'This Week' Transcript 6-1-25: White House NEC Director Kevin Hassett & UN World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain

A rush transcript of "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" airing on Sunday, June 1, 2025 on ABC News is below. This copy may not be in its final form, may be updated and may contain minor transcription errors. For previous show transcripts, visit the "This Week" transcript archive.

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ANNOUNCER: THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS starts right now.

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GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC "THIS WEEK" ANCHOR: Unprecedented conflicts.

DONALD TRUMP JR.: We're going to play by the rules, but we're not going to go so far as to stymie our business forever.

STEPHANOPOULOS: From real estate to crypto, the Trump family businesses rake in profits in President Trump's second term.

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): Donald Trump is selling access. He is selling out America.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The moves raising new concerns as Trump hands out a flurry of pardons to political supporters. This morning, Jay O’Brian reports.

Plus, analysis from Chris Christie and “The New Yorker’s” Evan Osnos.

Tariff whiplash.

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: As far as we’re concerned, our trade agenda is moving forward.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Multiple court rulings inject new uncertainty into the future of President Trump's trade war. Selina Wang reports on the legal battle. Top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett joins us live. And the political fallout from our powerhouse roundtable.

On the brink.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is unbearable. How could anyone --

STEPHANOPOULOS: Millions in Gaza face extreme hunger and chaos after a weeks’ long Israeli blockade. Ian Pannell is live in Tel Aviv. And the latest on the aid efforts with the World Food Programme's Cindy McCain.

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ANNOUNCER: From ABC News, it’s THIS WEEK. Here now, George Stephanopoulos.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Good morning and welcome to THIS WEEK.

The scale is staggering. President Trump and his family are making hundreds of millions, potentially billions of dollars, as Trump and his administration take official actions that benefit contributors and investors. Just this week we learned of pardons to tax cheats, including a man whose pardon was granted weeks after his mother attended a million-dollar-a-head fundraiser with the president. The Trump Media and Technology Group raised nearly $2.5 billion from 50 institutional investors whose identities have not been disclosed. The SEC dropped its lawsuit against the cryptocurrency firm Binance days after Binance began listing the cryptocurrency launched by World Liberty Financial, the crypto firm started by Trump's family.

This unprecedented money-making by a sitting president and his family summarized by critics like "The Atlantic's" David Frum. “Nothing like this has been attempted or even imagined in the history of the American presidency,” he writes. “Throw away the history books, discard feeble comparisons to scandals of the past. There is no analogy with any previous action by any past president. The brazenness of the self-enrichment resembles nothing seen in any earlier White House. This is American corruption on the scale of a post-Soviet republic or a post-colonial African dictatorship.”

That’s where we begin this week. Here’s Jay O’Brien.

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JAY O’BRIEN, ABC NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice over): From billion dollar real estate deals in the Middle East, to a flashy crypto investor dinner and the pardoning of political supporters, concerns Donald Trump's second term is blurring the lines between the personal and political like never before, as Trump tapped into his presidential pardon powers this week.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And just congratulate your parents. And I hear they're terrific people. This should not have happened.

O’BRIEN (voice over): One trend seemed to emerge -- the president absolving the convictions of at least a dozen people with political and financial connections to him, like last month's full and unconditional pardon of Florida nursing home executive Paul Walczak. Days after the 2024 election, Walczak pleaded guilty to withholding more than $10 million from his employees' paychecks and spending some of it on luxury items for himself.

According to "The New York Times," Walczak’s mother has raised millions for Trump's campaigns and recently attended a $1 million a person fundraiser at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, though it's unclear what, if anything, she donated to attend. Less than a month after that fundraiser, Walczak had his pardon.

CHARLIE DENT, (R) FORMER PENNSYLVANIA CONGRESSMAN: These pardons are rather arbitrary and they just seem to be granted to people who are friends or supporters of the president.

O’BRIEN (voice over): That example and others concerning for former Congressman Charlie Dent, a Republican, and former chair of the House Ethics Committee.

O’BRIEN: Have you seen more questionable behavior in the second Trump administration or the first one?

DENT: Oh, the second, by far.

O’BRIEN (voice over): Even some of the president’s allies questioning the recent gift of a $400 million jet from Qatar to the U.S. Department of Defense for future use as Air Force One. The president is exempt from conflict of interest statutes, but legal experts andDemocrats charge the plane could violate the Constitution’s prohibition on federal officials taking gifts from foreign countries.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY, (D-CT): Donald Trump’s acceptance of the luxury plane from a foreign monarch is basically the corruption that our founding fathers were seeking to prevent.

O’BRIEN (voice over): The White House says that's not the case because the plane is a gift between governments and will eventually be transferred to Trump's Presidential Library Foundation and would not be for his personal use after he leaves office.

And critics also pointing to another venture that didn't exist in the first Trump term, an emerging family cryptocurrency empire on full display at this gala last week, an event where the top 220 buyers of his personal crypto meme coin were given exclusive access to Trump, seen standing next to a podium with the seal of the president. The White House saying that Trump was only there in a personal capacity on his own time.

BRYCE PAUL, CRYPTO GALA ATTENDEE: And I'm just one of 220 people that are invited. And there's no media. There's no recordings. There's no plus ones. It's just truly some of the most influential figures in crypto, in policy and, of course, the man himself.

O’BRIEN (voice over): The top 25 meme coin investors even getting a tour of the White House, like Justin Sun, a Chinese crypto mogul who was previously under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud. That probe halted by the Trump administration in February. Both Trump and the first lady have a meme coin.

MOLLY WHITE, CRYPTOCURRENCY RESEARCHER: I think the -- the initial meme coin launch was some of the most anger I've seen out of the crypto world towards Donald Trump.

I think a lot of people in the crypto world view meme coins as a cash grab, which is, frankly, fairly accurate.

O’BRIEN (voice over): A company associated with the Trump family also owns a 60 percent stake in another crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. Trump's image is all over the firm's website, dubbing him “chief crypto advocate.” But in a statement to ABC News, World Liberty Financial claimed they are “a private company with no ties to the U.S. government.”

Once a crypto skeptic who said bitcoin seemed like a scam, Trump has now fully embraced digital currency.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I promise to make America the bitcoin superpower of the world, and the crypto capital of the planet, and we're taking historic action to deliver on that promise.

O’BRIEN (voice over): As the president has pushed for new policies that could directly impact his family's cryptocurrency ventures, the Justice Department has simultaneously rolled back crypto enforcement. On Thursday, the SEC dropped a two-year lawsuit against Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, which federal regulators accused of mishandling customer money. The case was dropped just weeks after that Trump-connected crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, announced a $2 billion deal where a United Arab Emirates-backed fund would use the firm's token to invest in Binance, a transaction that could generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family.

But the concerns of critics go far beyond the world of crypto. From First Lady Melania Trump's reported record-breaking $40 million deal for her new Amazon documentary, to the multiple Trump family real estate deals in the Middle East, some of which closed in the weeks right before the president's swing through those very same countries. At least one prominent Trump ally expressing concern.

SHAWN RYAN, PODCAST HOST: Oh, there's a brand-new hotel going up in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, and another one going up in - in Doha, I think. And -- and I'm like, do these, like, just get done also with the deals that just happened over there, or was this earlier? I don’t -- you would probably know.

TUCKER CARLSON, THE TUCKER CARLSON SHOW HOST: No, I don't know.

RYAN: You don't? That stuff kind of worries me, you know. It’s -- it’s --

CARLSON: Well, it seems like corruption, yes.

O’BRIEN (voice over): That isn't turning some Trump family members away from their own ventures. ABC News has learned plans are now in the works for a new private club in Washington, D.C., co-founded by Donald Trump Jr. and Trump’s crypto czar, investor David Sachs. The club's official name, Executive Branch, intended as a haven for the Trump family and top MAGA allies.

DAVID SACHS, WHITE HOUSE AI AND CRYPTO CZAR: We're creating something that didn't exist before in D.C., which, again, is younger, hipper Trump aligned Republican.

O’BRIEN (voice over): The initial price tag for membership, $500,000.

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O’BRIEN (on camera): George, the White House points to the fact that President Trump's assets are now in a trust managed by his children and assert that the entire Trump family are following all applicable ethics rules. A White House spokesperson telling us, quote, “everything President Trump does is to benefit the American people.”

George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Jay O'Brien, thanks very much.

Let's talk about this more with former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, now an ABC contributor, and “New Yorker” staff writer Evan Osnos, author of the new book "The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich."

Welcome to you both.

And, Chris, you know, we’ve talked about how in the second term on governing Trump is ungoverned. He's just full speed ahead. We're seeing the same thing on the business side.

CHRIS CHRISTIE, (R) FORMER NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR & ABC NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, sure. I mean, look, I think his view of this, George, is that the biggest mistake he made in the first term was not to go further, was to have any type of guard rails placed upon him by either the people he puts around him or by recognition of the law and norms and customs for the position of the presidency.

And so, you see it in a whole bunch of different ways that we just looked at, but you see it in pardons, in particular. You know, he's got categories of pardons. You know, you got the pay-to-play pardons. You've got the reality-TV-stars-turned-supporters. And then you've got the folks out there who are just victims of what he calls weaponization of the Justice Department.

But all of them have one thing in common, which is you've got to be whole hog for Donald Trump. Never before we have -- have we seen a president who makes it a gate to getting to a pardon to be a political supporter of his, a vocal current political supporter.

STEPHANOPOULOS: He even suggested this week that he could look at possibly pardoning Sean “Diddy” Combs.

CHRISTIE: Right. While the trial is still going on and he has no idea what the nature and quality of the evidence is and what the jury verdict. What -- if he's -- if he's found not guilty, he won't need a pardon. So, this is just about him trying to be more and more outrageous.

And also, by saying something about Diddy, he deflects from a guy like Paul Walczak, whose mother was a million-dollar donor/fundraiser for Trump. And this guy stole, George, million dollars in payroll taxes. The money that his employees give to him to pay their payroll taxes, he stole that money.

The other thing he's doing here, George, is eliminating white collar crime in America. He's saying it doesn't exist, anything goes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: One of the things you write about in your book, Evan, is kind of the ostentation of the ultra-rich right now.

And there's an analogy here to what we're seeing on the business side, it's all wide open, no attempt to cover it up in any way.

EVAN OSNOS, THE NEW YORKER STAFF WRITER, & AUTHOR, “THE HAVES AND THE HAVE-YATCHTS”: Yeah. Well, look, you just heard about the case of Paul Walczak a moment ago. It's worth remembering, the judge in that case actually said before sentencing him to prison, there is no get-out-of-jail-free card in America for the rich.

Well, I think the feeling that a lot of people are getting right now is that there is. You know, in a sense -- and you see this in survey after survey -- Americans say, I want to get rich. I want to prosper, but I feel now like I have to be a member of the club. I mean, maybe almost literally a member of the club set up by the president's son that you heard about in that report.

I think that the new economy of influence in Washington that Donald Trump has encouraged and generated is beyond even anything that people have seen. Even seasoned practitioners of lobbying in Washington will say this is -- this is staggering.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, you know, I, of course, lived through the Clinton White House and the whole controversy over whether or not people who contributed to the Clinton campaign could sleep in the Lincoln bedroom.

Now, the Trump team is very open about, if you want to see the president, here's the price tag.

OSNOS: Absolutely. Look, it is about as naked a transaction as you can get. Elon Musk, after all, the largest donor in the last campaign, he, too, used the Lincoln bedroom during his periods in Washington.

I think it's worth noticing that the American public ultimately did not like the look of the world's richest man not only getting access to the Lincoln bedroom but being given essentially a department of government that he could use to fire tens of thousands of federal workers, including at agencies that do business with his own --

STEPHANOPOULO: But, Chris, the Trump team seems to be banking on the idea that the American people will not care about this.

CHRISTIE: Yeah. I mean, he's -- he is a numbing agent is what he is. He does so much that he just makes you numb. And so, like look in the political corruption area, George, and I think he's particularly focused on this to try to make people think any allegation of political corruption is partisan no matter what and therefore invalid. Whether it's the sheriff, Scott Jenkins, who was convicted of accepting $75,000 in bribes and he's now been pardoned, or whether you look at Devon Archer who clearly engaged in political corruption with the Bidens.

But that's a twofer for Trump. If you could have been a corrupt Biden person and then flip over to become a Trump supporter, that guy was convicted of $16 million in fraud, he's now been pardoned by Donald Trump.

So, what he's doing is saying in the white-collar crime area, both in business and in politics, there are -- there is no corruption. It's all weaponization. It's all depending upon which party you're in. And he's going to pardon all of these folks because they support him and it helps to obfuscate, George, what else is going on.

I mean, what the hell could be wrong with taking $75,000 in bribes? To Trump, he would say, why did you take that little? That would be what would offend him.

STEPHANOPOULOS: “Forbes” estimates that the president's net worth increased by at least a billion dollars. I think it was between his first and his second term. You talk about in your book how the whole billionaire class has seen that kind of rise over the last four years.

And I guess the big question is, what does that mean for the country?

OSNOS: Yes, it is an astonishing fact that the billionaires in this country between Donald Trump’s first inauguration and second inauguration doubled their net worth. And that is part of a larger trend. In 1990, there were 66 billionaires in this country. George, today there are more than 800, which would -- might be a sign of prosperity except that the median hourly wage in this country in that same period has only gone up 20 percent.

Americans feel it. They know it. On some level, they can detect in their daily lives the fact that ten years ago there was no such thing as a centibillionaire. We didn't have people with $100 billion. Today there are 15 of them. We're on track to ultimately get to trillionaires. And the question is, and Donald Trump’s presidency has driven this home is, how do we make sure our law, our institutions, our culture can adapt.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, that gets to a final question about President Trump, Chris Christie.

The White House is right that the conflict-of-interest laws do not apply to the president of the United States. That's a pretty huge loophole.

CHRISTIE: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Of course, the Constitution does, and the Emoluments Clause does. So, it gets to the question, what, if anything, can be done about this?

CHRISTIE: Well, look, I -- first of all I think very little. And -- and let's be fair about the increase of billionaires, too. The increase you just talked about happened during the Biden years. And -- and so both parties are contributing to this because both parties are benefiting from it.

OSNOS: Trump tax cuts helped a fair bit in that too.

CHRISTIE: It did. And what -- and -- but Joe Biden also allowed a culture as well that, if you were Democratic folks, you were allowed to do that. But what can be done about it? Look, the Justice Department has always been the vanguard against this kind of thing regardless of party across the history of our country. And we're going to have to see whether this attorney general is going to do that or not.

It's not encouraging that the Office of Public Integrity has been cut down by two-thirds and that there's not any encouragement that we've seen so far of U.S. attorneys’ offices to go aggressively after political corruption or white collar crime.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Thank you both.

Up next, President Trump's tariffs hit a legal roadblock. Top White House Adviser Kevin Hassett responds.

We're back in two minutes.

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BESSENT: We have two deals almost closed as of last week. Almost closed.

There's a big inventory of deals that are -- are right close to the finish line.

We’ve got more than ten deals where there's very, very good, amazing offers made to the U.S.

There are so many deals that are close. Some are easier than others.

There are many, many deals coming, and there were three that are -- basically look like they're done.

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STEPHANOPOULOS: President Trump's top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, repeatedly touting trade deals he says the U.S. is on the brink of securing. We’re going to speak to him in a moment.

First, here’s senior White House correspondent Selina Wang with the latest on the president's trade war after several court rulings this week striking down Trump's tariffs.

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SELINA WANG, ABC NEWS SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice over): This week more whiplash in Donald Trump's trade war. The president, on Friday, vowing to double tariffs on foreign steel while rallying at a Pittsburgh steel mill.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So, we're bringing it up from 25 percent. We're doubling it to 50 percent.

WANG (voice over): it's the latest salvo in the nearly two months since the president announced crippling tariffs on virtually every nation on earth.

TRUMP: Our country and its taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years, but it is not going to happen anymore.

WANG: But Trump's dreams of a reshaped global trading order far from reached, starting with his own pause on those tariffs just one week after the announcement after stock markets plunged and recession fears soared.

TRUMP: They were getting yippy, you know. They're getting a little bit yippy.

WANG: The on again, off again tariff saga once again on full display this week. Investors even coining a new phrase to describe it all. TACO trade, which stands for Trump always chickens out.

MEGAN CASSELLA, CNBC REPORTER: They're saying Trump always chickens out on your tariff threats, and that's why markets are higher this week. What's your response to that?

TRUMP: I chicken out, I've never heard that. Six months ago, this country was stone-cold dead. We had a dead country. We had a country people didn't think was going to survive, and you ask a nasty question like that. It's called negotiation.

WANG: And now the legal battle heats up. On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of International Trade struck down Trump's tariffs ruling that his effort exceeds any tariff authority delegated to the president. The three judges on that panel appointed by Reagan, Obama, and Trump himself citing the Constitution that only Congress has the power to levy tariffs. But a day later, the judicial pendulum swinging back in Trump's favor when an appeals court announced that tariffs could continue as the appeals process plays out.

All of this as tensions ramp up with China which Trump initially tariffed at a staggering 145 percent rate before the two countries struck a deal to lower the levies as talks continue. The administration admitting talks with China have hit a roadblock.

SCOTT BESSENT, U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY: I would say that they are a bit stalled.

WANG: The Trump administration now accusing China of not holding up their side of the bargain. Trump writing on social media, "China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, has totally violated its agreement with us."

China hitting back accusing the U.S. of abusing export controls on semiconductors, urging U.S. to immediately correct its erroneous actions and jointly uphold the consensus reached at the high-level talks in Geneva.

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WANG (on-camera): And George, all of this legal back and forth over Trump's tariffs is likely to end at the Supreme Court. This is a fundamental question about executive powers. President Trump claims that this is judicial overreach that harms his agenda and his ability to negotiate with other countries. But meanwhile, American businesses and consumers are left with even more confusion -- George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: OK, Selina, thanks.

We're joined now by the director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett.

Kevin, thanks for joining us again this morning.

KEVIN HASSETT, WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL DIRECTOR: Thanks, George. Of course, yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's play off where Selina left off right there. Are you confident the Supreme Court is going to uphold these tariffs? What happens if they don't?

HASSETT: Right. Well, one of the things we've been doing all the way back until 2017, when I used to speak with you on the show last time, George, is that we've studied every possible way that President Trump's tariff agenda could be pursued. And Jamison Greer, the best trade lawyer in the business, came down and said the IEPA pursuit that we're pursuing is the fastest, and it's the way that's the most legally sound.

And so we're very thrilled. We are very confident that the judges will uphold this law. And so I think that's plan A. And we're very, very confident that plan A is all we're ever going to need. But if, for some reason, some judge were to say that it's not a national emergency when more Americans die from fentanyl than have ever died in all American wars combined, that's not an emergency that the president has authority over, if that ludicrous statement is made by a judge somewhere, then we'll have other alternatives that we can pursue as well to make sure that we make America trade fair again.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you say there's no plan B, but there actually is a plan B. What is it?

HASSETT: Well, it's not plan B, George. This is something we've been studying from 2017 on. We know there's 232s, there's 301s, there's 338s. There's all these laws that your listeners don't want to listen to that are alternative ways to pursue what we're doing. We picked the best way. It's going to be upheld in court.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's talk about steel. The European Commission responded this morning to the president's announcement of doubling on the tariffs on Friday. They say in a statement to ABC News that it undermines efforts to find a negotiated solution, and they're prepared to impose countermeasures. Your response?

HASSETT: Right, well, the problem is there's an OECD study that comes from Paris that says that because Chinese steel production is something like double the global capacity that steel industries all across the world are in trouble because of China dumping of steel and China is doing that not just because they love us and they want to give us nice steel, they're doing that because it prepares them to win a war because they're the only ones who can make steel.

And so President Trump is going to make sure that never happens in the U.S., that we don't have the steel we need in case of war, and Europe should do that as well.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Yes, but I asked you about the European response. I mean, they say they're going to --

HASSETT: The European response is they should protect their steel, too. I mean, the bottom line is that we can't go into -- we don't ever want to have a war. Like President Trump, we expect, is going to have a wonderful conversation about the trade negotiations this week with President Xi. That's our expectation.

But the bottom line is that we've got to be ready in case things don't happen the way we want, because if we have cannons but not cannonballs, then we can't fight a war.

And if we don't have steel, then the U.S. isn't ready, and we're not preparing ourselves for something. And if we're not strong, then that's when bad things happen.

So, we have to show strength. We have to have a steel industry that's ready for American defense.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So that conversation with President Xi actually has been scheduled? When is it going to take place?

HASSETT: I'm not sure if it's been scheduled at a specific date, but it has been discussed that the two of them will talk about the Geneva agreement which we're all very favorably inclined towards, thinking this is a huge step forward. But then what happened is that people had to -- in China, had to give us licenses for things, and the licenses we believe have been slow rolled is something that the presidents want to talk about this week.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So, it is going to happen this week, though? You're sure of that?

HASSETT: I'm not sure, George, because you never know in international relations. But my expectation is that both sides have expressed a willingness to talk.

And I'd like to also add that people are talking every day. So USTR Jamieson Greer, his team, and President Xi's team in China, they're talking every day trying to move the ball forward on this matter.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We showed at the top of this piece, you’re talking about how you believe we're on the brink of getting many of these trade negotiations secure.

HASSETT: Yeah.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Where are we exactly? When will we see an actual agreement? Will we see any this week?

HASSETT: I expected that we were going to probably see one perhaps as early as last week. And I think that one of the things that's happened is that the trade team has been focused 100 percent like a laser beam on the China matter, to make sure that there are no supply disruptions because these licenses are coming a little slower than we would like.

And so, we've been focused like a laser beam on that last week, and the presidents, we expect, will discuss the matter this week. Once that thing's resolved, then we're going to take deals into the Oval that Jamieson Greer and Howard Lutnick have negotiated.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's talk about the budget bill that the president is trying to push through. It's gone through the House. It's now in the Senate, facing several challenges there. We're also some -- a lot of questions about the overall impact of that bill on the deficit and whether or not that's going to create uncertainty in the bond market.

Jamie Dimon says, yeah, on the one hand, it could provide growth, but we could see a crack in the bond market, and that's going to be serious.

Your response?

HASSETT: Right. My response is that under the Congressional Budget Office analysis, that they say that there'll only be 1.8 percent growth over the next 10 years, and then they project deficits. If instead you get 3 percent growth over the next 10 years, then you don't.

And so, the answer is, what do you think growth will be, and do you think the odds of higher growth are higher if we pass this Big, Beautiful Bill that has all this supply-side stuff in it?

And the other thing you have to think about, George, is what's the correct counterfactual? So, if the bill doesn't pass, then we're looking at the biggest tax hike in American history. If we pass that tax hike, if we pass that tax hike, then, of course, we'd immediately go into recession.

The Council of Economic Advisors projects the recession would be about 4 percent of GDP. Usually, when you have a recession like that, then it increases the deficit by 6 percent of GDP.

So, the idea that it's worse for the deficit to do something that pays for itself if you get 3 percent growth is just not defensible intellectually, I believe right now.

And I got to say, George, as a final thing, that you'll recall that during the financial crisis when President Obama came in, that for two years in a row, he and the Democrats extended the Bush tax cuts because they didn't want to create a recession with a tax hike. So even they recognize that if there was a big tax hike right now, it'd be exactly the wrong time for the U.S. economy and the American worker.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Facing numerous challenges to the bill in the Senate right now from both the right and the left, are you confident that the president's deadline is going to be met?

HASSETT: Deadlines are deadlines, right? So, the one thing I could say is that we're 100 percent confident that this bill is going to pass because in the end, the senators who are worried about the bill understand that you're going to cast the economy into recession and vote for the biggest tax hike in history if you vote against the bill.

Meanwhile, I'm sure there'll be lots of posturing and negotiating and people want this thing of the bill and that thing of the bill, and we look forward to the legislative process bringing the bill to the president's desk by the 4th of July. That's still our expectation. That's still our expectation.

And I don't think that we have much concern at all that the bill is not going to pass.

STEPHANOPOULOS: It's a big bill. I think it's over a thousand pages, and some of the provisions are being discovered now by a lot of people for the first time, including this what is being called the “revenge tax”, Section 899, which imposes a surtax on foreign investors and entities from countries which the U.S. believes has unfair or discriminatory trade practices.

Experts are warning that this could be a toxic game-changer for foreign investment.

What's your response to that?

HASSETT: Well, I think it was kind of a toxic game-changer when European countries put tens of billions of dollars of fines on our companies and had a digital service tax that went after our companies, and so on, even though they don't necessarily have a presence in those countries.

And so, I think that what we need to do is go back to the traditional standards of international tax law. And that's what the bill is trying to do.

The bill is also filled with beautiful stuff that I think that everybody listening right now would be more thrilled to hear about than 899.

For example, President Trump and the House have negotiated putting $1,000 into a brokerage account for every newborn in America beginning the minute the bill is passed. So that's three and a half million people this year that'll have $1,000 that will go into an account that they own until they retire, and every newborn, every year for the rest of time, is going to have that account.

I went back and looked, George, and if the $1,000 in 1962 had been put in when I was born, it'd be worth $600,000 today.

And that's what you mean when you say there's a Big, Beautiful Bill. There are these things that people haven't even talked about, like putting money in an account for newborns, that when you read the bill, you find them, and that's why I agree that it's beautiful.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So Section 899 is not going to be dropped?

HASSETT: We'll -- you know, the Senate is looking at it right now, but Section 899 is a reasonable response to what other countries have done to our big companies.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Kevin Hassett, thanks very much.

HASSETT: Thanks, George. Good to see you.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Roundtable is up next. We'll be right back.

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SEN. JONI ERNST (R-IA): They are not eligible, so they will be coming off. So, we -- people are not -- well, we all are going to die. So, for heaven's sakes.

What you don't want to do is listen to me when I say that we are going to focus on those that are most vulnerable. Those that meet the eligibility requirements for Medicaid, we will protect.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Joni Ernst responding to calls -- to concerns about cutback in Medicaid in the president's spending bill at a town hall meeting earlier this week.

Let's talk about this on our roundtable. We’re joined by Reince Priebus, former Trump White House chief of staff, Donna Brazile, former chair of the DNC, and Astead Herndon, national political reporter for "The New York Times."

Donna, let me go to you.

We just saw Ken Hassett say the more people learn about this, what they call the big, beautiful bill, the more they're going to like it. That's not what we're seeing at these town meetings.

DONNA BRAZILE, FORMER DNC CHAIR & ABC NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: George, they're not going to like it because they're not going to like the fact that here, as hurricane -- hurricane season begins, FEMA has been cut by 30 percent. The Trump administration failed to respond to the tornadoes in Arkansas. They've cut off funding for hurricane victims in North Carolina. They're not going to like these bone-crushing, what I call decisions by the Trump administration to not put the American people first in terms of their health, their safety, and, of course, the future growth of our economy.

REINCE PRIEBUS, FORMER RNC CHAIR, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF & ABC NEWS POLITICAL ANALYST: This is ridiculous. We're spending $2 trillion more today than we were before COVID. $2 trillion. We have -- we had 50 million people on Medicaid in 2011. Today we’ve got 80 million people on Medicaid. This bill doesn't cut Medicaid. What it does is it says that for illegal immigrants there will be cuts, but what it says is that if you check in with Medicaid once a year, which is what you have to do if you're an able-bodied person that doesn't have a child under seven years old, they would have to now check in two times a year.

And because that check-in to go get a job if you're able-bodied is going to cause people to go back to work, the CBO says that -- that will become a Medicaid cut. Well, I'm sorry, but if you have a medical emergency and you borrow $50,000 to pay for it and you get well at the end of the year, you don't go borrow $50,000 every single year thereafter, but that's what the federal government is doing.

I think there's going to be a spending cut fight more so in the Senate coming up, and these issues that I'm talking about now are going to have to be addressed by the American people.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Just about every independent has -- it’s not just the CBO that’s looked at this -- says that the cutbacks in Medicaid are going to have a real impact on those who are receiving it now.

ASTEAD HERNDON, NEW YORK TIMES NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER: Yes, and I think that that's the message Democrats are trying to push. And that’s the message they're sending in with even some voters.

As we've been following up with people, some of the people who put Trump back in the White House last November, there’s been a surprise about the things that he has been focusing on. And I think to Donna's point, a sense that he is not actually delivering on the core promises.

I think if this bill was happening in -- in the isolation it would be one thing. But in conjunction with the tariffs, it's caused like sow -- it sowed chaos, it sowed confusion. And it also puts Trump on the wrong side of I think what’s best a -- a kind of political issue, which was the handling of his economy. We've seen his approval rating tank over the last couple months. He's now at the same place he was at the latter places of his first term. It’s almost specifically driven by the fact that people have done a 180 on his handling of the economy. And I think that’s partially this bill. But it’s also the chaos that's been sown through the tariffs.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I mean, and the question is going to be, does that hurt the ability of the Republicans to pass the bill, or are they going to do, as Kevin Hassett says they know they need to pass it, so they will?

BRAZILE: No, look, they will come under enormous pressure to pass the bill. And for obvious reasons, Trump wants a big, beautiful bill, which I call a big, beautiful betrayal of working class Americans who desperately need healthcare. You cannot tell me that Medicaid is -- is not a lifesaving program that not only help the poor, but it also helpsindividuals who are working it helps our veterans.

And so, yes, there is consequences for passing this bill. And I think the Senate, unlike the House, is going to take a very long-sided approach to passing this bill. They know it doesn't make sense. It raises the deficit by trillions of dollars. It decreased revenues to the federal government, and it's a bad --

PRIEBUS: So, you think we should have more cuts. I agree with you. But I --

BRAZILE: I think the tax cuts should be off the table.

(CROSSTALK)

PRIEBUS: But you cannot sit here and tell me that more than a million people on Medicaid and us and the Republicans saying we want able-bodied people who are mostly in the expanded pool of Medicaid recipients to check in with the federal government twice a year is going to -- is going to cause people to die. We're not talking about elderly --

BRAZILE: Oh, yes.

PRIEBUS: No, you are wrong.

BRAZILE: I’m not wrong.

PRIEBUS: We are not talking about -- we are not talking about elderly people. We are not talking about people that have kids under seven years old. We were talking about people who should probably start looking for a job.

BRAZILE: Many of them are working.

PRIEBUS: Well, they are --

BRAZILE: Do you know what it takes to make it in America?

PRIEBUS: So, we should spend two trillion more dollars than we did four years ago?

BRAZILE: Well, should we be giving rich people who are well off more tax cuts? No.

PRIEBUS: Forty percent of the American people don't pay taxes, Donna. It's the people --

BRAZILE: And many of them -- many of them are wealthy.

PRIEBUS: You know who pays all the taxes ? The top 20 percent.

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's income -- that's income taxes. Every American pays sales tax.

PRIEBUS: Well, sure, they all do. But the disproportionate share of taxes paid to the federal government are people who are at the top half of the income bracket.

HERNDON: But there's a reason Republicans have been slow to do this before. They recognize the kind of political cost that could be here. And I think there's a reason why we've seen some of these things at the town hall.

This is not just coming from Democrats. There's been independent backlash to this. And there's a reason why the senators have been kind of less so willing to kind of sign up for this.

But, you know, if I put back on the political hat, the Republican Party has not really shown an interest to cross Donald Trump even in Congress. We saw the House members do a 180 on this, even the ones who were talking about things like the deficit.

So, I don't think that even though the political backlash or the prospects of those seeds being planted for things like the midterms could be real necessarily means we're going to see senators act in that interest, because from this point of -- all the evidence points their interest has been in serving Donald Trump.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Your senator -- what -- your senator from Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, one of the two senators who's come up pretty adamantly opposed to where the bill stands right now. Are you confident President Trump can turn him around?

PRIEBUS: I don't -- I'm not quite sure. I mean, his heels are pretty dug in, and there's a couple more that are working with Ron Johnson. But I think there might be a happy medium between the two sides.

But I think that, look, a trillion and a half in cuts is still something. It's not nothing, and I think that the bill is great, that it's going to keep the tax cuts in place.

But I do think that you heard a little bit from Elon Musk last week that, you know, he may be a voice in this sort of fight that you're witnessing here at your roundtable as far as what types of spending cuts or, you know, buckling, you know, tightening the -- our belt buckles on spending we need to have. And I think Ron Johnson is probably going to try to lead the charge on that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You mentioned Elon Musk, Donna. I wonder if that's really a good thing for the White House. I mean one of the things you're seeing at these town meetings is a real reaction to Elon Musk and his involvement.

BRAZILE: And you know what? Elon Musk may have walked away from his temporary special government job, but no one will forget the harm that he has done to not only America's reputation across the world, but also the harm that he's done to the American people.

I mentioned FEMA. This is the beginning of hurricane season, of course. I'm a native Louisianian, we care about that.

But you go across the board, George, and look at the harm that he's done to the Forest Service. The harm that he's done to NIH and much, much more.

Elon Musk will be remembered for that chainsaw, not for bringing more government efficiency.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Actually, “The New York Times” has done a lot of reporting on Elon Musk this week, and the president and Elon put on a happy face at that last meeting on Friday. But do you think both sides are as satisfied with that relationship as they said they were?

HERNDON: I'm not sure, and I think specifically, that special election in Wisconsin gave Republicans warning signs about the backlash of Elon Musk, about how he could be a bigger motivator for Democrats than even folks like Donald Trump.

And even as we've gone back to our voters, it has been shocking to show how much Elon Musk comes up in that conversation.

You know, a lot of what Donald Trump does is expected. It's things he promised, even things like tariffs were consistent on the trail.

I think people have been surprised by the Elon co-presidency of it all, and I think that that was reflected in some of our voter talks.

But his legacy lives on, not just in kind of the images that we saw, but in using I think DOGE and waste, fraud and abuse as a pretense for some of these legal challenges they wanted to have about executive power, some of the reshaping of government Republicans wanted to do on things like the NSC and others. They have -- that has been kind of brought into this administration and given face by Elon Musk and that doesn't go away.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Did he leave, or was he fired?

PRIEBUS: I think he left. I think he always knew he was going to leave, and I think that President Trump loves a person who leaves on good terms, and then goes and helps the president.

I think he caused -- I think he did something very important. He's -- he brought this debate on government waste to the forefront, and that $175 billion is a good start. I hope that Congress codifies what Elon Musk did.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, yeah. And it is unclear that it's actually $175 billion.

PRIEBUS Well, whatever it is, it's better than nothing.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Thank you all very much. Up next, Cindy McCain from the World Food Programme on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RIYAD MANSOUR, PALESTINIAN U.S. AMBASSADOR: Dozens of children are dying of starvation. The images of mothers embracing their motionless bodies, caressing their hair, talking to them, apologizing to them -- it's unbearable. How could anyone --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Emotional testimony from the Palestinian Ambassador to the U.N. Cindy McCain, the Head of the U.N. World Food Programme, is going to join us to discuss the humanitarian crisis after this report from Chief Foreign Correspondent, Ian Pannell in Tel Aviv.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

IAN PANNELL, ABC NEWS CHIEF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This week, mounting death and desperation in Gaza, as hopes for a breakthrough ceasefire and hostage deal fade, Israel launching more strikes this weekend. Netanyahu's government insisting they're targeting, what they call, terrorist infrastructure, but the civilian death toll continues to rise relentlessly.

This morning, at least 30 people killed trying to get food in Gaza. According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. Ambulances packed with victims flooding into National Hospital in Khan Younis. The militants and eyewitnesses accusing Israeli forces of opening fire as people approached a U.S.-run food distribution center.

The IDF saying, it's unaware of injuries caused by its troops, but it is reviewing what happened. The war began after a brutal Hamas attack in October 2023 that left more than1,200 Israelis and others dead and 250 taken hostage. Now, nearly 20 months later, Israel controls all access points into Gaza, and for the past 11 weeks, it blocked all aid into the strip. Under pressure from its allies, the blockade has now been partially lifted, but the U.N. says the food getting in is having very little effect. It calls Gaza the hungriest place on earth.

Israel disputes aid agency figures and has repeatedly accused Hamas of stealing aid. Israel set up its own aid system bypassing U.N. and traditional NGOs. Operated by a U.S.-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is working with private security contractors but has been embroiled in controversy with scenes of chaos and gunfire as it tried to distribute food this week.

Hungry and desperate, hundreds of civilians stormed U.N. aid warehouses, and the wards at Gaza's Nasser Hospital a testament to the devastating toll that war and want are having. Little Siwa (PH) has just turned 6 months old, born relatively healthy, she's now fighting for her life. The hospital she's in has been repeatedly bombed by the IDF in pursuit of what it says are terrorists in hiding. She weighs just over seven pounds. That's less than half of an average American baby girl at the same age of 6 months.

DR. AHMED AL-FARRA, NASSER MEDICAL COMPLEX HEAD OF PEDIATRICS: If she doesn't take that suitable formula of milk, unfortunately, she will not survive.

PANNELL: Nearly half a million people in Gaza are facing catastrophic hunger according to a report by 17 U.N. agencies and NGOs earlier this month. Rising hunger and relentless air strikes.

On the other side of the hospital, volunteer surgeon Dr. Victoria Rose is operating on a patient with direct blast injuries.

DR. VICTORIA ROSE, NASSER MEDICAL COMPLEX PLASTIC SURGEON: I really want them to stop bombing. If they just stop bombing us for a couple of days it would mean that we could catch up with the back load. It's just the constancy of this.

PANNELL: This week, President Trump and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff announcing a new ceasefire plan the White House says is backed by Israel. It lays out a 60-day ceasefire, the release of 10 living hostages, and the bodies of 18 others. In exchange, Israel would release some Palestinian prisoners, withdraw its forces to a buffer zone, and allow more vital aid in.

But overnight Hamas pushing back asking for changes and further conditions. U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff responding almost immediately calling it totally unacceptable. "It's a setback for President Trump's plans for peace."

AMOS HAREL, HA'ARETZ NEWSPAPER ANALYST: It's quite clear where Trump is heading. He wants a ceasefire. He wants a full agreement, and he wants peace agreements and normalization all over the region.

PANNELL: And Netanyahu wants the same thing?

HAREL: No. Netanyahu does not want the same thing as Trump.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PANNELL (on-camera): Well, George, we've had a statement from GHF, that's the American-run organization, distributing aid. It's claiming that the deaths and injuries are, quote, "untrue and fabricated." They're also denying that any incident took place despite evidence to the contrary and after we've seen again this morning the suffering, the killing, the desperation in Gaza continues. George?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Ian Pannell, thanks very much.

We're joined now by the executive director of the U.N. World Food Programme, Cindy McCain.

Mrs. McCain, thank you for joining us this morning. Let me begin where Ian just left off. Is there anything you can add about this incident this morning, Hamas claiming 31 people killed? You just saw the GHF denying that anything happened. Do you have any independent information?

CINDY MCCAIN, U.N. WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Well, our people are reporting the same thing on the ground. It's a tragedy. And what we need right now is an immediate ceasefire, complete, unfettered access, along with the safe fence roads, every gate open, to feed people and stop this catastrophe from happening. If we don't do that, it's going to be a humanitarian catastrophe, as I've said, like none other.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So, just to be clear, you're saying your people believe that the incident did in fact happen and that individuals were killed this morning?

MCCAIN: Yes. Yes, we do.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You're calling for a ceasefire right now. Steve Witkoff said there's been a step back. How important is that right now, and what more can be done to implement that ceasefire?

MCCAIN: Well, the previous ceasefire proved that we can do the job. We were getting in over 600 trucks a day during the ceasefire into Gaza. So people were not -- they didn't have the feel of desperation. They knew food was coming. They knew they had access to food right now.

And now we don't. I mean, they don't have nearly enough access points. They don't have nearly enough food going in. And -- and so the -- the feel of desperation, you can see it in the video, is very -- it's very disheartening. I mean for all of us that do this, you know, this is what we do. We -- we -- we understand what it takes and we understand the complexity of it. But we also understand the grave humanitarian need that -- that is existing now.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Have you had any coordination at all this week with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation?

MCCAIN: No, I have not personally. I know that there's been some -- some meetings that have taken place around the -- around the -- Europe, particularly on some of the things. But we have -- we've not seen a plan. We've been a part of some of those meetings. Some of them we have not been. But again, we've seen no plan.

And, look, we will work with anybody to feed. This is -- this is the kind of thing that, at this level of desperation, we've got to work together on trying to feed people.

So -- so, it's not about not willing to work with people. We need the access. We need the Israelis to let us in, so we can do our job. And we do it -- we are the best at what we do, I might add. And we're the ones -- we -- we can -- we can not only get in, but we can get in at scale, which is what is most important right now.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's talk about the overall aid situation right now. You've spoken about the impact of the U.S. aid cuts on the World Food Programme. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked on Capitol Hill about the impact of these aid cuts and whether or not deaths have resulted. I want to play that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. BRAD SHERMAN, (D-CA): Has anyone in the world died because of what Elon Musk did?

MARCO RUBIO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: The -- the -- listen, you are --

SHERMAN: Yes or no, reclaiming my time. If you won't answer, that's a loud answer.

RUBIO: No one has died because of USAID.

SHERMAN: What about the people who have died as a result --

RUBIO: That's a lie.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is it a lie that people have died because of the aid cuts?

MCCAIN: Well, you know, I'm not going to -- going to even pretend to understand what's going on with inside the -- the U.S. government at this particular point. I know what I see on the ground, not just in Gaza but around the world. There's places like Sudan, DRC Congo, other places, South Sudan, et cetera, they're -- they're in just as much trouble as this. We need to get aid in, in Gaza, and we need to get it in now to avoid this catastrophe.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Ms. McCain, thank you for your time and your work.

MCCAIN: Thank you. Thank you.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We'll be right back.

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STEPHANOPOULOS: That is all for us today. Thanks for sharing part of your Sunday with us. Check out "World News Tonight," and I'll see you tomorrow on GMA.