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Trump Flew on Backup Jet After Threat; Moderate Dems Seek to Block Progressives; Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO) is Interviewed about Progressive Democrats; Death Toll Rises in Colombia; Mangione Due in Court for Pre-Trial Conference. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired August 11, 2026 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

ISABELLE CHAPMAN, CNN REPORTER AND PRODUCER: Lot in Mississippi.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KENNON GREEN, SPENT BELOOZEROV'S LAST DAYS WITH HIM: When we walked out the next morning, I opened the back door to the truck. And when I looked over my left, there's like 12, 15 guys, you know, pointing their weapons at us. And I looked at the guy, I said, is my friend all right? And he said, I don't know, we lit him up pretty good. I said, is my friend dead? And he goes, yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, so what does this family say?

CHAPMAN: You know, the family wants answers, but the FBI doesn't really have to give them. I spoke with Beloozerov's ex-wife and his son, and they're obviously devastated by this. The FBI has told them nothing about why he was even being followed, and definitely not why he was killed. So, they feel like there needs to be more accountability.

BERMAN: So, the FBI won't talk to the family. Did they say anything to you?

CHAPMAN: They said, no comment. So, after more than a year of reporting, we did actually, you know, find something out. Sources told us that agents had been investigating him for something. But there's a twist to this story. I'm not going to give it away here. But you'll have to watch it and find out.

BERMAN: Oh, wow, that's what we call a tease in the television business.

CHAPMAN: That's what we call a tease, yes.

BERMAN: Isabelle Chapman, thank you so much for being with us.

CHAPMAN: Thank you so much.

BERMAN: And you can find out the answer to that question. You can see Isabelle's full story, "Civilian or Spy." Watch now on the CNN app.

And a brand-new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight, new details about the elaborate cloak and dagger plan to put President Trump on a secret flight out of Turkey after the NATO summit because of an assassination threat from Iran, all while the press and some of his staff unknowingly flew on the decoy plane.

Plus, the death toll rising to at least 175 people from a devastating earthquake in Colombia. That number jumping just this morning about 45 people. Rescuers racing this morning to find any survivors in the rubble.

And there's a height requirement to make it under this under -- overpass. Two tall trailer, didn't know about that, apparently. We're going to show you that dramatic dash cam again, ahead.

Kate, out today. I'm Sara Sidner, with John Berman. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BERMAN: Now you see him. Now you don't. CNN has confirmed that when President Trump boarded Air Force One to leave Turkey last month, this -- right there, his security team, they hid him because of an assassination threat from Iran. A U.S. official says the president was secretly moved to a catering truck that took him to a smaller plane, while the old Air Force One took off as a decoy with some reporters and some White House staffers still on board. The story was first reported by "The Washington Post." And one of the reporters who broke it, John Hudson, who covers national security for "The Post," is with us now.

John, first of all, like, congratulations. This is one heck of a story here. But talk to us about how concerned they were about this threat. What was it about this threat that had them take these extraordinary measures?

JOHN HUDSON, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Yes, there was obviously an extreme level of concern here. This is the type of deception campaign that is highly unusual in the history of the U.S. Secret Service. What we can say is that there was concern about a threat to the president's life deriving from Iran. We don't know that much more about it or how imminent it might have been. The context here, obviously, is, the United States is at a low boil war with Iran right now. And the president was in a country that shares a border with Iran. In the opening moments of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, Iran's supreme leader was assassinated. A number of Iran's military and political leadership have also been killed in this conflict. So, there's a real motivation for revenge on the Iranian part. And this is for sure the most acute way the president has felt that really come home, that threat that was created out of a policy decision that he made.

BERMAN: To say the least.

Now, obviously, the president's security, personal security is of paramount importance. And a huge amount of deference, I think, is given to the Secret Service on these measures of national security.

That said, on that plane that the president left, reporters, still some White House staff, the crew. And another way to say decoy is target. Did everyone on board know that there was a threat that was deemed too high for the president, but not for them?

HUDSON: They didn't know. And, in fact, members of the press were completely unaware that the president was no longer on the plane that they were on.

[09:05:04]

And even some White House officials did not know that the president had simply slipped away and was no longer on Air Force One anymore.

BERMAN: It is unsettling to know, again, that a place you are in and flying in the air is not safe enough for the president, but deemed to be safe enough for you.

And another part of the context here, and I think where some people get confused, is the Qatari-made plane that was gifted to the president, that's not the Air Force One plane that the president snuck off of. That had left hours before. At the time, the president claimed it turned out, not honestly, that it was going to tour and visit, you know, U.S. troops in Germany. That's what he wanted to do. But where does the Qatari jet figure in to this?

HUDSON: Yes, that's right. The luxury Qatari jet was over in Mildenhall. And as "The Times" had previously reported, the president and the White House decided not to have the president take that plane because of concerns that it didn't have the type of defensive security measures that were going to be necessary against this flight. It is a confusing tale.

And this is one of the reasons there is a lot of concern about what happened and why the press was deceived. If there isn't a lot of trust between the public and the president about his whereabouts if, God forbid, something did happen, this is the stuff that can create a lot of conspiracy theories. And that's why it's always best to have a trusting relationship with the press and the White House when it comes to the president's whereabouts and his security.

BERMAN: You know, John Hudson, as I said, this really is extraordinary reporting that you did. Our congratulations to you and your entire team. I know "The New York Times," after you reported, had a version of this out as well. And it's just a matter, as I said before, the president's security is of paramount importance. But this does raise substantial questions about, a, the Iranian threat, b, what is being told to the American people about this issue and many others. So, John, to you and your team, thank you very much.

Sara.

SIDNER: That was great reporting. Thank you so much, John, and John.

Happening now, voters in six states are at the polls today deciding critical primary races. Among them, another major test for Democrats in the Midwest. Wisconsin Democratic socialist Francesca Hong is widely favored to win the party's nomination in the governor's race. Her potential victory is sparking big concerns about whether she can pull off a win when it comes to the general election this fall.

CNN's Jeff Zeleny is outside a polling location in Madison, Wisconsin. A place I love.

Jeff, what are you hearing as you speak to voters about this? There is this, you know, progressive movement. And we've seen it happen in many different states. This is the latest where this -- the possibility that in the governor's race the Democratic socialist is right now polling on top.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Sara, good morning.

This has been a very active election morning so far here. The polls have only been open an hour. There has been a big stream of voters who are coming in. And as they've been coming out, we've been talking to them. They've been talking exactly about what you were just saying there. There is this contentious debate that's really going on inside the Democratic Party. Electability is of concern for so many people we have spoken to, literally to a person. But, of course, it means different things to different people. So, here's a sample of just what some Wisconsin voters are thinking as they're going to the polls today.

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CHRIS BOOTZ, WISCONSIN VOTER: Well, I personally think that arguments about electability have been used very much by party elites, for example, to control the outcomes of primaries.

KELLY WALTERS, WISCONSIN VOTER: Personally, David Crowley.

I really like Governor Evers, and I appreciate his kind of support there in a -- in a -- in a race where there's a lot of candidates and maybe not really knowing, at the end, kind of what the support is. So, I think that definitely helped me in my decision.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: So, Madison, of course, is in Dane County. It is a deep blue part of the state of Wisconsin. But that is the point here. I mean this is a Democratic primary for governor. And this race between Francesca Hong, who's a 37-year-old Democratic socialist state lawmaker, against David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, they are the leading contenders. A couple other candidates are still in the race as well. But voters truly are trying to decide, not only what they like right now, but looking ahead to November, because they do know Republicans are looking ahead to November.

Tom Tiffany, the Republican congressman from northern Wisconsin, also on the ballot, but he does not have that much of a competitive Republican primary here. So, the question is, which one of these Democratic candidates would be better to go against Tom Tiffany in the fall?

[09:10:03]

And, Sara, that is what voters truly are wrestling with.

But just a few weeks ago, this race was entirely different. The lieutenant governor, Sara Rodriguez, was one of the candidates. She dropped out because of money reasons. Mandela Barnes, who's a former lieutenant governor, he also dropped out of this race. So, tens of thousands of Wisconsin voters who cast their ballots early may have voted for someone who's not even in the race. But the people voting here today, coming out and going into this polling place, have a decision to make. And it is split right here about what people are thinking about electability and really following their own heart here in this key primary election.

Sara.

SIDNER: It will be interesting to see if those early voters, who they voted for, and since their votes, if they voted for someone that's now out of the race, don't count if that hasn't -- makes a difference in this race as well.

ZELENY: Right.

SIDNER: You will be watching it all, as you do so well, Jeff Zeleny, and reporting back to us. Thank you so much.

And tonight, make sure to tune in to live coverage as the polls are closing and the votes are being counted. "Election Night in America" beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern here on CNN and the CNN app.

All right, let's continue the discussion. Joining me now, Democratic Congressman Wesley Bell of Missouri.

I spent some time with you years ago in Ferguson when there were protests in the streets there. You were very active. You actually went up against a more progressive candidate and won your seat. However, as we were just learning there, the progressives and social Democrats are making some serious headway during primaries. Are you one of the Democrats that believe that their primary wins might actually hurt the party's chances in the general election?

REP. WESLEY BELL (D-MO): You know, Sara, I try to get away from the labels because, you know, there was a time when, as city councilman, I brought body cameras to every single officer, as D.A., I expanded treatment programs for folks struggling with mental health and substance abuse, as well as ending the death penalty while I was -- while I was in office. And so, many people would call that progress.

I think my benchmark is the fact that progressives are supposed to make progress. And at the end of the day, anyone who is willing to get involved, to help move our region and our country forward, we going to -- we're going to work with. But we got to make sure that we're getting things done for voters. SIDNER: Do you, though, worry, to the original question, that those

who are farther left of what you are speaking about, who are talking about things that are far farther left, are going to put the Democratic Party in a situation where, when it comes to trying to, for example, get Republican voters to change their minds, they aren't able to do that because of the sort of left-leaning nature of the candidate?

BELL: Well, if we don't take into -- take electability into this analysis, we're being naive because, if we -- because none of it matters if we don't win elections. We saw what happened in 2016 when there was a couch movement, a movement to -- for the independent, who took about six percent of the vote and Secretary Clinton lost by about three and a half to four points, that was the election. We lost three Supreme Court seats. We essentially lost the Supreme Court for a generation.

And so, yes, we do have to think about electability. And when we think about issues that do not align with working class families, working class families don't want to see police defunded and ended. We don't -- working class families who are impacted by crime don't want to see prisons abolished. And so, you -- so, at some point, many of these folks in that -- in that camp have to decide, OK, are you with us so we can get things done or are you on some different agenda that doesn't align with the agenda of the overwhelming number of Americans?

SIDNER: All right, let's move on to something that the president has done. President Trump has been roundly condemned by the medical community. But here's just one thing he said while he's signing executive orders to overhaul the vaccine recommendations for children.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: At one year you should have five separate visits for vaccines rather than getting them all in the same day. And I saw this early on, and I've seen proof of it, where they have a vaccination -- it looks like the size of a bottle of soda poured into a little child's body, and bad things happen in many cases, in too many cases, because this is an explosion. This is an epidemic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Have you ever, or anyone you know, ever seen vaccinations the size of a bottle of soda? Do you know what he is talking about here?

BELL: Sara, we got to make it make sense. One thing that I've learned is that, to the American people, please listen to experts and professionals when it comes to your health care.

[09:15:10]

Do not listen to Donald Trump. This is the same guy that was suggesting that we should inject ourselves with bleach, I think, during Covid, or something, something like that. So, in RFK, who has no credibility in this particular field or any particular field that I'm aware of.

And so, what we've seen is the -- a record number of measles cases, something that we had -- we had -- a problem we had solved. And that record was broken from last year's record that was also a record number of measles cases. And so, we see the trend that's happening. And it's not helping the health and welfare of our young people or our population, our American population in general. So, please, to the American people, don't listen to that. Listen to your doctors and the experts in the field.

SIDNER: Do you think the president is putting children in danger by doing what he's doing and talking about vaccine this way?

BELL: Well, I think -- I'm a data person. We're seeing a record number of diseases that we have actually cured. And we're seeing them -- we're seeing them rear their ugly heads again. And so, yes, that is a danger because we are seeing, not only an increase in these diseases, but an increase in deaths. And so, I do think that that is -- that is -- that is a concern that is scary when the most powerful person in the world with the largest platform in the world is peddling in these conspiracy theories, it is very dangerous.

But that leads us to another problem. Why aren't House Republicans and Senate Republicans joining us to hold this administration in check? And that's the question that I -- that I ask. I serve on the Oversight Committee. And we're seeing over and over Republicans stay silent because they don't have the courage to stand up to their president, their -- and I should say their king because he gets to do whatever he wants to do. And so, at some point, we have to do what the Americans, the American public sent us to do, which is to serve as a check on this administration.

SIDNER: Yes, we haven't heard from Republican congressmen or people in the House, but we have heard from Senator Bill Cassidy, who blasted the executive orders, very upset with what he is seeing come out of the White House now.

We will see where it goes from there. But, for now, thank you so much, Congressman Wesley Bell. Appreciate your time this morning.

All right, ahead, moments from now, Luigi Mangione will be back in court one final time before his state murder trial begins. What we can expect from today's pretrial hearing.

And Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg touting his new A.I. model and its benefits for society. But there are, of course, critics saying his predictions about the technology are ridiculously optimistic.

And failure just seconds after liftoff when a Chinese rocket carrying satellites suddenly explodes. How rare this is for this particular satellite.

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[09:22:27]

BERMAN: All right, the breaking news. The death toll is rising in Colombia after the 7.4 magnitude earthquake that hit the western part of the country. One hundred and seventy-five people are now confirmed dead, and that number could rise even more. We're seeing new images coming in. A family forced to flee their home as it crumbles right there. Dozens of buildings collapsed across the country. Hospitals, damaged. Seven airports shut down. Crews are racing to find survivors that might be trapped in the rubble. Five cities close to the epicenter remain on red alert.

Our David Culver is on the ground in one of the hardest hit areas. Connections are hard, but he was able to just send us this report.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID CULVER, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Sara and John, we have seen scenes like this scattered throughout Pereira. This is one of the hardest hit areas. And I want to bring you a little bit closer here because they've just started, once again, in trying to actively search for folks within what was an apartment building. And you can see, it's covered now, this entire street. They brought in a crane. They've had to bring in a fuel truck directly to the crane just to keep the operations going.

And I was speaking to a couple here who have friends that live in this apartment building, and they say that they were hearing yelling throughout the night. And it's for that reason that you have several dozen, not only firefighters and first responders, but then just locals who have jumped in to try to help in some fashion. I mean most don't even have the proper gear to do so. But you can see they're using buckets and they're trying to clear as much rubble as possible and they're hoping to get to the areas that they believe that those yells are coming from.

And folks are standing on the sidelines, let me show you, just trying to stay out of the way as much as possible, but also, they're taking this in because these are folks that they know, this is their community. Some of them are just standing almost in a daze with tears in their eyes as they're watching this play out.

And it's interesting, as we got to the first location in this city, mind you we had driven for eight hours from Bogota because flights weren't landing anywhere near here last night, we went to one location and we thought that was the most devastating part of the city. And we've been told at each location, no, you need to go to another. You need to go check out this location. Go see this. And that's what brought us here to Lasa Libertad (ph), where you can see there is just a continued effort right now to try to find whoever may still be alive. I mean we're just after 24 hours from when this earthquake struck.

[09:25:02]

And so, folks are still incredibly hopeful and yet feeling that urgency to try to get to whoever may still be alive in this collapsed structure here.

But again, I mean, you just go block after block within this city and you will see a lot of the streets are just filled with rubble that have come down from the buildings around.

I was also noticing that they had on, on the mountain roads that we were coming in on, and these were very windy, dark, difficult roads to traverse. You had a lot of basically personnel coming in from the capital, from Bogota, where we were coming in from, and they were going at really high speeds, just trying to get with all the equipment and resources they had to this location to assist in this effort because you can see, it's exhausting. And at this point, I mean, the numbers suggest 55 or so who have died in this city alone.

But I was talking to a couple who said, look, overnight they saw that six bodies were pulled out in rubble in this area. So, they're not confident that those numbers are going to stay that low.

Sara. John.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: All right, thank you to our David Culver and his team. Those numbers of dead have jumped significantly this morning.

Now we are standing by to see Luigi Mangione any minute, in a Manhattan court, for what could be his final public appearance before his high-profile murder trial begins. Jury selection is set to begin next month. Mangione is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024. Now, if convicted in the state murder case, he faces the possibility of life in prison.

Here now to dive into what we can expect in this trial and today, trial attorney Kelly Hyman.

Thank you so much for being here.

Can you give us some sense of what arguments are left, what this pretrial conference is going to entail that is happening before, of course, jury selection begins in September.

KELLY HYMAN, TRIAL ATTORNEY: Media access to this trial is going to be a key argument in today's case. And why is that important? From a defense standpoint, they want to make sure that the public sees this case, not only in the courtroom, but that it's going to be live streamed, that people are going to be able to see it. However, in New York law, they do not allow live public streaming. So, that's most likely not going to happen.

But they're also objecting to transparency. Under our Constitution, the defendant is entitled to a Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial, open to the public. And the defense are arguing that only six journalists are going to be there for the jury selection, and only 68 journalists are going to be there for the trial itself. So, they want to know why these jurors -- these journalists were chosen and get some more information about what (ph) that decision was made. SIDNER: Yes. Everybody was watching this case as it was happening. It

was news for weeks. There is a huge public interest in this case.

I do want to ask you about something that the defense did, where it decided not to use an extreme emotional disturbance defense after the judge said that Mangione's psychiatric records would then have to be turned over to the court. What does that tell you about the defense strategy at this point?

HYMAN: So, initially, the defense strategy was to mitigate the damages. And what does that mean? So, under this defense, the potential charge is murder in the state case. And it would lessen it to manslaughter. And what that means is that he would serve less time in jail if, in fact, that he was convicted.

However, in this case, the psych records had to be disclosed and also experts as well. So, potentially, there wasn't enough evidence to support the defense position about this defense. And that's why they withdrew it.

SIDNER: Kelly Hyman, thank you so much for walking us through that. This will probably be the last time we see Mangione in court until the trial date starts, which is in September, not too long from now. Appreciate your time this morning.

OK, ahead, the polls are open right now in Wisconsin for a high stakes primary. The outcome could reshape one of the country's biggest battleground states.

And a former flight attendant posed as a pilot and jetted around the world on hundreds of free flights. How this high-flying hoax ended up coming to an end.

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