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Rogers: "In Good Shape" If El-Sayed Is Michigan Dem Senate Nominee; GOP Rep. Jordan Calls For Charges Against Trump Prosecutor Jack Smith; OpenAI And Hugging Face Investigate AI Model Breach. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired July 23, 2026 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. New CNN reporting this morning on the Senate race in Michigan. CNN has learned that Republican candidate Mike Rogers believes he has a good chance if the Democratic nominee is progressive Abdul El-Sayed. It highlights the intense debate within the Democratic Party about which candidate is best equipped to keep the seat held by retiring Sen. Gary Peters -- a vital seat to held onto if Dems want to gain control of the Senate in November.

CNN's Patrick Svitek is with me now. Patrick, what are you learning about this story and this feeling by the Republican candidate that this is the person he can beat?

PATRICK SVITEK, CNN REPORTER (via Webex by Cisco): Yeah. On his campaign call about a month ago, Mike Rogers told his supporters that if Abdul El-Sayed is the nominee for the Democrats he feels like he is "in good shape."

Now, in public he said that he's confident that he could beat either of the two main Democrats who are jockeying right now to be their party's nominee. But this was a, you know, interesting, somewhat candid insight into how he's thinking about this electability debate that is playing out very fiercely in a Democratic primary right now.

You have Congresswoman Haley Stevens and former public health official Abdul El-Sayed really in a fierce debate right now over who is the best candidate to take on Mike Rogers in the November election. Mike Rogers running unopposed in his Republican primary and so a lot of the attention is on the Democratic side of the race right now.

And this is just such a crucial Senate seat for the Democrats. I mean, Michigan is a state that President Trump won twice, including in 2024.

SIDNER: (INAUDIBLE).

SVITEK: The seat was currently held by a Democrat and so they need to defend this seat. And so having the right nominee is a very important question and debate for them.

SIDNER: Patrick, just out of curiosity -- well, OK.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE ROGERS (R), MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE: And by the way, if he wins, I think we're in good shape. I mean, I think he is so radical. I think he's going to lose, you know, big parts of the west part of the state. We think we can do well in part of the southeast part of the state. I think we'll do well if he, in fact, is the -- is the nominee.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Patrick, when you hear those words coming from him, you know, how are Democrats seeing this? Because if he feels strongly about this, are Democrats on the -- on the other side of this worrying about who their candidate will be and if, for example, El-Sayed -- if he becomes the candidate if he can win.

SVITEK: Yeah. I mean, in response to our reporting, the Haley Stevens campaign said that these comments were the latest evidence to them that Republicans want to run against El-Sayed.

You know, I talked to his campaign for this story, and they've touted how they're putting together the strongest coalition for the general election. They've been doing better in campaign fundraising. Just yesterday they announced that they've raised over $3.3 million in July alone, so far. You know, and that he also argues that he is the best positioned Democrat to excite voters and to maybe bring back some of these groups in the Democratic coalition that have strayed away in recent years.

So that's the case that we're hearing from both of these campaigns in response to this reporting.

SIDNER: Well, it's certainly a race to watch for sure.

Patrick Svitek, thank you so much for your reporting on this -- John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. This morning, Tropical Storm Bertha is on a collision course with the Texas Gulf Coast. You can see it happening right there. Gusty winds, heavy rains all expected. But the biggest flood threat from Bertha could be coming hundreds of miles away.

Let's get to CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar for the latest on this. Good morning, Allison.

ALLISON CHINCHAR, AMS METEOROLOGIST: And good morning to you.

Yes, we do expect Bertha to make landfall at some point today. It's just kind of meandering right here along the Gulf Coast. Sustained winds right around 45 miles per hour but they are gusting up to about 60 miles per hour. So you do have some of those tropical storm warnings in effect right there throughout the coast.

Again, it's going to continue to make that slow meander to the west throughout the day today. The bulk of the heavy rain is well down to the south, but that spin is going to bring some moisture into areas of Louisiana and Texas as we go through the rest of the day today. Now most of these areas, you're talking one, maybe two inches at absolute best in terms of moisture. But it's the added inflow of moisture a little bit farther north, right here to this front. That's where you're going to see Bertha's likely biggest impact. Because by adding moisture to this it's allowing all of these areas of Tennessee and North Carolina to have much more abundant moisture than they would have, frankly, just from the front itself.

You can see we've already got some flash flood warnings in effect across portions of North Carolina and even into Texas. Flood watches -- that's the green color here -- in anticipation of more of that rain as we go through the day today and even into tomorrow as well. Because that front is essentially just stalled, so all of that moisture that it's pulling in is just going to keep training over the same locations.

[07:35:00]

So these are the areas we have the greatest risk for excessive rainfall. So again, you're not talking here one to two inch; you're talking three, four, even potentially five inches of rain. The highest is going to be right here in that red zone. That does include the city of Raleigh. But even some of these other areas you see here in yellow -- Charlotte, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Birmingham -- all of those areas have the potential to have some of those isolated strong thunderstorms that could dump some pretty torrential amounts of rain. Like is said, not just today but even as we head into Friday.

BERMAN: Yeah. Look at that radar. That's a long line of very dangerous looking stuff happening there.

Allison Chinchar, thank you so much for that forecast. People in North Carolina better pay attention -- Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: So as cases linked to the now massive cyclospora outbreak continue to rise across the country, Taco Bell restaurants are dealing with the fallout. The chain already removed Taylor Farms lettuce from their restaurants, they said, after it was suspected to be linked to the outbreak of that serious stomach illness. But now Taco Bell is trying something else to get people back in -- lettuce-free deals.

CNN's David Goldman is looking at this. What are they trying now --

DAVID GOLDMAN, CNN BUSINESS SENIOR REPORTER: Yes.

BOLDUAN: -- and how much have they taken a hit?

GOLDMAN: Well, they're taking a pretty big hit, so that's why they're giving --

BOLDUAN: Yeah.

GOLDMAN: -- one-dollar, lettuce-free Enchiritos and also their nacho fries, which don't have any lettuce. Those are now for just one dollar. And there's a big reason for this. Taco Bell sales or its foot traffic, anyway, is down 30 percent over the two days that they announced that there was a big issue.

BOLDUAN: Right.

GOLDMAN: It may have come back just a little bit but that isn't something that they want to be able to contend with. It is significantly worse than other fast food.

Now, certainly, other fast-food companies that have lettuce are down as well. But, you know, when you're talking about 10 percent, that's more manageable. A third of your traffic is difficult.

And Taco Bell is the shining star of the fast-food market. Their sales were up eight percent in the first quarter. That means that, you know, they're doing pretty good. It was about eight straight months that they had those sales increase.

Now, other fast food increases are happening as well but not nearly at the same rate. Burger King is certainly the star there. But look at Wendy's down 2.1 percent. Taco Bell really was outshining all of them.

Now the biggest thing that Taco Bell is concerned about what happened to McDonald's in 2024. There was an E.coli outbreak. Sales were down 1.4 percent in the fourth quarter after they were rising 4.3 percent in the fourth quarter of '23. That's a significant decline and that's what Taco Bell doesn't want to happen.

But McDonald's did something unusual. They invested $100 million in a P.R. campaign --

BOLDUAN: Um-hum. GOLDMAN: -- and got the CEO out there. Taco Bell hasn't done any of that yet.

And so right now they're faced with this. I mean, certainly, people are aware of the lettuce issue. This is a pretty explosive story, and this is something that I don't think Taco Bell wants to have to deal with.

BOLDUAN: I would say so. And also, it's -- the way this has unfolded and how it's suspected to be linked. They're still now investigating exactly the direct source. It's still continuing so much that it's kind of in their -- in this uncertain realm of, like, have they figured out the real source of it all. Not quite yet. So that's why.

GOLDMAN: You don't have to eat at Taco Bell. There are so many --

BOLDUAN: Right.

GOLDMAN: -- different options. And so that's the big fear. It's a fickle business and they don't want to have to deal with any of this right now.

BOLDUAN: Yeah. Well, that's a big P.R. campaign --

GOLDMAN: Sure is.

BOLDUAN: -- that they might be needing to undertake.

It's good to see you, David. Thank you so much.

GOLDMAN: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: John.

BERMAN: All right. Breaking this morning, prosecuting the prosecutor. The Republican chair of the House Judiciary committee has formally referred former special counsel Jack Smith who, of course, investigated President Trump, to the Justice Department for potential criminal charges. Now, chairman Jordan accuses Smith of misleading the committee during his testimony about phone records he collected from members of Congress. Smith's attorney says this all shows a "chilling eagerness" to weaponize the justice system.

With us now is Congressman Dave Min, a Democrat from California and an attorney by trade. And Congressman, good to see you this morning.

I just want to go over the substance of what chairman Jordan is suggesting here -- that Jack Smith did in his testimony. He was asked during the deposition --

REP. DAVE MIN (D-CA): Um-hum.

BERMAN: -- "OK, did the toll records you requested from the senators -- did they include eight -- did they include the content of the phone calls? Jack Smith responded, "No."

MIN: Um-hum.

BERMAN: "Did the records that you requested -- the toll records from member of 11 Congress -- include the content of text messages?" He responded, "No."

Now what this has to do with is --

MIN: Um-hum.

BERMAN: -- again, phone records. Literal toll records that he did subpoena that's just data of who called who. That did not have the content.

MIN: Um-hum.

BERMAN: However, he did see the content of some of these calls in other records he obtained -- that from the National Archives.

[07:40:00]

MIN: Um-hum.

BERMAN: So you're training as a lawyer -- do you think this constitutes perjury?

MIN: I would have to look at -- and thanks for having me on, John. I'd have to look at the specific back and forth. Perjury implies and requires a certain intent to mislead. Here I think what you're describing and what we have seen is that Jack Smith is trying to answer honestly. Perhaps there's a little confusion between the records obtained from the National Archives and directly from the phone companies.

But this points to a broader problem right now that we're seeing. Jack Smith is being told he cannot release the details of the investigation and what he found, right? And so they're going after him. They're weaponizing the DOJ even as they are not allowing him to release the results of apparently very damning results here.

So let's -- how about if we want transparency, if we want to say that Jack Smith is lying, why don't we let him release the evidence that he accumulated, testified openly and publicly, which I think is what he's been requesting, on the -- what the Republicans have been doing -- and Jim Jordan, in particular. They've been conducting a shadow hearing -- like, closed doors not allowing him to be fully transparent about what he did and what he uncovered.

This is Kabuki theater of the worst kind and again, very clearly, they're weaponizing the DOJ here.

BERMAN: The president put out a statement on social media after this apparent announcement and it just said, "Justice at last????"

MIN: Yeah.

BERMAN: So what does the fact that he's weighing in on this -- what does that tell you?

MIN: Well, let's be clear. At this point Donald Trump's conception of justice is very different than anybody else I've ever encountered in my life.

People who want justice -- and I came here to talk about the Epstein files -- let's look at that as a counter example. We want justice there. We want transparency. We want actual criminals who traffic girls for decades to be held accountable. And Trump's DOJ -- his personal attorney -- former personal attorney Todd Blanche is obstructing that investigation.

We have seen multiple people come directly to us and lie to us as members of Congress. There has been no action there, no referrals to the DOJ even though people are very clearly lying. So where is the justice there and why is there this double standard for Donald Trump and his Epstein elite -- the people that are rich and powerful, and friends of his? Why do they get one standard of justice and everyone else is subject to this heightened scrutiny?

BERMAN: Your colleague Jamie Raskin, a Democrat, has suggested there should be an investigation into whether or not Jeffrey Epstein was some kind of a foreign agent -- had foreign ties. JD Vance, as part of his Joe Rogan interview, was floating the notion that he had ties to Mossad, noting that it was out there.

How valid of an investigation -- how much emphasis do you think should be placed on this?

MIN: We have been told that, and I know that some of the attorneys have told us that they believe there were some ties.

I think at one point I was told that Jeffrey Epstein's personal bodyguard said that "Whenever people -- if somebody senior from one of three governments -- Saudi Arabia, Israel or Russia -- would call, that Jeffrey Epstein would drop everything he was doing and jump on a plane to go meet them." The bodyguard didn't know what they discussed but that seems very potentially problematic.

And yeah, it does get to a bigger problem with the Epstein investigation. Where are the bank records? That could help us understand, you know, financial flows. Millions and millions of dollars went out to these girls. Jeffrey Epstein, of course, trafficked billions of dollars. Where did that money come from and where did it end up going? We don't have that information.

We'd love to see the rest of the Epstein files -- the hundreds -- millions of documents that the Department of Justice is withholding right now from us despite a valid subpoena.

So I can't tell you if he had ties to any foreign agencies. What I do know is that there have been incredible allegations made and we are not digging into that.

BERMAN: Congressman, there's a new poll out from Fox News which digs into a lot of very interesting different subjects. It does show that Democrats have widened their lead in their polling in the generic ballot test, but it also shows your own voters -- Democratic voters -- a lot of them aren't that happy with you.

MIN: Yeah.

BERMAN: Fox asked members of both parties: "Do you approve of your party's lawmakers?" Republicans, 67 percent approve of the Republican lawmakers. Democrats -- it's just 60 percent that approve of your lawmakers.

MIN: Um-hum.

BERMAN: Thirty-nine percent of Democrats approve of Democratic lawmakers.

Why do you think that number of so high?

MIN: Um-hum.

Yeah, and you didn't mention that we had some -- a very interesting and somewhat surprising election results in recent weeks in places like New York and Colorado.

You know, when I talk to my voters -- and I don't speak nationally but just in Orange County like -- places like Irvine and Newport Beach -- I get a sense that voters see an urgency to the moment and they want their lawmakers to rise up to that urgency. So people who are Independents and Democrats, and even some

Republicans, want to see us stand up and tackle this moment. Tackle the lawlessness of the Trump administration. Tackle the real challenges they're facing, a lot of which are around affordability, which we've talked about. But we're not talking about jobs. We're not talking about the corruption that everyone sees in endemic to Washington, D.C.

[07:45:00]

So for me, as a freshman who just got here, I'm hearing a lot. When I look at the situation, I think Democrats are very unhappy with us because they don't see us acting with any kind of real urgency and they see us acting like business as usual. And I think we have to get around that moment.

We have to really step up because what I tell people -- I don't know how this all ends up but I do know Donald Trump is following an authoritarian playbook right now. I know people are very unhappy about the economy. And if we don't rise up, this could be the end of America as we know it.

So this is a historic moment. We have a chance to meet that moment, but we have to -- we have to treat it with the urgency that this moment deserves.

BERMAN: All right, Congressman Dave Min from California. Always great to talk to you. Thanks for coming in this morning -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right. Thank you, John.

Questions are being raised after an interesting and, frankly, terrifying cybersecurity breach. OpenAI says two of its models escaped controls during testing and managed to gain internet access and then successfully hacked into another AI company's production servers. Open AI called it an unprecedented cyber incident and that they are responding accordingly. OpenAI clearly concerned about this.

It is one of the first publicly disclosed examples of an AI system autonomously breaching its testing environment and reaching a real external system.

Joining me now is Dave Kasten. He is the head of policy at Palisade Research. Thank you so much for being here.

I guess, first to you, how dangerous is what happened here where an AI made its own decision and took action that was ultimately illegal and certainly unethical? Break this all down for us.

DAVE KASTEN, HEAD OF POLICY, PALISADE RESEARCH (via Webex by Cisco): Hi, Sara. Thanks for having me on.

I think this was a very dangerous incident that happened. We're lucky in a bunch of ways.

First off, we're lucky that it was detected before it got very far and that it only had a subset of Hugging Face's environment instead of the entirety of it.

We're lucky that they ended up hacking a non, sort of, safety critical -- non-critical infrastructure kind of system like Hugging Face rather than some sort of other think like a power plant, health care system -- anything like that.

And finally, we're lucky that OpenAI decided to disclose this. They did so voluntarily. There's probably no law that required that they do so. And, in fact, Hugging Face didn't know that it was them until OpenAI came forward a couple of days ago and said yes, this was us. It was our system that went rogue.

SIDNER: You bring up a really important issue that there may be no law that requires them to reveal this. AI is happening so fast. It's trained to think for itself, and it calculates things and learns things in a nanosecond compared to how humans calculate things.

I mean, how do you stop this from doing dangerous and unethical things?

KASTEN: Yeah. So the unfortunate truth is that right now we don't have technical solutions that can guarantee that model will never do this. We have things that can reduce the likelihood of it. And I know that people -- there are companies who are friends of mine -- work hard on this. But we don't have a way of ensuring that it will never happen 100 percent of the time.

So what we need is we need the 1) requirements to make sure that companies are required to report this when it does happens. And second, we need to have more proactive vetting of the entire development process. This was a pre-released model. We need to have an end-to-end safety case for each of the models that the companies are developing to understand from beginning to end how they're going to make sure that they do so safely without having a sort of a lab leak incident like this.

And finally, I think we need national security experts inside and outside government to start doing real contingency planning against future incidents like this of misuse and loss of control. That will be even more significant with the even more powerful models that everyone believes will be arriving in the next few months and years.

SIDNER: Yeah. I mean, it is a stunning scenario that has taken place and it is good that you're hearing from OpenAI so that we understand what the capabilities are. But we're in this situation where the regulation can't keep up with how fast AI is going. We all can't keep up with it. We will all be watching this space and I know you will.

Dave Kasten, thank you so much for walking us through all of that -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: There is new video in of a semitruck just tearing down power lines and sending a telephone pole flying. We have new information on what caused this entire thing. Like, what happened here.

And you can now own the iconic raccoon Jimothy in bobblehead form -- AKA we now have another excuse to talk about and play the Jimothy video again.

(COMMERCIAL)

[05:54:05]

BERMAN: This morning Red Sox Nation is thanking the team for resurrecting a disastrous season in the span of just a few weeks. They matched the team's longest-ever winning streak and then they set the stage to begin a new one. In other words, they lost.

Let's get to CNN's Coy Wire for the -- you know, the highs and lows that were Wednesday for me.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Yes. Let's focus on the high thought, right, John? We've got to embrace the moment. The Red Sox' 15th- straight win matching the franchise record set 80 years ago and they wasted zero time.

In the very first inning four of the first five batters reached base and Caleb Durbin cashed in two of them. And then in the ninth, the moment John Berman was waiting for. The game ending out and the celebration deserving of its own highlight reel. Boston beat Baltimore 6-3 in the opener of that split doubleheader, tying the winning streak record set by Ted Turner -- Ted Williams' 1946 squad that reached the World Series that year -- just saying.

[07:55:03]

Boston lost game two 5-1 but for John Berman's sake we will just call that a scheduling glitch.

All right. A tough day at the office for Richie Palacios. His Rays facing the Blue Jays. Palacios gets bonked on the head with his own foul ball, John, after it ricocheted off the net behind him.

BERMAN: Oh, I've never seen that.

WIRE: Yeah. And then in the same at-bat, Palacios thinks I'm going to erase this pain with a home run, but Nathan Lukes said not today, bro. The highlight reel robbery. Good news for Palacios and the Rays. They still win 4-2.

To the WNBA where Caitlin Clark stays hotter than asphalt in July. Coming off a 45-point performance on Friday, she hit five three- pointers by halftime, John, of this game, scoring 21 of the Fever's halftime franchise record, 70. She finished with 27 points, 11 assists, and another Fever win 123-88 over Connecticut.

Now to a story that is ripe for celebration. Fans in Spain's tomato- growing province of Seville honored World Cup champs Fabian Ruiz and Gavi in the most local way possible, gifting each of the hometown heroes their body weight in tomatoes. Ruiz hauled home about 187 pounds; Gavi, around 151. They will also have grass soccer fields in the area renamed after them.

John, that is enough tomatoes to keep gazpacho going in their fridges until their next World Cup -- incredible.

BERMAN: Yeah. These guys -- that whole team never going to have to pay for a drink again in Spain for their lives. Their descendants won't have to pay for drinks. They'll all be knighted. I mean, that's the way it goes there. Tomatoes is just the beginning.

Coy Wire, thank you very much.

WIRE: I love it. Thanks, John.

SIDNER: But they cannot go to Argentina and get any love at all.

BERMAN: No. I wouldn't be thinking that's where they should go next.

SIDNER: All right. Thank you, John.

All right. Ahead -- or actually, right now we're looking at radars for you.

BERMAN: Don't wait.

SIDNER: Don't wait. We can do it now.

A terrifying moment for drivers in New Jersey when a semitruck knocks down multiple power lines. The truck was hauling a fork lift when it caught a low-hanging line. You can see what happened then. It ripped the power pole out of the ground. Sparks were flying as the line flung back and forth. Police say no one though -- surprisingly, when you look at this, nobody was hurt.

All right. Now to Ohio where a police officer praised for his quick thinking after spotting a house fire before it was even called in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POLICE OFFICER: Look at that. Look at that. Right here. Come on. Come on. I got you. Come on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: The officer realized when he ran out that there was a teenage girl still inside and she was slipping in and out consciousness. He managed to grab her and drag her out with another officer's help, saving her life.

All right. Russian officials say a cat was caught trying to smuggle drugs into a prison. I'm sure that was the cat's choice. The perpetrator -- yeah, I did -- I went there -- was fitted with two homemade collars stuffed with banned substances meant for inmates. A sniffer dog confirmed the stash. Guards removed the collars and let the innocent courier go. That cat safe and sound getting some pets this morning. Good grief.

All right. Seattle's most famous raccoon could be sitting on your desk by Christmas. The National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum just unveiled this officially licensed limited edition of Jimothy. I know -- some of you will love it and some of you will be scared for the rest of your life and don't want it anywhere near you.

Jimothy went viral after people starting catching him on video with his weird little round body running around Seattle. Vets think he has a congenital spinal deformity similar to short spine syndrome. He is beloved, by the way. You do not mess with Jimothy. That's one thing I know.

BOLDUAN: A serious question. What bobbles on that bobblehead? He has no neck.

SIDNER: Nope. Nope, you're not getting me, Kate. I'm outta here.

BOLDUAN: Berman, you're not involved in this segment -- finally, for once. He said I'm neck-shaming. Apologies, everyone.

Here we go. Let's turn to sharks. "SHARK WEEK" kicks off this Sunday on Discovery, and show launching the week of special programming brings together the combination that we did not know that we needed, Sharks and "KPop Demon Hunters."

Here's a clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Being a part of their ecosystem, a huge honor, the gift of a lifetime.

KEN JEONG, ACTOR: Incredible.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're not hunting us; they're misunderstood.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bad boys, like me.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: KPop, sharks, and Ken Jeong. What could possibly go wrong?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: I had the pleasure of speaking with the stars of "KPOP SHARK HEROES," as it's called, singer Rei Ami and meeting Ken Jeong that you just saw there about why they got involved with "SHARK WEEK."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEONG: I prefer to think of myself as a shark-bassador, Kate, in my list of resumes. MD, comedian, actor, Instagram model, and shark- bassador.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE).

JEONG: And out of all that, shark-bassador is at the top of the list.