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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
Trump: U.S. Elections "Worse Than Any Third World Country"; Trump Accuses China Of "Sinister Election Meddling"; Now: Wildfire Smoke From Canada Impacting 100M+ Americans. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired July 17, 2026 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[16:00:00]
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All right, listen, you know that when you make a bet and it just comes back on you time and again, you know, you remember that.
Felipe, it is great to have you and always wonderful to talk about football and soccer with you. We appreciate you being here with us again.
FELIPE CARDENAS, SENIOR WRITER, THE ATHLETIC: All the best. It's always my pleasure.
KEILAR: "THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT" starts right now.
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KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Hi, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to THE ARENA. It's wonderful to have you with us on this Friday. We made it. Happy Friday.
Right now, President Donald Trump's dire assessment of the state of America's elections receiving new weight today, with state election officials now facing threats of imprisonment if they don't cooperate with the Trump administration.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARKWAYNE MULLIN, DHS SECRETARY: The states have to do their part. I will tell you if the states that choose not to participate with the same program and they choose not to participate in securing the elections. We will make sure that we make those states a priority. If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections and they chose not to. Then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even depending on how far it goes, prison time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Okay, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullen today, doubling down on much of the president's extreme and often unfounded claims about America's elections.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These disclosures reveal an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it. It is not defensible. This is worse than any third-world country. There's no third-world country that has elections like we have.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Trump has long made dubious or simply false claims about voter fraud or foreign meddling. But Secretary Mullen's threat is new, and it does seem to fit a pattern in which the Trump administration tries to force blue states to change the way they conduct their elections. The Minnesota Secretary of State, for instance, accused the Justice Department of demanding his state's voter rolls as a ransom at a time when ICE agents were roaming the streets of Minneapolis.
And then, of course, there's the administration's refusal to rule out sending those same ICE agents to polling places in November. And now some Democrats are arguing President Trump should push for more control over the elections -- or that push for more control over the elections -- is simply to prevent his party from losing in November.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D), CALIFORNIA: Well, the only thing missing tonight in Donald Trump's speech was tinfoil. This was a legitimate 25th Amendment moment, the ramblings of a mad king.
Don't get me wrong, a foreign interference in our elections, that's a real thing. Nothing about what you watched tonight, though, was real. It's make believe. He wants to rig the election in 2026. He knows he's going to lose.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, let's go off the sidelines, head of THE ARENA. My panel is going to be here, but we're going to get started with CNN senior White House reporter Kevin Liptak.
So, Kevin, what are you hearing from White House sources in the wake of the speech the president gave last night?
KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yeah, officially, I think you see the White House now trying to translate some of what the president said about these election vulnerabilities into actions. Although I will just note the president himself actually seems to have moved on. He's been posting about all kinds of things that are not this, including complaining about Canada and its wildfire smoke.
He really seems to have left the follow up to Markwayne Mullin in that press conference today, who really went a lot further than Trump did himself in threatening some of these states if they didn't cooperate with DHS on some of these election security issues and promising to use, quote, "maximum pressure to root out any illegally cast votes".
But the question, of course, is just how many illegally cast votes there have been. Nothing the president said last night suggested that voting machines had been altered that would affect the tabulations. And even when you hear Markwayne Mullin talking about these numbers that they have found from four states with non-citizens on the voter rolls, what experts have said is that actual non-citizens casting ballots, which would be illegal, is in fact extraordinarily rare.
And so you hear Markwayne Mullin, I think, really kind of continuing what the president has said in his speech, but also continuing this pattern that we've seen from the federal government really trying to convince some of these states to hand over their confidential voter data so many states have resisted and in fact a number of judges have sided with those states when this went through court and so how exactly all of this is resolved I think isn't clear and it wasn't particularly clear from Markwayne Mullin's press conference today.
But the theme that you hear continuing as well is trying to punish people. And you heard that from the president last night when he urged to knock Markwayne Mullin's press conference today. But the theme that you hear continuing as well is trying to punish people. And you heard that from the president last night when he urged a number of different agencies to investigate the intelligence officials who he said were keeping some of this information from him during his first term in office.
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The one area where you're not hearing about any repercussions is with China. And I've been asking about this all day here at the White House. Will the president announce any punishment on Beijing or on the President Xi Jinping for what he claimed was the biggest election hack in history? They haven't come up with an answer, but I have been able to discern that planning for President Xi's lavish state visit here to the White House in late September is still continuing apace.
HUNT: All right, fair enough. Kevin Liptak, thank you very much for that report. Appreciate it.
My panels here in THE ARENA. CNN legal analyst, former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams; the chair of the Carter Center Board of Trustees, and the grandson of the former president, Jimmy Carter, Jason Carter is here. Democratic strategist, former senior advisor to the Biden-Harris presidential campaigns, Adrienne Elrod; and CNN political commentator and Republican strategist Brad Todd.
Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for being here.
Jason Carter, thank you so much for coming into THE ARENA. Welcome.
From a big picture perspective here, I mean, your home state of Georgia has become, in many ways, an epicenter for everything that the president is talking about. The Senate seats that are held by two Democrats there, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, at the center of this debate.
Big picture, how impactful, how dangerous potentially is it for the president to be casting the kind of doubt that he is on whether or not Americans can trust the results of our elections?
JASON CARTER, FORMER GEORGIA STATE SENATOR: So, I think there's two pieces to it, right? Number one, it is dangerous to cast doubt. But because you don't want to undermine the system. The Carter Center has observed over 120 elections in 40-something countries. We can tell you what a third-world election looks like, and it's not an American election.
But the problem with denigrating the system is that it does cast out where it shouldn't be. The good thing is that in Georgia, people are over this, like this is nothing new. This is the boy who cried wolf again and again and again and again. And my friends that supported Trump in Georgia, the Republicans in Georgia, they've debunked this. Everyone is done talking about this except the president.
And I think that's helpful. I think you've seen this system be attacked now from the highest levels and be very resilient. And I think in that way, it's a problem, but our system is incredibly strong.
HUNT: I appreciate the optimism for sure. And listen, I mean, having been at the Capitol on January 6th, the conversation about institutions holding in moments like that one, you know, fingers, hopefully we're nowhere near something like that. But I will say Democrats have been raising alarms about the midterm election and the possibility that the administration may try to declare a state of emergency.
Some Democrats are concerned that the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, might not seat the new Congress. We heard from Congressman Jim Himes -- he's the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee -- talking about the president's speech and what it might mean.
Let's watch that. We'll talk about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): The president was setting the context. He was setting the basis for him to turn around at midnight on election day and say, I warned you. I warned you back in July that the Chinese were doing XYZ and the Venezuelans were doing XYZ and all this terrible stuff. It happened tonight. I am deploying federal officers from the Department of Homeland Security to seven states.
They will be seizing ballot boxes in those states because we know that lots of undocumented aliens voted in those things. What happens when all of a sudden, we've lost the chain of custody of 70 ballot boxes? That is the moment in which American democracy dies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: And I will say, Brad Todd, I mean, he is not the only Democrat with access to national security information, or higher than normal access to national security information, who's sounding an alarm like that. So is Senator Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Are their fears founded?
BRAD TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: No, that's Trump derangement fear porn and you'd expect nothing less on that network. Let's go back to the speech last night what the president actually said. There are a couple things he said that Democrats in Blue states ought to help with. He said, first off, we want to assist you with the technical vulnerabilities. We all know that machines are fallible, and there are vulnerabilities with election machinery. States ought to be willing to accept that help.
Second, he said that we're going to send you a list of all the non- citizens who we found on voter rolls. States ought to be ready to take that help, too. And I think that's what Secretary Mullin was saying today, too. You can't vote if you're a non-citizen. You can't be registered to vote if you're a non-citizen. That's federal law.
So, states, blue states, red states, all states ought to be willing to take the help of the agency that's charged with knowing who's a citizen.
HUNT: Should they go to jail if they don't?
TODD: No, he said only if it was a severe issue and they persisted. I'd have to look and see what statute he's trying to talk about on that. But every state should want to cooperate with Markwayne Mullin to try to get non-citizens off the rolls.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I couldn't find a law that he's talking about there. Now, look, if someone commits an act of fraud, of course, they should be prosecuted for it.
If someone has a legal obligation that they're not meeting, of course, there are sometimes circumstances to be prosecuted, but just broadly saying, we're the federal government because you haven't helped us to the extent that we want you to help us.
[16:10:10]
That -- there's just not a crime there, right? It's -- and I think part of the bigger issue here is any goodwill that the president had on this issue. We sort of squandered with all these maximalist points of view that really aren't grounded in the data. They're not grounded in the kind of widespread problems that he's -- that he's that he's talking about.
So, yeah, I mean, someone commits a crime you should go to jail for. But what's the crime? Tell us what the crime is.
TODD: They should want to make sure non-citizens aren't on the roll.
WILLIAMS: I agree with that.
ADRIENNE ELROD, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Very little evidence of that, very little evidence of that.
TODD: But the appropriate number would be zero. Yes, if it's a small number, I agree, but zero is the only thing.
ELROD: I think you and I saw two different speeches or two different comments from Markwayne Mullin. I think he was trying to intimidate state election workers and anybody who has anything to do with administering state elections last night.
Look, at the end of the day, I agree with everything Jason said. I think voters are over this, but you know who's not over this is Donald Trump. He knows that he cannot win the ballot box. Republicans are underwater on raising money, on polling. They are being outpolled and outraised. by Democratic candidates, whether you're a sitting incumbent or a challenger.
And the only way that they're going to have any sort of level of success in the midterms, that they want to call this success, is by intimidating voters in blue states. And that's what you saw last night. And by the way, props to CNN for not covering the speech.
HUNT: Jason Carter, what about the point about election workers? Because, I mean, we saw some of them drawn in in Georgia. And our democracy absolutely depends on a bedrock of average people who are willing to do, you know, take time out of their days and make sure that they are, you know, at their -- I mean, this is so local. They're at their, you know, elementary school down the street making sure that the election is secure.
CARTER: Yeah, I mean, look, the most -- the greatest securing factor about American elections compared to others around the world is that we have 9,000 separate election jurisdictions, right? It is almost impossible to come up with some way to have a nationally impactful voter fraud, right? You steal a national election anywhere, in Georgia or anywhere in the United States, because of what you just said. We've got local people doing it.
In a country like Venezuela, where the Carter Center observed the election, they nationalized the counting process, and that's what allowed them to manipulate the results. The problem with the federal government coming in too much, and I agree with you, to some extent, we want to make sure that we're enforcing our laws, but the thing that we have to be careful about is the federal government starts playing a big role, starts telling states what to do, and it undermines some of those very local control issues that are the bedrock of the real reason why American elections are so difficult to steal.
TODD: I agree with you, Jason. I think the fact that we have a lot of local control of elections, it's kind of a rope of sand, but it's strength of steel when you disperse the power that way.
But in 2021, it was Democrats who were trying to federalize control of the election. They had two laws. They named them HR1 because they said it was the most important thing. And it was an attempt to force all red states to issue mail ballots to everybody who wanted one. It was an attempt to undermine the voter ID. It was a bad idea then I have some issues myself with the SAVE Act that the president supports and think he should negotiate it backwards.
But that's why states should maintain control of elections. But both parties have done this when they've been in charge.
HUNT: When you look at the SAVE Act, what do you think are the biggest red flags or concerns that you would have in there?
CARTER: Well, number one, I think the nationalizing of the system. I think the more that we can do to make sure that states make their own choices around elections, the better. I think, number two, when you make it harder for people to vote, that's an issue, right?
I mean, yes, it is true that we want to maintain election fraud and stamp it out. At the same time, there's no evidence, to the point that was made earlier, there's no evidence that that's a major problem. And so, we're trying to solve problems that don't exist by putting things in there that are going to make it harder for people with different names to vote, harder for various different things to be out there.
The biggest problem is that we're trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist when there's a million ways that we have solved it and can solve it by prosecuting people and doing the things that we should be doing now.
HUNT: So, talking about a problem that doesn't exist is a nice segue to this sound bite, which comes to us from Tommy Tuberville, who is, of course, a United States senator. Here's what he said recently about some -- didn't name them -- but some of his colleagues. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. TOMMY TUBERVILLE (R-AL): I've seen the evidence. The same thing with -- we probably have four or five senators that didn't legally win. They shouldn't be up here. And it's just unfortunate that that's happened.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Brad Todd, you know most of the Republican conference in the Senate. I mean, who -- who is he talking about?
TODD: Well, they all legally won. Let's get that out there.
HUNT: Okay. And, you know, I don't know what Senator Tuberville is talking about here. He's going to be governor of Alabama. He's going to preside over Alabama's election system, and I'm sure he will put his mark on that when he gets there.
There's a real tendency in politics to say if when you lose that it's not because the voters didn't pick you, and that happens on both sides of things.
[16:15:03]
You know, I hear a lot of people say Donald Trump only won because Fox News lied to the voters, you know? Like sometimes you don't win because you didn't have the right platform. So, I'm a little leery of sour grapes most of the time I hear them.
HUNT: Would you concur?
CARTER: Yeah, I concur, but I mean, who's got the sour grapes now, right? I mean, right now we're talking about a president that just last night said China didn't interfere in 2016, did interfere in 2020, and didn't interfere in 2024. It's like, whoever, when he wins, it's fine, and when he doesn't, he doesn't.
TODD: Well, we spent 2017 with Democrats claiming that the Russians elected Donald Trump.
WILLIAMS: But I guess the question I have with respect to 2016-202020 is, were there, and it's really an open question to everybody, were there Democrats saying all of our elections are rigged. The president literally says that the election in which he lost was rigged in its entirety. And I just don't think --
CARTER: Nobody can trust it.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, nobody can trust it. I just don't think you're getting those kinds of -- even with Democrats --
HUNT: Well -- can I just say, though, I mean, the bite that we played from Gavin Newsom said -- he said, well, the president is going to rig the election. Okay, I mean, is, I mean, Adrienne, is that where Democrats should be? Or, Jason, it could be that, and then Adrienne.
ELROD: No, I don't think that's where Democrats could be, because I think that it plays into everything that Brad is saying, which is like the party that is not in power is saying, oh, we're not going to be in power because the election's going to be rigged, or that may be a potential.
But look, going back to, I just want to make a quick comment on 2016. We have to remember that I think the '16 or maybe '17, Elliot can correct me on that, intelligence agencies came out right before the election and said, Russian is in fact interfering. We have evidence of that. Mitch McConnell put out a statement, it was very bipartisan.
So, I do think there is a difference between having clear-cut evidence that there is, and I'm not saying that we would have won, Hillary would have won the election regardless, but there was interference. I think there's a responsible way to show when there are concerns about the way the election process is carried out, and there are ways to not handle it, and the way that Trump is handling this so far is not the right way.
HUNT: What would you say to Democrats who say, hey, the president's trying to rig the election?
CARTER: So, I think, number one, it's very hard. As I said before, it's essentially impossible to have a national election rigged in the United States. It's just impossible. Number two, we do have a responsibility as leaders, as people who affect this community, to stand up for our system, because once you delegitimize a democratic system, it is very hard to rebuild that legitimacy, right? We talked when I began this with some optimism, but what we've seen in
other countries around the world is that once you really undermine a system, it's very hard to get that respect back.
And so, we need to defend, it has to be some constituency that's willing to defend the institutions and say when they lost, we lost.
HUNT: How far down that road do you think we are?
CARTER: I don't know. I mean, I believe, you know, you talked about January 6th. I think that the judiciary in this country has done a remarkable job of looking at the evidence when people have challenged elections, throwing out the election challenges, holding up the challenges that have been legitimate, that are legitimate violations of the law.
And so, I think as long as those institutions are holding, that we'll be fine. And I think you've got major attacks from the president of the United States, but I feel like our democracy is strong still today. And I do think that the concerns that we have, have to be vigilant. We have to be vigilant, but that vigilance can't take the form of eventually saying it's rigged you're really just mad that you lost.
HUNT: I'm tempted to ask when you're going to announce your bid for, I don't know, Senate in Georgia?
CARTER: I got good senators in Georgia, I'm not running in that.
HUNT: All right, Jason Carter, thank you so much for joining us.
CARTER: Thanks for having me.
HUNT: Grateful to have you on the panel today.
CARTER: Likewise.
HUNT: All right, coming up here in THE ARENA, Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi will join me. What does he make of the president's claim that China tried to undercut his 2020 campaign?
Plus, where there's smoke, there's politics ahead. How Canada is reacting as some in America blame them -- blame them for the smoke that is now stretching all the way from the northern border to right here in our nation's capital.
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DOUG FORD, PREMIER OF ONTARIO: If there's some politicians out there chirping away -- well, maybe what you should do, rather than complain, is send support, send help.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Think of that tens of millions of voters' data in 18 states have been bought, stolen, or hacked by China. Yet those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden. In fact, all they kept saying is, this is the most secure election in the history of our country. A standard, very pat line.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: In President Trump's address to the nation last night, China took center stage as he accused Beijing, as well as a handful of other adversaries, of meddling in U.S. elections. All of this coming just months, of course, before the upcoming midterms.
Joining me now, someone with a lot of knowledge on this topic, Democratic Congressman from Illinois, Roger Krishnamoorthi. He sits on the House Oversight and Intelligence Committees, as well as the Select Committee on China.
Congressman, thank you very much for being here.
And I do want to start -- I do want to start there with the big picture here, because Steve Bannon told CNN that the speech that we heard from Trump last night creates a powerful predicate to call a midterm election emergency. And this is something that we've heard Intelligence Committee members talk about, warn about on the Democratic side.
Do you concur that the administration is preparing or laying the groundwork to potentially declare a national emergency if the elections don't go their way?
REP. RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI (D-IL): Possibly.
[16:25:00]
I could see an executive order say that there's a national emergency and therefore, they're going to do a number of things that you know they believe might help them in the midterm elections. Just as two examples that come to mind. One is the potential placement of DHS or ice or CBP agents near polling places.
Another is using the USPS, the Postal Service, to basically delay or interfere with the kind of delivery of mail-in ballots, which unfortunately is now a real specter given the recent rule they proposed to basically withhold mail-in ballots from delivery unless states hand over their voter registration rules.
HUNT: So, what about the China piece of all of this? Because, of course, the president did seem to say that this was an incredibly significant event. And yet our Kevin Liptak report at the top of the program planning for President China, Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit continues apace. What do you know about what this was or wasn't? KRISHNAMOORTHI: Well, look, I think that the 2021 National Intelligence Council estimate of kind of what Chinese, you know, policymakers and the government were thinking about the elections is still accurate, which is they considered influence operation of the U.S., but ultimately did not attempt it. And there was not a shred of evidence that they either interfered with the tabulation of votes or altered the outcome in any way. And nothing last night contradicted any of those findings.
HUNT: One of the things that the documents show is the intelligence committee's -- or community's, excuse me -- concern about cryptocurrency and how that could potentially be a vehicle to try to influence elections, especially because it's so incredibly difficult to track.
How concerned are you that crypto could play a role in foreign actors trying to influence American elections?
KRISHNAMOORTHI: Well, we know that the North Koreans, especially, like to kind of deal in crypto. They steal crypto. They use it for kind of malign operations, and so I am concerned about that. I think that's all the more reason why there needs to be kind of a framework for regulating it, and of course, doing everything we can to. Kind of work with the private sector and other entities to discover if there are any unusual transfers of crypto, especially from foreign adversary governments.
HUNT: Do you have any concerns about using -- about the crypto industry funding campaigns? And potentially -- I know you were supported-- there was a super PAC that supported you in your race that was heavily backed by crypto interests.
Does that play into this at all?
KRISHAMOORTHI: I don't think so. I think that's with regard to the issue of foreign actors, we have to make sure that obviously whatever form of payments are made, whether it's cash, whether it's currency, or whether it's crypto, is regulated, there's a framework for it. and that we work with private institutions to monitor any kinds of transfers of those types of payments to state or non-state actors.
HUNT: Fair enough to circle back to the upcoming midterms. And when we heard from the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who suggested that states that are not complying with the edicts from the administration around election security could potentially even face jail time. What's your response to him?
KRISHNAMOORTHI: I think he's way out of bounds. This is similar to what the FEMA agency is doing under his supervision, under Markwayne Mullin's supervision, which is trying to condition grants for anti- terrorism funds based on whether or not those states enact certain laws or practices to cooperate with the Trump administration on election security. Again, highly questionable tactics.
And again, this is something that's going to be litigated, and Congress is going to join in the litigation, and it's also going to demand oversight within Congress as well.
HUNT: All right, Congressman Rajakrishnamoorthi, thank you very much for your time today, sir. Appreciate it.
KRISHNAMOORTHI: Thank you.
HUNT: All right, ahead here in THE ARENA, the back and forth now brewing between President Trump and our neighbors to the north as dangerous air pollution from wildfires in Canada pour into the U.S.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. LISA MCCLAIN (R-MI): Hello, Michigan, another summer, more Canadian wildfires. Last year when this happened, I don't know if you remember or not, but we actually sent some of our firefighters and foresters to Canada to try and mitigate the situation up there since they aren't really doing much.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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HUNT: Right now, more than 100 million people across the Great Lakes, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic are feeling the effects of the dense wildfire smoke that is coming down from Canada. The thick, orange haze causing the air quality to spike to levels so hazardous that some states are warning that healthy adults may be affected. The National Weather Service is also advising people to limit their outdoor activities and keep their windows closed overnight.
[16:35:00]
CNN's Brian Todd is right here in Washington, where the air quality right now is not great, to say the least.
Brian, you've been out there all day. for us. How long can we expect this to last and how's it been out there?
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kasie, as far as how long it can last, I can update you on that in a second. We think it'll last probably at least through this time tomorrow. We may get a break after that.
But as for the way it feels out here now and the way it looks, it's pretty miserable. And I can show you that just by stepping aside. Our photojournalist, Jay McMichael, is going to go past me. And you can visibly see the smoke and haze. This is always a position here of some depth where you could get a good view here. We're near the Iwo Jima Memorial, where we're standing right now. That's across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia, from those monuments.
And on a normal day, take a look at the view. On a normal day, you can see the Lincoln Memorial. You can clearly see the monument behind that and the Capitol behind the monument. Well, now, as you can see, the Washington Monument and the Capitol are barely visible through the haze. You can see the monument a little bit better now than you could an hour ago, but that's only really because the sun is hitting it more directly.
But it has gotten worse here over the past several hours. The smoke and haze have just really worsened here, and the air quality is just not healthy. Everybody advising you, stay out of this stuff.
The website IQ Air, which measures air quality, they said that as of this morning, Detroit, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. were the most polluted cities on the face of the earth.
Now, the Metropolitan Washington Council of governments is telling people do not come out in these conditions for any length of time. If you feel like you have to be out here, like you have to work out here or anything like that, use one of these. The COVID-era N95 filtration mask is a good piece of equipment to use in this weather. This is a regular N95 mask. You can use this as well.
But do not use a cloth mask because cloth masks do not protect you from wildfire smoke. And again, Kasie, when we talked about at the beginning of this, how long this is going to last? According to most forecasts, there is a series of thunderstorms that's going to move through here tomorrow afternoon and evening. That is supposed to make things a lot better as far as just dissipating all these particles.
That's also good news for the World Cup final in New Jersey on Sunday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time. They were wondering about that and how good the air quality was going to be for the players and the fans out there and whether these kinds of conditions would persist.
It looks like they're going to get a break as well. That area should see some rain on Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening. So, the air quality for that World Cup final on Sunday should be a lot better -- Kasie.
HUNT: All right, fingers crossed. Brian Todd, for us. Brian, stay safe out there. Thank you very much for all of your reporting here and all day long.
And, of course, like everything here in Washington, the poor air quality is political. President Trump just moments ago blaming Canada. Writing on Truth Social this, quote, The United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air. The president goes on to say that Canada is not properly maintaining their forests and that their, quote, "willful negligence is costing the U.S. billions of dollars". He ends the post by suggesting that Canada should compensate the U.S. through, you guessed it, tariffs.
CNN Washington correspondent for Puck News, Leigh Ann Caldwell, is joining our panel now.
I suppose that this was predictable. I don't think we had time to get the producers to bring up the "South Park" clip. But Leigh Ann Caldwell, the -- there's also a move in Congress. There's a senator that wants to sanction the Canadians over this. I think it's worth underscoring that this is something that is uncontrollable. "The Atlantic" actually kind of walked through some of the science of what goes on. in Canada.
And they said -- this professor, they quoted a professor who said, quote, "You can't control these fires. You cannot put personnel fire engines over an area that is the size of the entire American South or something like that. It's just way too big of an area."
So, this is why the Canadians have just monitored these forests, which are wilderness forests, as opposed to trying to fight them. And of course, it's really climate change that all of us contribute to that is ultimately causing this.
LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, PUCK NEWS: Yeah, and this is just another chapter in this war between the U.S. and Canada that the president is very willing to pick.
But as you mentioned, Senator Bernie Moreno is also introducing something in Congress. The four Republican congressional members from Michigan wrote a letter to Carney saying that he needs to get this under control. And so, this is becoming absolutely political.
You know, just yesterday, totally separately, Canada says that they're not going to pay any of the -- U.S. any of the tolls from the bridge that connects Canada to the U.S. and Michigan because the U.S. owes Canada money.
So, there is just this back-and-forth and using it absolutely for political purposes, and as President Trump likes to do, likes to victimize and point the finger at everyone else and create a victim.
TODD: There is one legitimate critique here, though. The Canadian -- this is not a question of why are they having enough firefighters. Canada, their forests are 90-something percent owned by governments, provincial governments and the national governments.
Here in the U.S., it's the opposite. It's about 5 percent owned by government, the rest of them are in private landholders.
And America's private landholders, most of which are timber companies, use good forest management practices. They thin the understory. They do prescribed burns.
Canada's government doesn't follow that procedure. So that's the critique that Senator Moreno is alleging, is that Canada has not properly exercised good forest management, and that's part of why we have wildfires. So, I think that's a pretty legitimate beef.
And Mark Carney, when asked about it, his answer was just, oh, the United States should use more clean energy. That's kind of a tell that maybe he thinks there's some truth to it.
HUNT: Let's watch what the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, had to say about this as in the context of this ongoing argument between the Canadians and the Americans in the second Trump administration watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FORD: I truly believe the Americans are good neighbors. If there's some politicians out there chirping away, well, maybe what you should do, rather than complain, is send support, send help, because we have done the exact same thing for our American friends. And that's what you're supposed to do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: It's worth noting that Congresswoman Lisa McLean, who's a Republican from Michigan, pointed out that Michigan tried to send people to help in the last round of this. Let's watch what she had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. LISA MCCLAIN (R-MI): Hello, Michigan, another summer more Canadian wildfires. I've been in touch with the White House. I've been in touch with Pete Hoekstra as well as Brooke Rollins. Last year when this happened, I don't know if you remember or not, but we actually sent some of our firefighters and foresters to Canada to try and mitigate the situation up there since they aren't really doing much.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: I mean, Brad Todd, does that address some of what you're talking about as well?
TODD: Yes, I think it is a management question. And of course, these are not simple things. There's a lot of reasons why wildfires happen and why they end up out of control.
I don't think a long-term fight with Canada is in our interest in the elections this year. But I also think that calling out bad forestry management practices to our neighborhood to the north is actually a legitimate thing for us to do. We have to share this continent.
HUNT: Yeah, I mean, I will say big picture here, Elliot, you know, for average Americans trying to live their everyday lives, I mean, this is going to become more normal.
WILLIAMS: Absolutely. And I think what lost in all of this, because when you say the word climate change, people's heads get all spun up about a political fight. We have to acknowledge this did not happen when we were kids. This is happening more frequently because the earth is getting more hot.
Now we can fight all we want about the causes of that, is it business, is it cars, is it whatever. But the earth is getting hotter and we can wag our fingers at Canada all we want, but this is going to keep happening until the more systemic issue that we have gets fixed.
I just don't know. I think it's a very easy solution. I get it. I get why this is a political fight over forestry, but it's something much bigger than that. HUNT: Easier to blame someone than to try to. I mean, it's obviously an incredibly complex problem, one that our political systems are not terribly well designed to solve.
Coming up next here in THE ARENA, Wall Street firms -- yeah, they'll soon be able to buy early access to President Donald Trump's Truth Social feed. That will give them a leg up every time his posts move the markets.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Critics say you're profiting off the presidency.
TRUMP: Well, you know why I'm profiting because the stock market's going up. Everybody's profiting.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:48:18]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): You can pay a premium to get and, you know, first access to his social media posts that move markets. If you'll give him a cut, that's basically what it is. He gets part of the profits of Truth Social.
This is the president saying, Give me a cut, and I'll give you the opportunity to make money off my statements, just as I make money off my own statements.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: President Trump's media company announced it's going to start selling Wall Street firms faster access to market-moving posts from President Donald Trump. It appears to be yet another example of the Trump family profiting off of his presidency.
According to FactSet, the president owns about 41 percent of shares in Trump media through a revocable trust, getting information even a few seconds faster can result in potentially massive profits for algorithmic traders.
Elliot Williams, what on -- what are the ethics of this?
WILLIAMS: And it's important that you ask about the ethics of it, because the actual business relationship here is nothing unremark -- nothing remarkable.
It's the --
HUNT: Well, it's remarkable in that it's like the president of the United States whose words move markets.
WILLIAMS: That's my point. It's tech companies do this. And it's not unique. The problem is that --
HUNT: Wait a minute, back up. Tech companies do what exactly?
WILLIAMS: No, this form of algorithmic trading.
HUNT: Oh, the trading. But they don't like sell --.
TODD: No, they sell early access. X does it, and Reddit does it as well, where they allow you to buy access to their APIs.
WILLIAMS: Yes, the difference is Donald Trump owns the Truth Social. That's the problem.
HUNT: And as the president of the United States.
WILLIAMS: And as the president of the United States, that's the problem.
HUNT: OK.
WILLIAMS: So, we should separate, we really should separate the -- is the practice itself problematic from is the guy who owns the company the president of the United States?
[16:50:04]
HUNT: OK. Basically, you're saying that Truth Social by doing this is undertaking a set of actions that are similar to things that other companies that do similar things also do.
WILLIAMS: Yeah.
HUNT: OK.
WILLIAMS: But they are not owned by the president of the United States and that's a big distinction and no one should forget that when talking about this issue. He is enriching himself off of his companies and the trade of information. Both of those things are problematic, deeply ethically problematic.
But again, I'm screaming into the wilderness here. We've been talking about this in various contexts before.
TODD: I mean, I wish you didn't sell perfume and watches, okay? Like the --
ELROD: And Bibles.
TODD: And Bibles, yeah. But I will say, I think this case is, and I've been critical of that, some of that. I think this is different because Truth Social is merely keeping up with its competitors.
This is the kind of thing that other platforms like it do. It's just that his post happen to be--
HUNT: OK, if he's not president of the United States, I could buy what you're selling.
WILLIAMS: A hundred percent.
HUNT: And even if he's the owner of it, if he's not -- but, I mean, my mind goes to national security information, right? If he finds out that the North Koreans have launched some sort of significant missile in our direction, or the Chinese have invaded the Strait of Taiwan. And he gives Wall Street early access to what he's going to say and do?
TODD: Anyone who's bought in to the API, it doesn't have to be Wall Street. I guess if you buy the API subscription, then you could get it. Theoretically, Wall Street's going to be the only industry that's going to spend that kind of money.
HUNT: Right, but does that not have, like, mind-blowing implications?
TODD: Well, I think one -- one of the reasons American people pick Donald Trump is, I mean, I've surveyed tons of Trump voters for three elections, right? And if you go look at his coalition, Salena Zito and I wrote a book about the people who moved from Obama to Trump. One reason they really liked him, even if they like Republicans is because they thought he was a businessman, they thought he was wealthy, and they thought therefore that gave him a certain degree of independence.
So, once you decide we're going to pick an active businessman who has active businesses, then you're going to run into these questions.
WILLIAMS: No, no, not if he were to either give the businesses away or stop managing.
TODD: It's an irrevocable trust.
ELROD: Okay, but his family is making money off of this.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, I just, you know, I think I'm all for someone with business savvy, running government, making it better, more if we can all agree with that. The problem is that when that person, as president of the United States, is enriching himself off of his work as president, that's where we --
HUNT: And let's put this another way too, Adrienne, like, not only is he profiting himself, but he is allowing very wealthy Wall Street firms to profit when average Americans would not have the means to purchase the thing that would allow them to share in that.
ELROD: Thank you. That is exactly right. And so this is another cog in the wheel of Donald Trump enriching himself, enriching his family at the expense of the American people when he's not supporting their needs. People can't afford their groceries. They can't afford their medicine.
They are looking at something like this, further grift, further continuation of the Trump family making a lot of money. He made $2 billion in his first year in the White House, second term, first year of the second term. And they're saying, why didn't I vote for this guy?
I mean, maybe they wanted a business person back in the White House, and I get that, but they're looking at this now and saying, he's not fighting for me. He's fighting to make himself rich. And that is something that is going to play very, very effectively toward Democrats' favor in the midterms.
TOD: It's a political challenge that they have to be aware of, for sure.
CALDWELL: Yeah, and I was going to go to the political point that polling is increasingly showing that corruption, whether this is pure corruption or not, but voters don't like this. And it's becoming an increasingly important issue to voters.
That's why you're hearing Democrats talk about it all the time on the campaign trail. That's why there's continuingly this populist -- a sentiment in the electorate that as the president and his family continues to make billions of dollars, as you said, people can't afford.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, you know, I just think it's important to note like it's a capitalist country. We should support people making money and doing well. That's OK. Not when you are the president of the United States and on account of your activities as president getting wealthier people. I think have a really hard time with that. It's important to separate the two things.
It's not criticizing Donald Trump for making money, make all the money he wants when he's not president.
HUNT: I mean, one other piece of this, Elliot, CNN did an investigation, and we found that Trump would buy stock. There were a number of instances where he would buy stock, and then he would promote that company on his Truth Social just days later after owning their stock.
WILLIAMS: Right. I mean, the crime is if someone is trading on what's non-public material information. It's not criminal.
HUNT: Listen, he's the only who knows that in three days, he's going to tweet something great about or the government's going to invest in Intel.
WILLIAMS: It's going to be tough to prosecute for but I think it's ethically incredibly problematic for all the reasons we're talking about here when he has access to information and sharing it with people getting richer off it. It's just -- all of this is a huge minefield and enormous problem we ought to be aware of, you know?
[16:55:01]
HUNT: But of course, if you're the teleprompter operator and you're placing bets, you're going to get put on unpaid leave because you made the mistake of making money off Donald Trump when you weren't a Trump yourself. All right. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUNT: All right. Thanks to my panel. Really appreciate you all being here. Have a wonderful weekend.
Thanks to you at home for watching as well. Do have a wonderful weekend.
And don't forget, you can spend some of your weekend with us. You can watch more of THE ARENA tomorrow. THE ARENA SATURDAY airs at noon and again at 4:00 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN. I would be honored to have you spend some of your weekend with us.
In the meantime, don't go anywhere. Jake Tapper is standing by for "THE LEAD".
Hi, Jake. Happy Friday.
