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Civil Rights Leader Rev. Jesse Jackson Dead at Age 84; Nancy Guthrie's Family Cleared as Possible Suspects. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired February 17, 2026 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

MALO BOURGON, CEO, MACHINE INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH INSTITUTE: Yes, I mean, I think, unfortunately, a lot of these people are in positions that I don't envy. They're on one hand claiming to build potentially the most powerful technology that humanity has ever seen and also worried about the consequences of what various actors, including governments, will be able to do with that technology. You know, even prior to reaching the kind of extinction level risks that I'm worried about, there's lots of risks of how this technology can be used and misused, both by, you know, authoritarian governments and governments who are trying to compete with them.

And so I think we're kind of in a real quagmire here, and it's incumbent on our leaders to really start paying attention to the risks that these CEOs and, you know, prominent academics in both China and the U.S. are talking about and start to actually try and have a rigorous conversation about how we can coordinate to slow down this race, just like we did with nuclear weapons.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, it just definitely doesn't seem it is happening right now, for sure. Malo, thank you so much for coming in. Really appreciate it.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, the breaking news. Waking up to word that Reverend Jesse Jackson has died, a towering figure in civil rights and politics who helped shape America for decades.

Nancy Guthrie's family officially cleared in her disappearance. This morning, investigators turning to Walmart for help on a key piece of evidence.

And a first in the world of aviation. Because to be honest, why would anyone ever want to try this in the first place? A guy lands a plane on and takes off from a moving train.

Sara is out this morning. I'm John Berman with Kate Bolduan, and this is CNN New Central.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

BOLDUAN: In the breaking news this morning, civil rights icon, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who sought to take up the mantle of his mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., became one of the leading figures in the battle for equality in America. Jesse Jackson has passed away. He was 84 years old.

His family released a statement saying this, in part, "He died peacefully on Tuesday morning, surrounded by his family. His unwavering commitment to justice, equality, and human rights helped shape a global movement for freedom and dignity. A tireless change agent, he elevated the voices of the voiceless from his presidential campaigns in the 1980s to mobilizing millions to register to vote, leaving an indelible mark on history."

Reverend Jackson is also being remembered for his powerful words in many scenarios in many places that continue to inspire today, including his signature line from the 1988 Democratic National Convention when he urged America to keep hope alive.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REV. JESSE JACKSON, CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER: When you see Jesse Jackson, when my name goes in nomination, your name goes in nomination. I was born in the slum, but the slum was not born in me. And it wasn't born in you, and you can make it. Wherever you are tonight, you can make it. Hold your head high.

Stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don't you surrender. Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith. In the end, faith will not disappoint.

You must not surrender. You may or may not get there, but just know that you're qualified and you hold on and hold out. We must never surrender. America will get better and better. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive. On tomorrow night and beyond, keep hope alive.

I love you very much. I love you very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: You know, I still remember where I was when I was watching that. I was a 16-year-old political junkie trying to, you know, to devour every minute of these political conventions. And I would stay up and I would watch these speeches.

And I just remember not believing what I was seeing when someone spoke like that. And to be honest, no one in our lifetime spoke like that.

BOLDUAN: I was just getting chills watching it again. I mean, it can still stir that emotion.

BERMAN: It rocked that hall, and I think the nation. With us, CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson and senior political analyst Nia-Malika Henderson. Thank you both for being with us.

Joey, I actually know you know some of the children of Jesse Jackson. You just spoke to his son. Tell us what you said and what he said. JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I'll just say this. Good morning to all.

[08:05:00]

I will just say that their family, John and Kate, of deep faith, that obviously it's a moment of much significance to the family and to the nation.

And I think that they are being covered by that faith today and certainly absorbing the loss of an icon, of a leader and a person who meant so much to them and so much to many. And so, you know, arrangements will be held for public observation in Chicago, but they are standing strong and standing tall.

And they'll get through this just like we all will, knowing that he made just the community that he served in and the nation that he lived in and the country and the world just a better place because he lived.

BOLDUAN: And Nia, he had been in failing health for years and it impacted his gate and impacted his speech. But I was listening back to just, even in 2022, he was speaking to Suzanne Malveaux and saying, and when she asked him about his legacy and what he wanted his legacy to be, he just said, he's going to -- to the effect of, he's going to go out with his boots on. And that is really true.

Anytime you saw him, even in his later years, he was still fighting, still pushing, even when his physical -- when physically it was limiting him.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right. I mean, I last saw Jesse Jackson in 2024 at the Democratic National Convention where he was honored on stage. And before that, when I was covering campaigns in South Carolina, Democratic primaries, he would, he would show up.

Of course, he was from South Carolina. He stayed engaged. He was in many ways a Bernie Sanders progressive.

I mean, even more accurately, Bernie Sanders was a Jesse Jackson progressive. And you can feel his morph on the Democratic party even now. If you look back at those campaigns, 1984, 1988, and in particular, he electrifies the party, ends up getting something like 7 million votes.

He wins the Michigan caucus, stunning the Democratic establishment and really able to put together what he would call a rainbow coalition of voters powered by the Black vote in Detroit, but also bolstered by white union Democrats as well. And so he ends up on the cover of Newsweek, of Time Magazine as a power broker, this question of what Jesse wants. And people called him Jesse, right?

He was that kind of figure, very relatable, humble roots in South Carolina. And he really, I think if you look at the trajectory of America, the trajectory of the Democratic party, you couldn't have Barack Obama without Jesse Jackson, who really reformed the way that voting and representation happened in the Democratic party. He was always engaged and had this deep, passionate love for America.

And that showed up in his activism, in his desire to make America, to make politics a much more inclusive and representative part of the system.

BERMAN: I remember all the reporting almost every four years about how other Democratic politicians needed to figure out Jesse Jackson, a way to court Jesse Jackson from Mike Dukakis to Bill Clinton, all the way very much to Barack Obama. And Joey, to an extent, Jesse Jackson was this bridge between Martin Luther King and then ultimately Barack Obama, who was elected president in 2008. But that's a huge gap in time.

That's 40 years. Think of the time that Jesse Jackson sort of helped fill. What did he mean to you personally?

JACKSON: I think everything is the answer to that question. And I have to say, it's not lost on me that I'm here on this great network, speaking to Nia, speaking to you, Kate and John, without him taking on everyone, right? The fact is, is that he was about his community.

He was about his country. And he was about making a difference. And when you're working closely with Martin Luther King and learning from the best, he became the best.

And he gave his life, right? Everybody's about different things. Some people about money, not hating on them.

Other people are just about legacy and making a difference and empowering and uplifting. And so talking about what he meant to me, everything, right? The fact is, is that the path certainly was made a lot clearer because people like him taking on corporate America, taking on institutions of higher learning, taking upon everyone, registering people to vote, empowering people, letting and having seen him in action saying, wow, right, someone, right, like me can actually enter into a room.

I could speak to people of worth and value. I could become someone. I am someone.

[08:10:00]

And so I think when you see that symbolism, when you see him in action, when you see his movements, wow, it's just not lost on me, nor should it be lost on anyone who looks like me, that a person like him just paved the way and made the path so much clearer to uplift us. And I'll just say this.

You know, today, when DEI has become such a negative word, this is a man who stood for that. This is the unifier in chief. He certainly would have been had we had he been president.

His life stood for the legacy of unity, the legacy of inclusion, the legacy of including everybody. And so I just think that he leaves so much and he has such a beautiful family who will continue his legacy of togetherness. BOLDUAN: And when you look at as you're both speaking, we're showing pictures of Reverend Jackson throughout his life. I mean, it's just, it's a story of these pictures of the rooms he has been in, the moments he has been at. It is truly remarkable.

I had Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago, was on, jumped on the phone and called in earlier. And he said the thing that he always appreciated, and he said it as a compliment to Jesse Jackson, is that Jesse Jackson had a complicated relationship with power. That he would sit in a room and talk about the things that he can agree with and work with Rahm Emanuel on when it comes to Chicago.

And he said, and then Reverend Jackson would leave the room and take to the microphone and say that Rahm Emanuel needs to do more. And it's the, I really appreciate kind of the complicated nature of a human for so many years in public life and what that says and the lessons in that.

HENDERSON: Yes, listen, I mean, in his prime, Jesse Jackson was almost like this civil rights superhero, right? People in my generation, John, you talked about watching him on TV. You think about Martin Luther King, he was this sort of distant kind of dour figure that we only saw in, you know, pictures and obviously in some clips.

But Jesse Jackson, he was alive. He was electrifying. He was tall.

He was charismatic. He was smart. He was funny.

And he reveled in the success of other people, right? Anytime I would see him, you could just tell he was sort of beaming that I was in these positions, able to report for CNN, able to report for the Washington Post. The other thing that he did was he planted seeds in communities all across the country with young activists, my father being one of those folks in Chicago, where he was steering them to be activists, to push for equality, to fight for equality.

We of course have the pictures of him at the convention, but there are hundreds of thousands of young African-Americans who were inspired by him, by those two presidential runs and then folks of his generation, right? Who fought next to him, who unfortunately, you know, are dying off at this point. They're in their late 70s and they're in their 80s.

It is fitting in some ways and sad as well that Jesse Jackson dies during Black History Month. And this comes at a time when this is an administration that is trying to erase some of what Jesse Jackson did, his legacy and the legacy of racism and slavery in this country. So listen, it is a sad day.

I've been texting all morning with folks who are remembering Jesse Jackson, remembering his spirit, remembering his passion for change, and he'll certainly be missed.

BOLDUAN: Joey, Nia, it's great to see you guys. Thank you for this conversation.

BERMAN: There is other news this morning. Nancy Guthrie's family cleared as suspects in her disappearance. And we're standing by for DNA testing results that could really come at any time.

New details this morning about a shooting during a hockey game that left two people dead.

And an American surfing legend is killed. What we are learning this morning about his death.

[08:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: We are standing by for the DNA test results and a potential key piece of evidence in the search for Nancy Guthrie. A glove found about two miles from her home in Arizona that officials say resembles the gloves worn by the suspect seen in the video from the doorbell camera.

Also, for the first time, the sheriff is explicitly ruling out Guthrie's children and their spouses as suspects in the case. He posted on social media, quote, "To be clear, the Guthrie family, to include all siblings and spouses, has been cleared as possible suspects. The family has been nothing but cooperative and gracious and are victims in this case. To suggest otherwise is not only wrong, it is cruel."

The sheriff also says that Walmart is assisting investigators to gather more information about the suspect's backpack. That's in the doorbell video as well. The FBI says that this backpack is a brand only sold by Walmart.

All right, with us now, CNN senior law enforcement analyst, former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe. And Andy, we're talking about the glove and the DNA testing on the glove. People can see here the glove that we're talking about.

What they say is that the glove they found within two miles of home resembles this glove. They're not sure whether it's the same glove. So what they've done is they sent it out to something called CODIS. Will you explain it? You're uniquely qualified to explain what this is.

What is this CODIS testing that's happening right now?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Sure. So every piece of DNA gets analyzed or tested in pretty much the same way.

[08:20:00]

And once it has been tested, if it comes from someone who's been convicted of a felony or involved in a violent crime, things like that, or if it comes from a sample that was recovered at a crime scene and we don't know who the human being it came from, that information, each of the DNA's analysis gets loaded into CODIS. CODIS is simply a data set of collected DNA that's maintained by the FBI. And it's used for purposes of identification.

So if I collect DNA at a crime scene and I analyze it, I put it into CODIS hoping that it will match with an already known sample of the same DNA that's existing in the CODIS data set. If it does not, it still remains inside CODIS in the hopes that at some point in the future, you'll take a sample from a human being, run it through CODIS, and it would then match to the sample you got from your crime scene or from this glove.

So it can be a very powerful ability to identify someone by their DNA, but it is not in and of itself always the secret to solving every crime.

BERMAN: No, but there are hundreds of thousands of pieces of information stored in it. If by some chance there is a match, it would give them a leg up in the investigation.

Andy, we got this new statement from the sheriff, clearing the Guthrie family. "To be clear, the Guthrie family to include all siblings, has been cleared as possible suspects. The family has been nothing but cooperative. They're victims," the sheriff said.

What does this effectively change in the investigation now?

MCCABE: Well, it doesn't really change very much. First of all, there's no doubt that the investigators took a close look at family members at the very beginning of this investigation, and that's simply because statistically we know that crimes committed in residences disproportionately involve family members. So that's just a standard thing that would happen in any similar investigation.

Now, they're proactively saying that the family has been cleared. This is likely because they have developed enough evidence on each family member to prove that they could not have been the offender. So that's like alibi testimony that they've been able to corroborate, things like that.

The real reason for putting this statement out, however, is it's very clearly an effort to sort of do something for the family, to prop up the family, to help them in, you know, to try to kind of mitigate against the crazy speculation that's been out there on the internet for weeks about potential family members being involved in this crime. And also, it's an opportunity for the investigators to build additional trust with the family members who, quite frankly, they need to help them solve this case every day that goes forward.

BERMAN: Andrew McCabe, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

We've got some other news to talk about. Hillary Clinton accuses the Trump administration of a cover-up over its handling of the Epstein files.

And this morning, a new sign of the apocalypse. Call it flying hubris. A plane lands on a moving train and takes off again. And that was all on purpose.

[08:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: All right, this morning, Hillary Clinton is accusing the Trump administration of a cover-up in how it is handling the Epstein files. She alleges the Justice Department is slow walking the release of documents and stonewalling requests from Congress, all in an effort to protect powerful men named in the files.

It is worth noting that both Clintons, former President Clinton and the former Secretary of State, are scheduled for closed-door depositions before the House Oversight Committee this month.

With us now, Senior Chief Data Analyst, Harry Enten. And we're just talking about Hillary Clinton as a peg, really, for what's going on with the Epstein files, which is extreme interest.

This is not going away.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: No, it is not going away. If the Trump administration, and Donald Trump in particular, believe that they can wish this story away, the American public have a different tune to sing. What are we talking about here?

Well, let's take a look at Google searches for Epstein. In fact, in the month of February, it is higher than it's ever been. Up like a rocket, up 900 percent versus a month ago.

And the top name associated with Googling for Epstein, well, it is Donald Trump. So the story isn't not going away. It's actually getting searched more and more and more, becoming more relevant in the minds of the American public.

BERMAN: It's so interesting. This is, you know, more than it was when Congress voted to force a release, more than it was when they actually released some of them, more than it was when they released more of them. Now it's the most it's ever been.

ENTEN: The most it has ever been. And the previous highs were also very high.

BERMAN: All right, let's talk about what this means for President Trump. How do people view his handling of the whole issue?

ENTEN: Yes, this is bad political news for President Trump. You know, yesterday we spoke about the fact that Donald Trump's overall approval rating, his net approval rating, was at a record low for term number two. What is the worst issue for Donald Trump of any of the major issues?

Look at this. We got them all up on the screen. Immigration, foreign policy, the economy, trade and tariffs.

And then all the way down in the bottom is the Epstein case. Look, he's underwater on immigration, foreign policy, the economy and tariffs, all between minus 16 and minus 25 points. The Epstein case, though, is on another planet.

Look at this. Negative 39 points. He's 39 points underwater.

Basically a split between 30 percent approved and 70 percent disapproved. The Epstein case is not the story the Trump administration and Trump in particular and Republicans at large wanted the news because it is a big political loser for him.

And these numbers have remained very consistent. No matter which poll you look at, he's about 40 points underwater in the Epstein case, by far his worst issue. And he's not actually good on the rest of mine.

BERMAN: From a political standpoint, ABE, anything but Epstein, really, for President Trump there. How about among Republicans?

ENTEN: OK, so if the Epstein case is something that absolutely is terrible in the minds of the center of the electorate, among independents, in fact, the number is closer to minus 50 on the net approval. If it's absolutely terrible among the center of the electorate, among Republicans, look at this. GOP approve of Trump ...

[08:30:00]