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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt

Trump: "Absolutely Ashamed" Of "Certain" Supreme Court Justices After Ruling Against His Sweeping Global Tariffs; Supreme Court Rules Trump's Signature Tariffs Are Illegal; Ex-Prince Andrew Arrested After Epstein Files Revelations; Mark Zuckerberg Testifies In Social Media Addiction Trial. Is Social Media Physically & Mentally Harmful? Court Will Decide; Civil Rights Champion Jesse Jackson Dies At 84; Do Aliens Exist? Depends Which President You Ask. Aired 12-1p ET

Aired February 21, 2026 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN ANCHOR: -- in curling, after a four decade effort just to reach the Olympics. And in the monobob, a solo bobsled, 41-year-old mom of two, Elana Meyers Taylor snatched gold by just a few hundredths of a second. She is the oldest ever female gold medalist.

That's all we have time for. Don't forget, you can find all of our shows online as podcasts at CNN.com/audio and on all other major platforms. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you again next week.

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The Arena Saturday. I'm Kasie Hunt.

President Donald Trump furious after the single greatest defeat yet in his second term. The Supreme Court ruling just yesterday that the President violated the law when he enacted sweeping tariffs on nations around the world. The 6-3 decision is a remarkable rebuke for President Trump, and it strikes down the flagship policy of his second term.

Trump has repeatedly pointed to the so-called Liberation Day tariffs and more than $130 billion they've taken in as the key to his entire economic agenda. Yesterday, the President insisted he would use other authorities to enact global tariffs, and he was unsparing in his attacks on the court.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The Supreme Court's ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing, and I'm ashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed for not having the courage to do what's right for our country. They're very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution. It's my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Wow. My panel is here in The Arena. Former Federal Prosecutor, CNN Legal Analyst Elliot Williams, Republican Pollster, CNN Political Commentator Kristen Soltis Anderson, former Communications Director for Vice President Kamala Harris, CNN Political Commentator Jamal Simmons, along with former RNC Communications Director Doug Heye.

Welcome to all of you. It's great to have you with us.

Elliot, I'm going to start with you. I mean, this 6-3 decision and, of course, the President came out aggressively immediately. Help us understand here, he now seems to want to keep these tariffs but use a different authority. What did the court actually do here, and what's it going to mean?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: The court was quite explicit that the authority that the President used, this emergency authority typically used for trade embargoes, cannot be used for tariffs. Congress, at least according to the Supreme Court today, Congress did not specifically give the President the authority to issue tariffs --

HUNT: Friday, you mean.

WILLIAMS: Pardon me, Friday. Did not issue authority -- did not give the President authority to issue tariffs in this manner. Tariffs can still happen, number one, if Congress puts them, you know, implements them, or more importantly, if the President follows any of the other methods for doing so that Brett Kavanaugh all but laid out in his dissent. So, yes, tariffs can still come, but they just have to be gone about differently.

I think what this all does open up, though, is a lot of litigation. There are at least 1,000 lawsuits filed already for companies that want to get back the money they've already paid in tariffs. They can't be joined as a big class action, so there's going to be a lot of lawsuits to sort this all out.

HUNT: Right. So why was the President then so very upset about this? Because he found out about it in the course of a meeting with the nation's governors who had gathered in the nation's capital. He basically stormed out upon finding this out. He was dropping the F word about it.

We should remember that for someone, a President who has previously been a Democrat and Independent, had, you know, different views about different things over the course of his very long career in public life and in politics. Tariffs is not the thing that he has changed his position on, and we can go all the way back to 1987 to find when he starts talking about this, and he is -- it is essentially the one thing he has been consistent on the entire time. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You can call it a tax, you can call it whatever you want to call it, but those countries should be paying us major billions of dollars. Now, I say you put a 25 percent tax on everything that's made in China.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's a tariff.

TRUMP: And you know what? And then the free --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That creates a trade war.

TRUMP: That's right.

Our leaders don't understand the game. We could turn off that spigot by charging them tax until they behave properly.

We have to use our power of tariffs and taxes.

[12:05:02]

Every time we had a problem, we just said, that's OK. Don't worry about it. We'll put the tariffs on. And they said, OK, fine. It's OK. We'll sign.

To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff. And it's my favorite word.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: And of course, Doug Heye, it has not been the favorite word of the Republican Party, which has been very much a free-trading party, as the President has been doing that. But, I mean, what do you see here for a President who has devoted his whole life to this, and now a court, and he feels like the court should be loyal to him because he put a bunch of people on it, right, that he thinks should have voted with him, said, uh-uh, no more?

DOUG HEYE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: I think you hit on the key word, and it's loyalty. It's not about tariffs, right? That's the issue that it's framed in. But everything with Donald Trump is about loyalty, and we know that loyalty is a one-way street with Donald Trump. You have to be loyal to him, and that's it.

He would probably prefer that any Supreme Court justice that he nominated doesn't have a lifetime appointment, because they can vote against him later on, and then we see what his reaction is. Donald Trump is upset on this issue, excuse me, because people said no to him. That's why he always gets mad, that's why he always throws temper tantrums, is when somebody says no to him.

HUNT: Yes. Kristen Soltis Anderson, where are Americans on this? I mean, I can put up the Pew poll, which is some of our latest numbers. The country as a whole, 25 percent think it's mostly positive to have these tariffs, 51 percent say mostly negative. When, you know, you ask about you and your family, only 20 percent say it's mostly positive, 52 percent say it's been mostly negative.

Now, on the flip side, there has been a lot of reaction and anger around the ultimate -- you know, if you think about NAFTA and some of the other free trade policies that really impacted deindustrialization in America, that's one thing. But this does not seem to be popular with the American people.

KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, it's not his most popular policy, to be sure. But you'll notice in those numbers you put up there that they don't add to 100, right? There's a lot of people that still say, I don't really know -- like, I don't know how I feel about this. And it's the sort of thing where, for many Americans, what they're most interested in is cost of living.

And for some Americans, they believe tariffs have made my cost of living worse. For a lot, there's a big question mark. What I'm wondering is, now that these tariffs have been ruled illegal by the Supreme Court or they're having to find a new way of going about it, will we actually begin to see cost of living go down a little bit? Will this in some ways accrue to Donald Trump, or rather the Republicans in Congress, their political benefit?

Because if all of a sudden you're unwinding some of these tariffs and price increases that have gotten baked in over the last year and have had people feeling kind of unpleasant, do all of a sudden folks go, oh, thank goodness. OK, my stuff at the grocery store feels a little cheaper. Thank you, Donald Trump.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

ANDERSON: Like, it's a weird backwards gift.

JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: This is the question about trade. It's always been part of the debate. We always look at what it costs us on the export side, but there also is the benefit for the imports, which is lowering the cost of living for Americans.

One of the things that our market has been is it's been an attractor around the world. So American foreign policy, America standing in the world, has been about the big American market. It's been about how we engage with our military. It's been about our alliances across the Atlantic. All those things work in concert to keep our country safe and growing and the world more prosperous.

What Donald Trump was doing is using these tariffs as like a bludgeon around the world to go after people as well as destabilizing some of the -- of our security arrangements. It's all interconnected. And so --

HUNT: Yes.

SIMMONS: -- the last thing I'll say about this is, I have been amazed at how the House Ways and Means chairman has been defanged by the Trump administration because in my entire time in Washington, the Ways and Means chairman was a beast.

HUNT: It was a pretty powerful post. I will say, I have -- I do have a question -- I mean, I got a bill from FedEx about a tariff because I ordered something online that came from overseas. It's like, am I going to get my $80 back? Because I would like my $80 back.

WILLIAMS: You're not getting your $80 back. There will be complex litigation probably involving FedEx.

HUNT: OK.

WILLIAMS: I have a hard time believing the Hunt-Rivera household is going to be getting their $80 void (ph).

HUNT: Ship has sailed.

All right. Coming up next here in The Arena, the face of Facebook faces the jury. New details on the blockbuster trial over social media addiction and how it could impact all of us.

But, first, the stunning arrest of the former Prince Andrew and whether it will or won't lead to legal accountability in the U.S.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EMILY MAITLIS, INTERVIEWED ANDREW MOUNTBATTEN-WINDSOR IN 2019: I do think we are currently doing better in the U.K. We are doing better at letting the course of justice run its path than the U.S. I mean, Norway is also doing that. France is also doing that. Europe, I think, is ahead on this. But I don't think that means it won't happen in America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN HOST, THE ASSIGNMENT WITH AUDIE CORNISH PODCAST: Here's where we begin, major breaking news out of the U.K.

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We do now know that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, of course, former Prince Andrew, has been arrested.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Andrew, the former prince and brother of King Charles, has been arrested.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good morning, America. Breaking news right now. The royal arrested.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The BBC understands that he has been arrested.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The biggest crisis for the British royal family in decades.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:14:42]

HUNT: It was news that sent shockwaves around the world. For the first time in almost 400 years, a senior member of the royal family was arrested. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was picked up on suspicion of misconduct in public office. It's a crime that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

[12:15:02]

He was later released under investigation on Thursday. Police have previously said they're assessing whether the former prince shared confidential material with Jeffrey Epstein during his decade as a U.K. trade envoy. Now, Andrew has not been charged with any sexual offenses, and he has previously denied any wrongdoing. But it does bring us to the quote of the week.

King Charles releasing a statement about the arrest of his brother, where he said in part, quote, "Let me state clearly, the law must take its course," end quote.

My panel is back. And Doug Heye, you have spent a lot of time in the U.K. You know a lot of officials in London. The reaction that we have seen from the British across the board, from the press, from the establishment to the royal family, has stood in real stark contrast to the reaction here in America. Why?

HEYE: That's a good question, and it's one that I'm getting. You know, I was in London the day that Lord Mandelson, former Lord Mandelson, the former ambassador, resigned. And I thought we couldn't get to a bigger news story in the U.K. than that. It turns out this clearly is a bigger one.

And I texted with a former U.K. ambassador about what is the reaction there and what are people saying. One, this is like warp factor nine in how big this story is this week compared to a few months ago. But the other is he asked very pointedly. We're doing things the right way, when will the United States? That's a really tough question.

HUNT: Kristen Soltis Anderson, what do you think explains the way this -- the way that the establishment is or isn't reacting here in the United States? Because, I mean, I think it's worth underscoring, right, the MAGA base has actually broken with President Trump on the way he has handled these Epstein files.

And, in fact, before you talk about it, let's watch what President Trump said when he found out that Andrew had been arrested. It was a pretty remarkable moment. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You know, I'm the expert in a way because I've been totally exonerated. That's very nice. I can actually speak about it very nicely. I think it's a shame. I think it's very sad. I think it's so bad for the royal family. It's very, very sad. To me, it's a very sad thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: It's very sad, he says. How do you think Republicans that, you know, you're polling all the time are going to react to that?

ANDERSON: Well, what I think is notable about the charges on which former Prince Andrew has been picked up this time is not the sexual side of things, it is the question of improper use of a public office. And I think in the U.S. so much of this conversation has been about young women, has been about assault, has been about the sexual nature of the horrible things that have been alleged.

But really, there's this whole other subplot to this, which is about very wealthy, very privileged people and a network where they are all in communication with one another, sharing information, sharing networks. And that's what's really, I think in this case, seems to have ensnared Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, that was he passing along improper information to somebody? And that, to me, is what is slightly different than the way this conversation has tended to go here in the U.S.

HUNT: Elliot Williams, I mean, to that point, I mean, one thing we -- I've started to hear from people off the Hill is this question of foreign influence and what role did that play in what Jeffrey Epstein was doing. But, of course, there's also the question of following the money.

And one thing we learned from the oversight committee is that the billionaire, Les Wexner, spoke to the committee. He said that the DOJ and the FBI haven't even tried to talk to him, even though he was essentially the biggest provider, the biggest benefactor to Jeffrey Epstein.

WILLIAMS: Yes, I think -- and this is picking up on exactly what Kristen had said, so much of the energy in the United States has been around, can you charge people with sexual crimes? Are we within the statute of limitations for sex trafficking, and therefore we're not going to pursue other angles or other leads?

Well, that Les Wexner interview or deposition was just fascinating in that, number one, you see how an individual claims to have been so intoxicated by Jeffrey Epstein that he was giving him millions of dollar -- like letting millions of dollars slip out of his hands and not paying attention to anything else.

But also, two, to the other point Kristen was making, that the subplot to all of the Jeffrey Epstein saga is the dealings between the wealthy and Hollywood and Wall Street and Silicon Valley and so on. To that extent, there may be other investigations beyond just the sexual assault crimes that everyone is focused on and are worthy of, at a minimum, public attention, if not law enforcement.

HUNT: Yes, so I asked Congressman Garcia, who's the incoming -- likely incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, if Democrats win the House, right, now he's the ranking member on the committee. Now, this committee has been doing its own investigation, digging into all of this around Epstein. They're the ones who depose Les Wexner.

[12:20:02] I talked to him about why, you know, this is something that the Biden Justice Department easily could have asked Wexner about. This is an investigation that has spanned multiple administrations. Take a look at what Garcia told me earlier this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ROBERT GARCIA (D), CALIFORNIA: Merrick Garland should be answering some of these questions. It is, to me, this idea that for so many years, the most powerful people in this country and in our own government have refused to investigate these crimes against children and women is disgusting. It has to end.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: I mean, Jamal Simmons, it's a fair question. I mean, why didn't the Biden Justice Department ask to talk to the people that were bankrolling Jeffrey Epstein?

SIMMONS: No, it's a big deal. It's a failure of administrations going back. It is a failure of the elites in the country to hold -- be held accountable. I think this is something everybody's going to have to answer. The failure also that's happening right now is that the Republican Congress doesn't seem to be looking at everybody who's involved.

They seem to be using this to target specific people, target Democrats, target Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, instead of thinking about, well, OK, what about the Trump officials who were involved? What about some of these other billionaires who were involved? I think if they spread their inquiries around, they would have a lot more political support. It would make more sense to the American people.

HUNT: Well, the snowball is really crashing down the hill. So, you know, we'll see.

Coming up next here in The Arena, remembering a champion of the civil rights movement and a giant in American politics. But first, the blockbuster trial being called social media's tobacco moment. Mark Zuckerberg on the stand and under oath defending his company from allegations his products are addictive and harmful to our kids.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JULIANNA ARNOLD, MOTHER OF COCO KONAR: He knew perfectly well what was going on. The intention of the company was to prey on teens, use teens usage, exploit them so they can make greater profits. And that was done intentionally, not by accident.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[12:26:23]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is my son, Eric Robinson. We were here in Santa Monica when he passed away in 2010 from the choking game.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm here on behalf of my son, Alexander, who lost his life at the age of 14 to fentanyl poisoning via Snapchat.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm here to represent my daughter, Selena, who died by suicide in 2021 at 11 years old.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I lost my daughter, Becca, in 2020. She's forever 18.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- my daughter, Annalie (ph), forever 18.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My son, Mason, forever 15.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Just devastating. Those were the voices of grieving parents who say that social media contributed to their children's deaths. This week, they faced Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a Los Angeles courtroom as part of a landmark social media trial in which Meta and Google's YouTube are accused of harming young people by making it deliberately addictive, a claim that both companies deny.

Pressed with internal documents raising concerns about child safety, Zuckerberg testified the company did not intentionally seek children as users. His testimony coming a little over two years after the Facebook founder famously made that surprise apology during a congressional hearing to parents who say that their children had been harmed by the platforms he built.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's families of victims here today. Have you apologized to the victims? Would you like to do so now?

MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO, META: Well --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're here. You're on national television. Would you like now to apologize to the victims who have been harmed by your product? Show them the pictures.

Would you like to apologize for what you've done to these good people?

ZUCKERBERG: I'm sorry. Everything that you all have gone through, it's terrible. No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered. And this is why we invested so much and are going to continue doing industry leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things that your families have had to suffer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Pretty remarkable moment there. Elliot Williams, there's a distinction here between the case itself --

WILLIAMS: Yes.

HUNT: -- what's on the line legally, and what's going on in the court of public opinion for Facebook, for Meta, for some of these other companies. I've said it before, I'll say it again. The moms are coming for the phones, OK? People have realized what this has done to their kids. What are we learning in the course of this trial that we didn't know before that you think may affect the outcome here?

WILLIAMS: The outcome ultimately, I think, is going to be settlements across the country only because there are so many suits, not just in Los Angeles. There's another one brought by the Attorney General of New Mexico and other states over these issues. It's -- the challenge in all of this, Kasie, is getting to what is the harm caused and how do you quantify it, and it's tricky.

We could say that in the context of tobacco or fentanyl, there was big litigation over those things. You have a very clear product that when design -- when used the way it was designed, it gives you lung cancer, it gives you heart disease, or whatever else. It's a little more nebulous with social media.

Just legally, it's just harder to establish that the thing that your kid's looking at is ultimately the thing that led to whether it was the self-harm or whatever else. Now, that's not to say there aren't incredibly corrosive effects to all of this --

HUNT: Yes. So, hold on, just -- let me pause you there because --

WILLIAMS: Yes.

HUNT: -- there's that famous line from the Supreme Court that, you know, one of the justices wrote in, you know, it's a little bit like pornography, you know, when you see it. I mean, isn't there a reality that parents really understand? We can put this up, right --

WILLIAMS: Yes.

HUNT: -- like, the Pew poll on teenage mental health. Parents, 44 percent of them said social media was the biggest threat --

WILLIAMS: Yes.

HUNT: -- to their teen's mental health. Now, among teenagers, it was 22 percent. Bullying comes, you know, in number two now. Of course, bullying can occur on social media.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: of course.

HUNT: So in many ways, they go together. But isn't this -- I mean, I absolutely take your point on it being hard to quantify, but don't we all know it when we see it?

WILLIAMS: Yes, it's true. And my heart flutters whenever I hear direct quotes to Yacobellis versus Oregon, and so you did it, and so we're good today. No, you're absolutely right. It's the court of public opinion versus the court of what can be established in a Los Angeles court. It is clear that there's broad bipartisan policy disagreement with how social media companies operate.

There's a challenge legally with what to do, but, you know, in a perfect world, we get to some place where some changes happen with respect to how they run their algorithms.

KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: And this is almost 100 percent going to be an issue in the 2028 presidential race as contenders on both sides of the aisle in this open primary process try to carve out a lane for what right now is not clearly a Republican or a Democratic issue.

On the Democratic side, you have some folks that have come out and been more sort of aggressive in saying, yes, we actually do need to ban these things for younger children. On the Republican side, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has come out and tried to carve this lane of saying, you know, I don't trust these big tech companies.

I do think that a lot of this stuff is corrosive. This issue is not going anywhere, and it's going to be a debate that unfolds on both sides.

HUNT: Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah, also has come out and said it should be banned for kids under 16. We heard from Gavin Newsom this week, according to "Politico," which I thought was interesting. He backed social media restrictions for teens under 16. At the event where I saw Spencer Cox, the Utah governor, Republican, say they should do this, the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, was much less direct about it. I mean, Kristen, is this potentially one of those issues where it just moves so fast that it gets ahead of where the politicians are?

ANDERSON: I think so, but I also think it's one of those issues that is not going to cut neatly across party lines, and whoever figures out how to harness that first will win. So I think of it actually having a lot of parallels to the MAHA movement. Set aside the vaccines of it all, this question of, hey, I don't know how I feel about food dyes in my kids' food. Hey, I don't understand why we're not doing more on preventative medicine. And that was not a right-versus-left issue.

Republicans were able to kind of harness it and say, hey, no one's talking to these people. That very well may be what happens when it comes to the, I'm worried about screen time, I'm worried about what this is doing to my kids' movement.

HUNT: Yes.

JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. Kasie, I mean, literally this week I was at the bus stop waiting for my kids' bus to come, and parents were having this conversation about social media. When do you get a smartwatch? When do you get a phone? And then there's the question, which this does take it off the table, of what happens when your kid's the only kid who's not using the device, or who's the only kid who's not using social media? What's the social pressure around that? If this applies to all the kids who are under 16, it does help make that better for the kids who don't want to participate.

HUNT: Yes. I mean, actually, so my kids are little, right? And I think how you think about this may depend on, you know, where you sit, right? Like, I am just of the age where a lot of this technology was being developed when I was an adolescent. So I grew up without it, but then I became a native to it, right? And so people that age now having these small kids and seeing what's happened to the generation of kids right before them, I mean, my parents -- my parent friends are buying landlines for their children, right, to try to make it something that we're all doing.

ANDERSON: And as a pollster, I say thank you. More landlines for everyone.

HUNT: I don't think I would ever put a yes, yes, the pollster may call my tin can phone in there. But go ahead.

WILLIAMS: You know, to that point though, the interesting thing about Generation Alpha, the kids coming up now, is that they're the first generation to have not known a life without screens. And so, yes, there are important questions that are being asked about social media and its effect on kids and body image and all of the above. They literally have not known a day of their lives where they haven't had screens in front of them. And thinking about how that affects them is going to be quite profound for the next generation.

HUNT: Yes, for sure.

All right. Ahead here in The Arena, we'll remember a giant in the fight for civil rights.

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[12:34:05]

JESSE JACKSON, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: We must never surrender. America will get better and better. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACKSON: Don't you surrender. Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith. In the end, faith will not be support. You must not surrender. You may or may not get there, but just know that you are qualified, and you hold on and hold out. We must never surrender. America will get better and better. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive.

(END VIDEO CLIP) HUNT: Keep hope alive. This week in history, we remember a towering figure of the civil rights movement, the Reverend Jesse Jackson. He died on Tuesday at the age of 84. Jackson was a living bridge between generations. He was at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis when Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down in 1968. Forty years later, he witnessed Barack Obama become the first black president in the nation's history.

Born in the Jim Crow South, Jackson rose to prominence as King's protege and continued the fight for social justice long after the civil rights leader's death. Later in his career, he mounted two electrifying but ultimately unsuccessful bids for president in the 1980s, becoming the first black candidate to be a serious contender in a national contest.

[12:40:16]

Both campaigns stunned party leaders who were shocked by Jackson's ability to unite a diverse group of voters under his rainbow coalition. His efforts eventually laid the groundwork for Obama's successful campaign 20 years later.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACKSON: Our flag is red, white, and blue, but our nation is rainbow, red, yellow, brown, black, and white. We're all precious. America's more like a quilt. Many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Jamal Simmons, the -- you're being here today, in no small part due to Jesse Jackson, to the leaders that came before. Can you talk a little bit about what he meant to our country, to our politics, and to so many of the black leaders we have today?

SIMMONS: Yes, I was just a hair too young to have worked for him when he was running for president. But I worked for the people who he brought in, the Donna Braziles who we know, the Mignon Moores, and all the women who really helped run the Democratic Party.

Leah Daughtry, who helped run the Democratic Party for an entire generation after he left. Ron Brown, who managed his campaign in 1988, was one of my mentors. He became Department of Commerce secretary, died in a tragic plane crash.

But all this generation really did look up to Jesse Jackson. I got to know him more when I was -- when he was a little bit older, and he was out of the sort of hardcore political game. But one thing he did that lasted and helped President Obama, he changed the way Democrats apportioned delegates.

And he took that number down. Before, when he ran, you had to reach 20 percent of a state in order to get any delegates. He lowered that number to 15 percent. And that 15 percent threshold helped Barack Obama in 2008 win delegates in states that he lost when he was running against Hillary Clinton.

HUNT: Doug High, what would you say, you know, Republicans who watched Jesse Jackson's campaigns, what did they learn from him?

DOUG HEYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: First was the way he talked. I mean, you couldn't be moved by it. And I read a thing earlier today that Brit Hume wrote. And you wouldn't think that Brit Hume is a massive Jesse Jackson fan. And he wrote about the tears that he had the last time he saw Jesse Jackson's speech because you could not get anything but worked up in that speech.

I watched that speech. I was 16 years old when he gave that speech at the DNC. I remember getting emotional about it. You couldn't not do that. I also remember, this is a total aside, but I see the Jesse with an exclamation mark. Clearly he influenced Lamar Alexander and Jeb Bush --

HUNT: Jeb Bush.

HEYE: -- which we never forget. I didn't know that that came from Jesse Jackson.

WILLIAMS: The interesting thing, and picking up somewhat on what Jamal had said, the interesting thing is that, so back in 1984, Jesse Jackson, many might not have seen as the mainstream candidate for the Democratic Party, his entire platform ultimately ended up becoming the platform of at least Bernie Sanders, if not the Democratic Party. Today you're talking about universal health care, which was the centerpiece of his platform, sort of this idea of a multiracial coalition, policing reform, and on and on things that were somewhat on the fringe of the party really became the mainstream today.

Now, you know, whether that's a good idea or what Doug and Jamal debate, but it is interesting how the things that he stood for politically really shifted into broad mainstream appeal within the party.

HUNT: Yes, I mean, Jamal, big picture, I mean, how do you think about his legacy? Because, you know, I mean, it really, what a remarkable arc from Martin Luther King Jr. to Barack Obama.

SIMMONS: Yes, you know, I talked to someone who was a producer of Jesse Jackson's show, and it was right here on CNN, a generation ago, and he said, you know, they wanted Jesse Jackson at one time to take after somebody who had had a really, a lot of a racist background and past, and he didn't do it.

And afterwards they asked him why. He said, you know, because I'm in the redemption business, and if I want other people to change their behavior and change their views, I can't attack them for what they did in the past all the time. And I think that idea of redemption, particularly in this moment for people who are Democrats, there are a lot of people right now who are questioning their votes for the current president of the United States.

Maybe they want to come back and change their minds. If we all point our finger at them and say, oh, you know, you were bad people for having done that, that's going to decrease the number of people who come and say, you know what, maybe I'll give somebody else a chance in the next election.

HUNT: Kristen Soltis Anderson, when we think about, I mean, Jamal's talking about, right, Black voters in particular, I mean, Republicans under Trump made pretty significant inroads, but they still, Black voters remain a bedrock, the bedrock of especially the Democratic presidential primary process. How do you understand Black voters as a group? And should we be understanding them that way in this day and age?

[12:44:59]

ANDERSON: I mean, enormously influential. A big piece of the reason why Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination in 2020 is because he was somebody who was able to win that group when nobody else in that field could, even doing poorly in the first few contests. But coming back in South Carolina, you know, in support of Jim Clyburn, and it's just, it is so enormously important in the Democratic Party to have these voters.

But for Republicans to put together a coalition forever, realizing that you can't just cede that ground is important. I mean, I thought it was honestly pretty notable. Donald Trump, not known for necessarily tweeting the most gracious things when prominent figures pass away, was actually relatively reserved this week. I don't think anything understands the importance of Jesse Jackson to a very, very large and critical piece of this country.

SIMMONS: I will say, I was one time at one of the Wall Street projects where Donald Trump hosted Jesse Jackson, when Jesse Jackson was running the Rainbow PUSH Wall Street program, and they were bringing in Black entrepreneurs and Black business people, and Donald Trump hosted him at that thing. So it's a complicated story, America, in the early 20th century.

HEYE: When I worked at the RNC, we set up a very secret meeting between Michael Steele and Jesse Jackson, because if there were 5 percent of the things that they could work together on, that could be a big boon for us. But we didn't want to talk about it, and they said, you can't.

HUNT: Well, now you're talking about it. Now it's out in the open, many years later.

All right, coming up next here, something totally different. The truth is out there. We'll explain.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[12:51:03]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are aliens real? BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They're real, but I haven't seen them, and they're not being kept in, what is it --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Area 51.

OBAMA: Area 51. There's no underground facility. Unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: The former president, Barack Obama, who's had all the access to all the files and all the things, he just said that aliens are real. I'm sorry, what is going on? So while on Brian Tyler Cohen's podcast, which you saw there, the former president just, you know, casually drinking his coffee or his tea or whatever, possibly confirmed one of the biggest conspiracy theories on Earth, which is that we are not alone.

His comments naturally exploded. They went so viral that he had to clarify by posting on Instagram this, "Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there." He said that the chances that we've been visited by aliens is low, and "I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really, exclamation point."

Sure, Jan. Sure, Jan. The current president, who also has access to all the files and all the things, had this to say about Obama's comments.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Barack Obama said that aliens are real. Have you seen any evidence of non-human visitors to Earth?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, he gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So aliens are real?

TRUMP: Well, I don't know if they're real or not. I can tell you he gave classified information.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Oh, my God. That didn't last very long. Just hours later, President Trump posted on Truth Social he's directing files related to aliens and UFOs to be released. Guys?

SIMMONS: I'm going with statement number one. Listen, it appears to me there must be aliens. It's kind of been confirmed by two presidents just now.

HUNT: I mean, what else? We can't believe both of them. I mean, they never agree on anything.

WILLIAMS: Get me out of here. No, I mean.

HEYE: You mean me up? Is that what you mean?

HUNT: Yes.

WILLIAMS: Come on, "Star Trek." "Star Wars" is a better franchise. No, no, it's just we've seen the films "Armageddon," "Deep Impact," "Independence Day." When things come from outer space, it does not end well for humanity. Get us all out of here as we can.

ANDERSON: Or this is "Contact," which is one where they make contact with us, but then like magically the tape disappears at the end and they claim that Jodie Foster never actually saw this.

WILLIAMS: Or it's "V" and Donald Trump rips his face off and he's actually lizard person.

HEYE: You ever seen a bigger group of nerds, Jamal?

ANDERSON: Or, I got one more or. Or, as my friend who's an artist says, we're the aliens.

WILLIAMS: That's so meta.

HUNT: I personally think if aliens are out there, it's got to be like Mos Eisley Cantina, Elliot. Just to add another nerdy thing.

WILLIAMS: And it's funny, and I will one up your nerdiness. I thought Washington, D.C. was the most wretched hive of scum and villainy. But no, it turns out that another one might exist. The real Mos Eisley spaceport in outer space from "Star Wars."

HUNT: Yes, I don't know, Doug, you're a "Star Wars" fan.

HEYE: I am. Look, I'd say meanwhile, let's get this back to politics. Barack Obama did a big favor for Donald Trump because with Epstein and the tariffs, what does Donald Trump have? Something else to talk about.

HUNT: He does.

HEYE: Thanks, Obama.

HUNT: I mean, look, I have to say, Kristen, I mean, this has been a fun and sort of silly conversation, but there is actually, I mean, when you talk to people on Capitol Hill, I mean, Harry Reid, who's the former leader of the Senate, was kind of obsessed with this idea that there were UFOs. Like, there is some body of governmental evidence out there that, I don't know, says something that we don't know.

ANDERSON: Well, I feel like the fact that Donald Trump has not put it on Truth Special is in some ways the best evidence that there aren't aliens. Like, can you actually imagine him getting that information and then just, like, holding onto it? So, if anything was going to disprove the existence of government evidence around this, it actually might be the events of the last 72 hours. [12:55:14]

WILLIAMS: In fairness, though, it is entirely plausible that there is another Goldilocks planet, the term that between, far enough but close enough to its sun, that there's probably been life across the millennia that the universe has existed. They're probably not showing up to destroy us like.

SIMMONS: And what is probably certainly true is that there are amoeba out there.

HUNT: Well, whatever the truth is, it's out there. Thank you all very much. Really appreciate it. Thanks to all of you for watching as well. Don't forget, you can see The Arena every weekday. It's right here on CNN, 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. You can also catch up listening to The Arena's podcast. Follow the show on X and Instagram. We're at TheArenaCNN. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Don't go anywhere. The news continues next on CNN.

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