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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt

Shouting Match Erupts In Trump's Meeting With GOP Senators; Mamdani-Backed Candidates Sweep NYC Dem Primaries; Soon: Trump Hosts Rally Near Troubled Reflecting Pool. Aired 4-5p ET

Aired June 24, 2026 - 16:00   ET

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

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: -- Miami Marlins, hottest team in baseball right now.

[16:00:03]

Fifteen wins in the month of June. They beat the Rangers last night. Just had to --

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Hottest team.

SANCHEZ: --mention that.

KEILAR: Hot dog.

I mean, it all makes sense.

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 wonderful to have you with us on this Wednesday.

Right now, President Donald Trump could be celebrating a major win and helping millions of Americans afford their first home. Instead, he's withholding that help, trying to use it as leverage to force Republicans to give him what he actually wants.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Buying a home is unattainable for so many Americans. Is this election legislation more important to you than resolving the housing crisis?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Every election is important. We're doing very well. They want a lot of communists to come in. I'm saying it a little bit differently, but the people that they're pushing are communists, and this country is not going to have communists. Thank you very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP) HUNT: That was President Trump on Capitol Hill today, just hours after he surprised everyone by saying he would not sign a major bipartisan housing bill unless Congress passes his election reform bill known as the SAVE Act, the president calling the situation a national emergency.

For reference on just how out of left field this announcement was, less than 12 hours beforehand, Trump's own press secretary described the housing bill as, quote, "one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American history," end quote.

So just to put a finer point on it, the president is refusing to provide what his own team says is historic help on affordability less than five months out from a midterm election, unless Congress gives him greater control over that election's rules.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren argues that's not a coincidence.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): Donald Trump is doing really badly. We all know that. We can look at the polls like anybody else, and he looks at them even more closely. Where is he, down in the 30s somewhere? So his answer, his last answer, is not use the time to help the American people. Use the time to lower the cost of housing. Use the time to put in place his promise that we'll reduce interest rates on credit cards to 10 percent.

No, none of those are his answer. His answer is, let's keep more American citizens from voting, because if fewer people vote, he somehow thinks that's going to make it easier for Donald Trump and the Republicans to win.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right, let's cut off the sidelines, head into THE ARENA. My panel is here.

And we're also joined by chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju, who's had quite a day.

Manu, the Republicans met -- Republican senators met with the president on the Hill earlier. Can you take us inside that closed-door meeting? Your sources told you it got pretty intense.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, it got very intense, really between Republican Senator Bill Cassidy and the president of the United States. That was the most contentious exchange by far, according to a number of Republican senators, other sources that I have spoken with.

This is over the issue of Iran. Remember, Bill Cassidy lost his primary bid last month after Trump endorsed his primary challenger. And Cassidy has returned to the Senate and has been a thorn in the side of the president, voting just yesterday with three other Republican senators to limit his war powers with Iran. That issue, I'm told, came up behind closed doors. Trump went after those Republican senators.

Bill Cassidy got up, tried to challenge Trump on the issue of Iran. Trump told him to sit down, I'm told. He would not sit down. He raised his voice. Trump called him a, quote, lunatic. Cassidy responded, called him his brother. President Trump said, "You're not my brother."

Eventually, Cassidy sat down. But that was undoubtedly, of what I'm told, a very intense exchange between Republican Senator Bill Cassidy and the president states. But overriding all of this is that issue of affordability, this big housing bill that Republicans wanted to cheerlead today, but President Trump blew up.

I caught up with a number of Republicans afterwards. They say they wish the president was focused on something that they could all celebrate on the campaign trail.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Is he hurting your chances of keeping the majority?

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): I'm just going to say I don't think it helps. People want us to -- to be able to deliver on priorities, absolutely. And they want to focus on things that they're talking about at home.

RAJU: Wouldn't it be helpful if you guys were rallying around a big housing bill, talking about affordability in the selection season?

SEN. KEVIN CRAMER (R-ND): It's a real -- and we are. I mean, it may not be a big thing to him, but we're talking about it. We're grateful for it, but it'll be more --

[16:05:00]

RAJU: It'd be helpful if you were?

CRAMER: Yeah, it would. It would.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: But Trump gave no indication behind closed doors, I'm told, if he would sign that critical housing legislation. That's what John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, told me, that he hopes the president will ultimately decide to sign that.

But Thune himself, Kasie, was totally blindsided by the president's abrupt decision to cancel this signing ceremony, really at a loss of how to proceed, because they have tried to pass this so-called Save America Act multiple times in the Senate, and the votes simply are not there to do just that. There aren't even a simple majority of senators to approve this legislation. So they can't seem to convince Trump to move off of his chief demand, which they can't deliver on, which has left his agenda, the president's agenda on the Hill totally stalled -- Kasie.

HUNT: Remarkable state of affairs. Manu Raju, thank you, as always, for your reporting.

My panel is here in THE ARENA. CNN senior legal analyst, Elie Honig; political analyst, author of "The Blow Stack" newsletter, Charles Blow; CNN political commentator, former Trump White House communications director, Alyssa Farah Griffin; Democratic strategist Lis Smith; and former Republican congressman from Michigan, Peter Meijer.

Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for being here.

Alyssa, this is not the first time I have seen Donald Trump blow something up on Capitol Hill at the very last minute, much to the chagrin of the people who've worked very hard, usually Republicans, to actually get it across the finish line. But in many ways, this is like a new level, right? I mean, this is -- the White House was touting this as a obvious win for the biggest issue facing Americans, which is that they say their lives are unaffordable.

This was, yes, a long-term solution, but it was supported across the board by the groups. It is hard to do something like this in Washington. What -- what is going on with the president's priorities?

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: This feels like vintage Trump going rogue. His House wanted this sign. They had the signing ceremony plan. They've been hyping this, and it addresses the major issue that they've been trying to get him to refocus on affordability.

This is bipartisan. This is an easy win and it gives his members in vulnerable districts something to go back and tout in the campaign trail ahead of the midterms. I mean, this is classic where the president gets something in his head and he just cannot get off of that focus. He wants the SAVE Act passed. It does not have the votes, but he is going to hold this up.

I mean, now we know that it can sit for 10 days. He could veto it. That's not something I would expect he would do. But, like, this ultimately is going to become law, so why not just give yourself the win of the signing ceremony and taking credit for it?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Fun constitutional minutiae for you. If there is a veto or rejection by the president, this almost never happens, but Congress can override a veto by two-thirds of a vote in both the House and the Senate. I can't count votes like Manu Raju can. I don't know if there's that much bipartisan support, but if necessary, that could be a way it goes.

It almost never happens, but it happened to Richard Nixon.

HUNT: There might actually be the votes. Yeah, but in this case, it's like, for Republicans, it's one thing. They may support the bill. There may be veto-proof majority to support the bill, but that doesn't mean that there's enough Republicans who are willing to cross the president.

HONIG: They did it to Nixon in '73. HUNT: Well, but they also forced Nixon out of office.

HONIG: It's true.

HUNT: Okay?

Lis?

LIS SMITH, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Yeah, and, you know, I -- unfortunately, lived through 2024 as a Democrat watching Joe Biden be really stubborn about inflation and refusing to acknowledge that it was a real issue. But this is a whole degree worse. The president has refused to really acknowledge that it's an issue, but he now has this bill in front of him that's ready to sign that would address one of the biggest cost drivers for the American people, housing, right?

It's housing, healthcare, energy, and he's not signing it. Why? Because of his personal obsession with the 2020 election being stolen. And when people went to vote for him in 2024, they weren't saying, give me the SAVE Act. They're saying lower my prices, get us out of Dunmore's, close the border. And this is --

HUNT: He did one of those things.

SMITH: He did one of those things. I'll give him credit on the border. I will give him credit on the border. But this is just vintage Trump, as Alyssa was saying.

PETER MEIJER (R), FORMER MICHIGAN CONGRESSMAN: I really feel to see the strategy here. I've been trying to think of what it could be.

HUNT: What am I going to say television?

MEIJER: The best argument you can make is that he wants to pressure the House and the Senate in order to include some elements of the SAVE Act in a reconciliation bill, right? You're not going to get the whole thing. A lot of those things wouldn't fly by the parliamentarian. Some of it could.

But this is -- you're also creating even more bad blood with the House and the Senate at the same time that the National Defense Authorization Act is being marked up. That's coming from the White House's request that the White House just sent the defense supplemental down to Capitol Hill. You know, Pete Hegseth had a great editorial in the "New York Post" yesterday, talking about the $1.5 trillion, so getting close to 5 percent of GDP defense bill.

Those are going to be some pretty big lifts and we have --

HUNT: There's money for the ballroom, too, that they want.

MEIJER: A lot of president's priorities. We have five weeks left before the House goes on recess. I mean, this is -- there's not a lot of time left in the calendar before the election, before it's a lame- duck Senate and House.

[16:10:01]

And we've already seen how the primary lame-duck Republicans are acting. I'm not sure that, post-November, there's going to be more of an appetite in order to support the president's legislation, so I'm just confused.

HUNT: Charles Blow, this is what Governor Gavin Newsom had to say. He called Trump a sick man. He says, "Wow, Donald Trump is holding affordable housing hostage until Congress passes his voter suppression bill. He is literally delaying help for families struggling to afford a home in order to make it harder for married women and Black Americans to vote. He is a sick man."

Now, it is worth kind of ticking through what is -- what is the president demanding that Congress do instead of this affordable housing bill. It would require proof of citizenship to vote. You obviously have to be a citizen to vote in this country. A photo ID when voting, states would need to take more steps to take people off the voter rolls, and there also would be penalties, criminal penalties for election officials.

You've obviously covered and written extensively about this. I mean, what are the implications of what he is demanding?

CHARLES BLOW, POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I'm not confused at all about this as some of my fellow panelists are, Donald Trump is systematically attacking the election on every way that he possibly can. He's attacking it by demanding off-year redistricting. We've now in an arms race over that. He has demanded voter rolls from particular states. Red states have given it. Some blue states have resisted this.

He has had some officials show up to question some poll workers already. Now we have him demanding that we figure out ways that would we understand. We know this from fact because Kansas has already tried a version of this will reduce the number of people who are eligible to go out and vote.

He is putting himself ahead of the American people. This bill in front of him would help the American people. Guaranteeing to some degree that he would not get face a Democratic Congress would help him. He is petrified of what it would mean because they would have subpoena power.

They can investigate in full. There are still according to the deal --

HUNT: Signing this bill would help him keep a Republican --

BLOW: He wants a guarantee you You're thinking of this in the natural political landscape Which is this helps your candidates and maybe they'll go out and win.

He doesn't care about the people in that -- in that room, he just had lunch with. He doesn't trust them. He doesn't believe in them. He wants a guarantee -- a guarantee is -- the only way to guarantee it is to limit the number of people actually access the polls. And that is what he wants. MEIJER: But he's also stepping on an important election that occurred last night in New York, where, you know, if cannot the Republican Party bask in Democratic incompetence and insanity for just one day, I mean, stepping on all that messaging. I know we'll probably talk about the primaries, but like, you know, yeah, point to that. That should be the news of the day is how insane --

GRIFFIN: I was thinking exactly the same thing. What was driving the news is Democratic infighting -- Mamdani against Hakeem Jeffrey, these extremists getting elected in New York. And now the story is that Trump is taking his own bill that would benefit Republicans and Democrats alike.

It's -- you can't make this up, but again, the reporting, as far as I see it, I think this is the president going out on his own. I think the White House did not want to do this. He's never quite understood Capitol Hill. He kind of sees them as folks who are supposed to respond to him and act as he deploys, not as a co-equal branch of government that he has to win over and try to convince of things.

BLOW: And looking at New York, what happened in New York as extreme or comical is actually a terrible misread of what is happening, and -- well, you can say -- you call it, you call it whatever you want to call it. I'm telling you that dismissing it is a terrible --

HUNT: Let's not cannibalize the show.

BLOW: It's a terrible misread.

GRIFFIN: I don't dismiss it, yeah.

SMITH: But there's -- I just cannot remember a president in recent memory who cared so little about building a majority, protecting members of his party, and he just goes out every day and, you know, steps onto this rake for his party because he thinks it helps himself. And he's even said, I don't care what happens in the midterms. And he's really showing it with us today.

HUNT: Elie Honig, the president said earlier this week, essentially acknowledged that he demanded -- he did acknowledge that he called the California Attorney General and asked for an investigation, you know. And then he also, excuse me, the U.S. attorney, not the attorney general. And then today, he essentially acknowledged that the SAVE Act is basically designed to prevent people from, he said, well, they're going to elect communists.

So it's explicitly, he's being very explicit about what that's supposed to do.

HONIG: This president is using every lever of power available to the president, and maybe more than that, to try to do what Charles was talking about before, to exercise and exert influence over these coming elections, it's not just this piece of legislation. There's an executive order the president issued that is not going to work. That's been rejected by the courts. The only way you can really regulate elections constitution says it is

the states or Congress. This EO, this executive order is going to fail. He's using DOJ. He's subpoenaing states.

[16:15:01]

He did a search warrant in Georgia, in Fulton County. He's subpoenaing states for their voter rolls. One was just rejected by the Sixth Circuit, about an hour before the show. So the courts are saying you're overstepping.

Another point I want to make about the law itself. If, by some reason, people were to suddenly change their mind on Capitol Hill and say, we're going to pass the Save America Act now, I think, on its face, it's constitutional. Whether it's a good idea or not, I think it would pass constitutional muster.

But the later we get, the closer we get to the elections, the more of a hard time that that law is going to have in courts. Because the courts have a rule saying, you cannot change the rules when you get too close to an election. What's too close? I don't know. But I think July is getting awfully close.

So even if that thing were to miraculously pass tomorrow, I think we would have a real hard time in the courts, 426.

HUNT: Yeah, it's a good point.

All right, Elie Honig, thank you for coming. It's always great to see you.

The rest of our panel's going to stick around. Coming up here in THE ARENA, we're going to talk live with Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock. Very excited about that.

But first, the insurgent surge in the Democratic Party. Why big primary wins for progressives backed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani are being celebrated by some on the right.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI (D), NEW YORK: We've heard from Republicans time and again that they're going to try and make these candidates the face of the Democratic Party. To them, I say that we are ready for that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:20:41]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAMDANI: I see these results as a reflection of, are the fact that New Yorkers are hungry for a new kind of politics. They are hungry for a politics that understands working people should be at the heart of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani flexing his political muscle and sending shockwaves through the Democratic Party. He went three for three on his endorsements in New York primaries last night. Two of the candidates that he backed, yeah, they beat incumbents.

It's just the latest primary to raise questions about the direction the Democratic Party's headed, the minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, had this to say about Mamdani.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): Listen, the mayor and I agreed to strongly disagree about some of his endorsements, and he's got work to do in terms of the conversations that he's going to have with members of Congress.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: My panel's back.

Lis Smith, there's a lot here. Where would you start in terms of what we should be reading into from these primaries last night?

SMITH: Democrats are pissed off. They're very angry at the status quo, very angry at what they believe is a feckless establishment that wasn't listening to them over the last few years that brought us Trump 2.0.

They're mad about the cause of living. They're mad about political corruption. They're mad about, you know, the fact that we're sending all this money over to Israel and it's being taken out in different ways in different districts.

So, yes, we are talking right now about the DSA candidates or DSA- adjacent candidates who won in New York.

HUNT: It's Democratic Socialist in America.

SMITH: Yes.

HUNT: Yeah.

SMITH: And that is a part of the story, right? And part of how Democrats in these very blue districts turned against the status quo and against the establishment was by electing these far-left candidates.

But another story that we should not discount from last night is two people who won, and I'm advisor to The Bench, a group that is interested and focused on recruiting candidates in like swing districts and two candidates of ours at one last night, Cait Conley in New York 17 and Nancy Lacore in South Carolina's first district. And let's pay attention to those districts because those are the

districts that will actually dictate who controls the House. And let me tell you this. Those candidates are also anti-status quo. There is -- they have no political background whatsoever.

Cait Conley, one of the first women in special operations, six times deployed. Nancy Lacore in South Carolina, former Republican, who was one of the highest-ranking women in the Navy.

They don't look like politics. They don't sound like politics. There's nothing Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, or even Zohran Mamdani about them, and that's why people like them.

And in those districts, people turned against traditional Democratic politicians. They want -- they just think it's failing us.

HUNT: Yeah. So here's the thing as I listen to you talk, right? Like, the thing that I keep flashing back to is 2015, okay, when Republicans were headed for an election with an enormous number of candidates.

And they had a party that was incredibly angry at their establishment. And what did they give us? They gave us Donald Trump.

SMITH: Right.

HUNT: And are Democrats on the -- I mean, they gave us somebody that completely blew up the status quo of the party, and the country, for that matter.

SMITH: Look, if Darializa Avila Chevalier became the presidential nominee, yes. But right now, she is -- she is a nominee in a very blue district. But we should -- and again, I am not from the DSA wing of the Democratic Party, but I think, and I have great respect for Hakeem Jeffries, speaker, or leader Jeffries, soon to be Speaker Jeffries, maybe.

But I really think we do not do ourselves any favors when we just say, oh, it's a one-off. It's a one-off here. People are mad. And they're sending us, like, red blinking lights and saying, you need to listen to us.

And if we don't listen to them, we're going to see more of this hostile takeover happening everywhere else.

GRIFFIN: Well, listen, obviously, Democrats are favored to take the House, but with gerrymandering, with the new congressional map, it looks a lot tighter than it's going to be. And to Lis's point, winning back the House runs through districts like Mike Lawler's, like New York 17. And Cait Conley is a very good candidate.

But these elections in New York are going to make it a lot harder for these moderate centrists running against Republicans that need to win these seats. Republicans, the ads write themselves. I mean, this Chevalier, she couldn't be created by a political operative on the right.

[16:25:03]

We couldn't have come up with somebody who is so easily -- easy to attack. This is someone who's gone after Obama, Kamala Harris, called Joe Biden a rapist. The hits just keep coming from her.

She's -- and we are going -- Republicans are going to go into the midterms trying to paint every Democrat as part of this more extreme wing. I think it's going to be tough.

MEIJER: Because she is where the heart and center of the party lies right now. I mean, that's where the enthusiasm is. I mean, to your point, yes, the establishment, everybody hates the establishment of both parties, you know, and the dissatisfaction with the status quo runs across the board. The challenge is it's not, you know, oh, you're being feckless.

Like the elections last night to me, and especially the Goldman race, like these, the unifying thread of the Democratic Party being opposition to Donald Trump, like that dog doesn't hunt anymore. Like it is 100 percent where the animating forces is on the DSA side and it's specifically routed around called Gaza genocide, focus on Israel. That is the animating, passionate force. And there's some very dark conspiracies that kind of go from there that all have deep anti- Semitic roots.

That's what's terrifying. I'm not trying to make light of this. I mean, Republicans will use her as the foil, but this scares the hell out of me for where our politics are going.

SMITH: Just quickly, it's an animating force in a few of those districts. It's not an animating force in South Carolina's first district, nor in New York.

MEIJER: It's an animating force in the Democratic convention in Michigan.

SMITH: Oh, yeah.

BLOW: I mean, here's the -- here's the problem. I mean, you guys are waxing over the entire thing that what's happening here. You talk about dogs that don't hunt anymore. The idea of painting these people as extremists does not hunt anymore because the moment that you elected Donald Trump and you watch what he has done in the first year of his administration, no one -- no one can make the argument that someone is too extreme.

(CROSSTALK)

BLOW: Donald Trump is on tape saying that he grabbed women by their private parts. I don't want to hear anybody talk to me about what somebody else said by calling somebody a name, or whatever the case may be.

GRIFFIN: This woman has literally aligned herself with the idea of tearing down Western culture and Western civilization. BLOW: When I hear Jared Kushner at Kirk's funeral saying that we are the whirlwind, and we're going to come out, and they don't understand how we're going to destroy things -- I don't want to hear that. People are actually -- people are -- yes.

You go back and listen to what Kushner said at Kirk's -- I think that is -- his memorial service. Go back and listen to the full thing. And tell me that that is not -- that is not a full-fledged white power speech. So --

GRIFFIN: The vast majority of Americans do not want our country to become a race to the bottom in politics.

So Donald Trump, who I criticized --

BLOW: It's already at the bottom.

GRIFFIN: Well, OK, then your side also --

BLOW: It's already at the bottom. But everybody wants Democrats to be -- to be holier than thou. Everybody wants the Republicans to play by one set of rules, and then they want Democrats to say, no, you can't do that. You said that you were better. You said that you were the nice guys, so you must run the race as the nice guy and let these guys literally dig into the graves.

This is an insane proposition.

(CROSSTALK)

BLOW: It's are insane thing to say.

HUNT: I think that we're hearing Charles channel some of the anger that we've been talking about here.

I do think I want to just briefly show you what the mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, posted after his three candidates won over the objections of many people in the Democratic establishment. Just -- just take a look at what he posted.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JALEN BRUNSON, NEW YORK KNICKS GUARD: There's a lot of people that have a lot of negative stuff to say. There's a lot of people who have a lot of opinions. But when you prove them wrong, you really don't have to say shit to them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Jalen Brunson at the next parade.

All right, coming up next here in THE ARENA --

BLOW: I want to say, it wasn't Kushner. It was the guy looks like Skeletor. What's his name? Stephen Miller.

HUNT: I do. I'm glad that we're correcting the record.

BLOW: It's not Jared Kushner. Everybody's not Jared Kushner I was talking about. It was Stephen Miller, Skeletor, got up and gave that white power speech. That's what I'm saying.

HUNT: Okay. Coming up next here in THE ARENA, the new demand from a federal judge related to the tarp that is still up at the Kennedy Center after Donald Trump's name was physically removed from the building.

But first, the president going all in on his controversial elections overhaul bill. Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock is here with us live. That's next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): This makes no sense. He wants to make his case, and he can't even make his case to all the Republicans about changing voting laws. Donald Trump is doing really badly. We all know that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:34:02]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We had a really great meeting. And we're very proud of the party. We like our leader. We like everybody really in the room. I don't like a few people, but that's okay.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: President Trump saying he had a great meeting with Republican senators today, just hours after he stunned Congress by refusing to sign a bipartisan housing bill in order to put more pressure on his party to pass his voter ID legislation, known as the SAVE Act.

Apparently, it was left to Republican Senator Rick Scott to tell the President during what was a tense meeting that the SAVE Act simply doesn't have the votes. Scott telling him, quote, "You have to live in reality."

Joining me now is Democratic senator from Georgia, the Reverend Raphael Warnock. He is out with a new book, "The Crooked Places Made Straight: Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America".

Senator, thanks very much for being here in THE ARENA.

I'm very glad to have you today because I know that you both worked very hard on some portions of this bill that I know you'll be able to explain why it would help with the big problem that is facing Americans today, which is that they can't afford to live. [16:35:10]

And, of course, the president doing it because he's trying to push through legislation that he has acknowledged would mean a lot fewer people likely would be able to vote as easily as they can now. What's your reaction to all of it?

SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D-GA): Great to be here with you.

Listen, Donald Trump came to Georgia promising to make people's lives better. We are in the midst of a major housing affordability crisis in our country. And he had a chance today to do something about that by signing a bill that he didn't do much on. You know, but he would have been there signing that bill.

And once again, we are seeing that we have a president who is so obsessed with himself that he keeps tripping over himself, and canceled this bill signing at the last minute, saying that what he wants to do is force Congress to pass the SAVE Act. He's trying to hold on to his power.

The citizens that I know all across Georgia are trying to hold on to their homes, hold on to their life savings, hold on to their retirement. He would rather jimmy-rig the outcome of the election rather than give people a reason to vote for them. Come November, the people of Georgia and all across this country are going to hold up and hold -- are going to stand up and hold them accountable.

HUNT: Senator, do you think the SAVE Act is an explicit attempt to prevent Black people from voting?

WARNOCK: The SAVE Act is a voter suppression bill. And actually, it has a disproportionate impact on married women of all races. The effort there is to lower who shows up to vote.

This idea that there are just throngs of undocumented immigrants who are voting is a lie. There's absolutely no proof for it. It is a solution in search of a problem that does not exist. The housing issue is something, is a real problem that people know on both sides of the aisle needs to be fixed, which is why we came together on the Housing and Banking Committee, which I'm a member of, passed it unanimously, and then it passed the Senate, overwhelmingly passed the House.

And yet here we are, yet again, another day in America, talking about Donald Trump and his obsessions rather than the concerns of ordinary people.

HUNT: I -- you, of course, one of the pieces that you worked on here in terms of the housing bill is this cap on private equity home buying. The idea behind that to protect Americans from those firms taking advantage of them in this situation, what impact will it have to not have those protections in place?

WARNOCK: We have a major problem in Atlanta, in Georgia, across our country where increasingly, it's the corporations who are buying houses rather than people. Imagine that. You're a young couple, you're 30 years old trying to buy

your first home. By the way, the average age of the first-time home buyer right now is 40, clearly moving in the wrong direction. And you're competing with corporations. How do you even have a chance?

And so this is raising prices, it's making homeownership unaffordable. My provision in this bill, which I fought for, I had to fight private equity because they didn't want this to happen. It bans this. It stops them from swooping in to neighborhoods and buying so much of the product that there's nothing left and the prices go soaring.

That's in this bill. And Donald Trump said that he supported it. This is one of the provisions that he actually talked about publicly. And today, rather than save homeowners and save young people who are trying to buy their first home, he is obsessed with saving his own power, because he knows that his policies are failing the American people.

He has said he doesn't care, he doesn't think much about it, and that much is clearly true. Gas prices are up, housing is up. Healthcare is up, and today he had a chance to do something about it.

The question is, will Republicans, if he vetoes this bill, will they stand with us and with the American people, or will they stand with Donald Trump?

HUNT: It's worth noting, Trump was just asking the Oval Office if he would veto the bill. He didn't answer other than to say, "I said I'm not signing".

Sir, I also want to ask you about, we saw some election results in New York last night. Three progressive candidates, in particular endorsed by Zohran Mamdani, won the election, including one who's made a series of comments calling former President Biden a rapist and reposting that Israel doesn't exist.

[16:40:17]

You, of course, are a senator from Georgia, which is a state that's at the center of the political conversation because it's a swing state, and it is a place, a purple state, where Democrats are really going to have to win if they want to try to carry the White House in 2028.

What do you think the future of the party is? Is it the Democratic Socialists of America who won in New York last night?

WARNOCK: We are a big tent party. That's who we are. And while we are expanding the bounds of our family and who is a part of the conversation, the Republican Party has become the MAGA cult, the Donald Trump cult, where the only litmus test is fealty and fidelity to Donald Trump.

We're having arguments and healthy debates in our party about what actually matters, centering ordinary people, and I'll tell you this. Everyday people aren't caught up in these, in the weeds of these ideological arguments. They want to know who sees them. Who sees the poor struggling family that's trying to afford rent? Who sees the young person who's trying to buy their first home or figure out how they're going to pay for college or pay off the loans now they're finding themselves buried in debt.

And we -- there are various ways in which we've centered that conversation. I'd rather be having the conversation we're having, which is about the people, than the conversation that they're having on the other side, which is about Donald Trump.

HUNT: You say Democrats are a big tent party. There have been some episodes recently that have made some Jewish Americans or pro-Israel Americans feel like they're not welcome in the Democratic tent. In fact, Congressman Dan Goldman, who is Jewish and a staunch supporter of Israel during the course of this campaign, was talking about being banned from coffee shops in New York over the issue.

Do you think that the Democratic Party should be fundamentally pro- Israel?

WARNOCK: We are a party that believes in Israel's right to exist. It is our most important ally in the region.

But as a pastor in the Senate, what I try to do every day is to center people's humanity, center the humanity of Palestinian people, as they fight for their right to be. And that's what is my North Star, what's right every single day, the notion that all of us are children of the living God.

I think Israeli mothers and Palestinian mothers put their children to bed every night, and they want for their children what every parent wants for their child, that they might live in safety, that they might go to sleep in peace, and that they might awaken to a world that affirms their humanity fully and completely. And that's the work that I try to do. What I want is a -- an Israel that is safe and secure and that is at peace with its neighbors, and a two-state solution that honors the humanity of all the people in that region.

HUNT: Of course, in this book that you have written, you talk about some of these themes, about what ails humanity. And you reference Scripture, of course. What do you want your book to mean to people?

WARNOCK: Well, we are approaching the 250th anniversary of our great nation. And my book, "The Crooked Places Made Straight," which is a text from Isaiah, that great Jewish and Hebrew prophet, which reimagines -- by the way, they are people in exile. And he says it's time to reimagine who we can be, and he offers that up in poetic language.

Here's my message: America's a grand and majestic cathedral of democracy, but it is unfinished. Cathedrals take a long time to build, and the folks who set out to be artisans and craftsmen start that work knowing that they will probably not live to see its completion.

There are many crooked places in our democracy. There are pieces of our cathedral that are unfinished, that are broken, and I hope that we will recommit ourselves to that work that we will not give in to the demagogues and the fascists who are trying to weaponize despair, and that we will believe that we the people, that we do have the power to stand up and build a country that's worthy of all of our children, all of our children.

[16:45:10]

HUNT: All right. Senator, the Reverend Raphael Warnock, sir, thank you very much for being here. I appreciate it.

And, of course, the new book he was just talking about, "The Crooked Places Made Straight: Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America," is available now.

All right, ahead here in THE ARENA, President Trump says the proof is in the pool, but evidence of alleged vandalism has yet to surface.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Somebody went in with a knife and cut it. They cut it up good, and then they cut a 200-, 350-foot slip in the form of lots of little slips, the real horrible stuff.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:50:09]

HUNT: All right, welcome back.

In just a couple of hours, President Trump will kick off the nation's 250th birthday celebration at the Great American State Fair in his own way.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We're going to have the biggest rally we've ever had. It's going to be on the National Mall, it's our music, our playlist. We don't have a lot of people boring you with songs that you don't want to hear. We have the hottest people, the hottest everything. It's going to be one of the best rallies we've ever done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: This, of course, after a majority of the musical acts who were slated to perform at the Ferris concert series backed out, with some claiming they were misled. Also on the president's mind today, ahead of America's 250th, the algae-plagued reflecting pool that he claims vandals cut a long slit in the pool. He even posted a picture of what he says is the, quote, "hard rubber surface before the supposed vandalism". He insists the Interior Department will share photos of the alleged acts. That evidence, though, yet to be made public.

Congressman, I think we can all agree, beautifying, as we were discussing in the break, our national monuments is, you know, a shared-- sure. I mean, great. But this has gone so wrong, and the president -- I mean, if you look at-- we even talked today about Maggie Smith and Jonathan Swan -- or Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's new book, but they basically report extensively that he is, I mean, so obsessed with, basically, decor and renovations.

MEIJER: He pays attention to details.

HUNT: While he's waging war in Iran and spiking a bipartisan housing bill. I mean, like, what?

MEIJER: So I think we need a bipartisan commission to get to the truth of this. Was it a failure of the resin to adhere? Could there have been some delaminating issues? You know, was there uplift because of some moisture that was there?

I mean, I --

HUNT: Did I miss you being in construction, too?

BLOW: So you don't believe his rationale?

MEIJER: No, like the president, I also have some hobbies, and I appreciate the desire to build something to create. I mean, we'll look for proof if there is some. I would not be surprised if there was vandalism. It may have also been something. I just really struggle to --

BLOW: I reached the point a long time ago that I assumed that he's always lying until he proves that he is telling the truth and I'm going to do the same thing on this reflective pool. I believe he's lying. If he can prove me wrong, I would love to be proven wrong.

SMITH: Yeah, I agree with that. But also like, what the hell, man? It's 2026. There's like a war in Russia, war in the Middle East. We're at war with Iran. There's an affordability crisis, a mental health crisis -- like so many things going on and this is what he's talking about, the color of -- an algae in his reflecting pool.

I mean, we're only talking about it because he's talking about it.

MEIJER: He's talking about it because we're talking about it.

(CROSSTALK)

SMITH: Just -- this along with the ballroom. It does have this like all like let them eat cake feeling to it like this shouldn't be the last of the things that he's focused.

HUNT: In my sort of anecdata based experience. These are the stories that are breaking through with people that they're passing around on their phones. They're about the reflecting pool and about the ballroom and all these other --

GRIFFIN: And even with the East Wing, because there's I think just resonate with people when he decided to demolish and rebuild that. But I did not care about the story. I was in the Peter camp until I saw just how green it is. I used to jog around that reflecting pool all the time. Had they done

actually nothing, it would have looked significantly better than it looks now. And it's just classic Donald Trump. We now know that this was a no-bid contract that went to somebody that was maybe a friend of his, that was maybe a donor of his, who was not equipped to do this, did not coordinate with the Army Corps of Engineers, and now it's a bit of a mess.

Is this the most important thing happening? Absolutely not. But I think it underscores he's focused on renovations. He's focused on his ballroom. He seems to be focused on everything but bringing down the cost for everyday Americans heading into the midterms.

BLOW: But it is also, you know, we should -- we should understand how big it is, even though it's small. the people who lost the Confederates who lost the war also understood symbolism, like it was really important even though you were the South was a wreck the economy was a wreck symbolism was still important.

Donald Trump understands symbolism I think more better than most people do. And he wants his name on things he wants to change things he wanted to change how things look he wants the architecture of America to reflect him and not the country itself and that actually is smart but it is also the move of a demagogue.

SMITH: Yeah, and --

HUNT: He also doesn't want it to be able to be taken out.

SMITH: And I would say there's a lot of symbolism in a rotting, reflecting pool filled with algae.

MEIJER: And a lot of symbolism and having a fountain restored and brought back and flowing as he's done in D.C., too.

GRIFFIN: Well and I would just like to know in Maggie Haberman's reporting, he considered putting his fist on top of the arch to Trump so that's something we could have had it sounds like he's going design wise in other direction but that might have been in D.C.

[16:55:03]

HUNT: Right and then you would have driven away from the Lincoln Memorial and seen a fist on top of the arch and then you would have seen Arlington National Cemetery, which honors our fallen veterans.

On that note, we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUNT: All right, thanks to my panel. Really appreciate you guys being here.

Thanks to all of you at home for joining us as well. Don't forget, you can now stream THE ARENA live or catch up whenever you want. It's all in the CNN app. You just scan the QR code below. You can also catch up by listening to THE ARENA's podcast. You can

follow us on X and Instagram. We're @TheArenaCNN.

But as always, don't go anywhere because Jake Tapper is standing by for "THE LEAD".

Hi, Jake.