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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt

Trump To Meet GOP Senators Amid Clash On Elections Overhaul; Senate Passes House Resolution To Limit Trump's Iran War Powers; Now: Key NYC Primaries Test Mamdani's Political Muscle; Wall Street Trampled By An A.I. Sell-Off. Aired 4-5p ET

Aired June 23, 2026 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:04]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Very exciting for Boris.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Don Riddell, I can sense your excitement for the Miami Heat. Thank you so much, Don.

DON RIDDELL, CNN WORLD SPORT: All right.

SANCHEZ: And thank you for joining us.

"THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT" starts right now. In Riley, we trust.

(MUSIC)

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: Hello, everyone. Welcome to THE ARENA. Kasie Hunt is off today. I'm Abby Phillip.

Right now, President Trump is back on the campaign trail as he tries to pivot away from an unpopular war with Iran and back toward the number one issue of the midterm elections, the economy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The average price of gasoline nationwide is down 60 cents a gallon just from a short while ago. And remember this, remember this, we had to make this detour. We had to go to Iran.

You can't let them blow up the Middle East and then us, if that's possible. We would have gotten them before, but they would have blown up Israel. They would have blown up the entire Middle East. You want to see a bad economy? That's a bad economy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: President Trump this afternoon visiting a battleground district in Pennsylvania, one that'll help decide which party controls Congress for the rest of his second term. And the president, though, will soon return to Washington for a key meeting with Senate Republicans tomorrow. Top of the president's agenda, the SAVE Act has billed to give the federal government greater control over how the states administer their own elections. Now, Senate Republicans say they don't have the votes to pass that,

and they're warning the president in pretty stark terms that he may not get his way this time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): I think implementing standards, actually appropriating money for election audits makes sense to me, but this is a waste of time. It's a distraction and it's not going to get -- it's not going to happen in this Congress. He's just got to understand some of the limits we have here in the Senate. Talking's good, SAVE Act's a waste of time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Now, while all that is happening, a major vote just went down in the United States Senate.

Manu Raju is with us, our chief congressional correspondent over on Capitol Hill.

Manu, tell us what happened here.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, this is a rebuke, a major rebuke of the president, a symbolic rebuke, but one showing the concern within the Democratic ranks and among some Republicans over the way the president has been waging this war with Iran. The Senate joining the House in passing a resolution to limit the president's war powers with Iran. If you were to choose to escalate things with Iran, he would be under this resolution, would have to come back to Congress to get explicit approval to do just that.

And that is, of course, exactly the way the president has waged this war, has not gotten approval from Congress, has moved ahead with it. But for the first time, we are seeing the Senate and the House speak with one voice on this issue. Just moments ago, four Republicans joining with 46 Democrats. Those senators included Susan Collins of Maine in a difficult reelection race.

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, someone who oftentimes does break with the president. Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian-minded Republican, one who opposes foreign intervention for the most part. There's also Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican who Trump pushed out of his Senate seat by endorsing his primary challenger, has come back to the Senate and voted against the president, broken with him on some key issues, this being one of them.

Now, even though this did pass the Senate after the joining suit with the House, it's not going to effectively change the president's course at all. It's really not going to force the president's hand, but it does send a message to the White House that there is some concern in the ranks.

In fact, Republican leaders in the House have tried It's so hard, Abby, to try to prevent this vote from even happening when it did pass a few weeks ago. The speaker of the House actually adjourned the House early when they went to recess to try to avoid a vote from even happening. They ultimately had to vote on this in the House. It did pass that chamber narrowly after a handful of Republicans joined with Democrats.

And now we are seeing the Senate follow suit. So a sign here, a message to the president as he comes here to Capitol Hill tomorrow, when so many Republicans, even the ones who voted against this measure, many of them concerned about the deal that his administration is cutting with Iran and question about whether sanctions, for instance, should be eased with that country amid all the questions about its nuclear program.

That's going to be front and center as the president addresses Republicans who are very concerned about the way he is waging this war with Iran.

PHILLIP: Yeah, Manu Raju, thank you for that. I mean, in an election year, it's even more significant, given that this was a war that President Trump chose at this pivotal political moment for him. Thank you, Manu.

My panel is here in THE ARENA. CNN political analyst, host, and editorial director at "Vox", Astead Herndon; CNN senior political commentator, Anna Navarro; Democratic strategist, Keith Boykin; and former Republican congressman from Michigan, Peter Meijer.

Peter, let me start with you on that, because, as Manu points out, yes, the president can veto this measure. All of that is true. But a Republican House and a Republican Senate just voted to basically say, time to stop and come to us for approval.

[16:05:04]

That is a pretty strong sign that the president's control, especially over the situation in Iran, is living.

PETER MEIJER (R), FORMER MICHIGAN CONGRESSMAN: Well, and I think it's a reflection of where a lot of those Republicans who did, you know, join Democrats in this vote, where they see the popularity of this conflict. Now, the irony is the conflict has gotten less popular as the president has been working to end this war, the memorandum of understanding landed like a lead balloon, which frankly baffles me. We'll get into all that.

I'm actually massively optimistic on this course, and I think that the worse it lands in the U.S., the more the Iranians will make concessions on their side. But this is -- this is a reflection of the political polling because they have to sell it to their populace, too. I mean, if you're the guy who's in charge of something that looks like you surrendered to the U.S., you're not going to be in that role very long.

KEITH BOYKIN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I don't get how this looks like a surrender to the U.S. I think this is really bad for the United States because Donald Trump is in a horrible position right now. Right now, he's in the point where he's losing support from his own party. Not only do you have these four U.S. citizens --

MEIJER: You say the walls might be closing in on Donald Trump after a decade of --

BOYKIN: Yeah. I mean, this is a big deal. You don't normally get a president of the United States who has his own party who goes against him. It's a very unpopular war. Not only do you have those four U.S. senators, but you also have John Cornyn, you have Cassidy, who's already come out opposed to him on several other issues.

So you've got now six U.S. senators who are openly opposed to Donald Trump's agenda, not just on this, but on Bill Pulte as director of national intelligence. You've got the whole issue about FISA that's stuck. He wants that passed. He can't get that through.

Donald Trump is in a difficult position. He's almost a lame duck president, and we haven't even gotten to the midterms.

PHILLIP: Let's talk about the midterms, because he's in Pennsylvania campaigning. And I remember not so long ago when his political people were saying, you're going to see Donald Trump everywhere. He's the magic bullet here for the midterms for Republicans, and we're going to turn this into a national election.

Turns out he hasn't really been out that much. He's been focused on the war. He's been focused on the reflecting pool. He's been focused on virtually everything else. And then today, the message is a little off. He's kind of like, everything's fine. And that's not really what people are seeing.

ASTEAD HERNDON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It's not what people are seeing, and I think it's not reflective of the facts. I mean, Donald Trump is trying to sell a crisis of his own creation to Americans who I think have seen through it. And I think you even hear in the president's own words, like a skepticism of the Republican message. He's like, you know, prices are down more than recent times ago, but prices are up because of his own actions.

And so I think that that causal relationship is one of the Americans understand. And the reason he's been an anchor, I see like him in Pennsylvania, I think, is that better for the Republicans or the Democrats? The much as this is about a referendum on Donald Trump come November, the closer Democrats think they are to being able to retake the House. And Donald Trump really hasn't shown any willingness to bring out that type of voter who comes out for on the national level to trickle that down to the Republican Party largely.

ANA NAVARRO, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Look, the reason we're talking about this is because it's so extraordinary. We have seen time after time Republicans toe the line when it comes to Trump. We saw Bill Cassidy, before he lost his primary race, vote in favor of RFK Jr., knowing he wasn't qualified. We saw Republicans give Trump a chance time after time and do what he wanted to do, respect him as a president.

And I'll tell you this, in my lifetime, I have never seen a president, Republican or Democrat, who's got as much power over their party as Donald Trump has had over the Republican Party. But I think they've had enough, and they now see him as an albatross around their neck. This war is increasingly unpopular. We are now four months away from a midterm election.

He has stopped Cornyn. He's stopped Cassidy. There's Lisa Murkowski. There's Susan Collins, who's in a very tight race. Rand Paul has always been on principle against foreign wars and intervention. So I think the, you know, I mean, this is coming home to rules for the guys.

PHILLIP: And let's add to that the infamous Tucker Carlson. Now, this is not an endorsement of Tucker Carlson in any way. But just to say that he is a loud voice in the Republican Party, and here's what he said recently about whether he's going to stay with Republicans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TUCKER CARLSON, FORMER FOX NEWS HOST: I would not support the Republican Party. There's no chance I would support the Republican Party. I'm not going to support the Democratic Party. I don't know what I'm going to do. But at this point, how could you support, how could I or any American voters support a political party that's not loyal to the United States that puts the interests of a foreign country above those of its own citizens? It's not possible to vote for people like that. So, no, I'm out. And if I'm out, then I think a lot of other people are out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NAVARRO: He might be out, in and -- in and out. That's the thing with Tucker Carlson. He and Megyn Kelly have had more positions than twisted.

[16:10:01]

PHILLIP: Talk to me in September of 2028.

HERNDON: I do think it is reflective, though, of things we see in numbers, the difference between the Republican standard voter and I think the larger MAGA coalition, which had a lot of those independent, I hate both sides type. I was at Donald Trump's UFC event in D.C. and we actually were there trying to talk to young men, right? The key demographic group that sort of flipped on Trump in the last year or so.

It is incredible how much you hear the Iran war, gas prices, a U.S. relationship to Israel come up there, his inability to be transparent about the Epstein files. There's a principal break between what he promised in terms of his America first, second term vision and what he's followed through on, and that has filtered down to Republican voters, and I think specifically It's that kind of Tucker Carlson- esque person who was part of the Trump coalition.

PHILLIP: Yeah, I mean, do you think that's right? I mean, look, all of these things are layered, right? There's a group of voters somewhere in the middle who sided with Trump in the last election because they hated the way that Biden managed the economy. They now hate the way Trump has managed the economy.

Trump's handling of inflation among Republicans is just 64 percent. That's compared to his general approval, which is usually in the '80s and the '90s.

Then on top of that, you have Trump backing off one of the big things, which is we don't get involved in foreign wars. He literally told them he wouldn't start a war with Iran, and then he starts a war with Iran.

So when you combine all of these things together, what's the impact?

MEIJER: Yeah, I mean, to one point, I mean, populists are fickle. Like, they go where the popular movement is, and those voters who are abandoning them now were Democrats and abandoned them then, they kind of swing back and forth.

I think one of the challenges the Trump administration has is he came in confronting two long-term threats. One was Iran getting a nuclear weapon, the other was the degradation of our industrial base. He was correcting the degradation of the industrial base through tariffs, but that had an inflationary effect.

So the costs are front-loaded, the benefits are back-loaded, and same thing with Iran. The costs are front-loaded. We saw that with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the rise of gas prices. Like, the amount of lives that may have been saved by going to war and preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon, potentially changing the direction of that regime, hopefully that's the intent of the MOU, you know, that is something that's incalculable, but when people see gas prices go up a dollar, they feel that immediately.

It's the mismatch between the short-term costs and the long-term rewards that I think is a political challenge, but could be to our benefit strategically as a country.

BOYKIN: I just don't think that people see that there will be long- term rewards. I mean, we had a joint comprehensive plan of action under the Obama administration. Trump threw it away in his first term.

He's negotiating a new deal that will actually put us in the worst position, giving Iran $300 billion, which they didn't have before, now allowing Iran to sell oil, allowing it to potentially control the Strait of Hormuz and to control to actually charge money to travel the Strait of Hormuz. All that is really negative.

MEIJER: And it's also not going to happen --

BOYKIN: At the same time -- at the same time, we had 13 American soldiers who were killed, hundreds who were injured, and the cost of gasoline is up. And what are we getting out of this?

We have a president who's not focused on the issues that the American people are concerned about. They're not focused on jobs, health care, and affordability, the things that he campaigned on. He claimed going to end these wars, he didn't do this.

And I think all this is just reverberating to the American people to the point where we.

MEIJER: Just signed an MOU last week to end the war.

NAVARRO: Come on, Keith. You have -- Keith, you have to give Peter credit --

BOYKIN: How's that?

NAVARRO: -- for a completely new fake theory on how to defend this terrible deal. We are trying to use reverse psychology on the Iranians. We are saying that it's so -- it is playing so badly in America that it is helping in Iran. It's reverse psychology on the Iranians.

BOYKIN: I didn't get that either.

MEIJER: No, I'm happy to defend. I mean, the reality -- the reality with the Iranian regime, when we talk about hardliners, they're not going to be as responsive to the democratic process because they're an authoritarian regime, and when people come out and protest, they get gunned down on the streets by the tens of thousands. They still need to get consensus within a very fractious and fractured leadership that is trying to figure out who is able to speak on behalf.

NAVARRO: Peter, the reason even Republicans are speaking out against this deal, even people like Lindsey Graham -- no, it's not because of the poll numbers, it's because they have been working on on this issue. People like Lindsey Graham have been working on this issue for decades, and they know a bad deal when they see it.

This is not about reverse psychology on Iran. It's about the fact that the merits do not hold up and that after a war, after closing of Hormuz, after an economic disaster, we are ending up worse than we started without regime change and without anything for the Iranian people and anything for the American people.

MEIJER: If you think that the future is a straight line projection from this point in time, sure, but the reality is this is not going to be a straight line. This is going to be something that goes back and forth negotiations there. Can we trust Iranians? No.

NAVARRO: I don't trust the Iranians and I don't trust Donald Trump. And I think a lot of people, even the Republicans, are having questions about that.

PHILLIP: Let me just save a word for the SAVE Act, which we heard John Thune basically saying it ain't going to happen.

BOYKIN: Yeah.

PHILLIP: But it just, what does it say about the president's priorities that with everything going on, right, he still has this hobbyhorse of mail-in voting and stolen elections, and it's infiltrating everything from his agenda on Capitol Hill to what he wants to do with the intelligence agencies in this country. What signal does that send to the American people?

HERNDON: Donald Trump's obsession with the SAVE Act is really important because he has let it control the entire agenda, and I think it's important to see it as central to his worldview largely. We know that he's protested every election he's lost then, and I think this act should be seen as a pretense for him to bring those claims back up in the midterms.

It's important that he's not even fine with some of the more universally-liked measures about funding election security or things like that. He is specifically meeting, the restriction of mail-in ballots, which even some Republicans don't like, and that's what's causing this sort of friction. And so, yes, it's creating a rift between him and Republicans in Congress, but that is a cost Donald Trump is willing to take, because his obsession with this is not just to drive messaging against Democrats in the midterms, but I think also to create a pretense for challenging results, as we've seen him do throughout previous elections.

PHILLIP: And one of the big frustrations that you are starting to hear, sometimes privately from Republicans, but sometimes now, publicly from Republicans is that the president is concerned about his agenda, not the agenda of Republicans writ large who are going to the ballot -- who are on the ballots in November.

Next for us, the primary day across the country is underway, including right here in New York City, where Mayor Mamdani is flexing his political muscle and taking on some big names in his own party.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI (D), NEW YORK: What we see in these candidacies is a referendum on whether the kind of leadership we have is the one that is serving the people of this city. We know that we need a Democratic party, as Brad often says, it's not just a question of electing more Democrats, it's a question of electing better Democrats.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:21:40]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAMDANI: And Darializa and Claire and Brad, what we see are candidates who understand that it's not just enough to fight back against the cruelty of the federal government's positions and its policies. We also have to have a vision that goes beyond 2028 and that looks at the struggles of working people and says, I don't just see you. Here's my answer for how to actually make your life easier.

(END VIDEO CLIP) PHILLIP: In New York City today, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is out and about rallying for his preferred candidates as voters cast their ballots in a series of high-profile primary races across the city. Mamdani is testing his endorsement power against that of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

And the latest proxy war of sorts between the Democratic establishment and progressives is underway as the party fights over its future.

CNN's chief national affairs correspondent Jeff Zeleny is joining us now from New York's 12th congressional national district.

So, Jeff, take us through the endorsements that Mamdani did choose to make today and what you've been hearing from voters so far.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Abby, it is fairly interesting and unusual that a new mayor like this would seek to put his imprint on these races that not simply open races, but also directly challenging sitting Democratic members of Congress with Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat. That is very unusual.

And we will see what the strength of the Mamdani endorsements actually are. We will see what his imprint the party actually is. But I am at a voting location here on the Upper West Side of New York in the 12th Congressional District. And that is a race where the mayor has not inserted himself in. This is to replace Congressman Jerry Nadler, who, of course, is a longtime member of the delegation.

This has been a wide-open, very competitive race with some very well- known names as well. I just talked to George Conway a few moments ago. He is still a candidate in this race. He says he has no regrets for putting his name on the line, also did not predict a victory this evening.

Jack Schlossberg also is in this race. He, of course, is the grandson of President John F. Kennedy. But it's largely seen now the top two candidates appear to be Micah Lasher and Alex Bores.

And I spoke with Alex Bores just a short time ago as well about the generational change he's hearing from voters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: This district has been, obviously, represented by Mr. Nadler for a very long time. Do you believe that this is an important moment to turn the page?

ALEX BORES (D), NY-12 HOUSE CANDIDATE: Well, I think the old ways aren't working. I have deep respect for Congressman Nadler and his half a century of service to the people of New York City. It's an incredible model to try to emulate.

And he ran the first time as part of the West Side Boys, who are bringing new ideas. I think it's time for some new ideas again.

(END VIDEO CLIP) ZELENY: So there certainly have been a lot of new ideas. And with Alex Bores in particular, he has been really targeted by A.I. companies, spending millions and millions of dollars against him because he has been leading the way trying to regulate these A.I. companies as part of his job as an assemblyman here in New York. So that is another new wrinkle in this race.

So we will see what the outcome is tonight. There's just a little under about five hours left of voting here in New York, so after the workday, we are expecting more. So we will see what the outcome is tonight. There's just a little under about five hours left of voting here in New York. So after the workday, we are expecting more voters to come out.

[16:25:00]

But there's no doubt most of these races, at least here in deep blue New York, are not going to affect the outcome of which party controls Congress in November, but what type of Democrats will be there if they do win the majority. And there is no question that the mayor is trying to pull them leftward, which could become a headache for Hakeem Jeffries, also of New York should he become speaker. But, of course, that is getting ahead of ourselves because there are many more primaries and certainly a general election yet to come -- Abby.

PHILLIP: That's right. Jeff Zeleny, thank you very much.

My panel is back here in New York.

Lots of big issues at play here in some of these races, for the Democrats in particular. One of them is the relationship between the party and its support for Israel. And Zohran Mamdani, I'll just play what he said last night about comments that he made comparing AIPAC, this pro-Israeli political action committee that's been playing in some of these primary races and general elections, he described them as monsters, and he defended that comment today -- last night. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAMDANI: I used the term to describe all those who are preventing the birth of a new world. Not solely AIPAC, but frankly, super PACs at large who are spending millions of dollars in deceptive and misleading ads that are blanketing airwaves, not just in the case of Darializa Avila Chevalier, but also we see that kind of PAC spending when it comes to oppose Brad Lander. My use of the term is a broad use that speaks to the untenable nature of a status quo that is quite literally starving people in this city, all in the name of sustaining something that we simply cannot defend any longer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Is this an argument that is helpful to Democrats?

BOYKIN: I don't think it's particularly helpful, but I think it's courageous in its part to be able to say that, because of the fact that AIPAC has had tremendous impact on -- on our elections in our country, Democrats and Republicans. And it's courageous for him to say that because here's a guy who just got elected mayor, he's a Muslim, Democratic socialist, and he's taking on his own establishment on these issues.

Regardless of whether you agree with him, I think it does reflect the fact that he is truly convicted about his beliefs. I think the problem the Democrats are facing with Israel is the problem that America is facing with Israel, that public support has shifted dramatically. The majority of Americans do not support Israel anymore. The majority of Republicans under 50 do not support Israel anymore.

There's a huge dramatic shift. I think that the Republican Party and Democratic Party are both having a come to, I don't want to use the word come to Jesus, but a reckoning moment right now where they have to figure out what are they going to do in order to move forward.

NAVARRO: I don't know if he's coming to Jesus, but I know he's gotten himself into a hell of a pickle with Latino leadership. And it's kind of extraordinary, right?

PHILLIP: Because he's challenging Adriano Espaillat.

NAVARRO: Well, he's challenging two of them. He's challenging Nydia Velazquez. She had endorsed a candidate to succeed her. She's been in Congress for 34 years. She is very well-liked, very popular in her district, a Puerto Rican leader.

And Mamdani has swooped in a mayor trying to affect and influence these federal races. And he is openly, I mean, at least Nydia Velazquez is not running, right? She's got an endorsed candidate who's running, who he is, he has challenged.

But he is directly challenging Adriano Espaillat, the first Dominican immigrant to be elected to Congress, incredibly well-liked, representing places like Washington Heights, I think he's going to lose. I will be shocked if Adriano Espaillat loses because he is very well-liked and I just --

PHILLIP: But I guess that's the question, like, why? I mean, I think --

NAVARRO: Because he wants to be stronger --

PHILLIP: He wants to know --

NAVARRO: Mamdani.

PHILLIP: Not why that, but why is the obligation for him to support the endorsed candidate of the outgoing congressperson or support the existing congressperson? I mean, I think the Democrats are basically saying, If there -- if this candidate is not right for this day, isn't it time to reevaluate that at the ballot box? What's wrong with that?

NAVARRO: It's a why. The question will be why if he loses. And I think he loses against Adriano Espaillat and he's going to have a powerful congressman who represents New York in the House of Representatives, who's going to be pretty antagonized against him and pretty upset against him. And it's not going to forget.

PHILLIP: Let me play.

NAVARRO: Latinos can hold a grunge.

PHILLIP: You had a conversation with the Mamdani endorsed candidate, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and it's about deportations. She's actually made a lot of past comments, some of which she's deleted on social media. But this question, Astead raises, is about why she thinks all deportations are immoral. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HERNDON: If we're saying all deportation is wrong, though, that would seem to also include people who were convicted of breaking U.S. criminal law. Is the deportation of those people wrong?

DARIALIZA AVILA CHEVALIER (D), NEW YORK CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: Yes, and the reason I say that is because we have a criminal system to subject someone who has committed a crime to both a criminal system and then, additionally, to an immigration system that also detains them, it is double punishment.

[16:30:04]

I also believe that the question of deportation is one that is deeply racist.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: So, in New York, that might play okay, or does it?

HERNDON: I don't know. I mean, that comment was controversial for a reason. You saw Mamdani be asked about it all through the week, but this is someone who has kind of made peace with her anti-carceral leftist worldview. People were asking, following up, asking questions about what about folks convicted of murder? What about isn't even entering the country itself considered?

PHILLIP: And she's a former public defender, right?

HERNDON: And she's a former public defender who is very much said that it is her kind of core belief to re-imagine those type of systems, and it's, I think, kind of comfortable paying an electoral penalty if that comes to cost.

But I think what Anna said is really important. I think that like, Mamdani has accrued political capital to spend it. You know, when I talked to him last summer when he was thinking about when he was running. in that general election, he was clear that he was going to endorse on the basis of his political project and who he think is most helpful for that.

And so that's going to run him afoul of establishment largely. And I sometimes think we talk about establishment like it's just, you know, white guys in suits in D.C., but there's a black establishment. There's a there's a Latino establishment. There's in New York, there's a Dominican, there's a Puerto Rican establishment.

And the purpose of that outsider candidacy is going to disrupt some of that. And he knows he's doing.

PHILLIP: He did that in his own campaign, so that's why he knows that.

MEIJER: But let's not forget, I mean, Darializa's a lunatic. Like, the idea she has about no deportations, that's not even scratching the surface. I mean, she doesn't believe prisons should exist, full stop, defended that several times.

(CROSSTALK)

MEIJER: It puts her on the wrong side of a 98-2 issue.

HERNDON: But that certainly is true, 90-10 issue at minimum.

MEIJER: Criticized interracial marriages, she called Obama evil, Biden a rapist -- I mean, this woman is, she's insane.

BOYKIN: I don't think -- I spent a lot of time in the 13th District in the past few weeks, and I don't think she has a chance of winning. But I do think, going back to what Ana said, yes, it does hurt him, but it still takes courage for the mayor to stand up to a sitting incumbent Democratic --

NAVARRO: Yeah, but it's definitely courage and crazy.

PHILLIP: Coming up next in THE ARENA, why artificial intelligence is feeling a very real slump today in the global markets.

Plus, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Jim Himes, is going to be here with us live as the U.S. and Iran give more conflicting statements about the state of talks to end this war.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: The Iranians are saying there's no scheduled visit for the IAEA inspectors. Is that part of your agreement?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They're wrong. They're wrong. They're wrong. They know they're wrong. They told us inside, and we have it down 100 percent inspections. And if they were right, I'd cancel the meetings right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:37:23]

PHILLIP: A.I. is once again shaking up the stock market as investors sell-off their A.I.-related stocks. Today, the tech-heavy Nasdaq sank 2 percent, and the S&P fell almost 1.5 percent, their worst day in about two weeks. Over in Asia, there was more panicked trading. South Korean markets

tumbled 10 percent overnight, which triggered a circuit breaker. The concerns about technology are not limited to Wall Street. Today, the intelligence alliance between the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, also known as Five Eyes, issued a warning. But we are months away from A.I. models that are capable of launching major cyber attacks that could overwhelm government defenses.

CNN contributor and host of "The Rip Current" podcast Jacob Ward joins us now.

Jacob, tell me about this sell off. What's causing it?

JACOB WARD, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, it's very hard to figure out what it exactly is in the mind of investors. It certainly has been very difficult in the past few months, right, as we've seen these folks just bid up and up and up the price of A.I. stocks, because as you know, Abby, right, none of it makes sense on paper. These are companies that are promising a utopia in the future that we really have not seen. You've got a big MIT paper often cited from 2025 that shows that 95 percent of companies implementing this stuff are not seeing any direct payoff.

And even today, "The New York Times" is reporting that enormous numbers of companies are trying to minimize the use of A.I. because they're finding it to be so expensive. And so it feels to me, and again, we never know why the market does what it does, but it feels to me as if the sell-off in Korea is a recognition by investors in Seoul that this whole thing is very, very fragile. It rests on memory from Korea, chips from basically one Taiwanese company, and rare earth minerals that have to come out of China.

You combine that with the fact that these companies are blowing literally billions of dollars on their capital expenditures to build all of this stuff, and the fact that they really have no way of getting all the electricity they claim they need, the whole thing just doesn't pencil out. And so I think the insanity of it is probably becoming clear to investors there and seems to have set off this thing here this morning.

PHILLIP: That's fascinating, almost describing something of a house of cards kind of situation.

Meanwhile, today, President Trump was asked about the prospect that truckers could start losing their jobs to A.I., to autonomous vehicles. Let me play what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: You're about to speak to truckers. Truckers are at high risk of losing their job to A.I. because of --

TRUMP: You can't get a job. Right now, we have the highest job numbers we've ever had in the country, in the history of the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP) [16:40:00]

PHILLIP: So -- I mean, maybe right now, actually, he's right about that, but do you think that he is right altogether? Because Americans are worried about this, 70 percent in this Quinnipiac poll say that A.I. will lead to fewer job opportunities for people, maybe more jobs for computers. Do you think that there is going to be that job apocalypse that has been predicted?

Well, I mean, you know, whether or not experts and academics are predicting it, the companies themselves are predicting it. And this is from an industry that, you know, in the past has been pretty good at sort of hiding the damage it might do.

You've got the creators of these companies openly saying that they could lead to something like 20 percent unemployment. And already we're seeing, of course, companies laying off huge numbers of people, tens of thousands of people, and now pulling back in all sorts of A.I. responsibilities where once a human would do it. The thing that's interesting about the trucking example is that is actually one of the very few places where we've seen in the rest of the world pushback against technology that actually carried some political weight.

In India, for instance, they have more or less outlawed self-driving vehicles because professional driving is such a huge employer in that country. And it is also a big political bloc. It's a voting bloc. And so the fact that you have now this industry, you know, coming for office workers, that's a much more difficult thing to push back against because everyone is so disassociated, everybody's on a, you know, at will contract.

But once you start coming for the truckers and the cab drivers and the folks, cab drivers obviously have had their own trouble, but professional drivers in this country, that's a big, big industry. And so I'd be interested to see whether or not there's actually some political traction around this in a way that there hasn't been as it takes admin, bookkeeping, and clerical jobs.

PHILLIP: Yeah, less than a minute left with you, but this warning from Five Eyes about the cyber component, that's actually something that you hear a lot from the big Wall Street CEOs when it comes to AI, that's the thing they're really concerned.

Is that, now that we know, is that really the big warning we should be concerned about?

I mean, I think the thing to really think about right here is that once upon a time, it took five years and $300 million for U.S. and Israel cybersecurity people to attack the Iranian program, the nuclear program through Stuxnet. Remember that system? That took a lot of work. That required the resources of an entire nation to pull that off, right?

Now we're in a world, according to the Five Eyes Agencies, in which it doesn't take any money or any technical expertise to do this kind of stuff. Once upon a time, as a small business owner, you wouldn't worry about a nuclear attack on your business because why would a nation ever blow that kind of resources on it?

Well, now, you don't have to have the resources that it takes to run a nuclear program to attack somebody at huge scale. So, the big CEOs, I don't worry about them. I'm worried about the small companies that are going to be on the receiving end of this stuff. Clearly, these intelligence agencies whose whole job it is to look at the protections that we all need are very, very concerned, shrinking the warning time that they say we're going to need for fixing this stuff from two weeks down to three days. This stuff is moving very fast, Abby.

PHILLIP: It sure is. Jacob Ward, thank you very much for all that.

And ahead for us in THE ARENA, a top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Jim Himes, is going to join us live as the White House starts mass firings in the nation's intelligence apparatus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): If Pulte does a reduction in force, the way that I've been engaged to do it before, where you do the analysis, you make sure you retain the most capable people, and you only eliminate the people whose jobs can be either automated or never should have been there? Good. My guess is, based on his past experience, it's just going to be another hot, steamy pile of dough.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:48:13]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TILLIS: If Pulte does A reduction in force, the way that I've been engaged to do it before, where you do the analysis, you make sure you retain the most capable people, and you only eliminate the people whose jobs can be either automated or never should have been there, good. My guess is, based on his past experience, it's just going to be another hot, steamy pile of dough shit. I think he's an incompetent sycophant and not the right person to lead DNI.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Tom Tillis unleashed. He is warning that the acting director of National Intelligence, Bill Pulte, is undermining the agency by firing staff on mass. The large-scale cuts are underway right now after Pulte showed up a day early to the job last week and demanded a list of every employee in the office.

Joining me now is the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut.

Congressman, let's start there with the firings over at DNI. What do you think are the consequences of -- for America's safety net based on what you know so far? REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): Yeah, look, it's an important question. And my guess is that most of your viewers hear ODNI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, they don't know what it is. So, I mean, let me -- let me make this sort of real. You know, as we speak, there is a big operation center known as the National Counterterrorism Center, the NCTC, where all kinds of people are staring into screens, watching terrorists, watching people who are planning attacks on the homeland.

I'm already hearing rumors, and I'd love to come back to the fact that as one of the key oversight people in the Congress, what I'm hearing is rumors, no communication from Bill Pulte or any of his people, that those folks are getting fired. So, you know, I want -- I want people to sit on that for a second.

The folks that are keeping us safe from terrorist attacks, at a moment when there's a war on the Middle East and lots of people who would like to do us damage, the rumors I hear is that many of them are being fired which is unacceptable on the face of it.

[16:50:12]

I had to chuckle at Tom Tillis's characterization. He knows very well that Bill Pulte didn't do the strategic work, the hard work, to figure out where the fat is, to figure out where, you know, streamlining can occur. God only knows, based on what we know about Bill Pulte, around how he's firing people.

And what we are talking about here are people who are dedicated day in and day out, 24/7, to the safety and security of the American people. So the stakes really couldn't be higher.

PHILLIP: So, you know, there's Tom Tillis, who we just heard there, who is very sharply critical. And you have Senator Tom Cotton, who was not thrilled about the Pulte nomination, but he did say, today, when asked about the cuts, that there is some agreement between Republicans and Democrats that there's fat that needs to be cut, that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence needs to be run more efficiently. I mean, do you think that's true?

HIMES: Yeah, well, it is true, but it has nothing to do with what Bill Pulte is doing right now. You know, it's kind of like if you had a appendicitis and I said, Oh, we're going to cut off your legs.

I mean, that's what we're talking about here. There are no federal agencies that probably couldn't use a pretty good hot wash to figure out where the fat is, to figure out how you could reform and modernize an agency. That's hard work. It really is hard work. It requires people who really know that agency. It requires people who are acting in good faith. Neither of those things describe Bill Pulte.

We know Bill Pulte, right? Because we saw what he did when he was at this obscure federal agency, right? FHFA, an agency nobody had ever heard of. It's really important to housing, but it's a pretty esoteric agency. And what does Bill Pulte do? He goes after Adam Schiff, and he goes after the attorney general of New York State, Tish James. Absolutely no jurisdiction, and he did it in illegal fashion. That was

bad enough. But now we're talking about the intelligence community, right, where people work in, as I said before, work 24/7 to keep us safe from terrorist attacks, from cartels, from spies, you name it.

PHILLIP: So Trump actually did nominate a permanent person to fill this role. His name is Jay Clayton. But then he pulls his confirmation or his nomination before the confirmation hearing. We're starting to hear from some on the right that Trump, even if the Senate moves to nominate a permanent head, should not even swear that person in, in order to keep Bill Pulte in that role longer.

First of all, do you think that's a risk here, and if he were to do that, what do you think should be the response from Congress?

HIMES: Look, it's a very serious risk. I've known Jay Clayton for a very long time, and, you know, if you want to think about the range of people who could be DNI, the head of our intelligence community, you know, Tulsi Gabbard never made me comfortable, but I knew Tulsi, and as crazy as some of the stuff that Tulsi was doing, she wasn't actually going after individual people the way Bill Pulte did in his previous job.

So Tulsi made me uncomfortable. Bill Pulte is about the worst nominee you could have for this position. Jay Clayton, who I've known for decades, is actually a very solid guy. Now, he's going to be working for Donald Trump, so he's going to say a lot of things that make people uncomfortable. But in the spectrum of people that could be running this agency, Jay Clayton would give me a lot more confidence than the other ones.

And by the way, if you actually got Jay Clayton done the way the president said he would, we would -- the Congress would have an opportunity to reauthorize FISA 702, which is not the subject of this interview, but suffice it to say that, you know, because the president's actions, our critical intelligence collection authority is now on ice. So what you see coming out of the White House right now is just straight-up vandalism.

PHILLIP: Let me play this for you. This is President Trump in the last hour talking about the state of California. He is basically saying he wants to take another look at the elections there. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Hey, did they screw the kid, Pratt? Boy, he's leading, and all of a sudden, he's lost. Then it started happening with the next candidate, Steve Hilton, who's running for governor. I said, Here we go again.

And I called up the U.S. attorney in California. They said, we're going to have a number in the next week. Next week. I called up the very powerful, very good U.S. attorney in California, and I said, Do me a favor. Take a look. They're trying to steal that election, too.

I guess they called up. We want to check your votes. About an hour after the call, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Hilton has won. So, had I not made that call, Steve Hilton would right now be looking -- watching the election from home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Not sure even what he's talking about, but what's your reaction to it, Congressman?

HIMES: Look, this is exactly what he did after he lost the election. He said it was fraudulent. He went to US attorneys. He went to court. Every single court said that is not true.

It is not true. And I'm sure he's going to sick people on California and they'll discover what they always discover, which is that the election was fair.

[16:55:05]

Trump is doing this because he knows he's going to lose the House of Representatives and maybe the Senate, and he wants to reserve the right to try to compromise those elections. Make no mistake, what he's doing here.

PHILLIP: Congressman Jim Himes, thanks very much for joining us.

And we'll be right back.

HIMES: Thank you, Abby.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIP: Huge thanks to my panel today, and thank you for joining us.

"THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER" starts right now.