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The Lead with Jake Tapper
Trump Halts Popular Housing Legislation To Push Voting Bill; Democrats Reel From Progressive, Socialist Victories In NYC; Report: Iran Ramped Up Executions, Killed 44 Political Prisoners Since Early Days Of War; New Book Examines Trump's Expanded Use Of Power; Inside Trump's More Powerful Second Term. Aired 5-6p ET
Aired June 24, 2026 - 17:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: All right, thanks to my panel. Really appreciate you guys being here. Thanks to all of you at home for joining us as well. Don't forget, you can now stream The Arena live or catch up whenever you want. It's all in the CNN app.
You just scan the QR code below. You can also catch up by listening to The Arenas podcast. You can follow us on X and Instagram. We're @thearenacnn. But as always, don't go anywhere because Jake Tapper is standing by for "The Lead." Hi, Jake.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Kasie, you just mentioned Instagram. Did you see how big the fish were that I caught in Idaho?
HUNT: I was very impressed.
TAPPER: They were really big.
HUNT: Very nice.
TAPPER: Really big.
HUNT: Catch and release, right?
TAPPER: All right. Of course, of course. Catch and release.
All right, Kasie, we'll look for more tomorrow in "The Arena."
HUNT: Great to see you. See you soon.
[17:00:38]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN Breaking News.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper. We're going to begin with an explosive day in our Politics Lead. President Trump threw a last minute grenade into what was supposed to be a major bipartisan victory on housing affordability legislation. It's an issue the president's own team wanted him to embrace, given the economy and the financial pain so many Americans continue to feel.
Instead, today, Trump ignored those pleas. Just hours before a signing ceremony, Trump canceled the event, refusing to sign legislation his own administration had been touting as one of the most significant housing bills in generations. His press secretary praised the measure late last night, calling it a historic step toward lowering housing costs and expanding home ownership. But by morning, the president reversed course, saying he would not sign the housing bill until Congress passed what's called the SAVE Act. That's legislation focused on fixing election problems that frankly do not exist in the way he describes them.
From called the need to pass the SAVE Act to national emergency, this abrupt move set the stage for an already rather uncomfortable lunch on Capitol Hill, where President Trump faced Republicans still reeling from this rare bipartisan rebuke passed earlier this week, limiting his Iran war powers in a concurrent resolution. Trump came out of that lunch and declared Republicans a well, unified party, flaunted that it was a really great meeting.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We like everybody really in the room. I don't like a few people, but that's OK. I think you know who they are.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: We like everybody in the room. I don't like a few people. Senators described a far different scene behind closed doors, including a fiery confrontation with outgoing Republican Senator Bill Cassidy over the issue of Iran. One source says that President Trump called the outgoing Louisiana Republican a, quote, "lunatic." CNN's Kristen Holmes is on the National Mall, where Trump will hold a rally later tonight.
But let's start with CNN's Manu Raju on Capitol Hill.
Manu, tell us about what took place during this quite contentious meeting behind closed doors between Trump and Senate Republicans.
MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I'm told from Republican sources that really it was that confrontation between Bill Cassidy and President Trump that was the most contentious of all of it. It all had to do with the war in Iran. And of course, the politics can't be ignored either. It was President Trump's decision to vote to push out Bill Cassidy from his Senate seat went by endorsing his primary chancellor. Just last month, backing Cassidy's primary challenger, Cassidy came back to the United States Senate, has been a thorn in the side of President Trump since then, including voting just yesterday to limit the president's powers when it comes to the war in Iran.
And that came up behind closed doors. Cassidy got up, asked him, what is the plan, Mr. President, for ending this war, for dealing with this war that you said would only go on for weeks? I'm told that President Trump told Cassidy to sit down. Cassidy refused. That's when President Trump called him a, quote, "lunatic," I'm told. He also -- Cassidy referred to Trump as his brother. Trump said, you're not my brother. Ultimately, Cassidy sat down and the meeting went on. But Jake, even though that was the biggest confrontation, there are so many Republicans who are concerned by the president's last minute decision to scrap a major housing bill that they wanted to tout on the campaign trail on the issue of affordability. John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, was completely blindsided by the president's decision here and has made clear to the president over and over again that the so called SAVE America Act just does not have the votes to pass the United States Senate. But Trump has derailed the entire legislative agenda to asking Republicans to meet his demands even though they frankly cannot be met, Jake.
TAPPER: All right, Manu.
And Kristen, Senators, Republican senators, saw this meeting as an opportunity to tell the president that this SAVE Act about election security, it simply doesn't have the votes to pass. Is there any sense that he's rethinking his position on demanding SAVE before anything else can be accomplished?
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Jake, the short answer is no, but I'll say that with the caveat that his own staffers, his most loyal allies on Capitol Hill, all believed he was going to sign the housing bill until he posted that he wasn't. So things with Donald Trump can change at any moment, but he basically took this message that he has been having in private where he's been frustrated with Senate Majority Leader John Thune saying he's not being a leader, he's not working hard enough on the SAVE Act, and then took it to this luncheon and kept talking about the SAVE Act.
[17:05:21]
And we even just heard him moments ago essentially saying that no or not answering if he would or wouldn't veto the housing bill if it came to his desk. Now, we have sources that say that likely the Congress, the Senate, could override any veto just given how much support that housing bill has. But right now, he is fixated on linking these two things.
This is just going to add yet another bit of heartache to White House officials who wanted him to be talking about affordability. And as Manu mentioned, those Republicans who are hoping to tout this as one of their many messages about affordability on the campaign trail.
TAPPER: All right, Kristen Holmes and Manu Raju, thanks to both of you.
Let's bring in former DNC Communications director Xochitl Hinojosa, also former Trump campaign adviser David Urban.
David, you're not a psychologist, but you did work for Trump in the past. Try to explain why is he doing this?
DAVID URBAN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Wow. TAPPER: Why is he trampling on a clean legislative win that would help people with housing affordability at a time when they're suffering a bipartisan bill and instead focus on grievance and an election bill that is not particularly popular and has no chance of passing the Senate?
URBAN: Yes, I mean, Jake, it's a good question, right? The president here, I think is really, you know, kind of biting his nose off despite his face, and that this housing bill will help him, right, and help Republicans --
TAPPER: Yes.
URBAN: -- perhaps, perhaps, right, keep control of the House, which would be a terrible thing. He is pushing this voting rights bill, saying election integrity bill, say, thinking that I need this so that I can keep control of the House. No, he's missing the point. Do the affordability piece, you win. You win the -- you win those.
And he mistakes the fact that, you know, I worked in the Senate for a senator for a long time and you know this, Jake, you go to the floor of the Senate, you say, Mr. President, like a third of the Senate turns around because each one of those individuals --
TAPPER: Right.
URBAN: -- thinks they could be the president and they're going to run for president at some point and they have six-year terms, that the Senate ain't the House.
TAPPER: Right.
URBAN: You can go to the House and bully people and kind of strong arm them. The senators have six year terms for a reason. Half of these folks are not going to run until Donald Trump is long gone.
TAPPER: Right.
URBAN: He's alienated a good handful and there may be a few whispering in his ear, you know, like maybe the senator from Florida, right?
TAPPER: Right. Scott.
URBAN: Right.
TAPPER: Yes.
URBAN: Who's saying, you know, Thune's not working it hard enough for you, right? I don't know where he's getting that message.
TAPPER: Although Rick Scott, who we'll have on the show later today, he says that he told the president they just don't have the votes.
URBAN: And so I don't understand the fixation on. I obviously do understand the fixation. Still 2020 redux (ph), right?
TAPPER: Right.
URBAN: But if you pass this housing bill, it's a big victory. You know, James Blair and others are out there talking about it tomorrow. It's a great message. Turn the page.
TAPPER: Yes.
URBAN: We get it, people -- you know, it's just a great story versus, you know, now we're talking about an inner party scrum.
TAPPER: Him calling Bill Cassidy --
URBAN: Well, I mean --
TAPPER: -- lunatic.
URBAN: Yes. And having a -- having a, you know, kind of scrum inside the caucus there, which doesn't need to be -- they don't need to fight that.
TAPPER: Yes. And Bill Cassidy just a few minutes ago telling reporters something along the lines of when he's pressing about Iran, you haven't told the American people what's going on. It was supposed to last four weeks. This war, it's lasted four months. Our objectives have not been achieved.
What's going on? I mean, that's kind of like a reasonable thing to challenge the president on.
It strikes me, Xochitl, looking at the landscape of how Democratic leaders, quote, unquote, "have been leading," the best thing you have going for you is Donald Trump.
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Is Donald Trump. I joked about this a few months ago that I thought that Donald Trump was trying to sabotage the midterm elections for, you know, against his own party and for that -- so that Democrats could win. And every day he gives us a new piece of information where I believe this is true. I mean, he was elected not to -- not because of election integrity issues. He was elected to lower prices.
And at the start, whether it is his tariff policy, whether it is this war that he was the one who started, whether now he has nothing, you know this, Jake, nothing happens in Washington, nothing bipartisan. There's finally a bipartisan --
TAPPER: Yes.
HINOJOSA: -- bill on affordability, and yet he has stopped it. The best thing he could have done for his party is have a signing ceremony to talk about how he is lowering costs.
TAPPER: Yes.
HINOJOSA: And so I still continue to --
URBAN: But just not for his party, but for himself.
TAPPER: Yes.
HINOJOSA: And now -- yes, exactly. And for himself. And, you know, and the reality is that the ads write themselves.
TAPPER: Yes.
HINOJOSA: He continues to give Democrats a gift for us to win in November.
[17:10:00]
TAPPER: And he called it a minor bill. It's not a minor bill. Really -- it would really help people.
HINOJOSA: Like Americans who are struggling.
TAPPER: And by the way, if elections were really such a huge problem, how did he get elected in 2024?
HINOJOSA: That's right. That one --
TAPPER: I mean, he is the president.
HINOJOSA: Yes.
TAPPER: Anyway, stick around. Thanks to both of you.
So that's the big story for Republicans. For Democrats, it's the far left making a clean sweep in New York City with Mayor Mamdani doing the pushing. Does this signal a larger transition in the Democratic Party? We're going to talk about that.
Plus Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan from the New York Times are going to be here talking about their brand new book "Regime Change" about President Trump's first year, from the Epstein crisis in the White House to obsessions you didn't know about the president. Their incredible reporting coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TAPPER: And we're back in the Politics Lead. A sweeping victory for Mayor Zohran Mamdani backed candidates in three New York City congressional races. The winds expose vulnerabilities inside the establishment Democratic Party to the ascendant progressive, sometime democratic socialist wing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI (D), NEW YORK CITY: New Yorkers are hungry for a new kind of politics. They are hungry for a politics that understands working people should be at the heart of it. What their successes represent is a shift in the balance of power between working people and special interests.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[17:15:09]
TAPPER: Something of a victory lap there for the mayor. Former City Comptroller Brad Lander and Democratic Socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier, both ousted incumbent Democratic congresspeople opponents. And also first term state Assemblywoman Claire Valdez won an open seat against a rival backed by the incumbent. All three of the victors share Mamdani's progressive economic agenda, staunchly reject America's allyship with Israel, and also, frankly, are not enamored of establishment Democratic leaders. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries backed the losing candidates in all three of those races.
Get a message today from Mayor Mamdani.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY), HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: The mayor and I agreed to strongly disagree about some of his endorsements and he's got work to do in terms of the conversations that he's going to have with members of Congress.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Democrats at large are now reckoning with inroads made by Democratic socialist candidates in their push for party power, with an apparent kingmaker. Zohran Mamdani at the helm, driving his party to the left.
Let's bring in my panel. Faiz, let me start with you. And just to remind folks, you're a longtime advisor to Bernie Sanders and you've been part of the progressive push for the Democratic Party for quite some time. What were your main takeaways? It seems as though your wing of the Democratic Party is really ascendant.
FAIZ SHAKIR, BERNIE SANDERS 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Right. And we have to ask why? And right now, if you mix all of the Democrats and Republicans in a bucket and said, how do I know which one is a Democratic socialist, a progressive populist? Jake, it'd be the one that's clearly standing up against the influence of big money. You sort them all and say, who's not taking corporate PAC contributions?
Who's upset about an oligarchy that runs our entire political and economic systems? Well, it's likely to be the progressive populace who also has an integrity of saying, well, I'm going to get in there and shake this up. I don't believe the status quo works. And so they couple that with an agenda and you say, well, which of these stands for Medicare for all? What's the progressive populace who believes in taxation of the rich, who wants to regulate AI?
So they're both bringing a sense of fighting wealth and power and an agenda and a vision. It's right now it's clicking.
TAPPER: And Xochitl, last night was not a one off, we should know, or a three off. The two DSA members, Chevalier and Valdez, last night make six high profile Democratic socialist candidates across the country in places like my home congressional district in Philly, here in D.C. in addition to four current lawmakers who claim the DSA. What are you hearing from establishment Democrats? I'm sorry to say that that's what you are, whatever, establishment Democrats about what this is nationally. I don't mean it as a slur.
HINOJOSA: So I do think that there is this sort of anti-incumbent sentiment. We're seeing it on the Republican side. We saw obviously John Cornyn just a few weeks ago completely ousted. And then we're seeing it on the Democratic side too. And I think the name of the game is authenticity.
We're seeing that, yes, voters want to shake things up, just as Faiz said. They also want to hear about the economy. And in a lot of those races they were talking about the economy. But establishment Democrats are also talking about is if you're looking at a place like New York, a place like New York is not a place like my home state of Texas, for example, or some of these like red or purple states. The reality is, is that when you're looking at the map and if you're Hakeem Jeffries and you're seeing this and a lot of people are saying that this was a blow to him, but these seats did not necessarily get us to 218 to winning the majority.
And I think that's what you will hear from Democrats on the Hill right now and then also from Democrats in tough races. They all want to talk about the economy. They all want to lower the cost of living. How they get there is a different story. And I do think that everyone has to show authenticity and sort of kind of ensure that who they're talking to are the voters directly.
And I think that's what happened in New York and it is this anti- incumbent sentiment.
TAPPER: There's another issue, of course, that's very important on the populist left, which is Trump and the Democratic Party's longtime support for Israel, for Netanyahu, for this war in Gaza. So let's focus on the race between Brad Lander, who won former comptroller, and Congressman Dan Goldman, both of them Jewish, both of them Democrats. Their key difference was on whether Goldman was supported by AIPAC and supported by just call them pro-Israel candidates. And Lander rejected that. Here's some of what Lander said last night about this race.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRAD LANDER, NEW YORK DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: I will be one of the Jewish members of Congress most willing to stand up loud for Palestinian human rights, freedom and dignity. I will stand firmly against bigotry aimed at Jews as well. That's not two different jobs. That's the same job.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Now, I don't think Goldman views it that way because he felt that he's been experiencing a lot of anti-Semitic blowback against him from the progressive left, including at a time when he was banned from a coffee shop because of his support of Israel. What's the role of this? Does one have to be in the Mamdani wing of the Democratic Party when it comes to Israel in the sense that he doesn't think it should exist as a Jewish state to be in this new progressive wing?
[17:20:07]
SHAKIR: I think you have to have some anger about what's been going on by Netanyahu and Israel over the last three or four years.
TAPPER: You read this book, by the way. I'm just -- "Regime Change." And Trump is angry about Netanyahu. It's not just --
SHAKIR: Well --
TAPPER: Yes.
SHAKIR: -- and AIPAC's activity. So right now as we talk, Jake, right, he's trying to settle the Iran deal on terms that I think he got into box canyon. He being Trump. And I'm supportive of ending this war and focusing on America.
He being Trump is also trying to end the Lebanon conflict, say hey, stop bombing Beirut. I happen to agree with that too. You know who doesn't? AIPAC. AIPAC would like both of those conflicts to continue at a low boil or high boil, whatever, just keep it going.
And so it happens to be this faction, this, whatever you call this, Jake, we are a version of the moral conscience of a Democratic party. Say this is wrong, this is unjust.
TAPPER: They're going to just call you the progressive left.
SHAKIR: For sure.
TAPPER: Is that not -- is that not a fair --
SHAKIR: There was a faction comment, but that's fine. Whatever we are.
TAPPER: I certainly didn't mean any insight (ph).
SHAKIR: No, no, I didn't take it that way.
TAPPER: OK.
SHAKIR: I'm saying that we are building a sense of a moral consciousness reaching majorities.
TAPPER: Or a movement. You want me to call on movement? I'm happy to call it a movement.
SHAKIR: A majority of the American people support it is my point. A vast majority.
TAPPER: On that issue. Absolutely.
HINOJOSA: Yes. But I will also say I think that there ever people have a right to be angry at Netanyahu. The anti-Semitism stuff that does have to stop within the party. I think what Dan Goldman did face is, is completely wrong. And Democrats moving forward need to ensure that they're not crossing that line.
TAPPER: All right, Xochitl and Faiz, thanks so much for being here. Really appreciate it.
Later, a more centrist Democrat than Mayor Mamdani, Maryland Governor Wes Moore coming up, fresh off his own election win. But first, what's really going on inside Iran? Apparently executions and more of them in recent months. Is this an emboldened Iranian regime? The report is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[17:26:10]
TAPPER: In the World Lead, America's top diplomats, the Secretary of State Marco Rubio says negotiations to permanently end the war in Iran will pick back up next week. He is visiting the UAE and Bahrain and Kuwait, three Gulf nations that bore the brunt of Iranian attacks against Gulf States in the early days of the war. Here's what Secretary Rubio would say about his conversations today in Kuwait.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: These are long standing relationships with these countries. So we speak very frankly, very openly, very honestly. We get their input and that's what we're here to do, to get their input. They're our partners.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Meanwhile, a disturbing report about what is happening in Iran itself right now. Apparently, executions are ramping up. At least 44 political prisoners have been killed since March 18th. That's according to Iran Human Rights, an NGO based in Norway.
Let's bring in Nazanin Boniadi, a British-Iranian activist and actress. Born in Tehran, raised in London. Horrible stuff. Not a surprise, I suppose, the report about political prisoners executed follows what we heard last month from Amnesty International when it warned that Iranian authorities were using the cover of wartime conditions, arbitrary arrests, harsh prison sentences, and now it's even worse. Is that what you're hearing, too?
NAZANIN BONIADI, BRITISH-IRANIAN ACTRESS AND ACTIVIST: Thanks for having me back on, Jake. Yes, that's exactly what I'm hearing. I mean, this is the usual pattern for the Islamic Republic after the 2019 protests. You saw a surge of executions in 2020 and again in 2023 because of the 2022 protests. And now again, but these executions are unprecedented.
We've got actually 47 is the latest number of executions of political and security related executions in the Islamic Republic. And of course the thing that is really devastating is in the 14 points of the MoU, the memorandum of understanding between Iran and the U.S. The point number two points to the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic and the U.S., nothing about the Iranian people or the sovereignty of the Iranian people. And that's exactly what they've been fighting for, for their own sovereignty.
TAPPER: Yes. Despite the president telling the Iranian people before the war began, help is on the way. People taking to the streets and a lot of them getting killed.
BONIADI: Yes, exactly. Help is on the way. And what started as a condemnation of atrocity crimes basically turned into photo op with the perpetrators of those atrocity crimes.
TAPPER: It was only a week ago that Iranian state media reported the regime would stop blocking access to the Internet, saying the country reached a level of maturity. Do you think that -- is that still going on? Is the -- no?
BONIADI: Not if you ask Javad Alikordi, the lawyer who just got dispermantly disbarred and is facing an 18-year prison sentence. Not if you ask Parastoo, the singer Ahmadi, who has just been sentenced to 74 flogs for showing her hair and singing in public two years ago. Not if you talk to the families of the many, many people on death row currently and execute -- facing this execution surge.
The situation on the ground in Iran is dire. It continues to be dire. And no, this regime has not only changed -- not changed, it's become entrenched and more brutal.
TAPPER: There was so much hope when this war began among the Iranian people and activists such as you hoping that this war would actually bring about regime change. The way you describe it, it sounds like things are worse than ever before.
BONIADI: They absolutely are worse, Jake. We started off as a call for a multilateral humanitarian intervention has been anything but. This is not what that looks like. And as I said, the U.S. seems far more interested in basically freeing up the Straits of Hormuz and talking about the nuclear issue. And once again the Iranian people have been sidelined.
TAPPER: Nazanin Boniadi, thank you so much. Always appreciate you being here.
BONIADI: Thank you, Jake.
[17:29:56]
TAPPER: Coming up next, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan on their brand new book "Regime Change," all about President Trump's first year. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TAPPER: In our Politics Lead, a brand new book has taken the political world by storm. It offers an unparalleled, in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the White House, President Trump, and how all of this is operating or failing to operate under the President. It's called "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump," and authors Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan of "The New York Times" conducted more than a thousand interviews over roughly two years with administration officials, campaign aides, donors, friends, business associates, and others close to Trump.
[17:35:58]
They even sat for an hour in the Oval Office to interview the President himself. The book describes fascinating, colorful, disturbing anecdotes and stories, including Epstein crisis meetings inside the sit room, details of frank conversations about the war in Iran, plus some details about Trump's eating habits and organizational oddities, essentially, how Trump lives his life in the White House completely unrestrained, completely untethered.
More than that, the book reveals what changed when Trump returned to power without any of the constraints that existed during his first term. Namely, Trump's second term operates in a more insular, more loyal, less dissenting decision-making structure than his first term by far. Let's discuss the book with the people who know it best. Haberman and Swan, join us now. Great to have you guys. Fantastic book.
For a 400-plus page book, it's a very easy read. I did it in a day and change. Jonathan, let me start with this anecdote from the book. It says one of Trump's aides, Natalie Harp, "Wrote Trump adoring letters that she left in his personal spaces, including one that read, you are all that matters to me." This is next-level sycophancy. And in some ways, the entire spirit of you are all that matters to me is repeated throughout the book to Trump by cabinet officials, tech leaders, over and over.
JONATHAN SWAN, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, NEW YORK TIMES: Yes, the Natalie Harp letters were very odd. I mean, we obtained them, and they were left in some of his personal spaces. They were adoring, intimate, you know, you described all that matters to me. And so much so that the Secret Service during the campaign were alarmed about these letters, and there was much discussion about them. But it's a broader dynamic.
There is a feeling, I think, among his staff that didn't really exist in the first term, which is not just I like this person, I want them to succeed. But almost a mystical belief in his judgment and his gut instincts. And I think it helps explain how he made some of these decisions, like going to war in Iran, which flew in the face of the assessments from the intelligence community.
TAPPER: Let's discuss one of the most widely reported stories in your book, which you serialized a week or so ago in "The New York Times," for which you both work. Senior administration officials without President Trump holding multiple meetings in the sit room to manage fallout related to renewed scrutiny of Trump's past association with dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. It's not often that Trump finds himself unable to fight off scandals.
So his team was very divided on how to handle it. We've discussed this on the show, like I said, because you guys brought this out a couple of weeks ago. But Maggie, what's so striking is completely absent from the conversation as you to describe it. Are any expressions of any concern for the survivors or any desire to see that justice is served? So they are that singularly focused on protecting President Trump just 100 percent?
MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It's not so black and white, Jake, there -- these -- there are a number of situation room meetings beyond the ones that we focused on in this book. The ones that we focused on were almost exclusively about dealing with the fury among the MAGA faithful about the fact that the administration was not releasing files. And what Pam Bondi had in what most of the administration considered to be a huge blunder indicated was the existence of a client list, which never a Jeffrey Epstein client list, which obviously there has not been one produced. And officials have said there isn't one.
There were officials who were concerned about the victims. There were officials who wanted to make sure that victims did not, you know, face any further victimization by having their identities released. Pam Bondi actually testified about that in the House recently in a closed door setting, and that comports with our understanding of what she was saying at the time. There were others who were concerned as well, but in these meetings, these were officials we're dealing with. And there's a four meetings that we wrote about here, really three and a half, one was very small about they were dealing with what's the path forward when you have a President who doesn't even want to talk about this, that every time everyone approached him, he would just snap at them. So how do you grapple with that?
TAPPER: Even before the Epstein crisis meeting, something else explosive happened on July 7th last year when the FBI and Justice Department released this joint memo on the Epstein files that basically said nothing to see here. And about that, you write "The deputy FBI director, Dan Bongino, showed up to a daily Justice Department meeting with the FBI staff and the attorney general. As soon as he entered the room, he erupted at Attorney General Bondi, shouting at her. You fucked this thing up from the start. Bongino yelled, the way you've been talking about this, that dumb fucking charade with the Epstein files, the they're on my desk, nonsense. All the promises to the folks out there. FBI Director Kash Patel and Bongino both told the White House official the Bondi needed to resign."
[17:40:05]
So then Susie staff Susie Wiles tries to rein in Bongino. He wanted to quit. He told aides he only stayed on longer to avoid damaging the President. He ultimately did leave, though. So, Jonathan, how does Trump manage to elicit this kind of loyalty where Dan Bongino is part of something that he completely loathes, completely hates and doesn't say anything about it and stays in the administration for as long as he did after that?
SWAN: Well, it's a sort of an unanswerable question that would require going inside Dan Bongino's psychology. But it was pretty remarkable. I mean, we have another scene in the book where he's in the White House Situation Room and he explodes at Susie Wiles and then storms out of the Situation Room and says, I'm done, gets into Kash Patel's armored SUV and directs it back to the FBI. But the situation with Bongino and Patel, who remains the FBI director, was particularly acute because they in their previous life had been podcasters and they had spent considerable time when they were just podcasters, you know, leading up to the 24 campaign, telling their audience that there was something going on with Epstein, that the people in charge were participating in a cover up.
And they were essentially accusing the ruling class of protecting this cabal of pedophiles. But then they become the ruling class and suddenly they're in charge of whether to be transparent or not. And for both of them, I think it was quite a jarring experience because they had been heroes to the MAGA base. And now the fury of MAGA was turning against them. And what we learned in our reporting for the book is Trump himself was intensely frustrated because he's so used to telling the base, here's what you should think, here's where you should go, here's what you should do, whatever.
Epstein was sort of the most profound issue we've seen where the base just didn't listen to him. They refused to go along with his marching orders. And we obtained some secret memos that Trump's key pollster, Tony Fabrizio, put together that showed that even this year, the Epstein issue was weighing them down politically very substantially.
TAPPER: I don't think it's helped with the Iran issue too, as the MAGA base has been kind of not supportive in many ways as well. Maggie, one of Trump's vanity projects currently in the works in D.C. is this arch. You write, "As the President showed off his models to a visitor one day in October, he puzzled over the details, including whether the arch should include a platform to take in the view privately. He had also been asking confidants what he should have on top of the arch. Should it be, he mused, a large replica of his, fight, fight, fight fist?"
So you guys both, Maggie, you both note in the book that the President uses a lot of artificial intelligence or A.I. slop. That's something that you mentioned in the book. In that honor, we asked a slop to depict the image of the arch as he envisioned it in your book, courtesy of A.I. I just wanted to offer this as a gift to you guys. Is that what you imagined when you reported that, Maggie?
HABERMAN: From what you showed me before, I can't see what's on screen right now.
TAPPER: It's the same thing.
HABERMAN: So it's the same word for what you said. It's the same thing. Yes, it looks, you know, I can't speak to the size of the fist, which I think what you sent us was quite large. But given that he tends to emphasize big, yes, I think that's about what he was using.
TAPPER: And by the way --
SWAN: It's pretty moving that you would do that for us.
[17:43:34] TAPPER: Well, I love you guys. You know that. The other thing that I want to note is that I did not ask -- I did not mention the word gold in my prompt. The A.I. just did it on its own, just so you know. That would be a very expensive fist. You both also wrote about the health of the 80-year-old president. I want to talk about that next, but I'm going to squeeze in a quick break. Maggie and Jonathan, stick around.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TAPPER: And we're back with our Politics Lead, deep diving into the brand new book, "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump." The author is Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan back with me. You write about President Trump's health at several points in the book saying, "In 2024, aides saw that he was going almost to the brink of physical collapse in the campaign. He finished the campaign with a sprint of rallies that left him briefly falling asleep on his feet backstage at one of his last events." And then later in the book, you write he was also having trouble hearing, asking people to repeat questions they had just asked him. Whatever thin verbal filter he had in the past was gone. He was saying whatever he wanted, when he wanted. And obviously, there's a bruising of the hands, a swollen ankles, falling asleep, et cetera, et cetera.
Do you have any idea, Maggie, whether these are just like normal health issues, largely just typical of any 80-year-old? Or is there something deeper, more profound going on that we're not seeing and they're not telling us about this administration is no more, well, I'll just say they're not as transparent as they could be, Maggie?
HABERMAN: Look, Jake, we would like to know as much as anybody what is going on with Trump's health. And to say that the administration is not transparent about it is an understatement, which is not to say the previous administrations were always up front either. But this administration is not answering questions about why the President has gone for, I think, three annual checkups, in their words. It's been annual. I think it became semiannual eventually. They say that he was seen by 22 specialists at Walter Reed recently. I can't even think of how many specialties that would be. But they haven't answered questions about what that would have been for or what types of specialists. They never released what kind of imaging they said he had at Walter Reed.
[17:50:02]
Last fall, they haven't released calcium scores, if he's even taking such tests. And they released numbers that don't entirely comport with our sense of his past medical history. Also, Jake, he had COVID in a very, very intense way in 2020. And he was having significant breathing issues at the time, which we all reported. They were not upfront about that. I don't know whether there's lingering effects there. So his health is a particular black box in this administration. And it's one we're continuing to report on. But beyond what you see, and we can all see, which is that he's an 80-year-old man with some issues, we don't know what else there is.
TAPPER: Jonathan, one chapter in the book delves into the Trump administration's efforts to influence the Smithsonian. You got inside the Smithsonian board meetings where an aide to Vice President Vance was taking direct aim at an Amy Sheridan painting of a trans model and performance artist. And this aide to Vance said, this is not what Americans want to see. You really got in the room. The Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is in that room hearing these lectures. Tell us more about Trump's pressure campaign to change what Americans are allowed to see in our own museums.
SWAN: Well, it's a pretty sort of extraordinary and somewhat underreported element of the Trump presidency, and we really want to dig into it. They have been very focused on changing the culture. They've done it in many different ways, obviously trying to eradicate DEI. But the Smithsonian effort was trying to change what was shown in American museums and art galleries. And they went basically on this pressure campaign against Lonnie Bunch, the head of the Smithsonian and the regents, to try to change the artworks that are shown in the Smithsonian museums.
And what you just referenced was an astonishing moment. They're sitting there in one of these regent meetings, and the Vice President is in there. He leaves the room, and he leaves one of his aides in the room. And the aide holds up an iPad, and it's a painting by the celebrated American artist Amy Sherald called Transforming Liberty. She canceled her show because of interference. And he just says, this is not what Americans want to see.
We thought it was very significant because there's a long history of authoritarian leaders trying to shape culture and reshape culture and determine what can be shown and what versions of history can be shown. So we think it's a really underexplored element of the Trump presidency. It's something we tried to shed some light on in the book reporting.
TAPPER: I could interview you guys for five hours about everything in this book. There's so many good stories. One that really fascinated me, Maggie, is this September phone call the President Trump had with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the president, was trying to get a peace deal in Gaza and was finding Netanyahu uncooperative, to say the least. And let me just read from this. Once again, I'm going to curse because this is -- these are quotes from conversations. "Trump told Netanyahu he was sick of his antics. I've done everything to protect you. You better fucking go along with this. Everybody's sick of you, Bibi, Trump said. All the Jews are sick of you. Even the two Jews on this call are sick of you," Trump added, referring to Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. "You can't back out of this. Trump ticked through the list of controversial decisions he had made supporting Israel through both of his presidencies" and on and on.
This is a stunning conversation. And combined with the reporting you have, Maggie, about how fed up Jared Kushner was with Netanyahu and the current Israeli government, I have never seen that kind of conversation really from any President with Netanyahu, including ones that were publicly much less supportive, like Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Barack Obama.
HABERMAN: Yes, Jake, it was, you know, again, another extraordinary moment in our reporting was hearing about this. And obviously there have been other tense phone calls that the two men have had, Netanyahu and Trump, since then. And we have seen some of those. But this really sets some of the table for what you're seeing in their relationship now. The President was just unloading on Netanyahu.
And there was enormous frustration on the part of the White House, on the part of Jared Kushner, on the part of Steve Witkoff, that there had been this strike on Qatar by Israel while the U.S. was in the middle of trying to negotiate some kind of a ceasefire and a hostage exchange. This was a turning point moment, at least in the minds of a lot of Trump officials. Now, Netanyahu went along with this plan. Some people around Netanyahu believed that he was more willing than perhaps Trump administration officials thought to engage in this ceasefire. But it was quite a moment between the two.
TAPPER: Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, fantastic book, highly recommended. I read it like in a day and a half, even though it's more than 400 pages. Congratulations. Congratulations on all the accolades, and I hope you sell a billion of them. Thanks for joining us.
[17:55:07]
SWAN: Thanks so much, Jake. Appreciate it.
HABERMAN: Thank you, Jake.
TAPPER: Then there's President Trump today, refusing to sign a bipartisan housing bill, then getting into a shouting match with Republicans in the Senate over Iran, even calling one senator a lunatic. Up next, just in here, what that senator is saying publicly about that moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TAPPER: Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper. And we are following breaking news tonight as a meeting between President Trump and Republican senators turned into something of a sweet screaming match on Capitol Hill. The confrontations about the Iran war as the President expressed his exasperation that any Republicans would vote for the War Powers Act. Here's how Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana described his dispute with President Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[17:59:59]
SEN. BILL CASSIDY (R-LA): The President didn't want to hear my question, interrupt me. I didn't care to be interrupted. I felt like I was trying to get answers for the American people and I'm not going to be bullied when I'm trying to get answers --
