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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
Trump Ramps-Up Midterms Involvement, Is That What GOP Wants?; Vance Talks "The End Times" In New Interview; Vance Says He's Doing "God's Work" & "If That Leads To The End Times, OK"; Princeton Review: More Colleges Surpass $100,000 Price Tag; Feminist Activist & Icon Gloria Steinem Dies At 92; Pumpkin Spiked, McDonald's Replaces Popular Flavor. Aired 12-1p ET
Aired September 05, 2026 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN ANCHOR: And the CNN film "Top of the World" premieres Monday at 8:00 p.m. Eastern. It is extraordinary to think that the entire 25 years of this 21st century has been imprinted with that dark, dark memory and that dark legacy of what 9/11 did and how the world reacted.
That is all we have time for. Don't forget, you can find all of our shows online as podcasts at CNN.com/audio and on all other major platforms. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. Thank you for watching and I'll see you again next week.
[12:00:47]
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Hi everyone, I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to The Arena Saturday.
We are now less than two months from Election Day. The first mail ballots have been sent out. And this week, President Donald Trump said he's ready to hit the campaign trail.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: All the way to November 3rd and beyond, we're going to be helping you. I'm going to be going around and doing a lot of speeches.
Well I'm not running. My party's running and I'm going to help my party. I'm going to be going the last 30 days before the election. I'll be making a lot of stuff.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So for months, Republican candidates have been desperate for the President to deploy some of the more than $400 million that his Super PAC has in its coffers and that's begun, at least in a small way, with the President hosting battleground candidates at a special dinner in the Rose Garden and his PAC releasing its first million dollar ad buy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security. The largest tax cuts in American history. The price of eggs is down 60 percent.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's fighting for you every day. Help him finish the job.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, my panel's here in The Arena. The co-host of the Interview podcast from the New York Times and a CNN Contributor, Lulu Garcia-Navarro, CNN Special Correspondent Jamie Gangel, Former Democratic State Senator and 2014 Georgia Gubernatorial Nominee Jason Carter, along with Former Republican Congressman and Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry.
It's great to have all of you with us this weekend. Thank you very much for being here.
Congressman, that ad that the Super PAC is spending lots of money on, you know, if the President sounded like that every day from the Oval Office, maybe when I called Republicans on the Hill, they would be happier.
PATRICK MCHENRY (R), FORMER SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE: A lot happier. A lot happier, right? This week we had a good jobs report for the American economy. We still see continued growth. We see inflation still sticky, but growth outstripping inflation. These are good things if you're the party in power, but we do have the Iran war and we do have a tariff battle, not just with China, but the globe.
And that -- those are the major headwinds that the American people are experiencing. For the President to be able to refocus and for Republicans to refocus in the midterm on what was popular that brought Republicans into power in 2024 is a good thing. So this midterm convention is a useful and good thing to refocus those things that were popular.
HUNT: That, of course, coming up next week, right?
MCHENRY: Yes.
HUNT: The President's going to go down to Dallas.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: We said so many people don't want to go. Why could that be? What a strange thing. It's like they're throwing a party and a lot of the people that are invited are just sort of, like, declining. What would that tell you?
It would tell you that what we saw in that ad is Trump making it all about himself. And I would say that if you are running in your 30s as the president, you don't want to make it about your coattails.
HUNT: You mean his approval rating, not his age.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: His approval ratings.
HUNT: Yes.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes, no, no.
HUNT: Just to be clear.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Not his age. His approval rating.
JASON CARTER (D), FORMER GEORGIA STATE SENATOR: I'll --
HUNT: Yes, go ahead.
CARTER: No, I was just going to say, when I hear people talking about how the economy is good, it reminds me of what the Democrats did wrong a couple of years ago, which is telling people, hey, don't worry, the economy is actually good, when they don't feel it, right? When I'm at home, like, people do not feel like this economy is working for them. They do not feel like costs are coming down. They don't.
And so when you start telling people, yes, they are, people think you don't have credibility. And I think that's the problem that we've got with the narrative right now.
HUNT: At what point, I mean, do you think that when you talk to folks at home, did they start blaming the current President? Because for a while, Trump could get away with blaming Biden and the previous administration, but it doesn't seem like that's the case anymore.
CARTER: I think Iran broke it. I think that, you know, you don't get to build an arch in ancient Rome unless you win the war. And here we are with, you know, different things going on, people trying to build arches while they started the war they can't end. And I think that was one of the ways where my friends that are Republicans are like, you know, we broke this. We bought it. We need to deal with it. And I don't think Trump has done that yet.
HUNT: Jamie, what do you think?
JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: To Lulu's point about the convention next week, does this help? Who is signing up to pay $25,000 to have their picture taken with the President? If you're in a tight race, you want him to be giving you money.
I mean, that ad you showed, yes, the message is right, but it's all about Donald Trump. And that's not a winning message in a lot of these tight races.
[12:05:09]
HUNT: I will say at least that version of being all about Trump, Congressman, is not what we hear about in Washington all the time. And what -- if you read the book that Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan put out, the President is spending like 70 percent of his time thinking about the Kennedy Center.
And this week, he put out a coin with his own face on it. It sounds like they're moving ahead with plans for the arch. The list kind of goes on and on. There's the ballroom, right? And what else am I forgetting? The President is like locked in on those things. What impact does that have on Republicans running for office?
MCHENRY: It's not helpful, but the American people aren't focused on that. They're actually talking about the very thing you're talking about. They're -- how are they living? How's their life? How do they feel about it? And they don't feel right.
And the headwinds are real. There's concern, a macro concern about A.I., and the manifestation of their concerns is borne out against anger about data centers. But it's really about the rising cost of energy that they can point to with data centers.
But let me give you one factoid. This administration has brought down the cost of prescription drugs. Does anyone know that? Is this information to this panel?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Some --
MCHENRY: Yes, OK. No --
GANGEL: Some.
MCHENRY: The prescription drug basket that they measure the price of is less today than it was six months ago. No one knows that. And you're arguing with me about the fact. There's a government stat that has been long kept.
No one's talking about this. This is a success of the administration. They need to actually talk about that and also talk about what they would do if they were reelected and given power for two more years. We hear none of the celebration of successes until this ad, one. And then, two, no agenda set by either party on what they would do if they win the election. It's a pretty lame mid-dock right -- mid-term this -- right now.
GANGEL: Can I just push back just a little on the ballroom and the Arc de Trump or whatever it is and the reflecting pond (ph)? You know, there was an article in, I think, New York Magazine, it added up all of these projects that the President is obsessed with. And they came up with a figure that all of his construction is $1 billion plus. And you suggested people aren't paying attention to it.
When your grocery prices are up, when your interest rates are up, when your gas prices are up, when diesel prices are going to make everything go up, I do think people are paying attention to it. I think those construction projects from the ballroom, to the patio, to the E-swing are tone deaf.
CARTER: Yes.
GANGEL: And they do get through.
CARTER: They're big-time tone deaf. Go ahead. You were going to say that.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: No, I was, actually. But I was going to say something else. There was this, as you mentioned, article this past week in New York Magazine. And what was so interesting is that it was an interview with President Trump about all of his projects. And one of the quotes in it is Trump saying, "My advisers told me not to talk about this and give you this interview, but I want to. I'm very proud of it."
And that's ultimately where we are. It is his id on display, right? He -- this is the symbol of who he is and what he wants to do. And that's what he's the most interested in talking about.
MCHENRY: But let's rewind. 1998, Bill Clinton, impeachment, right? They won the election because gas prices were cheap, the economy was roaring, and people did not care what the President was doing, right? And flip side of this is the economy is not roaring, gas prices are not low, and you don't have the strong economic narrative to say, go live your life, have a great life, ignore this stuff.
So the obsession with these things that the President's obsessed with by the media and by the President himself is not helpful and additive.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But no -- but the --
MCHENRY: Harm reduction.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: -- difference between Clinton and now is that the obsession is a symbol of exactly the problem, which is --
HUNT: Right.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: -- about where people spend their money. And it is a symbol of, like, I want to have a big, fancy ballroom --
MCHENRY: We can call them both obsessions.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: -- and I want to be with my billionaire friends.
CARTER: Right.
MCHENRY: Well, they're both obsessions by Bill Clinton.
CARTER: Hold on. Yes. Well, the biggest difference to me is that the President is not doing his job right now on the things that people care about. And what he's spending his time on are the things that he cares about, that we can all agree are distractions.
The difference in 1998, in my opinion, is that the reason the President wasn't doing his job is because the Republicans in Congress were the ones that got punished for drawing this out into something that was not about what matters in American life, right? So that's the difference. The President is choosing to do these things instead of the things that I care about or that we care about at home. And I think that's the biggest difference.
HUNT: Yes. One of the elements here, Congressman, of course, is that if this wave is as big as it could be based on the polling, we could see some things come into play that we might have not expected. I'm curious just what you think about Texas in particular, because the President is campaigning there. I mean, do you think James Talarico has a real shot?
[12:10:07]
MCHENRY: Yes, because Republicans have nominated a criminal. And what I would say is that criminal is likely to be --
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That is the quote of the week.
HUNT: Don't cut him off. Let him finish. That criminal what?
CARTER: Look, I mean, that doesn't change the outcome of Alabama, for example, though.
MCHENRY: No, I mean, I would say this. I would say that the deeply anti-Semitic Democrat in Michigan is likely to win the Michigan Senate race. And the deeply problematic and, I think, criminal Republican nominee in Texas will win the Texas Senate race. I think those things shake out.
The fact the midterm convention is there and the President is bringing attention to Texas is helpful to Republican chances in Texas. As dumb as that sounds, if we talked about this a year ago, if I'm talking about Texas in the midterms, I would say this is a pretty nasty election year for Republicans. I'm also really grateful that I am not on the ballot as a Republican.
HUNT: Which is part of why you're free to state things as plainly as you have here today.
All right, coming up next here in The Arena, the Vice President said what? That's our quote of the week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JD VANCE (R), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What I'm trying to focus on is doing as much of God's work as possible right now. And if that leads to the end times, OK.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[12:16:06]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're the Vice President of the United States.
VANCE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know a lot that's going on more than people do. What do you think about the end times? Do you think that we're here? Do you think it's common?
VANCE: I have, for my entire life, been fascinated by end times prophecy and theology. (END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Vice President JD Vance this week on a Christian podcast promoting his book on his Catholic faith and talking about one part of his religion that he says has always fascinated him -- the end times. Of course, the belief in the Christian faith that Jesus Christ will return to Earth in the ultimate judgment of humanity, which brings us to our quote of the week. The Vice President's comments about whether what he's doing now could lead us to said end times.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: I tend to think like the -- while I wouldn't be shocked if we are living in the end times, what I'm trying to focus on is doing as much of God's work as possible right now. And if that leads to the end times, OK. And if that leads to, you know, us building a better world that thrives and survives for a very long time after I'm gone, that's great, too.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
VANCE: I just think you've got to kind of try to have an attitude of the end times may be coming.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: OK, my panel is back. Yes, Lulu, go ahead.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Can I just choose door number two?
HUNT: Sure.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Door number two of what he said. I want to walk through door number two where the Vice President of the United States is not working towards the end times, but is rather working towards making peace and prosperity here on Earth for as long as possible. That's what I would like to have happen. That is a crazy statement.
CARTER: Well, I mean, you know, it's funny because my grandfather, of course, Jimmy Carter was evangelical Christian, believed in his heart about all of some of the things that JD Vance just said. And the difference is what has come to be the political version of God's work is so different than it was for my grandfather, right?
We had a situation, you know, they used to talk about, there's an old saying about mixing religion and politics and how it will -- it's like mixing manure and ice cream. It's not going to hurt the manure, but it will really mess up the ice cream, right? And our religion has gotten so taken over by this politicized version of Christianity where working -- doing God's work is not what Jesus talked about, feeding the poor, you know, making sure that people have homes.
What is it that we're doing for the least of these? How are we connecting with humanity? It's about whatever JD Vance is doing. And I think that the politicized face of Christianity has become a real problem that I think certainly would be disappointing to the Jimmy Carter Baptists that I grew up with.
MCHENRY: But he's a Catholic and he's a convert to Catholicism, and he's trying to explain that journey. And the context of that answer and his attempt at the answer, I think, was a laudable one, to shift away from the question of end times and say, actually, I'm just trying to do God's work here on the planet. Whatever may happen, may happen.
HUNT: I think the bridge was that he then said, if it leads to the end times, then fine, so be it.
MCHENRY: Which calls into question these general interviews that he's been about. Remember, his book tour was overwhelmed by the selling point of resolving the Iran war because it was resolved there. They had a plan, it was done, and that was what they were touting.
So for -- he is trying to create his own national image. And with all of these things, there's a lot of cringe to it. And no matter how disciplined he is of a messenger, being able to see who the person is, to create his own image for 2028, is a choppy rollout.
CARTER: You've got to think aloud of yourself to think you can bring on the end times, but anyway.
HUNT: Say a little bit more, the choppy rollout. Because the other thing, of course, that we saw from JD Vance this week was that he went to the podium and he cracked at least one, I think, joke about how Ted Cruz was very likable and authentic. And I'm curious what you thought of his performance overall and whether he has -- whether that helped show that he would have what it takes.
[12:20:04]
MCHENRY: He's trying to do that. He had a great success with The View, highly disciplined interview. He handled that well. And everyone regarded that as like a really standout moment for him in that book tour that for months -- a couple months ago. But he is trying to develop his own national voice and rapport, and it is not natural.
I would say that if you look at Ted Cruz's disciplined messaging, he's as disciplined as JD Vance is. But the person who is in the sidecar here for all these conversations is Marco Rubio, who the Internet memes have actually created much more of a status for who Marco is, much more relatable in the interviews and his podcasts and these conversations about who he is.
And it's really interesting to see the personality development, all while President Trump dominates the Republican Party, captivates the Republican Party in a way that no Republican President has, I think, ever.
HUNT: Yes. Jamie Gangel, you've covered a lot of campaigns. What do you make of these early forays by JD Vance into '28?
GANGEL: So the thing that I always note about JD Vance is he is very fluent. I can see him in law school, the debate stage. You know, he -- but to the Congressman's point, I'm not sure it translates. And I agree with you about the Marco Rubio memes. I think that's helped Rubio normalize him.
But at the end of the day, JD Vance is not Donald Trump. And I just don't think he will get the kind of enthusiasm that Trump gets.
HUNT: Jason, if you're a Democrat running in '28, who do you hope Republicans pick?
CARTER: I think the biggest problem that we all have is nobody knows who these guys are, right? I mean, they've been so many things. Everyone's like, yes, you're a Donald Trump bannerman. Like, you've bent the knee, you've bent over backwards for the President. All those guys have, right?
But who are they really? Like, without Donald Trump, I don't think we know, right? I don't know who JD Vance is. I know who he pretends to be. I know who he was when he wrote his book. It's someone different now.
You know, Ted Cruz has been three or four different people. Marco Rubio has been three or four different people. I mean, none of them have the kind of coherent character that you see from Donald Trump. So I just think Democrats right now are like, we don't know what we're going to get.
But we know it's not going to be Donald Trump. And so we're going to have to deal with it. And they're -- if they're cleaving to this record, then I think Democrats are going to be glad.
MCHENRY: I mean, who am I to say I'm a weird-looking guy wearing a bow tie? So --
CARTER: You look great.
MCHENRY: Oh, yes. But it's very -- they have to develop a national character, and there has to be authenticity. We talk about the passing of Dolly Parton. Truly authentic human being. There are very, very rare American personalities that break through like that.
Donald Trump, authenticity is his winning message for two presidential -- you know, two successful presidential elections. And that matters for the Trump brand. It's much more about the brand than it is about the policy side.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But can I just say what we're actually seeing is the splintering of the Republican Party? Because what, of course, Donald Trump did more than anything else is sort of cement over, not even paper over, the divisions that exist there. And now, once these midterms are over, if, you know, the law is followed, he is going to not be the President for much longer.
And there are very different strains of the Republican Party under him. And JD Vance is trying to capture one of them, which is --
HUNT: Yes.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: -- the religious right, you know, the online right. And that is different than the ones that the Rubio camp --
GANGEL: Right.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: -- are trying to capture.
HUNT: Yes, for sure.
All right, coming up next here in The Arena, a look at the life and legacy of feminist icon and activist Gloria Steinem, who we lost this week. But first, higher education coming at an even higher price. Stunning new numbers on the cost of college, with more schools charging upward of six figures per year.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:28:39]
HUNT: All right, it's officially back to school season. And for some college students this year, it's going to come with serious sticker shock as a record number of American universities are now charging over $100,000 per year. That's right. At 15 schools in the U.S., one year of undergraduate attendance will now run you six figures when you account for the cost of tuition, housing, books, other fees.
A year ago, there were only two schools with that price tag, according to the Princeton Review. You do the math, multiply it over four years, as parents across the country are doing. That is nearly $500,000 for a bachelor's degree. The spiraling cost is begging the question, is higher education worth it anymore?
Does anyone have an answer to that question?
MCHENRY: Every American's asking the question. Every parent's asking it. And very frustrated. The fact is, you know, our health care industry, our higher education industry, it is the most federally subsidized institutions in our economy and the worst value for the consumer.
And both have bad pricing regimes. The sticker price on a health care procedure at a hospital is not what people actually pay and not what, if they have insurance, what insurance pays. It's all different rates. Same thing for higher education.
[12:30:01]
And then, that's before you get into the scandals of elite families having connectivity to get into elite institutions, which is its own separate scandal. But broadly, everybody's questioning the value, both in health care and in higher education.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I mean, the problem also in the United States is that we don't really have vocational schools as they do in many other countries like Germany, et cetera. You know, what, you know, what do people do who don't want to go and do that? Yes, of course, we have, you know, sort of two-year colleges, et cetera, et cetera. But I think that there is a question, are you getting a return on your investment now, especially with the A.I. economy, right? What kind of jobs are kids going to get? How are they going to pay back their loans?
I mean, these are -- it's not just the question of the sticker shock and the value of four years, it's how am I going to pay back that money because most people actually can't afford to pay it up front. And so all of these questions are really roiling young people today. If you talk to kids who are in high school, they're really worried. They just don't know what it's supposed to look like. Before, you either thought, OK, I'm going to go to college, I'm going to go four years. Maybe if I go to a good college, I'm going to get a good job. It'll all, the math will all make sense in the end. But now, there's no guarantee.
CNN HOST: Jason, you have college-age kids.
CARTER: Yes, so I think it's an interesting point, right? We have a senior in high school and I've got a sophomore in college. And they're both, you know, excellent students, et cetera. But we live in Georgia. Georgia does a great job of making higher ed in Georgia affordable, right? We have the HOPE scholarship. We have a variety of other things.
And even when my kids look out at what they want, your concerns about what is the economy going to be like in five years? What is A.I. going to do? Those are real, right? But in terms of the sticker shock, what I hope doesn't happen is that number sounds huge. Almost nobody pays that number. The amount of need-based scholarships at all of these schools is enormous.
I think the -- At Duke University, for example, the average discount is almost 72 percent off of that. I'm not saying $28,000 is not a lot of money. It is. But it ain't $100,000 a year, right? And so I think what we need is to make sure that people know what they want to do, know why they want to do it, and they are able to follow it. That's what I hope for my kids. I mean -- and my family may end up having to pay that to one of these schools.
And we're lucky to be able to have saved and done that. But for most people, I think we need to know that people can still aim to do what they want. They're not really going to have to pay that, even though it is indicative of a lot of the problems that we're talking about.
HUNT: Do you think it contributes to inequality that these numbers are out there? Just because, I mean, there's got to be kids out there from backgrounds who feel like they see a number, like six figures, and they say, like, why would I even try?
CARTER: Yes, I think no doubt that happens. I think no doubt. And that's why it's really important for us all to say, hey, like, if you are a kid, and my kids go to Atlanta public schools, right? There's definitely kids in my children's graduating classes didn't have anyone in their family ever go to college.
But in Georgia, at least, and in the schools that we go to in Atlanta public schools, there's a lot of counseling out there that says, what do you want to do? Here's what a four-year college can do for you. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do you know what my biggest concern is? Because I mentor a lot of college students and high school students. And one of the things that I hear all the time is, I want to be a journalist. I want to be a teacher. I want to be a nurse. I can't afford to be those things because I have huge student loans. I have all this money to pay. And so I'm going to try and go into something that is going to remunerate me in a bigger way. And that is one of the things that I think is so hard.
Because you do need people to get these degrees, to do the jobs that we value so much in our society. And how can they do that if the money is just so overwhelmingly large?
GANGEL: To your point, Kasie, I'd say the word anxiety. You know, what is the job going to be? What is the impact of A.I.? And then most kids look at a number like that. Even at 70 percent, you know, $30,000 is a huge ticket. I did the math.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: A year. That's the thing. You're ending up with almost $120,000 at the end of it. And you're starting your career.
GANGEL: And just some math. I went back. I know I'm old. And I looked at my senior year's tuition. It was $4,100.
CARTER: Yes.
GANGEL: I did the math for inflation corrected. It should be $23,200. It is $100,000 at that school right now. So there are also some issues for higher education that they have to figure out.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Name and shame. What's the school?
HUNT: Are you going to jump in?
MCHENRY: No. There's a separation between elite institutions, higher education institutions. Politically, we've seen this with their testimony on Capitol Hill just in the last two years. We've seen their separation culturally from the rest of the economy, rest of the country. And then you see parents moving. The thing that I most hear when I visit New York about the interesting places in their kids, if you're in New York and you have the capacity, Vanderbilt, right? Not Yale.
[12:35:02]
HUNT: Tulane. Emory.
MCHENRY: This shift is a huge thing for the South.
HUNT: SMU. College of Charleston. There you go.
MCHENRY: So this shift is happening because these families are seeing that they're not getting the return. They don't want to send their kids to these places culturally. And the combination of those two things with the sticker price obviously is having a major impact on those institutions. And drawing out the need for them to change. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Are they investing in the fancy dorm rooms? Because I get a lot of fancy dorm room talk. And I'm just saying like I'm kind of here for it.
HUNT: I get a lot of it on Instagram.
(CROSSTALK)
CARTER: I'll show you my child's sophomore year dorm if you want to see something you don't want to see.
HUNT: All right. Ahead here in The Arena, we're going to take a look at the fight for gender equality in the U.S. following the death of longtime activist and feminist icon Gloria Steinem.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The mark of being part of the wrong group, a peripheral group rather than a central one, is that nothing you do is right. And what's so interesting about not being able to win and by conforming is that you learn to do whatever you all please. Can I say that?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You did.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[12:40:50]
GLORIA STEINEM, ACTIVIST: Because I'm recognizable, I get this great, enormous reward of hearing stories of how people's lives have changed. And at that moment, when I'm listening to that person tell me that, I often think to myself, you know, if only this, it would have been enough.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: This week in history, we lost a formidable force, the face of women's rights, for over half a century. Gloria Steinem passed away, surrounded by loved ones, at the age of 92. Her fingerprint's all over American culture, whether you realize it or not. She influenced women's rights from the boardroom to the bedroom. She coined the phrase, reproductive freedom, and created Ms. Magazine in the 1970s. She told Netflix how she wanted to be remembered.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So then how would you want people to be talking about you, remembering you? What would you want people to say about you, both who didn't know you and did know you?
STEINEM: Well, there was this person who tried to make the world a little more equal, compassionate, joyful, funny, than it was when I showed up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: What a remarkable life. Jamie Gangel, I mean, what are your -- what do you think about, how will you remember Gloria Steinem and what she meant?
GANGEL: So I just want to say I watched the Netflix last night, and I really, not to plug Netflix, but it's, she is funny in it, and she is unflinching and honest, and just, she calls Hugh Hefner pathetic at one point, but here's her guilty pleasure, she liked dance moms, which I never thought that I would hear. But Gloria Steinem is from my generation. I remember when Ms. Magazine started and what it meant.
And even though my mother was a lawyer and a judge and unusual for the time, what Gloria Steinem brought to the table for my generation going forward really is iconic and important.
HUNT: Lulu?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I have been consuming a lot of Gloria Steinem content since her passing, and she was not only funny and wise, but because I'm a woman filled with rage, she was also incredibly fierce. And she carried that sort of righteous moral anger that I have to say I find so compelling. And there's this quote that I saw that I posted online where she's talking about why her generation might have not had a good relationship with their mothers, and how the women's movement caused women to sort of embrace each other and mother themselves because society had driven all their mothers crazy and all the inequalities.
And I just found it to be just a really interesting idea about how she viewed community. But what was fueling all of that was just this absolute feeling that she couldn't stand injustice wherever she saw it. And I have to say it's something that resonates deeply with me.
HUNT: Jason, your grandfather was president as a lot of this was unfolding. Do you have memories of her? How did they work together or get along?
CARTER: So the way that I get content in my life is everybody who sees anything about Jimmy Carter, they send it to me. So what has been happening over the last few days, I don't know if you guys have it, but there's this, she put on the cover of Ms. Magazine a picture of Jimmy Carter when he was the president pregnant.
And it was a accountability measure because he said to her and my grandmother, the thing that's remarkable to me is that she so inspired my grandmother and my grandfather. And then she has so inspired this so many other generations, right? I mean, there's a truly cross- generational impact. And but the point of this thing about Jimmy Carter was that he said he was going to do something.
[12:45:09]
And she stood there to your point and said, well, you haven't done it yet. And I think that he really devoted a lot of his life, certainly the last 20 years of his life was about what to do about inequality and about the protection of women and girls and he wrote books about it and he focused the Carter Center on it in real ways in no small part because of the steel that she sort of put into his backbone on those issues and I think she did that with a lot of people, men and women.
HUNT: Are there people you've talked to that remember what his reaction was to the cover?
CARTER: I don't know but I guarantee you the way my grandmother's reaction was exactly. My grandmother's exact, my grandmother would have certainly said Jimmy now you know.
HUNT: So Congressman, Gloria Steinem published a final essay in the New Yorker, which they sent out yesterday with a date of September 3rd and in it she wrote this, "People often ask me what should we do? No one person could answer that for everyone. I will say that we must work together to make sure that equal laws and customs become normalized. While there are many external gestures the biggest leaps are those that we make within ourselves. Standing up for your own full humanity is an example you can give to others. Bring equality into your workplace and home and follow the sense you probably had as a child before gender roles took shape about fairness."
We of course have seen and Gloria Steinem has acknowledged that there has been a backlash to a lot of the things that she pushed for in the 70s and 80s during the height of the women's movement. What is your reaction to what she says here about how we find fairness?
MCHENRY: I think we're always in search of this. I mean the beauty of America is that we have a system by which we can have a continuous argument, a continuous argument and a hope and drive for a better tomorrow and that's what should unite us in our politics. And then we have folks that are outside of government that influence that.
And it's a rare moment in American history where somebody who's not had any appointed office, any elective office create a cultural phenomenon and will it into existence. She's on that small league over the last 250 years to successfully do that and leave America in a fundamentally different place than when she emerged on the scene 60 years ago.
HUNT: Jamie, do you think the backlash is still continuing?
GANGEL: Well, looking at Roe v. Wade and you know what I worry about is there's a young generation that may not be in touch with the change that happened and her influence and the influence of the feminist movement so I do think there still is.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: As she would say, the fight goes on.
[12:47:59]
HUNT: All right. Coming up next, something totally different. The Great Pumpkin Spice Latte divide.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Meg, it's the start of pumpkin spice latte season.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What's that?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A very special day for white women everywhere, even bigger than Martha Stewart's birthday.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: August 3rd.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Honey, there comes a day when every white girl must become a white woman. Today is that day.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Oh my God. OK. I'm just straight up laughing. Pumpkin spice latte season is apparently going to be, for those who celebrate, a little less magical this year after McDonald's announced that they will not be including it on its fall menu. I'm sorry, what? For the first time in 10 years, the fast food chain is not serving what is many people's fall favorite and instead will offer a new seasonal flavor, caramel apple pie.
In a statement, McDonald's said in part, "We are always exploring new ways to give fans seasonal flavors to enjoy. We chose caramel apple pie because it offers a fresh take on the familiar tastes of fall." As for Starbucks, they of course got the world hooked on pumpkin spice lattes. It started back in 2003. It will be business as usual. Hey, the clip said all the things.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It did. I don't like it. I'm glad it's gone. It's gross and no thank you.
HUNT: I hate pumpkin spice lattes. I don't know. Jamie, like how do you feel about that?
GANGEL: I say thank you, McDonald's.
CARTER: I mean, you guys are the focus group, right? Like, I mean, it turns out.
HUNT: As someone who graduated high school in 2003. Yes.
CARTER: I'm just saying like for those McRib fans out there, like if they bring the McRib back after all that time, they can bring the pumpkin spice latte back. It's not the end of the world.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What about you? You're being very quiet here at the end.
MCHENRY: That's so good. Like, how am I going to follow up? Come on. Oh my gosh.
HUNT: Do you have pumpkin spice latte fans in your family?
MCHENRY: No. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. I'll see you. I'm good.
GANGEL: We may be the focus group at the end.
[12:55:02]
MCHENRY: These corporate decisions where they're like, this product sells. It's fantastic. People love it. We're going to take it away. Like, who makes these decisions? And why doesn't somebody get fired for it?
HUNT: Do you guys remember when McDonald's took away their apple pie?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Oh, this is upsetting. I'll fight you on.
HUNT: They brought it back.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes, the fried apple pie thing.
MCHENRY: There's no other way to burn your mouth a billion ways. The best way to burn it is apple pie.
HUNT: I used to love those things. Like after soccer practice in the 90s for me, like it was terrific.
OK, guys, thank you. Great way to end. Thanks to all of you at home for spending part of your weekend with us. Don't forget, you can see The Arena every weekday right here on CNN at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. You can also catch up by listening to our podcast. You can follow us on X and Instagram. We're at TheArenaCNN, but do enjoy the rest of your weekend. The news continues up next right here on CNN.
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