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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Declares War Has Been Won Despite Sending More Troops; Trump Claims Iran Sent Present That's Related To Oil And Gas; Democrat Flips Florida Seat In Red District That Includes Mar-a-Lago; Trump, Democrats Skeptical Of The Proposal By Republicans To End Homeland Security Department's Shutdown; Minnesota Sues Donald Trump Over Blocked Evidence On The Deaths Of Renee Good And Alex Pretti. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired March 24, 2026 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, Donald Trump considers sending even more troops to the Middle East for a victory he's already declared.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: They call it a war. I call it a military operation.
We've won this. This war has been won.
HUNT: Plus, the president's approval drops to the lowest of this term as Democrats in Mar-a-Lago district look to flip a seat.
Also talks to end the DHS shutdown are just as unpredictable as the lines at airports.
TRUMP: Any deal they make, I'm pretty much not happy with it.
HUNT: And Minnesota accuses the feds of blocking evidence in the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, and are now asking a judge to force their hand.
Live at the table, Scott Jennings, Adam Mockler, Val Demings and Ken Cuccinelli.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Good evening. I'm Kasie Hunt in for Abby Philip tonight.
As the White House initiates talks with Iran about ending the war and President Trump celebrates a win, the U.S. is bolstering its firepower in the Middle East with more troops heading to the region. Sources tell CNN about a thousand soldiers with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division are preparing to deploy in the coming days. That includes a rapid response force that will be ready to go at a moment's notice, this on top of the thousands of Marines and sailors already on the way.
Today, President Trump signaling optimism that a deal is in sight, saying Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are leading the talks. An Iranian source confirms and the U.S. reached out to Tehran, but claims nothing has amounted to full-on negotiations. The source stressed that Iran is not asking for a meeting or direct talks, but is willing to listen to proposals.
All of this as President Trump, yet again declares victory, something that he's done quite a few times, amid weeks of intense attacks.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We've won this. This war has been won.
But they have no navy and they have no air force and they have no nothing.
Oh, I think we've won.
But from a military standpoint, they're finished.
We've won. Let me tell you, we've won. You know you never like to say too early you won. We won. We won the bet. In the first hour, it was over.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: In the first hour, it was over, he said. And yet bombs continue to fall. Troops continue to head to the region. What does this even mean anymore, Ken Cuccinelli?
KEN CUCCINELLI, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR RENEWING AMERICA: Well, it's really all going to be judged at the end looking backwards. And --
HUNT: Are we not already at the end? The president keeps saying we're at the end.
CUCCINELLI: No, we're not at the end. I mean, I --
ADAM MOCKLER, COMMENTATOR, MEIDASTOUCH NETWORK: So, you disagree.
CUCCINNELLI: My understanding of what he's saying is that they've devastated the military and that's accurate. It's hard to imagine it isn't. But that doesn't mean it's over. I mean, this is a regime that suffering is a tactic even for its own people.
I will say what's different this time is that their leadership's been successfully targeted, and so they're not just contemplating other people's suffering. They're contemplating their own suffering for the first time. And we can't see from over here what that does to the calculation on that side. Nonetheless, they're human beings like everybody else, and that's going to factor into how this plays out here in the next few weeks. MOCKLER: I'm glad that we got Ken's very charitable interpretation of what Donald Trump is claiming on a daily basis that we've won, but the reality is what the president is saying is incongruent with what's happening on the ground, and that's the scary part here. There are two separate conversations that are happening when we're doing these debates.
There's a conversation that you guys are having, which is just whatever the administration says on any given day. One day we've won. The next day there's negotiations. The next day we've won again. But there's the actual on the ground reality that we are mobilizing thousands of troops to the Middle East. We are asking for $200 billion for this war. And I don't know, what are we getting for this? 86-year- old Khamenei was replaced with his 30-year younger son who's more radical, more extreme, is purging moderates. Can anyone tell me what we've gotten for this?
HUNT: Well, I think that one question I would posit here is to you, Scott, and this is what James Mattis had to say, okay, Mad Dog Mattis, right, very well respected Marine Corps general, former Trump defense secretary. He says this, Iran right now, if we declared victory, they'd say they own the stait, you'd see attacks for every ship that goes through. We're in a tough spot, ladies and gentlemen. I can't identify a lot of options.
I know we've talked here, and I think one of the responses to what you just laid out is that the Iranians have funded bad actors across the region for many decades. Many presidents in both parties have talked about how bad this regime is. But, Scott, the challenge is, okay, we've done this, we seem to have underestimated their capabilities with drones, their willingness to dig in, the ways that they've attacked their allies, and now Jim Mattis is saying he can't see a good way out. Can you?
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. I mean, the way out, of course, is for an international coalition to secure the strait. And just in the news today is that the British Royal Navy has on its way. They've decided to engage.
I think that's the clear future here is after you decimate their military, take away their ability to make nuclear weapons, take away their ability to have a ballistic missile program and defeat their willingness to be an exporter of terror, you have an international coalition that, A, monitors these people, and, B, secures the strait. And, obviously, virtually, every country in the world has an interest in the strait being open and secure, and that they don't have a navy or any capability at all to harass these ships going through. So, I think that would be the hope.
And I think what the president said is true. We have decimated their military capabilities. We've destroyed all of their navy.
MOCKLER: That's not what he said. He said, we've won.
JENNINGS: We've destroyed nearly all of their navy. So, one of the pieces here is to get the rest of the world engaged in the strait. I think they're on their way to doing it.
MOCKLER: Do you think we --
FMR. REP. VAL DEMINGS (D-FL): What's really interesting though is we know that it's not over because we don't even clearly understand why we are there in the first place. The mission was never really clear. The president said nine months ago that he obliterated Iran's capabilities to obtain a nuclear weapon, yet he's deploying thousands of additional troops to the region. It looks like to me -- remember he started off saying we were on an excursion in the Middle East. It looks like to me, we're in a war and preparing for a ground war with no clear way out.
And so the president says there's negotiating, negotiations going on. Iran says that's not true. And so the American people nor other troops on the ground have a clue what the president's mission is, what the way out is. 13 people, U.S. soldiers have already died. We need a clear mission.
JENNINGS: Okay. Respectfully, may I ask you a question? Do you believe that Iran has been the world's largest state sponsor of terror for the last nearly five decades?
DEMINGS: The president is the one, Scott, who said nine months ago that he obliterated any capability that they had. So, what is the mission now? Why are we there now? Why are we there now?
I think the president --
JENNINGS: I'd like to ask you -- we're having a debate, so I'm asking you a question. Do you believe Iran is a state --
DEMINGS: I think the president owes the American people an explanation for why it's okay to send our sons and daughters into a war where 13 people have died. You're sending additional ones.
HUNT: Nobody's yelling right now.
JENNINGS: Because you're not prepared for this debate. Let me tell you what the objectives are. Number one, they are the world's largest state supporter and exporter of terrorism. Number two, they have a ballistic missile program, which we found out this past weekend can reach most of Europe. Number three, they lie about their nuclear --
DEMINGS: Is Europe at the table?
JENNINGS: They lie about their --
DEMINGS: Is Europe at the table?
(CROSSTALKS)
DEMINGS: Why weren't our allies included?
JENNINGS: I see now why you don't know the objectives because you don't stop talking long enough to listen. Number three -- DEMINGS: Why weren't our allies included --
JENNINGS: They have a navy that harasses ships.
DEMINGS: -- in the war in the beginning, in the discussion, in the strategic plan, in the operational plan? Why weren't they included?
JENNINGS: Nobody else does that.
HUNT: Hold on a second. We've known from the beginning that the Europeans were not included in this. I take your point, we've learned that they have additional capabilities, but also this president has struggled to tell a straight story to the American people about why it is, and his administration has, right? I mean, Marco Rubio was out with an explanation --
DEMINGS: (INAUDIBLE) you, Scott, explain why he's --
HUNT: Hold on, hold on. Marco Rubio was out and with an initial explanation saying, well, we thought Israel was going to act, so we needed to do it, okay? Now, we have the president today saying that we are having -- that he is having conversations with the Iranians, and that they gave him a present, and that this is part of why he's encouraged by the state of the negotiations.
I would like to play that moment for you and then we'll see if we can get our conversation a little bit more on the rails around that. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: They did something yesterday that was amazing actually.
[22:10:00]
They gave us a present and the present arrived today. And it was a very big present, worth a tremendous amount of money. And I'm not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize.
It was oil and gas related, and it was a very nice thing they did. But what it showed me is that we're dealing with the right people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So, does anyone sitting here have any idea what he's talking about?
DEMINGS: I'm sure Scott does. Please tell us what he's talking about.
JENNINGS: No, none of us do because none of us are in the room for these negotiations that are going on.
MOCKLER: (INAUDIBLE) like Trump isn't either.
JENNINGS: You're not. You're not. MOCKLER: Trump isn't either.
JENNINGS: You're not. You're not. And, obviously, they're talking --
HUNT: I didn't say --
(CROSSTALKS)
JENNINGS: None of us are going to be. Now, we will react to it when the news breaks. But, to me, if you exit this with an Iran that has been defanged, as it relates to missiles, as it relates to an aggressive navy, you take away their ability to make nuclear weapons and you leave the remnant here unwilling to be a supporter of terrorism, that is an unequivocal win for the United States of America.
MOCKLER: I want to show you, I want to show you the very careful wording Scott is using here. He is saying, if that happens, which means that he disagrees with Trump's statement that it already has happened. Also, I cannot believe you invoked an international coalition just two minutes ago when Trump already tried that. Trump announced two weeks ago he was gathering an international coalition of ships to escort -- that are countries to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz. Guess what? No country's answered because he spent the past year threatening to invade Greenland.
So, now --
DEMINGS: Matter of fact, he said he didn't need them.
MOCKLER: I mean, he said he didn't need them. I was going to get there. Then he comes all the way back around to saying, listen, I didn't break up with her, or no, sorry, she didn't break up with me. I broke up with her. I didn't need them in the first place.
JENNINGS: You almost had it. You almost had it.
MOCKLER: I almost had it.
JENNINGS: You screwed it.
HUNT: I want to ask you --
JENNINGS: You screwed it up.
MOCKLER: -- do you agree with -- yes or no? Do you agree with Trump that this war is won?
JENNINGS: I agree that we have devastated their military.
MOCKLER: Wait, do you agree that we've won? He said we've won. Yes or no? It's not a hard question.
JENNINGS: Well, I mean, if you --
(CROSSTALKS) JENNINGS: If you consider a condition of winning, destroying their military capabilities, their missile capabilities --
MOCKLER: We haven't. Wait, if that's true, why can't the Strait Hormuz be open if their military is destroyed?
HUNT: Hold on one second. Here is, you know, a big -- the big picture question I do have here, Scott, is if it is true that we have won, why are we sending the 82nd Airborne?
MOCKLER: Thank you.
JENNINGS: To be prepared for what happens next.
MOCKLER: Why is the strait not open if we've won?
CUCCINELLI: Yes. So, one of the elements of the discussion is presumably nuclear materials. And even with bombing last June, nuclear materials don't go away for thousands of years, and that material can just be dug up and reused. So, one of the -- really, to me, the only reasonable basis to put our folks in Iran is to recover materials after an agreement has been achieved.
HUNT: Would you support that, putting American boots on the ground to recover nuclear material?
CUCCINELLI: After has been achieved to recover materials, yes.
HUNT: So, not as combat troops? You're saying under an under a --
MOCKLER: Would you support that, Scott?
JENNINGS: Well, we cannot exit this, in my opinion, without being able to assure the world that they do not have enriched uranium to the point of and purpose of building a nuclear weapon.
MOCKLER: And we have to go (INAUDIBLE).
JENNINGS: So, that is what we have to exit.
HUNT: Do you -- I mean, do you and Ken have a difference of opinion here? I mean, would you support using special operations force, potential paramilitary forces or potentially regular troops to go get nuclear material if the Iranians didn't want us here, or are you wary of that as a choice?
JENNINGS: Well, I'm wary of it. Of course, anytime you have people in harm's way, you have to be leery of it. But I guess I'm not, and none of us here are in a position to know what is the status of the conversations between us and who we're talking with in Iran. Also, what is Israel planning to do? Also, what are we hearing from our partners in the other Gulf states? I think there's a lot of variables that we're frankly not in a position to know enough to answer that question.
But, yes, of course, anytime American troops are in harm's way, you worry and you pray. And we have the greatest military in the world, and we have the greatest troops in the world, but it would be quite dangerous. And, hopefully, as Ken said, you would get to a point where they say, uncle, come get the enriched uranium, and that would be a best case scenario.
HUNT: I think that people used to -- you used to work for called the known unknowns. Last word.
DEMINGS: The president said that we are going -- the U.S. is going to mutually control of the strait with Iran. We know that's not true. That's not going to happen. You're right, Scott, that anytime American troops are in harm's way, we all ought to be concerned about that. And that's why the mission for them, what they are clearly trying to do, needs to be clearly defined so they can accomplish that and come back home. That should be our priority, not supporting a president who is all over the place in terms of this war.
JENNINGS: But you do want to get the nuclear material, yes?
HUNT: I gave her the last word. I gave her the last word. Thank you.
JENNINGS: All right.
HUNT: All right. Coming up next here, breaking tonight, a Democrat has flipped a Florida seat in the red district that includes the president's Mar-a-Lago resort, this as Trump's approval hits the lowest rating of his term.
[22:15:01]
Plus, one MAGA Allies says ICE at America's airports is the perfect test run to put ICE in America's polling locations. We'll discuss.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUNT: All right. Breaking tonight, CNN is projecting that Democrat Emily Gregory will win the Florida statehouse race for the district that includes President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. Trump endorsed the Republican candidate in the race.
CNN's Erin Burnett asked Gregory if she thought Trump was a factor in the race. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MEMBER-ELECT EMILY GREGORY (D-FL): For me, not so much. I think my opponent put it front and center and I focused on the issues that matter most to Florida families.
[22:20:02]
Everyone is feeling that affordability crisis, and the last thing that Florida families needed when they're struggling is $4 gas. So, that is what I spoke about and that is what I talked to voters about. So, it wasn't as much a factor for me but perhaps my opponent focused on it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Something else worth noting in this election was how Trump cast his ballot. CNN has learned he used a mail-in ballot. He also used one for the primary in January.
Now, you may recall the president has railed against this method of voting. Does that amount to telling Americans do, as I say, not as I do?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating. I call it mail-in cheating
Corrupt mail-in ballots, we're the only country in the world that does it that way, corrupt as hell.
You'll never have an honest election when you have mail-in. And it's time that the Republicans get tough and stop it, because the Democrats want it. It's the only way they can get elected.
The problem I have with Colorado, one of the big problems, they do mail-in voting. They went to all mail-in voting. So, they have automatically crooked elections, and we can't have that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So, Ken Cuccinelli, former attorney general, when I was his age, it was Republicans who loved mail-in balloting.
CUCCINELLI: Yes, whoever's good at it loves it. But I'll say the way he voted is consistent with what he asked for in the SAVE Act. He didn't ask to get rid of it. He asked to limit it to -- for excuse, including travel and being away and deployed and sick and elderly and disabled folks. So he's not -- he is practicing what he preaches.
HUNT: But he's in Florida all the time and he has access to Air Force One all the time.
CUCCINELLI: Yes. Oh, yes, that wouldn't be a separate story, to fly down to Air Force One to vote in a state election.
HUNT: Didn't you have to -- I was talking to someone who was telling a story about Bush having a flight at Crawford at the last minute to make sure they got their ballot in under the wire. It's been done before. No?
JENNINGS: Most presidents try to vote in every election in their jurisdiction, however they can. Of course, he's managing quite a few things here in Washington today. So, I think it's possible to hold two thoughts. One, you're not a huge fan of mail-in balloting, a lot of Republicans aren't, and, two, if it's the only way you can vote in an election, that's what you do, because, you know, people want to participate.
HUNT: So, let's talk about the fact that this Democrat won this seat. Adam?
MOCKLER: Yes. I mean, as funny as it is that this seat is Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago district, I think that the reality is prices are squeezing a lot of Americans. I know that people in my generation do not like to see $4 gas. People in my generation were already feeling the pain of the tariff attacks that Trump imposed on American families in 2025, which was a $1,000 increase for American families. You can add in the ACA subsidies, those compound.
But the real thing that I'm concerned about right now is the national debt. The national debt added $8 trillion in the last two Middle Eastern wars, and now we pay $1 trillion per year just on the interest of that debt. And what are we doing? Spending tens of billions of dollars on another war that could last, whoever knows how -- who knows how long? It's like it's a lot of money and I do not want to be dealing with this debt crisis for my entire life.
HUNT: Yes. I mean, well, I will have to -- I have to say, it's a crisis I feel like I've been covering my whole career in Washington as well.
Now, Val Demings --
CUCCINELLI: I would like to mark a point of agreement. I don't want to get in Val's way, but --
HUNT: No, go ahead, do that.
CUCCINNELLI: I agree with the debt. That's simple.
JENNINGS: And what would be the most effective way to deal with it, Ken?
MOCKLER: Oh, I think Democrats --
JENNINGS: Cut everything. No.
DEMINGS: It's back voting in Florida.
HUNT: Yes. Let me give this to Val Demings. This is your home state.
DEMINGS: It's my home state.
HUNT: You understand the territory. This has been historically -- I mean, yes, obviously it's noteworthy that Mar-a-Lago is there, but it's also fundamentally a red district, that side.
DEMINGS: It's a red district. Mar-a-Lago is there. But Representative- elect Gregory said it. She focused on the issues that people care about. And at the end of the day, people want to know, how's my life better because of the decisions that are being made by the people in office?
Her opponent put the president front and center, who also said that he had the full and complete endorsement of the president. Emily focused on affordability. The president said it was a hoax. People don't like paying $4 for gas. They are worried about their future, their children's future, the cost of housing, the cost of rent, all of the things that affect people's lives every day.
She's a small business owner in Florida. She knows what people are feeling and what they are going through. And they elected her because they want to see someone who sees them in office.
HUNT: How much, Scott, do you think this is a sign of things to come? Because I got to tell you, I talked to Republicans in this town and, I mean, they see a pile of evidence heading into the midterms that things are not looking great?
JENNINGS: Oh, sure. I mean, you absorb all these things and analyze them for what they are. I mean, I think there's some evidence that the national electorate has moved somewhat to the left, although we don't know how much, from 2024 to 2026.
[22:25:07]
I mean, this is a small district. It's a low turnout. I think she won by 900 votes. So I'd -- I would caution anyone to extrapolate a 900- vote win to, you know, what could happen nationally.
But, you know, I'll be candid, I don't know much about this lady. She looked like a somewhat reasonable kind of candidate, which I'm not exactly sure the Democrats are going to get in a lot of their Congressional and Senate races.
DEMINGS: The Republican who was in the seat before the special election won the district by 19 points.
HUNT: Right.
DEMINGS: So, this was no --
HUNT: Which puts the 900-vote margin into context.
DEMINGS: There was also a Senate race in Florida, Senate District 14, where the Democrat -- they're calling the race for the Democrat, but it's automatically within the recount numbers.
MOCKLER: Can I point out --
DEMINGS: And so things are shifting, not because of Republicans or Democrats or right or left agendas, which I could care very little about, but I do care about people and what they are going through. And people are feeling the pain of what is happening in this country now.
MOCKLER: It is ironic that Republicans lost this special election. They're going to lose around the country come to midterms because of the same exact type of policies that, honestly, Scott has been advocating for on here, tariffs on the American families. People do not like that. This Iran war has increased gas prices. We have the ACA subsidies being cut. I mean, they continue to advocate and pass these policies that American families feel the effect of then it backfires in the midterms. This is going to be a big blue wave. It already was going to be before the war in Iran, and this is the most like visceral change that we've seen so far. When I drove to the airport today, I passed by two gas stations and I was paying attention. American families are paying attention to this.
JENNINGS: I'm old enough to remember when Democrats were advocating for higher gas prices, to bring about the end of the internal combustion engine.
MOCKLER: You only have to be five.
JENNINGS: Now, all of a sudden, gas prices are --
MOCKLER: Wait, which Democrats did want higher gas prices?
JENNINGS: Literally all of them.
MOCKLER: They said, I want higher gas prices?
JENNINGS: Yes.
DEMINGS: And gas prices --
JENNINGS: (INAUDIBLE) policy to drive prices up to get rid of the internal combustion engine.
DEMINGS: Gas prices was the one thing that -- that was the president's trump card, right, that gas prices were going down. He just said that a couple of weeks ago at the State of the Union. Gas prices are going up because of the war that he has not even clearly explained to his voters why the gas prices are going up, why we're in the war. And so we're seeing the results of how people, voters feel.
CUCCINELLI: Yes. We had an affordability election last November in Virginia, and the Democrats swept in with supposedly moderate Abigail Spanberger, and it took a matter of days or hours for people to realize how far left she is. And now we're getting tax increases upon tax increases, rejoining the Greenhouse Gas Initiative, to intentionally raise energy prices, the one thing that affects more people more quickly and poor people more than anyone else.
And so in Virginia, we just had a seat flip too, 30 miles south of where we're all sitting in Woodbridge, deep blue territory in Northern Virginia, went Republican for the first time since the 1980s. So, I agree that people kind of --
DEMINGS: Affordability matters.
CUCCINELLI: That, A, that it matters, and, b, that people vote on how they feel it's really happening. We watched Joe Biden try to tell everybody what the economy was and it wasn't, and they voted differently. And you can't talk people into it, right? I mean, I think we agree on that.
DEMINGS: The state -- right, you're right. But the State of Virginia voted for Abigail Spanberger.
CUCCINELLI: Yes. And real quickly --
DEMINGS: And the people in district in Virginia, I'm sure, voted based on things that were going on that they were being affected by in their district every day. And that's the way --
CUCCINELLI: Yes, because they saw that affordability was going the other direction.
DEMINGS: And why the president wants to continue to disenfranchise voters from the vote by mail.
Now, look, we're talking about the president of the United States. Of course, he will not be able, regardless of who it is, to get to his district where he lives and vote every day. Well, why would you want to disenfranchise millions of people from voting in this country? Why not support vote by mail? Whereas the Heritage Foundation that I know Scott loves --
JENNINGS: How do you know that?
DEMINGS: -- says that there is not very much -- do you not love the Heritage Foundation?
JENNINGS: Well, I'm just asking you. You make affirmative statements about my love --
(CROSSTALKS)
DEMINGS: Disenfranchising voters, and the statistics show that there has not been.
HUNT: Right. Well, I mean --
DEMINGS: Major fraud in voting. So, it's like --
CUCCINELLI: Look, you can go back to --
DEMINGS: Make it easier for people to vote and not worry at all.
CUCCINELLI: (INAUDIBLE) Commission 2005, Jimmy Carter said the most fraud-prone way of voting is by mail, Jimmy Carter, not -- well long before Donald Trump was engaging in this subject. And it is the most fraud-prone. It is also just the most mistake-prone.
[22:30:00]
DEMINGS: Are you saying that Republicans have had a problem with vote by mail for decades and did nothing about it until President Trump --
HUNT: We are going to wrap this conversation up. I think it's important for our viewers just to underscore that we have not seen vote-by-mail fraud on a scale that changes the results of American elections in modern times. So worth noting that. Coming up next here, no deal yet for DHS funding, no relief in sight for TSA workers who can't are not being paid or for the passengers that have been waiting for hours at the airports, and now a new twist in the talks. We'll discuss.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUNT: We are just days away from TSA workers missing their second full paycheck. And it's unclear whether senators are any closer to striking a deal to end the DHS shutdown.
So far, nearly 500 TSA officers have quit, many more have called out. Wait times at airports are still incredibly frustrating. Can you imagine being in this line at Houston airport for hours today?
So Senate Republicans want to fund DHS without ICE's budget or the SAVE Act, which is what the President is demanding. They instead want to try to muscle through those items in a reconciliation bill, it would pay for ICE and include some voting reforms.
But they are currently struggling to sell that plan to Democrats. The X factor, though, is really their own President.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I don't want to comment until I see the deal. But as you know, they're negotiating a deal. I guess they're getting fairly close. But I think any deal they make, I'm pretty much not happy with it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Now, it's not just Trump. There are some other Republicans outside the Senate that are pessimistic, too.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. RICK SCOTT (R-FL): Some people talk about reconciliation. It's very hard to pass a reconciliation, I think it's a pipe dream. It could happen, I think it's very difficult.
REP. MARK ALFORD (R-MO): When you start splitting things off, it's going to give the Democrats more leverage in the future. And I guarantee you they will hang that around the necks of the American people as well in the future. Let's keep this bill together.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, tells CNN he will not accept the GOP offer. Instead, plans to ask for more.
So with the stipulation that I would like to use the word reconciliation as little as possible in this panel discussion, Scott, this does seem to be a situation where Democrats have been going down to the floor and they have been saying we want to fund everything in DHS except for ICE.
It does seem like, and we were having this conversation in real time at this table last night, that Senate Republicans were able to convince the President that they should do a version of that, that they would try to do the ICE and the border enforcement funding along with the voter things that the President wanted in a different way, and they would fund DHS. But that seems to have totally unraveled throughout the course of today, and meanwhile, Americans are stuck in line.
JENNINGS: I know. Well, I think you have it right.
The Democrats originally asked for a situation where they could fund everything but ICE. Republicans said, Okay. They went over to the White House last night, they got Trump to basically agree to that.
There are 260,000 employees, by the way, in play here. Only 6000 of them have to do with the immigration enforcement. So what we thought Democrats wanted to do was fund 254,000 workers, and now they're saying they don't want to do that.
And so it seems to me that they're moving the goalposts. It strikes me that there's a really simple two-part solution here.
One, go ahead and get the airport situation taken care of. I thought everybody agreed to that. Maybe Democrats want to continue to inflict pain on the American people, it sounds like they do.
And then number two, Republicans go down the path of reconciliation, knowing that it may be difficult to get it done, but that's probably the best way to do that. Now, the ICE people are funded for the next two years, thanks to the Big, Beautiful Bill, so there is some cushion here. And my humble advice to Democrats would be, if you want to make policy changes to ICE, the correct vehicle for that is when you do the next four-year appropriations, that's when you can ask for things.
But right now, the priority ought to be, A, pay these poor TSA people, B, get the American people moving again, and C, say what you were going to do. Go ahead and follow through on what you were going to do yesterday, which is fund everything but ICE.
DEMINGS: Wouldn't it be nice to wait four years and make those policy changes? But you know what? Two Americans have died on the streets at the hands of ICE agents.
And as a form of law enforcement, what Democrats are asking for is not unreasonable. Body cameras, clear identification to identify yourself, and to remove the masks. You don't see police officers, local police officers on the street walking around like that.
And in terms of the TSA, we know that Republicans in the Senate and in the House give this President whatever he wants. If this President wanted to fund the TSA, you're saying they don't give this President anything and everything he wants?
If this President wanted to fund the TSA, they would be funding the TSA. And we need to find a way to pay the most vulnerable group with the most important job at the airport. Get them paid.
[22:40:08]
JENNINGS: Can we just have a Senate lesson here? It takes 60 votes to do this. There are 53 Republicans.
HUNT: Forbade that.
JENNINGS: I know, but that's because it obliterates her argument.
MOCKLER: The two-step solution you laid out would be good, but you're forgetting the third step, which is them bringing it to Trump and Trump shooting it all down. Democrats gave --
DEMINGS: He'll do it.
MOCKLER: Okay, so your two-step solution got blown up by the very guy that you're defending, but okay, we'll see about that. Number one --
JENNINGS: Because Democrats won't vote for him.
MOCKLER: What are you talking about?
JENNINGS: Call his bluff.
CUCCINELLI: Call his bluff.
DEMINGS: The TSA is not being paid because the President could care less about not being paid.
MOCKLER: Listen, Democrats, please put up a bill for the eighth time to fund TSA because Republicans have shot it down.
JENNINGS: It was filed. It was filed today.
DEMINGS: Let's fund the Coast Guard.
JENNINGS: It was filed today.
DEMINGS: And the Secret Service.
JENNINGS: It was filed today.
HUNT: There does actually seem to be some consensus here, which is that the whole thing should be funded --
DEMINGS: Yes, we don't want to pay TSA.
HUNT: Well, it does seem to be that --
JENNINGS: Schumer said he won't do it, Adam. Trump is holding it up.
MOCKLER: We literally just laid out that Trump is holding it up.
JENNINGS: Trump is in a separate branch of government. This is the Senate.
MOCKLER: He's holding the Republicans.
JENNINGS: We're talking about --
DEMINGS: The Republicans do whatever he wants them to do.
MOCKLER: But this is a different branch.
HUNT: I want to reorient this conversation slightly. The camera is only going to look at me right now.
I'm sorry. Yes, thank you. Okay, hello.
So we're going to look and see what Steve Bannon had to say about ICE agents at airports. Because, of course, we've been looking at how everyone's engaged in their own version of political theater and brinksmanship and trying to look like they're the ones who have saved the situation, et cetera. One thing that happened here was that the administration sent ICE into the airports.
Definitely a lot of political layers to that decision. But Steve Bannon posited that it was actually about much more than just this current crisis.
Let's watch what he had to say, and then we'll hopefully talk, not yell, about it. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE BANNON, HOST, "THE WAR ROOM": We can use what's happening with these ICE helping out at the airports. We can use this as a test run, as a test case to really perfect ICE's involvement in the 2026 midterm election, sir.
MIKE DAVIS, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, ARTICLE III PROJECT: Yes, I think we should have ICE agents at the polling places.
BANNON: I think it's perfect training for the fall of 2026. Look what happened.
They moved everybody along. People get there quick. They vote quick.
Maybe every now and again they pull somebody along. Hey, yo. I.D.? Got an I.D.?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: What's he playing at here?
CUCCINELLI: Look, there's a federal statute that forbids federal law enforcement from being armed near polling places, and law enforcement doesn't go anywhere unarmed. So he's pulling your chain and you're letting him. That's been in the law since the Reconstruction era.
DEMINGS: Oh, we're following the law now? Yes, we are. You're going to pull me.
MOCKLER: There's also a peaceful transfer of power in the law. I mean, guess who broke the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history?
CUCCINELLI: Nice try, Adam.
MOCKLER: What do you mean nice try? Scott Jennings wrote an article titled Trump policies have functioned everywhere.
CUCINELLI: Tom Homan just --
No, look, I've been being polite to you all day and I'm done with it. So look, this same kind of attack on sensitive spaces was made, Tom Homan answered it quite well earlier this week, going into schools, hospitals, etc.
And he called the bluff. Name one time that's ever happened. When someone, you know, in a hot pursuit, you could end up in there.
But enforcement actions are not taking place in those places.
MOCKLER: Wait a minute.
CUCCINELLI: They're not going to take place at polling places.
MOCKLER: ICE has skirted 200 court orders just in the state of Minnesota since this year began. Just because I point out that Trump has already tried to overturn an election doesn't mean that you can go on some random tangent. I mean, we have people at this table who called Trump out for causing January 6th and wrote articles about it.
So, congratulations.
DEMINGS: The problem, back to ICE being at the airports, the problem with ICE being at the airports to supplement TSA, they're just not trained to do what TSA does. They're certainly there.
They have a larger presence. I'm not sure how that is really helping with the problems with the lines because they cannot help in the scrutiny, right?
I'm not sure. But what I do think is that the President wants America to get used to seeing ICE on the streets of America, in polling places, in airports, and other places. I think he wants that to be commonplace.
JENNINGS: We ran a lot of stories today on CNN and other mainstream media outlets showing where ICE was. In fact, I saw them handing out water to people in an airport. I would think the people in Georgia who were worried about water in Wisconsin. HUNT: Why are they doing that and not actually enforcing our
immigration laws on the city?
JENNINGS: Because TSA is understaffed and we need line management and it appears to be.
[22:45:03]
DEMINGS: No, we don't need line management. We need multiple screens.
JENNINGS: Tell that to the people in the airports.
HUNT: We're in the last couple of seconds of this segment. Go ahead.
CUCCINELLI: We have three funded agencies in the Department of Homeland Security and five unfunded agencies and 22 unfunded components. It is not new for funded agencies at DHS to go and assist or take on, not every role is a TSA screening role.
If you look closely around those airports at where TSA agents are on a normal day and what they're doing, they're doing a lot of different things. 90 percent of them, any law enforcement officer can do.
There are 10 percent of them where there's special training, as you point out, that they can't do. And so they're just freeing up TSA personnel.
DEMINGS: I was assigned to the Orlando International Airport for five years. What TSA is to do, I mean what the ICE agents are doing is not what we need them to do to help alleviate the problem that we're facing.
HUNT: Fair enough. Coming up next here, Minnesota accuses the feds of blocking evidence in the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. We'll discuss.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:50:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUNT: Tonight, the state of Minnesota is accusing the Trump administration of withholding evidence related to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the non-fatal shooting of an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant.
In a lawsuit filed today, Minnesota officials accused the federal government of stonewalling. They're demanding a court order to compel the feds' compliance.
I want to give this to this side of the table because there's quite a few significant legal issues at play here. In many ways, they've been the most forthcoming about the situation with the Venezuelan immigrant who was shot. They've essentially said that the federal agents here didn't tell the truth in their accounting of what happened, but it is pretty remarkable that the federal government is telling us so little about what happened in these incidents and who these people are.
CUCCINELLI: So, I was obviously a prosecutor at a state level. We have a dual sovereign system and the feds always get to go first. I didn't like it then and they don't like it now in Minnesota.
But the feds go first and whether it's their agents or not really isn't the issue. It's that there's federal accountability here and the legal accountability at the federal level just rolls through first.
And I understand the frustration. I've lived with the frustration myself when I was Virginia's Attorney General. I realize there are political aspects to this, but I have even less trust of Keith Ellison than some people around here might have of Donald Trump.
So those issues are problematic and it's when we get into this kind of a situation, it's where all that political rhetoric and everybody owns some of the responsibility for it starts to really have meaningful consequences in how we can operate our justice system.
DEMINGS: Well, the sad part about it is the lack of trust. I mean, we're not talking about disagreement or not liking it. We're talking about the state of Minnesota feels they have to sue to get information.
Now look, I've investigated cases, I served as a police chief. We have never not had the coordination between federal, state, and local government. There was always a sense of cooperation whether we needed information from the feds or the feds needed information from local government.
What bothers me most about these cases is that the agents were cleared within 24 hours or less. Where is the investigation? The families deserve that, the public deserves that, the state of Minnesota deserves that.
How do you do a thorough investigation but you basically say they were justified in what they did?
HUNT: Well, and Kristi Noem came out very quickly afterward and essentially called Alex Pretti a domestic terrorist. She ultimately lost her job.
DEMINGS: They're not the officials. That's a problem.
CUCCINELLI: What are they? The mayor? The governor?
JENNINGS: The attorney general? That's a problem.
CUCCINELLI: That's why they sit on all parts because this is where your point goes into real life play.
DEMINGS: They cleared them without an investigation. CUCINELLU: Are you talking about Noem's comments? Because that's not a
clear.
DEMINGS: Well, she was the secretary of Homeland Security.
JENNINGS: Is there an investigation?
CUCCINELLI: Yes, there is an investigation going on.
HUNT: Markwayne Mullin, the now DHS secretary, said at the top of his hearing that he should not have said that. He acknowledged, he said I should not have come out and called Alex Pretti a domestic terrorist right away.
Now he said I was going to withhold. But what I'm saying is that Kristi Noem was the secretary at the time. She was fired. And I understand, Scott, you're trying to make a point.
But Markwayne Mullin, who is a loyalist, had to come out in that hearing and say, you know what? I should not have said that.
All right, everybody, thank you very much for being here. Thanks to all of you for watching as well.
Coming up next, much more on the war in Iran and the high level talks happening to end it.
[22:55:05]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUNT: Tonight, new details in Sunday night's fatal collision at New York's LaGuardia Airport. The fire truck involved in the accident with an Air Canada plane was not equipped with a transponder that helps air traffic controllers track vehicles on the airfield. And the airport's surface detection equipment didn't generate an alert ahead of the collision.
[23:00:03]
The collision killed the plane's pilot and copilot and injured dozens of people, including a flight attendant who was thrown from the plane while still strapped to her seat. We will, of course, continue to bring you updates as this story develops.
Thank you all for watching "Newsnight." Don't forget, you can catch my show, "The Arena," tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. right here on CNN. But don't go anywhere, "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
