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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
Trump Makes GOP Midterm Convention Attendees Pledge They Will Vote And "Try To Cheat Like Hell"; Trump Promises $5k To Evey American If GOP Wins Midterms; America Marks 25 Years Since The 9/11 Terror Attacks; Anthropic Researcher Quits, Citing Fear AI "Could Kill Us All". Anthropic Researcher Quits, Citing Fear A.I. "Could Kills Us All"; Smithsonian Head To Exit As Trump Fights To Reshape Institution; Nathan Fielder Drops Trailer For Secret Elizabeth Holmes Doc. Aired 12-1p ET
Aired September 12, 2026 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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I'm Christiane Amanpour in London, thank you for watching and I'll see you again next week.
[12:00:29]
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everyone, I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to The Arena Saturday.
The first ever Republican midterm convention is behind us and the question now is, will it work for them? This week's two-day gathering in Dallas was supposed to help the GOP turn the tide against what sure looks like it could be a massive blue wave. Central to that effort is President Donald Trump. But if you tuned in to both of his primetime speeches, he sounded maybe a little bit desperate to get Republicans to the polls.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Please pretend that I'm running and get out and vote on November 3rd. If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.
Please raise your right hand. I pledge --
AUDIENCE: I pledge --
TRUMP: -- to the greatest president in the history of the United States --
AUDIENCE: -- to the greatest president in the history of the United States --
TRUMP: -- that loves us so much he can't even breathe.
AUDIENCE: -- that loves us so much he can't even breathe.
TRUMP: That I will go out with my family, my friends, I'll do it anyway. I don't care if I'm registered or not, I'm going to try and cheat like hell like they do.
You know what happens if you don't vote? You go to hell, you know that, OK? You go to hell. And I don't want that to happen to you, so please go and vote.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Does the Bible say that? I'm not sure.
All right, my panel's here in The Arena. CNN Legal Analyst, Former Federal Prosecutor Elliot Williams, Former Assistant DHS Secretary and CNN National -- Assistant DHS Secretary and CNN National Security Analyst Juliette Kayyem, Former Communications Director in the Biden White House and CNN Political Commentator Kate Bedingfield, along with Former Republican Congressman and Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry. Always great to see all of you.
Congressman, like, cheat like hell, you're going to hell if you don't vote. Like, what was that?
PATRICK MCHENRY (R), FORMER SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE: That is a standard Trump rally, right? Accepting --
HUNT: I don't think I've heard that before, though.
MCHENRY: Oh, but this is the iteration on the same theme, so not surprising in any way. The whole thing, cheat like they do, it's because the Republicans assume that Democrats cheat in the elections. That's like --
HUNT: And do they assume that because Trump says it over and over and over again, or why?
MCHENRY: No, because Chicago exists, right? So --
HUNT: You don't have to single out Chicago.
MCHENRY: I know, but I got to say --
HUNT: Picking on that.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: He's on message though, so.
MCHENRY: But the thing is, in an election like this, an election like this, where Trump voters are new to the Republican Party and to the Republican coalition, he's trying to drive that base out, that Trump unique base out in a midterm where they're otherwise not going to show up. You also have this discussion about the House of Representatives.
So you have all this news that's counter to Republicans maintaining the majority, but there are so few seats that are in play for the House of Representatives, so few states that are in play for the Senate, that each little bit of iteration of turnout will make a difference on the final count of the Congress. That's what this whole thing is about, turning that base out, getting them geared up -- ginned up and ready to go. And that's what they did. I think they did a pretty decent job of that.
WILLIAMS: It is pretty wild to talk about the threat of socialism taking America over or $5,000 checks coming from the White House. The irony there should not be lost on anyone.
MCHENRY: Actually --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, the --
MCHENRY: -- this is such an old thing now. Every president's now going to issue checks.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
MCHENRY: This goes back to Bush right after 25 years ago. It was the first sort of direct stimulus checks post 9/11. This is not new.
KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Wasn't this the massive argument against Biden's spending? We were hearing from Republicans it was inflationary. It's the reason we're dealing with inflation. Donald Trump says it's still the reason that we're dealing with inflation. Obviously, that is not true.
In part, he's worn around. It's part of the reason we're still dealing with inflation choices he's made. So it's a totally incoherent argument for one thing. But also, you know, the big -- I certainly understand the strategy of putting Trump front and center to try to drag people who are otherwise not going to turn out to the polls, but, you know, there's a real glaring hole in the strategy, which is that Donald Trump is at about 37, 34 percent approval, depending on the poll you look at.
So the idea that, you know, kind of this vintage Trump, you know, craziness that we saw on display is going to bring people who are saying, I actively don't like what Donald Trump is currently doing as president of the United States out to the polls. I'm not sure that's going to work out.
[12:05:10]
HUNT: Well, I mean, Congressman, like some of your former colleagues, Rep. Bob Good says this is a "socialist vote-buying scheme." Chip Roy said, "Some of us think dependency is evil and soul-sucking in all its forms." Senator Susan Collins says it "would be extremely costly. Tax and spending decisions should not appear to be tied to election results."
MCHENRY: Yes, there you go.
HUNT: He's like, I have nothing else to add. It's like fair point. MCHENRY: So, one got voted out of office, you know, of the three points. One got voted out of office. The other's leaving office at the end of this term. The other's in a competitive race in Maine.
Look, who showed up to this convention? This is a large-scale rally. Conventions are a lot about connecting with people, political ambitions, and a little bit of fun. Post-Labor Day in a midterm election, this is not a standard thing. So you had a variety of people come, participate, a lot of others that didn't.
HUNT: Julia, I mean, one of the other things that's looming over this, of course, is, you know, as all of this was unfolding, JD Vance was heading to do his primetime address. The Wall Street Journal reported that in the White House, they basically are looking at the possibility that the war in Iran lasts past the end of Trump's presidency. Is that not hanging over all of this?
JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, I mean, I thought the sort of -- the thing in the room that's not being discussed is, why is Trump so wildly unpopular, right? And it begins, really, this plummeting is because of the Iran war. And they are desperate to figure out a way in which the president can claim victory, and the Iranians are not letting him.
And we have not come to terms with this as a country, that we are stuck because the Iranians are playing us. I don't know any other way to sort of explain this from the security perspective. So his plummeting, Trump's plummeting polling that requires a promise to the, you know, a lie. I mean --
BEDINGFIELD: Yes.
KAYYEM: -- we didn't even admit that, a lie to the American public for a $5,000 check.
MCHENRY: No, I'm saying that's standard now.
KAYYEM: But it's a standard -- you can say it's a standard. It's also a lie. So if it's a lie, then it's because the Iranian war -- the Iran war.
HUNT: Well, I mean, he's saying, listen, if you vote for us, we'll do it. I mean --
KAYYEM: And it's not going to happen.
HUNT: -- politicians do make promises all the time.
KAYYEM: Yes, yes. They make lies.
WILLIAMS: And I --
BEDINGFIELD: Well, I think the -- just -- I think -- so absolutely, the war certainly a huge driver of his --
KAYYEM: Yes. BEDINGFIELD: -- unpopularity, but also this larger idea of broken promises.
KAYYEM: Yes.
BEDINGFIELD: I mean, people who felt like he promised that he was going to come in and lower prices, he didn't, hasn't. And so, for him to make a, you know, a promise that I'm going to put $5,000 in your pocket, which he's not, I mean, first of all, Congress would have to do it, and that's not going to happen.
KAYYEM: It's someone, yes.
BEDINGFIELD: So, it's really actually just underscoring the long record of broken promises.
WILLIAMS: And I don't know if I'd characterize this is a rebate check in the traditional sense, whether to stimulate spending or in relation to government policy. It's, if you vote for us, we will give you money. Now, the president is allowed to do that. It's perfectly his right to do that.
HUNT: So, it's not like a bribe? Because you're not allowed to bribe people.
WILLIAMS: It's certainly not. The lawyer did not say it was a bribe, but I actually think it's a little limiting to refer to it as a rebate check.
HUNT: I mean --
MCHENRY: Right. So there's been a long debate. When Bush did this post 9/11 --
WILLIAMS: Yes.
MCHENRY: -- there was a debate within the Republican Party that said, we shouldn't be doing this, right? If you want to change tax policy, have a stimulated effect over the long term, stimulate investment, that's a good thing for America, and we can do that. That's like --
WILLIAMS: Yes.
MCHENRY: -- Republican brand. Democrats say, we're going to increase spending, we're going to spend it on you. How is that different than saying, I'm going to give you a rebate check?
WILLIAMS: It is different.
MCHENRY: OK.
WILLIAMS: It's different. It's -- if we win --
MCHENRY: And the tune and who says it? That's the point.
WILLIAMS: If you vote for us, we will give you money. KAYYEM: It's a little bit --
WILLIAMS: It's totally different.
KAYYEM: It's a little bit like how he's doing disaster --
MCHENRY: That is exactly what the Democratic Party has done for the last 100 years now, though.
KAYYEM: Look, it's a little bit like how he's doing disaster management --
HUNT: Come on.
MCHENRY: Really?
KAYYEM: -- funding for blue states. I mean, when you think about it, you didn't vote for me, so therefore you don't get the money, as we've seen, you know. And if you -- if the state voted for me and you had something bad happen, I'll send relief.
And this -- so it is a -- it's not like all Americans, it's anyone who essentially, if we can -- you support me, and that's the division that I think makes this different. And I think, just again, that what we saw in that room was the supporters, and what we didn't see is the people who are looking at the war and saying, what? What's going on?
HUNT: Last word?
MCHENRY: Even with Republican numbers not being great, actually being pretty bad, the Democratic Party has not harvested that, and they still have a brand problem. Might be fine for the midterm, post this disaster for '28.
HUNT: Yes, it's going to catch up, potentially, with them in '28.
All right, coming up next here in The Arena, 25 years ago this week, our nation was forever changed by terror, tragedy, and loss. Ahead, we'll discuss what it means for the millions of Americans who are too young to remember that fateful morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, 43RD U.S. PRESIDENT: I was in a classroom listening to a little child read. And Andy Card whispered in my ear, second plane, he said, "I knew the first plane hit the tower." Like you, I thought it was an accident. And second plane has hit a tower, and America is now under attack.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[12:14:56] BUSH: Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[12:15:19]
HUNT: Never forget. 25 years ago this week, an unimaginable act of terror changed our world forever. As the Twin Towers fell and fires burned at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, our collective sense of safety, our sense that things could be normal, just disappeared.
Thousands of parents, children, friends were taken from us that Tuesday morning. And in our shared national grief, we vowed to never forget. But those words take on some new significance today. A quarter of a century later, over 100 million Americans are now too young to remember 9/11, but they and all of us, we live in a world deeply shaped by that day and by everything that followed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you and the people --
ALL: Yes!
BUSH: And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.
ALL: Yes!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: I remember watching that moment. My guess is everyone sitting here at the table remembers it, but every single year, more and more Americans don't. They just weren't born yet. So what does that mean for us as a country trying to go forward in an ever-divided and more complicated world?
My panel is back. Congressman one of the things that I remember when I was covering Capitol Hill, which I did as a correspondent for many years, was the first time, and it was some years ago now but there's these eighth graders, right, that come -- many eighth grade schools will have their kids come here to Washington, D.C., take a tour of the Mall, right, see all the sights, and they'll come into the Capitol.
And I remember one of the guides was showing them the portraits and the paintings in the Capitol Rotunda, and for some reason they stopped and the tour guide asked, looked out at this crowd of eighth graders, you know, class size, and says, "How many of you here, raise your hand if you remember 9/11?" And none of them put their hand up.
And for me, I was a junior in high school, right? I watched someone jump out of the second tower live on TV, right, in third period, basically. And because we were all young people about to go off, it became something that, you know, the -- my generation are the ones that went to Iraq, that went to Afghanistan, that came home hurt.
And this idea that there are so many around us now who don't remember is something I really struggle to wrap my head around. How do you think about it?
MCHENRY: But you're still young, right? Imagine if you're old like me, right? But --
HUNT: You're not that old.
MCHENRY: -- 25 years ago, and yet, the images we saw this week, if you didn't see these images, just a brief video, like came on my feed yesterday, and you didn't well up, you weren't there for it.
HUNT: Yes.
MCHENRY: You weren't alive for it. You didn't experience it. What that sparked in all of us was this different era. Just a completely different era.
HUNT: It was a before and an after.
KAYYEM: Absolutely.
MCHENRY: Yes.
HUNT: Like a line in the sand.
MCHENRY: And that is before you get into the question of our intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, what became political, about our war-making capacity, what is in our national interest, the financial crisis and the economic calamity that came, and the populism that rose out of those ashes. We've seen a massive flux in the last 25 years, unlike what we've seen in quite a long time in American history.
WILLIAMS: Yes, you know, it's interesting. It's -- and it's hard to explain to a generation of younger folks who lived through COVID and wars and other things why they should care about something in which, forgive me for saying it, only 3,000 people or so died.
And it's not about the individual death toll on that day. And to really understand 9/11, you have to understand the decade or two before that, which when the Soviet Union fell, we were talking about the Berlin Wall in the break, Kasie, and the whole global order shifted. Everything we thought about safety and who we were as Americans, movies, every movie was about the Cold -- "Rocky IV" is literally about the threat from the Soviet Union. It just pervaded all of our lives, and that all got up- upended on that day.
And as you said at the beginning of the segment, Kasie, everything after in America changed, how we think about ourselves as a nation and safety and what our threats are.
HUNT: Yes. I mean, Kate Bedingfield, you're raising kids, I'm raising kids, right? We're going to have to teach them about this.
BEDINGFIELD: Yes.
HUNT: I want to read a couple things that The New York Times talked to younger people, teenagers, young adults. These are some of the things they said, OK? Quote, "Grown-ups remember a skyline I've never seen in real life. Sometimes I think they still see what is missing even when the rest of us just see what is there." Which, my God, that really hit me.
BEDINGFIELD: Profound.
[12:20:11]
HUNT: Right? You know, then someone else, Joseph Smith, says, "We lost something that day that can't be measured. We as a country didn't heal and still haven't healed from all the things that have happened since 2000." And then a 19-year-old that said, "It's important to always carry the memory, but there are also so many greater lessons to take away from it. We were the cause of so much destruction and instability."
BEDINGFIELD: Yes. I think one of the things that I think is hard for young people who didn't live through 9/11 and are now living through the political environment that we are living in is, it's hard for them to conceive of the moment of unity that happened right after the attacks. That's one of the things that I think -- I mean, there was --
HUNT: Yes.
BEDINGFIELD: -- the collective loss, of course, of a sense of security and the idea that the United States was -- that the homeland was untouchable. I mean, we, you know, there was a fear that came out of that day that I think it's hard to --
MCHENRY: Right.
BEDINGFIELD: -- appreciate if you didn't live through it. But when I think about what kids today probably have a really hard time imagining, just given how fractured and divided our political environment is. And again, before you get to the very real debates about what the United States did, you know, in, in the wake of 9/11, that moment of unity, the idea that everyone rallied behind President Bush.
I mean, people who didn't vote for him, people who were unhappy that he won felt an enormous sense of pride in the way that he conducted himself and the way he represented the United States of America. And I think for young people to not -- you know, to live in this world where that -- the idea that that is possible almost seems inconceivable.
HUNT: Right.
BEDINGFIELD: That's one of the things that frightens me, frankly about our politics today. And I think that's an important thing to try to help young people understand that that is, it is possible. It is possible for people to come together.
HUNT: I want to play what George W. Bush said this week. We heard from him at the Bush Presidential Center about isolationism and what some of these lessons are today. Let's watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: Our nation occasionally goes through isolationist periods where the attitude is, "We've got too many problems at home, therefore, who cares what happens overseas?" Which really means to me they just don't pay attention to the lesson of 9/11 because what happens overseas matters to our national security at home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Juliette?
KAYYEM: He's right. I mean, it's -- what Kate was saying, I've had this weird feeling of, like, nostalgia, and I don't mean to be grotesque in saying that. But just this idea that 9/11, because of the unity, because of the righteous indignation that we were totally justified in having, and because of, like, NATO support and the invocation of Article 5 that, you know, an attack on us was an attack on them, a sense that there was still a rules-based structure with the world between the United States and how we related to the world.
We can find all sorts of caveats to that, and we certainly know that to be true. And I think that, you know, that world that President Bush is talking about, that sort of -- the United States is engaged with the world, is one that we don't feel now because of Trump policy sort of against the world but also because I don't think our kids have ever lived in that world.
HUNT: Yes.
All right. Coming up next here in The Arena, very public disagreements over the past impacting the present. Why the head of the Smithsonian is announcing his exit as the president ramps up his attempted influence over the institution. But first, a not-so-subtle warning from someone who was once at the center of the AI revolution. It's our quote of the week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JACOB COXON, FORMER ANTHROPIC RESEARCHER: I think what's most scary is if AI is used to make itself more intelligent. The AI just gets smarter and smarter with no human involvement necessary, and so you have a thing that is vastly smarter than humans, and this could be coming very soon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) COXON: These AIs, with the same independent volition, they could cause extreme havoc. For example, hacking critical infrastructure, building extinction-level bioweapons. There is a very real possibility that in the immediate future, these years that like next year, the year after, recursive self-improvement will happen and we'll enter the phase of Evan's post where he argues that there's a chance we could all die.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[12:28:52]
HUNT: What? This week, new warnings about the dangers of AI. Anthropic released a report revealing that it caught people trying to use Claude for malicious activity, including cyber operations, influence operations, surveillance, scams and fraud, biological misuse, conventional weapons development, and distillation.
It came after Jacob Coxon, a researcher who resigned from Anthropic over concerns about AI, posted a warning about the threat that it poses to humanity. This brings us to our quote of the week, and it is straight from Jacob Coxon's warning. AI, quote, "could kill us all."
My panel's back. Congressman, I'm going to come back to you again. What?
MCHENRY: On that happy note.
HUNT: Like, where are we on this? I mean, it's, like, impossible to wrap your head around it.
MCHENRY: Yes. So for a little context, this 23-year-old was at Anthropic for six weeks. I've had -- I had congressional interns that were more substance and more detailed than this kid was. However, the viral nature of this thing, there is latent concern in society about the nature of AI.
I think the -- you see this manifest in data centers. It's not really about the data centers, it's actually about the AI.
[12:30:08]
And the A.I., the societal concern we have here in the United States, is driven by the two leading frontier labs, the CEOs, being doomers. Saying, well, actually we're creating something that, yes, could cure cancer, cure mathematical theorems that have been unsolvable, but we also might kill you in the process. It seems like not a good trade-off if you listen to them, right?
What I want is things to be faster, better, and cheaper, make my life better. So we need to separate these two things.
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: But you have a life.
MCHENRY: Yes.
HUNT: They're saying, like, you might not have the life at all. MCHENRY: So this begs the question, what is Washington doing about it?
HUNT: Right.
MCHENRY: Those that are on the doomer side of A.I. are the very ones that are stopping congressional movement on A.I. safety. They've attacked Democratic leaders that are trying to actually get an A.I. regime under law, not leaving it to the executive branch to do this and sort of pick and choose, but actually have a solid law and framework for A.I. and the deployment of A.I., and especially these frontier models that are coming out that are the ones that we should be focused on.
They're the very ones advocating to stop right now, and I think it's insane we've got to call it out. This viral nature, the viral post of this, was driven by those very people trying to stop progress here in D.C. It's so damn cynical.
HUNT: Yes, well, and I think it is worth noting, I absolutely take your point that he was there for six weeks, but one thing that happened that our Jacob Ward was pointing out earlier this week that's different is that Anthropic didn't repudiate it or ignore it. They essentially came out and said, that's what's going on, right?
(CROSSTALK)
JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes. Houston, we have a problem.
MCHENRY: Because they are for A.I. regulation later.
KAYYEM: Later.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, and you know, it's interesting, and this really ties in nicely to our conversation a few moments ago about 9/11, which is that moment of unity. Even if there's a slight chance, 10 percent chance that A.I. kills us all, which is a statistically, right, no, that's what I'm saying.
HUNT: That's right. OK.
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: That's one of the statistics that got thrown out, but there's a 10 percent chance that it kills us all. Even if that's the chance, Congress cannot come together to say, OK, there is something that maybe is a threat, maybe is not, might cure cancer, but we need to come together and put some guardrails around it and work with China and work with other countries to figure out what the parameters for this ought to be, and we just can't do that.
KAYYEM: I mean, let's just, I totally agree with you. I mean, and they're -- both Anthropic and OpenAI are about to have their massive IPOs, so they're trying to calm everyone down. Yes, we want to be regulated as if they have not been fighting this forever. This is about money for these CEOs and the leadership. They do not want oversight, but they want really strong IPOs, and they've lost public support. I mean, this is about, like the data centers, no one, they're just the physical manifestation of a bunch of people who are basically throwing deadly weaponry into a crowd and saying, isn't that so bad? We're really worried we could have killed people. I am now of the school that there's going to be some catastrophic incident, I don't think it's going to be 10 percent, and we should start thinking about using our criminal laws.
They are putting a dangerous substance into commerce and then saying, well, we're smart enough to kill everyone, but we're not smart enough to start -- to stop it. And I think a lot of the American public is done with this.
HUNT: Yes, so one question I have about that, and Senator Ted Cruz gave voice to this, because this is becoming part of the conversation. Is there a criminal complaint here? But the question is China. So here's, watch Senator Cruz.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): You know who's not pausing? China. They are not going to stop. If you look at where the U.S. --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So if A.I. is going to kill us, it should be U.S. A.I., not Chinese A.I.?
CRUZ: Listen, I've actually joked that if, and this is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it's not entirely, if they're going to be killer robots, I'd rather they be American killer robots and not Chinese killer robots.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: I mean, is there something to that?
MCHENRY: Yes, this is an arms race. This is like the nuclear arms race, and we either are ahead or we're going to, or we're handing off that power to somebody else. This is the dangerous element of it, which is why Congress needs to make laws. This is the reason why we have to have a regulatory perimeter that is reasonable and balanced, so we can still have innovation, still compete with those foes internationally, and at the same time, protect our society.
KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, and I also think if anti-corporate populism is driving, is animating our politics right now, this, a message like that, and, you know, a message that says these big, basically unregulated tech companies are playing, you know, Russian roulette with technology.
KAYYEM: They're playing God.
BEDINGFIELD: That may wipe us out. I mean, that will turbocharge anti- corporate populism in our politics. So if these members of Congress think that they can avoid dealing with this issue now, I think the next election, the election after that, it will be unavoidable. [12:35:03]
And so, you know, I certainly agree that there needs to be more proactive framework now for our safety, but also just purely as a political matter, the idea we can -- that they can continue to punt this forever, not the case. People are going to demand it.
HUNT: All right, ahead here in The Arena, the latest leading figure in Washington to announce an exit after months of attacks by the White House and the President.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I got a little involved with museums, you know, because I had a little problem with the Smithsonian. We like a little more positivity. It was all about all the bad things in our country. I said, what about the good things we've done? So I got a little involved.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[12:40:19]
LONNIE G. BUNCH III, SMITHSONIAN SECRETARY: I think our job is to say, how do we tell an accurate history driven by scholarship that's non- partisan, that challenges America to live up to its ideals, that celebrates America, but also celebrates that the great strength of America is that people have voted, debated, pushed to help America live up to those ideals.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: That was Lonnie Bunch, the Secretary of the Smithsonian, who this week announced he would be stepping down from his role at the storied institution. Bunch is expected to depart at the end of the year. He put out a statement writing this in part, "I leave with pride and sadness, gratitude and joy, and with enormous confidence in the people who will carry this remarkable institution forward." His retirement comes at a time when the Trump administration has stepped up its efforts to influence how American history is portrayed at the museum. Elliot Williams, you're nodding.
WILLIAMS: No, it's interesting. It's a -- when you read the White House's materials on this, a theme that comes across pretty consistently is that history and how it's presented needs to be inspiring and patriotic. And I would say, I would push back and say, that's probably one of the most dangerous things we can say about what history ought to be. History ought to be accurate, but it need not necessarily be patriotic.
It can be true that we are a model democracy for quite frankly, many if not all democracies around the globe, but that we also have a very ugly history at times, in parts. And we can acknowledge that in our museums and this idea that the solution ought to be sanitizing and whitewashing American history just so it makes people happy is actually dangerous. It is dangerous to future generations of Americans.
HUNT: Elliot, one of the other things that -- one of the examples of how this can be true or that there is a Confederate or there was a Confederate statue at Arlington, it was removed in 2023, but there has -- there was language that criticized that memorial and the Trump administration took it out. The decision by the Bipartisan Naming Commission to remove the statue was based on criticism and backlash over the depictions. It included an enslaved woman carrying an infant child of a white officer and an enslaved man following his owner to war. And now the Trump administration is basically saying, we don't want to say out loud that that was bad.
WILLIAMS: Yes. You know, and it's interesting, I would make the argument that Confederate monuments are not presumptively a bad thing because they are part of American history. You just need to contextualize them and say that, well, this was a secession and a rebelling against the United States. People were enslaved at the time and we moved on.
You know, it's just a broader point, not to get too poetic on everyone here, but some of the first words of the Constitution of the United States are more perfect union. The idea that it was never perfect and we are constantly striving to make it better. And the idea that we ought to forget some of these things like slave women holding white babies or going off to war is dangerous to the future of our country.
You know, the silly or cliche line, those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it. Well, this is happening. And sure, woke one went far and I understand that. And there's probably a way to strike a balance where, you know, like Lonnie Bunch was saying in a nonpartisan way, come to some notion of what our shared history is, but putting Confederate monuments back up and pretending that everything's OK is just not, ain't it?
HUNT: Well, and I think it's worth noting, you know, Lonnie Bunch is really a lion type figure in the world in which he operates, right? He's very much beloved. He took the President on a tour of the Museum of African American History, right? He has worked on this relationship and he had said that he was going to retire and functionally a timely fashion. But Congressman, I mean, why for the President is this such a focus?
MCHENRY: Because the woke mobs that took down the statues were a cultural flashpoint. And then to put, to sort of take that and the countervailing pieces, the plaque. So was it wrong for the administration to remove that plaque? Was it, OK, well, then you can debate that.
Well, then was it wrong to remove the statue acknowledging a piece of our history? OK, well, I think Elliot, you dialed in here that there is a give and take here. There's going to be a push and pull on the storytelling. How optimistic are we about ourselves? I think the President says we need to be a lot more optimistic about who we are.
Did we over index during whatever, woke one, which presumes a woke two, by the way, right?
HUNT: Does AOC get credit for that phrase by the way?
KAYYEM: Yes, I think she does.
WILLIAMS: She said it to her, right?
MCHENRY: But the setup here is always going to be this push and pull of who gets to tell the story. And who gets to tell the story in history, period, is the winner.
[12:45:08]
WILLIAMS: Victors. Yes, but you know, it's a -- some of the best art and the most important history of our planet involves suffering, death, genocide. The most beautiful painting in the world, Picasso's Guernica, is about a slaughter of human beings. We don't have that when we take away and sort of sanitize only the positive parts of whether it's Spanish history or American history or whatever else.
And we just need to embrace, quite frankly, the fact that very bad things happened on our watch as Americans and they're part of who we are. And I just think this backlash against whatever it is, I won't use the word, the W word, but the backlash has sort of, but I actually think it existed before that too. It's not just 2020. I think there's been always a push to sort of revive the Confederacy.
HUNT: Yes, of course.
MCHENRY: In Richmond, they took down the statues a generation ago of Confederate leaders in that Confederate capital.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
MCHENRY: This is not something today. This has been an evolution. And by the way, not 30 years ago. We've been struggling with this since the very beginning of the nature of our country. It is -- the basis of our country is that we have an organized way to argue with each other. And we're trying to be more perfect in this, but the push and pull of this, this is a natural countervailing aspect of what happened during the four years ago and eight years ago. And this is the reaction to it, frankly.
KAYYEM: Can I just add something? The Confederacy movement was actually not post-Civil War. This came out of the 60s. And so this cultural phenomenon of, like the idea that we're a country that celebrates the vanquished rebels, like that's very unique. We are really odd in that sense. No, country --
HUNT: Well, some of it also came up in the early 1900s, which was also post-Civil War but there's a backlash that --
KAYYEM: But all of the statues that met -- all of the statutes that have been mentioned here were 19, no, they were 1950s and 60s.
HUNT: The one at Arlington was put up in 1914. It was unveiled in 1914.
MCHENRY: And the ones removed from the Capitol, the Confederates removed from the Capitol were from a different generation. But having grown up in North Carolina, in the time where the Confederate veterans were dying, that's when they started putting up these statues, just like we're putting up statues, similar to when we're honoring people that are dying and their contributions.
KAYYEM: There's a counter-history, as there are always going to be, that the embrace of the Confederacy came during the Civil Rights Movement, when people were very fearful of blacks asserting power.
HUNT: Yes. OK.
Coming up, something totally different and totally bizarre. We'll be right back.
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[12:52:23]
HUNT: Three years after being sent to federal prison for defrauding investors, it turns out that we have not seen the last of Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes. Just to refresh your memory, Holmes founded a blood testing startup. It promised patients the ability to test for all kinds of things, cancer, diabetes, with just a few drops of blood.
The startup raised more than $400 million and she was once hailed as the next Steve Jobs until a "Wall Street Journal" investigation poked holes in Theranos' testing and tech and the dominoes fell from there. Before Holmes went off to serve her 11-year prison sentence, she invited a camera crew to document her final days of freedom. The crew included a comedian, filmmaker, and the king of awkward, Nathan Fielder. The trailer for that documentary is something to see.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELIZABETH HOLMES, CEO, THERANOS: I don't have anything to deceive you on. Of course I'm not deceiving you. I'm engaging with you as a human being. Why would I deceive you? There's no, there's no reason for me to do that.
NATHAN FIELDER, COMEDIAN FILMMAKER: OK. All right. OK, good shot. You're being real right now?
HOLMES: I'm always being real.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAYYEM: I love it.
HUNT: I was supposed to say, I'm sorry, what? But I don't actually have anything to say. If you want to cringe some more, the three-hour documentary is going to be in theaters on October 16th. I mean, this was stunning.
KAYYEM: I love it.
HUNT: Like, who does this?
MCHENRY: I'm reminded of Creed Bratton from "The Office," and he says, I've been a leader of many cults and a part of others. Far more lucrative to lead a cult. It's clear she was a fantastic cult leader.
WILLIAMS: One thing that may not have shown up -- one thing that may not have shown up on screen is the boredom. She's rocking a baby with her foot.
MCHENRY: Yes, yes.
WILLIAMS: Now, in fairness, all of us are parents. Who hasn't rocked a thing with their foot? I know.
BEDINGFIELD: While holding and having eye contact with their interlocutor for --
[12:55:03]
WILLIAMS: That made me uncomfortable, looking you in the eyes, Kate.
BEDINGFIELD: Oh my God, I know, I can't.
KAYYEM: We were like all sort of holding each other.
BEDINGFIELD: I know.
KAYYEM: It was like "Jaws." It was like, da-da, da-da, da-da.
HUNT: I mean, honestly, you can see why she was able to sell people.
MCHENRY: And she also, Kool-Aid, do not drink it.
BEDINGFIELD: Yes. Definitely don't.
WILLIAMS: Yes. Don't drink it.
KAYYEM: Also, I cannot wait for this movie.
HUNT: Don't drink the Kool-Aid. I'm going to see the movie too, for sure. All right, guys, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Thanks to all of you at home for watching as well. 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 The Arena's podcast and follow the show on X and Instagram. We are at TheArenaCNN. Do enjoy the rest of your weekend. The news continues next on CNN.
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