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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt

Now: New Details On Suspect In Charlie Kirk Killing; Trump Says He's Targeting Memphis In Crime Crackdown. Aired 4-5p ET

Aired September 12, 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]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Happy and healthy. And most importantly, sober.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Critical. Those fermented peaches are tough. You ever had a fermented peach by chance?

KEILAR: I have not. Although I could have, I guess, as a child gotten into some because my grandma used to make some -- I think actually it was fermented plums.

SANCHEZ: I see.

KEILAR: Didn't occur to me to partake. And thank goodness, because I don't think Misty was around to save my hide.

SANCHEZ: So glad for Otis and for Misty as well. And so glad that you joined us today.

Don't go anywhere.

THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT starts right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Hi, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to THE ARENA. Thanks very much for being with us on this Friday.

A suspect is in custody, and now the Justice Department is weighing federal charges that could be announced as soon as today. Authorities have identified 22-year-old Tyler Robinson as the man they believe shot and killed Charlie Kirk. Investigators are not yet commenting on his motive, but we do now know the messages that were found on the ammunition.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. SPENCER COX (R), UTAH: Inscriptions on the three unfired casings read, "Hey, Fascist, exclamation point! Catch, exclamation point. Up arrow symbol, right arrow and symbol, and three down arrow symbols.

A second unfired casing read, "oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao". And a third unfired casing read, "If you read this, you are gay. LMAO." (END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Robinson is currently in custody at the Utah county jail. An official there tells CNN he is being held without bail on multiple charges, including aggravated murder. He is expected to make his first court appearance on Tuesday when former formal charges are filed. Sources say Robinson initially was talking to investigators, but that he stopped cooperating this morning after getting a lawyer.

The end of the manhunt coming a day and a half after Charlie Kirk was shot in front of a crowd at Utah Valley University. As the search stretched on, police released this video showing the suspect jumping off the roof, where he is believed to have fired that fatal shot. And in this video obtained by CNN, you can see someone matching the suspect's appearance walking into a neighborhood near the university.

All of that leading to a confrontation that's almost unimaginable. A law enforcement source tells CNN that a man in southwestern Utah saw these photos and recognized his own son, Tyler Robinson. He confronted him and his son confessed. Our source says that Robinsons father called a youth pastor who contacted police, and that led to Tyler Robinson's arrest late last night.

All right. Our panel is here. They will be able to weigh in. We're also joined by CNN national correspondent Nick Watt, who is in Utah. CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller, CNN senior law enforcement analyst Andrew McCabe, and CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams.

Nick, let me go to you first. Just talk us through what we've learned about the suspect, how he was captured. Remarkable details about what his father learned.

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Twenty-two-year-old kid, born and raised in southwest Utah in a small, rural, conservative community. He was not a college student here at UVU, but he had spent a semester at a nearby college, so perhaps he knew this area well. You know, we're told that a friend has told investigators that in recent years, Tyler Robinson definitely became more political. And just in the days leading up to his assassination, alleged assassination of Charlie Kirk, he had told family and friends at a dinner that Charlie Kirk was coming to Utah, that he didn't like Charlie Kirk, that he said Charlie Kirk was a spreader of hate.

Now the investigation looked like it wasn't really going any place fast. Yesterday, the FBI put out some pictures, some grainy pictures. They then offered $100,000 reward. They then brought the U.S. Marshals in to help. It was clear that they needed a break. Then at 8:00 last night, they released some new images, some enhanced still images of a suspect on campus. And they released that video that you were talking about of the suspect running across the roof and then jumping in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, jumping off the roof.

Now, where I'm standing now, that is where he jumped off. That is where he left the forearm print and the palm print and the footprint on landing. So, he landed there and he fled and ran in this direction. Now how he was brought into -- into the frame here after those images

were released at 8:00 p.m. last night. That is when we are told a family member contacted a friend who contacted the law enforcement.

[16:05:01]

So, take a little listen to what the governor of Utah had to say about that chain of events.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. SPENCER COX (R), UTAH: On the evening of September 11th, a family member of Tyler Robinson reached out to a family friend who contacted the Washington County Sheriff's Office with information that Robinson had confessed to them or implied that he had committed the incident. When encountered in person by investigators in Washington County on September 12th. In the early morning hours, Robinson was observed in consistent clothing with those surveillance images.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATT: Now, we were also told this morning by the governor that investigators spoke to Tyler Robinsons roommate, and that roommate told them that and showed them, in fact, some messages he had received from Robinson over a Discord server in which Robinson was talking about having to pick up a rifle from a drop point, how he later would deposit that rifle wrapped in a towel, hide it, and hide it in a place where he apparently was observing it for a second.

Also, in those discourse -- in those Discord messages were Robinson allegedly talking about engraving, some of that ammunition. Now, I just mentioned that's where he jumped. This is where he ran.

Later in the day, this is where investigators found a high powered, bolt-action rifle wrapped in a towel with engravings on the ammunition. So that is where we are. That is how this young man, this 22-year-old man, ended up in custody -- Kasie.

HUNT: All right. Nick Watt for us -- Nick, thanks very much for that.

And John Miller, I understand that you have some more new details, new reporting that looks at this moment that the suspect is confronted by his father.

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Yeah. And this comes together, Kasie, very quickly, late in the day yesterday, likely after the new photographs are released and the father has a chance to look at them. He confronts his son and says, this looks like you. Is this you? Did you do this?

And the son, according to law enforcement sources who have been briefed on this chain of events, says, yes, you know, that was me. And the father says, I think you need to turn yourself in. And we are told by those sources that he said, I would rather kill myself than turn myself in or surrender. But the father persuades him to talk to the youth pastor that they

know, and he has that conversation. That's the conversation that the governor referred to, where he either confessed to or implied to the pastor that he was the shooter, and that pastor who is also a chaplain for the Washington County sheriff's office, as we understand it, passed that on to the fugitive task force and the U.S. Marshal that works in tandem with the sheriff's office, who put it into the FBI mix, and that lead quickly came from the side of, you know, 7,000 leads that had turned into 11,000 leads after that press conference last night that rose quickly to the top, because here you had a tip coming from another law enforcement agency about an individual who was allegedly telling a family member who reached out that he was the shooter.

HUNT: Really, really intense chain of events there.

Andy McCabe were watching this video right now of the suspect jumping off the roof and then running away here. This, of course, one piece of this chain of events. What role does -- does this this play in it, and what stands out to you most about where we go from here?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, really the video was instrumental in kind of, you know, pouring a little fuel on the fire of the public's awareness of the need for information. The video is not clear enough or distinct enough to actually facilitate an identification, but it's video and it's video of the guy literally running away from having committed the crime. And it's the -- so it's the kind of thing that draws people in.

So when you -- when you have this video as something to get people's attention and then you attach to it, those still photographs that we've all seen so many times now, those are the things that are close and clear enough to provide distinctive details, like the sneakers or like the hat with the triangular emblem on the front or the, the somewhat, you know, patriotic looking T-shirt that he's wearing. Those are the kind of things that help people and, in this case, likely help the father say, hey, wait a minute. I feel like I know that guy. That looks like my son.

From this point forward, the investigation is very, very different, right?

[16:10:00]

That moment last night when they take custody of him, this now becomes an investigation to bolster a prosecution. Whereas before that moment, it was all about the manhunt.

Now, they're executing search warrants, they're collecting evidence, they're interviewing everyone they can find who has interacted with him in any way in the near past, to pull together as many threads of information to make this prosecution absolutely watertight. You want to put him -- put that gun in his hand, show that that forearm is an impression made by his forearm, that the palm print came from, or the palm print came from him. All these little pieces that we're aware of and many more that we

haven't heard about yet are going to be feathered into this accusation, this ultimately the indictment that will be used to take him to trial unless he pleads guilty.

HUNT: Right, no, of course.

And, John Miller, one other piece of what we've learned here and we showed it to you. The inscriptions on that -- on those bullet casings. Hey, fascist! Catch! Those arrows. A saying that's apparently in Italian.

What do you make of these? And obviously there were some reporting initially that there was something about transgender people. We don't seem to see that here.

MILLER: Yeah. No, we don't. And that reporting was that reporting was on a preliminary kind of progress report update. That was submitted by the ATF based on the kind of immediate guesses of investigators trying to decrypt these things. It never ended up in anything that was released publicly, but it did spur that speculation.

But, you know, "Hey, fascist! Catch!" You can interpret probably as an anti-fascism message, "Belle Ciao." That is an old Italian folk song that became kind of one of the international anthems of the resistance movement that would have to be further interpreted. If you can read this, you are gay.

That's a, you know, if you search that, that is a meme, a troll that you find on the Internet. Again, the interpretation is, is up to debate depending on the context and how it sent and directed at whom. So they'll be sorting through these things.

One way to get to the bottom of this would be for the suspect to share what he meant, allegedly, with these inscriptions, but we are told by multiple sources that after his arrest by the FBI, he was not cooperating with investigators or answering questions. So that will be part of the investigation that goes on.

HUNT: And, Nick Watt, I'm told you have something you wanted to add about how the suspect changed his T-shirt partway through this?

WATT: Yeah. So, I was talking to the governor about this this morning because I found this fascinating, because we were told that when he arrived on campus at 8:29 in the morning, he was wearing a purple t- shirt and some shorts and different colored sneakers. Then, the governor says that this suspect changed into that black t shirt with the American flag and the eagle on the front, and the cap with the symbol, he changed into that outfit, carried out the assassination, and then once it was over, once he had fled the scene, he changed back into that plain T-shirt and that pair of shorts for his three hour or so drive back home down to southwest Utah.

Now, why he changed clothes? We don't know. Maybe he wanted to be wearing that particular T-shirt with that particular motive on the motive on the front. When he carried out this assassination or allegedly carried out this assassination of Charlie Kirk.

It's just an interesting little detail to me. And it cleared up why, you know, the governor was first saying he showed up wearing a mauve T-shirt and shorts. Then in those images, we saw him wearing the T- shirt with the flag on the front. Just a strange little detail of outfit changes during this bizarre day, and this bizarre attack here on the campus of Charlie Kirk -- Kasie.

HUNT: Really quite something.

All right. Nick Watt, thanks to you. Thanks to the rest of our contributors as well.

Coming up next, our panel is going to be here to weigh in as two national messages start to emerge here. The Utah Republican governor issuing a public plea for calm and unity. President Trump seems to answer the question of what next by taking a slightly different tone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, I'll tell you something that's going to get me in trouble.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:19:13]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COX: I absolutely believe that this is a watershed in American history. Yes. The question is, what kind of watershed? And that -- that chapter remains to be written. Is this the end of a dark chapter in our history, or the beginning of a darker chapter in our history?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: The Utah governor, Spencer Cox, warning us all this morning that in the wake of the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, political violence in America sits at a tipping point. And where we go from here, it's a choice. And in this moment, many Americans are looking to their leaders for a path forward and for an answer to the question, how do we come together? How do we bridge our country's deep divisions?

[16:20:00]

President Trump was asked that question earlier this morning. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, I'll tell you something that's going to get me in trouble, but I couldn't care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don't want to see crime. The radicals on the left are the problem, and they're vicious and they're horrible, and they're politically savvy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right. Our panel is back.

But we do want to start with CNNs senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes, who's joining us.

Kristen, can you talk a little bit about the contrast between Governor Cox's response there and how President Trump framed this?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, I think, you know, Governor Cox really set up two different pathways that you can take. And he was very clear that this was the time to cool down the rhetoric. He talked about how toxic social media is at certain points. And he said that everyone needed to kind of come to a place where this violent rhetoric was no longer being used.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, obviously attacked, the left saying that these were radical liberals and they were the worst. I really think that how this plays out is going to be something that is going to take weeks, months, if not longer.

One thing that I can only say about what I've heard from people inside the White House and around Donald Trump, who were all very close with Charlie Kirk, is that many of them are still going through these stages of grief. They were really sad. They were shocked. Now they're angry.

The question is how they get through the anger part, how the country gets through the anger part and moves forward. And I don't know that we are there yet. So there's a lot of analysis outside on which path the United States is going to go down, which path the Republican Party is going to go down.

But I do think that we are at a little bit of a turning point in this case as well, to see how the reactions shift around Donald Trump and around Charlie Kirk and around this horrific incident, as these people who are so close to Charlie Kirk go through the grieving process.

My only point of all this is to say that there is a huge swath of Republicans, including inside the White House, behind me, who want to see the rhetoric cooled down. It's just question now of when and how they actually do that, and whether or not President Trump also is on board with doing that.

HUNT: Always the question. Kristen Holmes, thank you very much for that reporting.

Our panel is here, CNN political commentator, Republican strategist and pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson, CNN legal analyst, Elliot Williams, Democratic strategist Adrienne Elrod, and CNN political commentator and Republican strategist Brad Todd.

Thank you all for being here.

Elliot Williams, let me start with you. I mean, I just -- I don't know how many times we've sat here in moments where we've watched something horrible unfold. Obviously, Charlie Kirk's death, his murder in cold blood, an enormous tragedy. But there are -- there are other incidents. Democratic lawmakers killed in Minnesota. Paul Pelosi, of course, with a hammer. We had a whole long list yesterday.

And each time we seem to ask ourselves the question, where do we go from here? How does this get better? The Utah governor posited, are we about to head into a darker chapter, or is this the end of a dark one? Its optimism seems really tough to find right now.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: And it's sad that Governor Cox comments almost sound quaint. That we are not used to politicians speaking with that level of a call to civility, almost like a pre- Internet sense of remarks. You know, that's -- he almost sounded like President Reagan in many respects, comforting the nation in a time of tragedy.

I think more than anything else, rather than criticizing what we do have, I think we ought to look to what we could be getting from leaders and hope for more of what we saw from governor cox. It was really a remarkable every single word of it. And if we were cynical and waiting for the moment when he was going to turn and start attacking people, it never happened because we're just not used to that. And it was a beautiful thing today.

HUNT: Kristen Soltis Anderson, where do you find that Americans are on this question of whether political violence is a problem in this country and whether they want rhetoric that's different? Because -- I guess I'm just curious, is there still a massive majority of people who want us to figure out some way to come together, who want us to not see incidents like this? Or is the culture that exists on the phone so utterly pervasive that that's, you know, a quaint bygone?

KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, I worry that our collective brains have been so pickled in the toxic vinegar of Internet partisanship that even for people who are not terminally online, it, like, bubbles down and bleeds into a type of culture where people just think like its completely fine to post online that you think this guy had it coming.

[16:25:18] That ha-ha, this guy is like two kids are going to grow up without their father. And like, you think that's okay. And I think a problem right now is I love what Governor Cox had to say. I want that to be the world we live in.

But you've got a lot of conservatives today that are like, I'm sick of being told that my side is the bad guys, and they're really, really mad, and they're sick of playing nice. And that is why I think this idea that we're going to step back from the brink, I think is kind of happy talk, at least in the short term.

HUNT: Well, and let's watch a little bit more of what Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah had to say earlier today, with the simple message to try to figure out how to get to exactly what Kristen is, is saying, where we should be, but also underscoring why it's such a problem. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COX: This feels a lot like the late '60s. And having one so gruesomely displayed on camera in all of our hands and in all of our pockets.

We are not wired as human beings biologically. Historically, we have not evolved in a way that we are capable of processing those types of violent imagery.

This is not good for us. It is not good to consume. Social media is a cancer on our society right now. And I would encourage -- again, I would encourage people to log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member, go out and do good in your community.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Brad Todd -- I mean, is there any way we walk back from the brink that this thing has put us on?

BRAD TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, first off, you know, we used to have to cooperate with people in our neighborhood who did things differently than us because that was our entire environment. And now we have a neighborhood online that we can guarantee agrees with the freakiest thing that we think and that is, of course, a problem is being monetized.

And that's -- there's for -- for other people's profit to your own rage. And that's something that everybody is guilty of, you know, just three or four days ago in my Substack feed, I got a comment from somebody who was mad at Ezra Klein for going to Spencer Cox's conference because Spencer Cox was an evil, awful Republican.

I don't think even people who think a lot of Republicans are evil and awful would find Spencer Cox evil and awful. But that's where we are.

You know, we do have some -- I think Kirsten's right. We have a lot of Republicans believe they've been called bigots and fascists for way too long, and it's been too casually accepted by people in authority. And they think it's time we fight back with heavy artillery, as we have.

I think that's a dangerous place for us to be, but you have to understand the sentiment, and I think we do have very deep divisions with about real problems, very different viewpoints of how to solve them.

But I don't want to see is the dialogue to die. I don't want to see our ability to talk to each other to die. We're very close to losing that, probably because of the phone. WILLIAMS: You know, I would go further to your point about the

Internet and the phone and so on. It's not just being guaranteed people that you agree with. It's a forum that prioritizes and promotes the most extreme views.

You are rewarded in the form of engagement and clicks and so on. By riling people up. And I think -- not to blame the Internet for all of our woes. People are adults and are responsible for their behavior.

But if we are all to use, I think a toxin, a toxic swamp or whatever it is, we all live in that space. And whether it's politicians or public voices playing to the cheap seats, you know, we're -- I don't know how we get out of it.

HUNT: Adrienne?

ADRIENNE ELROD, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I think we're all in large agreement here. I mean, first of all, I want to personally thank Governor Cox for being so incredible and really taking the high road and trying to unify and really encouraging Americans to take a, you know, deep, hard look at themselves morally and decide like, is this the kind of world that we want to live in?

I wish that we had seen that from President Trump. He still has plenty of time to come out there and unify this country. He has such an incredible bully pulpit, and he has the capability to bring people together. And I still hope that he will do that.

But, you know, Kasie, I've been working in politics for a very long time, and I -- you know, I didn't sign up for this profession because I was intrigued by the divide. It wasn't that way when I started working, I came up under Bill Clinton's tutelage. And that was a different time.

And I think it is incumbent upon all of us to really take the words from Governor Cox and take a step back and, you know, spend some time with family, get off your phones all the time. I wish the tech companies would cooperate a little bit more with the algorithms, as you were saying.

But until then, I think it's incumbent upon all of us to really -- we can change this if we -- it is -- we are human beings.

[16:30:00]

We can change that.

ANDERSON: And it's so hard to like we're all -- we all say, oh, I want a leader to solve this. I want a leader to bring us together. Interestingly, I feel like a number of prominent Democratic leaders have actually struck a reasonably good message on this.

The problem is sort of rank and file, just individuals, average people on the street, the sorts of folks that were cheering Luigi Mangione's murder of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare like it's not leaders who are necessarily always the ones stirring up the bad things. It is -- there is a lot of bad lurking out there. And there are places on the Internet that can be great and wonderful, like even a place like Reddit where they say, oh, this guy. You know, a lot of the stuff that was written on the bullet casings, this is like the dark underbelly.

Like there are places online where it's good that we can have connection, and you can go on a place like Reddit and talk to people about skin care or sports or whatever, and its good that we have some of these platforms. But even I, on the day of the shooting, I was watching you, Kasie, on air. And then I just sat there like doomscrolling for an hour. Like I could not unblock from my phone.

And I knew that that's toxic. I know that's doing bad things to my brain, but it's human. We can't help it. And that's -- that really worries me. And that's going to lead us to bad places.

WILLIAMS: And I -- 100 percent, 100 percent agreed on all of that. And there it is -- it is not and cannot be the case that humanity is just different. People are just bad. Now, the delta, the difference is we all are on the Internet and that is the thing that is riling people up, the reward for the craziness as -- had a corrosive effect on society. I just, I --

HUNT: And I would posit to you that it is not the Internet, it is not the connective power of the Internet that is the problem. It is the fact that you think that there -- the people on the other, you don't see them as people, right?

The people on the other side of the social media platforms, the things that people will say to each other when there is this screen --

TODD: Not a face.

HUNT: -- in between them, are astonishing.

ELROD: They don't say that at a grocery store.

HUNT: Right.

WILLIAMS: Fun fact --

ELROD: They say it on X.

WILLIAMS: Yeah.

ELROD: On social media.

WILLIAMS: Believe it or not, so there's psychologists have looked into this a little bit. And even outside of the Internet, therapists, you know, the classic image of someone lying on a couch as opposed to sitting and facing a therapist -- well, why do people lie on a couch at the therapist? Because they are more likely to speak their mind when they're not looking somebody in the eye. It is the loss of face- to-face contact that started with comments on articles, you know, on newspapers.

HUNT: Don't read the comments. WILLIAMS: Don't read the comments, and now has sort of metastasized

with the sort of constant social media.

HUNT: Because biologically, when we look someone in the eye, we see that they are a person that they have -- there are things about them --

WILLIAMS: You're looking in the eye.

HUNT: -- just like us.

WILLIAMS: Unnerving.

HUNT: Doing it on purpose.

All right. We're going to take a quick break here.

Up next, new security threats are prompting some lawmakers to cancel town halls and rethink their public events. Democratic Congressman Pat Ryan will be here live in THE ARENA.

Plus, the Republican governor, who is now confirming the president's plans for a crime crackdown in one of America's major cities.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I'm just announcing that now, and we'll straighten that out.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: National Guard?

TRUMP: National Guard, and anybody else we need. And by the way, we'll bring in the military, too, if we need it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:37:36]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. KEVIN CRAMER (R-ND): I like being accessible, but being accessible is starting to look like being vulnerable.

SEN. MARKWAYNE MULLIN (R-OK): I believe it's -- the situation we find ourselves in, I think it's undeniable now that we've got to beef up security on every member.

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): Everybody needs to be on guard.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: In the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder, lawmakers on Capitol Hill grappling with how to engage with the public going forward. You saw there a series of Republicans expressing concerns, but members and their staffers from both sides of the aisle are telling CNN many of them are postponing outdoor events for the time being. Some are using their own money to hire private security for events that are not held on Capitol Hill.

Senator Ruben Gallego, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib among some of the Democrats who are postponing or canceling upcoming events because of the heightened threat environment.

Joining us now to discuss, Democratic Congressman Pat Ryan of New York.

Congressman, thanks very much for being here.

REP. PAT RYAN (D-NY): Thanks for having me.

HUNT: Youve been under actual fire in a war zone. How does that where you understand you're walking into a dangerous situation compared to the way things feel here in America? How do you feel about walking into a campaign event?

RYAN: Yeah. I mean, you risk your life in uniform so that no one in America has to have that feeling, whether that's an elected official, a constituent, a young person who was at that event with Mr. Kirk and had to see that or anything in between. So it's just -- it strikes, I think, us all as so deeply un-American and figuring out how to get out of it is, of course, what we need to do. But it starts with real -- real leadership of bringing us together.

So that's -- that's what I'm certainly trying to do.

HUNT: Would you host an outdoor event or would you appear at an outdoor event this weekend if that was on the table for you? Would you feel safe?

RYAN: I'm less worried about myself. I have young kids and you know, my wife said to me yesterday we had that conversation, which is not a conversation you want to have and -- to have. And about a year ago, we had to get private security after some threats that we had received.

So, I know a lot of my colleagues are going through that and generally don't -- don't talk about it. And I understand why. I believe actually, no, I'm not applying judgment to my colleagues that have made other decisions.

But I think right now we need leaders willing to lean in.

[16:40:02]

And I know that great risk comes with that. But certainly from my perspective, it's more important than ever to be out there, and listening and talking, particularly with those that I know disagree with me. That's something I spend a lot of time talking to the folks that voted for President Trump and voted for me in my district.

I go out of my way to do that. Speaking of President Trump, I want to show you what he said this morning when he was asked about how we fix the country. And then we'll talk about it on the other side.

Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?

TRUMP: Well, I'll tell you something that's going to get me in trouble, but I couldn't care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don't want to see crime. The radicals on the left are the problem, and they're vicious and they're horrible and they're politically savvy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: What do you think is the impact of the way he framed that, where he said radicals on the right are -- don't want to see crime, radicals on the left are the problem?

RYAN: I'm not even going to give any more oxygen to that framing, because that is not leadership. It's the -- it's the epitome of selfishness and division. That is part of why we've gotten here today. Certainly not the only reason, but I think a big part of it.

This is a moment where whether you use labels of right and left or blue or red or Democratic or Republican, we need to speak as patriots, specifically as the word that I think we need to be calling on the best of all that was wrapped up into the founding of this country and the idea that we're all in this together.

And I know that almost sounds maybe naive in the moment we're in, but I'm telling you, when I talk to my constituents, that is what they're desperately looking for is that kind of leadership to say it would be so easy to take a pot shot right now, or to say what I might emotionally feel for a second, because we're all human. But it's that decision to elevate from the political or the partisan to the patriotic or even to the -- to the moral, I think. And that -- that's what we should be demanding from every leader.

HUNT: What do you say to people who've been out there saying the use of the phrase fascist or Nazi or Hitler comparisons from people on the left contributes to the problem overall? Does it?

RYAN: I actually don't think it does. I think people are trying to grapple with a really unprecedented time in our country where we're seeing maybe history not fully repeat, but history rhyme at some of the darkest times in our world's history. And struggling in good faith to try to put some intellectual thought into that and find the right language to describe the fact that the Constitution. I risk my life for 27 months in combat is being tested and pushed, and in many cases, I think, not being honored by this president.

That's hard to figure out how to how to put words to that in a way that is constructive. And so those are words that are more academic, I think. It is the call for violence to me, that is where the calls for violence link to that, that are -- that are the problem. The idea that we've heard from many leaders in both parties, unfortunately, that there's some deeper evil. If you feel a certain way.

HUNT: There was a shouting match that broke out on the floor of the House after news of what happened to Charlie Kirk broke. I mean, what does that say about where we are.

RYAN: Well, some of the coverage of that, I think is actually really not been accurate to what it felt like on the House floor. We had the whole house. This is what I think is such an important opportunity of leadership. You can tell two stories or multiple stories of any event. What I experienced being on the floor is we're all in shock, reeling. I mean, I have young kids thinking about Mr. Kirks young kids and his family and his wife, and it's just horrific.

We all came together, had a powerful, unanimous moment of silence. And then 1 or 2 individuals chose to not honor that. And unfortunately, the coverage becomes that when the reality is there are 432 or 433 people in that House chamber, and the vast majority did the right thing as humans.

And that is, I think, a choice we all make for what to put attention on and what to put attention to, and to really take in the wholeness of any of those moments. It's easy to find the division point, but that's just a perfect example of that, where we all knew that's -- that's going to be the story now. But the story should have been in a very solemn human way that what actually happened is the whole Congress, the whole house came to a halt to honor his life and his loss.

HUNT: Congressman Pat Ryan, thanks very much for being here. Really appreciate the thoughtful conversation.

RYAN: Thanks for having me.

HUNT: All right. Coming up next here, new comments. Just coming in from the leaders of one major city after the president today says he's sending the National Guard to help bring down crime.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR PAUL YOUNG (D), MEMPHIS: To me, this is not about politics. This is not a political stunt for anybody up here. We're talking about real lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:49:24]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: I want to be clear. I did not ask for the National Guard, and I don't think it's the way to drive down crime. However, that decision has been made. (END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: That was the Democratic mayor of Memphis, Tennessee, Paul Young, last hour, addressing for the first time something that President Trump announced this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We're going to Memphis. Memphis is --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's the next city?

TRUMP: Deeply troubled and the mayor is happy. He's a Democrat mayor. The mayor is happy. And the governor of Tennessee, the governor is happy.

Deeply troubled. We're going to fix that just like we did Washington.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[16:50:03]HUNT: The city of Memphis becoming the latest target for the White House. The president saying today he's going to send in the National Guard to try to lower crime. As of now, it is not clear when troops will officially be deployed to Music City.

And while the mayor today noted several drops in crime, in 2024, Memphis had the highest total crime rate in cities with a population over 250,000 people. This now, of course, coming amid an even more highly charged atmosphere in the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk.

Our panel is back here.

Elliot Williams, I -- first of all, a lot of people that pushed back against the president would point to Memphis and say, well, it's worse there than it is here. Why isn't he going there? Clearly, President Trump seems to have heard that. But also, there's clearly some layers to what's going on there.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

HUNT: Can you sift through that for us?

WILLIAMS: And we are getting so much closer to working this out in the way that it should be worked out, which is federal authorities speaking with state and local authorities and working on solutions to move forward. That did not happen in Washington, D.C., and that did not happen in Los Angeles, where the federal folks just sent folks in.

There ought to be a collaborative process where you get the buy in of the mayor and the buy in of the governor. Now, clearly, the governor was on board here in Tennessee. The mayor seems to say that -- well, this not what I wanted. However, I will welcome the help and well figure out how to make it work.

My question remains, and we've talked about it before on here, what's next and how long does it go? Are we now accepting that federal boots will be on the ground in Memphis in perpetuity? Now, that's not a great use of our national guard. What happens when there's -- when there's a natural disaster and emergency? Do you pull them off of crime fighting? Do they stay there forever?

It's great as a temporary solution. It might work as a temporary solution, but it cannot be the way these cities are going to operate forever.

HUNT: Adrienne, what do you make of how the Democratic mayor responded here to this? Because you can also see in the politics of this Republicans, the president trying to get Democrats to say that, you know, to -- in the way that they would cast it to be soft on crime.

ELROD: Yeah. Look, I mean, I mean, that's the problem that I think a lot of Democrats are having when it comes to this, because, I mean, we've talked about this on the show before, Kasie. Washington, D.C., you can say that crime has gone down, but not a lot of people feel that. I have had many friends who have had incidences. We won't go into that. So, it's hard for us to square that.

HUNT: It's a much different city than it was five, ten years ago.

ELROD: One thousand percent. It has gotten better, but there's still a lot of crime. So, when it comes to Memphis, I mean this I thought the mayor was really smart. He said, look, you know, we didn't ask for this, but we're going to welcome it. We're going to figure out how to incorporate the National Guard into our law enforcement strategy in this city. And maybe it's going to work.

To Elliot's point, though, I don't think it's a long-term solution. And if we're going to start deploying the National Guard to multiple cities across the country, it's not going to work.

So, I mean, I would hope that maybe this will lead to a solution of putting more police officers on the streets, providing more law enforcement funding to communities that need it. That can also be done at the federal level.

But, you know, I -- Democrats have to be very, very careful on how they message this.

HUNT: Brad?

TODD: Well, I used to live in Memphis, I love it. It's the Bluff City, not the Music City. As we said a minute ago. But it's a -- it's a great place. It has it's fantastic and culture and it's a great place to live.

They do have a crime problem right now, particularly have a homicide problem. Crime is a manpower game. And so more manpower helps. The feds have already been helping in Memphis, a thing called operation viper, where the FBI has been integrating with local law enforcement.

The state has beefed up its highway patrol. They went from five highway patrolmen in the city to 50. So there already is an effort to throw manpower at it. And if President Trump is willing to do that, I think the people of Tennessee are going to welcome it.

I think the mayor is smart. He's being pragmatic. Let's figure out how to make best use of these resources that I can't control, whether they come or not.

HUNT: Kristen Soltis Anderson, where are Americans on this question of using these federal resources to fight crime?

ANDERSON: Well, they're sort of torn. On the one hand, they definitely think that crime is too high, that people are unsafe in this country, that things have spiraled a bit out of control in the post-COVID era. They're also of the mind that the answer is more law enforcement, not less. Which is a somewhat separate question, though, of is this the right way to go about it?

And I think you will find the data is less conclusive that Americans specifically like this type of action. But they do think when you ask them, which party do you trust more to handle the issue of crime or to keep the streets safe? Republicans still absolutely have an advantage on that question.

HUNT: Elliot, how much of this do you think is about race at the end of the day?

WILLIAMS: Well, I think everything's about race at the end of the day. But it's a tricky question because a lot of the cities that were talking about here are predominantly black cities with black mayors, and the presidents gone after them. And we know what the presidents record has been in dealing with black leaders at a certain point.

Fundamentally, though, the statistics don't lie. And, you know, we've talked on this program a number of times about public safety and the need to work on public safety.

[16:55:02]

I'm not convinced that always throwing more boots on the ground, and particularly military on the ground in cities, is always the solution. If you're not even talking to the mayor to work out what would be best for -- for fixing a place. So there's -- there's got to be holistic solutions. This is just one of them.

TODD: There's a race component on the positive side, too. Eighty percent of homicide victims in Memphis are black. So, it's a perhaps -- we can make a difference.

HUNT: Fair enough.

All right. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUNT: All right. Thanks very much, you guys, for being with us today. Really appreciate it. Happy Friday to all of you at home as well.

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