategy that we have seen from the president. It has taken lots of twists and turns in trying to manage the revolt among those big MAGA megaphones.

So, let's set the table with that. Starting ten days ago, when he was asked about that Justice Department memo saying Jeffrey Epstein was killed -- excuse me -- killed himself, and that he didn't have a client list.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Then a few days later, last Saturday, as MAGA's biggest stars fixated on this issue at a conservative conference, the president posted a very lengthy plea and included this quote, "Let's not waste time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein. Somebody that nobody cares about."

But of course, as we have been discussing, people did continue to care and talk a lot about it, leading the president, who was losing patience, to try a new approach this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: These files were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama. They were made up by the -- Biden.

I don't understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody. It's pretty boring stuff. It's sordid, but it's boring. And I don't understand why it keeps going.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And then the president's anger really seemed to peak on Wednesday. He lashed out, writing, quote, "My past supporters have brought, excuse me, brought into this bullshit." That's his words, not mine. "Hook, line and sinker. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats' work."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It's all been a big hoax. It's perpetrated by the Democrats and some stupid Republicans and foolish Republicans fall into the net. And so, they try and do the Democrats' work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now, attempting to beat a conspiracy gone bad with another conspiracy, as you just heard, it didn't really work. In fact, it created even more backlash in some MAGA quarters. Then last night, "The Wall Street Journal" story hit, and it's a story that, for most, would be a political nightmare. For him right now, it was a political gift because finally, he could rally supporters who are mad at him behind a common target of disdain. And that is the media. And again, he did say he plans to sue "The Wall Street Journal" and its owner, his sometime friend Rupert Murdoch.

Bryan Lanza, you have such a window into, obviously, Donald Trump and the people in his world inside the White House. Donald Trump himself, but also the MAGA world that is giving him so much grief over this. Where do things really stand right now?

BRYAN LANZA, SENIOR ADVISER, TRUMP 2024 CAMPAIGN: Listen, I think the president has to find some type of release valve to take some of the pressure off. The grand jury, asking for the grand jury testimonies, one valve. Hopefully it works, but there's definitely going to need to be a release.

I mean, the base, the social media, all these components were involved in MAGA. I mean, that's all I hear. You know, I have real work, I have clients, but it's still all I hear every hour is the president has to do something. What is he doing? What's his team doing?

I've never experienced anything like that before. And I've been involved in Trump world since nearly the beginning. And it's -- you know, it's -- I think he -- there's clearly a path, right? You know, there's a path out, release more documents. Let's see what the grand jury does.

And I think that provides something. But the last ten days have just been clumsy.

BASH: Clumsy?

LANZA: Yeah.

BASH: I mean, that's a big -- one thing I just want to follow up on that because that's a big statement. You have been involved with Trump world since pretty much the start of Trump world in politics and why do you think that it has been clumsy? Because he has -- one of the things that has been such a hallmark of Donald Trump's political career is that he has his finger on the pulse of his people.

He doesn't right now. Why?

LANZA: Well, I'm not saying he was clumsy. I said the last ten days, his staff created a lot of clumsiness in the release of these documents.

BASH: But he's the one who doesn't seem to want to release it. No?

LANZA: Yeah, well, I mean, his staff played a key role in how that process went forward. You know, is the start of any scandal. You want to try to get as much information out as possible. You don't want revolting disclosures. And there's a lot of revolving disclosures right now to keep the story alive.

You know, the firing of Comey's daughter, I think a couple days ago that added more fuel. If you're going to do those things from a communication standpoint. And president Trump knows this because he's executing this many times, you get it all out as fast as humanly possible, whatever it might be, and then let the stories trickle that way.

But you don't keep feeding it with new narratives into this. And there's been -- there's been new narratives been added to it. It's clumsy. It reminds me of single gate or Signalgate, where every day, there's a new disclosure that doesn't allow the story to die.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I think in the end, when we get to the end of the line, this will be more a problem at the grass tops for Trump than the true grass roots. I don't think this -- after the "Access Hollywood" tape, I'd be surprised if this is the issue that actually causes a lot of his, you know, grassroots voters to say, this is too much. I can't -- I can't go down the line with you any further.

But I do think his reaction to this is quite revealing of a larger dynamic of his second term, which he feels almost in a position where he is impregnable, cannot and should not be questioned by any institution, has no tolerance for it.

I mean, the comments about his own voters in in in truth social and about Republican members of Congress. I mean, this is -- this is a guy who feels and you see it in, you know, myriad ways every day. He feels completely unbound. And that, I think, in the long run, is a dangerous attitude for a politician to have, because you make the kind of mistakes you're talking about when you feel that no one really should be in a position of questioning what you're doing. Certainly no one on your own team.

BASH: I'm not so sure. And far be it from me to disagree with some of your analysis, the great Ron Brownstein, but I'm not so sure, and we'll see if this is analogous to access Hollywood because of an important thing. And that is, the people who are going to vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. They really didn't want Hillary Clinton, and they really were already all in on Donald Trump.

This is so deep because it goes into the QAnon conspiracies that predated Donald Trump. And it is about not just those conspiracies, but about the deep state and people. So confused about why Donald Trump, who is now in there and promised to get rid of the deep state, including and especially try to find whatever answers they think that there are in these Epstein files, why he's not doing it.

MOLLY BALL, SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: I think that's right and I think that, you know, the people in MAGA world who have been the most ginned up about this believe the most deeply in Donald Trump, and they don't believe that he could be hiding anything. And I would and I will say -- so they're looking for him to release what they believe has to be out there. And they believe has to be dirt on other people, other elites, other -- other, you know, global network of pedophiles or what have you. I will say, I do want to defend "The Wall Street Journal", and I was not involved in this story, but it is obvious we do not do fake news at "The Wall Street Journal". It is not fake.

And -- but I do think that the president has regained his footing a little bit by being able to, as you said before, rally his supporters around a common enemy. That's always his M.O. That was his M.O. with Hillary Clinton as well, right? Whatever they might have thought of his behavior, his supporters could agree with him that they had to defeat her.

And so, he needs that common enemy to keep people in his camp. He has it now. The question is kind of like when Pam Bondi gave them the binders in February.

BASH: We actually have images of that.

(CROSSTALK)

BALL: -- down the road until the next unsatisfying disclosure causes another uproar.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, I think that the binders probably were the beginning of the backlash. You're nodding your head.

LANZA: It was a gift.

BASH: It was a gift?

LANZA: It was a gift.

BASH: Gift to whom?

LANZA: Democrats.

BASH: Why?

LANZA: Because they can talk about this, because we're not talking about, you know, the tax cuts. We're not talking anything about the agenda. We're not talking immigration. I think the first three segments of the show is Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah, it's a huge gift.

BASH: Well, Paula, I do want to bring you back in because Bryan talked about the release valve. It's pretty clear that the president is hoping that release valve is whatever happens, if anything happens with the justice department asking for some things to be revealed. You're shaking your head.

REID: Yeah. No, sorry, Mr. President, that's not going to do it. Because the people that really care about this, they know that that is just, again, a tiny sliver of the evidence. And again, it goes back to what DOJ and the FBI have. They have tens of thousands of documents.

And the attorney general signaled that she was reviewing that. They sort of let people believe that they would release more. And there are very valid reasons to keep some of that redacted or sealed to protect victims. But I don't think even if they do release some grand jury material, that's going to satisfy these questions. I also disagree that it's just the president's staff or even the attorney general that are at fault here.

Pam Bondi does not operate outside of the wishes of this president, so he owns this as much as she does or her staff in the choreography here has been disastrous. They should have done this before releasing her memo. That could have bought them some time.

BASH: But that got leaked.

REID: Well, yes. And -- but they could have done this request to the judge first to buy them some time and say, look, we're doing some stuff like we are trying. We kick the can down the road. They could have also tapped a U.S. attorney, but to draw this conclusion and flip flop on a promise that is so critical to the base, I too have never seen anything like this in covering Trump, and I do not think that this request, even if granted, is going to make this go away.

BASH: Yeah. Go ahead, Mo.

MO ELLEITHEE, SENIOR SPOKESMAN, 2008 HILLARY CLINTON CAMPAIGN: I think that's exactly right. Look, going back to the Biden administration, he was doing very, very well in the opinion polls until Afghanistan. And one of the reasons that hurt him so much was because it undercut a core tenet of his -- the rationale of his candidacy that he was going to bring competence back to the White House. And that looked less than competent to a lot of Americans.

This feels a little bit like that to some extent. Donald Trump has held this grip on his people, in large part because he promises to be the guy that's going to bring transparency to Washington, and he's going to be the guy who's going to take on the establishment that's hiding stuff from everybody. Well, right now, he kind of looks like the establishment that's hiding stuff from everybody.

Now, do I think that means you're going to see a mass exodus of support? No, but it does take the shine off of him a little bit. And where those people can go to vent their frustration are the midterm elections. And that's why I think you see so many Republican members of Congress kind of twisting themselves into knots, figuring out how to deal with this, because that's -- they're the ones who could suffer the political price for this.

BASH: We're going to have to sneak in a quick break.

You're right, Bryan, we do have more on this to talk about after the break.

Paula Reid, thank you so much for your insights and your reporting. More on the Epstein drama as we wait to see if that filing is going to happen from the attorney general and the Justice Department.

Plus, we're going to talk with one member of Congress as leadership on the Hill braces for possible bipartisan votes on whether to release the so-called Epstein files.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:21:35]

BASH: Welcome back to THE ARENA where we are waiting to see if the Department of Justice formally files its request in the Southern District of New York, asking a judge to unseal portions of the grand jury material in the Jeffrey Epstein case. That, of course, after President Trump asked Attorney General Pam Bondi yesterday, late yesterday, to unseal pertinent testimony related to the accused sex trafficker.

My panel is back.

You mentioned this, Molly, and again, you work for "The Wall Street Journal". You were not involved in this reporting directly, but obviously you stand by all of the reporting and that actually -- that makes a lot of sense because "The Wall Street Journal" went out on a big, big limb here to report this and did it in the face of threats even before they published. But the way that this is rallying MAGA back and pulling them back into the Trump tent in a way that we haven't seen in ten days, is really interesting.

For example, Steve Bannon, who was really vocal in in his criticism of how Trump handled this, generally says we are finally on offense. President Trump has had enough and is fighting back against his real enemies. Of course, he's referring to the media there.

And then watch what happened with Jack Posobiec. He is a MAGA supporter and somebody who has been critical until now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACK POSOBIEC, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: They're treating you like fools. They're treating the American people like fools. They're treating the MAGA movement like fools.

And let me tell you something, MAGA hat stays on. All right? The MAGA hat stays on. The MAGA hat is fully on. We're locked in. We're focused.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Molly?

BALL: Well, look, I think it's an incredible irony, right? That when people didn't know what might be out there on including potentially on Trump, they were mad at him. But now that we have seen a taste of what actually might be concealed in all these various files, they don't they you know, the curiosity is not quite the same. And in fact, as Bannon said, you know, there's a -- there's a much more of a feeling of unity and solidarity in MAGA world.

Now, does that last? I don't know, but I think to your point about Signalgate earlier, like that's not something people are still talking about, even though we didn't really get answers to a lot of the loose threads of that. And that, I think, is what the White House is hoping for, is that this doesn't -- this dies down as a sort of daily drumbeat.

And maybe it's something a few people are still curious about. But the way that this was consuming the entire administration, that does not feel quite as intense now as it did before. And, you know, is there still a chance that there are -- there are more. Either there are more shoes to drop or there are other developments, or people just don't let it die?

Sure. But it is not anywhere near the intensity that it has been at. When the president was trying to get people to not be interested in something that they were just naturally interested in.

LANZA: Listen, I agree, I think they've done, you know, the last 36 hours, they've done a good job of putting an extinguisher to some of these flames. Hopefully, there is this valve.

But by the way, if the -- if the -- if the grand jury doesn't grant it now they have another person to blame. We're asking for transparency.

[16:25:00]

The courts who have failed us for a number of years now, they continue to fail the victims. They continue to do this.

I think he has, you know, in the last 36 hours, he's developed multiple pathways out of this to release some pressure.

Obviously, "The Wall Street Journal" has been a unifying force for MAGA. It always seems to work that way.

But, you know, I think, you know, the thing that I hear most recently from MAGA is like, we know there's nothing there, because if there was something there, Biden would have released it. And I think that's the one thing that's resonating the most is like, if there really was something that Trump's trying to hide, you better believe Biden would have released it and it just hasn't been released. So this is much ado about nothing. Its just clumsiness, mismanagement, and how the process works. But, you know, hes got targets and were all going to be hitting them.

BROWNSTEIN: So, the fact that they all rallied around so much is why I think its ultimately more of a grasstops than a grassroots issue, because, you know, back -- going all the way back to 2016, there's a substantial share of Trump voters who hold lots of doubts about him on all sorts of fronts. Character volatility, whatever. But they have always looked past those because they believe he is fighting the forces in American life that they dislike, that they think either disdain them or marginalizing them. Hollywood, elite universities, the deep state, the media.

And he, I think, perennially has the ability to bring that coalition back together by fighting against those institutions. And so, like I said, I can't see this as the one that suddenly is going to move his approval rating among Republicans down to 72 or 75 percent. But there is an incentive at the grasstops to -- assuming that Trump is somehow immune to any of these revelations, that they can keep the drumbeat going.

BASH: I just want to dive a little bit deeper into what "The Wall Street Journal" actually reported, Mo, and I'll let you take this one. It's Jeffrey Epstein's friend sent him body letters for a 50th birthday album. One was from Donald Trump.

The letter bearing Trump's name, which was reviewed by the journal, is body. Like others in the album, it contains several lines typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman's breasts, and the future president's signature is a squiggly Donald below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

Sorry. Go for it. ELLEITHEE: Yeah. No thanks for tossing this one to me.

Look, we referenced "Access Hollywood" earlier. In a lot of ways, this feels like that. And there was a lot of immediate outrage when "The Wall Street Journal" story hit and a lot of people took to social media to start sort of trolling the president on this, his people see that, and they say, either its not true, or if it is, that's just boys being boys, right?

It's just locker room talk the way that they did around access Hollywood.

And so, you know, I saw a couple of Democrats out there trolling him with references to drawings or whatever. I don't think that's the right approach here. I think the right approach here is this is a guy who promised you he was going to be one thing, and like every other time he's made a promise, he's let you down.

He said he was going to be the voice of transparency. He said he was going to be the guy who takes on the establishment. He has -- he has the -- he has an out here. He can just release everything, but he's choosing not to. So, guys like he's -- he's letting you down, he's disappointing you.

BASH: You were there for "Access Hollywood". Do you see a similarity?

LANZA: Gosh, it was just such a blur. "Access Hollywood". This -- I've been able to breathe.

Yeah. No, I mean, I think from the beginning, from "Access Hollywood", we knew we had a hard challenge ahead of us. We knew we all had to sort of put our head down. And I think at the time in social media, it's like, burn the ships, you know, Cortez, you burn the ships because there's no back.

Here, there's -- it doesn't have that same intensity. It has some intensity, but it doesn't feel overwhelming intensity. "Access Hollywood" is a direct hit. This is, you know.

BROWNSTEIN: On a day that he had brought Clinton accusers to the debate.

LANZA: Yeah, it was a direct hit.

BROWNSTEIN: I mean, I mean, that the contrast on that on that day.

But I do think I think there is something revealing that his reaction to this in some ways, is the most revealing part of it, because he is not at a point where he believes he should be or can be questioned by any -- by anyone, especially within the Republican Party. I mean, he's rolled the Congress multiple times on multiple fronts. John Roberts, in the end, has let him do what he wants far more often than not. And the way he reacted to any kind of hint of dissent within his own ranks, I think, is -- shows you you're on a path that you are going to make mistakes. If you are -- if you think that what you are doing is that above being questioned. ELLEITHEE: When you tell people --

BASH: Perceived as not necessarily dismissive of dissent, but as maybe he has something to hide?

[16:30:00]

I'm not saying he does, but that is another way to take it.

ELLEITHEE: But to that point, like when you tell people, I don't want your support anymore, enough times, like at some point, I don't think he's there now, but at some point they say, okay, they say okay. And that's part of the political risk here.

BALL: He's never said that, right?

ELLEITHEE: He's never said that.

BALL: He has always returned the adoration that he gets from his core base. And that is a deeply fulfilling relationship for those hardcore MAGA supporters.

We're not talking about the soft supporters who swallow their doubts to vote for the lesser evil. We're talking about the most hardcore, most true believers. Not -- they rarely turn on him, and he has never turned on them.

BASH: All right. Everybody, stand by. Up next, a looming showdown in Congress over a potential vote. Maybe as soon as next week on releasing those so-called Epstein files.

Democratic Congresswoman Madeline Stansbury is here live.

Plus, new reporting on the stunning news from CBS. What CBS insiders are now saying after top Democrats suggest presidential politics played a role in the decision to cancel "The Late Show".

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): He wants to make the law firms afraid. He wants to make universities afraid. He wants to make immigrants afraid. He wants to make citizens afraid. He wants to make news organizations, CBS and Paramount afraid. He wants to make ABC afraid. And he is succeeding.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:35:48]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MELANIE STANSBURY (D-NM): You guys are so weak that you won't even vote to release the files. It's 11:20 p.m. in the middle of the night and -- UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The gentlelady will suspend.

STANSBURY: -- once again, you are --

UNIDENTIFED MALE: The gentlelady will suspend. The house is not in order.

STANSBURY: -- trying to jam your dark agenda through Congress at the dark of night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The gentlelady will suspend. The House is not in order.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: That was Democratic Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, criticizing her Republican counterparts for refusing to hold a vote on the release of information related to Jeffrey Epstein.

The House did pass a sweeping bill to formalize billions in cuts to federal spending.

Joining me now to discuss is Congresswoman Stansbury, who serves on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and is also the top Democrat on the so-called House DOGE Subcommittee.

Thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it.

A lot to get to. I do want to start with that "Wall Street Journal" story, though, that allegedly, Donald Trump wrote a risque letter to Epstein for his 50th birthday, which I should note Donald Trump vehemently denies is true.

STANSBURY: Well, risque is a light way to put it, of course. But, you know, Donald Trump's been doing this his entire life. There's so many stories about how he paid off papers to hide stories. And this sounds no different. In fact, in his own Truth Social last night, he basically admitted that he asked Rupert Murdoch to bury this story, and now he's talking about suing.

BASH: Well, in fairness, he said kill it because it's not true.

STANSBURY: Right, yes. Well, I don't -- I don't -- I don't want to give him that much credit. That's what he said on his Truth Social. But yes, of course, I mean, he has a long history of trying to bury stories.

But the truth is, we all know Donald Trump's history. I mean, he's been sued in civil court. We know that he has a history of sexual abuse of women. So, nothing about this story is surprising. And I think that's why not only Democrats, but Republicans and his own base are demanding the release of these files is because why would he be trying so hard to change the conversation if there wasn't something to see there?

BASH: Right. It's -- Republicans in his own base, some of them and Democrats, they're kind of first in line on this because of all of the times that people who are now in very high levels in his government promised that they would do just that if they -- if they won reelection.

On that, we did hear the president last night, as all of this was kind of bubbling up. Say that he asked the attorney general to produce, quote, pertinent testimony related to Epstein. We're still waiting to see if the Justice Department files and if they do, whether or not they will even be successful in court.

STANSBURY: Yeah. I mean, so the attorney general, I think as a wag towards the MAGA base, has said that she'll work to try to unseal the grand jury testimony, but that's not what people are asking for. They're asking for the DOJ's Epstein files, which she herself was said was sitting on her desk for months.

We're talking files of client lists. We're talking video footage. She said there was hours and hours of video footage of the sexual abuse of minors on Jeffrey Epstein's island. And now suddenly, it's gone.

I mean, the White House literally had an event with influencers and gave them binders, promising to give them Epstein list. So, I think MAGA is fully in its right to be enraged right now at Donald Trump, because he's reneged on his promise to his own base.

BASH: This has produced a rare bipartisan alliance between Republicans who want answers and Democrats respectfully, who may want answers. But you're also very happy to keep stirring the pot because his base is not happy with him.

Question is, does congress have real power to make that happen to get these released, or does it have to go through the courts?

STANSBURY: Yeah, I mean, you have to think about these things both politically and legally and legally speaking, the courts is the way to compel evidence to be presented to the public. And unfortunately, the people's attorney is the Department of Justice, which, of course, is very much in the business of covering for Donald Trump right now.

[16:40:09]

But Congress does have an oversight responsibility. The oversight committee, which I serve on in a leadership role, has a responsibility. But unfortunately, the Republican serving on that committee are not willing to act right now either. And that's why winning back the House is so important, because in order to perform appropriate oversight and to be able to compel evidence for the people, we're going to need to have power inside the House.

BASH: There is an old adage about politics, which is effectively when your opponent is in trouble, get out of the way and let them continue to stay in trouble. And don't try to insert yourself in the conversation. That is not what Democrats are doing right now. Instead, you're sort of jumping in and being part of the conversation, helping to stoke it. Why? STANSBURY: Well, like I said, there's both legal oversight and

political reasons. I mean, I think that's obvious, but let's be clear too. I mean, Democrats have been trying to hold the president accountable since he first came into office and began breaking the law during his first term. He was impeached twice. He was found to have broken multiple crimes by a New York court and is a 34-time convicted felon. He was convicted in a civil court for sexual crimes.

I mean, we have been working to hold Donald Trump accountable since day one, and this is yet again, another place where now he's clearly involved in a cover up inside the White House, while he's also engaged in all sorts of other criminal activities.

So, our question is, what are you trying to hide? Compel the evidence, show us if you're not on the Epstein list and you're not in this video evidence, bring it forward.

And I think the other thing that is really, you know, points to the fact that he is likely in there is that the Republicans themselves are trying to cover for him. There was a procedural vote on the floor in which they voted against compelling the release of the Epstein files, and multiple times in the rules committee. And if you followed it yesterday on the Hill, the Rules Committee leadership themselves was in closed door conversations with Johnson all day because they didn't want to be in front of the public having to talk about Epstein.

BASH: Well, good luck with that these days, Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it.

STANSBURY: Thank you so much.

BASH: And up next, is the final curtain for a storied TV show really just an opening act for the president's vendetta against the media and media companies, big and small? We'll explain after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:47:01]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": The network will be ending the late show in May and --

(BOOS)

COLBERT: Yeah, I share your feelings.

It's not just the end of our show, but it's the end of the late show on CBS. I'm not being replaced. This is all just going away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: That was nearly 24 hours ago, and we should note that "The Late Show" is being canceled after 30 years. So, the question is still out there without real answers. Was it really all about money? As the company says, or could presidential politics, particularly President Trump's politics, have played a role here?

Now, President Trump himself posted that he, quote, absolutely loves that show, hosted by Stephen Colbert -- loves that it was canceled. I should say, while also hitting the show for its ratings. Ratings, which have -- we should note they're pretty high, I think the highest of any of the late night hosts.

And it all comes two weeks after CBS's parent company, Paramount, agreed to pay President Trump $16 million to settle a "60 Minutes" lawsuit amid a merger.

Colbert criticized that just two days before he was informed about his cancellation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COLBERT: Now, I believe that this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles, it's big fat bribe, because this all comes as Paramount's owners are trying to get the Trump administration to approve the sale of our network to a new owner, Skydance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: CBS again says the decision was purely financial, and for years there has been a warning. Lots of warning signs about late night -- late night's decline. Ratings, generally speaking, have begun to shrink as the way that people consume television has changed a lot. Ad revenue has declined 50 percent over the last six years.

Brian Stelter joins our panel.

And I want to start with you, Brian. What more are you learning? I know you've been talking to people inside CBS and in and around CBS all day.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: And even on background, even when you grant these sources anonymity to speak more candidly, they insist this really was financial. At least the financials are a pretext. There is also, though, a question about whether the future owners of CBS maybe wanted Colbert out of the picture.

Now, one of the arguments I've heard today, dana, is, hey, if this was politically motivated, we wouldn't be leaving Colbert on the air for ten more months. And that's an interesting point. You know, Colbert's contract doesn't end until May. "The Late Show" will not end until next May, so Colbert will have ten more months to roast president Trump and members of the Trump administration.

That said, however, this does -- I think today as people process this, you can sense there's a little bit of a chilling effect or concern about a chilling effect.

[16:50:07]

The Writers Guild of America, which represents writers who work on the show, they are out with a pretty bold statement this afternoon, calling on the New York state attorney general to investigate the matter.

Here's a part of the statement, quote, "Given Paramount's recent capitulation to President Trump in the CBS news lawsuit, the Writers Guild has significant concerns that 'The Late Show's' cancellation is a bribe sacrificing free speech to curry favor with the Trump administration, as the company looks for merger approval.

And a source close to Colbert say to me today that this feels like a situation where Colbert and the late show are a casualty of that pending merger.

And there's a broader concern at play here that I think folks all around the world can relate to a country where you can't lampoon a sitting president is not a free country, a country where you can't publish editorial cartoons or have a late-night monologues, or have satires about the president is not a Democratic country.

Of course, we're not there. We're not there at all right now. There are lots and lots of figures who are famous for mocking and deriding president Trump. But the idea that Colbert might be taken off the air, that his voice might be silenced. It certainly is creating a little bit of a chill in the air today, Dana.

BASH: Yeah. All right. Brian, thank you. Don't go far.

Ron Brownstein, you spend most of your time in Los Angeles. You certainly have a sense of the way that, frankly, there is a collision coming. And we've seen it in several examples of big media companies.

Para -- we're talking about Paramount right now. We saw Meta settle, Disney, ABC, and even Twitter and X, or X settled. But it was because of allegations when it was Twitter.

BROWNSTEIN: Whatever else you can say about Donald Trump, he is a keen student of human weakness. He takes the measure of institutions, and he is watching big institutions buckle to his determination to transform the federal government. Every asset it has, into a mechanism for rewarding his friends and punishing his enemies. It's what I was saying before. This is just another manifestation of that tweet today, that dancing on the grave tweet, he feels utterly unbound.

He does not feel there is an effective pushback coming from any direction from Congress, the courts, Democrats. Some institutions have fought him many more, whether it's universities or law firms or these big media organizations have conceded to him. And I think he feels that he can be unimaginably overt in doing things. I had a conversation with John Dean a few months ago who was talking about how Nixon, you know, the enemies list was a deeply held secret. They felt that if it got out that they were trying to punish their enemies, it would be devastating, and he would be embarrassed by it.

That tweet today to me again, like the tweet about his supporters that I talked about earlier, is so indicative of a mindset that there are no boundaries on me. And institutions too many of them, rather than collecting and trying to resist this together, are trying to cut their own deal. And that simply does not work.

BASH: Mo?

ELLEITHEE: I don't disagree with any of that. Look, Paramount says this has nothing to do, that this is purely a financial decision, has nothing to do with politics. Those two things are clearly not mutually exclusive. And the fact that they see how he has targeted big media companies, I mean, in his first term, he was going after NBC, threatening to pull their license, which he doesn't have the ability to do, but threatening to pull their license and take NBC off the air.

Paramount has a huge dog in this, right? They are trying to get this incredibly lucrative merger done. They can either buckle to him and try to grease those wheels a little bit, or they can stand up against him, and that's and know that he could, you know, go after them.

LANZA: Or it could be he's not funny, Colbert, having disdain for the American president and his supporters, is not a profit-making venture, which it's proven so. And you get canceled, like, you know, like every other show when you hit the ratings. I think this is an example for --

BASH: They're not just canceling him, they're canceling the show. They're not replacing him.

LANZA: Well, late, late night is changing. Thats a different thing. Youve seen the revenue go down, but at the end of the day, having disdain, if you're an entertainer, you have disdain for half the country. You're not going to have an economic successful model and especially --

ELLEITHEE: Primetime lineup over at Fox News, right? Gutfeld over there, who has disdain for the other half of the country. And there's -- there's not that same kind of going after him, right?

LANZA: We'll see. But he's literally for four years, had disdain for the American people, and he's been rewarded by them not tuning in. This is what happens when you when you behave --

BASH: We got to sneak in a break. Thank you all. Thank you, Brian Stelter.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:59:26]

BASH: Thank you so much to my panel.

And if you missed any of today's show, you can always catch up by listening to THE ARENA's podcast. Just scan the QR code at the bottom of your screen and follow wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow the show on X and Instagram @TheArenaCNN.

And be sure to tune in this Sunday, 9:00 a.m. Eastern for "STATE OF THE UNION". Among the guests joining my colleague Jake Tapper is Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, Republican Representative Tim Burchett, and the former Democratic congressman from Texas, Beto O'Rourke.

But don't go anywhere because he has a whole other show that is going to happen. He's standing by. He's going to start THE LEAD right now. There he is.