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Inside Politics

Democrats Slam Trump Memorandum With Iran; Trump, Vance Sharply Rebuke Israeli Strikes In Lebanon; Mamdani Lambasts Dem Party In Rally With Progressive Challengers; Juneteenth Arrives As Redistricting Imperils Black Representation; Dem-Backed Senate Candidate Helped Alert ICE To Undocumented Worker Claims. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired June 19, 2026 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: -- some of the gator had just come out.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! I will say, you three are much more talented writers than I am. There's like 17 different amazing leads you could take off of the different elements of this and apply them to the presidency.

All right, when we come back, Senator Cory Booker joins me next on what he thinks about the deal to end the war he resoundingly opposed.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTINGLY: Democrats have nearly unanimously opposed the President's war on Iran, but that doesn't mean they're backing his ceasefire deal. Senator Chuck Schumer called the deal a, quote, "fiasco." So the President gave away the store, taking issue with the $300 billion investment pledge and Iran's ability to resume oil sales without clear commitments on its nuclear and missile capacity.

Democratic Senator Cory Booker joins me now in studio.

[12:35:02]

And Senator, I think one of the things that I've been trying to figure out here is understand the opposition, understand the legitimate and genuine concern with the MOU that we've seen up to this point. What did you see as alternatives --

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D), NEW JERSEY: Right.

MATTINGLY: -- given that we were here, whether you opposed it at the beginning or not?

BOOKER: Well, what I didn't expect is when the President said in February when he started this ill-conceived war, he said, I want unconditional surrender. I didn't know that it would be him being the one that was surrendering unconditionally. I mean, think about this for a second.

Iran right away is going to be able to sell oil on the open market. Right away, they get relief from sanctions, which means they'll get billions of dollars, much of which they didn't have before. All we get out of this deal is really nothing, just getting the Strait of Hormuz open.

So we are seeing them get all the gains, and us, who've spent $50 to $100 billion of taxpayer money, who our own taxpayers have then been paying higher costs at the pump, higher costs for groceries, that has not gone down yet. We've lost 14 American soldiers, and we have nothing to show for it except for a promise that we'll negotiate over the next 60 days.

Let me tell you something right now, and it's not me being predictive, it's me just knowing how hard this is. They're going to come back after 60 days and say, we need to negotiate more. They're going to continue to kick the ball down the road and deliver nothing in terms of any of the goals or ambitions Donald Trump said he would have.

Iran is coming out of this better off, and we are far, far worse off, every American citizen, and how their own lives are going could say we're worse off than we were before Donald Trump started.

MATTINGLY: You know, to that point, the one thing that this deal ensures on some level is there's economic relief. Again, unilaterally started by this administration, the conflict itself, but gas prices shot up. They've been continuously dropping. Even Iran being able to sell oil will flood the market with more supply at this point. Is that not worth it at this point?

BOOKER: So right now, understand that this is -- gas is about $1 more than when he started. Every economist, every person in the energy business will tell you it will take a long time for prices ever to return to where they were before February. So we're talking months and months more of pain for the American citizen. And this pain was entirely caused by Donald Trump.

So don't cause a wound. And just because you're providing a band-aid now, say, oh, you did nothing wrong. We should have never been in this war in the first place. It was one of the worst ill-conceived decisions I've seen a President make in my lifetime.

And now the way he's getting us out of it is by surrendering all American authority, giving up all of our leverage, giving them everything they want and actually making our adversary stronger before and us as a nation weaker in our national security.

MATTINGLY: Among the many parties that seem to have issues with this agreement is the party that the U.S. went to war with here --

BOOKER: Right.

MATTINGLY: -- which is Israel. And obviously the administration, President Trump, JD Vance, have responded in return. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Israel's fighting Hezbollah too long and too many people are being killed.

I'm saying when two drones are shot into the desert and drop harmlessly, you don't have to knock down buildings in Beirut.

JD VANCE (R), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Senator, I think what's striking about it is there are comments made, particularly some of the stuff from the President, and stuff that you've heard from Democrats saying repeatedly over the course of months, years even, since the October 7th attacks happened and the conflict that resulted. Do you agree with the sentiment that they're sharing there?

BOOKER: Well, this is what I know. The two of the worst administrations of all democratic governments on the planet Earth right now are the Netanyahu administration and the Trump administration, both led by criminals. Remember our President, first in history to have dozens of felony convictions.

So we have two criminals leading nations and acting in deeply immoral ways. And so this to me is the chickens coming home to roost. Israel is less safe and America is less safe because of immoral leaders that made horrible decisions.

MATTINGLY: I mentioned where -- that this is criticism that you heard from Democrats repeatedly. It has been striking. And you can look at polling, you can look at policy decisions related to assistance going to Israel. The party has shifted very dramatically, in large part because of the Netanyahu administration and how the prime minister has operated on some level. Describe how you view the relationship right now and where it should go.

BOOKER: Well, look, everybody should be committed to peace in that region. And we were moving well along that path before October 7th. And so my frustration now is the only way out of this is by being committed to a pathways of peace. And we have two leaders that in this decision to go to war with Iran, so veered us away from peace and strength, peace through strength, and now to a point of weakness and less leverage and more isolation on the world stage.

So, again, Bibi and Donald Trump are awful leaders that have ultimately come out not only making both of their nations weaker and more at risk as a result of this war in Iran, but in a cancerous way have eroded the U.S.-Israel relationship in a way that should make everyone concerned. Because the only pathway to peace I see is if the Americans step up and lead not only peace between the Palestinians and peace between the Israelis, a two-state solution, but also the larger peace efforts in that region with the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Jordanians, and ultimately the Iranians. [12:40:29]

We are in a global crisis right now because of the bad decisions of these two leaders. What we need is leaders that are committed to a just peace in that region for all its people.

MATTINGLY: In a post-Netanyahu world, which may happen after the next elections, who knows, is the Democratic Party -- does the Democratic Party need to have a unified, very structurally different view of the relationship now than it did, say, several years ago?

BOOKER: Well, in many ways, again, I don't speak for the Democratic Party, this is what I seek. I see a crisis in that region that has persisted. And we've had an inability, really, frankly, in the leadership of this administration to reaffirm the position that has been held for a long time. It's not just reaffirming a two-state solution, but really being an actor that fights for justice, humanitarian support in an independent state for the Palestinian people, and justice and security for the Israeli people.

And here's what folks don't understand. These destinies of these two peoples are so intertwined. Injustice to either of them is a threat to justice for both of them. There will never be Israeli security without Palestinian autonomy, and there will never be Palestinian autonomy without Israeli security. That's the kind of leadership and wisdom that we need to bring an end to this conflict.

MATTINGLY: Stick around. We have a lot more to get to, and you've been gracious with your time. We'll have more with Senator Booker after the break, including on today's holiday, Juneteenth, and an intense indictment of the Democratic Party from Zohran Mamdani. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[12:45:58]

MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI (D), NEW YORK: For far too long, our party has seen its job as managing decline, instead of delivering material change for working people. That old way of thinking will lose on Tuesday. And frankly, it will lose in South Carolina and New Hampshire. It will fall short of 270 electoral votes. Because the party of the past will not be what leads us into the future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: That was Mayor Zohran Mamdani lambasting the Democratic Party establishment last night. He was speaking at a rally for three progressive candidates fighting intense primaries in New York City that exemplify a lot of the fractures we've seen inside the Democratic Party at the moment.

Senator Cory Booker is still with me. And Senator, I think one of the questions, intraparty battles, figuring out what the future of the party is, is part of the deal. BOOKER: Yes.

MATTINGLY: And frankly, it probably leads to progress with parties on some level. But that sentiment there, do you think it's off base?

BOOKER: Well, here's what I believe. Right now, the Democratic Party needs to be far less concerned about the Democratic Party and far more concerned with what people are struggling with, which is an American bargain, an American deal that is just not working.

I'm one of these folks who's been saying, we need a new deal for America, not just the Democratic Party. I'm worried about, in my state, there's a whole generation of people that don't think the deal of my grandparents, where every generation does better than the one before, is going to work for them. And they're right.

Kids being born in the 90s and the 2000s, actually, less of them are going to do better than their parents, when my father's generation, 90 percent did better than their parents. So this is a time that the Democratic Party needs to start building the kind of coalitions we need, not around our party, but around the issues that are going to make a difference for folks. And so I tell this to people all the time.

Primaries, let's have them. But at the end of the day, we need healers, because the coalition that we need to win in America, that New Deal coalition from the FDR era that had everybody from rural farmers to urban factory workers, we need to have really a generational moment here where we renew not a Democratic Party, but we renew the American dream and make it real for all of America.

MATTINGLY: You mentioned kind of the better off than the generation before you, which you hear a lot right now. We were talking before the show -- I'm working on a project and I was down in Atlanta talking to some community advocates who, based on what they've seen with the Supreme Court and the Voting Rights Act, based on what they've seen with this administration and their policies writ large, but in particular, the attacks and effort to eliminate DEI-related issues or anything within the general periphery of DEI, that they had a lot of concern that they and their kids, despite everything that their parents and grandparents fought for, that black political power that the African-American community in general is in a worse place right now than they ever could have imagined. Is that off base, do you think?

BOOKER: No. Look, I'm the only United States senator that lives in a neighborhood, we don't mistake wealth with worth, my neighborhood's at the poverty line, the census track I live in, and it's a black and brown community. And I have substantive talks with my neighbors all the time about how they're working harder than their parents, but they're falling behind, affording childcare and healthcare and housing.

The math does not math for most American families, black or white. That's why I believe this is the time for big, bold solutions and things that make a sense to the average American. It does not make sense when you talk in 14-point policy plans. There are simple things that we could do.

This is why, as you and I talked about, individual savings accounts for every child born in America as a birthright, you've got an account that will compound an interest and gives you tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time you're 21. This is about reforming our tax code and lifting the standard deduction of $75,000.

No American pays any taxes on their first $75,000 worth of earnings. That will give everybody in my neighborhood immediately a 10 percent raise in earnings, and it will cut child poverty in half. And we can do that by unrigging the system that allows Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to pay an effective tax rate of less than 5 percent.

[12:50:18]

Those things people will understand. It will make an immediate difference in their lives. That's what we should be talking about as leaders in this country, about how we make change, not how much we hate the other party.

MATTINGLY: On the redistricting after the SCOTUS, I mean, the speed with which a number of southern states moved to redistrict and all of their targets were majority black districts historically. Is there anything Democrats can do from a policy basis legislatively?

BOOKER: Well, let's talk about the irony that you and I are having this conversation on Juneteenth. Remember, this was a celebration of freedom. And the first thing blacks did, many of them, after they were free, is they started effectively showing their citizenship by voting.

Voting at rates of 70 and 80 percent, but it lasted less than a decade because southern legislatures, after the fall of Reconstruction, in a way of violence and terror, stopped blacks from voting at the polls. All kind of dirty tricks, from poll taxes to messing around with district lines, you name it, they did it.

And here we are, generations later, on Juneteenth, watching the Supreme Court make a horrible decision like Dred Scott, like Plessy v. Ferguson, another horrible decision that sends southern legislatures back to doing what they were doing in that post-Reconstruction period and eviscerating black fair elections, black political power, taking away, again, like we saw in that period, blacks from the House of Representatives if we're seeing those seats disappear.

This is not a black-white moment. This is not a left-right moment. This is what kind of democracy will we be. All of us are invested in this idea that there should be fair maps and fair representations. To attack that, to undermine that, is undermining the very fabric of our nation, the very idea of freedom and justice.

MATTINGLY: Senator Cory Booker, I really appreciate you coming in and taking the time, sir. Thank you so much.

BOOKER: Thank you. Thank you very much.

MATTINGLY: Well, coming up, he is the Democrats' best bet in Nebraska, the way to keep Republicans from holding onto a Senate seat. But a KFILE investigation finds he helped alert ICE to undocumented worker claims. That exclusive next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:56:05]

ANDREW KACZYNSKI, CNN KFILE SENIOR EDITOR: Well, look, today, Dan Osborn presents himself as a pro-labor populist who is sharply critical of some of the Trump administration's harsh immigration tactics. But during a major labor strike he led in 2021, Osborn said his union had actually turned to federal immigration authorities over allegations involving undocumented replacement workers.

Take a listen to him here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAN OSBORN, U.S. NAVY VETERAN: -- Kellogg bringing in replacement workers, we have it on good authority that they're replacing us with a good percentage of undocumented workers. We have --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So now they're going to be taken advantage of.

OSBORN: We have been in contact with Homeland Security and ICE. We've made our claims. I hope they do the right thing and investigate our claims.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KACZYNSKI: So at the time, Osborn was president of a local union representing workers at the Kellogg Cereal Plant in Omaha, and this strike involved roughly 1,400 workers across Kellogg's four facilities nationwide. He offered, by the way, no evidence during this interview that replacement workers were undocumented, and we could not independently verify the allegation.

Kellogg's also did not respond to a request for comment, but compare those comments then to what Osborn is saying now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OSBORN: We're seeing factories get raided, meat cutters get raided. We're seeing people not showing up to work at restaurants. We are seeing business owners get hurt by this immigration policies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KACZYNSKI: So Osborn has also criticized the use of masked federal agent and called some of what he's seeing, quote, "not humanly decent". His campaign told CNN that Osborn never personally contacted ICE or Homeland Security. Instead, what the campaign told us was that Osborn contacted a local sheriff's department and sought guidance on how allegations involving undocumented replacement workers should be reported. He then passed that information along to others who they said contacted authorities on their own. This is what they told us. They said, "Dan contacted the Douglas County Sheriff's Department to inquire about the proper procedures for how to investigate and report that the company was replacing their striking workers with undocumented workers. He passed the information from the sheriff's office along to members of his team. Many of the individuals who raised the concern about Kellogg's replacing the striking workers with undocumented workers contacted DHS and ICE in their individual capacity." They say, "Dan never contacted DHS and ICE himself."

But this episode really does sort of highlight the complicated politics that Osborn has to navigate in this race. On one hand, we have him calling for a pathway to citizenship for long-time undocumented immigrants. He says immigrant labor is important to the state's economy, but he also supports strong border security, and he's argued that undocumented immigration does drive down wages for American workers.

MATTINGLY: And, Andrew, this comes as Osborn is relying heavily on Democratic voters in the Senate race, right?

KACZYNSKI: Well, that's correct. In Nebraska's Democratic Party, this cycle, unlike the last cycle when he ran, they decided not to recruit their own candidate and instead back Osborn after he had a surprisingly strong Senate run in 2024, and this makes immigration a particularly tricky issue for him.

There was a recent Pew survey that found Democrats overwhelmingly view ICE negatively, while Republicans hold very favorable views of the agency, and Osborne's challenge is going to be holding together both those groups if he wants to win.

And the campaign, they now frame this incident as actually being about protecting exploited undocumented labor, telling CNN that members of the community stood up to protect local union jobs and hold corporate power accountable, adding -- this is from Dan Osborne, "There's a reason we haven't had real immigration reform in the country. Mega- corporations who use Citizen United to fund career politicians in D.C. are benefiting from our broken immigration system by exploiting undocumented immigrants to create a cheap pool of labor, driving down wages to boost their own profits, while undercutting American workers."

Phil?

MATTINGLY: Andrew Kaczynski with the latest KFILE exclusive.

KACZYNSKI: Thanks.

MATTINGLY: Thanks so much, my friend.

And thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts right now.