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Americans Largely Oppose Trump Mass Deportations; Passenger Jet Avoids Collision With B-52 Bomber; Ex-Officer Set For Sentencing in Breonna Taylor Case. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired July 21, 2025 - 13:00   ET

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

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: One day in jail, that is a sentencing recommendation from the Justice Department for the officer accused of violating the civil rights of Breonna Taylor. She was shot and killed by police in her home in Louisville. A sentencing hearing for the officer is happening this hour.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: Aggressive maneuver, a Delta Air Lines regional jet forced to make a hard turn to avoid colliding with a B-52 bomber while landing in North Dakota. The pilot can be heard saying to the cabin -- quote -- "Nobody told us about it."

And six months into Donald Trump's second presidency, new CNN polling shows that voters may be souring on his performance in office, a troubling sign ahead of next year's midterm elections.

We are following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: More than five years after her death, we are now just minutes away from the first sentencing hearing involving the botched police raid killing of Breonna Taylor.

Former Louisville Officer Brett Hankison was convicted last year of violating Taylor's civil rights. Last week, outrage reignited after President Trump's Justice Department recommended Hankison only be sentenced to one day in jail. Taylor's family delivering a blistering response, calling it an insult to her life and a blatant betrayal.

In March of 2020, Taylor was killed during an early morning no-knock raid. Taylor's boyfriend opened fire when he says police did not identify themselves. Officers then fired back, striking Taylor. Her death, along with George Floyd, sparking worldwide Black Lives Matter protests.

CNN's Jason Carroll is with us now on this story.

Jason, walk us through what's about to happen here. JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, first and foremost,

Brianna, I remember speaking to Tamika Palmer, which is Breonna Taylor's mother, and this was after her daughter's death.

And I remember her saying she was not sure she was ever going to see justice. Now justice for the family very much in question here. This one-day recommendation has left the family heartbroken. It's left them angry, this going back to after a federal jury had found Brett Hankison guilty of violating Breonna Taylor's civil rights after that no-knock warrant debacle on the night of March 13 back in 2020.

Hankison fired 10 shots into Taylor's apartment unit there, some of the shots also entering a neighboring unit as well, but none of the shots that Hankison fired actually struck Breonna Taylor.

That is part of the reason why the Department of Justice during court filings said the following, said: "Hankison did not shoot Mrs. Taylor and is not otherwise responsible for her death. Counsel is unaware of another prosecution in which a police officer has been charged with depriving the rights of another person under the Fourth Amendment for returning fire and not injuring anyone."

Again, Hankison found by her jury guilty of violating Taylor's civil rights. Attorneys representing Taylor saying that recommending a one- day sentence is simply outrageous, saying the following: "This sets a dangerous precedent. When a police officer is found guilty of violating someone's constitutional rights, there must be real accountability and justice. Recommending just one day in prison sends the unmistakable message that white officers can violate the civil rights of black Americans with near-total impunity."

Now, the judge in this case, Brianna, has a great deal of leeway. Again, there is a one-day recommendation here. Hankison is facing a maximum sentence of life in prison. The federal judge overseeing this, Judge Rebecca Jennings, expected to make her decision now in just

about a little under a half-an-hour.

We're waiting to see what happens.

KEILAR: And what about the other officers involved here, Jason?

CARROLL: Well, look, the short answer to this is, none of the officers who were involved in that botched no-knock warrant were actually charged with violent -- charged with killing Breonna Taylor.

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I mean, you have got Myles Cosgrove and Jonathan Mattingly. Those were two of the officers who actually fired the fatal shots. They were not -- they did not face federal charges in connection with Breonna Taylor's death. Now, you did have some of the officers who were involved in issuing that no-knock warrant who are facing at this point some charges, federal charges, surrounding that no-knock warrant.

But, again, the bottom line here -- and this is what is so troubling and so disappointing for the family -- is, none of the officers involved here were actually charged with Breonna Taylor's death.

KEILAR: Yes.

Jason Carroll, thank you so much for the very latest as we track this story.

With us now ahead of this sentencing hearing is CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson.

Your reaction, Joey, to this one-day sentence request as we look at the reasoning, DOJ saying this federal conviction of Officer Hankison was excessive because he was acquitted on state charges. Is that sound reasoning?

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It is not, Brianna. Good to be with you and Jim.

My reaction, as objectively as I possibly can be is, it's outrageous, it's demeaning, it's problematic, it's troubling, and it sends the wrong message, without question. And so let's reset. The purpose of sentencing is really just threefold. One is punishment, one is deterrence, one is rehabilitation.

Those are the three real reasons why you would sentence someone and why the sentence really has to match the nature of the offense. In terms of punishment, you could argue, with regard to him needing punishment with respect to firing 10 indiscriminate shots, testimony concerning him being worked up before the raid, and really being no basis for just shooting with no target in mind, we know that those shots ended up in the neighboring apartment.

Thank goodness that no one else was killed. Not saying his bullet was the one that hit Breonna Taylor, but it's troubling. So you can argue absolutely you need punishment so that people fire, officers fire in a way that is in keeping with their discretion and comportment and demeanor and their training.

The other thing and more importantly is really deterrence. And so I'm concerned about a message that sends to law enforcement that, if there's really no consequence to what we do, then why don't we just do whatever we wish to do? And so deterrence is a very important part of it.

And the other issue is, even before getting to rehabilitation, is, if you look wholesale, you see that in cases involving police conduct and misconduct, you don't really get to indictment many times. A grand jury doesn't indict. And when you get to an indictment, you don't get to a conviction.

And here you got to a conviction. And I just think you have to honor, number one, the law and certainly, number two, the jury. The jury made a determination here. That needs to be given weight. It's seemingly being disregarded by the Department of Justice. And that's very troubling.

SCIUTTO: This is part of a broader effort you're seeing on the Trump administration, is it not? I mean, for instance, you have seen the rescinding of consent decrees where the federal government has oversight of local police departments when there's been excessive force, et cetera.

Now you have the DOJ asking for one day. Does that mean the judge listens? I mean, how much weight does the prosecutor's recommendation have?

JACKSON: So, Jim, generally, prosecutors have very vast authority and their recommendation is really listened to by a judge. I don't know that happens here and let's talk about why.

Under the federal sentencing guidelines, you could say that, hey, there's a 20 -- or -- excuse me -- life imprisonment is what he should get. Well, no, he shouldn't, because they're these guidelines. And what the guidelines do is, we look at Breonna Taylor there, not that he shot and killed her or his bullet, but he fired the 10 shots.

But these guidelines are meant for uniformity, meaning what they do is they look at the offense and the nature of the offense and the guidelines and they look at your prior history. Here, the guideline sentence would be 11 years to 14 years. It's not mandatory, but it provides guidance. Why, Jim, Brianna, is that important?

Because you need uniformity in sentencing. You need something, right, to really establish precedent, so that one defendant before the court doesn't get a day and another one get 14 years. And so those guidelines are advisory and you could have upward departures, meaning it could be more time than 14 years. You could have downward departures, meaning it could be less time. You could have variances.

So there's ways around them. But the issue really is that, is this really sending a deterrent message? What message does it send? Final point, Jim, and that was to your point, yes, when you look at the broader message that's being sent here with the Department of Justice and consent decrees, nothing to see here, picking up people off the street who are citizens, sending them away, you have got to have some respect for the law.

And if a jury renders a verdict, whether I like it, you like it, Brianna likes it, anyone likes it, they made a decision. And whether either of us or any of us like the fact that the sentencing guidelines are 11 to 14 years, vary them.

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But a day? I think it shocks the conscience. I think it's most unfortunate. And I think we're living in the Upside Down.

SCIUTTO: Well, listen, we're going to know quite soon, within the next hour -- next half-hour, Jason Carroll was reporting.

Joey Jackson, thanks so much.

And we do have this just in the CNN. Video captured by someone in the crowd at the North Dakota State Fair -- watch this -- shows a B-52 bomber doing its flyover on Friday. This is around the time that a Delta regional jet, operated by SkyWest reported a midair close call with the military aircraft as the passenger jet was making its approach to Minot International Airport.

The pilot says he was forced to do a hard turn to avoid colliding with the bomber, about five times its size. That sounds a lot like a B-52.

KEILAR: Yes, CNN is further reviewing the video to determine whether another plane seen in the distance is related to this incident that we're hearing about here.

And the passenger describes the moment when that plane suddenly had to veer away.

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MONICA GREENE, SKYWEST PASSENGER: Honestly, like, everyone was kind of weirdly calm. Like, I felt kind of -- like I was gaslighting myself. Like, am I being crazy? No one else is reacting. Like we took a really sudden turn. And that's when the pilot got on the intercom and said, sorry, everybody, I will explain everything when we land safely.

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KEILAR: Yes, ultimately a U-turn there.

CNN's Brian Todd here with more details on it.

What are you learning, Brian?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, guys, you saw that video that we just got into CNN of that B-52 doing the flyover of the North Dakota State Fair on Friday night.

That's what it was doing. And the Air Force just sent us a statement a short time ago basically admitting to such. Here is the text of the Air Force statement.

"We are aware of the recent reporting regarding commercial and Air Force aircraft operating in airspace around Minot International Airport. We are currently looking into the matter. We can confirm that a B-52 aircraft assigned to Minot Air Force Base conducted a flyover of the North Dakota State Fair on Friday evening."

And to further set the scene for everybody now, this was this past Friday, July 18. It was SkyWest Flight 3788. That's the commercial jet involved in this. That was operating as a Delta connection flight between Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Minot, North Dakota. The incident happened as the plane was approaching Minot, which is also home to an Air Force base which is only about 10 miles away from the commercial airport there.

The pilot had to make a hard U-turn. According to the pilot himself, he had to make a hard U-turn to avoid colliding with a B-52 bomber during this incident. The pilot told passengers that the tower asked him to report when he was about six miles from the airport. And after being in communication with the air traffic control tower, the pilot said he turned right, and that's when he saw the military aircraft right on the right-hand side of his aircraft.

And then the air traffic controller told him to turn left. He said he could tell by the speed of the other aircraft that it was a military plane. And afterward the pilot, in kind of a chillingly matter-of-fact way, explained what had happened to the passengers and apologized.

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PILOT: Sorry about the aggressive maneuver. It caught me by surprise. This is not -- not normal at all.

I don't know why they didn't give us a heads-up, because the Air Force base does have radar. And nobody said, hey, there's also a B-52 in the pattern.

I -- long story short, it was not fun. So I do apologize for it. And thank you for understanding.

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TODD: That pilot got a round of applause from people in the cabin right after he said that.

Here are some critical things, though, that we do not know at this hour. We do not know how close these two aircraft got to each other. We do not know whether they were actually on a collision course or not. And we do not know what the air traffic controller actually said.

And, guys, SkyWest Airlines issued a statement saying that that flight did land safely at Minot. We have to emphasize that. And they are investigating this.

SCIUTTO: I'm thinking if I'm on that plane why is a flyover at a state fair by a giant military aircraft allowed to happen close to a passenger airport? Yes.

TODD: I think that is going to be the key question that will be asked and hopefully answered here.

But you have got this broader issue -- and we have seen this earlier this year in January. You had that collision of the passenger jet with the military helicopter near Reagan National Airport. Right here, you had a close call a couple of weeks after that, I believe it was a couple of weeks later, with that military jet doing a flyover of Arlington National Cemetery.

And now you have got this in Minot. I mean, they clearly have not resolved issues with deconflicting military and commercial passenger planes.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

TODD: And that incident on Friday was a very close call. KEILAR: And we wouldn't know about it if the pilot hadn't, with quite

a lot of clarity...

TODD: His handling of it and his demeanor extraordinary.

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KEILAR: Yes.

TODD: I mean, he's really, I think, a hero.

KEILAR: Yes, his announcement with so much detail.

SCIUTTO: So understated, right?

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KEILAR: To the passengers.

Brian Todd, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Still ahead: President Trump marking six months in office just as new CNN polling finds that Americans are not too pleased with a key part of his America first agenda.

Plus, the World Food Program says the hunger crisis in Gaza has reached -- quote -- "new levels of desperation." We will take you live to the region.

SCIUTTO: And activists and police clash at an ICE protest. Now the man seen on camera being punched out by police is speaking. Hear what he says happened just ahead on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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SCIUTTO: President Trump is celebrating six months since entering the White House for his second term, but he's also facing some growing backlash to a policy central to his reelection campaign.

A new CNN poll finds that Americans largely oppose the Trump administration's efforts to ratchet up deportations, with 55 percent saying the president is going too far, that up 10 points, as you can see there, since February.

CNN's Alayna Treene is at the White House.

Alayna, I wonder if the administration sees any warning signs with these numbers. There's certainly not backing off the policy.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: They're not.

And I will tell you from my conversations, Jim, with people here at the White House and the broader Trump administration as well they continue to argue that immigration specifically is a winning issue for them. I know, whenever there's a specific case, just one example being the Abrego Garcia case, they argue that any time, even when there's controversy over what they are doing, that it's good for them because they believe that immigration more broadly is well received.

Even though, as you pointed out, this new CNN polling and the numbers we're seeing -- and I know this matches other polls as well -- it shows that Americans appetite for these kinds of deportations is waning. And I think it's important to remind you that this was the issue the president ran on in 2024 both publicly, but also privately.

He said that he believed immigration and specifically his plans to widely and massively ramp up the deportation of illegal immigrants was the most important issue, even more of a priority than the economy. But just to get back to some of those numbers, you went over how 55 percent say that they believe the Trump administration has gone too far.

But when you look at some of the specific policy, you look at the increase in the ICE budget by billions of dollars in the president's recent, as he refers to it, One Big Beautiful Bill, 30 -- only 31 percent of Americans say that they support that move, compared to 53 percent who oppose it.

Another big, of course, policy priority for this administration is trying to end birth rights citizenship, something the president tried to do during his first term, but was unsuccessful. Only 28 percent of Americans say that they support that, 59 percent opposed.

So,look, I mean, this is clearly continuing to be we're looking at them trying to take these new billions of dollars and apply them to more deportations. Unclear, though, whether or not the majority of the American people are going to continue to see their support for these moves continue to wane or if they can somehow re-message some of this, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Listen, and then folks will have to decide, whether it's answering to a poll or how they vote in the election, right, in the midterms when it comes up.

TREENE: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Alayna Treene, thanks so much -- Brianna.

KEILAR: For more on President Trump's first six months in office, we are joined -- back in office, I should say -- we're joined now by pollster and communication strategist Frank Luntz.

All right, Frank, what are voters telling you six months in?

FRANK LUNTZ, POLLSTER: They're telling me that there are two Americas, and it's no longer a red America and a blue America. It's a Trump America or an anti-Trump America, that your viewers will react based on how they voted, because in the end there is no similarity, there is no overlap.

If you voted for Donald Trump, you like the immigration policy, you like the legislation, you want to cut spending in Washington, you want to have this greater focus on tax cuts or tax relief. And if you voted against them you think, this is the end of democracy as we know it. It really is that stark.

And I don't see any commonality, any cross-pressure that brings people together. So, Brianna, this is only the beginning, six months. We got 3.5 years to go, and America is continuing to separate, to divide. And the polarization is as great as it has ever been in the last 50 years.

KEILAR: You also said something here recently to "The Atlantic." You did a really interesting interview with them, where you said that voters of Trump's they're happy with most of what he's doing. They're not happy with how he's doing it.

And that has really become your refrain, Frank. What do you mean?

LUNTZ: I mean that the language that he uses appeals to his vote, but his vote is not all of America. And he did get right at 50 percent.

But a president should be trying to reach out to more than just 50 percent. He should be trying to unite the country. If you look at the issues in this legislation, you go issue by issue, and you put it plainly to the public, a lot of them have majority support.

But the legislation overall doesn't, because in his communication he's focused on his base. And he's doing a great job there. But that's not all of America. And I, as a pollster, have to see 100 percent of the country, not just the 49.9 percent who voted for him.

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KEILAR: Yes.

And we look at CNN immigration polling here recently, 55 percent of Americans say the president has gone too far when it comes to deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. That is actually up 10 points since February.

If you break that out a little bit and look at it by party, it is two Americas, as you describe. Just 15 percent of Republican-aligned adults say that Trump has gone too far on deportations. What do you think of that?

LUNTZ: I think that he's -- and this is his goal. This is his objective, to reach out to the people who voted for him to say, you made the right choice. I kept my promises. I kept my word. And he's succeeding in that.

But a president -- and this is what he had done for the first 30, maybe 45 days. His numbers were higher than at any time in his career. And the reason why were the independents, the people who don't like either political party, who are studiously unaligned. And they saw what he was trying to do, and they liked it.

But over the last three months, it's been much more polarizing, much more overt and some of the rhetoric has been really strong. And that turns off the people in the center. He is succeeding in reaching his people, but he is failing in unifying the country and bringing everyone on board.

And, Brianna, you get about six months. People give you a break. This is called the honeymoon period. Over the next six months, when Labor Day kicks in, then they're going to start to make decisions that will affect where they vote in 2026.

A country is too important for pollsters, it's too important for people like me just to give you the breakdown of left and right and agree and disagree. What is essential is that we find some sort of common ground, so on issues that are so important, Medicaid, taxes, budgets, immigration, that we can have a consensus, so we can move forward as a country, rather than moving forward as a political party or an entity.

KEILAR: Yes, you mentioned the honeymoon. Voters, when they decide to marry a candidate for president, ultimately, it's Congress who they decide whether or not they're going to divorce. So we will see what happens in 2026.

Frank, always great to talk with you.

Frank Luntz, thank you so much.

LUNTZ: Thank you.

KEILAR: Coming up: More soaring prices at the grocery store, but it's not eggs. We will tell you what item could soon be impacting your wallet.

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