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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
Iran War Hits Six Months With No End In Sight; AOC Sanders, Jeffries Rally Voters Ahead Of Midterms; NOTUS: Trump Admin Wants To Give Portion Of Yosemite National Park To Private Developer In "Land Exchange"; 579+ Killed And 1,900+ Missing Following Massive Nepal- China Flood. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired August 28, 2026 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We learned that earlier in the day they asked to see specific evidence about pills that Clancy was consuming, as well as the knife that she used to attempt to take her own life.
[16:00:08]
We'll, of course, keep you posted with the very latest. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon.
THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT starts right now.
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 to this last summer Friday, really.
As we come on the air, we're now six months into a war with Iran, a war that the president had predicted would last just weeks.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We projected four to five weeks.
This is a short excursion.
It will be soon. It won't be long.
Most of the points are already negotiated and agreed to.
We're very close to making a deal.
We're going to end that war very quickly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: As the Iran war hits the six-month mark, we're also less than 10 weeks out from Election Day, with affordability and gas prices top of mind for so many voters.
So naturally, the president today is posting about, you guessed it, granite and grout and columns and golden statues and trying to rename a lake to score points and a spat with our neighbor to the north. But amid all the home makeover and tariff fighting, the war grinds on.
The president this week posted this image declaring mission accomplished in Iran while showing an image of President George W. Bush and, quote, "mission not accomplished".
Still, six months into a six-week war, you have to wonder if President Trump might come to regret making this comparison.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Way back in 2003.
All right, let's get off the sidelines, head into THE ARENA. My panel's here.
Capitol Hill correspondent for "Puck News", Marianna Sotomayor; CNN political commentator, Republican strategist and pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson; Democratic strategist and a former senior adviser to the Harris and Biden campaigns, Adrienne Elrod; and Republican strategist Matt Whitlock.
We're also joined by CNN political and national security analyst David Sanger.
Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for being here.
David Sanger, let me start with you on what we saw there from President Trump. Again, six months into what he said would take six weeks, he says mission accomplished in Iran. He brings up George W. Bush. I mean, we played that infamous, really, clip. And of course, there's that banner up there behind him.
I mean, let's play what he said years later in 2008 about how he felt-- Bush felt about that moment, because it, I think, further sets up this conversation we're having today. Let's watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: Being on this ship reminds me of when I went to the USS Abraham Lincoln and they had a sign that said mission accomplished. I regret that you know that sign was there. To some it said, well, Bush thinks the war in Iraq is over when I didn't think that but nevertheless it conveyed the wrong message.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: He was on the USS Abraham Lincoln just to add some more symbolism to all of this.
I mean, David, is the mission accomplished in Iran? Where does this all stand?
DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, you know, Kasie, I was out in San Diego covering President Bush's speech when he gave that. And I think when we all saw the imagery from Abraham Lincoln, which they had just put over the horizon to make it look like he was fully at sea, I think almost everybody in the press corps who was covering that were sort of shaking their head and saying, Boy, he could come to regret this quickly, and he obviously did.
In the case of Iran, though, we haven't even had the moment that would have led you to put up such a banner, right? I mean, the president laid out six months ago tonight what his major objectives were: end the nuclear program, sharply limit the missile program, telling the people of Iran to stay in their homes while this brief bombing went on, and then they could rise up and overthrow their government.
And almost every one of those remains completely undone. He's done some limitation on the missile program. That's it. The nuclear program's exactly where it was.
And so, at some point, there's going to be a reckoning here where the president's going to have to say, Did you accomplish any of your goals? His answer so far is, I destroyed their air force. I destroyed their navy.
[16:05:02]
But that wasn't what he was trying to accomplish.
HUNT: So, Kristen Soltis Anderson, this -- of course, 10 weeks out from the midterm election. And if you talk to Republicans, they will say they had hoped that this war would be out of the headlines by now. What are you seeing in your data about where the president stands with this still going on as we're heading to the polls?
KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: So, if we're making comparisons to the George W. Bush administration, the reality is that, thankfully, the conflict in Iran right now has not had nearly the level of U.S. military casualties and such that we saw in, say, Operation Iraqi Freedom. You know, in the lead up to the 2006 midterms, which is sort of that second term midterm for George W Bush, Republicans got annihilated. You had Speaker Nancy Pelosi come into office.
But that was a moment where the conflict in Iraq and the way that it was going south, you were compounding that with things like the response to Hurricane Katrina, very low job approval ratings. So, I think in terms of thinking about the political impact of this conflict, this is not dominating the political discussion in the way that something like Iraq was during Bush's presidency.
At the same time, the challenge is that this is supercharged by voter frustration around the economy because people feel like the problem is not just there is a tragic thing happening over there, but also in my neighborhood, I look at the gas prices in my neighborhood and I wonder when they're going to go down. And that's creating this additional political problem for Republicans of them needing to say, hey, we've got a way out, we've got policies we want to talk about. And voters go, well, that's all nice, but I feel pain right now. That's the political knot they're trying to untangle.
HUNT: Well, and, Matt Whitlock, I mean, the president is not talking necessarily -- I mean, we were talking on this show and the Republican who was sitting in your seat essentially said, look, we've got all these great things to talk about, Trump accounts and no taxes on tips. The challenge being that the president does not seem to be focused on those things. What's that about?
MATT WHITLOCK, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, I think the president is known for thinking about a lot of things at the same time. But I think to Kristen's point, the strategy with Iran right now is to lower the temperature of what's going on with this longer-term play of economic pressure. Basically, the idea that we can wait them out because the pressure is hitting them. We see the economy in Iran really hurting right now, and the hope is that we'll be in a better position to negotiate better terms.
And the president is also trying to respond to the fact that more volatility and more armed conflict is increasing gas prices and creating more headlines that he thinks are not helpful right now. Who knows what's going to happen right after the midterms? But I think his hope is to sort of push this off, create the pressure that will bring Iran to the table, and see what happens from there.
HUNT: So, speaking of bringing Iran to the table, I mean, if you listen to President Trump, and again, worth underscoring here, when he went in, when he started this bombing campaign, this was, you know, a six-week-ish project, according to the president. We can go all the way back to March, okay, which is now almost six months ago, and take you through to earlier this month.
Well, you listen and you tell -- You decide if it sounds like a broken record.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: They want to make a deal.
It's looking very good that we're going to make a deal.
This process should go very quickly.
We're going to end that war very quickly.
We're in the final throes of what will be a very, very good deal.
And they want to make the deal a lot more than I do.
We have our deal done with Iran and it should be successful.
We're making an amazing deal with Iran.
They want to make a deal with us very badly.
They're dying to make a deal. They're giving us a lot.
I'm not sure I want to make a deal with them.
We made a deal two days ago, and they want to make a deal.
And they called me, and they said, please, let's talk. They want to make a deal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: I mean, David Sanger, do they want to make a deal? Because, like, we've been hearing the same thing for months.
SANGER: Look, they are under considerable economic pressure, but there's huge division inside Iran on the question of whether or not their better course is one of resistance, because they don't believe at the end of the day that President Trump would ever relieve the sanctions fully or allow Iran's economy to truly flourish. So, there are many, and particularly those in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who believe that the best approach is resistance, try to keep gas prices up through the American elections, are acutely aware of that. and to try to basically make the president pick up and leave here.
And you know, you were discussing before these economic sanctions playing the long game. It does raise the question, if that is such an effective technique, why didn't the president move from diplomacy in January and February to that step first before he took military action, because the Iranians don't believe he's willing to go back to military action now if, in fact, those sanctions fail.
HUNT: So, Marianna Sotomayor, this is obviously all taking place as the men and women that you cover, 535 of them on Capitol Hill, of course, not all senators, but all of the House, up for reelection here in a couple months. And not only does the economic picture continue to be difficult, there are some signs it might be getting worse with inflation concerns that the Federal Reserve chair was talking about.
What are you hearing from Republicans on the Hill about what they think the job -- they think the president is doing?
MARIANNA SOTOMAYOR, CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT, PUCK NEWS: Well, I have heard so much more concern and just frustration and anger from some of these lawmakers, some of them who will be coming back next week post-August recess. And I just think back to six months ago when House Republicans were in Florida, they were thinking about their year ahead, how they're going to win back the midterms. And they were all saying, well, this is -- this in Iran is going to wrap up quickly, at least let's hope, because if it doesn't, and it is Labor Day, and we're still engaged, and prices are high, and gas seems to be high.
HUNT: Labor Day is a week from Monday.
SOTOMAYOR: Correct. So that is why I'm sensing much more, much more panic from them. Are they going to say anything? Are they going to do anything? Probably not, because they're walking such a tight, tightrope, they have to embrace Trump in some ways still because he turns out the base.
But what I am hearing from a lot of strategists now, especially for those more vulnerable Republicans is try and actually keep a distance. Don't go to the convention. Don't mention him on your websites. Don't even talk about him as much as possible. But it's really going to be those lawmakers who have, at different points in time, tried to distance themselves or at least have a different brand from MAGA who may be able to survive this midterm election.
HUNT: So Adrienne Elrod, I mean, one of the things we can look at -- and I know this is something Democrats are eager to use in the midterm election campaign are Trump's various renovation posts today. Just today, let's put them up.
There is gold. There are columns. There is granite. There seems to be marble. There is painter's tape.
I have to say I love painter's tape, but you know. I use it a lot at my house, but I'm not president of the United States.
What does this give to Democrats who are trying to win back the House and Senate?
ADRIENNE ELROD, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, look, the split screen could not be more clear and more different. You've got, on the one hand, a war that is never-ending, a war that millions of Americans did not think we should be getting into in the first place. Those numbers have only gone up over the last six months. Prices remain high.
Nothing seems to be working that he's doing. As you mentioned, neither side is really talking or communicating right now.
And then you have the president who's posting these gold, gaudy- looking, whatever he's doing, redoing the White House. If you're the average American, especially if you're the swing voter out there, saying, how am I going to vote in this election cycle, you are looking at the fact that we are in what seems to be a never-ending war that most Americans didn't want in the first place, becoming unpopular by the day.
And then you're looking at Trump doing whatever he's doing to the White House, the renovations there, and you're saying, is he actually here fighting for me? Does he care more about the war in Iran than me? Does he care more about renovating the White House than me?
And that's one of the reasons, Kasie, why his numbers are so low right now. There was a YouGov poll that came out this week that showed his numbers worse than Bush was in 2006, when as Kristen mentioned at that time in 2006, we flipped, I think, 32 seats in the House, and we won back the Senate. I worked for the Democratic congressional campaign giving me that cycle.
And his numbers are worse than Bush's were at that time -- or now than Bush's were at that time. So, he's in some deep trouble, and he knows it, and that's why I think you're seeing this panic going on.
HUNT: We've certainly got some structural differences since that time, namely gerrymandering. The map is not as fluid as it used to be, but certainly those numbers don't portend well for Republicans that want to hold the House and Senate.
All right, David Sanger -- sir, always grateful to see you. Have a wonderful weekend. Thank you so much for being here.
SANGER: Great.
HUNT: The best of our panel is going to stand by. Coming up next here, Democratic Congressman Brendan Boyle will be here in THE ARENA as his party fights to retake the House and maybe the Senate.
Plus, one of America's most popular national parks could soon get a little bit smaller, with the Trump administration reportedly trying to give a piece of it to a private real estate developer? Promises made, promises kept?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DOUG BURGUM, INTERIOR SECRETARY: Public lands in general, some like the national parks, absolutely, we need to support and protect every single inch of those.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): This November, the first of many tides is coming, coming to respond to every right they are trying to take.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): Now it is our turn.
REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): Win the week, win the month, win the year, win the hearts and minds of the American people and then on November 3rd, win back control of the United States House of Representatives so we can end this national nightmare.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: The Democratic Party's establishment and progressive leaders coming together to rally today, just about nine weeks ahead of the critical midterm elections to mark the 63rd anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1963 March on Washington. The Defend the Vote Rally, as it was called, comes after the Supreme Court rolled back a key part of the Voting Rights Act earlier this year, a move that party leaders are warning could significantly impact the party's chances of taking back control of Congress.
[16:20:07]
Joining me now is Democrat of Pennsylvania, Congressman Brendan Boyle. He sits on the House Ways and Means Committee and Budget Committee where he serves as ranking member.
Congressman, great to see you.
REP. BRENDAN BOYLE (D-PA): Good to see you.
HUNT: Thank you for spending a little bit of your August recess with us here in Washington.
BOYLE: Came down to sign some paperwork, do some office work before I go back home to Philly.
HUNT: So, let's start on voting because this is going to be a key piece of the conversation we're having around the election. There is an expectation Democrats are going to take back the House. If for whatever reason you don't perform as well, what are you going to attribute that to? I mean, do you think Americans can trust the results no matter what they are?
BOYLE: Well, first, I have -- frankly, at this point, little doubt that Democrats are going to do well on Election Day in just over 60 days. This very much reminds me of the 2017-2018 period. I've been saying that for a long time.
I do believe there's going to be a blue wave. And no, that's not irrational exuberance. That's based on basically every special election that we have seen over the last 18 to 20 months, combined with the polling that we're seeing as well, both in House and Senate races.
So, while I don't mind playing along with most hypotheticals, I just don't think I'm going to be in a situation in which we're waking up a day or two after election day and Democrats have underperformed.
HUNT: One of the, of course, challenges Democrats are facing, even as you say, things are moving in your direction heading into these elections, there has been a split in the party.
And you saw there Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Hakeem Jeffries is set to potentially be Speaker of the House. He's come under considerable criticism over he wouldn't say that he supported Medicare for All. He met with Jared Kushner. The left has really gone after him.
Does he deserve that, in your view?
BOYLE: So, I mentioned the analogy to 2017, 2018. Here's another instance in which I believe at this exact moment, eight years ago, I was on this network facing a very similar question. And the question then was -- well, we were seeing a number of progressives, in that case Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Presley, beating Democratic incumbents in these very blue districts. Would there be division if Democrats were to win back the House?
And we saw how we performed both in the House majority, but with Trump as president in 2019, 2020.
HUNT: Nancy Pelosi was --
BOYLE: And 2021 -- I'll get to that. And 2021, 2022, when we had a trifecta and we were able to pass some of the far sweeping legislation that we passed in '21, '22.
HUNT: Are you saying that he could be as strong a speaker as Nancy Pelosi was?
BOYLE: I think that whether it's in sports or in politics, it's always difficult to be the person who is succeeding a legend, right? And that is the difficulty that Hakeem has. But so far, he has knocked it out of the park.
I mean, from the most -- I'm really thinking about -- actually trying to think about someone who internally, I know within the House Democratic caucus has criticized Hakeem. And I actually can't think of one person. He is personally popular.
He's also -- let's face it, and I think this will aid us over the next two years -- we have a great unifying figure in the House Democratic caucus. His name is Donald Trump. The fact that he is unfortunately president, the fact that he is so polarizing, does tend to unify Democrats of all stripes from the most moderate to the most progressive member.
HUNT: When you think about what the party's future looks like in 2028, we just learned that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, who is often discussed as someone in that mix, actually joined the rejoined or re- upped her membership in the Democrat Socialists of America. Do you think that the Democratic nominee for president will have more success if they're affiliated with the DSA, or will it be harder for them to succeed in a general election with an affiliation?
BOYLE: You know, as I look at it, I really think this is the most wide-open Democratic Field since 1992. If you think about 1991, 1992, there was no heir apparent whatsoever. It was completely wide open.
Bill Clinton emerges out of Arkansas to seize the nomination and actually goes from third to first in the summer of '92 and didn't look back and won by a solid majority or solid plurality since it was a three-person race. I hope history repeats itself.
But I think for our party, having this discussion and this great debate, in the end, I think it will be healthy just as long as we remain united after that nomination fight. Because in order to fly, you need two wings of a plane. There is no question that we need both wings of this party if we're going to be successful.
HUNT: I mean, if you look at the Bill Clintons of the world, the Democrats that were successful in that mold, Jimmy Carter's another one, both white, Southern, Christian men. Is that the mold that you're going to need this time?
[16:25:00] BOYLE: Not necessarily. I mean, I do tend to remember there was an African-American 20 years ago with a rather funny middle name --
HUNT: Yes, that's actually fair, of course.
BOYLE: -- who did quite well and, in fact, won by seven percentage points, 10 million votes, the largest margin of victory since Ronald Reagan and George Bush in the 1980s.
So, I tend to look back at history, as you notice, on these things. And what I find is any time we attempt to draw on paper the ideal candidate, the person who inevitably wins in no way looks like whoever that ideal candidate was, whether it was Barack Obama or, frankly, Donald Trump.
At this moment in 2015, absolutely -- or 2014, 2015, absolutely no Republican I talked to in this town wanted someone like Donald Trump. They thought he would be an electoral disaster. And now here we are. He's won the presidency, unfortunately, twice.
HUNT: Yeah, dominated our politics for the last --
BOYLE: Decade plus.
HUNT: Exactly.
So when you you're talking about people that what they look like on paper, what you expect, one person that some Democrats, especially in Pennsylvania, will tell you isn't what they expected necessarily, is John Fetterman, who is a Democratic senator and who, of course, has broken with the Democratic Party in a couple of key ways. Israel is a notable one. to the point where there are a lot of questions about whether he can continue to be the Democratic nominee should he decide to run for reelection in Pennsylvania.
How strongly are you considering challenging Fetterman?
BOYLE: Yeah, in terms of me personally, what I've said is by far the most important election, in my view, right now in front of us in 60- some-odd days is control of the House of Representatives. Donald Trump has been able to operate in a way which he said no check whatsoever on his power for the last almost two years. We've had no oversight from the Republican House or Republican Senate. We have the opportunity to change that come this November.
Now, after this November, I will sit down with my family and seriously look at 2028. What will weigh heavily on my decision, though, is whether or not we win the majority and that I'm the chairman of the House Budget Committee, which is a very important position. So, in the end, I will make a decision based on frankly, how can I have the biggest impact possible on public policy?
HUNT: Do you think that Fetterman is in step with Pennsylvania Democrats?
BOYLE: No, I think it's clear he's not. I mean, there's a poll out this week. He's underwater by some 50-plus points among Pennsylvania Democrats. He is clearly a very different person, and has very different views today than he had just three or four years ago when he was running. He's been a tremendous disappointment.
HUNT: What do you think it is that is driving those numbers? Because we can actually, I mean, we can put up the favorability for Senator John Fetterman, and you can quite literally see these lines from 2024 to today with approval from Republicans skyrocketing, plummeting among Democrats, independents tend to have about the same type of view. Why has this switched?
BOYLE: Well, in some ways, it'd be a better question for John Fetterman. Why has he switched?
HUNT: I just mean, why are you-- they're your voters. These Democrats are your voters. Like, why are they feeling this?
BOYLE: Well, and likewise, the Republicans who are having the same movement only in an inverse way. And I think part of it is almost every day, Senator Fetterman, the still Democratic senator from my state, is on Fox News and elsewhere constantly bashing Democrats and refusing to engage in opposition to this White House.
So, I don't think it's not -- I don't think it's just his views on certain issues that have changed. I think it's his whole approach to the job where he seems more interested in fighting fellow Democrats than he does in actually fighting President Trump and the Republicans who today run Washington.
HUNT: Before I let you go, and I guess I'm showing my Pennsylvania bias here, but do you think your governor, Josh Shapiro, is running for governor or president?
BOYLE: I think he's running for re-election, will win a big re- election, and then I wouldn't be surprised if maybe there's another office that he will look at as well as maybe 40 or 50 other Democrats at this point and I welcome them all. I think this is the kind of great debate we need to have. as a party in 2027 and '28.
HUNT: All right, Congressman Brendan Boyle, thank you, sir. Always great to see you.
BOYLE: Thank you.
HUNT: Come back.
All right, coming up next year in THE ARENA, what we're learning about the environmental causes behind the catastrophic flooding along the Nepal-China border. But first, the deal that's reportedly being kept on the hush-hush to sell a chunk of Yosemite National Park, to sell it.
The reporter who broke this story will join us live in THE ARENA.
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[16:33:53]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We want every American child to have access to pristine outdoor spaces. When they gaze upon Yosemites, Yosemites, towering sequoias, their love of country grows stronger and they know that every American has truly a duty to preserve this wondrous inheritance. And that's what they're doing, and that's what we're doing. We're preserving an incredible inheritance. America's natural landscapes belong to the American people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Quote, "America's natural landscapes belong to the American people." That was President Trump back in 2020 talking about the importance of preserving national parks for future generations.
Now we're learning that his administration has been quietly working to sell a slice of Yosemite National Park to a private developer. Yes, you heard that right. The plan, which was first reported by "NOTUS", includes a land exchange between a Nevada-based company and the National Park Service.
The agency would give up a quarter mile strip of Yosemite or an interest in that land in the form of an easement in exchange for land of equal value somewhere in California.
[16:35:09]
Joining us now is "NOTUS" reporter Anna Kramer. She broke the story this morning.
So, Anna, why are they doing this? What is the justification?
ANNA KRAMER, NOTUS REPORTER: So there's a private developer, Las Vegas-based, that owns a plot of land just outside of the boundaries of Yosemite National Park that currently doesn't have easy access to the park itself. Getting there and getting to the main attractions in the park from that plot of land is extraordinarily difficult, has long winding roads.
That private developer wants to build a short road that would connect his property to the main road in this western part of Yosemite National Park. And if you could build that road, there would be sort of extraordinary private access to whoever is on that piece of land to the park, because there are very few places surrounding Yosemite National Park that have that kind of immediate direct access. So that a quarter-mile strip of land that we're talking about would be used to build a road to facilitate the access that currently doesn't exist for this private developer.
HUNT: Do you know more about what or who is on this piece of land that then wants to access the park in this short way?
KRAMER: Absolutely. So, the piece of land was purchased in 2024 by a Las Vegas-based real estate development firm called Kingsbarn Realty Capital. And Kingsbarn purchased it from a developer before who owned it for nearly 20 years who also tried to build this private road that would connect the piece of land to Yosemite and never succeeded because the National Park Service never agreed to do it.
But that piece of land is currently undeveloped. But it could be developed into all sorts of things that you could imagine you might want on the boundaries of the park. It could be a hotel, a resort, a private residence. You could make it into anything you'd like. But ideally, for whatever's built there to have value, the value would come if you got that really immediate access with the road that doesn't currently exist.
HUNT: Right. So essentially, agreeing to do this deal would likely significantly enrich this developer and allow whoever was then able to access this land to have relatively special privileges to access this national park.
KRAMER: That's how my source described it, yes.
HUNT: Okay, so I mean, Matt Whitlock, you've worked out west. You understand what the drama of these landscapes, the way these parks draw Americans to them, the way the public nature of it. I mean, there's so much publicly owned land out in the American West and relatively little of it is accessible for people to access, to hike through, to be able to enjoy.
Do you think the traveling ministry, what are they doing?
WHITLOCK: I think that what they will do going forward is explain the purpose of this. Having grown up in California, went on field trips to Yosemite, it's beautiful, but it is hard to access. There's not a lot of places to stay around it, and the park is hurting financially.
So, the goal of this is to make it easier for people to access, have more people come into the park. This is a quarter of a mile, or three quarters of a mile easement, as you said, intended to help it get more people into the park.
It's a land swap. It's not a sale. It's not a giveaway to help a wealthy friend. This has helped more people get in and enjoy Yosemite. So I think there's been a lot of coverage that's sort of much ado about nothing when you understand how this actually works.
HUNT: Well, I guess the challenge would be if this land is still undeveloped. who exactly does get to benefit from it, because if it's a billionaire with a private compound, then you're not actually giving access to the public, you're giving access to one person.
WHITLOCK: Well, the vote will be to create a resort or a facility that people can stay in.
HUNT: Do we know that?
WHITLOCK: I don't know that we know that yet, but I also know that because --
HUNT: Anna, do we know that? We don't know that they've said one way or the other what they're going to do with it, right?
KRAMER: No, no, nobody has commented publicly or said to me what they imagine will be built there. The previous owner did want to build a resort, but we have no idea what the current owner wants to build there.
WHITLOCK: But I believe the current owner has done a lot of developing in other places similar to this, so that's a fair guess to make. But the other part of this is with the swap, they'll get other land to expand the parks. It's not like you're losing land in Yosemite. And to your first point, so much of the West is locked up in federal land rules that make it hard to grant access to more people.
So, this is kind of an attempt to compromise so that more people can enjoy America's wonders, like Half Dome. Hiking Half Dome is something everyone should experience in their life.
HUNT: I've always wanted to do that.
(CROSSTALK)
WHITLOCK: It's spectacular.
HUNT: Adrienne Elrod, I mean, how would you look at this?
ELROD: Well, I look at it again as a president who wants, we have the soundbite there, he said he wants to expand access to land for children to be able to enjoy our national parks. And here he is again using the grift that his administration has used so effectively toward benefiting themselves financially, which is to try to do a land swap of developer, which I think --
WHITLOCK: Is there an indication that the president will benefit from this in any way?
ELROD: Well, my point is this, perception-wise --
WHITLOCK: Perception.
ELROD: I think that's the average person would be thinking here. Like, why are you trying to do this?
And to Kasie's point, and to the reporter's point, he wrote the story on "NOTUS", We don't know what this land is going to be used for, but every assumption based on everything that Trump has done thus far would be that it's going to somehow benefit him financially or as a favor to one of his donors.
[16:40:10]
It just -- again, it distracts from the fact that people are suffering economically, prices remain high, and here's the president trying to enrich another wealthy --
WHITLOCK: Can I add one point really quickly? There's a lot of people in the area that are excited about this because it might increase economic activity around the park that has struggled because the structure of it makes it hard to recreation around it.
HUNT: OK, fair enough. So Matt's offering a relatively local perspective.
Kristen, when you look at your polling, there has been this sort of "let them eat cake" element to the things that are breaking through with people who are struggling when they look at Trump, whether it's the ballroom or some of the other things he's putting his name on. When you look at your numbers, does something like this, them taking a piece of the national park and selling it to a developer, play into that perception, and does that perception exist?
ANDERSON: So it does sound like this is a different circumstance than, say, the president's family making a great deal of money from a cryptocurrency venture or something like that. This feels very sort of different.
HUNT: Absolutely worth distinguishing.
ANDERSON: It is the case that in a lot of my data, I see voters feeling concerned about the issue of political corruption. But it's also important to note that when a voter tells me that they think political corruption is a big deal, lots of them think Trump is corrupt, but they think everybody is corrupt.
And so there's a lot of ah, yes, look, the average guy is getting screwed by politicians in Washington making a decision on their behalf. It's not a dynamic that I think is helping Republicans now. But I think in this specific instance, the biggest challenge I can see within the Republican coalition is Republicans actually do have a lot of outdoorsmen in their coalition. Every piece of data I've seen shows that it is Republican voters who stand alongside independents and Democrats saying they believe we should protect public lands.
So, the public opinion on this is where I actually think Republicans don't deserve sort of the stereotype of being like, oh, let's all sell it to developers. And I think in this specific instance, if they can make the case, like what Matt has made, that this is actually trying to expand access, that would be much more in line.
HUNT: I mean, it's the whole plot of the TV show "Yellowstone".
WHITLOCK: Yes.
HUNT: Save the land. Protect it from development.
WHILOCK: It's all about how this is framed --
ELROD: I think maybe you should be these folks --
HUNT: You did a very nice job.
(LAUGHTER)
HUNT: All right. Anna Kramer, thank you very much for your reporting. Thanks very much for spending some of your day with us. I appreciate it.
The rest of our panel is going to stand by. Ahead here in THE ARENA, the latest in the search-and-rescue efforts after a wall of water tore through the Nepal-China border, what we're now hearing from survivors of this flooding disaster.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE; So the way it came, it came just like a tsunami. It just came going all the way up. And just like a tsunami, how it sweeps going like a row, it just took the buses, the lands, houses, people, everything. We saw people just getting sucked in the water.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:47:25]
HUNT: All right, welcome back.
The death toll continues to climb in Nepal after catastrophic flash flooding ripped through mountainous border towns. Nearly 600 people are confirmed dead, more than 1,900 people are missing, including 90 Americans, according to the State Department.
New satellite images reveal the extent of the damage, disappeared towns, burst riverbanks. And now authorities are monitoring a new risk, a second newly formed lake is adding to concerns about further flooding with monsoon-fueled storms expected across the disaster region in the next few days.
CNN spoke with two Americans who shared their story of survival.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANJANA RAJA, SURVIVED FLOOD DISASTER: So, the way it came is came just like a tsunami. It just came going all the way up, and just like a tsunami, the how it sweeps, going like a row.
It just took the busses, the vans.
PATTABIRAMAN VENTAKASSEN, SURVIVED FLOOD DISASTER: Houses.
RAJA: Houses, people, everything. We saw people just getting sucked in the water. It was so traumatizing to see that. People are screaming, but of course, water doesn't hear anything.
It just kind of sucked them in.
I don't know if they were thrown away somewhere in the shore, but then this happened.
It was just a span of 30 minutes. In 30 minutes, everything was swept and gone. There was no water after that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Pretty stunning. In 30 minutes, everything was swept and gone.
CNN chief climate correspondent Bill Weir joins us now.
Bill, thank you so much for being here.
Can you walk us through what we know about what happened here, this threat of melting glaciers to towns that surround them?
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. I mean, it's still too early to definitively do the forensics on how much, you know, a warming climate led to this event. But we do know the Himalaya, the high mountain region, is heating up about 50 percent faster than average on the planet. We know that the glaciers are deflating everywhere around the world. As they do, they create these pools of water that are darker, which absorb more of the sun's energy than melt faster there and then sort of turn into Swiss cheese.
This one was almost 1/3 of a mile wide. This giant chunk of ice and some scientists think that the impact as it fell thousands of feet into the valley below just turned it, pulverized it into that slushy ice. And then by the time it reached those videos that you're seeing there, it had the consistency of almost like wet cement, viscous enough to spin those house-sized boulders there.
[16:50:01]
But this happened not to this extent, but a glacier squashed a quaint Swiss village last summer. There's another village called Kandersteg, Switzerland, that looks up every day because the permafrost is melting underneath this rock formation. Juneau, Alaska, has regular glacier flooding because the Mendenhall Glacier is thawing so quickly.
So I'm afraid this is sort of the opening attractions on a planet that's losing its ice. And the pain comes in either slow like it is in Lake Mead and Lake Powell or not enough snow in the Rockies is creating mega droughts or it comes in breathtaking, just life taking speed with something like this.
There were like three of these glacial lake outburst floods since 2021 in the Himalaya that have taken at most 300 lives. This will eclipse that by far and set a new standard for how to think about adaptation in these mountain communities.
HUNT: Well, that's actually exactly what I was going to ask you about, because when you look at these pictures and when I hear you talk about the scale of this problem, I mean, it almost sounds absurd to ask, well, what do we do about it? I'm also not sure what else to ask besides what can be done about it.
WEIR: Yeah. Well, you know, every gigaton of fossil fuel burned has that blanket in the sky that makes things warmer and speeds things up that much faster. We're now living through this real-time experiment, Kasie. And this was warned about decades past. But yeah, you're absolutely right about practically now cleaning up
from this, rescuing people in that quicksand, finding people in these high mountain passes, the cost of rebuilding these roads, the cost of trying to protect villages. You can see you go in the Alps and some of these ski towns have these quaint like snow barriers for wintertime avalanches, but it's just basic physics.
You know, the same reason you don't serve ice cream cake outdoors in Phoenix these days is the same phenomenon that's happening. The structure of these mountain landscapes that are frozen, as there's been studies done, as the temperature reaches certain points, the strength of these mountainsides goes down by factors that sort of blow your mind and you can't really think about it.
In the United States, we have Glacier National Park. It's losing all its glaciers, which is poignant, but that's not a threat to life and property like it is in some of the steepest communities around the world.
HUNT: All right. Well, on that remarkably cheerful note, Bill Weir, always appreciate your reporting. Very, very clear-eyed and helpful, but of course, the future seems to hold more of this, as you note. Thank you very much.
All right. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:57:25]
HUNT: All right, before we go, we want to get a quick update in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial. The jury ended deliberations today without reaching a verdict. They will be back in court on Monday.
CNN correspondent Brynn Gingrass joins us now with more.
So, Brynn, walk us through the second day of jury deliberations.
BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, so in total, Kasie, they've been deliberating about 10 hours over yesterday and today, like you said, they're going to come back on Monday, 9:00 a.m. fresh to continue discussing this case.
They asked for two key pieces of evidence that they wanted to take a look at. One being the knife that was used by Lindsay Clancy to cut her own wrists in her neck before she had that failed suicide attempt. And then also they wanted to see the prescription pill bottles that were admitted into evidence.
Now there are a number of those. If you remember, Lindsay Clancy had 12 different prescriptions over a four-month period. Some of the bottles, the defense actually brought out the fact that they were not taken in as evidence by police. And another set of pill bottles was found in the back of Patrick Clancy's car. He said that he would keep them there whenever Lindsay would have a change in course of her medications. So those were some of the things that they wanted to see. Of course,
you can never glean exactly what they're discussing in that jury room. but certainly interesting in itself. Something else that came out today that was a bit interesting was that one of the forensic psychiatrists, or rather just psychiatrists, that was a key witness for the prosecution, for the commonwealth, Avram Mack.
Now he testified that Lindsay Clancy was not suffering from postpartum psychosis when these killings happened. He actually left his job he resigned from his position at a children's hospital in Delaware earlier this week.
Now, he had some very contentious moments with the defense back and forth, so much so the defense almost kind of laughed at his credibility when he was giving his closing argument. So, what you can take from that who knows, but the timing is certainly curious at this point.
Lot to consider here remember, Kasie, in this -- in this case. There are, you know, about 90 witnesses that testified over these more than three tons and tons of evidence and the fact that jurors need to decide is Lindsay Clancy not guilty because of her criminal responsibility in which case she could go to a psychiatric hospital not guilty at all or is she guilty of a first-degree murder of these three children or a lesser degree second-degree murder or manslaughter. So a lot to consider and they're going to continue doing that on Monday.
HUNT: A lot -- a lot indeed really, really tragic.
All right. Brynn Gingras, for us -- Brynn, thank you very much for that reporting.
Thanks also to my panel. Thank you all very much for being here today.
Thanks to you at home for watching as well. Don't forget, you can watch much more THE ARENA tomorrow. THE ARENA SATURDAY airs at noon and again at 4:00 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN. I'd love to have you with us.
"THE LEAD" with Bianna Golodryga starts right now.
