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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt

Trump Wraps Xi's State Visit As White House Press Access Restored; TV Networks Resume White House Pool Coverage After Media Ban Lifted; Supreme Court: States Can Audit Voters Using Citizenship Data Tool; Bill Gates On A.I.: "Never Been A Weapon As Powerful". Aired 4- 5p ET

Aired September 25, 2026 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT starts in just a few seconds.

(MUSIC)

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

As we come on the air, the party's over, the press is back in the room. But did all of that accomplish anything?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We've had a tremendous visit from two spectacular people. And we really enjoyed it, and I think we've made tremendous strides. We made great strides, very positive for both countries.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Chinese leader Xi Jinping left Washington today after a lavish state dinner, most of which you didn't see because of Donald Trump's decision to ban CNN and others from the White House. Even after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to let us back in, the White House refused last night to let our reporter and producer into the state dinner alongside other press teams. That's why there's no video of it playing next to us right now.

But that all did change today when the pool was allowed to function normally. We'll see what happens next as this case plays out in federal court next week.

So, the question is, what did all of this pomp and drama accomplish? Neither President Trump nor President Xi got the press coverage they wanted. There's been no announcement of a trade deal nor an agreement on artificial intelligence. No firm answer on whether China is helping Iran.

One outgoing Republican senator yesterday questioning why the Chinese leader received such a warm welcome in the first place. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): This president in a speech in this term took on the Chinese for degrading and stealing voter data. I just don't know what has -- whatever has changed had to have been at a confidential level because I haven't seen any public basis for the sea change that we see right now in our posture towards China.

You got to have a relationship with them. I get that. But when you have world leaders looking at this reception compared to the way maybe President Zelenskyy has been received are some of the nations that are long, steadfast partners that they've had men and women down the battlefield satisfying the Article 5 obligation in Afghanistan, you go like, you know, it's a WTF moment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: WTF indeed.

All right, let's get off the sidelines, head into THE ARENA. My panel is here, but we're also going to get started with CNN White House correspondent Alayna Treene.

Alayna, always great to see you.

So, you've got some new reporting on how the Chinese felt about the timing and the implications of the media ban.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Look, I think there's no question, and I had heard this a lot in the lead up to this state visit, Kasie, that both the president, President Donald Trump, as well as the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, wanted robust coverage of this state visit and especially that state dinner last night. That's part of why you saw all of this pomp and circumstance and of course, we know the Chinese really want those images of both of these leaders standing side by side and the welcome, the really warm welcome that she got to be kind of out there with wall-to-wall coverage which would be typical of an event like this.

But that didn't happen because of the ban and I spoke with the Trump advisor who essentially told me that this was a very inopportune time for that ban because it resulted in -- of course, not only having some of these reporters not being able to access the White House, but because of the pool issue, you didn't have the networks taking and broadcasting live footage of all of the different events that played out over the last three days. I should say, with exception to today, we did have the pool back in place for that visit to the National Archives.

We were also told I did some report with my colleague Kristen Holmes, Kasie, that the Chinese had actually asked the White House and White House officials about how the ban could potentially impact coverage plans. So, look, this was obviously a top of mind thing for the Chinese, but it's also something the president wanted as well. And I think that's why you saw him really eager to take questions when he was at the National Archives today and did have a full television pool group and crew with him for that.

So, look, I think, obviously, one of the big things of this state visit was, as you mentioned, the ceremony around all of it. I mean, when was the last time, Kasie, you saw a foreign leader come to the U.S. and have the U.S. president greet them on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews and literally roll out the red carpet. I think that shows just how successful this White House wanted this to be, even though, as you mentioned, we didn't see a lot of the deliverables.

We know that they were expected to discuss A.I., Taiwan, the war with Iran. The president said some of those subjects came up. I'd remind people, a lot of the A.I. leaders and tech CEOs were actually here at the White House in the East Room for that state dinner last night. But we didn't get any specifics from that. So, we're still waiting on that.

But I think, by and large, a big part of this really was the pageantry around us to try and show the strong ties between the U.S. and China at this point. But a lot of it, as you mentioned, didn't get coverage because of that ban.

[16:05:07]

HUNT: Yeah. All right. Alayna Treene for us at the White House -- Alayna, thank you very much.

All right, my panels here in THE ARENA, senior writer at "The National Review", Noah Rothman; former Fox News anchor, co-founder of Lift Our Voices, Gretchen Carlson; former communications director for Vice President Harris, Jamal Simmons; and former Trump White House director of strategic communications, Alyssa Farah Griffin. They're, of course, both CNN political commentators.

We're also joined by CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig.

Welcome to all of you.

And I want to talk to Elie about the future of the legal matters in a second. But let's start actually with the politics here.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, what is your sense of just how this went over with the president? And it's I think it's also worth remembering that all of this comes as Republicans. The numbers are absolutely cratering, right? The president's added a nadir in his polling. Diesel is absolutely destroying the budgets of farms across America in places like Iowa, for example, that haven't been in play for Republicans for a long time.

And instead, what we've seen the president focusing on and doing is this press ban that actually seems to have made his guest feel unhappy.

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, no question backfired. Donald Trump cares about getting press coverage. Months of prep had gone into this state meeting. And listen, I've heard from a lot of Republicans who are echoing Thom Tillis. They did not like the pageantry around greeting President Xi here, literally rolling out the red carpet at a time where I could go on about their human rights violations.

But we're also right now still in a partial trade war with China. We know that they're in possession of F-35 parts right now, and they're very likely materially supporting the Iranians against us. This should not have been a friendly, warm reception, but then on top of it, it doesn't sound like there were any deliverables. We got basically a one-sentence readout from the United States side, which, by the way, came hours after the Chinese readout of the meeting.

Seems like nothing was accomplished, and this could have been a moment that you deliver something for the American people. I think A.I. would have been the most likely place.

HUNT: I mean, Noah, what is your kind of assessment of where this stands here? Because, I mean, this is probably the world's most important bilateral relationship, the Americans and the Chinese, the issues at stake are absolutely enormous. And you heard Thom Tillis there talking about the implications of the way in which the president greeted Xi.

Is he reflecting what other Republicans also believe about this? What is your assessment of how it went?

NOAH ROTHMAN, SENIOR WRITER, NATIONAL REVIEW: Maybe in their quiet moments, closed doors amongst each other. There's very few bilateral agreements on the major issues at stake that I think I would coming out of this summit. Anything on A.I. cooperating with the Chinese is not worth the paper it would be printed on.

I don't even know if Taiwan or the South China Sea came up. The Chinese aren't going to tell us whatever we want to hear with regards to their material support for the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Houthis, by the way, both of which are strategically important to Beijing. They want to truncate our influence in their part of the world.

This should have been done at a much lower level than the presidential level. And if there were no deliverables to come out of this, then the summit shouldn't have happened. It seemed that the administration was very committed to the theater of it, to the visuals of it, and less to actually getting anything out of it.

And again, from my perspective, I don't know if there's anything that would have come out of this that would have satisfied me. So, maybe it's a blessing in disguise.

HUNT: Right. So maybe it was the visuals that suffered, right? Of all the times to do this.

And I also think it's worth underscoring, right, that the Chinese have actually been assisting the Iranians in a war that is deeply unpopular with the American people and where our troops' lives are actually at risk.

Here was the U.S. ambassador to China being pressed about this on Fox News, actually. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL HEMMER, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Does that mean that Beijing will stop in their aid and assistance to Iran?

DAVID PERDUE, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO CHINA: Well, we've seen movement, Bill, on that already. That's what the commitment is. They assured us yesterday they're not doing that. Well, we know that in the past that there were some intel and some potential parts that went to either directly or indirectly. But President Trump again made it very clear this is unacceptable to us to have any interaction with Iran with regard to support of this war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Now, of course, what we did get Gretchen apparently two additional pandas.

GRETCHEN CARLSON, FORMER FOX NEWS HOST: Oh, really, I didn't that headline? Well, there's always a silver lining.

Look, this was a vanity project for Trump. And so, the whole media ban did backfire because we saw his lips moving and no sound coming out, which must be his greatest nightmare that he thinks about going to bed at night. I think that usually state dinners are supposed to have purpose and specifically right before the midterm elections, this state dinner should have had a purpose with regard to the American people.

And I don't think the American people got one thing specifically right before the midterm elections. this state dinner should have had a purpose with regard to the American people. And I don't think the American people got one thing out of any of this.

Even if there would have been a deliverable, did it help the economy? Did it help inflation? Did it help the tariffs? Did it stop the Iran war? None of those things were going to be accomplished with this. And so the American people are sitting home scratching their heads, wondering what it was all about.

HUNT: And again, we don't have the pictures that -- I mean, it's impossible to overstate how the White House press corps covers a visit like this.

The -- I mean, Alyssa, you've seen it, right? Just the machinery of it is quite something to behold, and it's taken very seriously by everyone who has a small role in it each moment where a leader like this is welcomed. And again, we don't have that because the White House was, at the time, trying to control who was in the TV press pool. Now, we do have a moment from today that we can show you.

The pool has been operating normally today. This was President Trump talking, comparing Chinese history and American history.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're just comparing. Ours goes 250 years, which is great, and we're proud of it. But theirs goes 6,000 years. So there's a little difference between 6,000 and 250, but we're very proud of our 250 because when Trump -- oh, everything.

We had a great meeting. We had a really great meeting. Great for everybody. Great for the farmers. Great for everybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Jamal, would you like to take this one?

JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: We are truly in the upside down. We're in a place where the Chinese leader is advocating to have more press coverage. The United States president is trying to keep press out of our meetings. That's just not really where we are.

And what were they discussing when they were looking at the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? I'm just not sure what the president was explaining to the Chinese leader. And this is the thing that troubles me the most. The United States used to speak with very heavy moral clarity in these moments.

We talked about the freedoms that people enjoy. We talked about the freedom of speech. We talked about what was happening with prisoners. There were all sorts of reasons that people could feel like the president of the United States was advocating on behalf of the American people. I'm just not sure what Donald Trump, President Donald Trump, was saying in that meeting with President Xi that was on behalf of the American people.

HUNT: Yeah. So, Elie Honig, let's talk a little bit about what we're going to see going forward here, because, I mean, it's just a matter of weeks until the midterm elections. And again, you know, the recent CNN polling just shows just how bad things are.

Only 27 percent of Americans approve of the president's handling of the economy which is, of course, the issue that really at the end of the day got him elected and you know this ban on the media and the at the White House and of course the judge has put a temporary injunction on there seems to be quite a bit of conversation about how this may be something the president continues to come back to in this crunch period, what is next for the case and how do you see potentially the White House attempting to follow what the president may wish to do if in fact he continues to try to do this and what options they may have.

HONIG: Well, first of all, Kasie, I'm really eager to see what the public polling looks like on how we are looking. We generally are looking at the president's press ban. Anecdotally, you see Republican members of Congress rejecting this. You see conservatives rejecting this.

But that may well dictate what the president does from here on out. So, as it stands right now, the judge, by the way, a Trump-appointed judge, Timothy Kelly in D.C., has issued a temporary restraining order, which blocks the CNN ban, lets us go back in, and will be in place for the next 12 days.

And over those 12 days, there will be litigation that will essentially turn that temporary ban into a more permanent ban. And after that point, or he can try during, but really you're supposed to wait until after, the president, if he wants to continue this fight, will then have the ability to appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. And if he loses there, he can ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case. You can never require the Supreme Court to take the case.

But ultimately, if you look at Judge Kelly's ruling, which came out on 1:00 a.m. on Thursday morning, It's pretty straightforward. He says there was no due process, first of all, therefore CNN is likely to prevail. And second of all, the judge completely rejects this national security rationale for the ban.

The judge says that's just not what reality shows. Donald Trump spent three days after he announced the ban saying, It's because I don't like their coverage. And if you look at that First Amendment in that document that Donald Trump and Xi were just looking at the First Amendment basically says you cannot discriminate based on viewpoint of the media organizations. I'm paraphrasing. Congress shall make no law, but that's what it means.

HUNT: Right. Well, I'm so glad that you underscored that point, that that was literally the document that they were reading there. Ellie, did the judge offer -- I know we've talked about this some, but this question was whether he was going to go past any due process ruling and consider the First Amendment arguments that CNN's lawyers had been making.

Did he give an indication and do you think that would come into play if, for example, the White House decided they were going to come up with a process and start throwing people out through that process?

HONIG: Well, what the White House has suggested doing here in their legal briefs is something, and this is a new phrase to me, post- deprivation process, meaning we're going to deprive you of your rights first, then you'll get a process. And I think anyone who understands your process knows. Not exactly the point of due process. And Judge Kelly was unimpressed with that argument.

Now, Judge Kelly did not decide the First Amendment question, which is separate. He said, I don't need to because I find that CNN's likely to win on the due process point.

But he did make a finding, like I said earlier, that the national security pretext is just that. It's a pretext. And when you take that away, then you're left with viewpoint discrimination. You're left with, I'm going to treat CNN, MS NOW and "Politico" differently because, as Trump said, because I don't like their coverage.

It's too unfavorable. It's too negative. And that's right down the heart of the First Amendment.

HUNT: Yeah, for sure.

All right, Elie, you're going to stand by and be with us on our next block along with the panel.

Coming up next here in THE ARENA, the Supreme Court hands the Trump administration a big win in their crusade to find non-citizens voting in federal elections.

Plus, yet another dire warning about the risks posed by artificial intelligence, this time from Bill Gates.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL GATES, MICROSOFT CO-FOUNDER: A.I. is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[16:20:55]

HUNT: All right, breaking news. The Supreme Court today handing President Trump a major victory in his efforts to find non-citizen voters. The court's majority now allowing states to use a controversial citizenship data collection tool, shorthanded as SAVE, to review voter rolls.

The Trump administration has overhauled that program last year by expanding its access to federal data, including Social Security records. The court's three liberals dissented today with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writing in part, quote this the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it literally lacks the authority to take.

All right, my panel's back.

And, Elie Hoenig, I'm hoping you can kind of help us clear through some of the brush and confusion on this decision because we are, you know, 30 days-ish out from the midterm elections. There are questions about what this means in that context. How do you understand this ruling from that perspective?

HONIG: So there is this federal database called the SAVE program, unrelated, by the way, to the SAVE Act or the SAVE America Act. They just happen to have the same acronym.

It's actually existed since the 1980s. Originally, it was used if the federal government wanted to check and see that somebody who's receiving federal benefits, food stamps or Medicaid, to confirm that that person's actually a citizen. Since 2005 or so, the federal government has been using that database to make sure that voters are actually citizens.

Now, what's new is that in 2025 and into 2026, the Trump administration said, well, let's expand the information that can go into that database. Let's reach over to the SSA, the Social Security Administration, and then we will dump in a whole bunch of new information, including Social Security numbers, other personal identifying information. And now the challengers here, including the League of Women Voters and

others, said that's illegal. You can't take Social Security database and bring it over into this SAVE database, which is located in DHS, because it violates privacy concerns around Social Security information. It violates confidentiality concerns around Social Security numbers and other personal identifying information.

And what the Supreme Court said today, the majority likely the six conservative justices, we don't know exactly because it's not signed, they said there's nothing obviously illegal about this. There's nothing illegal about the SAVE database. It's been in use for 40-some years now.

And if the federal government wants to expand the pool of information in that database, even if it's used to cross-check against voters, then that doesn't violate confidentiality. It's federal data. The federal government can use it. And hence, this move will be allowed to go forward.

And so, now, the database will include Social Security numbers and other new information.

HUNT: So, Elie, how does this relate to the kind of broader way the court has handled voting related questions here? Because obviously, the president has had a series of executive orders. He is absolutely fixated on this idea. He has essentially talked about the idea that the elections will be rigged, the Democrats will try to steal the elections.

The court has had kind of a series of different approaches here. How would you characterize it overall?

Yeah, it's been a mixed bag over the last few weeks. So, Justice Jackson in her dissent today said, well, we don't know if this new information that's coming in is going to be accurate or reliable, and it could be used to disenfranchise voters. The majority says we don't know that.

And by the way, there's a rule that says within 90 days of an election, which we are now, I think we're, as you said, 30-some days away, you cannot use this database in a mass way to purge roles. You'd have to do individual searches.

So, this was a win, for sure, for the Trump administration. But remember, two weeks ago, the Trump administration got a massive, much bigger loss from the Supreme Court when the Supreme Court blocked his whole effort to use the U.S. Postal Service to essentially take over mail-in voting.

[16:25:05]

So, this is a big win for Trump, but he had a much bigger loss when it comes to balloting in elections a couple weeks ago.

HUNT: Yeah.

Noah Rothman, how do you look at this?

ROTHMAN: Well, there's two things for me here. One, and we have this problem every time a ruling like this comes down the pike, where we talk the president, the Republicans talk process, Democrats talk outcomes. And those two things are talking past each other here.

It wasn't the universe of potential outcomes that could result from this ruling that was before the court. The statute was before the court. And the relevant statute, according to the majority, says not only does the federal government have the responsibility to respond to states when they ask for this information, this relevant statute actually seems to envision something like the amended SAVE database.

The second thing here is that these lower court rulings that are overturned tend to believe that they can constrain the president within his own domain. The president can't lower court rulings overturned. It can't restructure the federal government, can't restructure the education department, can't get rid of federal, can't remove appointees to federal agencies. No, he can, according to the Supreme Court, because that is the executive domain.

Where he runs afoul is when he intrudes on state sovereignty, where he intrudes on the province of Congress. That's where the Supreme Court sides with the president's opponents, again, talking past each other with outcomes in process.

I wonder if they're going to stop running into the same brick wall, though. This is happening over and over and over again.

HUNT: Alyssa Farah Griffin, the Democrats have been calling this. I just got a press release landed in my inbox. calling this database the voter purge database.

And I have to say, when you listen to Elie's description of where this started, what it's now becoming, the people that I remember being the most vocal about states having control of their own roles and elections are not Democrats, okay? It's like Mitch McConnell, all right? And his, like, corner of the Republican Party.

So, what is that about?

GRIFFIN: Donald Trump is in office.

Listen, Governor Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania has been citing tooth and nail about having to turn over Pennsylvania's voting logs. I would agree with him, but again, I'm a registered Republican.

This is a couple of things. The president has wanted to get at ways that he thinks we have to address undocumented immigrants voting. It is a very, very small number of times that that happens, but there was this New Jersey case recently where a couple hundred did. This is an effort to do that.

But then you see some of the bigger efforts, like the mail-in voting that that feels like actually attempts to get fewer people to vote. And I would just say heading into a midterm election, if you're confident in your position, your goal is not to suppress voter turnout, it's to amplify voter turnout.

So, I think that tells you kind of all about where the president's head is going into the midterms.

HUNT: Jamal?

SIMMONS: Yeah, for the record, Democrats don't want people who are ineligible to vote on Election Day. Let's just put that on the table. That's not what they're up to.

GRIFFIN: DSA, right, but they don't --

(LAUGHTER)

SIMMONS: So Democrats don't want that, but the question now is, can you protect people's privacy? Because Social Security data is kind of a unique data set. Also, this system has been proven to flag the wrong people. So, is it going to be consistent in something we can rely on this close to Election Day? And if you get improperly flagged, what's going to be a resolution to fix that?

And lastly, I think it highlights the importance of voting for state election officials because states aren't forced to engage in this. They're going to make choices. So, people like Garlin Gilchrist, who's running for the secretary of state office in Michigan, he's going to make that decision next year about whether or not people get to do this, because I think this is really also about 2028.

We're so close to election day in 2026. It's probably going to be hard. 2028 is fair game.

HUNT: Yeah. So Gretchen Carlson, one of the other things that came out on the on this today is that the Justice Department is saying that it's going to dispatch more than 1,000 monitors on Election Day, which they are calling the biggest DOJ election observer effort in history. It's hundreds more than the Biden administration deployed.

What are the implications of that?

CARLSON: Well, see, I think that Trump floods the market with, you know, media stories. He floods the courts with these kinds of things. He just does them to see what sticks. And so now we're hearing that this is the latest thing that he's going to have these monitors out there.

I mean, to me, I'm not so sure that he wouldn't even try to test this federal law that's on the books that you can't purge voters within 90 days of an election. This comes down, we're within 30 days of the midterms. But let's see what they do with this particular ruling. And now they're saying they're going to have monitors there.

And to Jamal's point, in Utah, they flagged 9,000 people by this SAVE program. And it turns out that only 27 ended up being non-citizens. That's a huge difference.

SIMMONS: Big delta. CARLSON: That's a huge difference in numbers. I mean, I think everyone here is all for the fact that people who are not citizens should not be able to vote in the United States.

HUNT: It's against the law.

CARLSON: It's against the law.

HUNT: Period, at the end. Not in question.

CARLSON: Yes. We'd all be in favor of systems that would get rid of.

ROTHMAN: As Alyssa just noted, though, it does happen, and it happens unnoticed for years in my home state.

HUNT: And it shouldn't happen, but Elie Honig -- Elie Honig, the flip side of this is -- Noah is making a point about non-citizens who do vote.

[16:30:07]

And there were examples of -- for New Jersey, for example. However, if you are an American citizen and you are caught up in something like this, if they're using this database and the data is flawed and somehow you are stripped from the voter rolls, what kind of remedy do you have?

HONIG: Yeah, it's difficult. The court actually addresses this. The way it works is if a person is flagged and notified, we believe you are ineligible. You can either accept that or you can contest it.

But again, here we are right on the brink of a midterm election, and it's not exactly clear what that process would be or how long it can take.

And I want to just address a quick point that Gretchen made that I think is an interesting point. The president has said he's going to dispatch a record number of observers, DOJ observers. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but the key word here is observer. Usually, it's supposed to be just what I was, non-threatening people in suits, lawyers, not armed agents, okay?

So, sending DOJ lawyers out to observe is normal. Administrations of both parties have done that. Nothing wrong with it. However, if you get into sending armed agents or certainly military, then you have crossed a very serious line.

HUNT: Yeah. All right, Elie Honig, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. It was great to have you this week. I hope you have a great weekend.

All right, the rest of our panel is going to stand by. Coming up next in THE ARENA, for weeks, we have been wondering whether A.I. will one day kill us all. Ahead, a new warning about what A.I. can do right now. Plus, Senator Chris Van Hollen will be here in THE ARENA. What does he

make of President Xi's visit and the growing U.S.-China competition on A.I.?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:36:05]

HUNT: All right. Welcome back.

After an elaborate state dinner and a summit full of pomp and circumstance, Chinese Leader Xi Jinping now on his way home from his White House visit. This week's meeting not the only time that we'll be seeing Xi and President Trump together, though. Trump posting on Truth Social today that he'll, in fact, be seeing Xi two more times this year, once in China in November and then again at the G20 in December.

Joining me now, Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. He sits on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, Foreign Relations Committee.

Sir, thank you very much for being here. It's always good to see you.

I want to get your reaction to this visit from the Chinese President Xi Jinping. It was, by all accounts, a very warm welcome. We didn't see a lot of it because some American media had been banned from it, including members of the TV press pool. But we did see today the president and the Chinese leader looking at a copy of the Constitution, including, of course, the First Amendment.

What was your reaction to seeing the way the president received the head of the Chinese Communist Party?

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD): Well, Kasie, it's good to be with you. And, you know, President Xi probably felt right at home after President Trump had said that CNN and the others could not visit the White House. I mean, this is how President Xi treats China's press, and it's only because of the court decision, of course, that Donald Trump allows the press back in.

So, look, the fact that Donald Trump was showing President Xi the Constitution of the United States is a little bit rich, given the fact that it was President Trump who was trying to tear up the free speech part of the Constitution. And of course, President Xi has no respect at all for people's First Amendment or other rights.

What are the implications of the welcome that she received, considering the reports around how the Chinese are assisting the Iranians as Americans confront and fight a war against Iran?

Well, we've seen a pattern, Kasie, from Donald Trump about cozying up to authoritarian leaders around the world thinking somehow by giving them the red carpet treatment, Donald Trump's going to get his way. And it never works that way, right?

We saw Putin's continue to use aggression against Ukraine even after Donald Trump wined and dined him. We've also seen President Xi do exactly what you said, continue to support Iran. Now, look, you know, Donald Trump, what he should do with respect to Iran is get us out of the senseless illegal war he started.

But the fact that he thinks, he, Donald Trump, thinks that he can somehow sweet-talk himself into persuading foreign leaders to do his bidding has been proven wrong. Donald Trump is not the world's best negotiator. Foreign leaders always get the better of him.

HUNT: On another note today, sir, the Supreme Court just weighed in and said that the administration can use a federal database that's aimed at providing information about citizenship status of voters. Now, there is a time horizon that makes it seem that they cannot use this in a broad way for the midterm elections, but they may be able to use it in a targeted way. What kind of implications does that have for this election?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, Kasie, there are really two issues, as you all were discussing. One is the threat to privacy of sensitive information on every American, Social Security numbers and other things. And that's why this database has not been allowed to be expanded in that way.

The concern is that it will be used to exclude American citizens from voting because the database is, you know, not perfect.

[16:40:08]

And we don't want this database to be used to prevent American citizens from voting. Now, maybe in this coming election, it won't be as big a problem. But the fact that Donald Trump wants to do this is a continuing threat to our democracy and the right of American citizens to vote. And we should be worried about all of Donald Trump's shenanigans. They tried to pass the SAVE Act, which we stopped in the Senate, which would make it much harder for American citizens to vote.

Of course, he tried to prevent the post office from delivering mail-in ballots. The court struck that down. But we can expect continuing efforts by Donald Trump to try to rig this election, and all the more reason people just need to turn out big and vote against the party of the president who promised he'd bring down prices and keep us out of war and has done the opposite.

HUNT: Sitting here today, do you feel confident you can assure Americans that the election is going to be free and fair?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, what I can assure Americans is that the best way to make sure that the will of the American people is heard is to have an overwhelming turnout. We know Donald Trump will use every trick in his book in the book to try to prevent this from being a free and fair election. But we also know that at least to date we've stopped him.

I mean, so we're going to be vigilant. There are going to be a lot of observers at the polls looking out for, you know, Trump-instigated shenanigans. But the most important thing is to say, if Donald Trump wants to prevent us from voting, all the more reason we got to get out there to exercise our rights to vote. HUNT: Do you think there's any risk in raising questions about the system? I mean, President Trump has shown that when he does so, it does, in fact, undermine the faith that people have in ways that can have dangerous consequences.

Do you think that there's an imperative for Democrats, for opponents of the president, to share faith in the system?

HUNT: Well, that's exactly, Kasie, why I'm saying that the most important thing is for people to get out and cast their votes. Because at the end of the day, if we have an overwhelming turnout, the voters' will will be absolutely clear. And we know how worried Donald Trump is, and he should be. And so should Republicans in the Congress who have been absolute rubber stamps for Donald Trump.

I mean, he says jump. They say how high. And voters don't like what they're seeing from Donald Trump. They see prices going up and up and up, despite his claim that he was going to bring them down on day one. And they see us in this illegal war in Iran.

So, I can understand why Donald Trump wants to throw up a lot of dust in the air. But voters, they should go out there and exercise their rights at the ballot box.

HUNT: All right. Senator Chris Van Hollen, thank you very much for spending some of your Friday with us, sir. I really appreciate it.

VAN HOLLEN: Great to be with you, Kasie. Thanks.

HUNT: All right. Ahead here in THE ARENA, another day, another A.I. warning. We're going to bring you the chilling message from both Bill Gates and the pope.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:47:48]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GATES: A.I. is certainly powerful enough to drive events that cause a billion deaths. So even though it's pretty hard to get to 100 percent, there's never been a weapon as powerful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Yet another dire warning from a tech leader about the risks of artificial intelligence. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates telling NBC in an interview that will air in full on Sunday that runaway A.I. has the capacity to kill a billion people and that self-regulation simply won't cut it.

His comments, of course, coming amid growing concerns from within the A.I. industry about the technology's potential for catastrophe. And amid calls from the likes of Sam Altman and Dario Amadei, those top two CEOs for global A.I. guardrails. Some other tech figures, though, are saying there should be a much simpler solution. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "AC380": CEOs Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, they are raising alarms, saying, we need regulation. Aren't they the ones closest to these models who would know best about what is needed?

JENSEN HUANG, CEO, NVIDIA: If they're worried about it, they should just stop. If the product is not safe, just don't release it.

COOPER: It's that simple?

MARK ZUCKERBERG, META CEO: I don't think that we need some kind of industry-wide coordination. You just take the time that you need internally to basically make sure that you're proceeding safely.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: My panel is back.

Alyssa, how cavalier is like, oh, yeah, like it could kill a billion people.

GRIFFIN: A billion people.

I'm glad that we ended on Mark Zuckerberg because this is somebody who's disproven exactly what he's saying through Meta, through Facebook, all of the stats that we've learned after the fact about how harmful it's been to mental health, especially to children and to young women, that his product was not safe, yet he put it out there and it's been out there for years.

Listen, we have to find a way to balance A.I. alarmism because we have to be globally competitive. It's crucial to the future economy, but also listen to the smartest people running the industries when they're saying something scarier and worse is happening. Like based purely on what I knew when I was at the Pentagon in 2019, which in A.I. terms was a million years ago, these capabilities are extremely advanced and extremely scary.

[16:50:03]

HUNT: Yeah.

Noah, jump in.

ROTHMAN: Well, here's the thing. You just heard the CEO of Microsoft, former CEO of Microsoft say that no one agrees that self-regulation is necessary and then you just play two clips of people in that field saying we don't agree. So that's a lie. And it's one of many I hear from these not persuasive claims where they say with all the urgency of an unsolicited e-mail from a Saudi prince, act now or you may lose access your entire civilization.

Yeah, you should be skeptical of that especially because their only answer seems to be cartelization or extraordinary intervention of the federal government into this otherwise permeable and dynamic field and there's no --

(CROSSTALK)

HUNT: Wait, I'm going to push you to put that in slightly more layman's terms. What I think you're saying, forgive me for translating, is that you think that these companies may be trying to set up a situation where they are crushing competition, creating a cartel for themselves, and basically taking advantage of the government to do that.

ROTHMAN: Using the federal government to create a moat around their product that is otherwise pretty accessible right now to just about any entrant in the field. And they're saying that --

GRIFFIN: Can that both be true though, because I do agree they're trying to block out startups and have kind of a corner of the market this. But can it also be true that models have done things that are highly dangerous and that are alarming?

ROTHMAN: They have. And then there are people like me in this debate who regard this product as potentially dangerous. I'm very concerned about how state and non-state actors abroad will use it. And it's also deleterious to, I think, your mental health.

But the median position in this debate is not that. It is, if you don't agree that this is a civilization-destroying innovation within the next six months, unless the federal government acts now to intervene in the private sector in an extraordinary way, well, you're just ignorant.

SIMMONS: I just think it's a very --

CARLSON: The problem is we don't know.

GRIFFIN: Yeah.

CARLSON: See, this is the problem. To me, my first impression when I hear these very smart people who have created A.I. say that now there is a crisis that they created, it's like, well, wait a minute, you did it. Like, can't you go back inside of your company and be able to then regulate it?

But I also think that Trump calling it a hoax is problematic. He said he was going to name a czar a week ago. He hasn't done it yet. He had a perfect opportunity with the Chinese leader. Nothing happened.

SIMMONS: Yeah, Democrats like me who believe that we ought to have fair markets, but those markets need to have regulation. It's profound that you have corporate leaders who then come and say, please regulate us because they want a cop on the beat because nobody's going to stop competing until somebody sets up a regime where they know they can't really certain violations.

So, if we do that internally in our country, then the United States can go abroad and begin to negotiate that with other countries and try to say, listen, here's a set of standards that we all agree to. We want all of us to have some standards so we don't have a real problem down the road that we can't fix.

And that's the fundamental point here is they're saying this is not like if we make this mistake, we can't come back 10 years later and fix it. The cat will be, the horse will be out of the barn and we're just all going to be stuck.

HUNT: Well, and I mean, to that point, let's watch what the Pope, Pope Leo, who's, you know, role on this planet is to think about souls and humanity, has to say about this. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POPE LEO XIV, CATHOLIC CHURCH: If we are to avoid losing our humanity amid a paradise of machines invading and conditioning our daily lives, there is an urgent need for education in ethical discernment and the capacity to acknowledge the moral good.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: I mean, and Alyssa, to your point, I mean, this technology, the speed with which this technology is coming at us, is absolutely unprecedented. It is faster moving by far than social media was. And our ability as a society to grapple with social media still is functionally non-existent. I mean, our courts are finally, this year, starting to catch up with some of the harms.

But Congress is behind. We all were -- I mean, parents were behind, you know, feeling like, you know, I have small children, I feel almost powerless. Thankfully, the backlash is now making it a community basis enough that I might be able to have some agency over that.

But A.I. is so far outstripping that. I mean, that to me seems to be the central political problem as well because people are starting to feel, I think, out of control of their own lives.

GRIFFIN: I think there's so much fear around this, and Gretchen made a great point earlier, which is if Donald Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize, which we know he does, getting the international community together around ethics of A.I. use and some basic guardrails would be the way to do it because this is a generational defining issue and moment that we're in right now. And that would have been a great outcome, by the way, to start that dialogue with President Xi when he was here.

But I would also just know we -- there's this sort of myth that I Ted Cruz actually sit out my show and I half agree with him, which is if there's going to be killer robots, he'd rather them be American, the Chinese. Here's the reality. China's one of the most repressive regimes in the world. They're not a free market economy.

The idea that President Xi is just letting competition that could jeopardize his own power move forward unregulated, I don't buy that. I think he's moving in certain areas of A.I., but I don't think he's allowing civilizational destroying capacity to move forward.

SIMMONS: And what will happen is this isn't going to stop. States are going to come together, create compacts and deal with it on their own, and then they'll start going abroad, talking to other countries and trying to get them to buy in.

[16:55:00]

This is going to go below the federal level. These countries need a national standard.

HUNT: All right. On that cheerful note, we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUNT: Thanks very much to my panel. Really appreciate all of you being here.

Thanks to you at home for watching as well. Don't forget, you can watch much more of THE ARENA tomorrow. THE ARENA SATURDAY airs at noon right here on CNN. I would love to have you join us.

You can also stream THE ARENA live. You can catch up whenever you want. It's all in the CNN app. You can find it if you scan that QR code below.

You can also catch up by listening to our podcast. You can follow us on X and Instagram. We're at @TheArenaCNN.

But don't go anywhere. Jake Tapper is standing by for "THE LEAD" and he of course is going to be in on Sunday for "STATE OF THE UNION".

Hi, Jake.