Trump rails against CNN when asked about $1.776B fund
📅 Jun 04, 2026CNN10 MIN413519 VIEWS12 SEGMENTS · 7 SPEAKERS
President Donald Trump declined to commit to permanently scrapping a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund on Wednesday, telling CNN’s Kaitlan Collins he still considered the controversial initiative “a beautiful thing.”
The comments inject fresh uncertainty into the Senate’s effort to pass $70 billion in new immigration enforcement funding. But Senate GOP leaders are powering ahead with plans to pass that funding — despite the remaining sharp disagreements in the party over how to handle the controversial settlement fund.
Collins rolls the tape of her Oval Office exchange with President...
What Donald Trump said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Trump defended the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, calling it a 'beautiful thing' and criticizing the Biden administration and media, especially CNN, for what he described as weaponization against Americans. He cited suicides, bankruptcies, and the Mar-A-Lago raid as examples. When asked if the fund was dead or on hold, he said he would have to ask the lawyers, declining to confirm its status. He also claimed he won 87% of counties in the election and mentioned a detour to Iran to prevent nuclear weapons. The conversation highlighted tension with Republican senators who want the fund officially killed, and the upcoming Senate vote on immigration funding.
Key takeaways
Trump refused to confirm the $1.8 billion fund is dead, saying he'd have to ask lawyers, contradicting Acting AG Todd Blanche's statement.
Trump called the fund a 'beautiful thing' and defended it as necessary to address alleged weaponization by the Biden administration.
Trump claimed he won 87% of counties in the election, a figure he said was unprecedented.
Trump criticized CNN as 'corrupt' and a reporter as having 'hatred in her eyes' during the exchange.
Trump mentioned a detour to Iran, saying the U.S. cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon under any circumstances.
As you're about to hear, the president seemed clearly irritated when he was asked earlier today why his administration says it is not moving forward with that $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, as they have called it. And just to note, as you're about to listen to this, this first exchange actually occurred before I had yet to ask the president a question.
So I love it. I think it's so important. People were... this is a victim right here. But not only a victim, he was also a student of it. What happened to great people, great American people, and the way they were victimized, the way they were savaged. You have suicides. They killed themselves. They went bankrupt. They were weaponized by the Biden administration, by a bunch of thugs, including Obama. People. And like, nobody's probably ever been. I mean, I can think of maybe two instances in this country where they've had it to somewhere that extent. I'm not even sure it was so much. They were put in jail for long periods of time. They were accused of things that never happened. They had prosecutors that were radical lunatics and their lives were destroyed. And frankly, we had a lawsuit that against us on the, you know, one of the weaponization where the judge, your radical left judge, ruled against it. And we'll see how that all works out. But a radical left judge ruled against it. But these people, their lives have been destroyed. Their families have been destroyed. Many of them. And I'm not just talking about a few people. Many of them, I'm one of them. I look, I... they raided my house. Mar-A-Lago. That never happened. Nobody ever thought of a thing like that. It turned out that it was a total fake. Everything about it was fake and corrupt. We have all the information here. The good advantage to sitting here is we can get information that you wouldn't get based on what we have and what we are going to be showing over the coming weeks and months. You're not even going to believe... some of you will believe it, like CNN, or believe it because they knew what was going on. They're crooked as hell. CNN is a very corrupt organization, but with a corrupt reporter standing right there, never smiles. Universe. We see a young, beautiful woman, never smiles. I never see a smile on her face. I see is standing there with hatred in her eyes. Like she has hatred. Because we have borders. Because we have a strong military. Because we cut our taxes, because we do things that everybody wanted. And then we won our election in a massive landslide. We won 87% of the counties in this country. Nobody has ever heard of a thing like that. And that's because we're doing the right job. And we took a detour down to Iran because we can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon under any circumstances. We can't let that happen. So, the reporters should be happy. They shouldn't be unhappy. They should be very happy. Because you know what we're doing? We're saving our country.
It's... I'd have to ask the lawyers. I know. I know one thing. The weapons. What are you talking about? The weaponization. Yeah. What's your defense? The weaponization fund? As far as I'm concerned, it was a beautiful thing. It was something I was... I didn't make it, but I was... I heard that I thought that was the greatest thing. Because people like you have abused our people so badly. The fake news like CNN, like the New York Times, and like the others, have a Republican people. Wait a minute, because I don't... I have abused people so badly. And you should be ashamed of yourself. You used to be a conservative. She was a conservative from Alabama. Can you believe it? But she stole from... in particular CNN does such false reporting, but now they have new ownership, so maybe it'll straighten it. That I doubt it, but it's hard to straighten garbage out. But CNN has abused and and others have abused so badly people, these are people that are great. People that would destroy their families, have been destroyed. Many suicides. They committed suicide. People that went there to with love. They went there with love. You know, when I made that speech early in the day, tremendous crowd, I hate to say because they'll say, oh, I was wrong in the number, but I believe it's the largest crowd I've ever spoken to by by twice the biggest crowd, I think bigger than the inauguration is bigger than anything. And there was so much love and and friendship. It was the most amazing thing. People were crying.
Attacks aside, the news there is the president defending this $1.8 billion fund while pushing questions about whether or not the door is permanently shut on it to the off to the attorneys in his administration. He himself never said whether or not it could potentially move forward. The fact that the administration has not done so and hasn't done so in writing, despite the fund being actually announced in writing, has not gone far enough for some Republican members of Congress who are now issuing fresh calls to officially kill the fund themselves. In fact, the unprecedented use of taxpayer money has become so politically toxic that sources say many in the GOP were glad to see the issue taken off the table by Todd Blanche, or so they thought. A brief reminder of what we heard from the acting attorney general on Capitol Hill.
6 more exchanges in this transcript
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Trump, D. (2026, June 4). Trump rails against CNN when asked about $1.776B fund [Interview transcript]. CNN. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/963546/
MLA
Donald Trump. "Trump rails against CNN when asked about $1.776B fund." CNN, 4 Jun. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/963546/.
BibTeX
@misc{trump2026_963546,
author = {Donald Trump},
title = {Trump rails against CNN when asked about $1.776B fund},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, CNN. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jun},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/963546/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}