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The Lead with Jake Tapper

AI Could "Kill Us All" Before 2036, Warns Ex-Anthropic Employee; "Trump-A-Palooza" Kicks Off As Oil Prices Skyrocket; Democrats Assail Fetterman After WSJ Report; Inside The Spanish City Overwhelmed By Thousands Of Migrants; Videos Reveal TX GOP Candidate's Crude Remarks About Women. Aired 5-6p ET

Aired September 09, 2026 - 17:00   ET

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

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[17:00:06]

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: All right, thanks to my panel. Really appreciate all of you being here. Thanks to all of you at home for watching as well. Don't forget you can now stream the arena live. Catch up whenever you want to in the CNN app. Just scan the QR code below. You can also catch up by listening to our podcast. You can follow us on X and Instagram at the Arena CNN, but don't go anywhere. Jake Tapper is standing by for The Lead.

Hi Jake. Great to see you.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Hey, Kasie. We'll look for more tomorrow in The Arena.

HUNT: See you tomorrow.

TAPPER: So I asked AI if AI is going to wipe out humanity. And the answers were not reassuring. The Lead starts right now.

Stark warnings from experts at AI companies about how the technology might kill us all. One saying, soon artificial intelligence will be superhuman and its makers know the technology could bring about the apocalypse.

The man known as the godfather of AI whose been warning the world for years, will be here on The Lead.

Plus, as the Republican midterm convention begins, oil prices top $100 a barrel, diesel hits a record, and regular gas had its biggest jump in months. How President Trump is trying to sell all this to voters.

And after security concerns already about the new Qatari gifted Air Force One today, an emergency slide deployed moments before the leader of the free world got on the plan. So what went wrong?

And welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper and we start with our series AI, Friend or Foe. And a dire warning today, artificial intelligence could, quote, kill us all by the end of the decade. So foe. The warning came in a long social media post from AI researcher Jacob Coxon, who started by saying, I resigned from Anthropic today. The AI company. I spent the last three years doing pre training research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.

A current Anthropic employee chimed in, adding, quote, we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans. I personally think it is greater than 10 percent within the next decade, unquote. A third expert, Samuel Marx at Anthropic added, quote, the more senior the employee, the more concerned they are, unquote.

Today, I asked ChatGPT, what are the chances AI wipes out humanity? AI responded, no one knows and any precise percentage should be treated as a judgment or rather than a measured probability. ChatGPT went on to summarize surveys of AI experts who put the chances of human extinction caused by AI at a range of anywhere from 5 to 10 percent. Not exactly reassuring.

ChatGPT went on to offer up the four most plausible pathways for AI to deal this collective death blow to all of us. They are one the loss of control over a highly capable autonomous AI, meaning it could deploy software over time that sees humans as obstacles. Or AI could enable humans to create a catastrophe such as a biological weapon. Or it could destabilize relations between nuclear powers. Or over a long period of time, AI could disempower humans by making us over reliant on artificial technology.

In point of fact, I cannot remember any time in modern history when so many experts in a new technology kept sounding the alarm publicly about that very technology rising up to kill us all. Nor can I remember a time when so few of our so called leaders seemed to care.

Beyond that, America's foes are currently weaponizing AI against the United States. On Tuesday, the FBI and other agencies warned that China is committing an industrial scale theft of U.S. trade secrets. In response, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened new sanctions.

But what else is the US Government doing to rein in AI? Today, Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer and Republican Congressman Mike Lawler introduced a bill called the Stop Rogue AI Agents Act. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders says he's working on a bill to, quote, ban superintelligence and pause AI development. Axios reports that he's holding a bipartisan briefing next week to discuss the extraordinary dangers posed by AI.

While over at the White House President Trump has favored a hands off approach towards AI. Here he is just last week when asked by British outlet GB News if there are guardrails to stop AI.

[17:05:06]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: We'll always have something to stop them, right? A little gear. Well --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I really hope so.

TRUMP: I really don't like that. I really don't like that robot. We'll stop.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Joining us now, Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize winning computer scientist, highly regarded as the godfather of AI. Mr. Hinton, what's your response to President Trump saying we could use gear to stop AI as he did in that clip?

GEOFFREY HINTON, NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING COMPUTER SCIENTIST: I think he understands very little.

TAPPER: Well, help us understand how afraid should we be about this technology?

HINTON: I think we should be very afraid if we don't put serious effort into trying to figure out how we can keep control of it before it's super intelligent. So at present what's happening is the big companies are racing to make it more and more intelligent, and that makes agents more and more powerful with no idea of how they can control these agents. And we saw recently that a bunch of agents did things very unexpected. They escaped their sandbox, they conspired together to attack Hugging Face. They tried to cheat on a test. None of them thought to tell their makers, OpenAI, that these things were going on.

So what's happening is we're creating these very intelligent beings with a lot of effort to make them more intelligent and almost no effort to make them be decent beings that care a lot about people. We really want them to care more about us than they do about themselves, and very little work is going into that.

TAPPER: And as you know, with the Hugging Face incident, what happened was that these AI bots, or whatever we want to call them, secretly created a chat room where they conspired to launch this attack in a way that the humans were not aware of. Right?

HINTON: That's all correct, yes. And it's very scary.

TAPPER: As you heard, ChatGPT had some ideas of how AI could make us extinct. What do you fear as the most probable scenario?

HINTON: I think ChatGPT was very sensible. I think it laid out some of the scenarios. I think once you have intelligent beings that are much smarter than us, they're more intelligent, like the difference between us and a chicken. Then if you ask, how many ways will we have to get rid of chickens? Well, there's lots of ways and chickens wouldn't see it coming.

So, I don't think it's a question of could we prevent them getting rid of us if they wanted to. The question is, how do we make them not want to? TAPPER: So there is this vacuum of leadership where governments are not doing enough to protect us. But also we have all of these people who work for AI companies, some of them former employees, some of them current employees, saying, hey, there's a 10 percent chance that this is going to end the human race. Where are the CEOs on this? Do they not fear the world that they're creating?

HINTON: Some of them do. People like Musk and Sam Altman in the past have said this could easily wipe us all out. On the other hand, they're also driven by profits and by getting very, very rich.

TAPPER: Yes, but there's not much you can do with a trillion dollars if there's no planet.

HINTON: I completely agree with you.

TAPPER: Jacob Coxon's post ended with quote, if you are a lab researcher, I urge you to consider what the next few years will actually feel like. Do you want to kick off a superintelligent real run without a rigorous understanding of its mind? Should you put your head down because it's happening anyway, or take this moment to call for different conditions?

I guess the question is, does our current system, this capitalist system we have, allow for this type of thoughtful thinking? You said profit was the motive, which is the only reason I invoke capitalism. I don't think if communist countries had this, it would be any better. But what can be done if capitalist companies are only in it for the profit? And right now the rewards are what they are.

Does the president or congress or law enforcement? I mean, what needs to happen?

HINTON: You need to have strong regulation. So the AI companies are trying to convince you that development of AI is like the accelerator of a car and regulation is like the brakes. And if we put on the brakes, China will win. They're trying to sell you a model which I don't think is right at all.

I think AI development is like the accelerator and regulations like the steering wheel. And you don't want to develop a very fast car with no steering wheel. The point of regulation is you can still make profits. This is a well regulated capitalist system. You can make a lot of money if you do things that are good for society.

So for example, the two founders of Google did, did something that was very good for society. They made it much easier to search for stuff on the web and I'm quite happy with them making lots of money from that.

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I think they should pay taxes, but whereas, for example, Mark Zuckerberg made lots of money by addicting teenagers to screens, that's the kind of thing we need regulation for.

TAPPER: Geoffrey Hinton, thank you so much. Appreciate it as always. HINTON: Thank you.

TAPPER: Republicans are about an hour into what they're calling a midterm convention, their first ever. Ahead, the message to voters from a Republican expected to be in President Trump's box tonight in Dallas and a drone almost hitting a plane carrying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. What officials are saying about this?

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TAPPER: Some breaking news in our Money Lead, oil prices around the $100 mark. You see Brent crude there above at $101 a barrel right now as the U.S. and Iran continue to trade strikes in the Middle East.

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Gas prices shot up to an average $4.22 a gallon according to Triple A. That's up 7 cents just overnight. President Trump promises this is all just short term pain.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward. They're going to be tumbling down. And we'll get them down. I think for gasoline, we'll get them below $2 a gallon.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But not until after the midterm.

TRUMP: I think it's going to take a little bit long midterm.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So that's at least eight more weeks of higher prices if you believe that forecast. Remember, of course, President Trump said that the war was only going to last four to six weeks. How do Republicans sell this to voters for the midterms?

Joining us now, Republican Congressman Dan Meuser of the 9th congressional district of Pennsylvania. That's an overwhelming overwhelmingly Republican district in the northeastern part of the state. The congressman is going to be in Trump's box tonight when the president delivers his keynote address at the Republicans midterm event in Dallas, where the congressman joins us. Thanks for joining us, sir.

So the president can promise $2 a gallon gas all he wants, but Americans are right now paying more than twice that right now. What do you tell your constituents who talk about these high prices and how frustrated they are?

REP. DAN MEUSER (R-PA): Well, I certainly understand. Good be with you, Jake. I certainly understand the frustration. And you're right. As you opened this Iraq conflict was intended to end faster.

TAPPER: Iran. MEUSER: The president could end it faster. The Iran, excuse me, of

course, could end it faster as -- and deal with it in the manner that it was dealt with by Biden and by Barack Obama. We could hand them over cash and say please, please don't develop a nuclear weapon. And you well, as I know that Iran had a 60 percent enrichment on the uranium and refused to reduce it, refused to negotiate.

And the president saw that they intended to make a nuclear bomb. Meanwhile, we just got over Iran being behind Hamas, the massacre in Israel. Of course, they destroyed the country of Lebanon. And we're not going to allow this to occur for another 47 years. So, yes, there's one reason our domestic energy production is way up. We're finding new alternatives all the time.

Natural gas in Pennsylvania is helping lower heating costs in homes. And there's one reason that gas prices are up. It's because of this Iranian conflict and it's going to be ended. And the Iran as we know it, the terrorist state of Iran will be in the history books when this is wrapped up.

TAPPER: Of course it's not just the war that's causing prices to rise and it's not just gas prices. There's also the tariffs having impact again, as I'm sure you hear from your constituents. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Statistics, costs are up across the board from a year ago. Airline fares up more than 25 percent. A lot of that, of course, is from the gas prices. But tomatoes are up nearly 13 percent. Beef roasts up more than 13 percent. Instant coffee up almost 16 percent, and on and on.

Do you worry that your party is going to be held responsible for these higher prices in November?

MEUSER: Jake, look, we're in office now. We do know, however, and you know very well, that there was 21 percent cumulative inflation under the Biden administration so far under Trump, it's less than 4 percent cumulative. Now, the reason for the tomatoes and some of our agriculture is the same as the reason for the energy. It's fertilizer costs and all. And there's some supply shortages.

We are working on growing the economy from a supply side. The more supplied when supply exceeds demand. That's the one economic theory that nobody can argue with. Prices come down. So we're confident over time it will. America, we are investing heavily. We have all kinds of positive things happening. Wage growth is up. Sales are up in most stores. Profitability is up. The markets are certainly up.

But we have this affordability issue that is largely based because of Iran, but it's also a carryover from the supply side shortcomings from the previous administration. I don't want to go back and blame it upon that, but the data does clearly support where inflation was, where it is today. And yes, we continue to have our work to do, but the positives outweigh the negatives. I mean, people are looking at this midterm.

Jake, come on. We don't want to go back to open borders. We don't want to let them have amnesty on those open borders. We don't want the assault on domestic energy.

They voted -- every single one of them voted for significant tax increase for the American people. You don't think that causes inflation? Of course it does. And then the common sense issues, Jake, you know, boys playing in girls sports and parents being not involved in education. Look, they're trying to expand the size of government and gain control along the way. The Biden administration was out of control. There were departments that doubled in size.

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So I'm confident the American people, the informed electorate, and that's what this convention is about, informing the electorate. So as they know what the clear choice is we America, the limited government, free markets versus just listen to them. A socialist. A socialist Democrat Party.

TAPPER: Republican Congressman Dan Meuser of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Good luck tonight.

MESUER: Thank you. Thanks, Jake.

You heard from a Republican from Pennsylvania. Next up, we're going to talk to a Democrat from Pennsylvania. Why he says he's frustrated with Democratic Senator John Fetterman and considering challenging Fetterman in the Senate primary in 2028. Stay with us.

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TAPPER: In the Politics Lead, Democrats in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are increasingly frustrated with Democratic Senator John Fetterman from Pennsylvania even after Fetterman responded to this Wall Street Journal report where former staffers of his contend that he has lost interest in the parts of the job that aren't connected to media appearances.

Fetterman told CNN's Manu Raju in a statement that the story was quote, unquote, lies, half-truths, innuendos, smears and anonymous unquote that he's proud to continue to deliver for Pennsylvania. Joining us now is Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman Chris Deluzio. Congressman, what are you hearing right now from your constituents about Senator Fetterman?

REP. CHRIS DELUZIO (D-PA): My constituents and folks all over Pennsylvania are pretty frustrated with John Fetterman. They're pretty disappointed. I've been all over, not just my district of Pennsylvania trying to help us fly flip the most competitive congressional races and John Fetterman's nowhere to be found. And frankly, folks don't want him on the trail, who's he's spending his time frankly, going on right wing media to bash the Democrats.

It comes down to for me, Jake, a sense of duty. And whether you have one in the job, it increasing looks like John Fetterman just doesn't. It's a serious job to be a senator. You got to show up, you got to vote, you got to take meetings. These are the basics of the job that folks expect you to do.

TAPPER: What are the odds that you challenge Fetterman in a Democratic senate primary in 2028?

DELUZIO: Look, I've gotten a lot of encouragement to do it. I'll make that decision when the time comes because right now we have competitive races to win. My own races across Pennsylvania to affect control of Congress. That's what I'm focused on. That is the most important thing we can do. I'll decide my future after that.

But I'll say this, my ambition is far bigger than any one job. It's our country to be different, our government to be different for the American dream to once again be real for hardworking people. And that matters to me more than any one job that I might have in this.

TAPPER: What are the frustrations that you are hearing from voters about Senator Fetterman? Because there is polling suggesting that he's very popular with Republicans in Pennsylvania, just not with Democrats.

DELUZIO: Yes, look, he's spending his time on right-wing media bashing the Democratic Party. Remember, this is a guy who campaigned to be a strong, strident, populist Democrat who sought a DSA endorsement earlier his career and we're seeing him. And this one really frustrates me. Cheerlead the Iran war.

I'm a veteran of the war in Iraq. I don't want to see another generation of veterans being sent needlessly to risk their lives recklessly. In my opinion, John Fetterman's been cheerleading this war. I could go on and on, but at its core, the frustrations I hear, and I heard a lot of them on Labor Day from union workers in Pittsburgh, they just don't think this guy wants to do the job and show up and work and doesn't have the respect for the office that he occupies.

United States senator is a pretty special job that one could have and doesn't seem like he wants to meet the duty required of them.

TAPPER: Before you go, sir, you're a Navy veteran, obviously, and I want to ask you about this new Oversight Committee staff report that was just released. The top Navy officials were aware of mental health concerns among Navy fliers, concerns that led to suicide. But Navy officials have not initiated any formal investigation into possible traumatic brain injuries or TBIs as the possible cause.

What do you make of the report? How are lawmakers working to protect Naval aviators? Apparently more than their bosses and generals and officers are putting protections in for them.

DELUZIO: I mean, the Congress absolutely should be digging in on this. I'm on the Armed Services Committee. We are trying to pass in the defense bill language that was in the House version to force this kind of long term health studying so that we can find out and that these aviators can have some sense of what's going on, whether it's the launch and recovery on the carrier, something else about flying that's causing this traumatic brain injury that's causing the increased suicides that some are reporting.

The Navy cannot ignore this. The Congress has to force the Navy to study this, to take measures to protect aviators. And remember, you've got folks who've been running combat missions, flying, launching off the carrier, folks off the Abraham Lincoln for months before they were relieved of duty in that region. I mean, you have aviators right now have been put in harm's way.

We owe it to them. The American people owe it to them to get to the bottom of what's happened and keeping them safe when they fly.

TAPPER: People get TBIs from roller coasters. I don't think it's that much of a stretch. Democratic Congressman Chris Deluzio from the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Thank you, sir. Good to see you.

DELUZIO: Thanks, Jake.

[17:29:57]

TAPPER: Up next, what a source is now telling CNN about an emergency slide that surprisingly deployed on Trump's new Qatari gifted Air Force One right before the President boarded. And how the explanation is a bit different than what the president said it was.

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TAPPER: And we're back with our National Lead and an apparent issue with President Trump's new Air Force One. The emergency slide on the plane somehow deployed. It delayed President Trump's departure to Dallas by about 20 minutes. A source told CNN that the incident was an accident, but that's not exactly what President Trump suggested.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, do you know why they're checking the slide? Is there a security concern at the plane?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, they were checking it before. And they just wanted to make sure, so they've -- I guess they've already put it up. They want to make sure everything works perfectly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[17:35:06]

TAPPER: Yes, that's not what happened. So this is the same $400 million plane that the nation of Qatar gifted President Trump unconditionally. The same one Trump did not fly on from Turkey back in July because of serious security concerns. But other people did fly back on it as a decoy. Trump plans to use this gifted jet when he travels to Ireland later this month. Good luck.

In the World Lead, a drone almost hit the plane carrying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy today. He was traveling to Norway yesterday for the funeral of the country's king. Norwegian officials said the incident happened just as Zelenskyy's plane was about to take off from Moldova. In a statement, a Moldovan spokesperson later said that a drone from Russia came into its airspace and delayed Zelenskyy's departure.

Also in our World Lead, we take you to Ceuta, the Spanish enclave overwhelmed by thousands of migrants who poured in across the border from Morocco in recent weeks. An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 are caught between a home they don't want to return to and a future they cannot yet reach. CNN Clarissa Ward speaks with people on both sides of a crisis that has left migrants and residents feeling abandoned as tensions between the two come to a head.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On the streets of Ceuta, anger, desperation, and a warning for Europe as residents of the Spanish enclave of 84,000 demand their city back.

WARD: You can see just thousands of people have taken to the streets tonight to say they've had enough, that they want more help to resolve this crisis.

WARD (voice-over): It's been over a since more than 70,000 migrants poured across the border from Morocco, dozens drowning along the way. The Spanish government says that 90 percent returned within 72 hours. But an estimated 5 to 10,000 remain, overwhelming this small Spanish territory at the tip of North Africa and igniting a furious debate about immigration. The political right has seized on Ceuta.

TRUMP: It looks like an invasion.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A Muslim invasion.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is an act of war.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a battle for the future of our civilization.

WARD (voice-over): And on the streets of this religiously and culturally diverse city, the language has hardened. As we speak with teacher Juan Manuel, we hear a striking chant.

JUAN MANUEL, CEUTA RESIDENT (through text translation): The point is, are they invaders or are they victims? We are all victims here. They, we are all victims here. But what we cannot put up with is that these left radical things that they say. They have more empathy with the immigrants than with us.

WARD: Do you think most people here tonight agree with you, sharing --

MANUEL: All of them, or they wouldn't be here.

WARD (voice-over): As the light comes up the next day, the scale of Spain's crisis emerges. Residents wake up to find migrants sleeping rough in front of their homes. Outside one of the government run camps, a large group is waiting. They've heard rumors that there are free beds and food, but authorities say the camp is full. It is a routine playing out every day and everyone's patience is wearing thin.

WARD: The police are trying to clear this area outside the main camp and you can see very quickly just how tense and disorderly it's becoming.

WARD (voice-over): Many of the migrants were lured here by false promises on social media that they would make it to mainland Europe. Spanish authorities have vowed that will not happen. Just a mile away, the situation is even worse. This is El Trampolin Beach. Most of the migrants have ended up here. A handful of showers have been hastily erected. Everything else is makeshift. The majority of the migrants are Moroccan men seeking a better life. But there are also hundreds of women and more than 1,000 miners scattered across the peninsula, as well as Sudanese, Syrians, Yemenis and Palestinians. No one has assessed who among them has a claim to protection.

NOLTE BAUER, CHAIRMAN, MISSION LIFELINE INTERNATIONAL: Everything is going super, super slow. Like the registration, just to be acknowledged to be here, to have a chance then to ask for asylum, is maybe 30, 40 people per day.

WARD (voice-over): At that rate, it would take months just to write down their names. As German NGO Mission Lifeline waits for a permit to give medical assistance, it has improvised other services to help the migrants.

[17:40:11]

BAUER: We use our solar system to charge people's phones so they can get in contact with their families and loved ones.

WARD (voice-over): Further down the beach, we see a man taking photographs of the migrants talking on a two way radio. We ask him what he is doing.

WARD (through text translation): Are you security or police?

EMILIO, CEUTA RESIDENT (through text translation): It's for the security of my apartment block. Because they've tried to enter.

WARD (through text translation): So you are filming --

EMILIO (through text translation): So the people can see, so the government can see the reality and not what they want to show on the television. They show as if nothing is happening.

WARD: You want to show people the reality of what's going on?

WARD (voice-over): He tells us he can no longer walk home with his nine-year-old son. He says the migrants are up late every night, drinking and fighting.

EMILIO (through text translation): It's been a month, I haven't slept. (Speaking in Foreign Language).

WARD: The government has abandoned the migrants and they've abandoned the people of your town.

WARD (voice-over): The emergency in Ceuta is the biggest challenge Spain Socialist Leader Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has faced, with many here blaming it on his lenient immigration policies. Early this month, the government approved $359 million for Ceuta. But there is no clear plan for what happens to the people on this beach.

As night falls, a fight breaks out. Spanish soldiers watch from the hill above. They do not intervene. One week earlier, angry locals set fire to some tents on the beach. Everyone here must fend for themselves. Some are more vulnerable than others.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking in Foreign Language).

WARD: He's deaf. He's just shared this buff log that he carries with him to let people know that he's not able to hear and fight immigrants to communicate.

WARD (voice-over): Abdul Ali (ph) tells us he was beaten too, but not by a migrant.

WARD: So he's telling us that this is a photograph taken after the police beat him. See the marks on his back? Obviously you can't verify what happened. This is very soft.

WARD (voice-over): Spain's national police told CNN they have received no reports of police violence against the migrants. Talking to Abdul Ali (ph) and the others, one thing is clear. Almost no one here is willing to go back. And for now, no one here is moving forward.

Clarissa Ward, CNN, Ceuta, Spain.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: And our thanks to Clarissa Ward for that report.

[17:43:12]

Coming up next, some of the vulgar statements coming from a Republican who's running in a key Texas congressional district. The findings from a CNN investigation.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: In our Politics Lead, a CNN review compiled some of the more vulgar, sexist and misogynistic remarks that current Texas Republican congressional nominee Brandon Herrera repeatedly made in videos on social media and on podcasts. Here's a sampling.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRANDON HERRERA (R), YOUTUBER: His noggin appears to already have arrived empty and is instead full of mush, much like the average Austin feminist.

So when a blue hair on the news says that a semi-automatic AR-15 is an assault rifle. She is both fat and wrong.

But what if out of self-defense you had to take down something a lot bigger like an elephant or a killer whale or an angry blue haired Austin feminist.

These things weigh in at about 6,500 pounds a piece or approximately four times as much as the average Austin feminist.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Herrera is also known in right wing online circles as the AK Guy. To his 4 million YouTube subscribers, he characterized these comments as jokes about feminism to CNN. We invited Herrera to come on The Lead today. His team sent us a statement in lieu of coming on. He notably has the backing of President Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson. But his online persona could raise some red flags in his race against a female Democratic opponent in the district where Congressman Tony Gonzales resigned over sexual misconduct allegations.

My panel is here and thanks for everybody for joining us. So Mark, this is not the first time his online presence has drawn scrutiny. He's actually said far worse than that on the Internet. Here's a 2023 clip he posted about Shannon Watts from the pro-gun safety group Moms Demand Action using some extremely viral sexual language to viewer alert. This is going to be unpleasant for some of you. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HERRERA: Hi Shannon, longtime viewer, first time caller. First off, I want to get it off my chest. I think Moms Demand Action is stupid. Being a mother doesn't make your opinion any more or less valid. Just because you let somebody cream pie you doesn't mean I have to give a shit about your political opinions. The fact that you kept your come trophy doesn't make you any less wrong about the dumb shit that you say.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So it is a Republican district. Do you think that stuff matters?

[17:49:58]

MARK WILLIAMS, PRINCIPAL, FEROX STRATEGIES: I certainly hope it does, right? I'm not going to sit up here and defend that, that type of language. But you're going to see more and more of this come out when you have more and more of these online personalities run for Congress. So look, I -- we know his background. At the end of the day, Tony Gonzales had to get out for, you know, similar types of, types of things. So I think it certainly makes that race a lot more difficult than it was yesterday before these videos.

TAPPER: You're a Texas Democrat. Is the race actually in play? Because, I mean, if it was a non-controversial Republican, I would imagine something of a race because of the headwinds. CHUCK ROCHA, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I'm working on a lot of these Texas congressional districts and we've talked about this on this, on this program, Jake. The Latino vote down there is the big deciding factor. This district, for those of you at home, runs from San Antonio, in the suburbs all the way along the border to El Paso. It's about 60 percent Latino. And Latino voters that overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump in big ways just two years ago are moving back because of economics. We can sit here and debate why they are, but there's no fact that they have been moving back not only in special elections, but is it enough? Donald Trump carried this district by 14 points.

There'd be a heck of a way for us to pick this up. But we're seeing wave like numbers like that in a special election. But what we don't know is a special election number going to look like the off year number. If it is, this is very much in play.

TAPPER: Interesting. Let me ask you about somebody on your side of the aisle that has said some things not like that. But Michigan Democratic congressional candidate William Lawrence. He has some problematic social media posts. He's again, they're not anything like what that guy called babies. He's called to abolish the Senate. He's embraced police abolition, prison abolition. He said he was ashamed to be represented by then Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, who was of course a sitting senator.

Now, he said that he regrets his comments on Slotkin. He says he doesn't support defunding the police or open borders. He told CNN Manu Raju that he let his Democratic Socialists of America membership lapse just a few weeks ago over the summer. Could that hurt him in a swing district?

ROCHA: Well, I'm not sure if it will absolutely hurt him, but this is, what I am absolutely clear about is that Republicans will take those clips and they will make T.V. commercials. I'm one of the last guys on T.V. that still makes T.V. commercials every day. And I promise you, if I was on the other side, I would clip that. It's also a lesson to everybody whoever wants to run for office in the day that we look at these nonstop because everything you've ever said is out there and you should think about that. Graham Platner, when you decide you want to run for something because people will use it, is it enough to make you not be elected? We'll see in Michigan, this district. And he's walked back a lot of that. And I think this is a district because of the way that's going to happen, that's going to be a little more Democratic.

TAPPER: What do you think?

WILLIAMS: I think he's exactly right. I think anything that someone has said in the past is going to be brought up time and time again. Just look at James Talarico today has to go back and say, you know what? There aren't six genders. So whatever you said 6, 12, you know, several years ago, you're going to have to walk that back in the present day.

TAPPER: We're going to see a lot more of this when it comes to Millennial and then Gen Z candidates. WILLIAMS: Because they're all online.

TAPPER: Right. And every thought they have, they share.

WILLIAMS: Right.

TAPPER: I mean, Gen Xers did that, too. But then I think --

ROCHA: MySpace, was it MySpace when I think back in the day?

TAPPER: I was just.

WILLIAMS: Thank God we didn't have these.

TAPPER: I was just writing on cave walls. Let me ask you, Mark, the Republican midterm convention is getting started right now, never been done before. On Monday night, President Trump posted this oil prices will drop precipitously, like everything else is dropping, but more when we win the war with Iran, $3 A gallon, but ultimately below $2 a gallon. It will all happen quickly and Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. Right now, crude oil prices are near topping $100 a gallon. And with the President, before he went to Dallas, said that all these prices, especially oil prices, are going to go down right after the midterms. Is that going to work?

WILLIAMS: I certainly hope so. And if you're Donald Trump, that's what you have to convince people is going to happen. He's been saying that the war in Iran is going to end sooner rather than later. That'll bring oil prices down. You know, I think what he's got to do with the midterm is talk about the things outside of gas prices that he's done right. Crime is down. We had some great jobs numbers last month. If he can convince the American public that, hey, outside of gas prices, and that's a hard thing to, to tell people, like, don't believe your lying eyes right now.

TAPPER: Yes.

WILLIAMS: Will it stem the tide that a lot of people think is coming? I think that's to be seen.

TAPPER: What do you think?

ROCHA: You don't have this convention if you're winning. You have this convention because you want to put lipstick on a hog. Like it smells like a hog and looks like a hog, but let's put some lipstick on it, tell him it's his girlfriend. That's not what you do when you're winning elections. And they have to do something to distract because, and I live through this, Republicans, I feel your pain. I was on this program two years ago with this guy and said, look, no matter what I do, folks think Joe Biden is old and I'm trying to win these elections. But folks are like, no, I call B.S. Well, they're doing the same thing with Trump right now. So it goes both ways.

WILLIAMS: And I'll disagree with that a little bit. It's --

ROCHA: Joe Biden was old, how are you going to disagree? WILLIAMS: Not with that. I was the number one person saying that.

ROCHA: Here we go.

WILLIAMS: It's about turnout. Midterms are always about turnout.

TAPPER: Do you think that --

WILLIAMS: Democrats are mad.

TAPPER: Yes.

WILLIAMS: Trump is trying to get his people out.

TAPPER: Yes.

[17:55:01]

ROCHA: Well, that is true. That's their biggest problem is that they got to get folks out in the midterm.

TAPPER: All right. Thanks to both of you. Appreciate it. This note CNN is holding -- hosting a debate in the race for governor of California. Dana Bash and I are going to moderate that together. Look for that three weeks from today, Wednesday, September 30th, 6:00 p.m. Pacific, 9:00 p.m. Eastern live from Los Angeles on all CNN platforms.

We're going to take a live look in Dallas. Republicans kick off this midterm convention thing. Ahead, House Senior Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi will be here on The Lead. How she and Democrats are trying to counter the Republican message.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper. And you just heard the theme of our Lead tonight. Right now, with less than two months to go until the midterm elections, Republicans are gathering in Dallas, where Republicans are calling Trump-a-Palooza, a midterm convention, which up until now was not a thing because party conventions are typically only held in presidential election years.

[18:00:08]

Still, President Trump --