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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
Trump Pushes Baseless Claim Of California Election Fraud; Iran, Israel Pull Back After New Strikes Test Ceasefire; Trump To Attend Game 3 Of NBA Finals As Knicks Lead Series 2-0. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired June 08, 2026 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[16:00:03]
MERRY FRAYNE, BOSTON DYNAMICS: And part of the reason why we make the robot have those, those more friendly gestures is to change the perception about robotics in America, because we have movies like the "Terminator", you know, what we really want is for people to understand that robots can be there to help them and to make their life better.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Listen, I want you to fool me into liking the robot dog, so I'm okay with it.
Merry Frayne, thank you so much for being with us.
"THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT" starts right now.
(MUSIC)
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Hi, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to THE ARENA. It's great to have you with us on this Monday.
As we come on the air, the president of the United States once again undermining confidence in our elections at the very same time that votes are being cast and counted in primary races across the nation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They sent people to jail who did nothing wrong.
KRISTEN WELKER, NBC NEWS ANCHOR: Just to be very clear, there's no evidence of what you're saying. But let me ask about Todd Blanche --
TRUMP: There's a lot of evidence.
WELKER: Let's talk about Todd Blanche.
TRUMP: Listen to me. Listen to me. There's tremendous evidence. There's nothing but evidence.
WELKER: It's not the perception of a court of law.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: The election was rigged. It was a dirty election. And it's happening again right now in California.
WELKER: Mr. President, you never presented evidence.
TRUMP: It's happening right now in California.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: President Donald Trump there getting highly agitated when he was pressed for evidence to support his repeated and baseless claim that elections in America are rigged.
Just one example, he posted this afternoon, quote, "not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A; runoffs after the big lead he had. Third world nation rigged elections," end quote.
Election officials are still counting votes in California's nonpartisan primaries, including the Los Angeles mayoral race, where Pratt, who's a registered Republican, has slipped into third place. If he stays there, he won't be on the ballot in November.
And now, even the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, all but echoing the president's claims.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You're saying it's rigged like the president?
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I'm not saying it's rigged. I'm saying it stinks to high heaven and everybody knows that. I think California is playing around with this.
RAJU: But what evidence is there to prove that it is rigged?
JOHNSON: I don't -- some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream that it is impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Okay, so let's be clear. Nobody, including the president, has provided any evidence that the L.A. mayor's race is rigged. That is also true of Trump's defeat in the 2020 election. But that has, as you know, never stopped President Trump from publicly insisting basically that elections are only fair if he and his allies win.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they're rigged. You know that I won an election in a landslide. And I got 94 percent bad press.
WELKER: But Mr. President, you've never presented --
TRUMP: You know why I got that? Because you have no credibility.
WELKER: But you've never presented evidence that it was rigged. Let's keep talking about -- I want to talk about Todd Blanche.
TRUMP: You have more evidence. There's more evidence than ever presented.
WELKER: Let's talk about --
TRUMP: Your elections in this country -- we're like a third-world country. Your elections are crooked, and you're crooked, and "Meet the Press" is crooked, and so is ABC and CBS and CNN, your one-sided crooked network.
Let's call it quits, because I've had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: OK, on that note, let's get off the sidelines, head into THE ARENA.
My panel's here. CNN political director, Washington bureau chief David Chalian; Capitol Hill correspondent for Puck News, Marianna Sotomayor; Democratic congressman from Maryland, Johnny Olszewski, and former Republican speaker pro tem, Patrick McHenry.
Welcome to all of you.
David Chalian, the president there clearly agitated. Kristen Welker pressing him, telling him he's not provided evidence. At the same time, this is all happening, votes are still being counted in California. I don't think anybody questions that is an example of a certain degree of incompetence, perhaps. But malice and incompetence are not the same.
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Also structural, according to the law in California, because you can, according to the law in California, they are allowed to accept ballots and count them as long as they are postmarked by election there before if they are received up to seven days after.
Now, I don't know, you know -- whether or not that's a good system, that is up to the people of California to elect representatives to deal with that and change the law if they don't want that to be the law in their state of how votes are counted, because it is kind of annoying to those of us that report on elections that we have to wait that long.
That does not mean that there is evidence of fraud. And to then play the game that Speaker Johnson's playing, you know, well, you know, this just stinks to high heaven because it takes so long. So we have to get rid of the appearance of any impropriety. There's no appearance of impropriety. They're counting votes and it takes time.
And what we know is that, and this has been true for several elections in a row now in California, that the votes that are counted last and have arrived late takes time.
[16:05:00]
And what we know is that, and this has been true for several elections in a row now in California, that the votes that are counted last and have arrived late tend to be more democratic in nature than the votes that were handed in by election day on election day or cast in person at a center.
And that is what is happening here. That's how Nithya Raman overtook Spencer Pratt in the L.A. mayor's race because more voters who cast their ballot, legitimate ballots for her, their votes weren't counted until these more recent days.
HUNT: Right, of course, the progressive challenger there.
Congressman McHenry, what is the president doing when he does this? And what is Speaker Johnson doing?
PATRICK MCHENRY (R), FORMER SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE: He's getting us to talk about this rather than anything else. And so this focuses the energy on something that the president has a large following on, the question of the election.
By the way, echoing what Hillary Clinton said in 2016 when she lost, that of course she couldn't have lost. It had to be rigged. This is what --
CHALIAN: By the way, he won in 2016, and he still questioned the legitimacy of the election in certain states in 2016, even though he had won the election.
MCHENRY: Yes. And so, here's the example of California, where it is -- it feeds into the narrative that California is a broken state, frankly, number one. Number two, large Democratic states tend to report late on election night and late their election returns, which feeds into this malevolence about their actions.
When I agree with you, as you stated, there's a difference between malice and incompetence, and I look at California and a heavily Democratic state and a heavily Democratic city, that they are struggling to count votes, just like in New York.
HUNT: New York, it really is perhaps more incompetent than in California, whereas you point out, the system is designed this way.
MCHENRY: But it's a stupid system. It is a stupid system. They don't have to do it this way.
A large state like Florida, the best example I have is Florida. After the 2000 election, what did they do? They cleaned up their process. It is the first large state to report on election night. It's a fairly extraordinary thing, the reforms that they put in, to having a clean, durable, strong election.
But this is also where we are with our politics. Everything is questioned, right? Even to the nature of the counting of elections is questioned to its core. Both parties have done it. Both parties now at the federal level have tried to nationalize all these state and local election laws. The Republican Party with the SAVE Act most recently, the Democratic Party at the beginning of Joe Biden's first big vote, H.R. 1 in the House, for two Congresses for Democrats was nationalizing the elections.
Why? Control and power. Both parties are in it. It does not look good. And this is also a bigger societal problem that we have right now. The president's just the large mouthpiece for it right now.
HUNT: Yeah, I want to get the congressman to weigh in on this in a second. But I do think we need to focus in on President Trump has, since he has been on the public stage as a presidential candidate in a serious way, continued to say over and over and over again that our elections are rigged.
And it is worth remembering that the people that support him will believe what he says. He influences their opinions. We have gone all the way back to 2016. The last 10 years, this is what the president has sounded like over that time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: And I'm afraid the election's going to be rigged. I have to be honest.
They even want to try to rig the election at the polling booths.
The only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.
This year, they rigged an election. They rigged it like they've never rigged an election before.
The election was rigged and stolen.
The election was rigged. That election was rigged.
The radical left Democrats rigged the presidential election in 2020.
By the way, that election was totally rigged.
I don't know, you have a rigged vote out there. That's the problem. The votes are rigged.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: And again, just to circle back, one of those clips we saw was on January 6th of 2021, where a mob of people then left that speech stormed the United States Capitol, took action based on what the president was saying when he claimed that the election was rigged.
Now, Congressman, this is something I will say to Congressman McHenry's point, some Democrats have started to say in the context of our elections, and it always raises a little bit of a red flag for me because there has been so much pushback from Democrats defending rules and norms. Now, there are a lot of base voters, frankly, who are kind of sick of the rules and norms and think that the rules should be -- you know, they should be fighting the same way they perceive Republicans to be fighting, dirty.
What say you about where your party is now and whether people should and can trust our election results?
REP. JOHNNY OLSZEWSKI (D-MD): Well, I think your point about January 6th, it's the culmination of that repeated mantra, especially by the most important political figure in our country to say that. We get a January 6th riot storming of the Capitol when the president keeps saying that. I think it's irresponsible for the speaker to also say that in the context of not having any evidence.
[16:10:02]
There is no widespread fraud. And look, yes, Democrats should own that too, but I think it's irresponsible for leaders of any stripe at any level to say that without evidence. I'm someone who won an election by 17 votes, who then oversaw elections at the local level.
We have people who are working very hard to make sure these elections are safe and secure. It took weeks for my manual recount to get redone. The most important thing is that it got done right. Do I want to see California count their ballots faster? Absolutely. Will it instill more trust? Absolutely. But that does not mean that these elections are rigged, and I think it's incredibly irresponsible of the president and the speaker to suggest just that.
MCHENRY: I think Hillary Clinton was wrong to say that too.
OLSZEWSKI: Agree.
MCHENRY: It was Vladimir Putin that elected Donald Trump in 2016. She said that for years. I'm probably saying it somewhere today. This is what losing candidates say, right, is it was rigged against him.
I'm sure the person you beat by 17 votes is still harrumphing about the jerks that voted incorrectly. I won -- I won my election officials.
OLSZWESKI: She's thanked the election officials.
MCHENRY: Well, that's shocking because the person I beat by 85 votes in my first election to Congress, I'm sure right now if he's watching, is thinking where I should go, which is some hot place, I would think.
HUNT: Well, it's worth noting, I think, that Hillary Clinton did concede, right, because that's another piece of this, right, because there have been candidates out there that don't want to concede.
Marianna Sotomayor, how much concern is there? You know, I've picked it up from if you have a conversation with Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, for example, he's been very public about writing about concerns around the midterm elections, mechanisms that could be used to declare some sort of emergency and potentially nationalize elections on the Republican side, something historically conservatives have been opposed to, but that's something he's warned about in terms of the Trump administration.
I mean, what are you hearing on the Hill? Because I wouldn't be surprised if we get all sides saying the elections are rigged, and I have a lot of questions about where that leaves us.
MARIANNA SOTOMAYOR, CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT, PUCK NEWS: Absolutely. No, you're totally right. When it comes to Democrats, there have been conversations since, I would say, even started a year ago, because, like you just laid out perfectly, Trump is very predictable on this point.
So Democrats are going into this, assuming if they win whether the House or the Senate, that Trump is going to claim that the election is rigged. OK, how do we prepare about that? They have been having conversations with a number of secretaries of state across the country just to get a sense and know what how their lawyers are preparing, how do they run elections. Because if Trump and the administration do start doling out or suing states or wanting voter rolls from this midterm election, Democrats want to be ready.
And I know that there's efforts both on the House side and also the Senate side and they're both in conversations to make sure that at least congressional Democrats are on the same page.
So that is already part of the conversation. Not as much conversation among Democrats if a Democrat were to claim and say that the elections were rigged. Republicans, of course, want to pass the SAVE Act. I'm not sure how or when. There's not much time left before the election. We're seeing --
HUNT: There's also not enough votes.
SOTOMAYOR: That's exactly what I was going to say. Not enough votes to probably be able to make it happen, but it's something that the base wants. When I've been talking to congressional Republicans, what they're hearing back home when it comes to their primaries, they constantly say, well, our voters want to see the SAVE Act done, but don't know if it's going to happen.
CHALIAN: I would just note that the other thing that Democrats have said to me, they sort of look at this in two phases that they're preparing for, the pre-election phase and the concern if the president's going to deploy ICE to polling sites to interfere with the election that way versus the post-election certification, counting, certification process, getting to January 3rd in the installation of the new Congress. And I think they have teams of lawyers sort of divided up, focused on both of those phases.
HUNT: Really interesting.
MCHENRY: We also have held national elections even in the midst of world wars and civil war. So the House and the Senate know how to deal with this stuff. This is also the reason why we have state-based rules for elections. So we should not be nationalizing elections, regardless of what both parties are saying.
HUNT: All right. Coming up next here on -- in THE ARENA, new details on a significant attack that Israel was planning for today against Iran and what stopped Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from carrying it out.
Plus, New York City scrambles to close off a major part of the Big Apple in advance of a last-minute VIP visit to game three of the NBA Finals.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIMMY KIMMEL, COMEDIAN: The president wants to be there in person to support his hometown team and, if necessary, to overturn the results of the game. I just can't wait to hear him try to say the word Wembanyama. That's my -- that's what I'm looking forward to. You'd think Trump would be rooting for the Spurs, right? It's what got him out of Vietnam.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:19:15]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WELKER: Is the United States at war with Iran?
TRUMP: Well, they've been largely decapitated, and I call it a military exercise because people would rather have it called that. It's not a big war for us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: The war with Iran now hit the 100 days mark. It's the same war that President Trump repeatedly said would end quickly, estimating it would be over in four to six weeks, but was also ahead of schedule. It comes as Iran and Israel traded fire overnight, the first direct attacks in two months.
In his interview with NBC, President Trump was pressed on breaking his campaign promise about starting no new wars.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WELKER: What changed? Because you insisted no new wars.
[16:20:01]
TRUMP: I didn't guarantee no war.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Under Trump, we will have no more wars, no more disruptions, and we will have prosperity and peace for all. I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I didn't promise anything. I don't like these endless wars. This is not an endless war.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: With our victory in November, the years of war, weakness, and chaos will be over. I don't have wars. No more wars, no more disruptions. We will have prosperity, and we will have peace.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HUNT: All right, my panel is back.
Congresswoman McHenry, we've had the conversation at this table many times about whether what the president did was potentially good or bad for the long-term national security of the United States. But the question I have is, in your view, did he promise not to do what he then did?
MCHENRY: Just like Woodrow Wilson said, we're going to keep, we're going to stay out of Europe before World War I.
Every president makes their campaign pledge and events overtake them. And national security is the first one on the chopping block, because global events and opportunities, both events on the negative side and opportunities on the proactive side, present themselves, and these presidents will take them.
So, what President Trump pledged was --
HUNT: Are you convinced that the status quo with Iran was so different on the day we bombed them than it was when he was running for president in 2024?
MCHENRY: Yes.
HUNT: Why?
MCHENRY: When you have a piece of intel that all the top leaders of Iran are at the one place at one time and with one bomb you can destroy them, that is a -- that is a huge presidential opportunity.
So when he did that, the question is then the second-order effects and whether or not they're properly prepped for that. We're dealing with now the downstream effects of those second -- of a lack of plan for those second-order effects. That's where we sit.
But here's the question of the president's pledge is pulling back from the world, bringing troops home. He has largely done that in keeping with his pledges, coming back from Europe and European obligations. But this opportunity in the Middle East was something that presented
itself, and there's a lot of press about this, and we'll know a whole lot more in the coming years.
HUNT: Congressman?
OLSZEWSKI: I've seen no intelligence to suggest that Iran was an imminent threat, so it was a choice. But the problem is the president is a pathological liar.
He lied about no new wars. He lied about lowering costs for Americans on day one. He lied about releasing the Epstein files. He lied about Mexico building the wall.
I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And so if this were in isolation, maybe I can give him a little bit of grace on the Foreign Affairs Committee about he made a decision. I think the execution afterwards has been terrible.
And then we have to ask, he's lying, but these aren't innocent lies. These have real world implications. We've lost American service members. We are paying at the pump, we're paying at the grocery store, and we're spending tens of billions of dollars to execute this decision by the president.
So I just, I can't take him at his word anymore. I think he just is a pathological liar, and this is just yet one more example in the long litany of lies the president has told.
HUNT: David, where do you think the politics are cutting on this right now?
CHALIAN: Well, clearly they're cutting against the president. I mean, the war is not a popular effort, and Americans really don't want to see a return to sort of military -- active military operations. That's pretty clear and consistent across the polling.
You know, the thing and it's so clear that President Trump and his pollsters understand this as well when you listen to his rhetoric, that he understands where he does have public support is the notion of not having a nuclear Iran. Like that concept, but the how is -- is where it all sort of unravels and I --
HUNT: It's been a huge problem for every administration --
CHALIAN: Exactly. And I would just like I think --
HUNT: -- in modern history.
CHALIAN: -- Welker really focused in on the right question in that interview, which is that every week we are hearing from the president, a deal is upon us, and a deal is coming this weekend, perhaps, and a deal is coming within days, and a deal is here, and all they want to do is deal, and yet, no deal, to your point, Kasie, as has been thus for all previous administrations in this spot.
HUNT: Yeah, I want to bring in CNN senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes, who has been standing by for us.
Kristen, what are we hearing from the president on this? And I know, as David and Kristen in the interview were pointing out, I mean, something major here has been imminent all the way along, and yet still it seems that we have status quo in the state of Hormuz, at least since February since this complex started, and we still have tens of thousands of troops in the region.
CHALIAN: Yeah, and Kasie, on top of that, it's not just that a deal is imminent or imminent in quotes there, but it's also that instead of working towards a deal or instead of announcing a deal, they are having calls in which President Trump is essentially begging Netanyahu not to retaliate against Iran, breaking what was already an incredibly tenuous ceasefire. So it seems that we're going in the opposite direction.
Now, if you talk to White House officials, senior US officials, they say that there is still a deal in the works, that there are still ongoing negotiations and conversations happening behind closed doors, given the conversation and the context behind what President Trump and the Prime Minister Netanyahu talked about the idea that President Trump asked him not to retaliate, he retaliated anyway.
[16:25:14]
And now this new reporting that a senior U.S. official says that Netanyahu had actually planned a much more substantial attack on Tehran before President Trump weighed in. I'm not really sure that does anyone a lot of favors or gives them a lot of comfort, this idea that it would have been worse if President Trump didn't step in, but yet Netanyahu still retaliated despite what President Trump asked him to do or not to do.
So I think what we're watching now is what this relationship between these two men, how this progresses forward. It is clear that both of them have had different objectives when it comes to this war. Really, since the beginning, however, they had been operating side by side. We have seemingly come to a fork in the road here in which both of their objectives are becoming more clear and they are not going in the same direction and how that impacts President Trump's end game. That's what's really important and critical to watch here.
It has been very clear from President Trump from the White House they do not want any more U.S. military involvement in Iran. That is why you're hearing him almost every step of the way say this doesn't mean we're going to start attacks again. This doesn't mean we're going to drop bombs again. But instead, they want some kind of diplomatic resolution. It's just unclear if they can get here.
HUNT: Kristen, Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance have played interesting roles behind the scenes around this and obviously the decision to do it in the first place, both of them, weighed in their ways. And we've learned a little bit about what that looked like.
How would you characterize what's going on with that dynamic right now? Who is the president listening to? Are they singing off different pages of the hymnal?
HOLMES: At this point, everybody is trying to figure out the same solution as far as I can tell. I mean, in terms of inside the administration, if you're looking at Lindsey Graham or outside or some of these Iran Hawks, we're talking about a different scenario. But when it comes to the actual administration officials, Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, everyone is trying to get to the same page, which is some kind of resolution here.
And really what it comes down to is some kind of resolution in which President Trump can claim a win in any aspect that justifies why he went in there, coming out of it with something that looks better than the deal President Obama came out with, which of course we've heard him give different ideas of what that would look like in terms of not unfreezing assets or doing something different with the enriched uranium already on the ground. They all want some kind of resolution, diplomatic resolution in which he comes out and he's able to claim some kind of win.
It's just unclear. I mean, we are past the point of, you know, don't go in, don't get involved in Iran. It is more now the administration working towards an off-ramp here because all of them Rubio to JD Vance to Susie Wiles across the administration understand how bad this is politically for President Trump. And the president himself doesn't want to be in this anymore.
I mean, he's made that really clear behind closed doors and publicly for that matter, that he's kind of done with this war. And yet here we are still in it on, I think it's 101 days of war that was supposed to last originally two to three weeks.
HUNT: Indeed. All right, Kristen Holmes for us at the White House. Kristen, thank you very much for that. Really appreciate it.
Coming up next here in THE ARENA, the he said, they said. CBS responding to allegations of political bias by recently fired correspondent Scott Pelley.
But first, we're going to go live to Madison Square Garden, where New York City is getting ready for game three. But are New Yorkers ready for the president?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI (D), NEW YORK: The right to protest is one that is innate, not only to the spirit of our city, but also the laws of our country. And the procedures that are being taken today are ones that honor that right, and they also look to ensure that we are providing safety and security for this evening.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:33:25]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Secret Service's focus is straightforward, to ensure everyone attending the game can enjoy the game and have a safe experience while we carry out our responsibility to protect the President of the United States. All the attendees will pass through TSA style magnetometer screening before entering THE ARENA.
I strongly encourage fans to arrive at MSG at least two hours before tip off.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Right now, a five block radius surrounding Madison Square Garden is virtually on lockdown ahead of game three of the NBA Finals tonight. The area closed at 4:00 p.m. Eastern, with tip-off not scheduled until 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
President Trump's attendance is historical. He'll be the first sitting president to attend an NBA Finals game. But that means security has been heightened and watch parties surrounding MSG, the Mecca of basketball, have been canceled.
CNN's Mark Morales is outside the garden.
Mark, what is going on there? These tickets were already so unaffordable. People expecting to be outside having watch parties now disappointed, too.
MARK MORALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right, and it's really interesting over the last couple of hours because before this was an energetic crowd that was just kind of walking around here while we had security. But the closer we get to tip off, the more you get this sort of rabid excitement that you're getting from fans. But at the same time, you're also getting this tightening of security.
So if we can show you just a little bit of what we're talking about here, you'll see these barricades behind me.
[16:35:00]
These are the designs so that people can't climb up. You'll also see these white blocker cements on the bottom so that's to prevent from vehicles to sort of do any sort of attacks. And what we saw at four o'clock is these metal barricades. These metal barricades have gone up and now they're not letting people cross to the next street.
So this lockdown is really taking shape now. And if you look over into the distance, you'll see these sanitation trucks. Those are there to also prevent from ramming attacks as we've seen in other terrorist incidents. So this is all part of the posture that's been put together by the Secret Service and the NYPD to really put everything on lockdown. And as we get closer to tip off, this is going to get tighter and tighter.
Now, one of the ramifications of such a security plan means this very popular watch party that was right outside of Madison Square Garden can't take place today. And that's because it would be a massive security risk for the president to be here while that's going on.
So we talked to some fans and they have some feelings about it because for those of you who couldn't afford to get into Madison Square Garden and pay those ticket prices, you at least had that. You could be that close to the Garden.
But some of the fans are a little disappointed. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think people should still come out. I don't really think Trump should even be here, to be honest with you. He doesn't really came myself as a New Yorker.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've been waiting for this for like how long? And you know, a lot of people can't afford to get into the game. I'm one of those people. So I was actually looking forward to going to one of these watch parties and now I can't.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He doesn't live here and he's kind of pooped on us for a while and you know so like I think this is our time and he's distracting from our time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MORALES: We've even seen TSA is here ready to do bag checks and again they're saying no bags at all and arrive two hours before tip-off so you can get into the game -- Kasie.
HUNT: All right. Mark Morales outside MSG, thank you, Mark for that.
Is anyone here a New Yorker?
SOTOMAYOR: No.
CHALIAN: New Jersey.
SOTOMAYOR: Any New Yorkers.
HUNT: OK, well, they wouldn't give you credit for that, I don't think. But, I mean, David Chalian, like, you know, you cannot overstate what this, with the Knicks being their first hometown final in 27 years means.
And, I mean, the criticism of the president-- I mean, look, let's put up Ann Coulter. Of all the selfish, narcissistic things that Trump has done, attending MSG to watch, see the Knicks play in person on Monday is the absolute worst.
And it seems as though she agrees with Stephen A. Smith, who said this on ESPN This Morning. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHEN A. SMITH, ESPN HOST: This president has no business showing up in New York City. I am dead serious. It is selfish. It is narcissistic.
It is -- it is ridiculous that he is coming to this game. I would say the same thing if it were Obama, George W., Clinton, I don't give a damn, we went back to Reagan.
This is not a football stadium in some space in Texas where you got a whole bunch of outlays and all of this. This is the Garden. This is Midtown Manhattan.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: What say you?
CHALIAN: You know, I don't find it so offensive. Like, I think it's totally okay for a president to go to a big sporting event. I get it causes complications and a headache, and it is the right of every New Yorker to complain against that. That is quintessentially New York.
But, I mean, who's more of a New Yorker president than Donald Trump? I know he has rejected his citizenship there and has moved to Florida, but the guy has a tower called Trump Tower up on Fifth Avenue.
He's from Queens. He is a New York character and has been for decades. It's not, like, out of the realm that he would want to go to Madison Square Garden and be part of the action.
HUNT: Let's watch a little bit of -- this is not the first time that President Trump has interacted with the NBA. Back when he was a New Yorker, a couple things stood out to us.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's your good friend, Donald Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, Donald. Yes, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What does it say, walk on?
TRUMP: I love this game, and if you don't, you are fired.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Congressman, what do you think?
MCHENRY: You can take the man out of New York. You cannot take New York out of the man. And this is -- this president loves sports, loves these national events. They get attention.
I think our attention will be on the crowd reaction. And if these folks have to show up without bags, with nothing to do for a couple hours before the game, this is going to be a lit crowd in every sense of the word.
(LAUGHTER)
MCHENRY: It will be fascinating to see what happens tonight before we have the big match on the president's lawn or the White House lawn on Friday.
HUNT: Well, I mean, and the other reality here, too, right, is that this game was already-- I mean, look at the front row, like the semifinals, Knicks games. I mean, you recognized every face in that row. I mean, the celebrity star power, are they all? I guess they're all going to have to go through TSA.
OLSZEWSKI: They're going to have to do it too, be like the rest of us.
(LAUGHTER)
[16:40:00]
OLSZEWSKI: There are a lot of things I will criticize President Trump for. Going to a sporting event is not one of those things. But what I will say is if we can get the president into Madison Square Garden safely, protect him, protect those around him. I do have real problems with this ballroom vanity project. We're going to spend billions of dollars for a couple of events.
So if we can send him to the Super Bowl, to Madison Square, which we can and we should, I'm fine with that. But I think it underscores some of the other issues that have been --
MCHENRY: On message. I agree with you. Shout-out for that. Bring it back.
HUNT: This was Whoopi Goldberg, actually, in terms of, you know, we've got Ann Coulter criticizing the president for this.
Here was Whoopi Goldberg defending Donald Trump today. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WHOOPI GOLDBERG, CO-HOST, "THE VIEW": Trump and Mayor Mamdani are Knicks fans and have been. They're New Yorkers. And you can't -- there's nothing either one of them can do to change what's happening in this city for this team. They can't -- you know, they're -- they're there. Okay, there's a lot of --
(CROSSTALK)
GOLDBERG: You know what? I don't think anything can jinx anything. I think these guys are on a mission.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: I mean, I don't know. There's almost like a risk if he goes and they lose that like--
SOTOMAYOR: Right. People are going to absolutely blame it on him.
No, I think, look, anything that Trump touches turns political. That's why we're talking about why so many people are opining on this one moment. I will say another New Yorker is making a scene about this on Capitol
Hill. Hakeem Jeffries came out of his press conference just wearing a very, very, very light blue and light pink hat, matching outfit. It was quite a scene to see.
And he was just like, look, we haven't had the Knicks in the final in almost 30 years. I think he said almost verbatim, why does Trump have to ruin something so good?
HUNT: So wait a second. Why is Hakeem Jeffries not going?
SOTOMAYOR: There's votes at 6:30 p.m. tonight. Maybe he can't get in.
MCHENRY: By the way, you got to write your own check. You got to write your own check for those seats. That's not a giftable thing.
HUNT: Oh.
MCHENRY: So come up, what's the cheapest seat, $10,000 or something like that now? So good luck.
HUNT: I mean, so that to me, that does seem, David Chalian, like if there's political risk in this, right? It's just -- I mean, he doesn't have to win an election in New York. So I guess what does it really matter?
But it's like the Trump people in New York that are already having a hard time getting these tickets, right? It's like the firefighters and the policemen in Queens and like they were all supposed to have parties around the Garden, be part of the celebration if they were to win tonight. And that whole is going to be changed because of what the president's doing.
CHALIAN: Yes, no doubt. And to Patrick's point about, you know, the anticipated booing that we will hear, I think we're also going to have to suffer through a news cycle where the president's going to try to convince us that it wasn't booing and that it was actually -- like it was a sea of love for him in the Garden when it wasn't. So we're going to have to go through the motions of this. Let's just focus on the game, let's hope the Knicks win, and move forward from there.
HUNT: Yeah, I mean, he should just be glad that he's from New York and it's a Knicks situation, and it's not the Sixers in Philly, let me tell you.
(LAUGHTER)
HUNT: We do more than good (ph), okay?
All right, ahead here in THE ARENA, breaking down the "60 Minutes" interview of -- "60 Minutes" interview of former "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley, what he's alleging about the current leaders at CBS News and what he wants to happen now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SCOTT PELLEY, FORMER "60 MINUTES" CORRESPONDENT: We can save this. It's possible to land this plane, but right now, CBS News, in my view, is on fire.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:47:55]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PELLEY: It's like your spouse was murdered. There's some moments of the day I feel fine. There are some moments of the day that I just frankly fall apart.
I don't care about me. I'm fine. I care about these people that I left behind, the people who are still trapped there and this institution that I love so much.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So that was longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley in his first sit-down interview since he was fired by CBS. Pelley detailed the abrupt end to his 37-year career at the network, and he accused Bari Weiss. She, of course, was brought in as the editor-in- chief late last year of injecting what he called falsehoods and bias into one of his politically sensitive stories.
Here, he is walking through an e-mail that Weiss sent to his then boss, according to his account, hours before a story was set to air.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PELLEY: Renee Goode's car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer. This is not what you see on the video. The video showed that the officer wasn't standing in front of the car and she wasn't driving toward him, but that's what the president said about that. And that's the way she wanted it described.
There was a thumb on the scale for the president's version of events that I felt was a level of political influence that I had never seen in 37 years at CBS News.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, joining us now in THE ARENA, CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter and the chief Washington correspondent at MeidasTouch Network, Scott McFarlane, who previously served as CBS News's justice correspondent. He departed the network a few months ago.
[16:50:00]
Brian, I want to go to you first. How did CBS respond to what Scott Pelley said there, and what more would you add about what's going on here? BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Nothing on the record from Bari Weiss, no rebuttal, although I think she'd probably like to speak out. CBS is bracing for possible legal action from these fired journalists, and there's non-disparagement clauses and things like that, so it's complicated. But I suspect she'd probably say that Scott Pelley is being self-indulgent and sanctimonious.
And as for the charge about that report about Minneapolis, CBS has said there was no editorial interference, no political motivation, just a normal back and forth between editor and reporter. CBS said in a statement more broadly about what's going on, quote, there's no political to CBS News, not from ownership, not from Barry Weiss. So CBS says this is just a normal back and forth.
But we've now heard from several fired correspondents who have said the opposite. And the three correspondents who are remaining there, they say this whole mess has damaged and wounded the broadcast.
You know, Paramount CEO David Ellison is now surely asking himself, at what point does Bari Weiss become too much of a distraction? Ellison gave her a mandate last year to shake up CBS News and restore trust in media. She's definitely shaken up CBS News, but she seems to be eroding the audience trust.
The current CBS viewers are really worried about what's going on. I'm getting so many emails from CBS viewers who are worried about all of these controversies. Now, certainly Weiss still has some defenders, Kasie, but she has many detractors, including now internally at Paramount.
And some Paramount executives tell me Weiss has been doing the right things, but in the wrong way. For example, the way she has blown up "60 Minutes". So I'm paying attention to that chatter because it has TV industry insiders wondering if there's going to be another shakeup, this time at the top of CBS News.
HUNT: Scott McFarlane, what can you tell us about what you're hearing from former colleagues and friends at the network that you worked for, for quite some time about how all of this is playing out?
SCOTT MACFARLANE, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: I'm hearing a lot, and a lot of it is not good. It sounds like a perfect storm, Kasie, of problems. First of all, this round after round after round of bad publicity helps no one does not lift morale. There's a morale problem going on. You see people like Scott Pelley, a North Star for everybody who walks inside CBS News, like a living member of a Mount Rushmore, get fired and have that type of exit interview. It's tough to watch. And oh, by the way, there are fewer people to help you.
The round after round of layoffs, people quit. I quit. I left people behind with more work to do. This is a tough professional situation, and I got to tell you, Kasie, Brian, I feel like there's going to be more departures coming because of the economics of linear legacy media, the eroding revenue base and audience, and the demoralized troops in the army. HUNT: Scott, have you heard anything from critics who look at the way Pelley exited and believe it's a little bit more about him than it is about the network? Is there any "there" there?
MCFARLANE: I think Scott was trying to emphasize, don't worry about me. I don't think anybody's going to be concerned about the disposition of any Network broadcaster. I think what he's trying to say is look at the bigger picture you have one wounded network out there. That's supposed to be a watchdog on Trump and Protecting American democracy. That's what news media are there to do to afflict the comfortable.
Right now, CBS News has got to regather itself, recenter itself to be the proper watchdog and Scott Pelley's trying to argue right now is at risk of being as he says on fire. I think it might be myopic to look at his personal outcome and think that was his purpose. I think his purpose was to speak for the broader organization.
Brian Stelter, when you look forward in terms of what the future holds for CBS but also for its parent company, how would you look at what their goals are? Because while certainly "60 Minutes" isn't a longstanding and very traditional broadcast that one could argue could have a stronger presence on new and emerging platforms, it also was a business with an audience that was also extraordinarily well- established and loyal.
STELTER: Yes, a profitable program. partly thanks to that NFL lead-in, but profitable on its own as well. The attitude from these new leaders at CBS is you should change from a position of strength. You should try to reinvent yourself while you're still doing well. And more broadly, there's a belief that outside energy is needed at CBS News. That's the Paramount position.
But the reality here, Kasie, is that there's a lot of corporate politics and, you know, I emphasize politics at play because Paramount is trying to get that deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery done. That is the number one, number two, number three priority for CEO David Ellison. Get that deal across the finish line.
That's why so many critics and observers are wondering if CBS is trying to appeal to the Trump administration right now. Ultimately, though, viewers get the vote here. You know, viewers get to judge CBS or CNN or any network on the merits. Do you think the coverage is fair?
[16:55:00]
Do you think we're holding the administration accountable? And I think the silver lining here, when I look at Scott's former colleagues, they're still doing the work every day. Great journalism being produced at CBS. However, it might be happening in spite of all of this mess that we're all hearing about every day.
HUNT: All right, Brian Stelter, Scott McFarlane, thank you both very much for your time today. I really appreciate it.
STELTER: Thanks.
HUNT: All right, we'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUNT: All right. Thanks very much, my panel. Really appreciate you guys being here.
Thanks to you at home for watching as well. Don't forget you can stream THE ARENA live. Catch up whenever you want to in the CNN app. You do that by just scanning that QR code below.
We've also got a podcast. You can scan that QR code for that. You can follow us on X and Instagram @TheArenaCNN.
But don't go anywhere. Phil Mattingly is standing by for "THE LEAD".
Hi, Phil.
