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The Lead with Jake Tapper
Soon, Trump Holds Campaign Rally In Kansas; Trump Again Sides With Russia Over Ukraine; Local Officials Say, U.S. Citizen Injured In ICE Encounter; NY Times Reveals Identity Of A Possible Accomplice; Young Recruits Say Economy Is Big Driver For Enlistment. Aired 6-7p ET
Aired October 19, 2026 - 18:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper.
This hour, President Trump is about to land in Kansas, where he claims polls showing a neck-and-neck Senate race are, quote, fake. We're live on the campaign trail ahead of his rally for a preview of his message to these crucial voters.
Plus, before heading to the Sunflower State, the president once again sided with Russia over Ukraine, and he accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of not knowing what Zelenskyy's talking about.
[18:00:10]
The comments come as Zelenskyy makes a direct appeal to Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill. What all of this means for the efforts to end this war ahead.
Also, CNN has just obtained new video showing the moments before a man, whom local officials say is a U.S. citizen, was injured by ICE forces in California. Witnesses say ICE agents struck Ricardo Gonzalez with their car, and then tased him, and then pinned him to the ground. We're going to walk you through all of the details that we're learning tonight.
And more than 30 years after the case made international headlines, there are new revelations about the O.J. Simpson case today. We're going to be joined by a New York Times reporter behind the fascinating new story about O.J.'s possible accomplice, who may have helped dispose of evidence from the crime scene.
The Lead tonight, in less than an hour President Trump is going to take the stage on the campaign trail in ruby red Kansas, but it's his comments from ten years ago today that might be just as relevant. Here he is at the final presidential debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016 on this day ten years ago.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, that's because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: No puppet. No puppet. CLINTON: And it's pretty clear --
TRUMP: You're the puppet.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Talking about Vladimir Putin there, and it's relevant because many Republicans are perplexed and others outright furious with President Trump over his deference, especially in recent days and weeks, to Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Trump told Republicans who oppose his diesel deal with Putin and the waiving of Russian fuel sanctions -- fuel sale sanctions, that he's actually the one taking his party into a, quote, winning position.
Well, they don't all view it that way, Republicans. Here's Michigan Senate Candidate and former Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers talking to Dana Bash on Sunday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE ROGERS (R), MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE: I would have voted for the sanctions bill on Russia. I don't think we can give Putin an inch.
TAPPER: Thom Tillis of North Carolina called it, quote, beyond irresponsible to waive these sanctions, and, quote, It's unconscionable that this administration is capitulating to a Russian dictator, unquote. Republican Congressman Don Bacon told the National Review magazine, quote, I can't believe we've got a president that is literally kissing Putin's ass, unquote. Congressman Bacon probably meant figuratively, but we're going to talk to him in just a second.
This afternoon, a bipartisan group led by Senator Tillis and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal hosted a call with Zelenskyy to insist that members of Congress, quote, remain committed to Ukraine's sovereignty. As Putin and Trump appear to get friendlier, Trump's relationship with Zelenskyy has deteriorated even further. Trump even claimed on social media that Zelenskyy, quote, doesn't want to end this war, and probably never did, unquote.
It's a sick signal from Moscow, Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, burned overnight after wave after wave of ballistic missile attacks from Russia. Ukraine usually gets a heads-up about these attacks from U.S. satellite networks, but Zelenskyy says this time there was, quote, no early warning from our partners.
This afternoon, President Trump insisted he didn't know who ordered restrictions on Ukraine's use of Starlink, which connects some of their military systems to the internet. Here's Secretary of State Marco Rubio this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: I don't know where he's getting these things from or why he's saying these things to the press. You should go back and ask him. There's been no pause.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: CNN's Betsy Klein is on the campaign trail with President Trump just north of Wichita, Kansas. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh is covering the war in Ukraine for us from the London Bureau.
Betsy, Republican lawmakers are clearly unhappy, so how is President Trump trying to sell this to voters?
BETSY KLEIN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, Jake, President Trump campaigned on being the president of peace. So far, ending this conflict has proven so elusive, and we are now seeing him shift blame to Ukraine's President Zelenskyy.
We are also shift, seeing him shift how he is approaching this conflict with Ukraine. Of course, there was that very confrontational Oval Office meeting back in February of 2025, a real low point for relations between Trump and Zelenskyy. And we've seen them take steps to repair that relationship, but it has since subsequently deteriorated significantly in recent weeks.
President Trump has been accusing Zelenskyy of prolonging this war. He has taken aim at Ukraine's efforts to target Russia's energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, the president easing or delaying those sanctions on Russia. His team has also floated the possibility of financial deals for Moscow if this war is ended. And now the president expressing openness to a potential trilateral meeting between Russia's President Vladimir Putin and China's leader Xi Jinping, notably without Zelenskyy. This would take place as the president travels to China next month.
[18:05:01]
And the president, in his view, according to our sources, believes that this could help end the conflict. But our colleague Kristen Holmes asked him about this just a short while ago. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Do you agree to a trilateral meeting with President Putin and Xi to talk about Ukraine?
TRUMP: No, but I would do it not so much for Ukraine because Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine. They haven't been doing much, and the same thing with China. We would have it to talk about nuclear weapons and denuclearization. We would schedule a meeting based on the denuclearization, and that's a very positive thing for the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KLEIN: Now, the president has also placed blame on Zelenskyy and Ukraine for those rising energy prices, which of course are in large part due to his ongoing war with Iran that has driven gas and diesel prices up and made this a very complicated map for Republicans.
And we're going to see that as the president is headed here to reliably red Kansas, where Republicans are playing defense for Senator Roger Marshall's seat here, Jake.
TAPPER: And, Nick, you've been to Ukraine many times. It now seems Trump is more supportive of Putin than Zelenskyy more so than ever, saying that Russia's been fine in Ukraine is just an unbelievable statement to make about a country bombing civilian targets in Ukraine, including killing Ukrainian kids. What does this major shift in loyalty mean for Ukrainians on the battlefield as another winter approaches?
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: I mean, ultimately they've seen this before, right, Jake? I mean, this is arguably as bad as February 2025 with the Oval Office blowout, but it's not new like it was then. And so I think the Ukrainian approach, Zelenskyy's approach, has been to call what he sees much more openly, be less afraid of offending President Trump, to talk about very openly the damage done, it seems.
President Trump, Elon Musk all say they don't quite know how this happened, but the damage done or the impediments to the Starlink and Starshield systems that Ukraine relies upon, to talk about how three times over recent days they've not received early warnings about ballistic missile strikes, and to talk about the hold up in Patriot interceptors. In fact, Zelenskyy today said, give us 30 days of Patriot interceptors and we'll give you 30 days of no strikes against Russian refineries.
So, Zelenskyy very open in his criticism. President Trump, as you heard just there, saying that Russia has frankly been fine on Ukraine. That's a very telling statement because it shows you how the president views this conflict very much in the prism of his own experience. He's not there referring to how today a Russian strike using a jet-powered drone killed a one-year-old girl called Angelina, and dying in hospital later, her mother Ina (ph), in a strike on a park near a cafe in Kharkiv.
This is happening every hour, every day. I mean, the civilian toll has been significantly rising through a Russian choice to exact more pain on its enemy, often in terms of civilian targets. So, it's startling how we see this evolution occurring here. It's very clear that over the recent days, perhaps because the midterms approaching or some other calculation, President Trump has been clear in his mind that he feels loosening sanctions, the diesel deal that didn't really come through yet but might reduce price at the pump, probably not for Americans, the energy ceasefire that was basically dead on arrival because Russia and Ukraine never went for it, the slowdown in Starlink and Starshield.
All of this has been rhetorical, but it's had real impacts on the ground where Ukrainians on the front line have suffered defensively, offensively because these limits placed on their systems by essentially Elon Musk, and he blames the U.S. government for it.
But the difference here I think is Ukraine has basically accepted that it cannot trust Donald Trump. It sees a clock ticking on his presidency, and certainly the potency of it potentially lessened after the midterms, and is now leaning on its European allies to step up and finance. They're doing a lot of the financing right now and thinking really it has to get through this winter. It's learned resilience, survival, invention as a way of making up for the sort of very vacillatory position Donald Trump holds in this conflict.
But it is startling just to hear after nearly five years of this war a White House commander-in-chief so vocally in support of Russia's position. Jake?
TAPPER: Nick Paton Walsh and Betsy Klein, thanks to both of you. I appreciate it.
Joining us now, retiring Republican Congressman from Nebraska Don Bacon. He's a retired Air Force brigadier general. He serves on the House Armed Services Committee.
Congressman, so you were on that bipartisan phone call with Zelenskyy. What did you learn about what's going on with Starlink and why access to it keeps getting cut off to Ukrainians?
REP. RON BACON (R-NE): I learned three things today from President Zelenskyy. First, the Starshield, which is affiliated with Starlink, it -- the speeds are still too slow to track the jet-powered drones that Russia's using, that they're getting from Iran.
[18:10:00]
And so the speed of the tracking isn't adequate to track the jet- powered drones.
Also, on the intelligence sharing, the intelligence sharing has been restored a little. But they're not getting intelligence sharing on ballistic missiles when they're launched from Russia. So, they're getting no warning when these ballistic missiles hit Kyiv or Kharkiv. I think that's disgraceful, by the way. And also, the Patriot missiles that they were expecting have been put on hold.
And so those are the three things that the President Zelenskyy told us today. I think all three are appalling. I know the Republicans and the Democrats that were on that call were livid. This is absolutely disgraceful coming from our president, and as a Republican, I'm embarrassed about it. But we want answers. We want to have an investigation, and whoever is making these decisions, they should answer for it. And if I had my way, they'd be out of the White House or out of the administration. They can go on the unemployment line somewhere. We are better than this.
We stand for freedom, and we oppose a dictator and a war criminal. And I just -- I see Ronald Reagan and Ike Eisenhower just rolling in their graves right now that a Republican president could disgrace this country so bad and puts their lot towards Putin.
TAPPER: Well, just to -- and just to quote Trump again, he said, today, Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine. They haven't been doing much. Just a few hours ago, Zelenskyy posted a picture of a little kid that was killed by Russian armaments. BACON: It's absolutely disgraceful. Our president's morally blind on this war. He's pitched his lot in with a dictator and a war criminal, and he's being harsh and undermining the democracy, the country that wants to be part of the West, part of the E.U., would love to be part of NATO, would love to be allied with us. Putin hates us, but the president doesn't see that.
But to say that Russia's been fine on Ukraine, and they bomb cities every night, I was there a month ago, they were bombing gas stations, restaurants, shopping malls. They're committing terrorism against Ukrainians.
And so the Ukrainians, what do they have to do? They have to respond, and they're trying to degrade their weaker in their economy, which is oil production, and the president's mad at them for doing that. He's not mad at the actual country that's -- and the dictator that's bombing cities.
It really is disgraceful. And the Republicans that I associate with, there's a lot of us, can't stand it. I think the president's leverage in this Congress is shot.
TAPPER: So --
BACON: Why would I want to support the president's priorities, like the victory arch, right, or, you know, the arch he wants to put in. Frankly, what I see him doing here is surrendering. There should be no victory arch being funded. Or why do we want to fund a ballroom? He said he could do it all by himself, but he's doing this. This may be for the next president to get that done.
But there's a lot of us -- like why should we try to accommodate and meet him halfway on funding when he is embarrassing this country so bad with what he's doing with Putin and Zelenskyy?
TAPPER: So, I read an interesting article in the National Review, obviously a conservative publication, former Federal Prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, he argues in this opinion piece, it's titled, quote, Congress must investigate Trump's aid and comfort to Putin. And he writes, quote, in a properly functioning republic, there would be immediate hearings about this week's shocking escalation of the Trump- Putin alliance.
So, I have two questions. One, will there be hearings? Will Republicans call for any hearings on this as to why this is happening? And, two, I mean, Andy McCarthy is a smart guy, and he picks his language. He calls Putin and Russia an enemy of the United States and says President Trump is giving aid and comfort to that enemy, which is the definition of treason.
What do you think? Should there be hearings? Do you think President Trump is committing treason according, you know, in the language of Andy McCarthy?
BACON: Well, I like Andrew McCarthy. I like reading his material. I'm a subscriber. And, you know, National Review r- represents the kind of Republicans like me that hark back to Ronald Reagan and Ike Eisenhower, peace through strength, support freedom and democracy in the world. It doesn't mean you have to be in every war, but you help countries that are victims that are staying on our side. And the president does not do that. It's a different kind of -- it's more of a national conservatism, not, you know, an old-fashioned conservatism that I support.
So, I like that article. I thought it was right. And the president, I do believe, is aiding and abetting Putin, and he's undermining Ukraine. Do I call that treason? No, I don't know his motives, but he's dead wrong. And he's hurting the credibility of this country. He's undermining our alliances. It will be -- it will take a long time for the next president to help repair the damage that's being done here with NATO and the countries surrounding Russia.
But I did read the article, and I agreed with Andrew McCarthy.
[18:15:01]
He represents the Republicanism of old that I think is still what most Americans align with, and I wish our president did better.
TAPPER: Republican Congressman from Nebraska, former General Don Bacon, as always, sir, thank you, and thank you for your service.
BACON: Thank you.
TAPPER: Voters in seven additional states can now cast their ballots in person and early, thanks to early voting. That includes Texas, where our teams are live on the ground covering a neck-and-neck Senate race.
Plus, the Justice Department is suing California over claims that the state is letting non-citizens vote in the midterms. The latest details in that fight next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TAPPER: In our National Lead, on top of last week's lawsuit against California election officials, today, the Justice Department charged 28 foreign nationals living in California as part of a statewide sweep targeting those who officials say illegally registered to vote or voted in U.S. elections.
The arrests further escalate a growing legal fight between the federal government and California over access to the state's voter rolls.
Joining us now to discuss, Democratic Congressman Sam Liccardo of California.
[18:20:00]
Congressman, what is your reaction to the arrests?
REP. SAM LICCARDO (D-CA): Well, this is the typical kind of intimidation that we expected to see from this administration. We've certainly seen this movie before, and it's a farce. And what we are continuing to see are attacks on states that have the appropriate authority to implement elections and do so overwhelmingly without fraud.
It's important to keep in mind of those 28 folks that were arrested, many of them did not ever vote. In fact, many of them may not have committed any illegal act because we know that in the past, there has been occasion where the motor voter law has swept up legal immigrants who are simply applying for a DMV license to vote. And that's not an illegal act, it's simply a mistake, and then they're purged from the rolls.
TAPPER: The Justice Department is defending its lawsuit against California election officials. They are accusing the state of not working with the federal government to check alleged non-citizen voters. I want you to take a listen to the acting deputy U.S. attorney general.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRENT MCCOTTER, ACTING DEPUTY U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: It's about preventing voter fraud that cancels out the votes of U.S. citizens. Enforcing federal law increases the integrity of elections. It increases confidence in elections.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: I mean, the basic argument from the Trump administration is that California election officials don't take this seriously enough.
LICCARDO: Well, context is important. Donald Trump's been saying that for about a decade and decided to wait until two weeks before the election when the ballots are already in voters' hands to decide now California should somehow or another take action to purge people from the rolls, which, by the way, violates state law, not just in California, but in many other states.
They gave the secretary of state 48 hours to respond to a computer file that had 20,000 names listed in it and told them, okay, identify all the citizens, except they actually never delivered the file to the secretary of state. They delivered it to L.A. and the secretary of state had to go get it from L.A. It was in a hand drive they actually had to transport by car.
This is no way to run a rodeo. And the worst part of all this is, you know, for the Trump administration, this is the only fish story I've ever heard that actually gets smaller with each retelling. They first accused California of 190,000 illegally registered voters, now it's 20,000. In Nevada, they started with 16,000, then it became 185, and then the state actually looked at the 185 and found they were all citizens.
So, this is the fish story fraud that keeps getting smaller. By Thanksgiving, it'll be the size of a mancho.
TAPPER: California voters already receiving mail ballots, early in- person voting begins in many counties this weekend. What's your message to election workers out there watching all of this happen?
LICCARDO: My message is thank you for the service you are doing for our country. The American people are with you, and please continue to follow the law, and we will ensure that this is a lawful election for the tens of millions of Americans who come out to vote in this midterm.
TAPPER: Democratic Congressman Sam Liccardo of California, thank you so much.
We're going to head back to the campaign trail next and go specifically down to Texas, where early voting started today. What we're hearing from voters with just 15 days left to go.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:25:00]
TAPPER: That sweet, sweet CNN election jam, so nice. There's only 15 days to go until Election Day, but as you can see, thanks to early voting, more than 9 million ballots have already been cast nationwide. In-person early voting kicked off today deep in the heart of Texas, where President Trump has two rallies planned next week.
CNN's Ed Lavandera is on the ground in Texas. Ed, what are you hearing today?
ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the first day of early voting, Jake, is in the books. I can guarantee you there are political operatives and campaigns poring over the data today, trying to figure out exactly where the voters are showing up and where they're not showing up, perhaps more importantly.
And we know that Republicans are very nervous about what is unfolding here in, in Texas. A number of polls show U.S. Senate Democratic candidate James Talarico ahead in some polls over the Republican Ken Paxton. Other races also extremely close. I've talked to a number of Republican strategists and political advisers throughout the day who say they, Republicans, are very nervous about what is unfolding.
We spent the day in the suburbs of Dallas, this is Ken Paxton's home turf, wanted to kind of get a sense of where his home crowd voters are feeling. We ran into a large number of Democratic voters here. But also what it was interesting, Jake, is we found a number of Republican voters who voted for John Cornyn in the primary, and about four or five of them told us today that they ultimately voted for Ken Paxton today.
But what I also hear from Republicans is that they are very concerned that even though the Republican voters are turning out and voting for Paxton, that they're worried that there could be a large number of Cornyn Republican voters who just sit out this race, or don't cast a ballot in this race.
So, that is the kind of details and the kinds of issues that they are concerned about as the voting is now underway here in the state of Texas. Jake?
TAPPER: All right. Ed Lavandera in Allen, Texas, thanks so much.
My panel is here. Kurt, speaking of Texas, there's also this big governor's race going on. They're not getting as much attention. The incumbent Greg Abbott, a Republican, is facing a challenge from a state representative, Gina Hinojosa. Axios is reporting that Democratic Governors Association Chairman Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, Democrat, he's resisting pressure from Latino and Latina lawmakers to invest in Hinojosa's campaign for governor.
[18:30:10]
He's investing in other races.
Quote, in response, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and Maryland Governor Wes Moore have given money to Hinojosa's bid to unseat Greg Abbott and earned praise from Latino lawmakers.
Two things going on here, there's the governor's race, and then there's the 2028 presidential primary, Democratic primary.
KURT BARDELLA, CO-HOST, POLITICON'S PARTY LINES: Yes. And Governor Pritzker particularly has been very active. He's come to Dallas a few times in the last few months, even when the midterm convention Republicans had was there. He came for Democrats to counter-program that. He's given more than seven figures to Hinojosa's campaign.
And, again, there's a big risk here for Beshear. If it turns out that Hinojosa comes just a little bit short on Election Day, everyone is going to be pointing the finger at him going, you know, if you had brought the DGA resources to Texas, we could've gotten that one. We could've gotten that over the hump. It would be very bad for Beshear in 2028 prospects in the Democratic Party if he doesn't do what he needs to do that could've gotten the job done.
TAPPER: So, we talked to Representative Hinojosa last week about this. Here's what she had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Do you agree that the National Party's not doing enough to help you, and why do you think that is?
GINA HINOJOSA (D), TEXAS GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: Well, listen Texas is the high roller's table. As I've said before, it costs a lot to play at the high roller's table. That's because the payout is so great.
TAPPER: Do you think it's time for the national Democrats to ante up, to pony up, to put more chips on the table?
HINOJOSA: Yes. Well, let me tell you the stakes. There are national stakes, big national stakes. Republicans in Austin have already said they're coming back next year to redraw maps. We need a governor in Texas who will veto rigged maps.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: So, obviously, that's an argument she's making specifically to Andy Beshear, not to Texas voters. What'd you think of that?
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. But, look, I think it's a good structural argument about the future to everything that Kurt was just talking about. But in terms of moving the needle for her in Texas, I'm not convinced as of yet that it's a strong enough argument to get some of those independent right-leaning voters to vote for a Democrat.
Now, if you look at Texas for the past several election cycles, particularly the number of individuals moving from California into the state, and Kurt, you would appreciate that living in Texas now, the state is changing. Texas is not -- I mean, I grew up in Texas. It's not the same it was 10, 15 years ago, Jake.
And I'd make the argument, give it another five more years Kurt, it might indeed become more of a purple state, Jake, where you could see a Democrat become governor. I'm not certain as of this moment that there are enough numbers to make that case as of today.
BARDELLA: Are you going to move there to offset me?
SINGLETON: I'm going to try.
TAPPER: So, Vice President Vance along with President Trump, campaigning all over the country, trying to rally the loyal, the faithful, leading rallies for the GOP ahead of the midterms. Here's a moment from his North Carolina rally this afternoon.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Release the Epstein files. God bless our children. God bless our children.
J.D. VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: I'm going to have to amend something I said earlier. I said that we have had zero illegal border crossings in the United States of America. But one isn't bad, right?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: So, for those listening who didn't see that there was a gentleman of a darker hue, I don't know what ethnicity he was, he could be Latino, he could be East Asian, I have no idea, who was protesting something about the Epstein files, and the vice president's remark, obviously, he was joking, was that this was an illegal alien, an illegal immigrant. Shermichael what do you make of all that?
SINGLETON: I mean, look, there's a reason why young men 45 and under who do care a lot about this issue, you look at a lot of the podcasters from Joe Rogan and many others who believed to have moved the needle a little bit with a lot of nontraditional young male voters for Trump and Vance, they do care about this, and they care about the war in Iran as well.
These are two, I would argue, singular important issues to, to that group of voters. And when you ignore this, it's why a lot of those guys, we've talked about them, talked to them rather on our network, other networks have covered them and what my folks -- they're saying that, you got us into a conflict in another country, number one.
TAPPER: Right.
SINGLETON: Number two, you promised to go after the, the Epstein class. You didn't deliver on either of those two promises.
TAPPER: Right.
SINGLETON: Therefore, we're going to go home. And some of those guys have actually started voting for Democrats again.
So, you can make whatever jokes you want, but losing a key and core constituency to what allowed Trump and Vance to win the White House in '24 I think is a catastrophic mistake.
TAPPER: And what do you make of the fact that he suggested that the guy --
BARDELLA: That he racial profiled. I mean, that's --
TAPPER: Well, let me just say, I didn't hear an accent, but certainly he wasn't Caucasian.
BARDELLA: Sure, but that doesn't mean he's an illegal immigrant either.
TAPPER: Right.
BARDELLA: And, again, if we want to talk about, wow, the Latino vote is cratering for Republicans, especially in Texas.
[18:35:02]
We're seeing races that went plus 15 for Trump that are in jeopardy in the House in Texas. This is the reason why. Their immigration agenda used to be their strength. It's why, in part, they won so handily in 2024. Now, it's a tremendous weakness, because the way they went about doing it, casting everyone who's brown as an illegal immigrant, everyone who's not white as some drug dealer, rapist, someone to be terrified of. Well, you can make that joke now. They're not going to be laughing in a couple weeks when the Latino vote comes in.
TAPPER: So, of the millions spent on ads this cycle, and I bet it's -- by the time it's done it's going to be billions, one study found that $137 million has gone toward A.I.-generated ads, primarily from Republicans. So, there is no law, federal law, explicitly regulating A.I.-generated political ads. For example, here's one from the Georgia Senate race against senator -- Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator Jon Ossoff spends more money than any Washington politician on hair and makeup, thousands on hair and makeup. What a phony. The dude voted to raise taxes by $2,000, and to tax overtime, too.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: SLF Pac is responsible for the content of this advertising.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: I mean, it's remarkably good, it looks real.
BARDELLA: It does.
SINGLETON: Wow.
TAPPER: I mean, let me just also say that there are three men on this panel right now who have -- who went through hair and makeup.
BARDELLA: We are wearing makeup right now.
TAPPER: So, we are conflicted out of commenting on it. But let's just talk about the A.I. of it. Are you surprised that there's so much?
BARDELLA: I am only because when you look at actual polling, and this cuts both ways, Republicans and Democrats, A.I., data centers, technology, upside down. There are fierce feelings against A.I., against the tech bros. So, for Republicans to go out there and spend hundreds of millions of dollars putting A.I.-generated campaign images out there, I actually think it works against them.
TAPPER: I don't know that people make that connection, though.
SINGLETON: If you can notice it. I don't know if you would've known this was A.I.
TAPPER: Do you think it's real?
SINGLETON: It looks real, were it not for this segment. It's cheaper, it's more efficient. And from a strategist perspective, Kurt, I mean, imagine being able to write a prompt to say, I'm trying to target a specific group of people with certain imagery, certain messaging, the A.I. can create that.
BARDELLA: I mean, I'm all for getting rid of all political consultants anyways. We can go do something else.
TAPPER: Kurt and Shermichael, thanks so much.
New videos tonight showing the moments before officials say a U.S. citizen was injured by ICE agents, a citizen. Those details next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:40:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's broken. What the (BLEEP)? Help me. Help me (BLEEP).
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: In our National Lead, demands for answers today after officials say a U.S. citizen was injured during an altercation with ICE agents on Saturday. Ricardo Gonzalez was found by Long Beach, California, police after he and other community members called 911 to report unmarked vehicles in their neighborhood.
CNN's Leigh Waldman is following this story for us from the Los Angeles bureau. Leigh, what more do we know about how this went from a 911 call to Gonzalez on the ground in handcuffs?
LEIGH WALDMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, we're piecing that together ourselves, because the Department of Homeland Security hasn't said anything just yet.
We're having to figure all this out and try and answer our own questions through surveillance video and through new video that we have obtained. So, let's take a look at that first piece of new video. It's surveillance obtained by KTLA. You see a gentleman on a bike there turning down the street, and an unmarked vehicle driving the wrong way down the street before masked agents walk around the backside of that car towards him.
Now, at this point, the angle cuts off, so we don't know if that bicycle and the SUV collide. But we have heard from witnesses who saw all of this happen, who say that the SUV did, in fact, hit Gonzalez on that bike there.
Let's go to our second piece of brand new video here, Jake. So, in this new piece of video, we can see -- you see Gonzalez standing there and a masked ICE agent pointing what appears to be a yellow taser at him. Now, this video turns before we can see if that taser is, in fact, used on him. Several witnesses have said, including Gonzalez's own daughter, who said that her father was tasered.
That's when you see the agents on top of him there. There's screaming in the background as people are watching all of this unfold. We know that the ICE agents called law enforcement for assistance because of a person needing medical assistance, and also because of vehicle vandalism.
When Long Beach Police arrived, they took Gonzalez from the ground there, took him to a, a firehouse, and had those handcuffs removed before he was then taken to the hospital to be treated for those injuries.
We're also learning that several of those ICE agents went to the fire station as well. They were asked to leave and told that they could file a complaint for the vehicle vandalization that they say happened there. But we still don't know exactly what led up to this. And we're hearing from Gonzalez's family. They're saying that he's a U.S. citizen.
TAPPER: Leigh Waldman, thank you so much.
In our World Lead, Israeli police today announced the arrest of ten suspects in what's being described as a crackdown on violence by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. Last Friday, masked settlers attacked and injured Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine as she accompanied a group of Palestinians for the start of the olive harvest.
Saturday saw a similar incident as masked settlers targeted European diplomats as they tried to visit a Palestinian Christian town. The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, calls the arrests a very positive development.
More than 30 years after the case made international headlines, there are actually some new revelations about the O.J. Simpson case today. One of the reporters behind the new story joins us live next.
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TAPPER: In our law and justice lead, believe it or not, there are new clues in the O.J. Simpson murder case. If you're unfamiliar with the case or its recreation on American Crime Story, O.J. Simpson was a Hall of Fame football player in the NFL who went on to a career as an actor, a TV personality pitchman, and then in 1994, he was accused of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman.
Simpson was acquitted, shockingly, at his 1995 criminal trial, but he was ultimately found liable for the killings in 1997 after the trial, in a separate civil lawsuit. O.J. Simpson died in 2024.
Sunday's "New York Times" had a fascinating story, revealing the identity of a possible accomplice who may have helped O.J. dispose of the knife and bloody clothes from the crime scene.
"The New York Times" investigative correspondent Mike Baker joins us now.
Mike, tell us more about this possible accomplice and why you think he might have been in on the crime.
MIKE BAKER, NATIONAL INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Right. So, the person we wrote a lot about here, his name is Joey Ippolito. He was a Mafia associate, a drug runner. And then after he got out of prison in the 1980s, he came to Los Angeles and kind of started mingling in the celebrity world of Los Angeles.
He became very close with Al Cowlings. A lot of people might remember him as the man who was close to O.J. Simpson, who drove the Bronco and the infamous chase.
And Joey Ippolito and Al Cowlings became very close up until the point that Joey Ippolito went back to prison for drug trafficking, and then he escaped prison a month before the murders. An interesting fact pattern that we started to dive into. And then we were shocked, frankly, to find out that after Joey Ippolito was picked back up by law enforcement, he started to tell them that he knew stuff about the O.J. Simpson case, that he knew information about the location of the murder weapon.
[18:50:09]
They knew information about O.J.'s effort to escape justice. And so that led us sort of diving deeper into who is this person and what role did he play in that orbit at the time?
TAPPER: And what -- how did authorities react when he said, hey, I know where the murder weapon is. And I know information about this?
BAKER: Yeah. I mean, it was an interesting timing because Joey Ippolito was on the run, still on the lam up until August of 1995. If you remember the timeline of the O.J. Simpson trial at that point, it was near the end of trial. The verdict was issued in October. The prosecution in August of 1995 had rested their case.
The federal prosecutors in New York, who are hearing this information from Joey Ippolito, they passed it along to local prosecutors behind the scenes in Los Angeles. Again, something that we did not know at the time that this this sort of backchannel conversation was happening between federal and local prosecutors about this guy.
And at that point, I mean, it seems to us that there was a time issue there, that the prosecution had rested it's case. The verdict was nearing. What we're they to do with this new information coming in at the very end from this mafia associate, who they we're, you know, trying to assess the credibility of.
TAPPER: So Ippolito's information didn't come out during the trial, you note, but you write that O.J. Simpson came close to revealing some of this in his book, "If I Did It"?
BAKER: That's right. Yeah.
I mean, if I did, it comes out in 2007 in, you know, it's written as a what he calls a hypothetical confession that a lot of others have read as a real confession in which he describes the night of the murders and how he had gone over to Nicole Brown Simpson's that night, and the bloodshed that followed.
In that description, he says he has a friend with him, that they go to the scene together. This friend is described as sort of a horrified observer of what takes place there. But then they get back in O.J. Simpson's Bronco. They return to his house, and at that point, O.J. Simpson describes in his hypothetical account, he hands over a bundle of his bloody clothes and the murder weapon to this friend, and asks the friend to get rid of it.
And you know, one thing that was a key aspect of this case is that murder weapon was never found. There's always been questions about where it ended up.
TAPPER: "New York Times" investigative correspondent Mike Baker, thanks. Come back when you find the murder weapon, as I -- as I no doubt people are looking for right now. And you probably have an inside track.
Thanks so much
BAKER: Thank you.
TAPPER: Coming up, next, Gen Zers taking to social media to share their hack for being able to afford the skyrocketing cost of college. It does involve boot camp. We'll explain.
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TAPPER: In our national lead, after two years of missing their recruiting goals by double digits, the U.S. Army has now achieved it's recruiting goal three years in a row. Officials credit that to an increase in the number of Gen Zers joining the armed forces. Nearly half of active duty service members are from Generation Z.
CNN's Julia Vargas Jones went to meet a group of young recruits to find out why they decided to enlist.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No college debt in the military.
JULIA VARGAS JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's all over military corners of TikTok and Instagram, video after video, making the case for the armed forces as the ultimate financial life hack. The pitch seems to be working.
At an air show in Huntington Beach, California, Army recruiters make their case to Gen Z.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're eager to join. They want to know opportunities and the benefits that the Army has to offer. I speak from personal experience and how I benefited through education benefits, financial benefits, and stuff like bonuses and all that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ready? Go!
MARINE ASPIRANTS: Aye! Good morning sir.
JONES: These are aspiring Marines. They are very young, squarely. Gen Z, 18 to 27 years old. And this is the last time they're able to do a fitness test before they're shipped out to boot camp.
LUCY CASAREZ, JOINED THE MARINES: I'm 19. I'm in the DEP program. Delayed Entry Program.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go. Let's go.
JONES (voice-over): Lucy Cazares was about to ship off to basic training. She says she still wants an education, but she doesn't want is to end up in debt.
CASAREZ: I didn't want to waste my time just waiting around or just doing school, ending up in debt or anything. So, with everything that's going on globally, economic like -- gas is expensive and I love driving my car. So, it does have a big role to play because I do not like the idea of being hungry for money time.
JONES: Salvador Vargas grew up in Oxnard, California, and graduated high school in the spring.
SALVADOR: My first option was definitely college. There was talks about veterinary, maybe law enforcement. And I just saw that a lot of our people are going to be taking up debt from a lot of their careers. And whether that's college. And I saw that the military pays for that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's go!
JONES (voice-over): Vargas and Cazares are part of a larger trend. With college tuition on the rise and U.S. job growth slowing sharply over the last year, it's much harder for recent graduates to land a job across all branches. Gen Z is helping boost military recruitment numbers to levels not seen in 15 years, according to the Department of Defense.
But money is only part of the appeal. For some recruits, the draw is harder to put a price on for Gen Z to have real life interactions with others, purpose and meaning offline.
RICKY SCHOEFFLER, ARMY RECRUIT: It's not really the benefits of why I'm joining. It's just to be with like a brotherhood.
JONES (voice-over): Julia Vargas Jones, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TAPPER: And our thanks to Julia Vargas Jones for that report.
You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram Threads, and on TikTok @JakeTapper. You can follow the show on X and Instagram @TheLeadCNN. If you ever miss an episode of THE LEAD, you can watch the show on the CNN app.
"ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT" starts now.
