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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt

Cracks Emerge In GOP Over Iran War And Growing Cost; Will More Republicans Break With Trump On Iran War?; Trump On Gas Prices: "I Thought It Would Be Worse"; Experts Warn Oil Prices Could Surge Past Record High If Iran War Persists, As U.S. Gas Hovers Around $4 A Gallon; Will Trump's Decision To Launch Iran War Help 2028 Dem Contenders?; 1931: Nevada Becomes First State To Legalize Casino Gambling; Trump Jokes About Pearl Harbor In Meeting With Japan PM. Aired 12-1p ET

Aired March 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]

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

War with Iran now entering its fourth week, and challenging President Donald Trump's ability to control the situation. From escalating attacks on oil facilities across the region, to the thousands of American Marines and sailors who, sources say, are once again deploying to the Middle East.

And an apparent disconnect with Israel playing out in public, President Trump now finds himself facing questions over whether he really has a handle on all of it. Not just from Democrats, but from prominent voices inside his MAGA movement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R), FORMER GEORGIA CONGRESSWOMAN: We said on every single rally stage, no more foreign wars, no more regime change, it's time to put America first, and this is a complete betrayal of those campaign promises.

REP. LAUREN BOEBERT (R), COLORADO: I am so tired of spending money elsewhere. I am tired of the industrial war complex getting all of our hard-earned tax dollars.

CARRIE PREJEAN BOLLER, CONSERVATIVE INFLUENCER: MAGA is dead, it is deader than dead, and Americans are furious. We do not recognize President Donald J. Trump anymore.

JOE KENT, FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER: This is why 77 million people voted for him. It's probably not the only reason, but the no new wars, put America first, don't let us bleed out in the Middle East.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: That last person that you saw there? Joe Kent. He is now the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. This week, he became the first high-ranking member of the Trump administration to resign in protest of the war. It all, of course, begs the question, will more Republicans break with the President on Iran?

My panel is here in The Arena. Staff writer at The Atlantic, Toluse Olorunnipa. CNN Political Commentator, Former Deputy Communications Director in the Biden White House, Kate Bedingfield. And Republican Congressman, former Republican Congressman and Speaker Pro Tem, Patrick McHenry. Welcome to all of you, thank you very much for being here.

Congressman, the question I have heading into next week, this potential $200 billion ask from the White House to pay for this war. I mean, you saw how some of the people who used to be the President's most ardent MAGA supporters responded to that. I'm curious whether Republicans are going to want to do this on their own, because they're unlikely to get a lot of help from Democrats.

PATRICK MCHENRY (R), FORMER SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE: Well, they can't do it on their own. You have to get 60 votes in the Senate, and you're going to have to have a bipartisan vote in the House. The House majority is so narrow currently. You don't have enough Republican votes to do much of anything on a daily basis.

So something of this magnitude will have to be bipartisan. The appropriations process for war supplementals going back to -- going back 30, 40 years has always been a bipartisan process.

HUNT: Yes.

MCHENRY: This is the war vote. This is the war vote is on the supplemental, on the replenishment of our weapons systems. This is the -- this is really the question of whether or not there really is a MAGA split. We have some influencers here that have gotten in fights with President Trump.

And over the last 10 years, anyone who's in the MAGA movement that gets in a fight with President Trump loses. Marjorie Taylor Greene, not in Congress anymore. And so these significant voices that say they espouse Trumpism or MAGA more than he does are traditionally losers in that effort to fight with him. And I think this is just going to be another example of that.

HUNT: Well, and you can see it in the approval rating. I mean, Republicans, 84 percent of them say they approve of how President Trump has handled Iran. Just 11 percent say they disapprove. And sorry, Kate, jump in.

KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: No, no. Well, I was just going to say I think it's actually sort of interesting on the Democratic side, too, because, you know, historically, you would expect there to be some bipartisan support. It is difficult to take a vote that can be framed as not being willing to supply troops with what they need when they are, you know, in battle.

And so that historically, particularly for moderate Democrats, has been a place. And you can look back, obviously, at the Iraq war. But I think given the broad unpopularity amongst the general population thus far around this effort in Iran, combined with the kind of continued echo chamber of these prominent MAGA voices expressing concern, whether that's having a real impact on MAGA voters, the data would suggest actually probably not yet. But it is contributing to an overall sense that this is unpopular.

[12:05:00]

And I think for Democrats -- I think moderate Democrats you might have in another scenario seen vote for this money are not going to.

HUNT: How do you see the difference or potential difference between the pressure that you have seen those Democrats face, especially moderate Democrats over the years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a war that Donald Trump started, when Donald Trump is so toxic with the base?

BEDINGFIELD: So I think there's some of that. I think the fact that this is Trump's project does have an impact on some of these Democrats. But I actually -- I think the bigger factors here are, one, rising gas prices, which, you know, is front and center for voters. And I don't think any Democrat is eager to seem like they are part of contributing to that problem.

But --

HUNT: Yes. Understatement.

BEDINGFIELD: To say the least, to say the least, that's real political insight here for you. You're welcome. But, secondly, I think that Trump's inability thus far to make a coherent, cohesive argument as to why we are doing this also creates an environment where Democrats are going to be just less inclined to support it.

HUNT: Yes.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: It sounds like it's his inability, but it's also his unwillingness to even try. He spoke at the State of the Union for nearly two hours and barely talked about Iran. And now it's the biggest news story in the world.

And his unwillingness to justify this before the American people, before Congress, is part of the reason why he's having a split within his own party and part of the reason why he's not likely to get the support that you would expect in a bipartisan way.

At least at the beginning of a war, you normally get at least some bipartisanship at the very beginning. Everyone rallies around the flag, rallies around the troops. You're not seeing that as much this time around, in part, because the President has not explained why we're doing this, why we're all sort of having to pay the price for this with higher gas prices, higher inflation, and a lack of understanding about where this goes next.

HUNT: Yes. Well, and then, of course, the big question, Congressman, and I want to put up this other piece of this Quinnipiac poll that we have, Republicans on whether or not we should have ground troops in Iran. OK, so different from what the President's been doing so far.

Fifty-two percent of Republicans oppose the idea of putting U.S. troops on the ground in Iran. And the reality is the President, I mean, it does seem like a live possibility that there is at least a conversation about whether troops should go in to try to secure any nuclear material in Iran, which would be a significant potential escalation. They don't seem to be selling that either, if that's what they're talking about doing.

MCHENRY: Yes, that's true. They haven't done the storytelling. First, I mean, as we've just discussed, they haven't done the storytelling about what the Iranian regime has done. That is bipartisan facts that we've discussed for the last 30 years of the malevolence of this regime, killing Americans and our allies globally, and the proper good that has been done by removing and decapitating this regime.

I think there's bipartisan agreement on that. Now, every movement off of that becomes much more fractured in our politics. What you see in this poll is what you'll see in every poll around military action, a deep skepticism of the American people that we should do anything that goes outside, you know, outside the bounds of our nation.

And so that skepticism is born out of experience. You would see a similar poll in World War II on whether or not we should be engaged in World War II. So --

HUNT: Up until Pearl Harbor, of course.

MCHENRY: Right. But even then, there was skepticism about sending ground troops to Europe in response to the Japanese attack. So -- but I know we'll get to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

HUNT: We are going to touch on that at the end of the show, yes.

MCHENRY: But the skepticism is now. The question here is the ramifications on the election. That means you have to prove out results around your actions. Each week we go by, we're in a different state of play. And this administration, in coordination with Israel and our allies in the Middle East, is getting results week over week. That is a good thing.

But the faster it gets to a close, the easier it's going to be to actually replenish our munitions, the easier the vote will be on the supplemental, the easier the politics will be in the gas prices and everything else.

BEDINGFIELD: But this is also -- I agree with a lot of what you just said. But I think this is also where Trump's natural inclination toward hyperbole hurts him. I mean, we heard last summer their nuclear program has been obliterated. You know, we continue to hear, you know, time and again this is -- this effort's going perfectly, we've crushed them.

And so, if -- in the effort of trying to make -- HUNT: Right.

BEDINGFIELD: -- the argument for why you're doing what you're doing and the wins you're notching, if you've already kind of blown through the idea that these wins are, you know, matter, you've kind of put yourself in a weird dynamic. And this is where I think the lack of credibility is problematic for him.

HUNT: Yes, an interesting point.

All right, coming up next here, we have talked about the MAGA reaction, but where are Democrats? What some potential 2028 candidates are saying about Iran and what they're not saying.

Plus, the political price Republicans now fear they could pay for the war as the White House launches a full-court press to calm fears over rising gas prices.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[12:10:08]

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They said, you know, if we do that, oil prices will go up. The economy will go down a little bit. I thought it would be worse, much worse, actually. I thought there was a chance it could be much worse. It's not bad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JD VANCE (R), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Gas prices were up. And we know they're up, and we know that people are hurting because of it, and we're doing everything that we can to ensure that they stay lower.

I will say, you know, the President said this, and I certainly agree with it. This is a temporary blip.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:15:12]

HUNT: Vice President JD Vance right there saying the pain Americans are feeling at the pump is a, quote, "temporary blip." His comments come as gas prices soar, with drivers paying $ 1 more than they did a month ago as the Iran war enters its fourth week.

And Americans, not optimistic at this moment that the prices are going to go down anytime soon. A Yahoo/YouGov poll found 67 percent think gas prices will go up in the next few months, with 40 percent saying President Trump is to blame. This all coming ahead of a heated midterm election season where Republicans are increasingly concerned these surging energy prices could cost them their slim majorities in Congress.

The President, meanwhile, downplaying the economic impact. And that brings us to our quote of the week. President Trump saying he thought prices would actually be, quote, "much worse."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I saw what was happening in Iran, and I said, I hate to make this excursion, but we're going to have to do it. I said, you know, if we do that, oil prices will go up, the economy will go down a little bit. I thought it would be worse, much worse, actually. I thought there was a chance it could be much worse. It's not bad, and it's going to be over with pretty soon.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So he thinks it could be much worse. I will say, Congressman Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful himself, was on the show this week saying, well, it will take three months for gas prices to get to $7 a gallon. I mean, if gas sits at $7 a gallon in three months, I mean, how many seats are Republicans losing in the House exactly?

MCHENRY: A lot. A lot. That's super bad news. And we're going into the driving season in the summer where that will exacerbate the problem.

A couple of things. Number one, we get into the President's thinking here. He has the opportunity to take out the top 40 in the regime, and he has a moment of intel gathered by Israel and the United States. You take that moment or you don't.

And I think had we wanted to take any action against Iran without taking out the leadership of Iran, we would have more Americans, more human beings killed as a result of our inaction. So he took this action knowing that the economic peril to the United States could be severe.

But he thought on balance is the right thing to do. I think that is a very important thing. And I'd be interested to hear the Democratic reaction to that fact.

Second, the question of gas prices. Look, the prediction on commodities markets for laypeople, even people that watch the market closely, is wildly inaccurate. Gas prices can go up much faster. My expectation and a lot of market watchers expectation was that prices would be much higher now.

But for the fact the United States produces more than it consumes in oil and natural gas, we would be in a very different situation as Americans in -- even a generation ago than we are today. So I think the question now is where do things end up, how quickly is this done, and how quickly can you get the Strait of Hormuz open. That will have the impact on gas prices --

HUNT: Right.

MCHENRY: -- and our economy and the election. HUNT: Well, and of course, one big question, Toluse, I want to play what the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had to say about Russian oil, which is under sanction because we don't want them to make money that they can then spend in -- on the war in Ukraine. But here's what Bessent said this week. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT BESSENT, TREASURY SECRETARY: In the coming days, we may unsanction the Iranian oil that's on the water. It's about 140 million barrels. So depending on how you count it, that's 10 days to two weeks of supply.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So, excuse me, he was talking about Iranian oil there, which, of course, would finance the war that they're waging against us. What does that tell you?

OLORUNNIPA: Well, they've already taken sanctions off of Russian oil. So they've already taken that step, which was unpredicted at the beginning of this. Now they're considering taking sanctions off of Iranian oil, releasing more oil from Venezuela, releasing more oil from this strategic petroleum reserve.

They are taking a number of steps that do look desperate in some ways, in part, because none of this was telegraphed to the American people that your gas prices are going to go up. We're going to take all of these various measures to try to, you know, stem the blow. And people don't realize that all of these steps are being taking -- taken and the gas prices are still going up.

And so it does make it hard to explain why this is necessary, why this is the step that this President is taking, and how Americans should expect their gas prices to be in the weeks and months to come.

HUNT: Yes.

OLORUNNIPA: Whether this is going to be short term or a temporary blip or something that takes much longer is a big question that remains to be answered.

HUNT: Well, and Kate, it does seem as though, and we showed some of the polling in the last block, but that same poll shows that just 2 percent of Americans blame Joe Biden for gas prices, which, of course, the President keeps trying to blame Joe Biden --

BEDINGFIELD: Yes.

HUNT: -- for the economy, or he has in the past anyway.

[12:20:00]

BEDINGFIELD: Yes. Well, I mean, look, I think that's just a factor of our incredibly hyper-partisan politics. I think there are 2 percent --

MCHENRY: Should it be higher, though?

BEDINGFIELD: -- 2 percent of --

MCHENRY: Should it be higher?

BEDINGFIELD: 2 percent of people are going to blame Joe Biden for anything you throw out there. So, you know. But, I mean, I think a couple of things. What -- to your point about taking -- seizing the opportunity to take out horrific despot who did potentially pose some threat to the United States, I would say essentially every president, you know, for the last -- almost 50 years, has grappled with that question.

I think had the Trump administration attack -- the sort of to lose point -- had the Trump administration attacked this with a sense of planning, preparation, had they communicated effectively that this is why they were taking that action, I think they would be in a very different place. And you're right, there are plenty of Democrats who would say we should seize that opportunity.

But we've heard a hundred reasons from the administration from day one starting from, you know, Trump, to Rubio, to Vance, to others. And so, you know, how is the American public supposed to absorb a sense of sacrifice, a sense of, I'm willing to pay more for gas because we took out somebody who was a threat to the United States and a threat to freedom around the world.

I mean, you're asking people to sacrifice for something that you're not even justifying to them why you've done it. So that's what I would say to that. But --

HUNT: Yes. Well, I mean, it's interesting you say that. I want to play the Republican Senate candidate in Minnesota. Michele Tafoya said a version of this, right, a pitch to voters like, hey, let's all rally behind the flag, sacrifice a little bit for this.

I want to show you that argument and we'll talk about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHELE TAFOYA (R), MINNESOTA SENATE CANDIDATE: I Know it's frustrating and I know it's hard for people. What I would say to them is we've lost some service members over there who have put their lives on the line to protect us. I think right now, at least just kind of keeping a stiff upper lip, maybe you take one last trip to Starbucks and so that gas goes a little further until this thing is over and these gas prices come back down again. Let's just try to be patriots about this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Congressman, do you think that's going to work, the argument?

MCHENRY: No. It didn't work when the Biden administration tried it.

BEDINGFIELD: So I -- MCHENRY: And all the efforts of the Biden administration tried to --

in efforts they put in to reduce the cost of the pump, which was managing global supply, all these really intricate detailed things that do have this really significant impact on the price of oil. Those two -- those things do matter to our domestic politics.

Shared sacrifice, not a winner in this day and age and a very hard line. The real through point here is the President on the geopolitical stage reordering everything to the benefit of the American people in our safety. That should be the message and that's what we need to hear from the administration.

HUNT: All right, fair enough.

Coming up next here in The Arena, Democrats who want to be commander- in-chief weighing in on President Trump's latest overseas military operation including California Governor Gavin Newsom and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. His national profile got a boost this week after one of his political gambles paid off.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. JB PRITZKER (D), ILLINOIS: We didn't need to be in this position, but Donald Trump has put us here and contrary to what he promised when he ran for President.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Governor, at the beginning of your answer, you said something that just stood out to me. You said that there's something wrong with him. What do you mean by that?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:28:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRITZKER: We need to get out, frankly. I think this was another one of his adventures around the world that doesn't make any sense and that's illegal in my view. So, I believe that they shouldn't -- if they can, you know, now pull the troops out and not have to spend that money, that's the time to do it.

HUNT: Illinois governor and potential presidential candidate, JB Pritzker, making clear where he stands on the war in Iran this week. Perhaps more people are listening. The 61-year-old Democrat fresh off a significant political boost after he made a relatively risky endorsement of his lieutenant governor in a contentious Senate primary and it paid off. Juliana Stratton won a solid victory and Politico called him the king of Illinois.

The New York Times says "Pritzker's gamble to become a kingmaker pays off." The Chicago Sun-Times, "JB Pritzker flexes political muscle." Pritzker, of course, not the only Democrat trying to potentially be commander-in-chief. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D), CALIFORNIA: Now asking for $200 billion supplemental which could provide seven years of subsidies under Obamacare. All of a sudden now, they have the money? $200 billion supplemental? Connected to what issue?

What's the whole Strait of Hormuz about? What's -- what is it fundamentally about? What's the issue there? The issue is oil.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: OK. Kate, what do you make of how the potential Democratic field is grappling with what we're seeing in Iran right now?

BEDINGFIELD: Well, I think for the most part they see a huge opportunity to continue to make arguments against Trump, but to do it in a way -- I think the way Newsom was just doing it there, to do it in a way that ties back to Trump's fail -- what he would define as Trump's failures hurting people in their day-to-day lives.

That argument about $200 billion can fund, you know, this much in Obamacare subsidies and you can go down the line, can fund schools in your district, can fund, you know, food programs. I mean, that's a very tangible argument that I think will have legs.

[12:30:08]

It's interesting to watch. So you see, you know, Pritzker and Newsom both pursuing, I mean Newsom's been very aggressively anti-Trump for, you know, a year and a half here. But, you know, for Pritzker to really take a pretty lefty kind of resistance coded --

HUNT: Yes.

BEDINGFIELD: -- line of attack against Trump. I mean, I think he's trying to burnishes his credentials on the left. I am somebody who's dubious that in a big sprawling 2028 primary. I actually think this question of electability is going to come to the fore more than it is right now. And I think this kind of, you know, if you elect me, I'm, you know, going to exact my revenge on Trump officials.

I actually don't think that that's going to wind up being a persuasive argument in the Democratic Party. But we will, you know, debate and discuss that for many, many months to come.

MCHENRY: We're looking for the same things. I'm watching them go as far hardcore left as they possibly can and thinking well, we'll just use this. We'll use this in the general election of '28. My Republican Party will use this and beat him back. This is what happened in the Joe Biden primary. And everybody went to the far left on social issues, it came back to haunt Kamala Harris.

This is the time frame that John Kerry said I voted for the Iraq war before I voted against it. These things will come back to them, against the American people. And American people are all about killing the bad guy on a bipartisan basis. That is a winning message and being on the far left and extreme right now is not.

BEDINGFIELD: And I think people want to see, I think for the most part, voters and voters who are going to vote in the Democratic primary. Of course there's a slice of the far-left base that wants to exact as much revenge as possible. And there's certainly energy in the Democratic base for a vocally anti-Trump message. But I think the successful message is going to sound a lot more like Gavin Newsom just did right there holding Trump accountable for the things that have had impact on people's lives, not holding Trump accountable because we feel like he has wronged the Democratic Party or even some of these constitutional arguments which I know makes people really, you know, rile --

HUNT: Animates the base.

BEDINGFIELD: -- it riles, it animates the base, it riles people up. But you got to win a general election. And I think making an argument that's, again, that's just tied to what's going on in people's lives. It's going to feel a lot more immediate.

HUNT: Yes, so let's watch another one of these potential candidates at Pete Buttigieg who doesn't currently hold elected office, but has been traveling the country and campaigning and also talking about this, watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE BUTTIGIEG, FORMER TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: What I'm worried about is not the soldiers and the people who are serving. What I'm worried about is their political leadership like Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump. You know, we lived through a war that was sold to us on false pretenses when I was younger. This war has not been sold on any pretense. The President just went ahead and did it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: What do you make of it?

OLORUNNIPA: It does sound like a lot of these Democrats are trying to put their flag in the ground in terms of where they stand on this war early in part because they realize that people are going to be voting based on their foreign policy record and their response to how President Trump carried out his own foreign policy people. Remember in 2008 how Barack Obama who then was a senator talked about the war in Iraq and his vote -- he didn't have a vote, but his public commentary against going in and going into Iraq and when it turned into this quagmire and everyone started to turn against it. He could point back to his early statement.

So I do think a number of these Democrats want to be able to point back to what they said in the early days of the war. If we are still talking about this war six months from now or when the 2028 primary begins in earnest early next year, they'll be able to point back to some of these statements. But it is risky if this war fades from the headlines or if, you know, it turns out to be a situation where they want to show that they are in support of the troops. It may be difficult for them to point back to any statements showing that kind of support if they're very negatively against the war of it this early on.

HUNT: It does beg the question, Congressman. We sort of think we know what the issue set is going to be in any given election. And often I mean if you look at this war with Iran, definitely did not have to be on the list of potential top issues in the midterm elections.

MCHENRY: No, it could be about rebuilding Cuba. That could be the defining issue of '28 for all we know. The turn of this news cycle is so fast now. It is so fast you can't really predict where things are going to be by September, October, much less where we are two and a half years from now.

HUNT: Yes, the possible acceptance of that is just that everything is so expensive and that fundamental reality it seems to have defined our politics --

BEDINGFIELD: Yes.

HUNT: -- for quite some time and will continue.

[12:34:41]

All right, coming up here in The Arena a first of its kind extremely controversial law that one state passed 95 years ago this week and how now it's everywhere you turn.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's people like you come here and blow the family nest egg that built this town, not this pretty boy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whoa.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, gee.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can't believe it. We lost $300 in 15 minutes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: If you've ever spent a weekend in Vegas you've probably been in Chevy Chase's shoes at least once. Ninety-five years ago this week, Vegas cemented itself as the casino capital of the world after Nevada legalized gambling. That decision initially intended to spur economic investment after the Great Depression. It laid the groundwork for today's gambling boom. In the last few years gambling in particular sports betting has seen a meteoric rise across the U.S. It's the result of recent deregulation and of course the advent of smartphones that has put a casino into all of our hands on online prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket you can bet on quite literally anything including when U.S. forces will enter Iran, whether Jesus Christ will return before 2027, what the highest temperature could be in Milan, Atlanta, or Toronto on any given day. [12:40:44]

Now all of this raises major questions about the mental and societal harms of omnipresent and relatively unregulated gambling as an industry. We should note that CNN does have a partnership with Kalshi. We use its data to cover major events. Editorial employees are prohibited from participating in prediction markets.

And I have to say the cover of "The Atlantic," Toluse, esteemed magazine, today features a McKay Coppins, a longtime friend of mine. He covered Mitt Romney when I did that too. He conducted a pretty interesting experiment. "The Atlantic" gave him $10,000. He had to go to his Mormon bishop to get permission to do this because of course it's prohibited in the religion that McKay is a part of. And it resulted in some interesting things, including him at one point standing in his kitchen pantry and his son saying, hey daddy's hiding in the pantry again because he's on his phone.

He's in the church sneaking a look at Draft Kings. I mean what else did we learn, do you think, Toluse, about the potential implications of what this means?

OLORUNNIPA: Well, first McKay lost almost all of that $10,000.

HUNT: Something like $9,800 --

OLORUNNIPA: Eight hundred or something.

HUNT: -- something.

OLORUNNIPA: Yes. He had that experience of losing a lot of money. But I think one of the things that stuck out to me about reading his piece was how much the moments that we normally think of as sort of unifying moments, sports games, have become not just times to rally around a normal moment but have become part of this digitized casino that we all are privy to in which people are betting on, you know, will this person, you know, score a touchdown or will this person get a hundred yards.

And he was not able to enjoy some of the games with his children as he normally would because he was thinking about his parlays. And so I do think that there are a lot of societal impacts that he noted and that we all as a society are feeling when you take gambling, which normally has been sort of this small part of our society. You have to go to Vegas to do it.

HUNT: You have to physically go there. Yes.

OLORUNNIPA: Right. And then you turn it into this thing where everyone has access to it. It's heavily marketed and it can have addictive effects. And so McKay ended up sort of realizing that his own experience was to get to the verge of feeling sort of those addictive effects and having to pull back from the brink. But a lot of people don't realize it until --

HUNT: I mean the bishop warned him that that could happen, you know, in their conversation according to his reporting. I mean, do you guys participate in these sports markets? I don't.

BEDINGFIELD: I don't really.

MCHENRY: Well, I love the prediction markets because of the political piece of it. To see what candidates actually have traction, what who's getting attention for them. And it's a two-sided transaction. A sports book is you betting it's a house. Gambling, you betting it's a house. These are two-sided markets.

HUNT: Right.

MCHENRY: So you get to see a lot. And there are predictions about legislation passing Congress. The relative belief set that they're going to do anything. Which I always think is funny, right? The best the best advice that's put money on Congress not doing things. Like policing themselves. But sorry. But for the prediction markets, I think there's a lot of good that comes out of that two-sided market.

There are obvious risks here. And that's why you have to have regulation around it. I think you can have national markets that are well regulated and balances societal impacts of that.

BEDINGFIELD: Well, it is just -- it's highly addictive. I mean, just the neurochemistry of your brain. I mean, the intermittent reinforcement. It's the same phenomenon that gets people hooked on drugs. I mean, it is deeply, deeply addictive. In the same way, frequently, often, that social media is addictive.

And so you kind of have this, you know, this horrible blending of activities that are incredibly addictive. And also now, you know, imminently available to you. And so, you know, I just, I think that the shift that we see, it's just -- it's wild to think about Pete Rose being denied entrance to the Hall of Fame, you know, one of the best hitters ever in baseball.

And now you've got, you know, if you're 16 years old and you've got a phone, or maybe 18 years old in most states, I guess, and you got an iPhone, you know, you can bet away. It's just the shift has been -- the cultural shift has been really, really dramatic and probably not for the good.

[12:45:09]

HUNT: You know, like, so, you know, I have a six-year-old son, right? He's super -- he's getting into sports kind of for the first time for real. We're sitting watching a basketball game. And in the middle, there are just, there's ad after ad after ad, shiny ad. They look like toys, right? And the people are talking in the ad about how much money they are going to win. So I find myself explaining to my six-year-old how the house always wins in terms that I'm hoping he's going to understand, right?

But it did make me wonder, Congressman, like, why are -- like, why do we allow these ads to air in times when little kids are watching? Because it's like, they can get addicted to this kind of stuff. It's like watching an ad for cigarettes. MCHENRY: Yes. And this is the stuff we have to argue with. The fact is the iPhone changed everything. The iPhone changed everything. And we have the capacity to do almost everything we want in our life through this, this device. We can get food, but we're now getting access to markets we don't fully understand. So there's a large saddle education piece that has to go on here in order for us to be competent consumers of these products. This is financial markets and regulated financial markets to everything, even Twitter or X is an addiction device.

HUNT: Yes, well, that's true. All right. On that note, we'll be right back.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[12:51:05]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have a very popular, powerful woman and she's a great woman. We have a very fine relationship and we're going to be talking about trade and many other things and it's an honor to have you. Thank you very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: President Trump welcoming the Prime Minister of Japan in the Oval Office this week. They talked about the U.S.-Japan relationship, the global economy and once the conversation turned to the war with Iran, things got, well, watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why didn't you tell U.S. allies in Europe and Asia like Japan about the war before attacking Iran?

TRUMP: We went in very hard and we didn't tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan, OK? Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor, OK? Right?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: President Trump made a Pearl Harbor joke sitting next to the Prime Minister of Japan and the Prime Minister's reaction pretty much embodies, I'm sorry, what, which is, of course, the name of this segment. And it was not the only off-the-cuff comment that the President made this week that, you know, the family member of the person about whom he was talking was not sitting there but the Speaker of the House was. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The Speaker of the House got the easiest job of anybody in government. He's got a majority of two. I don't like to say one because it varies. We had one man who was very ill. It looked like he wasn't going to make it. I don't know -- I don't -- I won't mention his name. Should I? Do other people know his name? Do you want to mention it? He'll be proud. Go ahead. Tell him this, sir.

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), HOUSE SPEAKER: Congressman Don is a real champion and a patriot because he's still coming to work. And if others got this diagnosis, they would be apt to go home and retire.

TRUMP: What was the diagnosis?

JOHNSON: It was, I mean, I think it was a terminal diagnosis.

TRUMP: He would be dead by June.

JOHNSON: OK. That wasn't public, but yes, OK. That's -- it was grim.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: I'm sorry. Congressman, this President says the things that are like, that no one else, I mean, I guess it's the quiet part out loud is the cliche.

MCHENRY: Oh, yes. No, absolutely. You know, like showing somebody perfume and said, give this to your wives, right? Or Erdogan, where he says, who knows better about stealing elections than you, right? I mean, he just says it. Now --

HUNT: OK.

MCHENRY: -- let's step back. I mean, other than, first of all, he's sitting next to the most powerful prime minister of Japan has had in generations, which is fascinating. But this comment, this comment is factually true. The war in the Pacific, we were two years out because of their attack on Pearl Harbor. So the President's actions in Iran gave us a jumpstart.

The other part here is that Trump has this element with international leaders that you can't be sure what he's going to do. That uncertainty might actually help him in the negotiating table. If I'm trying to find something serious out of this, I've just tried my best.

BEDINGFIELD: I mean, OK. I, for like 15 different reasons, I did not want to laugh at the Pearl Harbor quip, but I laughed. I mean, I'm sorry. It was funny. It was funny and it was well-delivered and that kind of thing, the shock of it, but also just the sort of --

HUNT: I mean, her face contributed to it, honestly.

BEDINGFIELD: But also it was sort of an outrageous thing. And I think you could reasonably argue it as beneath the dignity of the President of the United States. But Donald Trump has moved the bar so far from that. But, you know, but I think that's part of his charm. That is part of why he has been such a successful political figure.

I'm not arguing he's been a successful president. I don't think he has. But why he's been a successful political figure, because he is funny and he has these moments that are just so off the wall that they kind of work. Now, I -- disclosing the diagnosis of the congressman, that I thought was in bad taste. [12:55:13]

MCHENRY: I've actually seen President Trump at 101, somebody saying, well, I just started a diet. And Trump looks at him, looks him up and down and says, well, I hope you're still trying, right? So he has this certain way about his jokes that elicit laugh.

HUNT: Yes, that's one way to put it. All right. Thanks very much to my panel. Really appreciate you being here. Thanks to all of you at home for watching. Don't forget, you can see The Arena every weekday right here on CNN at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. You can also catch up by listening to our podcast. Follow the show on X and Instagram. But do enjoy the rest of your weekend. The news continues next on CNN.

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