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California Gov. Newsom Vows to Fight Fire with Fire in Battle Against Redistricting Efforts; Football Player's Emotional Press Conference Sparks Conversation on Male Vulnerability; American Prince, JFK JR, New Episode Saturday. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired August 14, 2025 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): ... on women's rights, he wants to bring us back to a pre 1960s world. That's what this is all about. It's about power.

And I want to end on this. And we are about to give power back to the people.

(CHEERING)

NEWSOM: You have on November 4th in California, you have the power to stand up to Trump. You have the power to declare that you support a system that is not rigged.

You have the power on November 4th to stand up for people that are being bullied. You have the power to stand up for people that are being intimidated. You have the power to stand up to the rule of law.

We're giving the people of this state the power to save democracy, not just in California, but all across the United States of America. I hope we are waking up to this reality. Wake up America.

Wake up to what Donald Trump is doing. Wake up to his assaults. Wake up to the assault on institutions and knowledge and history.

Wake up to his war on science, public health, his war against the American people. This is a guy who lays claim to want to get a Nobel prize sitting there and betting is needed to Mr. Putin. You have the power to straighten this out.

And so I want to again just thank everybody for exercising not just their formal authority. Yes, that's what we're doing. But also sharing their moral authority at this moment.

(APPLAUSE) (CHEERING)

NEWSOM: I want to thank everybody for being here today or being here tomorrow. And most importantly, we're counting on all of you on November 4th for each other to win this election and stand up for our democracy. Thank you all very, very much. DANNY FREEMAN, CNN HOST: We've been listening to California Governor Gavin Newsom really beginning the next chapter in an ongoing battle over congressional redistricting across the country. Governor Gavin Newsom saying that this plan, he's calling for a special election on November 4th to, in his words, ask for the consent of Californians to do midterm redistricting. Again, in his words, doing it in reaction to this ongoing plan between President Trump and the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, to try and redistrict and gain more seats in Texas.

Governor Newsom now again drawing this battle line, saying that he's hoping to get more Democratic seats in California by holding the special election in November to ask to do it, essentially.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Yes, and the governor there casting Trump's actions and his agenda as an existential threat to democracy in the United States, suggesting that the reason Trump is doing this is because he knows that he will lose in the midterms and if Democrats take control of either chamber of Congress, that that would freeze his agenda effectively, in the words of the governor, ending his presidency.

He said that as a result of Trump's actions, it is time to think anew and act anew. Questioning who does this, he says someone with weakness masquerading as strength, bending a knee to Vladimir Putin.

The California governor saying this obviously on the eve of the big summit between Trump and Putin tomorrow in Alaska.

Let's go live to CNN's Steve Contorno, who is tracking this alongside us. What were your takeaways from this press conference by Governor Newsom?

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, it's clearly that the stakes for what was a fight that started in Texas is now going national. And I think you can expect a sort of tit for tat blow for blow escalation of this redistricting fight to take place. You heard Governor Newsom calling for not just California Democrats to move ahead with their redistricting plan, but for other Democratic leaders to get in this fight as well.

And we have seen Republicans and President Trump and J.D. Vance urging Republican states to join Texas. J.D. Vance going to Indiana to convince the governor and legislature there to redraw their maps. And in Florida, you have Governor DeSantis saying that they are ready to act. Missouri and other states.

So this is clearly going to be a chaotic and state-by-state fight for the House of Representatives in a very unconventional way. It is very uncommon to see these kinds of mid-decade redistricting efforts, but it's something Democrats say that they are being forced to do in response to what Texas has done.

[15:35:00]

I will point out it is a much more difficult path for Gavin Newsom and Democrats in California than Texas Republicans because they have to get their population, their voters, to approve of any changes to their map because of their state constitution. That's an added wrinkle that will make it a little bit more challenging than what Republicans have to do in Texas.

SANCHEZ: Yes, and that's probably part of the reason that the governor is holding this event to try to court those voters, and we will likely see more to come soon.

Steve Contorno, thanks so much for the reporting.

Stay with CNN. We're back in just moments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: A homesick college football player recently cried during a press conference and its got people taking about masculinity and very public shows of emotion.

[15:40:00]

The player who broke down is Archie Wilson. He's from Australia, and he joined the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers this year as a punter. He just turned 19, and at that press conference, a reporter asked him how he was doing being so far from his family, which is halfway across the world.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: First time you're away from them?

ARCHIE WILSON, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA CORNHUSKERS PUNTER: Yes, that part's hard. I mean, I'm sorry.

(SOBBING)

WILSON: Yes, I love them a lot. Yes, I've got two little brothers and a mom and dad, and yes, that's the tough part about being here. I love them a lot, and I miss them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Let's talk about this with writer and philosopher Ryan Holiday, who hosts The Daily Stoic Podcast. He also wrote the book The Daily Dad, a book on Stoic philosophy designed for fatherhood. Ryan, great to chat with you, as always.

The response that I've seen online to this has been overwhelmingly positive. People have empathized with Wilson, but some are mocking his display of emotion. They call him a crybaby, a wimp, saying that he should get a girlfriend and just FaceTime his family.

Why do you think that this expression of emotion from a young man, a football player, elicits these kinds of responses?

RYAN HOLIDAY, WRITER AND PHILOSOPHER: I think it makes us uncomfortable. Maybe we think, would our son miss us that much that way, that far across the world?

I think the irony of it is that sports are incredibly emotional. That's why we love them. And there's certain kinds of emotions that we accept from athletes, you know, anger. We might even accept crying in happiness.

But as soon as it sort of veers into a place of vulnerability, then we get uncomfortable and we judge and we condemn.

SANCHEZ: I told you last time that we spoke that the next time we would chat, I would nerd out about Marcus Aurelius. And I'm about to do that. Being that you're a proponent of Stoicism, this idea that many of our emotions or passions cloud our reasoned judgment, that we shouldn't dedicate energy to things we can't control.

Do you think that Seneca or Marcus Aurelius would tell Archie Wilson to stop crying?

HOLIDAY: Well, you know, I've got Marcus Aurelius behind me on the shelf. And I know from the historical record that he wouldn't. We have four stories about Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of Rome, breaking down into tears.

A famous one actually involves him as a young man, probably Archie's age, one of his favorite teachers dies. And he starts to cry and one of the other philosophers comes up to him and tries to tell him to stop, that this isn't manly, this isn't what we do.

And actually the current emperor, the then emperor of Rome, Antoninus, stops the teacher and he says, let the boy be human. He says, neither empire nor philosophy takes away natural feeling.

And we have stories about Marcus crying in grief, over an earthquake, over the plague. We even have a story of him crying when he loses the chance to grant clemency to one of his arch enemies.

So yes, the Stoics were about not being blinded by or deceived by our emotions, but that doesn't mean they didn't have them and that they weren't human beings. I think there's something different about crying in a press conference because you're sad and then being so debilitated by it that you can't play or that you turn around and go home. And so that's what Stoicism is.

It's not the elimination of the emotion. It's the understanding of it, the processing of it, the being aware enough to have it and then deciding what you're going to do after.

SANCHEZ: I think some of the chatter online about this specific incident is sort of a microcosm of a larger question about masculinity. And I want to ask you about why you think masculinity has become so political and in some ways, a commercial product, these tough guy retreats and boot camps and influencers that peddle a certain vision of masculinity. It seems like there's a demographic of men out there who are responsive to the idea that manhood itself is under attack.

I wonder if you think it is.

HOLIDAY: Well, there's this sort of performative, insecure masculinity that seems to be very concerned with what other people do and how other people live. Even if you wouldn't cry in this situation, why does it matter to you that somebody else who's objectively tough, objectively in great shape, objectively great at what they do, who's courageous enough to move to a new country and, you know, play an American sport? It's something we should be impressed by.

[15:45:00]

And instead, I think instead of being impressed, some people are threatened by that or they feel the desire to mock it or make fun of it. I am concerned with what I'm doing, with my emotions in my life. I don't spend a lot of time that concerned about other people's masculinity. And I guess that is not a common view these days, unfortunately.

SANCHEZ: Ryan Holiday, thanks so much for joining us. His new book, Wisdom Takes Work, is now available for pre-order.

Ahead, still to come on CNN, the lasting legacy of John F. Kennedy Jr., a look at our new original series, "AMERICAN PRINCE, JFK JR."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:50:00]

FREEMAN: A new CNN original series, "AMERICAN PRINCE, JFK JR.," explores the story of John F. Kennedy Jr. In this week's episode, JFK Jr.'s stardom hits a new peak as he launches George, a trailblazing political magazine that really became the center of the cultural zeitgeist of the 90s.

SANCHEZ: Yes, and stars on the cover included Madonna, supermodel Cindy Crawford, dressed as George Washington, notably. The magazine explored the political world that JFK Jr.'s father was such a central part of. Here's a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It must have been hard for him to grow up with a father who was mythical. The only things he remembered from his father were the memories that people told him. He has none of his own memories.

His dad was a trailblazer, the first Catholic president of the United States. He was pushing boundaries all over the place. So I think of John as having a little of that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think part of the desire to do a political magazine was to be able to learn about his father's presidency in the first person and understand it on his own terms.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: His search was in search of my father, finding myself. And George gave him the material or the tools to further engage that search in a different way.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: Joining us now to discuss the impact of George is CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter. Brian, tell us more about the media landscape that George was launched in and why it was so interesting at the time to have a magazine that mixed pop culture and politics.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Right, I was really riveted by this episode. I watched an early copy of the episode that airs this weekend, this Saturday night. And it really stood out to me because it is like a time capsule of the 1990s of a turning point in American media history that we did not know about at the time.

1995, JFK Jr. launches George Magazine. It turns out to be the very same year that the World Wide Web becomes public knowledge. People start logging on with their dial-up modems onto the internet.

You know, the World Wide Web, the internet is about to eat the magazine business's breakfast and totally up-end publishing forever. So this was really one of the last OG, big deal, glossy magazine launches in history. And he did it right in so many ways.

You know, getting Cindy Crawford to play, dress up as George Washington on the cover of the first issue, filling the magazine with luxurious features and trying to make politics not just informative, but entertaining and engaging and relatable and buzzy.

This was a really interesting turning point for the media business, but also, as you heard in that clip, for politics and for JFK Jr. as an individual. He started to think more seriously about entering the political arena running for office someday.

And of course, one of the through lines of this entire docuseries is what might have been had he not been killed in that plane crash later in the decade.

FREEMAN: Brian, I'm curious. Is there a particular issue that stands out to you as maybe the most controversial of the time?

STELTER: You know, there are actually several of them. I don't want to give it away because on Saturday, you hear about some of the controversies that enveloped George, some of the decisions that JFK Jr. had to make. He had complete editorial control, which is usually unheard of.

And he was trying to leverage his celebrity into something meaningful, trying to help figure out ways to connect people into the political landscape. He talked a lot about this magazine being post-partisan. And if you think about the environment we live in today, where partisanship has consumed everything, we could use a little bit more of that post-partisan attitude.

At the same time, you think about the connection between the 90s and today and who Donald Trump was then versus today. Some commentators have suggested that George magazine was a signpost along the way to a Trump presidency because of its combination of celebrity and politics. So that's something else worth thinking about when you watch this weekend.

What are the connections between the two? And is it possible for those to be disconnected in the future? But, you know, as we think about, you know, just the idea of him launching a print magazine, I was reminiscing about this when I was watching and listening to the Taylor Swift podcast last night.

Because nowadays, 2025, what would you do? You would launch a podcast. That's what JFK Jr. would be doing today in order to gain that kind of cultural currency and political relevance, he would launch a podcast. But in the 90s, it was still a print magazine and it's a blast to go back in time with this episode this weekend.

SANCHEZ: Brian Stelter, thank you so much for giving us a sneak peek.

Be sure to tune in a new episode of the CNN original series, "AMERICAN PRINCE. JFK JR." premieres this Saturday night at 9 p.m.

Still to come, robots that dance, play musical instruments, and do karate. Now, a look at the world's first humanoid robot games being held in Beijing. We'll be right back.

[15:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FREEMAN: All right, let's take a look at this. Robots are showing off some of their best performances as the first world humanoid robot games kicks off in Beijing today. Now, it may be one great leap for robots, but at this point, it does not quite seem like they're near human level competition.

SANCHEZ: Check out this head-to-head moment at the soccer goal. Yes, hundreds of humanoid robots and teams from 16 countries are competing over the next three days. It's supposed to be good news for everyone worried about robots taking over the world because as you can see right now, they're not very coordinated.

They're having a moment together.

FREEMAN: Yes, yes, it's a dance really is what it is more than a soccer game, I feel like.

[16:00:00]

SANCHEZ: There we go.

FREEMAN: Oh, it's in, goal, goal.

SANCHEZ: That counts, that counts right.

FREEMAN: Oh, man.

SANCHEZ: I'm not really sure what to think about the running though. It is a bit eerie, even though that was --

FREEMAN: Yes, still faster than me, I'll tell you.

SANCHEZ: Hey, Danny, thank you so much for joining us this week. It was a pleasure to have you.

FREEMAN: Thank you, Boris, appreciate it.

SANCHEZ: Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. "THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts just about eight seconds.

END