Hostages Rescued, Trump's Probation, Shark Attacks
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It's Monday, June 10th. Right now on CNN This Morning, a daring daytime rescue in Gaza brings four Israeli hostages home. Their freedom did come at a cost.

In politics, Donald Trump fresh off the campaign trail scheduled to meet later today with, get this, his probation officer. Plus. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Two shark attacks in two hours on one stretch of beach in Florida. And Hunter Biden's federal gun trial nearing an end. Will the president's son take the stand?

All right, 6 a.m. here in Washington, a live look at the White House on this bright, nearly summer morning here in Washington. Good morning, everyone. I'm Casey Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us. We'll begin with that stunning hostage rescue operation in Gaza and the deadly consequences, the Israeli military freeing four captives from the grip of Hamas on Saturday. Watch this video that the Israeli military just released.

This video is edited and it appears to show Israeli forces escorting rescued hostages toward military helicopters on Saturday. Those four Israelis now reunited with their families and beginning the recovery from months of captivity. Among those freed, 26-year-old Noah Arghamani.

Her abduction during the October 7th attack was captured on tape. You may remember seeing it at the time. Noah screamed for help as she was forced by Hamas members onto the back of a motorcycle and driven into Gaza. She would spend the next eight months there. The rescue operation marks the deadliest day of the war in six months. At least 274 people killed, hundreds more injured, according to Gazan health officials.

The Israeli military is disputing those numbers. They claim the casualty count was quote under 100. CNN can't independently verify the death toll and we don't know how many of those were civilians. We do know that the hostages were being held in residential homes in a densely populated area.

CNN also learning this morning that some IDF soldiers disguised themselves as Hamas fighters and displaced Palestinians to conduct the raid. Let's bring in our panel, Elena Platt Calabro. She's staff writer for The Atlantic. Jonah Goldberg, co-founder and editor in chief of The Dispatch and New York Times journalist Lulu Garcia Navarro. Good morning to all of you. Thank you so much for being here. Jonah, let me start with you on this, because

This raid presaged some turmoil, political turmoil in Israel that also played out over the weekend with Benny Gantz resigning. Clearly, it also highlighted this raid, some of the tactics that Hamas has been using in the course of the conduct of this war.

Yeah. I mean, when you say tactics, the highlighting, the reason why the casualties are as high, I don't believe the Hamas health ministry and they keep, UN keeps revising down their numbers and you should never trust them immediately after any operation. But at the same time, a lot of innocent people died. And the reason a lot of innocent people died is

is because they hid these hostages in the middle of concentrated civilian centers. And when Israel tried to rescue them, they got involved in a 360-degree firefight. And the weird reaction from a lot of the international community and the media is simply that, sort of, how dare Israel try to save hostages that were stolen from it? And I don't have a lot of patience for it. Lulu? I think what critics are...

is the fact that, you know, Israel is one of the most well-funded militaries in the world. It is one of the best trained. And if the United States military, for example, did a raid to rescue hostages and had this high casualty count, there wouldn't simply be applause. There would also be congressional hearings. And the...

You know, I think a lot of people are concerned and rightly so for the high casualty count. I mean, it is important and everyone celebrates the fact that these hostages were rescued. But at the same time, Palestinian life is equally as valuable. And so people are upset about it.

Of course. But how do you look at the reality that there is a ceasefire plan on the table right now that President Biden put out there that would release hostages? It would end the fighting. It would prevent a lot of what the carnage that we are seeing. And we are waiting on Hamas right now.

We're not only waiting on Hamas, we're also waiting on the Israeli government. I mean, this is a two-way street. Bibi Netanyahu has also shown himself to be less willing to engage in some of the planning for this ceasefire.

And we now see that Benny Gantz has resigned simply because he has no more patience with the leadership of Bibi Netanyahu. We've also seen the Israeli public have very little patience with the leadership of Bibi Netanyahu. And on your show, we even heard hostage family members say that they want this ceasefire to go forward. And they feel like the Israeli right and the hard right, which is part of the Bibi Netanyahu government,

uh... isn't actually playing ball with this so i think it actually makes a ceasefire less likely that benny gantz has pulled out uh... than more likely because now bb netanyahu is beholden to the very right flank of his own government let's take a look at what benny gantz i had to say uh... this is of course in hebrew but it's it's translated uh... when he again

the sort of further to the left, still in the center portion of this war cabinet that, as Lulu outlined, may end up pushing things farther to the right. Let's watch what Gantz had to say.

Regrettably, Netanyahu is preventing us from advancing toward true victory, which is the justification for the ongoing and painful cost of war. That is why we are leaving the emergency government today with a heavy heart but with full confidence. I call on Netanyahu, set an agreed election date, don't allow our people to get torn apart.

And of course, Gantz's comments coming as the administration here in the U.S. continues to put pressure on the Israeli government to accept, to move ahead with this ceasefire and call on Hamas to accept it. Here was Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor, on with us over the weekend. Watch. He thinks the best way to get all of the hostages home is in a deal where they're brought out diplomatically, where there's no need for military operations to get every last hostage out. What we would much prefer to see

is a ceasefire where the hostages come out peacefully. That is available. Israel has said yes to it. Now Hamas needs to say yes to it. That's where President Biden's full effort, energy and attention is. So, Elena, how is the U.S. government thinking through this at this point?

There's so many moving parts with this right now. Of course, you have Secretary Blinken in the Middle East trying to galvanize Netanyahu and the right forces to get behind this deal. But what I think the implications of this could mean, if Bibi Netanyahu remains reluctant to kind of push forward as hard as Blinken would like for him to, what does this mean for Netanyahu's

plan joint address to Congress that's supposed to take place later in July. You've already heard Nancy Pelosi within the last couple of days say that she does not agree with the decision to bring him here for this joint address.

You know, the outcome, I think, of these talks could affect how members of Congress, especially on the left, are feeling with his presence later this summer. All right. We're going to talk a lot more about this throughout the hour. But up next here, will he or won't he? All eyes on the Hunter Biden trial to see if the president's son is going to testify. Plus, a massive landslide forcing a major mountain road to close. Details from Wyoming. That's out in Yellowstone ahead.

And Donald Trump has an appointment he can't miss today with his probation officer. No third world country has weaponization where they go after political candidates like we have either.

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.

Welcome back. This morning, Donald Trump is scheduled to meet virtually with a probation officer for a pre-sentencing interview as Judge Juan Merchan weighs the punishment for the former president's historic hush money conviction. In an effort to prepare a pre-sentence report, the probation officer is likely to ask Trump about his conviction, his employment, and his criminal history. He could even interview family members and friends before next month's sentencing.

The Trump campaign assuring everyone in a statement, quote, President Trump and his legal team are already taking necessary steps to challenge and defeat the lawless Manhattan DA case.

My panel is back. Jonah Goldberg, I think I'm a little bit still kind of like, wow, I'm really reading a script that says all these things here in the year of our Lord, 2024. Yeah, all I can think of is the Seinfeld where George Costanza wants to keep his girlfriend in prison because it's much easier relationship-wise where he knows where she is all the time and he just keeps telling the probation officer, yeah, she keeps talking about getting back to her schemes with the gang, you know, just, I don't know, you could throw it,

you can see how some of the people in Trump's orbit might talk to the probation officer in ways that are not convenient to Trump. Yeah, it's a very strange place. Yeah. Yeah, let's see if our production team can dig that up. We can play it on the way out of this block. But, I mean, in reality, I mean, this is, we're starting to see

some of the earliest signs of how this is going to affect things or not. There's a new CBS, YouGov poll. Our official CNN parlance is that this is too close. It doesn't show anything one way or the other. But if you compare it to the previous poll, there's a two-point swing in Joe Biden's direction. Do you think that that is significant, not significant? I think, well, we got 146 days or something until the election. I think a lot of this stuff is just going to become...

fuzzy memories baked in. I think, and I actually don't think the fact that he's a felon is the thing that's moving the polls to the extent that they are. I think it's just the reminder of the chaos that he brings. And this is one more example of it that is problematic for people. If the election's a referendum on Donald Trump, the polling suggests Joe Biden wins. If the election's a referendum on Joe Biden, the polling suggests Donald Trump wins.

It's very hard for things not to seem like a referendum on Donald Trump when he's meeting with his probation officer. I mean, I think this is a sign, though, of how weak President Biden is, that with all of the problems that we're seeing with Donald Trump, I mean, he is a convicted felon. I mean, there was just a hush money trial about

porn stars and all these things, every time he speaks, you're just hearing over and over again these same talking points and this destructive language. And yet the polls are so close. And so I think that really does speak to President Biden's weakness. And I think what we're seeing is that people are not adverse to the message of the Democrats. They don't like the messenger. And that's President Biden.

Yeah, I'm impressed. Last time the two of you were sitting here next to each other, I think it was a little sparkier, but John is not. No, no, no. This is the first time since 2016 where we have two candidates so unpopular, each of them has a chance to lose to the other. So, Elena, we heard from Trump over the weekend at this Vegas rally. And, of course, the next sort of

looming legal issue for Trump is going to be his Supreme Court case. They've got to decide whether he's immune in the January 6th prosecution. So here's what he had to say, Trump had to say about Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing that probe at this Rally Watch.

What they've done is they've weaponized the Department of Justice. The only thing they didn't understand is that we just had the largest fundraising effort in a period of one week than anybody has ever had. I did nothing. You know, we have a deranged individual named Jack Smith. He's a deranged, dumb guy. He's a dumb son of a bitch.

So that's where we are with Trump and Jack Smith. What is your reporting? I know you talked to members of Congress, etc. What do they say to you about how much the January 6th case might make a difference with voters as compared to what we've seen with the Manhattan case? I haven't heard anything from members of Congress or aides that they expect it to make a huge difference necessarily. But I think listening to the clip of that rally just conveys

confirms how when Trump went to Vegas, his, you know, sort of isolated efforts to appeal to possibly persuadable voters feel so out of place in a way. I don't know if you all remember, but when he was down there, he was trying to appeal to the culinary union to say, you know, once I'm president, I will get rid of taxes on tips and whatnot.

And the Culinary Union immediately fires back with a statement. This is a fan. Like, you know, we take real candidates seriously, not false promises. But just even trying to kind of put forth and advertise a policy proposal feels so out of place now with the Trump who you see on stage 97 percent of the time.

We should also say the Culinary Union is a hugely democratic organization that campaigns for Democrats in the state. But Nevada is so interesting because, of course, it's because it's got Latinos. You know, he's trying to appeal to that demographic. We've seen a swing towards Trump from Latinos, especially working class Latinos. And so, you know, the message I know it sounds interesting.

frankly a little ridiculous coming from him because he doesn't deal in policy he deals in emotions and yet I mean I think he is finding a more fertile ground even when it's just a small little snippet in a longer speech I will say when I talk to sources about what's going on in Nevada I think that they would not be surprised if Trump wins Nevada in the fall alright coming up next here the US releasing its first public statement on Israel's deadly hostage rescue operation and

Two shark attacks in two hours on one stretch of Florida Beach. Alright, 23 minutes past the hour. Five things you have to see this morning. Oh my god! Oh my god! Get, what? Get, they need to get out. Chaotic moments on a Florida beach caught on cell phone video as two women become victims of a shark attack. Officials are still trying to determine whether two sharks were involved or just one. The women are listed in stable condition.

Take a look at a former firefighter coming to the aid of neighbors stuck on the second floor of a burning building in Denver. Adam Steinbach raced a ladder across the street and began rescuing people through an open window before firefighters arrived. Look for him.

Three people injured after a bull jumped into a crowd at a rodeo in Central Oregon Saturday night. The bull was eventually wrangled and the rodeo did go ahead with its final performance on Sunday. Scary stuff there.

New video shows the super-heavy booster for SpaceX's mega rocket Starship returning to Earth in a controlled burn and splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. Both the ship and the booster had a successful fourth flight test this weekend.

A critical highway between Idaho and Wyoming shut down after part of the road cracked and then collapsed in a landslide this weekend. Officials say there's no timeline for reopening the pass, which is a key route to the Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Our time now for weather. More heat in store for multiple states across the West this morning, while South Florida is bracing for heavy rain and flooding this week. Our weatherman Derek Van Dam has it all for us. Derek, good morning.

Good morning. Heat building once again for millions of Americans. This time we're focusing our attention on the Central Valley of California from Southern Nevada right through Arizona, including Las Vegas and Phoenix. In fact, speaking of Phoenix, you've had 14 consecutive days where the mercury in the thermometer has climbed above 100 degrees. So what is happening? It is a ridge of high pressure. So that brings out maximum sunshine, suppresses the cloud cover, and we get the

Heat that is going to soar into triple-digit territory. Vegas, Palm Springs, Phoenix, even Sacramento, in fact, Las Vegas, you've had the warmest start to June ever since records have begun since 1937. The other big story coming out of the state of Florida. You know that you've been in drought conditions for much of the southern half of the peninsula, but watch what's happening this week. Go forward. This is the rainfall over the next five days. Locally, up to 10 inches across the southwestern portions of

of the Florida peninsula, including Naples and Fort Myers. It's all thanks to an approaching cold front tapping into abundant moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, and that is going to bring multiple days with the potential of flash flooding. Casey, back to you. All right, Derek Van Dam for us. Derek, thank you very much. All right, coming up next here, new details about the rescue of four hostages from Gaza and how Israeli soldiers pulled it off. Plus, Caitlin Clark speaking out after being left off Team USA. How do we end...

the death of civilians in Gaza. But there is only one way to get to a comprehensive ceasefire and hostage deal. That's what President Biden laid out. Hamas accepting that deal would bring an end to the tragedy in Gaza. White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan continuing to try to put pressure on Hamas to end the war in Gaza. On Saturday, Israeli Defense Forces executed an operation in Gaza that freed four hostages from Hamas custody.

However, at least 274 people were killed, according to Gazan health officials. The IDF disputes those numbers. They put the number of casualties under 100. And CNN can't independently verify the death toll. Sullivan saying the U.S. was not involved in the operation, but supports Israeli efforts to free the hostages.

We didn't have any U.S. forces on the ground. The United States will support Israel in taking steps to try to rescue hostages who are currently being held in harm, held by Hamas, and we will continue to work with Israel to do that. We will also continue to reinforce the point that all of their military operations, including hostage rescue operations, should take every precaution to minimize the amount of civilian harm.

CNN's Oren Lieberman joins me now live from Tel Aviv. Oren, good morning. We're learning new details this morning about just how this Israeli raid unfolded and how the U.S. provided support. What's the latest?

That's right, Casey. This is an operation that took weeks of planning, according to the Israeli military, including hundreds of personnel. That includes military, intelligence, as well as a special police unit for the training that went into this, including the building of mock apartment buildings in which the Israeli military believed these four hostages were held in Nusaydat, a refugee camp in central Gaza, a densely populated area. The operation itself carried out in midday, Israel believing that would give it

an element of surprise that Hamas wouldn't believe that Israel would do such an operation in midday when the streets were busy. The Israeli forces moved in just before noon on Saturday, again to two apartment buildings that were fairly close to each other, pulling out these four hostages. A celebration for Israel. There was celebration and joy on the streets. Of course, politicians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, celebrating a major and very difficult operation. But of course, that operation came at a steep

cost as israeli forces extracted the hostages there were both gunfights and israeli strikes to try to get those hostages out of central gaza and in that the palestinian ministry of health in gaza says more than 270 palestinians including women and children were killed as part of those israeli operations and hundreds more wounded israel disputes those numbers saying there were less than a hundred casualties

It's impossible for CNN to be able to verify those, but either one of those numbers or anything in between, frankly, makes it one of the deadliest days in Gaza we have seen in months. Meanwhile, witnesses on the ground say Israeli forces moved in in disguise, effectively trying to dress as Hamas militants or as displaced Palestinians to try to get closer to those apartment buildings where the IDF says the hostages were held before the operation itself.

the extraction effort unfolded here. Now, after the operation here, the U.S. says that, or rather, U.S. officials say they helped with intelligence. They haven't been too specific here. We simply know that ever since the beginning of the war, there has been a U.S. cell here that has worked hand-in-hand with the Israelis to try to share whatever intel is out there to try to push forward a hostage rescue effort. However, as the U.S. has acknowledged

the success of the operation. U.S. officials, including you heard Jake Sullivan there, warning that the right move now is to go to a ceasefire as well as a hostage deal, putting pressure on both Israel and saying now it's up to Hamas to act. All right, Oren Lieberman for us in Tel Aviv. Oren, thank you very much.

All right, let's turn now to 2024 and how immigration policy is shaping the presidential race. New reporting this morning indicates that as he tries to court swing state Latino voters, President Biden is considering a second executive action focused on providing legal status for long-term undocumented immigrants who are married to American citizens.

Donald Trump was in the key swing state of Nevada over the weekend. And he used, shall we say, creative language to criticize Biden's first executive order. It's weak. It's ineffective. It's bulls**t what he signed. Wow. This word seems to be catching on a little bit, but in a much more positive way than deplorable. Sorry, I had to take my earpiece out. The bleeping. Yeah, the bleeping. And also, clearly,

wonderful that this is now introduced to the political lexicon. I mean, another triumph for the Trump campaign. You know, I have to say, when I first started doing this, I feel like, I guess I was covering Mitt Romney, everything was a little more polite. But that was not, that was not the chant. That was not the chant. Yeah.

Let's talk a little bit about, and we were continuing to talk about this in the break earlier in the show, let's just kind of bring our viewers in on that. The way that Nevada is changing Latino voters, in particular an opportunity for Donald Trump in a way that some people may not have wrapped their heads around. But Lulu, it does seem like, I'll be honest at this point, it feels like Nevada's gonna land in Trump's column, why?

If Nevada lands in Trump's column, it's going to be because of the economy. I mean, frankly, Nevada is a place where you have a lot of working class service workers. They are very impacted by high prices. They have been hurt during the pandemic and they are looking for improvements in the economy. And as we know, people are nostalgic about the Trump economy pre-pandemic. They think that they did better then.

and they believe that he would be able to turn the economy around for them now. And so that, I think, is the main appeal. The mistake I think people make with Latinos is that they think that immigration is the main issue for them. And in fact, that's not true. What really is important is education, is crime, is the economy. And those are issues in which Donald Trump is pulling better right now.

So does that mean, if that's the case, Jonah, does that mean that this is a mistake for Biden to consider the second executive action that would welcome some people that are here with undocumented status? Look, I think it might be. I mean, they poll a lot, so maybe they've got some data that we don't know about. But, you know, to Lulu's point, it has always been true that Hispanic voters, as they move up the socioeconomic ladder, become indistinguishable from the median voter.

You know, people think, a long time ago, Republicans thought, oh, Hispanics just always vote Democrat. No, poor people tended to vote Democrat. As Hispanics moved up the socioeconomic ladder, they tended to look indistinguishable from other voters. That's changing a little bit because now we're seeing the electorate sort along working class lines, non-college educated versus college educated, really bizarre gender gap stuff that's really sort of solidifying.

Blacks and Latinos are just following a little slower behind what's been happening with the white working class. The old FDR coalition has fallen apart and it's moving right. And the sort of college educated bourgeois parents who want to send their kids to college has been moving left. There is a caveat here, though, which is that even though immigration is not the most important thing for Latinos, most Latinos have

family members who were, who came to this country, you know, might be undocumented. And so it is an issue that matters. So I do think that actually Biden, if he is going to do this, which is, I think the plan is to give a path to citizenship or at least legality for those who are married to U.S. citizens, I

I think that that actually might have an impact. At least it will distinguish him from Trump's stand on this. - Also, just don't call people who look like you vermin if you wanna get their vote.

There's something there, too. Yes. And when you talk to Democrats about this, they're like, that's the distinguishing thing, right? Like, we're not going to use dehumanizing language to talk about people. That is the thing that, you know, Donald Trump does here that they really, you know, feel. And it helps his base. I mean, you know, the progressive base actually wants a path to legalization. When they talk about comprehensive immigration reform, they mean that, yes, there should be border enforcement, but also there needs to be

a path to citizenship for those who are in this country illegally. Yeah, and the governor of Nevada puts it this way in the New York Times this morning. He writes, quote, as the 2024 election inches closer, candidates would be wise to consider the effect of their actions on voters' everyday lives. If recent polling on Democratic candidates in Nevada is any indication, I think it is. Mr. Biden has a big problem to overcome. Nevadans are losing confidence in him to do something meaningful about inflation and housing, and they're left feeling that he just doesn't get it.

And we're talking here about broadening out beyond Latino Nevada voters. This is just about the state and why it is so essential to this election. Recall first that it was a nail biter in 2020 when Joe Biden won. So this was never a shoe in for him. But Lulu, it struck me when you said how these voters correctly they yearn for a pre-pandemic economy under Trump. But I think what Biden's challenge is going to be is to remind voters that 2020 was in fact a year that Donald Trump was president.

And I think when I was just in Reno for a panel talking to a lot of voters at the university's campus there,

A lot of people were upset still about the closures that they thought harmed the economy, but they were attributing those to Biden, which I found interesting as if 2020 has been sort of erased from the national memory as having been indeed a part of Trump's presidency. Yeah, I mean, I think there's sort of a collective desire to erase 2020 from our memories in general, regardless of who was president of the United States.

Anyway, up next here, a potential new frontrunner in the mad dash to be Donald Trump's running mate. Plus, Splash Mountain is out at the Magic Kingdom, the ride that will replace it ahead.

All right, 46 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup. Take a look at the damage done to an Austrian Airlines plane that hit a thunderstorm cell on a flight from Spain on Sunday and got pelted with hail. 173 passengers, six crew members were on board. The plane eventually landed safely in Vienna. Yikes.

Apple kicks off its worldwide developers conference today by unveiling its new AI features. It comes as a new open AI deal giving access to hundreds of millions of users is set to be announced this week.

Take a look at Tiana's Bayou Adventure. That is the new ride replacing Splash Mountain at Disney World's Magic Kingdom. It opens June 28th. It's being described as an enchanting musical adventure inspired by the Disney animated film The Princess and the Frog. I just want to know if you can still, you know, fall.

And rookie phenom Kaitlyn Clark says she's not upset about being left off the U.S. Olympic team. The WNBA star says she had no expectations and she'll be rooting for the team. Honestly, no disappointment. I think it just gives you something to work for. That's a dream. Hopefully one day I can be there. I think it's just a little more motivation. You remember that. Hopefully in four years, when four years comes back around, I can be there.

I feel like she's got a while, right? I think she's got a while, but I also am like, why isn't she on the team? I mean, to me, it's kind of crazy. It does seem like a missed opportunity. I will just say, I feel like there would be a lot of people watching. Can we just say, though, her poise when she answers questions like that? I mean, I always forget that she is just out of college because she carries herself, I think, with such dignity. For 22 years old, it's really impressive. It's crazy.

All right, now this. Hunter Biden's federal gun trial resumes in Delaware in just a few hours. The big question, whether the president's son will take the stand. Today is the deadline for the defense attorneys to decide whether Hunter will testify. The president's son facing three counts related to his purchase of a firearm in 2018, which of course prosecutors say violated federal law because he was addicted to crack cocaine at the time. On Friday, Hunter's daughter Naomi testified about her father's struggles

with drug use. Joining me now from Wilmington, Delaware is Alex Thompson, national political reporter for Axios. Alex, great to see you here again. Can you bring us up to speed on what we saw from Naomi on Friday and what we might expect to see today?

Yeah, it was an incredibly emotional testimony with, you know, Hunter Biden's daughter, the first granddaughter who, you know, just a few years ago got married at the White House, basically taking the stand. I was a little bit nervous, was really trying to vouch for her father and say that she believed that he was in a really good place with his sobriety.

to crack cocaine around the time when he was buying the gun. But she was really subject to a really sort of emotionally gutting cross-examination when the prosecution brought up text messages

that Hunter had sent between them, the two of them, in just the days after he bought the gun. He was sort of erratic, texting at all times of night, at midnight, at 2:00 a.m., looking to, asking if her husband could bring a car to 57th Street in Manhattan where she was going to law school. And then basically reading out this text message,

where she said, so no see you. She only saw him one time when he was there for a few days and then said, you know, I just the text message said, I just can't take this, dad. I just want to hang out with you. And, you know,

For a 23-year-old girl to just text her dad saying, I just want to hang out with you, and then him saying, I'm sorry, I can't. You know, it really was this very emotional moment. And I can tell you when they were all coming out of the courtroom, the first family, the first lady,

And Joe Biden's sister, Val, Val Biden, they all looked a little bit a little bit shaken. They all you know, it was a very emotional sort of testimony when Naomi came out of the courtroom. I was right there and she she sort of wiped one of her, you know, wiped a tear from her eye. And when she came out of the witness room, you know, is indoors. But she was she had put on these very.

dark black huge glasses to shield her eyes. So it was an emotional day for the entire family. - Really remarkable. Alex, there is of course this question about whether or not Hunter is gonna testify. We've talked at length in recent weeks about

You know, because of a different defendant, whether or not it's a good idea for people to take the stand in their own defense. Generally speaking, it seems like it typically isn't. It is their right, of course, to do so. What are you expecting?

I think at the end of the day, he's not going to do it. But I can tell you that I feel very confident that he really wants to do it. I mean, a lot of defendants want to take the, you know, take it. But I can tell you, you know, going back years, you know, Hunter has always tried, has really favored a much more aggressive approach.

and at times has been very frustrated when his father's aides have just basically encouraged him to just keep his head down. That's actually part of the reason why he hired Abby Lowell, his current lawyer in this case, was because he was tired of sort of being quiet. And you saw that earlier this year, you know, with how he dealt with the House Republicans investigations.

when he started going out publicly, he was just being much more publicly aggressive. And Hunter has, I've spent time with him, I interviewed him earlier this year, Hunter has charm. As we've seen from the many girlfriends he was juggling that testified in this trial. So he has like an ability to really make,

make his own case and be very, very compelling. And so I'm sure he wants to, but just given the amount of material the prosecutors would be able to introduce in this trial, if he were to testify, that could then have repercussions, not just in congressional investigations, but other legal cases. I'd be surprised if he does.

Alex, a big picture here. This isn't the only problem that Hunter Biden is facing. He's got another trial set for the fall. How are people around in the Biden family, around the president thinking about the difference between those two things? Because the other one, it might seem, has a higher potential for doing damage to the president from a political perspective. What are you hearing?

Absolutely. Well, because the other trial is more problematic for two reasons. One is it starts September 5th. So we're talking just two months before the election. The other reason is it's just messier.

This one is a little bit simpler. He bought a gun in the midst of when he was addicted before and when he was addicted after. The trial, as we've seen, the trial is going to last just a little over a week. The other one is about his finances and not paying taxes in 2017 and 2018, when he made over $2 million each of those years. And the finances...

You know, they're sprawling. I mean, in that indictment, they they name his ex-wife in this civil case when he was not paying millions of dollars in alimony. They talk about the other civil case with, you know, in Arkansas with a woman he had a child, Hunter had a child with. And just all the different pieces of the finances of where he was making that money, I think is going to be messier.

All right, Alex Thompson for us. Alex, very grateful to have had you on the program on this. Come back soon. Thank you. Thanks. All right. He is a businessman who self-funded his political career and was first elected to office in 2016. Does that sound familiar?

That's basically where the similarities end between Donald Trump and North Dakota's governor, Doug Burgum. But he, Burgum, is the man who has climbed the former president's vice presidential shortlist. As the New York Times reports, he's emerged as perhaps Trump's safest option, also the biggest wild card. Burgum has reportedly received vetting materials from the Trump campaign and has spent months supporting Trump on the campaign trail and in court, while also walking back comments that he made in this NBC interview last summer.

Would you ever do business with Donald Trump? I don't think so. Why? I just think that it's important that you're judged by the company you keep. You just wouldn't do business with him? No, I wouldn't.

Panel's back. Jonah. He wouldn't do business with him back then. Tune has changed. But what do you think? I mean, Burgum in many ways is probably what Donald Trump would have conceived of as like, you know, if vice presidents had baseball cards, like this guy would go well on one. What's your view? Yeah, so, I mean, I've long thought that

Trump, if he was sure he was going to win, wants the scariest vice president that doesn't hurt his election chances because that makes him harder to impeach when he's president, right? Because like, you can keep me or you're going to have this Medusa head, right? And pull out, you know, Carrie Lake or something. But I don't think he's that confident he's going to win.

You know, Mike Pence was equally boring to Doug Burgum, but he also back then brought evangelical Christians, social conservatives. And Trump needed that then. He needed it. And Trump needed it then. Trump does not have a transactional need with any constituency on the right the way he did in 2016. And so the two things he's looking for most are loyalty.

And money. Burgum, I think, has the money. J.D. Vance has more of the loyalty. And I just, I have no idea. And a good head of hair. A good head of hair. And very important eyebrows. Just really crucial eyebrows. Very, I mean, look, it's an enviable head of hair, really. Yes, yes. Many would kill for it. What do you think?

What I have continued to hear from my sources in the Trump campaign is that the internal effort to convince Donald Trump to choose J.D. Vance is much more aggressive than it is for Governor Burgum. At the end of the day, obviously, Trump makes his own decisions and, you know,

at the very last minute, you could have an intense lobbying effort from every single person around him. Still might not result in that person. But yeah, that line I'm hearing is unchanged from people around him, that J.D. Vance is still...

You've heard Kristi Noem saying he needs to choose a woman. You also have Marco Rubio of Florida talking about how he might help with Latinos. There are lots of different reasons to choose different people. And ultimately, it is up to Donald Trump. And what is interesting to me is that he is waiting to the very last minute. Apparently, he's going to make this announcement at the convention. It is like the apprentice style.

you know, the unveiling of, you know, we're getting... It's the trumpiest possible way to do it. Yeah, it is. I have to say. I mean, the drama. Yeah, it's very smart because it gets all these people to be just unbelievably sycophantic surrogates on Sunday shows and everywhere else for months on end. Well, conversations about whether Marco Rubio would be willing to move out of Florida, you know, if he were to be the president. You mean Marco Rubio of Waukesha, Wisconsin? That's exactly who I meant. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, and there also is this sort of, like,

He requires some certain degree, it seems, of humiliation from these people as well. All right. I'll leave you with this, and this is a little bit of a point of personal privilege today. I got to spend some time with a very special group of heroes over the weekend at the annual DC Fire and EMS Awards Dinner, which honors all of the first responders who answered the call in 2023.

That year, one of those calls was mine, or I guess technically my husband's, after I rather abruptly went into labor at home last March. The labor lasted 13 minutes. My daughter, Gray, was born on my bathroom floor. My husband had to deliver her himself. The baby was delivered through no fault of anyone who works here before you could arrive, only because it was so fast, we didn't actually have time to call 911. So that happened...

Once we did have a chance to make the call, they did at DC Fire and EMS arrive in force. We had a ladder fire truck and all. They made sure that Gray and I both came out happy and healthy. And while I certainly hope that this was a once in a lifetime situation for me, for the people that came to help, it was really just all in a day's work.

Situations like this really show everyone and certainly showed us in this instance just how much all of us out in the world depend on all of you.

And again, I want to thank the crew from Medic 24, firefighter Hayden Campbell, firefighter paramedic Adam Eake, and fire inspector paramedic Kimberly Boozer, who helped bring Gray into the world. I got to be reunited with them over the weekend. And I also learned when I spoke to Adam and his crew, they were just as happy as I was to have a friendly female face on that crew. Thank you to Kim for taking charge because, man, she did.

We also do want to just take a moment to thank all of the first responders here in the District of Columbia, but across the country that all of us trust with our lives every day, because you really have no idea when you might need to make that call. And having those people on the other end of the line makes all the difference in the world. They are truly lifesavers. So thank you to all of them. Thanks to our panel. Thanks to all of you for joining us. I'm Casey Hunt. Don't go anywhere. CNN News Central starts right now.

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