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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
Trump Nominates Stephen Miran To Fill Vacant Fed Seat; Dow Tumbles As Trump's New Tariffs Kick In; Meeting Of Vance, Bondi & Others To Discuss Epstein Case Was Moved To White House After News Coverage; Cuomo: If Mamdani Is Elected Mayor, I Believe Trump Would Attempt to Assert Mor Control Over NYC; Just In: Trump Comments On Potential Meetings With Putin. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired August 07, 2025 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN HOST: -- you're not going to see me doing anything else.
[16:00:04]
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: I'm Elaine from "Seinfeld". I mean, it's like --
WHITFIELD: Oh, no, please.
KEILAR: -- pay me not to dance.
WHITFIELD: Okay. Well, now I have to see it.
KEILAR: I have something.
WHITFIELD: Okay.
KEILAR: But I'm not going to bust a move.
WHITFIELD: Okay, well, maybe. All right. Maybe as we go into THE ARENA, maybe you'll show me those Elaine moves. That's funny.
KEILAR: I think so.
WHITFIELD: Okay.
KEILAR: But I really like you, Fred. But I'm not going to show you.
WHITFIELD: Well, I'll give you the head and that's it. You know that to some music that.
KEILAR: I can do the bird one.
WHITFIELD: That's safe. You can do that in the car. You know, driving --
KEILAR: THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT starts now.
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Hi, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to THE ARENA. It's wonderful to have you with us on this Thursday.
Right now, breaking news as we come on the air, President Trump has just decided who he will nominate to fill a vacancy on the Federal Reserve's board of governors.
That news happening as a sweeping new set of tariffs comes into effect. The markets just closed. The Dow and the S&P both closing down, with the Dow down almost 300 points, the Nasdaq up just barely.
Let's go live to the White House where we find CNNs senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes.
Kristen, so who is this person? What do we know about them?
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, he currently is the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. He has become really close to President Trump and advisor, but also a media personality. In some ways, he was communicating to the public. He was doing TV constantly during the pushing of the Big, Beautiful Bill, quote/unquote, "Big, Beautiful Bill".
He was also meeting with lawmakers and top economic adviser. But the real thing to point out here is that this is -- seems as though its going to be somewhat of a shadow position on the board. We know that Miran is a loyalist. Stephen Miran is his name.
This is a temporary position. It's only going to be through January, and we were expecting something sort of like this because of all the criticism that the federal board has gotten, the federal reserve board of governors, particularly from president Trump, his team, and from really Miran himself, we have heard him be critical of the fact that there have not been lower interest rates, among other things.
So, now, you're going to see this loyalist who's going to sit in this position on the board, at least just temporarily, through January, when he's going to be re-upped and they're going to find someone to fill that role permanently? Just to be very clear, a part of this whole thing is really based in President Trump's intense dislike and anger at the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell.
We know that he has wanted to replace him, but he has been advised that that is a bad move, particularly for the markets. Wall street would not go for something like that. But now you're seeing him be able to have an opening to put at least a loyal on the loyalist on the board of governors to have read backs on everything that is going on there, and to have a voice in the room who believes what President Trump believes.
HUNT: So, Kristen, I want to bring Phil Mattingly into this conversation. He's going to join our panel in in just a second.
But, Phil, you're telling us that, you know, this guy pretty well. You know a lot about what his views are. Can you read us into that a little bit?
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: I think that the best way to probably to frame his role within this administration and actually in the months and years leading into this administration, was he could rightly be credited as one of the are one of the critical players in developing the intellectual backbone for the entire economic policy, particularly on the tariff front, that we have seen over the course of the last six, six and a half months. He served in the Treasury Department and the president's first term. He's a Harvard PhD. He's an economist, but he's also been an economist that was willing to kind of buck the mainstream trend when it came to the issues of tariffs, kind of has a seminal November 2024 paper.
If you've ever heard about the Mar-a-Lago accord, I hope you haven't, because you have better things to do. But it was a very, very, very important issue, kind of a subject of fascination and fixation on Wall Street for several months because of how he talked about currency issues. But within that paper was really laying out a very expansive tariff regime that the president has more or less pursued. Not exactly to a T, but pursued.
And I think what's important about Miran, and Kristen had at this point to its in part the role of the chairman of the council of economic advisers. But he is not just provided the intellectual basis, he has also been the person coming out and defending the president, laying out why they are doing this, given the strategy that they have actually pursued. He has used the CEA and its team of economists to create the research that backs the Big, Beautiful Bill that backs the tariffs and their regime, and why they don't think it's having the effects that many mainstream economists thought that it would.
He's a very important player here. Would just note that the seat is open because somebody is leaving early. Adriana Kugler is going back to Georgetown to teach. That gave the president this opportunity. He still has to be confirmed by the Senate. He was to be a CEA chair, but this will give president, presumably a third vote in favor of his interest rate policy. There's already two, Nikki Bowman and Christopher Waller, who voted, dissented for the first time, too, in 30-plus years. Miran, once he gets confirmed, assuming he does, would be in that position as well.
[16:05:02]
HUNT: All right. Phil -- Kristen Holmes, thank you very much to her for her reporting.
Alongside Phil, we also have the rest of our panel, CNN contributor, "New York Times" journalist and podcast host Lulu Garcia-Navarro, former communications director for the DNC, Mo Elleithee, the former Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker. We're going to be joined shortly as well by Kevin O'Leary.
And Phil was just talking about the tariff regime, right? So, we have finally reached the day after months of an announcement and then a delay and then announcement and then a delay, and the market goes up and the market goes down and the market goes up and the market goes down again. We've reached the day where the tariffs are in effect.
This is a day that Donald Trump has been thinking about for a long, long time. Let's just flash back a little bit to the time that Donald Trump talked to Oprah Winfrey about this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I can't promise you everything, but I can tell you one thing. This country would make one hell of a lot of money from those people that for 25 years have taken advantage.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: That was the answer he gave when he was asked in 1988, what would you do if you were elected president of the United States? And here we are today.
Governor Walker, I'm not sure I ever imagined that it would be Republicans who would be doing this. And if you've been reading some of the banners that have been on CNN all day, its highest tariffs since the Great Depression, right? That lesson, Smoot-Hawley had been learned the hard way. A lot of people thought, now we're here.
What view are you holding, as someone who previously ran for president as a Republican, about whether the alarm over this from some free market corners was justified, or whether it's been a false alarm?
SCOTT WALKER (R), FORMER WISCONSIN GOVERNOR: Well, I'm all for free trade. I want that -- I think actually, I think the president does. He's a global businessman. He'd like to get as close to zero when it comes to tariffs as possible.
But as you saw from --
HUNT: That kind of hard to believe though.
WALKER: Well, no, no, no, I don't -- I disagree because you look back to why he said that. I think back to the '80s. He was pointing out that American workers and American employers were getting screwed. Other countries talk all about American tariffs, but we largely ignore the fact other countries have been doing this for decades.
Ronald Reagan, the king of free trade out there, punched Japan in the face with 100 percent tariffs on electronic goods when they screwed up one of their trade agreements.
So, you can be for free trade like Reagan was and still push this. In this case, he's trying to level the playing field. I'm going to ask the treasury secretary more about this. We actually have a conference about an hour and a half with our group, Young Americas Foundation. College students want to hear about, like everybody else.
HUNT: Yeah. Phil, what do you -- what's your take on him?
MATTINGLY: You're asking, who's going to be the Fed chair? We're still waiting for that.
WALKER: Right.
HUNT: We'll make us some news, governor.
WALKER: Yeah, right.
MATTINGLY: Look, I think what's fascinating about this is the Trump administration and I talked to Stephen Miran about this, it's actually quite perfect that Miran, on the day that these tariffs become actually set in place, is picked for this, this position.
I talked to Miran about this last week. They are justifiably spiking the football against those who said everything was going to collapse. Inflation was going to skyrocket. Our trading partners would immediately fight back, fire back. That hasn't happened with the exception for the most part of China.
Inflation, if you look at the underlying data, there's a lot of reasons. I think there's warning signs and some concerns. A lot of companies were holding off raising prices as they waited to see where the tariffs were actually going to land. But I think the reality is that this is a president right now that is emboldened by the experience that he's had.
And this is a White House, Miran included, that feels like what they've gotten in the framework agreements, which are not trade agreements that you or I ever covered in Congress, that Mo had to defend or attack, that Governor Walker had to try and figure out on the state level that we've ever seen before. But they're the types of things that the president believes are genuine wins. And I think the concern is that that maybe clouds judgment going forward as these things really start to bite.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I feel like I'm living in an alternative universe, I might be, but what I would say is that we haven't been living in Donald Trump's tariff world because he kept on putting them on and taking them off. And the biggest trading partners of the United States, China, Mexico and Canada, he simply punted on those.
And even now, for example, when you look at Canada, most of Canadian goods are exempted because of the free trade agreement that he negotiated in his first term. So, what we are actually seeing is not this massive wave of tariffs that he had been promising, but this more incremental backwards and forwards, very destabilizing tariffs that I think got priced in by the markets. And I think we're still just has sort of delayed the effects of. So, I don't know that I agree with the assessment that somehow this is a big win for the Trump administration.
HUNT: All right. So, we also are joined now by the host of "Shark Tank" and the chairman of O'Leary Ventures, Kevin O'Leary, who I think may be in his -- did you say he's in his car? Yes, he's in his car.
Hello, sir. Very grateful to have you on the show. Thank you for pulling over to spend some time --
KEVIN O'LEARY, CHAIRMAN, O'LEARY VENTURES: Great to be here.
HUNT: -- some time with us.
Tell us, I mean --
[16:10:00]
O'LEARY: I just got this. I just want to tell you, I just got this car, and I couldn't help myself. It's a 50th edition Porsche 911. I'm a huge Porsche collector. Just love it.
HUNT: And so, this is it's inaugural appearance on television?
O'LEARY: Well, I got to tell you, you press the turbo button, you leave your teeth behind in this.
HUNT: Well, congratulations on the car.
Tell us a little bit about what you think --
O'LEARY: Thank you.
HUNT: -- about the markets and what we've seen from the Trump administration so far. I mean, clearly, as has been pointed out on the panel, Canada is such a critical piece of this. And we've talked about this in the last couple of times you've been -- you've been on with us. Is this where you expected us to be?
O'LEARY: No, but, you know, judging by what the world thinks and the world is -- can be monitored every day by the S&P 500 hitting new highs. They've come to the conclusion that although it's an erratic, volatile negotiation, one day it's 100 percent, one day it's 10 percent, whatever, that in the end, rational minds will prevail and that there'll be some kind of reciprocal tariffs in the 10 to 15 percent range.
I know you brought up Canada. That's a very good point. There is an existing agreement and there are zero tariffs on the most important import to the U.S. and that's energy. And that's existed for quite a while.
And so, you start to think about fine tuning. What about potash? What about steel? What about aluminum? These are critical elements for the U.S. economy. And those are not covered by the Canadian free trade agreement.
So there's a lot of pain coming there and on and on with India and Switzerland, et cetera.
And so -- but I think basically, you can be very critical of the administration because of the mixed signals. But the market isn't. And you have to use that as a metric. You have to look at it and say the money itself is not that worried.
HUNT: Mo Elleithee, let me let you weigh in here because you haven't had a chance to yet, as someone who is has been a critic of Republican policies over the long term, I don't know if you were as surprised as I am that this is what we're getting from Republican administration, but what do you make of it all?
MO ELLEITHEE, FORMER COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, DNC: Yeah. I think Lulu's exactly right that we haven't had to deal with this yet. We haven't felt the sting of these tariffs yet. And we're about to start. And there are some indicators, some indicators that we can feel in our everyday lives.
At the end of the day, we're seeing prices start to go up. I have less money in my wallet today than I did yesterday. I have -- the markets may not be blowing up. They're down and they down since Trump took office, I have less money in my retirement account today than I did yesterday, and I checked my 401(k) balance fairly regularly.
Your first mistake, Mo.
ELLEITHEE: Right, seriously. I should wait until January 20th, 2029 to look again.
But that is the reality for so many Americans. Some of these fights he's picking are not fights. He had to pick, right? He's levying tariffs on nations that we have a trade surplus with in in some cases.
So I don't know that a lot of people fully appreciate or understand what the bluster is all about, because it hasn't really paid -- it hasn't really taken effect yet. And for a guy who promised that he was going to make all of our lives easier economically once he was elected, for a lot of people, their lives are a little bit harder.
HUNT: Kevin O'Leary, I want to give you the last word on this. And, you know, I think to that big picture question, I hear what you're saying about the money and the markets and that that's how you've oriented a lot of how you think about it, what you say. But most point about how regular people feel -- I mean, we are seeing a populist surge around the globe. In some ways, that's been a destabilizing force.
And in many ways, tariffs is -- are taxes on regular people, something that perhaps is going to exacerbate the growing divide between the haves and the have-nots worldwide. Does that concern you at all in a -- in a big picture way?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: As you're sitting in your Porsche, I just want to say.
HUNT: I was -- I was going to finish with that, but yes.
O'LEARY: I'm an entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur. And I want to make sure you understand I started with nothing. I worked my tail off.
The American Dream is what got me in this Porsche. So, I'm very, very thankful and I want to pass it on, obviously. But having said that, I'm a policy guy. That's what matters to me. I look at policy.
And, you know, if you have tariffs in Europe against American products at 15 percent, you know, just intuitively what's wrong with applying the same on a reciprocal basis, which is actually what the market believes is going to happen.
[16:15:03]
I don't see a problem there.
And so I know the thing that people have such a hard time with -- and I'll give you an example. That meeting with Apple yesterday, Trump does not mind letting the cameras in, watching sausage being made.
So, if you have a bad meeting with Trump, the market value of your company goes down. Look at what happened with Intel today when he took a shot at the CEO, saying he wants him fired.
Tim Cook goes in there with a couple of graphs. Nobody knows the real details. Billions are added to the market cap.
So there's good meetings and bad meetings with Trump. This is an unusual administration, to say the least. I mean, that's the problem. No one has ever done it this way. It's hard to get used to.
But again, just 88 days ago, 88 trading sessions, we were at a low on April 3rd. We made it all back.
So, something's working. I don't give credit to politicians. I give credit to policy. Something's working.
I'm going to get my Porsche and driving to the sunset now.
HUNT: I was going to say, it's certainly working for you, Kevin O'Leary. Thank you very much.
Phil Mattingly, thank you, as always, for bringing your expertise here as well.
The rest of our panel is going to stand by.
Coming up next here, new CNN reporting just coming in on a dinner last night at the White House.
Plus, a new twist in the race for New York mayor. Candidates reacting to the president's threat to take over the city, competing for who can be the bigger roadblock for the White House.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDREW CUOMO, NEW YORK MAYORAL CANDIDATE: Would you want to deal with me every day? You don't even like to deal with me in these press conferences.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:20:58] HUNT: All right. Welcome back.
A theme this hour, we've got more breaking news. A meeting last night of several high level Trump administration officials that had been supposed to be held at the vice president's residence. It was moved to the White House after extensive news coverage.
Vice President J.D. Vance was joined at the meeting by the White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche. Blanche, who formerly was Donald Trump's personal attorney, met with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell last month, and the White House is actively considering releasing an audio recording or transcripts of the interview.
CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams joins the panel now.
Elliot, welcome back.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Hi.
HUNT: I'm trying to figure out how what percentage of the segments we have done together in the last several weeks have been on this exact topic.
WILLIAMS: This and Taylor Swift, I think those are the two.
HUNT: But when the White House is weighing this, right? I mean, first of all, we know there's a lot of division among this group of people. Pam Bondi, Kash Patel. It doesn't sound like Dan Bongino. Or at least he's not on the list that we just read through, but there's definitely been tension there.
WILLIAMS: Yeah.
HUNT: What -- are there any legal problems or challenges with releasing a transcript like the one of Blanche and Ghislaine Maxwell? Like, I mean, how would how are you even thinking about this?
WILLIAMS: Just the transcript could be released. The legal challenge would be in the form of if grand jury materials were to be released, because those -- the law requires that they be kept secret.
Now, if they are thinking about charging anybody with a crime, the last thing on earth they want to be doing is releasing any transcripts publicly, because that will out their investigative tech -- tactics and techniques. It'll out who their personnel are, it'll out people that they're investigating and maybe even victims as well. So that's -- that's one big step.
But to step back, the idea of this meeting happening at all, we really should name and identify as a huge, huge, huge problem. The FBI director runs a law enforcement agency. He's not a cabinet official. Yes, he was politically appointed. And I understand that's how it works. But there's a long tradition of separation between our law enforcement entities and our Justice Department and the political leadership in the White House. It goes back to Republican and Democratic administrations.
So, the FBI director, the deputy attorney general and the attorney general really have no business doing PR damage control with the White House on what really is a political matter for them.
HUNT: How unusual is it for the FBI director to go to the White House, period, the end?
WILLIAMS: It's pretty remarkable. Now, maybe if there's -- you know, if you're a post office or something like that, you know, a ceremonial event they might do together with political leadership, but it's very, very rare. And for -- with good cause, because when you talk about law enforcement, you're talking about taking peoples freedom away, putting them in jail.
These are questions that really you don't want, at least the impression that the White House has a thumb on the scale of its just the impression, it's just what the public takes away from it.
And I understand that the president appoints the FBI director and the attorney general and the deputy attorney general. Fine, I get it. Like they're politically appointed, but once they get into that role, they really ought not be at these political meetings.
It just -- you know, and you see it. You, you know, every time it comes up, it's really a big problem. And people should not get used to this being something that we see every day.
HUNT: Fair point. Governor Walker, why is it do you think that the White House is interested in putting out the conversation between Todd Blanche and Ghislaine Maxwell?
WALKER: Well, you've heard me say this repeatedly here. I think whether you're a Democrat or Republican, left or right, people want transparency. They want to know what's going on. They want to know the circumstances.
And to the point about grand juries and otherwise, if that's the case in some of this information, then explain why. Explain what's being withheld and why.
But for anything else, this transcript or otherwise, I'd say get it out there. The American people want to know. They want -- they don't want to feel like there's some sort of privilege protecting --
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But all of it.
WALKER: Absolutely.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Selectively, some of it.
(CROSSTALK)
WALKER: It's not a partisan issue.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I think that can cause them problems if they selectively choose parts of it and don't give other parts of it, then that's going to create a whole another problem.
[16:25:02]
WALKER: I totally agree, you want to get out. With the exception of obviously if there's the courts ordering some part of a grand jury, but even in that instance, explain what it is that is restricting any more than that.
But, you know, we were just on yesterday and, you know, Republicans, when Democrats in say, oh, they're withholding or vice versa, I think people across the board want to hear they just want it all out there, put as much as you can and whatever you can explain why.
WILLIAMS: The way to do it would be a checkers speech. Remember Richard Nixon sitting down looking the American people in the eye and saying, this is what my finances are. This is what the truth is. This is what I can tell you. And this is what I cannot.
No one has done that yet. No one, the attorney general, the president haven't looked into a camera and said, look, this is what we have in grand jury that we can't make public. These are what we might be able to make public. And this is what we should not make public. They have not done that.
HUNT: Yeah. But I think that would make it worse. I take your point, but unless they're going to put it all out there.
WILLIAMS: Better than what they have now, right?
HUNT: I mean, maybe.
ELLEITHEE: Nothing out. Right? They're choosing to put nothing out.
This is going to be taught in future political communications operatives schools as a textbook case on how not to handle a PR crisis, a PR crisis of their own making.
Every day they make news on it, and every day they make it worse. This governor, not bipartisan agreement. Here, put it out. Put all of it out as much as you can.
HUNT: Unfortunately, we are out of time for this ongoing conversation. Don't worry. We'll be back tomorrow. We can talk more about Jeffrey Epstein.
All right. Coming up, what Vladimir Putin is saying today about President Trump's proposal for a meeting that includes Ukraine's leader.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:30:54]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: He said something to the effect of, well, then I would have to take over New York City, right, if Mamdani was elected. I think there's something to that. It would be like Los Angeles on steroids. I think the president would like to have control of New York City.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Former New York governor, New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo warning today that President Trump's threat to take over New York city is not an empty one. Cuomo issuing that warning days after the president again suggested he might also take over the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., citing what he says is out of control crime.
Cuomo's comments, coming on the heels of a New York times report alleging that Cuomo and Trump spoke on the phone. Both the White House and Cuomo have denied that that phone call ever happened.
Despite those public denials, Cuomo's opponent, Zohran Mamdani, is using the alleged call to run against him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ZOHRAN MAMDANI, NEW YORK MAYORAL CANDIDATE: What this city deserves is a mayor who when he sees Donald Trump attacking the people of this city, will stand up and fight back. We'll not get on the phone with the architect of that vision.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Joining us now, former Chicago mayor and former U.S. ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel. Also, CNN's senior global -- political and global affairs commentator.
Mr. Emanuel, always grateful, Ambassador Emanuel, excuse me. Always grateful to have you on the show here.
What do you make of what Donald Trump has said here about New York and how Cuomo -- that this Cuomo/Trump dynamic is playing out?
RAHM EMANUEL, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: Well, first of all, you have -- I mean, in this situation, you're talking about taking if it's true, taking control of New York. I think he really wants Mamdani rather than he doesn't. Talking about taking control of D.C. government, sending troops into Los Angeles, sending the FBI out to arrest legislators from Texas state house.
So, I think there's a pattern here. This is -- let me say this. If the Republican Party used to be the party of small and less government, this is a whole new twist on it. And he's interjecting himself in places that local government, local elections let him make a decision on who they want to nominate. And I think actually there's a backhanded, more nefarious effort in what he's trying to do here.
HUNT: Yeah. And one thing that you've put out today, you have a new op-ed in "The Washington Post" that hits on some of the themes that both have gotten Mamdani in the position that he is in, perhaps also may help explain Donald Trump and the populist sentiment. You write this, quote, "The American Dream can't live up to its name
when only a 10th of the population has a shot at it. The dream has become unaffordable and inaccessible in a way that Democrats should declare unacceptable. The problem is that real generation over generation prosperity is harder to achieve today. This shouldn't be some mystery. American democracy became unstable at almost exactly the same time, the American dream became unaffordable."
Say a little bit more about how that plays into the dynamics here, because that is what Mamdani ran on.
EMANUEL: Yeah. Well, look, I think -- I mean, the core point here is when you look at kind of cost of living affordability, the number -- the first among all equals, I say, and there's housing and more importantly or more specifically homeownership. It's now literally so inaccessible that the average age for first time home buying has increased by a decade from where it was -- used to be 28. It's now 38.
And you can't have the American dream if 90 percent of the people are locked out from it. And homeownership is the cornerstone of wealth creation and the cornerstone to the American dream and major, major pillars that hold up the American dream, homeownership, saving for your retirement, your kids' education and health care have all been eroded and basically restricted to only about 10 percent of the American people.
[16:35:01]
And that is driving whether you talk about left, right or whatever, our politics in a place to instability. And I do believe there's a relationship between the American dream being unaffordable and an American democracy unstable there. Heads and tails of the same coin in the same way that the alienation among young men and homeownership are heads and tails of the same kind of also social and economic problems.
If you want to solve a lot, allow young families, the first-time homebuyers, a place at the table of buying their American dream and a slice of it.
HUNT: Yeah, it's a really, really interesting way to think about it.
Ambassador, stand by for me for just a second. We've got some new comments coming in from President Trump about that meeting. We've been reporting on about his potential discussions with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and potentially also the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Mr. President, is your deadline for Vladimir Putin agreeing to a ceasefire still stand tomorrow? Is that fluid now that the talks are --
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Say it, what?
REPORTER: Is your deadline still standing for Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire tomorrow? Or is that fluid now?
TRUMP: It's going to be up to him. We're going to -- we're going to see what he has to say. It's going to be up to him. Very disappointed.
Yeah?
REPORTER: Do you have to meet with -- does Putin have to meet with Zelenskyy in order, and before you and Putin have to meet?
TRUMP: No.
REPORTER: Or are you all --
TRUMP: No.
REPORTER: Are you hoping for --
REPORTER: So, you're willing to -- that's actually important because the president, President Putin said this morning he was pretty dismissive of this idea of meeting with President Zelenskyy.
TRUMP: Who was?
REPORTER: President Putin was.
TRUMP: I don't know, I didn't hear --
REPORTER: You're to meet with him. He doesn't have to agree to meet with Zelenskyy. Is that what you're saying?
TRUMP: No, he doesn't. No, no.
REPORTER: So, what do you think --
TRUMP: They would like to meet with me and I'll do whatever I can to stop the killing. So last month, they lost 14,000 people, killed, last month. Every week is 4,000 or 5,000 people. So I don't like long waits. I think it's a shame.
And they're mostly soldiers. They're Ukrainian and Russian soldiers. And some people from the cities where, you know, missiles are lobbed in and you'll lose 35, 40 people a night, which is terrible.
But no, mostly it's soldiers. And you're talking about, on average, 20,000 a month. Twenty thousand people are dying a month. Young, generally young people, soldiers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Let's bring in CNN anchor, chief White House correspondent, Kaitlan Collins.
Kaitlan, help us understand what -- why this is -- how this evolves, what the president has been thinking about, his potential meetings with Putin and Zelenskyy. KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Well,
Kasie, it's notable because earlier, we had been hearing from White House officials that they believed it was likely that there would need to be another meeting that was set to happen with Zelenskyy and Putin and President Trump in order for that meeting between President Trump and President Putin to happen.
But the president there and this hastily arranged Oval Office meeting that we just had right now, where reporters were called in with just a few moments notice to talk about the economy, the president there answering that question quite clearly, saying that he does not believe that there is a precondition for this meeting with President Putin, for the Russian leader to also sit down with President Zelenskyy as well.
Now, that is notable and will certainly stand out in Kyiv, because obviously they have been pushing to be included in any conversations that the United States is having about bringing this war to the end. And they have been clear to say they believe only President Trump can actually bring this war to an end by mediating between these two parties. But what the president was saying there was very clear that he wants to meet face to face with President Putin and does not believe there has to be a subsequent trilateral meeting with Zelenskyy in order for that to happen.
Now, it's still a question of when this could happen or what that could look like. And that matters because we heard from the Russian leader earlier this morning who basically was dismissive of this idea of sitting down with Zelenskyy. He said certain conditions must be met in order for him to meet with Zelenskyy, that they are far off from those conditions happening.
So, he was basically saying that this meeting is not on his radar in any way, shape or form, which is a notable comment. And of course, there is a real question of how European leaders respond to this, saying that that is not a condition and what that meeting looks like. If it goes forward and it's just president Trump and president Putin, and president Zelenskyy is not included in that.
HUNT: All right. Kaitlan Collins reporting for us -- Kaitlan, thank you very much for joining us. Really appreciate it.
And joining our panel to talk about this a little bit more is Garrett Graff. He is the author of the new book, "The Devil Reached Toward the Sky", about the -- it's an oral history of the making of the atomic bomb.
Garrett, congratulations on the book.
GARRETT GRAFF, AUTHOR, "THE DEVIL REACHED TOWARD THE SKY": Thank you. Thank you very much for joining us today.
I want to pick up where we just left off in terms of this meeting between President Trump potentially6 and President Putin. You know, when we were talking with our reporter on the ground in Kyiv yesterday, Nick Paton Walsh, he basically characterized it as a play for time from the Russian president to try to extend this -- extend this out. What do you make of that?
HUNT: Yeah, I think that that's a pretty accurate. I mean, the Putin believes that the longer this war goes on, the better it is for him.
[16:40:05]
I think it's just worth re-emphasizing how weird it is to be thinking about a high level summit at the presidential level on a sort of multi-hour basis like that -- normally these are things that take weeks or months to come together.
There's a whole level of staff work that takes place where you're looking for sort of deliverables and deals that you agree on before you even get to the event, and that sort of his improvisational diplomacy of like, let's just meet in the next couple of days and hash this thing out. If it was that easy, this war would have been settled years ago.
HUNT: A long time ago.
Ambassador Rahm Emanuel is still with us.
Rahm, you, of course, have been an ambassador yourself. You have been an advisor to presidents. You understand, to Garrett's point, what usually goes into something like this.
How would you suggest we be thinking about how the president is handling this? And especially -- I mean, this all this conversation started after Steve Witkoff went and met with Vladimir Putin, and he seems to be playing a unique role here as well for the president.
EMANUEL: Well, I mean, this doesn't -- this is a part of a pattern. This is not like new. All of a sudden, it looks like the audible that it is.
But there's all this confusion of who's coming, who's not coming, what's usually you have months and months of negotiation. You know, Putin has put out a set of preconditions for any discussion with Zelenskyy. You never heard us put preconditions. We had concessions to President Putin going back to the Saudi Arabia meeting.
So to me, there's a -- it's not about just ending the killing, although that's good enough, which is are we going to end the shadow war that Russia's been committing to the rest of Europe, and also on the United States? Are we going to end, in fact, any not only territorial claim, but also that Ukraine can join the E.U., may not join NATO.
We've never laid out our bottom line conditions, and we've accepted all of president Putin and more. And so to me, this is kind of like anything else. It's more chaotic. That's okay. That's stylistically.
But it has real consequences to whether this is the end of a war or a pause in the war before the next stage, which is what happened from Crimea in 2014 to where we are today. What happened prior to Crimea, to the war on Georgia in 2008? They were all part of one chess move after another by President Putin.
And so I haven't seen the president lay out what the goal of the United States is, which is to end the war in all of Europe, initiated by President Putin. And to me, there's real consequences around it's not just the killing, but it's also the principles and the goals and strategic stability in Europe, long term and short term.
HUNT: Yeah.
Well, and, Garrett, I mean, to that point, you've made a career really of thinking about our national security, our global affairs in a really broad and sweeping historical way and some of what we know about Vladimir Putin suggests he thinks about the world that way, too, right, and the return of the Russian empire, you know, in the wake of the collapse of the USSR, which, of course, was a shaping event for him. I mean, the disparity between Putin's long term thinking and Trump's short term thinking is pretty remarkable here.
GRAFF: Yeah. And I think, to that end, I mean, what Vladimir Putin wants, part of a big part of the war in Ukraine is he wants to undermine the sort of rules-based international order that we have had in place since the end of World War II.
He wants to undermine NATO. He wants to undermine the European Union. And part of what I think makes this summit seem crazy on the face of it, is it's not clear to me what of Putin's goals have changed that would make him think that this is the time to come to the peace table, to your -- to your point earlier about like playing for time.
Donald Trump sort of every day that he is in office, NATO is getting weaker. And, you know, European allies are thinking harder about their geopolitical arrangements with the United States and, you know, every day that this war is going on and Donald Trump is in the White House, I think Putin feels that his goals of undermining the sort of broad based order of Europe have a better chance of being achieved.
HUNT: Garrett Graff, thank you very much for being here. I hope you'll -- I'd love to get a chance to dig into your book for real. We don't have so much breaking news, so thank you very much for taking the time.
GRAFF: Absolutely.
HUNT: Appreciate it.
Rahm Emanuel, thank you very much to you as well. I really appreciate having you. I hope you'll come back soon.
Garrett's book, "The Devil Reached Toward the Sky", is available right now.
Coming up next, a new court ruling just coming on one of the president's top immigration policies. We'll explain.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:49:23]
HUNT: All right. Breaking news a federal judge in Florida has ordered a temporary halt to construction at Alligator Alcatraz, the immigration detention center that's been built in the middle of the Everglades.
CNN's Priscilla Alvarez joins us now with more.
So, Priscilla, the facility will still be able to operate. What's behind the pause and construction?
PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, it's exactly right, Kasie. They continue to detain migrants, but they can't continue to build out this facility. This essentially freezes paving or infrastructure for the next 14 days. It stems from a lawsuit from environmental groups who said that this has placed the sensitive wetlands and the Everglades at risk, and have argued that the state of Florida had violated environmental law, which requires that federal agencies examine the impact of construction on the environment.
So this is a -- this is a blow, really, to the state of Florida, which had set up this facility and really only a matter of weeks and has wanted to expand it over time. There are already hundreds of migrant detainees who are there, and they have wanted to build this out so that it could include thousands of detainees. It's a facility that the Trump administration has regularly touted. But the president himself, touring it not long ago, and they are now looking to other states to try to replicate this model.
So, this has been critical to the administration's efforts as it tries to expand detention capacity. But right now, it is now halted from continuing to expand, and they can no longer do any construction for the next two weeks. According to this latest order.
Of course, Kasie, this is a facility that has also come under intense scrutiny because of the conditions in the facility. But this was a lawsuit that that put that aside and was very much focused on the impact on the environment in the Everglades.
All right. Priscilla Alvarez, for us, priscilla, thank you very much for that report.
Our panel is back, and we've been rejoined by CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams, who is getting his steps in between the table and the green room.
So, I actually want to expand this conversation out a little bit beyond just this issue of Alligator Alcatraz, because we have been seeing quite a bit in our -- and, Elliot, you also serve as our pop culture correspondent. I don't know if our audience has really learned that yet.
But let's watch a little bit of the most recent episode of "South Park", because politics is all over it now, and specifically immigration. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHARACTER: I have no doubt that there are many, many Latinos in heaven.
CHARACTER: Remember, only detain the brown ones. If it's brown, it goes down.
CHARACTER: Jesus, look out!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: The show has obviously been on the air for a really long time, but they have really zeroed in on Trump and some of these -- what's going on with this particular issue. What do you think it says about how this is being absorbed by our culture writ large? Lulu, I'd like you to weigh in, too.
WILLIAMS: Sure. I would say that "South Park", particularly if you look at the last episode two weeks ago, was probably the only entity in America that could have gotten away with it because they have a tradition of sort of skewering both sides in a way that "Saturday Night Live" or Stephen Colbert or other comedy groups don't. Now, they're -- they're leaning in to really going after the Trump administration here. And I'm curious to see how the concept of the "South Park" Republican, which exists in our politics, how that evolves over time.
But no, they're probably one of the few entities that probably could get away with that. But this -- this week leaned in much further than last week.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I mean, that's a lot right there, for sure.
And I think they're really pushing the bar. I will say, we know that politics is downstream of culture, and this is part of that fight that we have been seeing across our culture, and "South Park" is now embodying that.
And I think if you talk to Latinos, one of the things that they'll tell you, even Trump supporting Latinos, is that they do not like the way that this immigration policy has been carried out. They want a strong border. They feel very good about what Donald Trump did at the border. They hated what Biden did, but they don't like the way that they have been, that they've been enacting these roundups.
ELLEITHEE: I think you both are absolutely right. First, yeah, they are the only ones who can get away with it. And one of the ways you can tell that is, you know, when they went after Trump last, you know, their first episode, White House put out a really harsh statement, right, hitting them back.
They came back, leaned in even more. And what you're seeing now, J.D. Vance, who was hit in this piece, Kristi Noem, ICE --
HUNT: That's why the puppy was shot, to be clear. That was very jarring for me to watch. That was -- ELLEITHEE: Yeah, right. But they are putting out tweets and
statements saying, well, I guess you know. Ha, ha, ha. I guess I finally made it big.
You're not seeing the same frontal assault today that you saw last week, which tells me that there's a healthy respect for what "South Park" is doing.
WALKER: I think it's more of a buzz here than it does anywhere else in my state. The number one swing state in America, when they talk about legal immigration, they talk about the multi repeat offender, drunk driver who killed a bunch of people the other day, two weeks ago. And they say those people should be deported. They're breaking the law. Get them out. They're all behind it.
HUNT: Yeah. Well, this has always been the question. The law breakers, what happens beyond that and what will people tolerate beyond that?
All right. We're going to be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:59:30]
HUNT: All right. I want to say thanks to all of you for joining us today. Elliot, thank you for your extra exercise in between our blocks.
Governor, you didn't get to tell Rahm Emanuel --
EMANUEL: I wanted to tell him. You know, the biggest disagreement is the Cubs and the Brewers. The Brewers are on top, right? I wanted you to know that, best record in baseball.
HUNT: Yeah, well, and the Cubs are down below. I'm not going to talk about the Orioles. I really need to just -- it's really, really rough.
ELLEITHEE: Stronger in that cup.
HUNT: Oh, man. All right, well, if you've missed any of today's show, don't forget you can always catch up by listening to THE ARENA's podcast. Just scan the QR code below on your screen. You can follow along wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also follow us on X and Instagram @TheArenacCNN.
"THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER" is next. He's not available to talk about his Phillies, unfortunately, but you're going to see him in just a second. Don't go anywhere.
