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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt

Trump Says Strikes Could Resume Any Time As Iran Denies Talks; Trump DOJ Asks Supreme Court To Allow Mail-In Ballot Restrictions; Now: Trump In Michigan With 99 Days To Go Until The Midterms. Aired 4- 5p ET

Aired July 27, 2026 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:02]

CAMILLE MOORE, BRANDING EXPERT & INFLUENCER: Like not going, but gone.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Yeah.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

Camille Moore, thanks so much for sharing part of your afternoon with us. Appreciate the time.

MOORE: Have a great day, guys.

SANCHEZ: Have a good one. I don't know what she said, but --

KEILAR: She said, have a great day, guys.

SANCHEZ: Let's do it. Have a good time with "THE ARENA" as well with Kasie Hunt. It starts right now.

(MUSIC)

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Hi, everyone. Welcome to THE ARENA. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's great to have you with us on this Monday.

Right now, a pause in fighting and new hope for peace talks, even as President Donald Trump warns the war with Iran could resume at any moment. The president telling "Axios" this today, quote, "We are in very deep talks with Iran. If they don't work out, we will go back to very strong military action."

And when asked about his timeline for negotiations, the president responded this, quote, "not much time. Either it goes fast or not at all".

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They requested a meeting. They would not have requested the meeting if we were doing poorly. The only reason they want to meet is because we've been hitting them very hard.

Yeah? REPORTER: How much patience do you have left?

TRUMP: I have a lot of patience. I have plenty of time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: "I have plenty of time," he says. But with the midterm elections now just 99 days away, Time may not be on the president's side, at least politically. A new CBS poll finds that almost 2/3 of Americans now say that the war is going either very or somewhat badly for the US. That's higher than in any previous polling.

Similarly, about 2/3 of Americans say the U.S. should simply end the war right now.

As President Trump weighs his options, we're learning a bit about who is shaping his decisions when it comes to Iran. Two sources tell CNN that Vice President J.D. Vance and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine, have both raised concerns about escalating the war, with Caine specifically warning about the effect that it could have on America's stockpile of munitions.

All this gets at the central question, really the central problem that is facing the president. This war has already lasted months longer than the administration predicted, it is increasingly unpopular. And Americans who are about to go to the polls are seeing its impact, especially when they go to put gas in their cars. Thirteen days of bombing seem to have brought the Iranians to the negotiating table. But was it enough to force them to make a deal?

Here's the U.N. ambassador, Mike Waltz.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE WALTZ, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: What the president is doing right now, as we've seen all along, is giving some talks some space. Talks are ongoing. They're happening at every level.

KRISTEN WELKER, NBC ANCHOR: Can we expect to see some strikes tonight, tomorrow, in the coming days?

WALTZ: Well, I would take the president very seriously if I was the Iranian regime. The U.S. military is locked and loaded.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right, let's get off silence in THE ARENA. My panel is going to be here, but let's get started with CNN senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes.

So, Kristen, it seems like we were on the brink of something really big, and then the president over the weekend pulled back. Now we have this pause in fighting. We have this sort of change in tone/rhetoric.

Explain what more you're hearing and how you understand this. KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, it certainly feels like this is another deja vu moment, another time that we are now talking about potential military action that was then walked back so that President Trump could allow these negotiations to happen. That's been going on really roughly for about the last months, and that's what we're seeing here today.

We know that there was a meeting about those potential escalations that President Trump decided not to escalate, instead to give, as Mike Waltz said, the talks some breathing room. He says, the president, that this came at the request of Iran. They wanted to re-up those negotiations, but there are now even more questions about that munitions stockpile. All of this is not happening in a vacuum, and the administration has had a hard time articulating what is actually going on with that munitions stockpile.

On one hand, you've had them out there asking for more money, saying that the Biden administration depleted all of the ammunitions, that they need more money to rebuild their stockpile. On the other hand, President Trump has said they have plenty.

Here was him on Air Force One just moments ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Now we have plenty. We have a lot of ammunition, different types. You know, Biden gave a lot to Ukraine. And so, we're building that up, but we have a lot. We have a lot of the mid-level stuff too. I mean, more than we could ever use, no matter what.

But we have a lot. I'd like to have more. To be honest, we're in very good shape. But for some of the more sophisticated stuff, we'd certainly like to have more.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Now interesting there to hear him say we'd like to have more but still maintaining that there are plenty. Now of course this is all happening as President Trump is set to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tomorrow. Netanyahu, somebody who has wanted to continue the military escalation in Iran. It is likely that will come up tomorrow. He has not been as big of a fan as those negotiations.

[16:05:05]

Now, one of the things to keep in mind here is President Trump seemingly even distancing himself, or at least chastising a little bit in tone Netanyahu on the plane just now when he was asked about the pushback from the Israeli prime minister on the selling of F-35s to Turkey, and he said nobody gets to tell me who I sell things to, which is pretty stark wording there for such a close ally of President Trump's.

HUNT: Indeed.

All right, Kristen Holmes getting us started at the White House. Kristen, thank you very much.

Our panel is here in THE ARENA. Capitol Hill correspondent for "Puck News", Marianna Sotomayor; CNN political commentator, Republican strategist and pollster Kristen Soltis-Anderson; former DNC communications director and CNN political commentator Xochitl Hinojosa; and former Trump White House communications director Mike Dubke.

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

Kristen, I actually want to start with you because some of the polling that we saw come out over the weekend was pretty stark in terms of where people are on this, where Americans are. And just this number, 67 percent of Americans say that the US should end the Iran conflict now.

Often in politics, we shorthand 80/20 issues, right? You don't want to be on the wrong side of 80/20 -- 67/33 is creeping an awful lot towards 80/20.

How much tolerance -- I mean, actually, let me reframe. Does this number explain what the president did when he pulled back from escalating this over the weekend?

KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, and I think that the White House would take a look at that number and they would say, we would also like to end the conflict if only Iran would do X, Y, and Z that we want them to do. I think, right now, there's not a sort of warmongering mood out there, and I think the White House is even cognizant of that.

What I wonder is, you showed those numbers earlier on that showed that slow erosion of what was never really a majority support position for this conflict, but has gotten a little bit worse. The movement hasn't been enormous because a lot of President Trump's supporters are still with him, still give him the benefit of the doubt.

But that's not what will be decisive in November. If you are losing even four, five, six points on the margin of how people feel about this conflict in the November midterms, that could be very decisive in key swing states.

HUNT: Yeah, incredibly.

I mean, Mike Dubke, it does seem to go back to what is perhaps the original sin that the administration committed when they went into Iran, which is, you know, not even necessarily that they did it right. I mean, there are plenty of Republican hawks on Capitol Hill that would have been willing to support it, but they didn't make any effort to bring people along.

MIKE DUBKE, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Well, I think part of that was the surprise. So, if we remember, the surprise attack was the beginning of this. So, I think they'll say, well, we really couldn't build a level of support because of the way we entered this conflict. But I think November is on their mind. The president was on his way to

Michigan. He's going to Michigan to talk about economics, pocketbook issues, and the such. And so, I do think that they're taking that into account.

The number that I'm looking for, that 67 percent, is how the Republican base especially the mega base are eroding and as that number gets creeps up from 60 to 65 to 67, that's going to be coming from somewhere because every and most likely the base because every other poll I've seen Democrats are definitely against this conflict and independents have really been against it since the very beginning.

So, as that number grows larger that means the base is becoming a little less sanguine about it. And that, I think, is going to be what the White House is going to have to deal with.

XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, the president doesn't seem to have his finger on the pulse of where the American people are. His comments just a little while ago where he talked about how he has patience when it comes to this conflict, he said things throughout this war that have shown that he doesn't actually understand the pain that Americans are going through.

And if you take all of his comments together and him getting us in this war in the first place, they make for a perfect ad for congressional Democrats right now, especially in these swing states.

Why are gas prices going up? Because Donald Trump started this conflict. Does he care? No, he doesn't care. He only cares about himself.

He's getting richer off of the presidency while you are seeing higher gas prices, higher prices at the grocery store, and being left further and further behind. And it writes itself.

And with the president doesn't have any urgency in this, then this is only going to get worse for him. The other thing is that the American people don't believe him anymore. He has said about 40 times that this conflict is nearing an end, 40 times. If you're an American right now, say, I've heard this for the last six months. You told me it was only going to last a few more weeks. And now we're 40 times we are now saying that this might come to an end.

When does it end?

HUNT: Yeah, it is -- it is fairly striking, especially considering the way he ran his campaign, Mike, which was no new wars.

DUBKE: Right. I mean, but his base that supported him through that is weirdly supporting him in this conflict.

[16:10:01]

So -- I mean, it really does come back to that old, I could shoot somebody in the middle of, you know, Fifth Avenue.

HUNT: Fifth Avenue, right.

DUBKE: It's a strange phenomenon, but, you know, what's really broken the back here, and I'll be very short about this, I think are gas prices.

At the end of the day, to your point and to the point that the president's going to be making and others are going to be making, Inflation was creeping up, but what kept it okay was gas prices being low. That's not the case anymore, and I think that's what's moving a lot of this back and forth.

HUNT: Marianna, what are you hearing on the Hill? These are the folks that actually have to win races in November.

MARIANNA SOTOMAYOR, CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT, PUCK NEWS: Yeah, when the president said, I have a lot of patience, my first thought was, well, Republicans on the Hill very much do not on this issue.

And something that I've heard repeatedly from the start of this, including from congressional leaders, is we could really be breaking through on the economy, on our economic message, and people if it weren't for the war. Of course, they're not going to go up against the president in any form or fashion, especially as we get closer to the midterms.

We've seen how much they've defended him of anything there, especially on the House side, readying legislation to try and give all of this huge bulk of money potentially ahead of the midterms to supplement a lot of the losses in the Iran war.

But look, he went to Tom Barrett's district today in Michigan. He is one Republican who has voted with Democrats on war resolutions to try and stop the president. So, this is very much front of mind, particularly because of the economic issues.

I mean, you said it perfectly. It's gas prices. If they continue to go up the closer they get to November, when people start paying attention to everything after Labor Day, that is really when I've heard across the board Republicans are going to start really panicking.

Do they change their tact? I don't know. Does Speaker Johnson still try and force a vote on, again, Iran War funding for a very unpopular war? It's still possible. to try and appease the president.

HUNT: Right, in the middle of the worst possible moment for people on the House side.

I mean, Kristen, where are we in terms of that kind of piece of the campaign here? I mean, we often talk about how people don't tune in until kind of right beforehand, but the media environment's also changed a lot since that sort of wisdom held. I mean, do you see a major shift in opinion on this coming between now and November? Is it a slow burn? How do you think about it when you're writing your polls?

ANDERSON: I think the biggest shifts that I'm looking for are, one, the pieces of the Republican base who are a little less motivated. Those who don't think of themselves as MAGA Republicans and are exactly who Mike was talking about. The people who voted for Donald Trump, they're not going to vote for a Democrat, but they just feel this ugh about everything that's going on.

Right now, for many of those voters, they look at November and they're like, why do I even bother? Divided government just means nothing will get done. Surprise, nothing's getting done now. And I think it's going to be a big question of, do billions and billions and billions of dollars of ads on the airwaves, plus whatever happens in current events over the next couple of weeks, change that calculation for enough of those voters who are the drop-off in turnout between a presidential year and a midterm? Can Republicans get those folks back out to the polls?

DUBKE: But here's the thing from a communications standpoint, we should be talking from a Republican standpoint about the Trump accounts. which are great for new families. We should be talking about the GLP-1 subsidies that are out there, which are great for a lot of rather large Americans that can benefit from it.

Well, I mean, these are things -- or many, really. Or many, yes. These are the types of things that Republicans should be talking about, and we're not. We're not talking about no tax on tips or overtimes, all of those things have been washed away by this conflict in Iran.

And that's -- you know, that would be an answer to your criticisms. And it would also be a positive message to put out there. And we don't have any of that right now.

HUNT: Yeah. All right. Coming up next here in THE ARENA, we've got breaking news out of the Supreme Court. President Trump just now asking the justices to get involved in a major dispute around the midterms with just 99 days to go.

Plus, the divide among Democrats on full display ahead of a critical primary. We're going to talk to one prominent member of the party, Rahm Emanuel, who recently grabbed a headline by saying the so-called Bernie Bros could spoil the midterms for Democrats.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): The American people are tired of a rigged economy, a corrupt campaign, finance system. They want real change. They don't want Rahm Emanuel and the establishment maintaining the status quo.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:19:05]

HUNT: All right, welcome back.

We have breaking news over the midterm elections. The Trump administration is now formally asking the Supreme Court to let them tighten rules for mail-in voting. This is about an executive order that was signed by the president earlier this year. It's an order that's been challenged in the courts by nearly half of the states. All of this is unfolding with just 99 days until election day.

Let's bring in CNN chief Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic,

Joan, always good to see you. Can you walk through what this means, the timetable here, because the time crunch is real.

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN CHIEF SUPREME COURT ANALYST: The time crunch is real, as you say, just 99 days. And we know that President Trump is trying several measures to try to affect what happens in November in the midterms. This particular action today involves his March directive that would involve the U.S. Postal System and the Department of Homeland Security screening state roles.

[16:20:07]

The directive requires the states to submit list of eligible voters and then for those two federal entities to try to screen whether there are some non-citizens who can be poised to vote. That's his whole theme here is to try to take noncitizens out of the voter poll.

As you know, there are very few noncitizens who have been found to have voted at all. And, you know, I'll mention the New Jersey situation in a few seconds. But really, this has not been a problem that the country has had in the past. But the president is trying to head off something.

And 23 Democratic-led states have said, look, election procedures are the domain of the states. This is not something that the White House should be infringing on, and so far, lower courts have agreed. And what we have is an order from the U.S. Court of Appeals based in Boston over the weekend that would halt this policy going forward and not force state officials to start to keep using their time to meet this directive.

The -- today, just a few minutes ago, Kasie, the Trump administration, the U.S. solicitor general representing Donald Trump here, has come to the court saying, you know, prevent the effect of that order from the First Circuit, let these procedures go into effect.

Nothing's really happened yet. In fact, that's the government's argument at this point is that it's premature to interfere because right now, the federal government is just putting in several regulations to try to prevent non-citizens from voting. And we saw just in recent days, New Jersey has acknowledged that some 400 non- citizens did vote, but that's -- that is just a real outlier situation. This has not been a problem.

So, what will probably happen, Kasie, is the justices will ask for some sort of response from the Democratic challengers, and then we'll see if they want to intervene at this point and effectively force the states to start to keep turning to turn over roles and potentially have these procedures in place for the November election, Kasie.

HUNT: All right. Joan Biskupic, reporting for us, Joan, thank you very much.

BISKUPIC: Sure.

HUNT: Our panel is also joined now by professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University, Michele Goodwin.

And, Michele, I actually I do want to put this to you because -- I mean, you heard Joan walk through kind of the immediate ramifications of this particular situation, but how unprecedented is it or is it unprecedented for an administration to try to make such dramatic changes to the way in which Americans are allowed to or able to vote with such a compressed time frame before they're supposed to do so?

MICHELE GOODWIN, PROFESSOR OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY: Well, it's great to be on with you and also my good friend Joan. So, it's absolutely unprecedented. We've never seen an executive order like this Trump order, which Joan referred to.

Notably in that First Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the injunction from a lower court, one of those three judges was Trump appointed. That court said that this is null and void just on its face, and it is because it's extraordinary, we have known and held for. It's been now centuries that the domain of elections are left to states to control, to monitor. They're responsible for that.

This is not something that is just of the last year or two of this administration. This is something that has been fundamental to the United States and its rule of law and politics. And so, what we see, I think one of the ways of seeing this has been a longer arc of Donald Trump with suspicion about U.S. elections.

We saw suspicion in 2020 with more than 60 court challenges by Donald Trump under the presumption that there was something that was amiss in that election and that he should have prevailed. It's worth noting that he lost every one of those challenges except for one which was not a matter of whether he won or not, but it was just during COVID to allow for those who were overseeing those were handling the elections to be able to come six feet within those that were handling it.

So, it's dead on arrival, but we're not really sure what might happen with the United States Supreme Court.

HUNT: Sochi Hinojosa, how do you -- how do you think through this both? I mean, you were at DOJ, but you've also worked as a Democratic operative. What? What is going on?

Like what is the president trying to accomplish here? Because they are, it seems, trying to use the Postal Service and how do how should we put it innovative ways?

HINOJOSA: Yes.

HUNT: -- compared to how it's been used in the past?

HINOJOSA: Yeah, absolutely innovative ways.

[16:25:00]

It's very clear that he is trying to limit voting in some kind. Here is what I would caution the administration and Republicans. If we are 99 days to the election, this could cause total chaos. There are election officials who are already very, very stressed under circumstances, under stressful circumstances, they get threats all of the time.

We may end up having a Democratic president in 2028. And the Trump administration wants to continue to try to meddle in elections, there might be a Democratic administration that then might try to meddle with elections, too.

My hope is that that doesn't happen, but we can't start the precedent of, whether it's Republican or Democratic presidents, anyone, the federal government, meddling in elections when it is when they do not believe that they're going to win. This is a state -- these are left to the states and it's under the Constitution, and I think that this is setting a very dangerous precedent overall to make our election system more political based on one party or another.

HUNT: Mike?

DUBKE: Well, I don't disagree on the making our election system more political. I mean, we really do need to watch out for that. We have to have as Americans trust in the -- in the system.

Problem with that is and I'll leave New Jersey to the side because there were 6,000 -- 400 people who voted, 6,000 who were eligible to vote that really weren't eligible to vote.

But I'll look at some of the Republican states that actually participated in this program. And they have found individuals that are registered to vote that, according to the DMV, because a lot of states use motor voter as the way that they do registration in the states now, as being non-citizens.

So, they sent out letters to 3,000 plus Alaskans in the one case that I know about. And they're following up on that. So, there is some -- again, these are small numbers. I will grant you that.

But I don't know that it's absolutely wrong for us to take a look at the system and go, you know, sometimes people make mistakes. Software has glitches. We saw that in New Jersey. Let's fix it.

HINOJOSA: Yeah, states should be fixing them, and that's what they're doing in New Jersey. In other places, we haven't seen mass voter fraud or people who are registered to vote actually vote who are non- citizens, so things like that, but it's up to the states. to do that, not up to the president of the United States.

GOODWIN: And let --

HUNT: Yeah, briefly, Michele.

GOODWIN: That if we care about American voting, then we would actually go back to the Voting Rights Act, the John Lewis voting rights bill. There's a lot to be said about shoring up American elections, making sure that Americans can vote. Right now, we have Americans that are poised to be in lines for five, six, seven hours waiting to vote, we have states that have passed laws that you cannot even give someone water or a sandwich while they're waiting in line for five or six or seven hours.

So, of the things that we could be talking about in terms of more robust American elections that are fair and equal for all participants, this is not it, but there certainly is more that we could do.

HUNT: Well, Kristen Soltis Anderson, I mean, this is of course a uniquely Trumpian fixation, right? The president has been fixated on mail-in voting, I think in no small part because of the role it played in 2020 during COVID when he -- when he lost his election.

But I mean, "The New York Times" points out that Republicans made huge gains in mail-in voting in 2024. They wrote that it eroded a key Democratic advantage in nearly every state. The tracks party registration, the Republican rise in the use of mail voting was almost always accompanied by a drop in registration casting a mail ballot, and it allowed Republicans to make significant inroads in battleground states like Pennsylvania, red states like Florida, and blue states like Connecticut.

ANDERSON: Yeah, and Florida is a great example of a state one that counts its ballots extremely quickly. They know one or two because they've seen a thing or two.

But Florida was also a place where the Florida Republican Party for a long time built up a massive advantage by figuring out how do you use mail-in balloting and absentee voting to get your voters registered and created a scenario where Florida became a reliably red state.

So, it is not to say that mail-in voting always benefits one party or another. It is a tool that you can use to figure out how do I maximize turnout for my side. And what's really interesting is in an election like 2024, for a long time Democrats had said, you know, the more people who vote, the better we do.

And Donald Trump turned that on its head. He found a way to get lower propensity voters to participate, and that creates exactly what you saw.

On the security question though, what's interesting is if you ask voters about something like voter ID, you find 80 percent say they support voter ID. But if you ask about mail-in voting, you find about 70 percent say they support mail-in voting.

A majority coalition says like both of these things can be good things and we should have a system that has them.

HUNT: Yeah, fair enough.

SOTOMAYOR: Just very quickly, what Trump is doing here is the one thing that Congress would not be able to do. Yes, the SAVE Act is not going to also pass the Senate, but at least on the House side, Republicans, a majority of them would be okay with, again, incentivizing the states, giving states money to try and figure out voter ID.

[16:30:01]

None of this mail-in voting is something that Republicans just do not want to talk about on capital.

HUNT: Yeah, for sure. That's a good point.

All right, Michelle Goodwin, thank you. Always appreciate you.

I'm so sorry. We have to go, but come back soon and we will talk more.

The rest of our panel is going to stand by.

Coming up next here in THE ARENA, inside the debt, dysfunction and drama at the DNC as the party heads into what historically should be a winning year for their candidates.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Now you have down-and-out communists. I mean, these people are down and out, and remember, you go communists, nothing good happens. Is something wrong? These people are crazy, and we can't let them get into office and ruin our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[16:35:07]

HUNT: Right now, President Trump rallying in a key battleground state, Michigan, alongside the Republican candidate for Senate, Mike Rogers, just 99 days ahead of the crucial 2026 midterms.

With early voting in that state already underway, Michigan Democrats are battling it out over which candidate will be facing Rogers in the fall. The two, Abdul El Sayed and Haley Stevens, set to debate tonight as the combative primary comes to a close. It's going to be a key test of how far left Democrats are willing to go in a purple state.

We're joined now by CNN senior political and global affairs analyst Rahm Emanuel, though that title may not be the most relevant one today, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Ambassador, Mr. Former Chief of Staff, Chair of the DCCC, I don't know, you take your pick.

I'm glad to have you here.

RAHM EMANUEL, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: For this conversation, we'll stay with the DCCC.

EMANUEL: I love it, I love it. And you of course have this op-ed out right that the Bernie Bros could spoil the Democrats midterms now it seems to have gotten under Bernie's skin a little bit.

But I want to show you a clip of the chairwoman of the DSA, Democratic Socialists of America. Now, it's worth pointing out El Sayed does not say he is a member of the DSA we've had some DSA candidates in blue districts when nominating fights. But this is what the president is trying to focus in on when he says things like what he just said about communism.

Let's watch that clip, and I want to hear what you have to say about it on the other side.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHANNON BREAM, FOX NEWS HOST: Abolish the Senate.

MEGAN ROMER, DSA NATIONAL CO-CHAIR: True.

BREAM: OK. Replace the presidency and Supreme Court as we now know them.

ROMER: Yep.

BREAM: Abolish ICE.

ROMER: Absolutely.

BREAM: Abolish borders and give amnesty to anyone currently in the U.S. illegally?

ROMER: As a long-term plan, yep.

BREAM: Defund the Pentagon.

ROMER: Absolutely.

BREAM: Abolish prisons, at least in large part?

ROMER: Yeah, again, as part of a long-term program, yeah.

BREAM: OK, so no prisons. Government or public ownership of most large corporations.

ROMER: Yeah, absolutely.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Is that helpful for Democrats trying to win elections?

EMANUEL: That can't be a pop quiz question. Of course, no, it's not helpful. And as you saw tying that also to what Donald Trump just said, look, 2006 and '26 match up perfectly as referendums. There was an unpopular war in 2006, unpopular war today.

There was corruption everywhere from the House of Tom DeLay-ville to what the Trump family, Witkoff family and Lutnick family are doing in the sense of just literally in broad daylight taking money out of the bank, out of the Treasury. You also had spiking gas prices, spiking gas prices.

This election is set up, Kasie, to be a referendum on Donald Trump's corruption and his inability to manage the economy to make people's lives better.

Anything that distracts from that means you're helping Donald Trump. The DSA and that agenda is laid out does not play anywhere except for maybe on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. And any time a Democrat anywhere in a red to blue district has to either distinguish themselves rather than prosecute that the Republican would be a rubber stamp for Donald Trump is a dollar wasted allowing us to not only get a majority, but more importantly, to then pass finally after 20 years a minimum wage increase.

And I said in the piece and I said this: You have a battleground Senate race in North Carolina and one in Georgia. You have very significant Senate and gubernatorial races in both Arizona and Nevada. Do you think anybody in those states wants a member of the DSA to come campaign or any many out of the Progressive Caucus?

And second, since 2018, the Progressive Caucus hasn't flipped a single red-to-blue district. And to me, this is a consequential election where we could put a checkmate on Donald Trump, and we cannot risk it with diversions from the Democratic Socialists of America, who are giving them nothing but talking points, because outside of that, it will be a total referendum on Donald Trump's corruption and his total mismanagement and malpractice on the economy and making life more easy for American people.

HUNT: So you've clearly delineated what you view as a problem for Democrats, or could be a problem for Democrats.

EMANUEL: I gave this example. I was in Omaha a week ago for Denise Powell, great candidate. Three times in a row we had a very progressive candidate, lost that district. Kamala Harris won the district, had a Republican congressman, open seat.

Denise is above 50 percent. They're calling her DSA Denise. Her opponent last week in city council, voted against an increase in the minimum wage.

[16:40:03]

Now she -- does she have to spend resources saying, I'm not part of that agenda you just ran, or prosecute that I want to go pass a minimum wage increase after 20 years, the last time 2007, when Nancy Pelosi got the gavel and we took the majority. But my opponent would vote no.

You're going to have to pick. Not everybody has all this money. You have to make real-life decisions. And if you're not flipping a red district blue, you're not part of stopping Donald Trump. And it's a waste of time.

HUNT: So, a very clearly delineated potential problem. Now, Bernie Sanders, on the flip side, says -- and there's

considerable anger in the base, right he says that the establishment of the problem in fact, he named you. He said people are sick and tired of the Rahm Emanuels and the Democratic establishment. Are you the problem?

EMANUEL: Yeah. So, look, you know, here's the point. I do believe the system's rigged, and it is rigged against the middle class. You've heard me talk about this all over the country.

Now, when I was mayor of Chicago, we got 20,000 kids, free community college, you've got to be average, couple about 40,000 kids got both universal full-day kindergarten, universal full-day pre-K, and hundreds of thousands of families got to raise the minimum wage. Those are all progressive policies. They moved our city forward. We are also the only city seven years in a row, number one for corporate relocations.

Now, I don't talk about it. I don't talk about free college. I got 20,000 kids free college and relieved their families of any financial burden. Hundreds of thousands 11 years in a row, got to raise in minimum wage. You can either talk about it or get it done.

And as you know, Kasie, whether it was winning elections or passing universal health care, financial reform, it's not about the rhetoric or the goal. As I always say, the first eight letters of progressive spell progress, not perfection.

A lot of hot air out of Washington, not a lot of action out of it. I'm about making sure like we did when Nancy Pelosi got the gavel, minimum wage. When Barack Obama had a majority in the House, he got health care done and financial reform done.

Winning elections leads to the change in policies you want to see. Everything else is total distraction.

HUNT: So, one piece of winning elections, of course, is the strength of your party's institutions. And Ken Martin is over at the DNC. They are basically out of money to the point where it seems that they've mortgaged the building.

Do you think that Martin is doing a good job at the DNC? And does it matter?

EMANUEL: Yeah, I mean, well, it does matter in this sense. And the irony of this, and I said this to Ken, look, if the House goes wins, Hakeem and the team are going to take credit. It's also true about the Senate and Chuck Schumer.

The one place you're guaranteed you're going to win is this third category that does not get discussed a lot in Washington because it doesn't deal with Donald Trump, and that is the farm team for 2028, 2030, 2032. We are going to make massive gains at the state legislative level and at the state constitutional level.

I was just on the phone today with the leader of the Michigan House Democrats. I have a lot of -- I've done two fundraisers for him. I'm going to do a third.

I have a lot of confidence they're going to flip the statehouse in Michigan. You're going to see that also in other states.

And so, the question is, Ken Martin should be building our apparatus for 2028 --

HUNT: Yeah, and is he or is he failing at it?

EMANUEL: -- in eight battleground states.

Well, it's not -- I mean, it's not happening at the level of the support that needs to happen. And to me, that is going to be a place we're going to win, and the question is by how much.

And Ken Martin has a role to play both in 2026 and in 2028 to set up Democrats, because eight state -- seven states, 500,000 voters across those states will determine who the next president is, as they did in 2016, 2020, and 2024.

That's what is important in 2026. at the state capitol level.

HUNT: All right, former chairman of the DCCC, Rahm Emanuel -- thank you, sir, for being here. I appreciate it.

EMANUEL: Thanks, Kasie.

HUNT: All right, ahead here in THE ARENA, disturbing new details on a false allegation made against Pete Buttigieg. Why the Michigan attorney general is now investigating how the accusation was handled.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:48:47]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE BUTTIGIEG, FORMER TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: They asked me if I had ever been to a location in Alabama, which I've never been to, where an anonymous caller had told CPS that somebody had told him that I had told her that I had committed unspeakable crimes. And only then did we know that the police agreed that this was not an allegation that was credible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Last month, the former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg revealed he was the victim of a swatting-like attack. But this one so devastating in that it involved a false allegation he had committed violent crimes and that that put his four-year-old twins at risk. Buttigieg said he was forced to be separated from his children while the anonymous tip was investigated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUTTIGIEG: They couldn't tell me what the allegation was and then they told me that I couldn't be around my children unsupervised until my children were interviewed. During that questioning, no one in the family could be present. And the next, 24 hours are some of the darkest times of my life. I don't know how to describe it, it's one of the most awful moments of my life and something I wouldn't wish on anybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[16:50:07]

HUNT: So now according to a previously unreported police records that were obtained by "The Washington Post," Michigan police waited six days after approaching Buttigieg to attempt to identify the caller who authorities later deemed as possibly, quote, "mentally unstable". A spokeswoman for the Michigan Attorney General's office told "The Post" they've opened an investigation into the allegation against Buttigieg and how it was handled.

My panel is joined now by senior CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayem.

Juliette, how should something like this be handled, an allegation that comes from some place into state authorities about the fitness of someone to be a parent. And, you know, he says they just came in. They separated him from his kids. And it turns out now that the state didn't even try to figure out who called.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Who it was first. I was on. Why does this matter? Obviously, because it's a horrible instance of swatting. It comes -- it gets to political violence or political intimidation, and for members of the LGBTQ community, it also gets to a sense that that they are not legitimate parents. The fact that that Pete Buttigieg was taken away from his children is shocking.

I was surprised that the mayor was forgiving of Michigan state authorities when this first happened. He may not have known everything that goes on, but how should this work? State officials have something called judgment. They live in a world in which they know these things are happening and they know who Mayor Pete is.

And the idea that a third tier double hearsay call can come in and that launches six days later, so they didn't think it was imminent. Six days later, an investigation is absolutely shocking.

So I can understand a call that comes in. I'm a neighbor of this person. I'm hearing something you should come immediately and they come in without maybe doing background check.

This strikes me as at best bad judgment. At worst, something that was intended to be intimidating in the political space. And the governor and the Michigan State authorities need to investigate.

HUNT: Marianna Sotomayor, I mean, this is the kind of thing and this is a truly horrific example. But there are also other terrible examples of members, people in the public eye being targeted with threats, whether it's swatting attacks.

There was a judge whose child was murdered. I mean, all kinds of new violence that has entered our system. How do you experience it when you cover the Hill every day? Because it strikes me that we're losing good people, or maybe good people aren't even showing up because of this.

SOTOMAYOR: No, absolutely. I mean, there are members of Congress who have said that they are retiring simply because they don't want to be involved potentially with any political violence. I'm thinking of Jared Golden, essentially. He said, I don't want to put my family in harm's way.

And that is something that is definitely at the forefront of so many lawmakers' minds. But, you know, when you talk about the day-to-day, you're thinking about, you know, what am I going to vote on? As a reporter, you're not even thinking about the safety concerns. But it is absolutely something that when you have lawmakers reflect about it, they do wonder whether being in public service is worth it.

And I should say that there's a lot of people who could be recruited as really good candidates for Republicans or Democrats who say, at the end of the day, they decide not to do it, they don't want to be public servants because they don't want to face any potential violence.

HUNT: Yeah, well -- and Buttigieg also told ABC, he said, who would go into public service if things keep going the way that they are and things like this have happened?

Kristen, what does this say about our overall political climate?

ANDERSON: Well, I mean, it -- divisions not new, but the tools that people can use to try to inflict pain or on the other side are new and rapidly evolving and frequently nowadays involve cloaking oneself in the garb of law enforcement, whether it is swatting. I think Juliet was right to describe this as like swatting. in a different form. It's calling upon the authorities who we need to know we can trust would be there when something is wrong and just perverting that for horrible ends.

You saw in the case of Melissa Hortman, the man who showed up and who thankfully, I believe this past week was put away for life, showed up at her doorstep dressed like law enforcement saying there's a threat to you.

[16:55:04]

I mean, this is -- it is disgusting and it is a pattern.

HUNT: Yeah, it is for sure.

All right, Juliette Kayem, thank you so much for your expertise. Always appreciate you being here.

All right, don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUNT: All right. Thanks very much to my panel. Really appreciate you all being here today.

Thanks to you at home for watching as well. Always appreciate you.

You can now stream, don't forget, THE ARENA. We're on live. You can catch ever -- catch up whenever you want in the CNN app. The QR code is there on your screen.

You can also catch up by listening to THE ARENA's podcast. You can follow us on X and Instagram. We're @TheArena.CNN. There's another QR code for the podcast right there.

But don't go anywhere. "THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER" starts right now.