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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
A.G. Names SDNY U.S. Attorney To Lead Epstein Probe Ordered By Trump; Source: Trump Ally Told Him He's Getting Bad Advice On Epstein; Vance Blames Housing Inaffordability On Undocumented Immigrants; New Prosecutor Named In Georgia Election Interference Case. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired November 14, 2025 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: The man was charged with theft and possession, obstructing police, and driving while prohibited, and following rules at the most unusual time.
[16:00:07]
Maybe they can add that to it. You think, Jess?
JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: Yeah, maybe. I also going back to how he commandeered the bus. More questions than answers.
KEILAR: That's right.
THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT starts now.
(MUSIC)
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Hi, everyone. Welcome to THE ARENA. I'm Kasie Hunt. Happy Friday to all of you who celebrate.
We do have breaking news as we come on the air. Attorney General Pam Bondi has chosen a prosecutor to investigate people and companies associated with Jeffrey Epstein, quickly obeying a public request from President Donald Trump. Bondi writes this, quote, "Thank you, Mr. President. SDNY U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton is one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country, and I have asked him to take the lead," end quote. That in direct response to this announcement from President Trump, which came less than four hours before.
The president wrote this, quote, "I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein's involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, JPMorgan Chase, and many other people and institutions," end quote.
That post, perhaps the clearest example of how the president is personally directing his administrations messaging when it comes to Epstein. Multiple sources telling CNN that Donald Trump himself dictates how and when the White House responds to Epstein related developments as he tries to avoid anything that pushes the story forward. One source says this, quote, "Everybody has been instructed to wait until information comes out and then respond that it is a hoax or doesn't prove anything," end quote.
All of this, just the latest instance of the president telling the nations law enforcement who to target, and if his attempts to divert attention from his own relationship with Epstein. But it should come as no surprise.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You should focus on Clinton. You should focus on the president of Harvard, the former president of Harvard. You should focus on some of the hedge fund guys. I'll give you a list. These guys lived with Jeffrey Epstein. I sure as hell didn't.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Let's get off the sidelines, head into THE ARENA.
My panel is here. We're going to get started, though, with our reporter, CNN White House correspondent Kristen Holmes, and our senior justice correspondent, Evan Perez.
Kristen, let me start with you. There's been so much discussion this week about how the president himself, how the White House has been reacting to this story. And this is a lot of your new reporting on that.
What else do we know?
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, I mean, look, what I was told essentially is that there are allies and people around President Trump who have been telling him for months that he's getting bad advice that he's not handling the Epstein case correctly, the controversy correctly.
And we have learned that just in recent days, one of his allies on Capitol Hill told him the same, particularly when it comes to denying deflecting, downplaying these, quote/unquote, "Epstein files" that there's another strategy at play. And we certainly saw whether or not this is why President Trump shift the strategy here, instead of just saying that this is a Democratic hoax, he is clearly trying to take control of the narrative and asking Pam Bondi, the Justice Department, to now investigate his political foes, particularly Democrats, many of whom were named in those emails that President Trump was also named in that were released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.
One thing to keep clear here is that it's not as though the Southern District of New York hasn't already investigated Epstein's ties to various high profile officials. They, at one point, have not only gone through that, but decided that there is not enough evidence to charge anyone else. So, a lot of this is, or at least seems to be performative, but it is a notable shift when it comes to how President Trump is addressing this. All of this, of course, coming as it's become clearer to the White House, to the president himself, that that bill that to release Epstein files is likely to not only be brought to a vote, but passed in the House. And there are many who believe it will then go on to pass in the
Senate. And that's the inevitable. Now, you're seeing again, President Trump kind of shifting his tactics from being defensive to being offensive.
HUNT: Really fascinating.
Evan, what do we know about who this prosecutor is that was just announced by the A.G.?
EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jay Clayton has a good reputation. He is the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. He's a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
And what this does, this instruction from the attorney general, it does put him in sort of a bind, right? Because you can see that she screenshotted the president's announcement, his social media post, which clearly says that what he wants is an investigation of prominent Democrats. In other words, that's what -- that's what Pam Bondi appears to be endorsing here.
[16:05:07]
So, the question for prosecutors in Manhattan will be whether they're going to do a fulsome look of everyone who is associated with Epstein. Now, a couple of things have happened in the last few days that have really put this squarely back in the hands of the Justice Department.
First of all, the Democrats surprised a lot of people with documents that they got from the Epstein estate that it's clear the Justice Department did not have. And so, that put the deputy attorney general in a sort of an embarrassing position where he was tweeting at George Conway yesterday, saying that the Epstein estate had hid documents from law enforcement.
We got a pushback from the Epstein estate attorney saying they did not hide anything. They simply responded to any requests for documents. So, now, the question is, will the Justice Department ask for these new documents, these documents that they did not already possess? And, Kasie, keep in mind, this summer before they put out this statement in July saying that there were no additional documents to be released, the Justice Department and FBI did go through everything they had and determined that there were no additional prosecutions that could be brought against anyone associated with Epstein.
And so, the question is whether this new investigation is going to yield a different answer. Also, one last thing. While they're doing this new investigation, you guys just talked about the discharge petition that is going on in the House right now. What this means is that there are no documents that the Justice Department is going to be able to turn over, because during an ongoing investigation, their practice is to not release documents that are -- that are subject of an investigation.
So, what that means is that we are now back into a holding pattern, right? They're not going to be able to release any new documents so long as that investigation is ongoing.
HUNT: How convenient.
Kristen Holmes, Evan Perez, thank you both.
PEREZ: Yeah.
HUNT: Really appreciate your time today.
All right. Our panel is here in THE ARENA. National political reporter for "Axios", CNN political analyst Alex Thompson; CNN legal analyst, former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams; former DOJ director of public affairs, Xochitl Hinojosa; and Republican strategist Shermichael Singleton. They're both CNN political commentators.
Welcome to all of you. Thanks for being here.
Elliot, this is -- looks like a day for you.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Oh.
HUNT: But actually, this point, Evan just raised there is a really good and interesting one. Can you dig in a little bit to I mean, whether they could be using it for this reason, right? Attempting to launch this investigation, basically to keep these documents from seeing the light of day.
WILLIAMS: That's plausible only because once something is an active investigation, obviously, they can't be or shouldn't be released to the public.
But let's step back and be clear. No matter who you voted for in America, no matter how much your support for Donald Trump may be, we should not normalize or get used to this idea of a president dictating investigations to a Justice Department. That is true whether it's a Democrat or Republican or anybody else.
It is bonkers, bizarre, and a gross breach of every norm in United States that the president of the United States is sending out social media posts directing the investigations into 20-year-old conduct at times of even of his political enemies. So that's sort of the big step. So, whether there's something strategic about it within the Justice Department or whether they're just throwing stuff at the wall to try to make this go away because it's a political crisis, we may not know.
HUNT: Yeah.
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yeah.
HUNT: Xochitl, you worked at justice, and I think you were on the set fighting back and forth about a version of this very point, perhaps yesterday.
HINOJOSA: Yes.
HUNT: But how would you look at the points Elliot's making here?
HINOJOSA: Well, I think that's right. We never want a president to be dictating. What investigations you should open, or you should not open. I'll also note is you never start investigations based off of a political affiliation. So, the fact that the president is naming off a number of Democrats don't do that. You investigate people based on the crime and then if it leads you to a Democrat or Republican, then that might be the case.
In this instance, obviously, Donald Trump is one of the people that is mentioned, so they can't necessarily reopen an investigation and start looking at everything because that potentially means looking into Donald Trump. What does that also mean?
That means that they would potentially have to interview him. The last time we interviewed a president, as Alex remembers quite well, because he wrote an entire book on it, was Joe Biden, and there was audio. Then there was a whole fight about the audio, and there was a whole fight about the transcript.
My guess is that Justice Department does not want to open this book. So, they're trying to keep it very, very narrow. They have the president to fall back on, which is not right. You should never have a president dictate the investigation. But if they do open it again, it could lead to potentially looking at Donald Trump. And I don't think anybody -- they want that.
HUNT: Yeah, Alex Thompson, what are you hearing from your sources about this? Because obviously Democrats have really seized on it. They weren't as focused on it. Obviously, when Biden was in office. But it's not as though, you know, I mean, there's a lot of -- nobody's hands are clean.
ALEX THOMPSON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: No. And they definitely have drawn blood with Trump and a lot of Republicans and, you know, people very close to Trump have said they're worried -- you know, Trump is known to be a man of great many moods.
[16:10:04]
And they're worried that, you know, once he gets in a funk, sometimes he stays in a funk for like months at a time. And he gets very frustrated. And clearly, this investigation has incredibly frustrated him. But it's also to your other point about there are no clean hands. I mean, it is true that Larry Summers is in these emails and was one of the top economic officials in the country for Obama administration. You had Obama era lawyers very much talking to him.
And I think it really shows broader than just the political impacts, is that people with power were willing to overlook a lot of what Jeffrey Epstein did, if it meant having access to him and his wealth and his connections.
HUNT: Yeah. Well, and at that point, Shermichael Singleton seems to be the part of the reason why this is such a problem in mat -- for MAGA supporters of the president is that part of the support many of them had for him is this idea that he was not of this elite, that played by a different set of rules than they did? And this Epstein saga makes Donald Trump look like he is playing by different rules.
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: He promised that if elected, he would reveal this information. That was a campaign promise, expectation from a lot of Republican voters is that he delivers on that. That said, rhetorically speaking, I think this is a smart political move by the president because for the past several days now, we've focused exclusively on Trump from the Democrats perspective. I get why.
I think it's smart. I get what they're trying to do, but you don't want to be on the defense of an issue like this. And so, if you're seeing names like Summers, if you're seeing journalist names listed, if you're seeing big financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, you want to position yourself to say, wait a minute here. We're going to look into every single name that's listed, whether they're Democrat or not, and that one is going to appease MAGA voters.
But number two, I think it shifts some of the focus from the president solely to some of these other political actors. And that's where you want to be, electorally speaking, versus, again, being on the defense, having to defend or explain this.
THOMPSON: But could also keep the news, keep this issue in the news many, many months, if not years longer. As Xochitl knows, investigations have a way of perpetuating themselves.
SINGLETON: Sure, but I don't think Democrats want to go back to talking about Bill Clinton again in his bad --
THOMPSON: I mean, Bill Clinton was not an option --
HUNT: He's not the president of the United States.
SINGLETON: But my -- but my -- but my point is, from a Republican perspective, to put Democrats on the defense, to have to defend a Clinton and so many others, I wouldn't want to be in that place if I were a Democrat.
HUNT: I want to -- I want to take a look back at how President Trump has talked about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein over the course of the last year. So, this has obviously been an issue that has come up throughout this first year of his second term. Pam Bondi, his attorney general, had said she had the list on her desk. She was going to put it out.
Ultimately, that did not happen, and officials Kash Patel, Dan Bongino later defended that decision, said that that there was nothing to see there. And the president has been asked about it repeatedly. Let's just watch kind of one after the other, a number of the things that he has said in the past year. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
TRUMP: And are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable.
I would say that, you know, these files were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama.
I don't understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody. It's pretty boring stuff.
Never had the privilege of going to his island. And I did turn it down.
He took people that worked for me and I told him, don't do it anymore. And he did it. And I said, stay the hell out of here.
I would like to see people exposed that might be bad, and we'll see how that all works out. But it's getting to be very old news.
But it's really a Democrat hoax.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
HUNT: I mean, Alex Thompson, there's a lot there.
THOMPSON: Well, this is why Democrats want to keep talking about it, because clearly, Donald Trump does not like talking about this topic. And, you know, going back, you can see it in the emails that Jeffrey Epstein and him did have a severe falling out. But it's also true that they were friends and they were, you know, having parties with lots of -- with lots of women.
And given what Jeffrey Epstein was later convicted of, obviously, the topic makes him incredibly uncomfortable and he hasn't given a really good reason as to why.
WILLIAMS: The fascinating thing about the names that he ran off there, and we've been talking about this a little bit, Jim Ccomey, JPMorgan Chase, Bill Clinton, it's like a greatest hits of, quote/unquote, the elite in America. It's almost as if he's about, you know, the next name would be the Vatican, the queen, the Rothschilds, the Gettys and Colonel Sanders.
He's just sort of running off this list of people that trigger something in his base. And far more than any sort of legal impact of any of this.
SINGLETON: But I want to push back against that. I think politically, you want to have your opponents having to respond to something.
WILLIAMS: OK.
SINGLETON: It does not benefit Republicans to constantly have to defend the president solely on this issue. Without reporters and journalists saying, well, wait a minute, what about these names who happen to be Democrats? Which I would imagine Democrats would only want the focus to be on the president singularly.
[16:15:01] That's what I think the president is.
HUNT: The Oversight Committee, Democrats on the Oversight Committee have gone along with attempts to get this stuff out there that have included Democratic officials. They have not limited their scope of their investigation.
(CROSSTALK)
SINGLETON: -- the White House and they didn't really focus.
(CROSSTALK)
HUNT: This is what they're doing now.
HINOJOSA: But they also prosecuted -- they also prosecuted Bob Menendez. They went -- I mean, we -- Democrats, they prosecute Democrats or Republicans.
I will say on this, though, and when it comes to his base, Donald Trump was able to say for quite some time that all of the investigations into him were political. The Justice Department ones were not. I can say that from fact, I don't know about the other ones.
But what I'll say about this instance is now he controls everything, and there are emails that are coming out with Donald Trump's name and that show the closeness of Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein. And he's like, there's nothing to see here. And yet, my Justice Department can investigate something else.
And so, with his credibility with MAGA and with Republicans who wanted these files out, now, what is he going to say? Well, this is all political?
(CROSSTALK)
SINGLETON: Republicans voting -- Republicans voting with Democrats to reveal all of this.
HINOJOSA: And he's like --
SINGLETON: So, it's not like the Republican Party is trying to hide anything.
(CROSSTALK)
THOMPSON: When Trump is trying to fight that -- but Trump is trying to fight that. And I don't think the majority of the Republican caucus is going to go along with voting to release these documents. But I can tell you, Democratic officials I talked to, they will take emails about Bill Clinton and Larry Summers and JPMorgan. If it means that they can put Trump on his back foot, which they clearly have done. He does not like this topic.
SINGLETON: Which means they're not talking about cost of living. It means they're not talking about the things that actually move the needle, electorally speaking, not Jeffrey Epstein.
HINOJOSA: Well, that's' what we want on this Tuesday ago this last --
SINGLETON: Correct. Correct.
HUNT: I mean, the bottom line here is that -- I mean, we just watched Donald Trump say in that one of those soundbites, I never had the privilege of going to the island, right? I was -- like using the word privilege in that, right, in that context, there's this email from Jeffrey Epstein in 2011 that says this quote, "I don't know and have never met Al Gore." Lucky for Al Gore.
And he goes on to write, "Clinton was never on the island." Right? Shermichael, I will take your point that like classic politics would indicate you go in the offense.
SINGLETON: Sure, sure.
HUNT: But the bottom line is this all stinks.
SINGLETON: No, no, I agree.
HUNT: I agree 150 percent. You're not getting me here defending Jeffrey Epstein. What I'm simply saying in a political context, the worst thing I would argue for my party, and even if I were advising the president, is to not be able to pivot on this issue. It's an issue that a lot of Republican voters care about. It's an issue that a lot of conservative evangelicals care about. Politics aside.
And so, I don't -- I can't think of any other way but to start to focus on certain things that Democrats may not necessarily like to, at a minimum, take some of the light off of the president. I'm not saying it'll be 100 percent effective, Kasie. I'm just talking politics.
WILLIAMS: They literally created this mess themselves. This -- Pam Bondi with the binders and suggesting that she had all this stuff to release.
HUNT: Sitting on her desk.
WILLIAMS: Was sitting on her desk. This is a crisis of the administrations.
SINGLETON: The president ran on it. I acknowledge that the president ran on this.
HUNT: All right. Well, we're clearly going to be continuing to talk about this for quite some time.
Coming up next in THE ARENA, someone has taken a job that no one wanted, and it might result in another courtroom battle for the president. But first, a key member of the House Oversight Committee will be here live. Democrat Ro Khanna responds to the president's latest comments and actions around Jeffrey Epstein and just how many Republicans he thinks might support that big vote coming up in the House. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIMMY FALLON, COMEDIAN: The big story is still the newly released Epstein emails, and now Trump is telling Republicans to ignore them. Today, Trump tried throwing the files into a dumpster behind the White House, but the whole East Wing was already in there. So --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:23:09]
HUNT: All right. Welcome back.
We're following breaking news. Attorney General Pam Bondi announcing the appointment of a U.S. attorney to investigate people and companies formerly associated with Jeffrey Epstein at President Trump's direction.
Joining me now in THE ARENA to discuss Democratic congressman from California, Ro Khanna. He sits on the House Oversight Committee and has, of course, been one of those leading this push to force a vote to release all of the Epstein files that the DOJ has in their possession.
Congressman, thanks very much for being here.
Can I just first ask for your reaction to the appointment of Jay Clayton, who is, of course, the top prosecutor in New York's southern district to investigate after President Trump asked her to do so.
REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): Kasie, I'm glad they're doing it, but I don't understand why it took Thomas Massie and me introducing a bill to release the Epstein files to get the president's Justice Department to move. I mean, Pam Bondi said that the investigation was over a few months ago, and now, I'm glad they're taking action.
I wish the president had a change of heart. You know, as I mentioned before, we were on air. I joined Truth Social. I'm pleading with him to support Massie and my bill. The survivors are going to have a press conference in front of the Capitol on Tuesday.
They want to meet with him. I hope the president would meet with him. This is not to score points on President Trump. I want the files out there.
HUNT: So, one thing that the Department of Justice regularly does and says is that they can't release any files if there is an ongoing investigation. Does the resumption or beginning of this new version of the Epstein investigation inside the DOJ act as a way for them to justify preventing the files from being released?
KHANNA: Well, Massie and I were discussing that actually, just this afternoon. There's still a lot of things they could release that wouldn't impact an investigation about financial crimes. They can release a lot of the witness interviews. They can release the
FBI interviews with people who were involved in this farm system that Epstein had created. So, there is such a large amount of files, and right now, they've released almost nothing.
So, the question is, are they going to have a good faith investigation? Are they going to be good faith in releasing this? Are they going to consult the victims and survivors' lawyers? They haven't even done that.
Our interest is in getting the truth out and justice out. And wed much rather have them cooperating with us rather than intimidating House Republicans members in the Situation Room, trying to get them out off the petition.
HUNT: Do you think it's possible for this investigation to be done in good faith, considering that the president asked specifically for an investigation into Democratic officials like former President Bill Clinton, like Larry Summers, former treasury secretary, without mentioning, of course, himself or any other potential Republicans with ties to Epstein?
KHANNA: Well, look, they have obviously politicized the Justice Department. They've gone after the president's political opponents. So, I have deep concerns about how objective that investigation is going to be.
The way to put a rest to all of this is just to release the files. It is to be transparent, and it's going to be a big vote on Tuesday or Wednesday whenever the speaker is putting it out. He realized he couldn't stop the parade. So, now, he's gotten in front of it and there's still time for Trump to do the same thing.
His own allies are telling him, what are you doing, Mr. President? Why are you opposed to releasing the files when you campaigned on releasing them? He's becoming part of the swamp. He railed against, and my hope is he changes course and that we can put this behind us and have justice.
And the whole Epstein class needs to go. I don't care who it was, whether it was in the 1990s and involved Democrats or whether its involved Republicans. They all need to go.
HUNT: Congressman, do you have a sense of how many Republicans you think may break ranks with the president and support your bill? I mean, Congressman Kiley was just on CNN's air a few minutes ago in the last hour or so, saying he would vote against the president's wishes.
KHANNA: Well, I appreciate Congressman Kiley saying that. You know, it's the whip operation. It's Massie and me. We don't have exactly a huge whip team, but we were hoping to get 40 to 50. The ideal would be can we get to 290, which would be veto proof.
But, you know, it's the two of us. And then on the other side, you've got the entire White House where they've deployed, having members of the Situation Room, the attorney general, the FBI director, they've got White House legislative affairs.
And I just -- I don't understand it, really. I mean, I don't understand why he's so opposed to this vote happening in the House. Think about it. If they end up voting for my bill, the Epstein Transparency Act, and you have 40, 50 Republicans who vote for a Democratic bill, don't you think that's a bigger blow if President Trump is seen opposing it, rather than what he could say is, "You know what? I'm supporting this bipartisan bill."
So then the vote doesn't become an embarrassment to him. That would be my -- my hope and approach, because ultimately, it's about justice for the survivors and accountability for the Epstein class.
HUNT: What are the Republicans who are on the fence that you are talking to, saying behind the scenes about the president's strategy here? I mean, do they feel like he is hurting himself in how he's handling it? And what are they afraid of as they stare this down?
KHANNA: Well, I don't think they understand it. I don't -- I don't think they understand why he has been so dug in on this issue, why he's calling it a hoax. When you have survivors standing in front of the Capitol telling their stories, when they've moved people to tears, like Representative Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Why he's dug in on this.
And of course, they're concerned, as anyone would be, about voting against the president of the United States. The reality is, there are only 28 discharge petitions in the history of this country since 1935 that have passed. In that, only nine of them have actually passed -- the underlying bill has actually passed the House of Representatives.
It's a big deal to vote against your speaker, to vote against the president. And that's their reluctance. But this issue is so powerful that people are willing to do that.
HUNT: Do you think if this assuming this does come out of the House, is there any way it gets to the floor of the United States Senate?
KHANNA: I do. I think the numbers candidly matter in the House. If we have a narrow win, it becomes harder to do in the Senate. That's why Massie and I have been working the phones and texting folks and being aggressive in getting as big a vote.
[16:30:07]
That's why I'm pleading for the president and others that they should just support this. Do what Speaker Johnson is doing, join the effort.
But it depends on the vote. But if we get a significant vote, then I think it will be very, very hard for Senator Thune not to bring it up for a vote because he's putting all his members in a difficult position. Most Americans want these released. And what does Senator Thune going to explain why he's not bringing that for a vote in the Senate?
HUNT: All right. Congressman Ro Khanna, thanks very much for spending some time with us today, sir. Hope to see you soon.
KHANNA: Thank you, Kasie.
HUNT: All right. Coming up next here, a new prosecutor is taking over the Georgia election interference case after D.A. Fani Willis was disqualified. What that might mean for the president and some of his high-profile supporters.
But first, what top administration officials now say is the reason buying a home has become unattainable for so many young Americans. And their ideas for how to fix it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT TURNER, HUD SECRETARY: There's a lot of ideas that are on the table, including the 50-year mortgage, the portable mortgage. And I don't think it's a matter of if I like it or if I'm -- if I'm for it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:35:36]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A lot of young people are saying housing is way too expensive. Why is that? Because we flooded the country with 30 million illegal immigrants who are taking houses that ought by right go to American citizens, and at the same time, we weren't building enough new houses to begin with.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: That was Vice President J.D. Vance offering his explanation for America's current housing shortage. That, of course, is an issue at the core of the country's persistent affordability crisis. Voters in last week's elections made crystal clear that issue has been top of mind for them.
Over the past week, the Trump administration has attempted to address some of those frustrations with a list of new affordability focused proposals. They include a 50-year mortgage that even Trump's own housing secretary seems unsure of.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TURNER: There's a lot of ideas that are on the table, including the 50-year mortgage, the portable mortgage. And I don't think it's a matter of if I like it or if I'm -- if I'm for it. What really matters is what makes sense for our country. What's the appropriate policy to put in place?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Our panel is back. And, Alex Thompson, from a political perspective here the 50 -- let's
just start with the 50-year mortgage and the way Republicans are going at this, I mean, a 50-year mortgage would lower the average payment by maybe a couple hundred bucks. And cause the interest over the life of the loan to balloon and enrich banks at a remarkable rate. It's been widely criticized this policy.
How do you think that the Trump administration is looking at this and handling this? Does the president understand what a big deal it is?
THOMPSON: I mean, it's amazing what losing a few elections can do, right? Where -- where now, all of a sudden, this White House is, is, you know, honed in on trying to find something to do about the affordability crisis which did exist before the elections as well. And not all of these proposals were out there.
Now, in terms, you know, I have people very close to the White House who have rolled their eyes at this at this proposal, and people inside the White House have rolled their eyes because also, what happens to the 50-year mortgage means that you might die before you own your house. And like that is not necessarily the most appealing thing.
Yes, it can bring down the rate, you know, bring down the monthly payment. But a lot of people just do not -- do not see it as a realistic option. They want to focus on, you know, the Democrats will try to focus on places like Blackrock and big corporations that they think are inflating levels and making it harder to own a home. Republicans now want to focus on illegal immigration. Neither side is capturing the full picture.
HUNT: Let's put up on the screen the a chart that shows the new median age of first time home buyers. Okay? In 1991, think about what your life was like when you were 28 years old, what was behind you? What was ahead of you?
Think about what it looks like when you're 40. And to your point, Alex, I mean, 40 plus 50, this is math even I'm willing to do in public. Okay? Like, most people don't live to be 90 years old.
WILLIAMS: Even the 28-year-old, is the life expectancy, even 78 years old in the United States. If it's not --
HUNT: It's kind of around there.
WILLIAMS: Right. And so, it's what a preposterous idea for all the reasons you're saying.
HUNT: Shermichael Singleton, I want to I want to play.
WILLIAMS: Sorry --
SINGLETON: I agree with you.
WILLIAMS: I'm taking it.
SINGLETON: Seriously, I agree. (CROSSTALK)
SINGLETON: I agree. You know how I feel about --
WILLIAMS: I know. We've talked about this.
HUNT: Well, Shermichael, let's watch what the White House has been saying about this. This is the president, various other officials, the vice president, Kevin Hassett, and others about the affordability crisis. And we'll try to make sense of it on the other side. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The reason I don't want to talk about affordability is because everybody knows that it's far less expensive under Trump.
J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have to remember they're expensive because we inherited this terrible inflation crisis from the Biden administration.
TRUMP: We've never been hotter than we are right now. This is the hottest country anywhere in the world.
KEVIN HASSETT, DIRECTOR, NEC: We understand that people understand as they look at their pocketbooks and go to the grocery store, that there's still work to do.
TRUMP: I think polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we've ever had.
WILLIE GEIST, MSNBC HOST: My rent is too high. I can't afford to buy a house. Groceries are too expensive. You think they're just misperceiving what's happening in their lives?
SCOTT BESSENT, TREASURY SECRETARY: I think that they -- that they're in -- that we inherited an affordability crisis.
(END VIDEO CLP)
[16:40:00]
HUNT: I mean, Shermichael, would you like to add to the pantheon of cable news clips?
SINGLETON: Not at all. I think -- I think, this is a terrible, a terrible messaging point. We have not delivered on affordability.
Even Steve Bannon, for goodness sakes, has that vibe like, hey, this is not the right message. The 50-year mortgage is a terrible, terrible, terrible idea. We have a supply issue. If you really want to address this, let's tackle maybe looking at people's rental history as a consideration to qualify for a loan.
Let's figure out how to change some of the zoning requirements or the bureaucracy that costs a lot of money at the local level. You could even throw around the idea of, hey, if you're a state, the federal government will match dollar by -- dollar by dollar.
If you come up with an incentive program to help new homeowners, there are a systematic approaches here that we could take, this isn't one of them. This doesn't help people who are my age, early 30s, buy a house and out of my --
WILLIAMS: Your friends are at 30s.
HUNT: I know.
SINGLETON: Kasie --
HUNT: Every time I remember this.
SINGLETON: Like it's only out of my group of friends. It's maybe me and three others that actually can afford to buy a house. I own one, two others own homes, and they're not the greatest homes for the two others. I'm like fortunate as hell to be in the predicament that I'm in. But that's not representative of the average person.
THOMPSON: I can also tell you that veterans of the Biden White House will tell you that blaming the last guy and then not actually proposing your own solutions and putting your back into it is not usually a winning political strategy --
SINGLETON: And we can -- and we actually can.
WILLIAMS: There's one more point to that. And this is, you know, we were talking about a conversation you and I had yesterday and another point that came up, it's similar to public safety, where when people don't feel safe, when people don't feel secure telling them, but look at what the chart says. The data says --
HINOJOSA: Yeah, it doesn't work out.
SINGLETON: And you remember that, right, Xochitl?
HINOJOSA: I absolutely remember that, but I also just want to address the immigrant part of this. I'm sorry if you were an immigrant in this country, you were not buying a home right now. You were hardly making ends meet. You can hardly afford your rent. You were trying to buy groceries for your family.
You're basically trying to survive and contribute the way that you can. I'm from Brownsville, Texas. I will say 90 percent Latino, very high immigrant population. I will say housing prices have not gone up the way the rest of the country. It's actually affordable to live in a place like that right now.
But that's not the case in other large cities or other places around the country where people that are our age or, you know, in their 30s. I'm not in my 30s, but people that are in their 30s cannot afford to buy a home. And it's not because of immigrants.
Immigrants are not buying places in our neighborhoods and other places that we live. And so, I love that they're trying to blame immigrants, but this is one where it falls flat.
SINGLETON: Kasie, if I could just add quickly by addressing the supply issue, you also tackle the joblessness rates among young men, in particular, because you can encourage those young men to help build the next generation of houses for Americans. And so, you're really addressing two issues and one. So that would be my advice to Republicans. Let's address the supply issue.
THOMPSON: Is there a bill on the -- on the House floor that Trump -- that Trump is supporting, right? I'm just saying.
(CROSSTALK)
SINGLETON: There is not.
HUNT: I mean, look, there also -- if you talk to home builders, they will say that the president's immigration policy is actually making it harder for them to build more affordable homes quickly.
I do also want to Alex Thompson -- one of the things that has become part of this dynamic, right? It's affordability. On the one hand, what are we saying? Are we focused on this? Are we feeling people's pain?
But then there are the other things that the president and his team have been focused on that seem to potentially contradict this message of "I am on your side". And one of them has become this -- the ballroom. And we have this new picture.
This is a view of the White House or what was once half of the White House just gone, demolished to build this new ballroom for the president to host, like enormous state dinners. He, of course, was giving a tour of the gold leaf with Laura Ingraham in the Oval Office the other day, saying that, you know, the fixtures were not from Home Depot, that they were all very real. How is this dynamic playing out, politically?
THOMPSON: I mean, Democrats are eager to run lots and lots of ads on this next year, at least at the moment. I was talking to Democratic strategist just yesterday and they said, that the, the, the ballroom, all the gold, is going to feature prominently as a way of showing that Trump is not focused on you, that Trump, you know, the champion who came in claiming to be a champion of the working class, is spending a lot of times with tech CEOs and is getting all these CEOs to come and pay tribute and give money so he can build the ballroom.
WILLIAMS: Really quick. What about the narrative? Earlier on that, there was something aspirational about Trump. Many people saw Trump as the rich person they ultimately wanted to be. And that was the thing that drove many of his supporters.
THOMPSON: It might not work.
WILLIAMS: Is that wearing off or what's the --
THOMPSON: Well, you can see in the polling that Trump consistently, even when he was unpopular, that at least when it came to the economy, he was always above 50 percent, that that changed about six months ago, and they haven't been able to fix that.
[16:45:02]
And I think that his approval on the economy was a proxy for sort of that aspirational. He's a successful businessman.
HUNT: Well, and also, you know, doing for yourself what people saw Donald Trump having done for himself, requires the American dream to actually be in operation. And a lot of people feel like it's totally inaccessible now.
All right. Ahead here in THE ARENA, Fani Willis's case against Donald Trump lives to see another day. But what exactly does that mean for the president?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FANI WILLIS, FULTON COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: If you've been intrusive into people's personal lives, you're confused. You think I'm on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020.
[16:50:01]
I'm not on trial. No matter how hard you try to put me on trial.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis may be off of the Georgia election interference case, but we're learning today the case will still go forward. The man who was tasked with finding a replacement for Willis has now appointed himself to lead the case.
Now, this is not so much because he wanted the job, but because nobody else did. It became pretty clear pretty quickly no one else wanted to touch the case, charging President Trump and 18 of his allies. Now central to this case is that now infamous phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, just after the 2020 election, when the president lost the state to Joe Biden.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
TRUMP: So, look, all I want to do is this I just want to find, 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. CNN crime and justice correspondent Katelyn Polantz is here.
So, Katelyn, in the immediate term, what does this mean for President Trump?
KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, right now, it means Trump is still a criminal defendant in the state of Georgia. State of Georgia v Donald J. Trump. That's the case title. That case, it's alive. It has a prosecutor after being essentially a zombie case for quite a bit of time, Kasie. But we're going to get to see what happens here in pretty short order.
The judge, he wants to have a hearing on December 1st where the prosecutor is going to have to say what he wants to do next, and the reality here really is that Donald Trump, while he is in the presidency of the United States, even if it's a federal thing and he's has no power over the state systems of government, he has a lot of protections around him because of what the Supreme Court has previously said. Theres a lot of constitutional questions that his lawyers still have the ability to kick up if this case were to move forward.
And, Kasie, one of the things we know as well is that this prosecutor, Peter Skandalakis, he says he's reviewing all the evidence that exists in that Trump case, but he's already had to review and get familiar with a lot of it already because he had been brought in earlier to look at one of the defendants there, the former State Senator Burt Jones. And he said when he looked at that, separate from Fani Willis, because she could not because of a political conflict with Jones, he said he wasn't going to charge Burt Jones because he was just doing what constituents wanted. He was taking the advice of attorneys and he did not act with criminal intent.
Very plausible that Peter Skandalakis would move in a similar direction with Trump and all of these other defendants. But it's court, anything can happen. And there could be many, many steps between now and the end of this case, wherever it may go -- Kasie.
HUNT: Katelyn, does the president have any options here? Obviously, there was the big Supreme Court decision on immunity, but is there anything he can do to make this go away now that he's president again?
POLANTZ: Well, the fact that he is president gives him some avenue here. Weve seen this in a couple different ways, both in this case, but also in another case where he was a criminal defendant, the hush money case where he's tried to move the charges or told the courts he wants to move them to federal court, some of his co-defendants, defendants even tried and failed at that in Georgia. If this case were to move forward, if Peter Skandalakis, the prosecutor, says he doesn't want to dismiss it, he wants to try it, try it. Maybe Trump and his team could come back and say, no, we need to have federal courts look at this because of the constitutional protections around the presidency.
Also, a real possibility that everybody says Trump can't be prosecuted while he's in office. He's the president, the Supreme Court weighed in. That's it -- Kasie.
HUNT: All right. Katelyn, thank you very much for that.
Elliot Williams, what do you make of this question?
WILLIAMS: The last sentence she said there was spot on. The president cannot be prosecuted while he's in office. And that's not -- even the -- setting aside what the Supreme Court ruled a couple of years ago.
The simple fact is the president is a unique role in the United States government. It's the only one that exists by itself, and no one else can really carry out the functions. Not even the vice president of the United States while the president is there. And so, the rationale is a president cannot sit for prosecution and be tied up.
Now, maybe they could make an argument that you could try him in 2029, after he's no longer the presidency. Now, there's certainly -- there's still going to be legal questions around that, but also public appetite. Even do the biggest opponents of Donald Trump really want to relitigate literally the 2020 election once again?
THOMPSON: Well, and most Democrats I've talked to want to never speak about this case again because it was one of the biggest political goals in recent political history. Not only did Fani Willis get kicked off the case because of her romantic relationship, but the fact that she brought this case and the case in New York almost 100 percent ensured that Donald Trump would be the nominee of the Republican Party, because if you look at the polling, the days when those then -- when those investigations start is when you saw the base rally back around him and Ron DeSantis' campaign was over.
[16:55:12]
HUNT: Yeah, really, really interesting dynamics.
All right. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUNT: All right. Thanks to my panel. Really appreciate you guys.
Thanks to all of you at home for watching as well. Don't forget you can now stream THE ARENA live or catch up whenever you want. We're in the CNN app on demand. Just scan the QR code that you see there on your screen. You can also catch up by listening to THE ARENA's podcast. There's a QR code for that, too.
And don't forget to follow the show on X and Instagram. We are @TheArenaCNN.
Pamela Brown is standing by for "THE LEAD".
Hi, Pam.
