Biden's Border Ban, Hunter's Angry Wife, Naked Florida Man
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It's Wednesday, June 5th, right now on CNN This Morning. Asylum seekers effectively banned at the southern border. President Biden's executive action in effect, but for how long?

Sparks flying at Hunter Biden's federal gun trial, his wife lashing out at a Donald Trump supporter. A Florida man angry with Donald Trump and naked from the waist down crashes his car into the lobby of a local jail. Okay. And any moment now, a new verdict in the Amanda Knox case, her lawyers looking to overturn a 16-year-old conviction.

All right, 6 a.m. here in Washington, a live look at the White House on this Wednesday morning. Good morning, everyone. I'm Casey Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us. The message from the White House this morning, the border is closed. Right now, most asylum seekers crossing illegally from Mexico into the U.S. are supposed to be turned back after President Biden took executive action. The simple truth is there is a worldwide migrant crisis.

And if the United States doesn't secure our border, there's no limit to the number of people who may try to come here. So today, I'm moving past Republican obstruction and using the executive authorities available to me as president to do what I can on my own to address the border. The pushback was immediate, progressive Democrats calling it a betrayal, while Republicans claim it's a political ploy.

This is a public relations executive order and it's meaningless, meaningless. He could stop the millions of people coming into our country with one order and one signature. It's all there for him. I did it.

We should note that the ACLU is filing suit to block the president's action. They were previously successful blocking a similar action that was issued by former President Trump. Our panel's here. Molly Ball, senior political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, CNN legal analyst, Elliott Williams, former federal prosecutor, and Patty Solis Doyle. She's former presidential campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, and Matt Gorman, former senior advisor to Tim Scott's presidential campaign. Welcome all. Thank you so much for being here this morning. Molly Ball, big picture reporter.

The president is doing this precisely because he wants these headlines for political reasons. The border is shut. It is closed. But obviously, this is something that Republicans still feel like they have higher ground on. How does this ultimately work for the president or not?

You know, the Democratic sources I talk to don't expect the president to actually win on this issue. But the idea is that something is better than nothing, and they'd rather have something to point to to say he's doing something than to have to sort of continue to ignore it or blame it on Republicans. In our own Wall Street Journal polling, we've asked people, what do you believe is a better explanation for what's going on in the border? Is it, you know, that...

that the president undid a bunch of Trump's executive actions and has allowed it to get out of control? Or is it that Republicans refuse to go along with this negotiated bipartisan border bill? And the majority of people said the former. The majority of people blame the president for what's happening, don't blame Republicans for not having come to the table or from having walked away from the table on the border. And that had been the argument up to now. I think you do hear some Democrats and some on the left

saying, how does the president draw a distinction between him and Trump if he's doing essentially the same things? And some of the progressives who are criticizing him, not just on the policy that they don't like, but politically are saying, this now makes it harder for him to make that case since Trump's

platform on immigration is such a central part of his campaign and was so contentious while he was president. - This whole idea of Republicans walking away, quote unquote, really revolves around,

There's nothing more American than mom, apple pie, and failing to pass immigration reform. And it happens literally every couple years. When I worked up in Congress 2007, 2008, failures both times. Then I was at ICE, oddly enough, working on the border in 2013, and they failed again. And Congress can't seem to get their act together with passing legislation. What ends up happening then is that

presidents, Trump did it, Biden did it, Trump did it for different reasons, Biden did it, use these executive actions to try to patch the holes. And that's why the ACLU was suing. The president has limited authority to step in when there's existing law and try to change it with just a signature. Right. So this has divided Democrats. And I kind of want to give you guys a preview of or a little bit of a taste of how that's playing out. Let's watch. This is a series of Democrats, progressive and moderate, weighing in on the president's actions.

It is extremely disappointing that this White House would choose to double down on the previous administration's harmful and flawed immigration policies. It's not perfect, but I am supportive of the action that he took today. He knows that probably the courts will reject it as they did when President Trump did it, and that really throws the issue back to Congress. The asylum is a very important part of America's history, but now the system is being abused. I think it was the right thing to do.

Patty Solis Doyle, you've run a presidential campaign. You hear what those Democrats are saying there. The moderates are basically saying like, yeah, I'm on board with this. But progressives are obviously some of them are calling it a betrayal. Yeah. Look, I don't think the president had a choice, in all honesty. Again, that, you know, Trump came out early this year and said, no, no, we're not going to do this bill. I'm not going to give Biden the political win here.

I'm going to use this as a juggernaut on this campaign. I'm going to win on this issue. And I'm sorry, mayors and governors of states that are being affected, really high stress situations for them. You know, they have called out and said, we can't handle this anymore. Trump said, too bad, you're going to have to wait until after the election.

So I really honestly don't think Biden had a choice. As Elliot said, this is really complicated and really difficult to wrangle. Presidents on both sides of the aisle for decades have tried to put together a comprehensive immigration reform and have failed miserably. And because it's complicated, it's got security implications, got economic implications and

myself included, really high emotional implications as a daughter of Mexican immigrants. I don't think Biden had a choice. He had to do something to sort of stop the bleeding on this issue.

Matt Gorman, I do want to show what, you know, obviously these policies are very, I mean, this is a very similar policy to what Donald Trump put in place, right? Biden clearly is aware of that and he sort of preemptively defended himself against that by explaining how he believes he's different from Trump on this issue. Watch this. I will never demonize immigrants. I'll never refer to immigrants as poisoning the blood of a country.

And further, I'll never separate children from their families at the border. I will not ban people from this country because of their religious beliefs. I will not use the U.S. military to go into neighborhoods all across the country to pull millions of people out of their homes. So obviously, all of the contrasts that he sees with himself and Donald Trump

But the bottom line, politics of this, sir, he's still taking this action for a reason. I mean, look, show someone the Overton window of this all has shifted, right? When we talk about immigration, if we've been doing this for a long time, for the last decade or two, it was always, if you wanted border enforcement, you wanted border security, you had to do something, legal status, citizenship, that is not the case anymore. Going back to George W. Bush, it was, you know. Absolutely, right? It was one for the other. That is not the case anymore. And look, I was down at the border last year with Tim Scott. Like, I saw this firsthand.

And I think also you see the politics just radically change on this issue. This is an animating issue, not just for folks in the border states, but all across the country because you're getting migrants really pop up in a lot of different places. And look, I think the Biden administration sees that they need to do something on this. They need to be able to answer these charges, right? And it shows also the politics of

shifted, right? Day one, you saw Biden reverse the emergency declaration that Trump had in office. Also Title 42. Now you're starting to see a veering in the other direction because, look, we talk about abortion. I think rightly so is one of those animating issues of single issue voters. Immigration is now rapidly becoming that on the other side. It's going to be in many respects a battle of which issue kind of dukes it out with the economy looming above all.

Yeah, really, really tough. All right, coming up next here, prosecutors painting Hunter Biden as a man driven by addiction in his federal gun trial. Plus, verdict watch for Amanda Knox, new courtroom drama connected to that infamous murder trial. And Alec Baldwin's next chapter, a new TV show.

I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. What are some of the social service agencies that have supported you and your family growing up? That's Dr. Robert Waldinger. He's a psychiatrist, a professor, and a Zen master. What kind of relationships actually help us maintain happiness? And what should we do in those moments where we have setbacks and things that don't work out? Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, welcome back. Testimony at Hunter Biden's federal gun trial will resume this morning after yesterday's opening statements. The defense arguing the president's son did not knowingly lie about his drug abuse when he purchased a firearm in 2018. Prosecutors using Hunter Biden's own words against him, playing back for the jury long portions of the audiobook of his memoir in which he narrates his own fall into addiction.

I possessed a new superpower, the ability to find crack in any town at any time, no matter how unfamiliar the terrain. It was easy. All right. Panel's back. Elliott Williams, they're relying a lot in the legal arguments on, I mean, Hunter Biden's own words, quite frankly. And we can play a little bit more of that, actually, because this comes from his audio book. The book was written in 2019. Obviously, these events are in 2018. And here's how Hunter himself describes the timeline.

If I could find some new treatment, some new approach, some new lifeline, I thought I could still claw my way back out. During the nearly four years of active addiction that preceded this trip to California, which included a half-dozen rehab attempts, that's what I told myself after each failure.

So that, of course, is something the prosecution wanted out there. The defense is basically saying, well, this happened right after one of those stints in rehab and he thought he was clean. How does that work? The prosecution's only challenge here really is not going too far and not appearing to vilify or demonize someone who is addicted to or using drugs. Because as far as prosecutions go, these...

possession statutes, and I prosecuted them too, not for drug addiction, but usually for someone having a felony conviction beforehand, are quite easy to prove. You just have to establish, number one, the possession, not even the purchase of the gun, the possession of the gun, and number two, that the person was addicted to or using drugs at some point. Now, defense... Isn't that a little less clear, though, than like a felony conviction that's written down? It is a little fuzzy, and...

But it's there. I mean, you have the defendant's own voice and it isn't a huge leap to saying that at the time that the firearm was purchased, this person was using drugs. It's really just a question of not going too far and getting in the jurors heads that you are attacking or putting this person down.

There's a great basis for him to plead guilty at this point, to just take the lower sentence, knock six or even 12 months off of the time he would have gotten, given that if he does go through with trial and gets convicted, ultimately it could be a much higher sentence. Very interesting. Matt, I want to talk about the politics of this for a second, because NBC News reported a pretty heated confrontation that played out at the courthouse.

between Melissa Cohen Biden, who is Hunter Biden's wife, and a man named Garrett Ziegler, who is a former Trump aide. So Hunter Biden's wife confronts Garrett Ziegler outside the trial. She points her finger at him and says, you have no right to be here, you Nazi POS. Obviously using the profane version of that.

Ziegler then was interviewed, told NBC News, it's sad. I've been sitting here the whole time, haven't approached anyone. For the record, I'm not a Nazi. I'm a believer in the U.S. Constitution. I haven't said one thing to them. Now, this is a guy, Garrett Ziegler, who after Trump leaves the White House has really made a career out of

assembling information and disseminating it about Hunter Biden. They blame him for many of the most salacious and nasty things that came out into the open from the Hunter Biden laptop and everything else. But I was pretty surprised to see that his wife...

it really underscores just how tense this all is. - And there's a story, I believe it was in Politico recently, talking about the toll this is putting on the president as well, right? I think that is something that is really percolating behind the scenes, the tenseness of the family. 'Cause I mean, look, I'm not a lawyer, but Elliot, how much is he looking at in terms of a penalty if he's found guilty conviction, as you were saying before? - A bunch of months, but not a few years. And I'm being a little vague here because it's going to be sort of a bell curve kind of, but

So pleading would be, I think, six to 12 months. He'd get a little more than that if he ends up going to jail. And originally there was a plea deal, right? It kind of got shot down, whatever. But I think that is really the tension behind this for the Biden family. And look, Biden...

Hunter's a grown man. He can handle this, whatever. But obviously for the loved ones, it's tough. And you put this in the shadow of a presidential campaign. Biden is, what, 81 right now? He's not a spring chicken, so these things are tougher as you get older. And I think that is a real, real thing at play here for all the family involved. All right. Coming up next here.

We expect a verdict at any moment in Amanda Knox's slander trial in Italy. We'll bring you that. Plus, the Bidens in France for D-Day commemorations, 80 years after the Allied invasion of Normandy. All right, this just in to CNN. We now have a verdict in the Amanda Knox slander case in Italy. Let's get straight to CNN International Senior International Correspondent Ben Wiedemann, who is live for us in Rome. Ben, what are we learning? Well, we've learned that...

Amanda Knox has been reconvicted for slander relating to an accusation against a bar owner in the case of the murder of Amanda Knox, or rather Meredith Kircher back in 2007. This was a retrial. Last year the European Court for Human Rights ruled that her conviction for slander in which she accused this man Patrick Lumumba

who owned a bar where she worked part time. She accused him after a night of interrogation by the Italian police of the murder of Meredith Kircher.

And it turns out that basically she said today, very emotional in court, speaking in fluent Italian, which she learned during four years in Italian prison, that she was young, she was stressed, she'd lost her accommodations because that's where the murder took place, and that she basically made two statements to the Italian police in the absence of a lawyer or a proper translator that Patrick Lumumba had killed Meredith Kircher.

The court today upheld that conviction. However, she's already served four years in prison waiting for the trial and the verdict going back to 2009. So she won't have to spend any time in Italian prison. She may, however, have to pay a fine. Casey.

All right, Ben Wiedemann up for us in Rome. We will watch to see what else Amanda Knox has to say in the wake of this verdict. Ben, thank you very much. All right, a heat dome settling over the West, leaving millions under excessive heat alerts as temperatures spike to the triple digits over the next several days. Our meteorologist Elisa Rafa has the latest for us. Elisa, good morning.

Yeah, good morning. We're looking at some of the earliest 110 degree temperatures on record for a lot of these locations in this kind of deep purple. These are all of the warnings that stretch from the Sierra Nevadas down into Las Vegas and Phoenix.

for days actually through the end of the week. We're looking at at least 100 or more heat records following both daytime highs and overnight lows. I mean, look at this temperatures. Yes, a lot of these areas do get hot, but not this hot this early. Your average high in Las Vegas is 96 degrees. We're looking at temperatures getting to 110.

As we go into the week, same thing in Palm Springs. Phoenix could get temperatures up to 112. All of these temperatures 15 to 20 degrees above average. Again, it's dangerously hot for this early in the season. You'll want to just check on kids, elderly and pets. It's going to be tough to stay hydrated because temperatures get no relief on the overnight, Casey. All right, Elisa Rafa for us this morning. Elisa, thanks very much. Coming up next. I will not be intimidated.

and the Justice Department will not be intimidated. -The Attorney General standing his ground against Republican attacks, plus a grave warning about the danger posed by artificial intelligence and why AI insiders say it poses a threat to human existence.

All right, welcome back. President Biden arriving in Paris this morning to kick off a five-day state visit hosted by President Emmanuel Macron, which begins with commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day. That's tomorrow. On June 6th, 1944, soldiers from the U.S., France, Britain, and Canada stormed the beaches of Normandy.

the beginning of the end of Hitler's Nazi rule. Events are also planned across England and France today, and we are just minutes away from King Charles' royal address. CNN's Kayla Tausche joins us live from Paris, where she's covering the president. Kayla, good morning to you.

Good morning, Casey. President Biden arrived here in France this morning where he is set to embark on a series of high-stakes engagements with world leaders aimed at strengthening the transatlantic alliance against the backdrop of two wars, one on the front lines of Europe.

In Normandy, alongside those ceremonies to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day, President Biden will meet directly with President Zelensky. And they'll discuss the state of play in Ukraine on the ground and in the air and discuss how the U.S. and other allies can continue supporting Ukraine. Biden has recently authorized Ukraine to begin using American-made weapons to strike inside Russia over the border, which National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan called

common sense. When Biden returns to Paris, he and President Macron are going to be having a conversation about, again, how they can continue supporting Ukraine, ensure more funding, both from other European defense budgets, as well as Russian assets that are frozen in the continent. That's going to be a key deliverable at next week's G7 summit. But Casey, zooming out here, as President Biden is trying to project strength overseas, it all

confounds him at home, where voters have given him low marks and are becoming frustrated with his handling of the myriad foreign policy issues that he's been presented with. Take just the issue in the Middle East. Twenty eight percent of voters surveyed by The New York Times and CNN approve of his handling here in Paris. Pressure is building on Biden and allies to reach resolutions to both the conflict in the Middle East and in Europe. Casey.

All right, Kayla Tausche, Forest Lab in Paris. Kayla, thank you. Enjoy your trip. All right. New developments in Donald Trump's classified documents case. Judge Eileen Cannon is expanding an upcoming hearing on the former president's request to declare Jack Smith's appointment as special counsel invalid. Trump's lawyers want Judge Cannon to throw out the case. Trump has attacked, of course, just about every judge he's encountered in his legal battles today.

Except this one, Eileen Cannon, who he happened to appoint. The former president has frequently praised her in public, describing her as smart and highly respected. On Tuesday, Judge Cannon ruled a variety of political partisans and constitutional scholars who are not otherwise involved in the case can join the oral arguments in two weeks. Elliot Williams, how normal is this? Not normal at all.

- At all. - Okay. - There is literally no reason why the judge needs to have additional folks come in at the oral argument. Now, it is a very common practice, the Supreme Court does it all the time to have parties, outside parties called amicus submitters, right? - Mm-hmm.

file briefs on the court that lay out their views and the judge can read them and help them in crafting her opinion. But she doesn't need to have this free for all open argument where multiple parties, no matter how great their scholarship has been, they don't need to be arguing in court. And this question that they're raising here, this question of was Jack Smith appointed lawfully,

It came up in the context of Robert Mueller. Hunter Biden has raised it, and it's lost every single time. So the idea that the question needs to be reopened now and litigated is just sort of silly. Well, I mean, the question, I think, throughout this case has been whether, you know, the unorthodox way Judge Cannon has approached this is a result of her relative inexperience or some sort of bias toward the defendant. And the upshot of all of it has been to delay the case repeatedly. There's been, you know...

multiple times over the course of this case where she's sort of indulged motions from the defense or put things on the calendar, decided to consider things at length or just not sped up the case in a way that I think makes

watchers of this case particularly who are not so sympathetic to the defense very frustrated and exasperated because the end result of it all has been that this is not going to trial anytime soon and I think that's what people are concerned about you know in polling when we ask voters would you like to see these cases reach a verdict before the election

there resoundingly large majorities of american voters say yes they would like to have this information about how these cases are going to be disposed in the legal system before they go to vote but that is just not going to happen well in my corpsman I mean I is there sort of a sense at least among republicans I talk to them maybe this class by documents case was the most dangerous one for Trump

only because of its sort of simplicity in being able to understand what was going on and sort of the general feeling that, well, if I took something classified home from my office, right, that would obviously not be legal. And yet it's probably the least likely of all of them to actually see a verdict. It's true. And if you remember back in the primary, it was really, it was the only case where another Republican candidate attacked

I believe it was Nikki Haley I know did maybe one other, but I remember Nikki Haley doing it vividly. And so you're right, you have like this weird little conundrum because while the New York case, while it was litigated, et cetera, it was a little bit more technical. It was tougher, but also a tougher jury pool.

tougher judge, you have a little bit more Trump-appointed judge, maybe a little bit more sympathetic jury pool, but the facts of the case are quite different, and according to many people, maybe a little bit more clear-cut. Yeah. Patty, I want to get you to weigh in on this next story. We're going to turn now to Capitol Hill, where Attorney General Merrick Garland had this message yesterday for House Republicans who have been threatening to hold him in contempt. These repeated attacks on the Justice Department are unprecedented.

and they are unfounded. I will not be intimidated, and the Justice Department will not be intimidated. This is dangerous. Garland pushing back against allegations that he's protecting the president by refusing to hand over audio of Biden's interview with special counsel Robert Huer and rejecting an onslaught of GOP accusations that he's politicized the criminal justice system against Donald Trump. The special counsel's prosecution of the former president.

It comes alongside false claims that a jury verdict in a state trial brought by a local district attorney was somehow controlled by the Justice Department. That conspiracy theory is an attack on the judicial process itself. We do not control the Manhattan District Attorney. The Manhattan District Attorney does not report to us.

The Manhattan District Attorney makes its own decisions about cases that he wants to bring under his state law.

So, Patty, this is Biden, excuse me, Garland is being more aggressive than he has been in the past. Part of me wonders if it's for this reason. So Politico wrote this headline. Merrick Garland was Biden's consensus pick. Now everyone hates him. Rather than being revered as a straight shooter, Garland's become reviled. He is a man alone on an island in Washington taking unyielding blowback from the right and left. The left thinking he's not been aggressive enough. Yeah.

He's in a tough spot, that is for sure, given all of the different trials and prosecutions around both Democrats and President Trump and Republicans. I thought he did a very good job yesterday. I thought particularly in that sort of theatrical circus of politics. But look, the bottom line is,

the Trump campaign, Republican party writ large have decided that the way to put lipstick on this 34 count conviction and

50 plus other indictments that Trump is facing is to call this a political witch hunt and to insert politics into it. There is no real basis. It has been debunked, as Garland said quite eloquently at the hearing yesterday. The Manhattan DA is completely independent and separate, but this is the only way that they can navigate moving forward

in this campaign is to call this a political witch hunt. And look, for their base, it's working. It is absolutely working. - Let me give you another word on this. - I think to your first point though, one of the big issues is when Biden nominated Merrick Garland, it was great, oh, you know, the guy who didn't get the Supreme Court vote, et cetera.

that also he didn't have a constituency he's not a former senator he's not a former governor not a former democrat political official or obviously republican so he doesn't have a built in base constituency and right when the only thing in the middle of the road is roadkill so he doesn't have people to stand up for him and to rally behind him and that's why you have headlines like that one would argue nor should he he is the attorney general he's not supposed to be political it's unheard of you're right for political officials to be nominated for attorney general I think it's a little different

I mean, look, the ideal is supposed to be that, yes, he wanted to bring that ideal back, right? But obviously, if you're in the middle of the road, you're roadkill, I feel like, says so much about the state of our current politics today. Briefly, I want to touch on, Elliot, Molly, this is a likely future legal battle, but we know that Republicans are already sort of setting the stage to potentially fight court battles.

over the outcome of the 2024 election if it doesn't go the way especially Republicans are hoping that it will. And Donald Trump, we caught this. It's very interesting. He seems to have changed his tune on mail-in voting in a pretty significant way. Let's watch. You'll see what he said yesterday interspersed with his previous comments. Take a look.

If you have mail-in voting, you automatically have fraud. Whether you vote early, absentee, by mail or in person, we are going to protect the vote. I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election. I really do. But if you can't make it, you need to make a plan, register and vote any way possible. Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country because they're cheaters. We talked a lot about this in 2020 because people listened to him. They didn't vote

vote by mail in twenty twenty and now i guess somebody finally has gotten to him and said no no but this this is we need to fix this this has been a consistent frustration from republicans as since he started saying it because he's leaving votes on the table and there has been a feeling among republican political operatives like this was just killing them the way he as you say successfully so doubt with so many of their voters in and and you think about

who is most likely to vote by mail. A lot of it is elderly people, important Republican constituencies, people in rural areas who might otherwise have to drive for hours to the polls, whole states where they only vote by mail now. And that's been an increasing trend. I think the statistics are that in 2020, more than half of Americans voted before or outside of election day, not by going to the polls in person. So there has been a feeling on the Republican side like Trump was just

killing them with turnout and they've gotten him finally to address it the question is can you reverse all those perceptions since so many base republicans now are so suspicious about elections and he continues to say falsely that 2020 was rigged and stolen and they might be able to get him to record a video saying what they want him to say but whether they can keep him on the teleprompter in future instances i also have many questions about that all right just ahead we're going to take you inside the courtroom in the federal gun trial of hunter biden plus

the half-naked driver, I believe this was a Florida man who crashed his car into the lobby of the county jail. And our shot of the day, a bear in midair about to be caught in a tarp. Oh my gosh, the tree-bound Bruin was tranquilized in Pennsylvania. He will now be set free on state land. We'll have more.

All right, 47 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup. Wisconsin's Attorney General filing forgery charges against three men accused in a fake elector scheme to keep Donald Trump in office after the 2020 election. Kenneth Chesbrough, Mike Roman, and James Truppis all charged on Tuesday.

Florida police investigating a man who drove his car into the lobby of the Martin County Jail. Police say he was also spewing "hatred for Donald Trump" while tossing rubber snakes from his vehicle. He also apparently was not wearing pants.

Alec Baldwin announcing he and his family will star in a new TLC reality show in 2025. The actor's wife, Ilaria, and their seven young children will be involved. Baldwin says he is inviting America into his home, quote, to experience the ups and downs, the good, the bad, the wild, and the crazy. At least we're acknowledging that. We should note, TLC and CNN share a parent company.

And this: a group of insiders from OpenAI and Google calling for transparency from artificial intelligence companies about the risks of AI and demanding they protect employees who speak out. In an open letter posted by current and former AI employees, they write this: "AI companies have strong financial incentives to avoid effective oversight," and they also say under current law, "AI companies will not share critical information about the technology voluntarily."

I don't know, I'm still stuck on the man with no pants.

Driving into the table. As well you should be. As well you should be. I don't think I've ever had as much trouble keeping it together on television as I just did. It's just a model of effective political activism, you know? I mean, this is what's really going to finally stop Donald Trump. Every sentence was better than the last. Throwing snakes, no pants. Like, it was like, it just got topical. Crash sentence. Crash into jail. Leave out. Crash into jail. That's good. But if you're going to crash into jail. Yeah.

Why would you have pants on in the first place? Exactly. I just think it's very comfortable, I guess. All in. Did they do a blood test? I feel like they did a blood test. Everything. You think? All of it.

All right, on a more serious note, we are just a few hours from Hunter Biden's federal gun trial resuming in Delaware. Court began yesterday with the jury hearing opening statements. Prosecutors and defense attorneys battling over one fundamental issue, whether the president's son purchased a gun in 2018 while he was knowingly addicted to drugs.

Hunter's main defense in the case is that he did not consider himself an addict at the time of the purchase. Biden's defense attorney reminding the jury, quote, they have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hunter knowingly violated the law. The prosecution trying to refute their case with an FBI agent testifying, Hunter texted he was smoking crack days after buying the firearm. They also used Hunter's own words against him, playing several passages from the audio book for his 2021 memoir.

If I could find some new treatment, some new approach, some new lifeline, I thought I could still claw my way back out. During the nearly four years of active addiction that preceded this trip to California, which included a half-dozen rehab attempts, that's what I told myself after each failure.

All right. Joining me now from Wilmington, Delaware, is Alex Thompson, national political reporter for Axios. Alex, good morning to you. Thanks so much for being with us. I actually want to dig into something that happened outside the courtroom yesterday in this reporting from NBC where Hunter Biden's wife reportedly confronted

a Trump, former Trump aide who has now become very much an antagonist of the Hunter Biden's family. This is Garrett Ziegler. Melissa Cohen Biden reportedly saying, quote, you have no right to be here, you Nazi POS. This seems to really underscore the incredible tension that is on display here, the stakes for the family. What did you see in court yesterday?

Yeah, absolutely. So Garrett Ziegler, if you don't know, he runs this thing called the Marco Polo Project, which, among many other things, literally posted it, transcribed and posted Ashley Biden's sobriety drama journal. He also has compiled a laptop report, which is based on the hard drive that

came from Rudy Giuliani and co. And that report, you know, is several hundred pages long, includes every single sort of, you know, inappropriate, you know, nude video picture, everything. And that is part of the reason why

Hunter's wife reacted the way she did. He was sitting among the reporters. You know, I saw him when he was there. But to your bigger point, I think it just shows how emotionally fraught this entire thing is. While she, you know, I actually saw Melissa and Hunter's wife. She mouthed an explicit name right after the prosecution ended their opening statements that I can't repeat on television.

Right. We should note, for transparency's sake, Ziegler did tell NBC News, quote, it's sad. I've been sitting here the whole time, haven't approached anyone for the record. I'm not a Nazi. I'm a believer in the Constitution. I haven't said one thing to them. Alex, bring us inside the courtroom in terms of how

especially Hunter, his family reacted to some of what was heard in court yesterday. It seems like the prosecution was trying to make a distinction between judgments and choices that you can't make when you are addicted as compared to what they described as a choice to purchase a weapon. Yeah, they made very clear that he is not being prosecuted for drug possession or drug use. He is being, but he is being prosecuted

for buying a gun. And there's a difference between the two. They're saying, "We are not trying to stigmatize addiction, but we are trying to say you can't buy a gun if you are an addict." Now, obviously, as you've discussed, Hunter's team is going to say that he didn't knowingly believe he was an addict at the time. In terms of how the family's reacting, you know, it's incredibly heavy.

They all have different reactions. Ashley Biden, Hunter's sister, was wiping tears throughout the morning and then actually left in the middle of the opening statements yesterday. Or sorry, not during the opening statements, during the first testimony. Jill Biden tried to look stoic when she was there. And you could tell that Hunter's wife was sort of angry, was sort of defiant.

Now, this is only going to get more fraught today because today we are expected to hear from Hunter's ex-wife, Kathleen Buell, one of Hunter's ex-girlfriends who he was with around the time when he purchased the gun, and Beau Biden's widow.

who's romantically involved with Hunter, Hallie Biden. We are expected to hear from potentially all three today. And Hallie Biden and Kathleen Biden are subpoenaed for the prosecution. And Abby Lowell, Hunter's attorney, indicated that Naomi Biden and Jimmy Biden are going to be witnesses for the defense. So really it's Biden versus Biden in this case.

Very, very, just really difficult for the family, for sure. Really interesting dynamics at play. Alex Thompson, really appreciate your great reporting. Thanks very much. All right, let's turn now to this. Today, Biden is on the cover of Time magazine. That's right, he's courting the youth vote where the kids hang. Print media. Next stop, Zeppelins. It is brave. I believe that it is brave for Biden to do this cover because he's side by side with his nemesis, Time.

All right, as concerns about Biden's age continue to swirl around his candidacy, there's reporting this morning from the Wall Street Journal, and they are trying to raise questions about the 81-year-old president and his mental acuity. The Journal reporting this morning that behind closed doors, they say, Biden is showing signs of slipping, that they say, according to interviews with more than 45 people, both Republican and Democrat, who either participated in meetings with Biden or were briefed on them at the time,

The White House is pushing back against those claims. They write this, quote, congressional Republicans, foreign leaders, and nonpartisan national security experts have made clear in their own words that President Biden is a savvy and effective leader who has a deep record of legislative accomplishment. Now in 2024, House Republicans are making false claims as a political tactic.

that flatly contradict previous statements made by themselves and their colleagues. Patty Solis Doyle, this is something that's been flying around Washington since it was posted overnight. What is the reaction in Democratic circles to this? Yeah, well, I can just tell you since last night, it has been forwarded to me. I've been text. I've been emailed. You know, this is a

terrible story for Biden, obviously because it feeds into the narrative that is being painted by the Trump campaign that he is too old and his challenges or that they say on his mental acuity. Personally, I read it. I don't think the story is very good for Donald Trump either. It talks about his mistakes and flubs and on the trail.

But look, this is a challenge for Joe Biden, no question. Polling shows that Americans do believe he is too old to be president, and he's just gonna have to really,

defy those challenges on the trail because his accomplishments you know speak to presidency that got a lot done in four years and so I think he's just gonna have to drive that point home on the trail and in the debate so Mac or my one other things that stood out to me about this reporting was how the White House reacted when they figured out the story was being reported out

uh so um the journal writes this quote the White House kept close tabs on some of the Wall Street Journal's interviews with Democratic lawmakers after the offices of several Democrats shared with the White House either a recording of an interview or details about what was asked some of those lawmakers spoke to the journal a second time and once again emphasized Biden's strength and they have Gregory Meeks on the record saying like yeah you know they kind of said to me well you should call you should we should call you back

It really, I think, underscores the nerves they have around this. Absolutely. Look, set aside the fact that I think this is the biggest liability, bigger than any policy issue for Biden. But look, when I'm dealing with reporters, especially on a tricky story of...

You can tell very quickly that reporters couch, they understand your body language and they understand how you react to the story and the question. And that also feeds into whether they think there's something there or not. So for example, if you get in the phone with a reporter, it's a tricky topic, and you start kind of freaking out or getting very defensive, that tells most reporters that they're onto something here. If you brush it off, they really read how you react to these things. And I think the White House reaction, I can't speak for the reporters here, fed that

we're on to something here and cause the chase more this is of course Molly's yeah my colleagues who reported this story did an absolutely incredible job you know they were extremely meticulous you know this is something that on the one hand you can tell the White House is extremely sensitive about because it is something I that that that confirms what a lot of motors believe on the other hand I don't think it should surprise anyone who watches

President Biden in public, right? This is the same thing that we see when he speaks publicly, which of course is less frequently than almost every other president in recent history. So, you know, people have a lot of doubts about, and it's not the numerical age, right? When you dig down in polling and focus groups, voters are not saying, well, the number next to his name concerns me or how old he's going to be at the end of a potential second term. It's his capabilities.

right? It's can he function in these settings and you know it is not just Republicans saying it we spoke to a wide array of Republicans and Democrats who all spoke to this dynamic saying you know yes he's been effective in some ways but in some of these meetings like they question his command of what's going on alright I will leave you with this

You might remember that very famous movie. Well, in real life, a group of kids up and close and personal with a T-Rex. Obviously, less scary, not alive. The Associated Press says three young cousins were wandering through the North Dakota Badlands when they found a T-Rex bone. It is now a special exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science called Discovering Teen Rex. And there's also a new documentary. ♪ It's a nightmare to sleep ♪

Wow. You never know what you might find when you're out hiking. Thanks to our panel. Thanks to all of you for being here. I'm Casey Hunt. CNN News Central starts right now. I'm Oprah Winfrey, and I am delighted to introduce you to my podcast, Super Soul Conversations. You can listen to some of the most universal, powerful life lessons. I hope these conversations will help illuminate your path to all that you've been meaning to be and all that you were meant to be.

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