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Trump Switched Planes in Elaborate Ruse Because of Iran Threat; Iran's Supreme Leader Reshapes Military Leadership; at Least 224 Dead Following 7.4 Magnitude Earthquake in Colombia; New Russia Strikes Kill Six, Injure at Least 19 in Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia; Waves of Storms Sweep the Midwest & East. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired August 11, 2026 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: -- Sources told us that agents had been investigating Ilya Beloozerov, but there's a twist for this story that really surprised all of us who worked on it. I'm not going to give it away here. You'll have to watch it on all access to find out.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": I guess we'll have to watch it on all access to find out. Thank you so much, Isabel. You can see Isabel's full story, "Civilian or Spy," right now on the CNN app and get answers to that twist.

Still to come, we've got some incredible new reporting about how the President of the United States was secretly shuttled away in a catering truck over fears of an Iranian assassination plot.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: We're learning new details this afternoon about an elaborate bait-and-switch decoy trick to protect President Trump from an assassination threat by Iran. The ruse played out last month as Trump was leaving the NATO summit in Turkey and you can see him here boarding Air Force One around 8:30 at night.

[13:35:00]

A short time later, you see this catering truck highlighted under Air Force One. U.S. official tells CNN that minutes after boarding the jet, the president was secretly moved into that truck to protect him. All of this playing out as journalists boarded the rear steps of Air Force One, highlighted here, believing they would be flying with the president on the scheduled trip to England.

It turns out the catering truck covertly rushed the president to a smaller military plane nearby, flying him to England, where he arrived before the Air Force One decoy. The reporters on this, "Air Force One flight" were told to put down the windows of their plane so that they didn't see any of the movement outside.

Let's discuss with Michael Allen. He's a former Special Assistant to President George W. Bush for National Security, also a former Senior Director for Counterproliferation at the National Security Council. Michael, great to see you, as always.

What do you make of this story? What does it tell you that the president has to use this kind of deception to get away from an Iranian threat?

MICHAEL ALLEN, SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH FOR NATIONAL SECURITY: Well, it tells us what I think we've known, which is that for some time, the Iranian government has been very interested in targeting senior officials of the United States government. It was at least -- it at least began as far back as when Qasem Soleimani was assassinated by the United States during President Trump's first term. And there were a number of other senior officials who they were after.

So I think it's appropriate that we're taking this very, very seriously. I understand why they would do a decoy operation. If I were doing it differently, I think you would try to tell the media whenever you could at the easy -- at the earliest opportunity. That probably was when they landed in the United Kingdom. I think there's a way to balance security and transparency. I don't know if it was out of whack here, but, you know, safety first, I guess.

SANCHEZ: But it also tells you something about Iran's potential capabilities, does it not?

ALLEN: Yeah.

SANCHEZ: Because this was leaving Turkey.

ALLEN: Yeah, and we don't feel great about Turkey these days, of course. I mean, I think Erdogan might play a little bit fast and loose with some of the organizations that we are very skeptical of throughout the Middle East.

And so to me, it made a little bit of sense that the Secret Service was appropriately worried about what might be happening inside of Turkey, even if they are a NATO ally. So I think Iran has capability. They're angry. We're obviously bombing them. And we have this long- storied unfortunate history with them. So it's kind of on brand for them to be coming after us.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, important point there about Turkey. I want to ask you about what is happening at the highest levels in Tehran. Iran's new Ayatollah shook up his military leadership, elevating hardline members of the IRGC. How should we read that shift in approach?

ALLEN: So I think it's sort of consolidating what we think we already knew, which was that at the death of the Ayatollah some weeks ago, mostly at Israel's hands, there has been a more hard line. If you can say that, you know, they're all pretty hard line. But there's been more of a hard line sort of faction of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who is taking power and calling all the shots.

I think that was evidenced most recently by Sunday when they said, in addition to what we want --

SANCHEZ: New demands. ALLEN: New demands. All these things we've said for years, but we're reiterating them now. They know, of course, the United States could never agree to reparations or to get out of the entire Middle East. But it might be just indicative of where we are in the negotiations. We're having a hard time with them. We've lost some leverage, and we're trying to find our way through it.

SANCHEZ: So if this new military leadership means being more aggressive toward opponents outside Iran and more hard line against any dissidents inside, that obviously means that a deal is going to be harder to reach, a comprehensive deal.

ALLEN: I think so. I mean, I subscribe to this school of thought that they're all hard liners, and they all want to perpetuate the regime. There's just some that might want to do it differently than others. There's some that believe any compromise with the United States would compromise their own regime, if you will.

There are others who I think want to perpetuate the Islamic Revolution, of course, inside of Iran. But they might think to themselves, you know what, the best way to do it is to make sure we don't have any massive economic problems like we did in January. So right now, I think the latter group is probably on the decline and the really, really, really hard liners are in the ascendance again.

SANCHEZ: Michael Allen, great to get your perspective. Thanks for joining us.

ALLEN: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Brianna?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": We want to get back now to our Breaking News that we have been following this hour. These are actually live pictures coming to us from Pereira, Colombia, where search and rescue operations are intensifying after that devastating 7.4 magnitude earthquake on Monday. At least 224 people have died. And what we have been seeing is crews here in Pereira, as they move debris, they're looking for survivors, people who actually had been calling out overnight.

CNN's David Culver is on the scene watching all of this as it happens. He's joining us now to talk a little bit about it. David, tell us what you've been seeing.

[13:40:00]

DAVID CULVER, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's all a rush of first responders from here in Pereira trying to figure out how much closer they can get. And they were moving a lot of the vehicles off to the side and positioning themselves to be able to pull out anyone who potentially is stuck within that rubble.

And you can see this is just one of the ambulances just behind us here that's backed in. And they're ready with stretchers, closer towards the rubble to try to bring folks up. And you can see also this has been a line that has just been extended.

All of these folks are volunteers. And when we got here a couple of hours ago, this didn't exist at all. They started to mobilize people, realizing that they were hearing a response to the calls from within the concrete slab.

So all of these people just started rushing up. And you can see now this line continues all the way past the intersection. And they were struggling to even get people to move that car. So they decided to just dump the buckets of concrete and metal on the other side, onto the sidewalk, just to continue to extend it away from the source, from what was an apartment building, four stories high. On the ground level, you had a drugstore. You had a restaurant.

And we're told, at least by a couple of the locals here, that they believe that there's a young girl that's still trapped inside, an older woman that was described by one business owner just at the corner here. Others have said, no, there's more people in there. We know in the past 24 hours or so that they've pulled out seven individuals.

Three of them did not make it. The other four are being treated and seem to be survivors in this as of now. Now, here in Pereira, I mean, this is a city that, just to put it in context, it's about a half million population. So think of Minneapolis or Raleigh, North Carolina. It's sizable. And this is one plaza that we've been focused on.

But we've driven to several different parts of the city center. And damage is on almost every street. And if you're able to even actually pass through a street, you'll see the facade.

Let me just try to turn around here just to give you a sense. We're still keeping tabs on the rescue efforts. But this kind of gives you a sense, looking at the facade up there, you can see that's a totally exposed apartment. You can see bedding and a family's kitchen. And all of that, of course, has crumbled down onto the street. A lot of that has landed on vehicles.

So it's quite widespread within this city. And as you can see now, I mean, I just want to point your attention to what's been kind of going on and off. There are moments where they will mobilize like this.

And you can hear the glass and the rubble being dumped onto the pavement. And then they will put their hands in the air and they will call for silence. And that happens every few minutes because they're once again trying to see if they can get a response from within.

We've heard a lot of cheers, a lot of excitement. We even saw at one moment several first responders rushing towards this, carrying stretchers. And we thought perhaps they were going to be able to pull somebody out. But that stopped. And they then brought in utilization of this crane once again. And they've started to hoist up some of the massive slabs of concrete.

All of this, you'll notice people are covered up. They're wearing hats. They're trying to cover their face because of anything that they could be exposed to. But more than anything, it's intense, brutal heat. And yet they're out here trying to stay hydrated, trying to stay mobilized. And now, you can see they're even moving. So we're going to step aside here because I don't want to get in their way.

But they're trying to just continue the movement of what was an apartment building and is now essentially being disassembled onto the street and into the intersection here. This has been going on now through the night. We were told that in the middle of the night, one of the reasons that they decided to bring in even more first responders is they were hearing yelling at one point. That yelling, at least from where we stand, is no longer audible. It has subsided.

But there is still enough of a response that they've been getting in some of these intermittent moments that has obviously kept them continually trying to search for whoever may be trapped within that space.

We were in another plaza not too far from here earlier today. And there was another situation where I looked up and I saw two buildings right in between a massive space. And you realize as you look down, that building too had collapsed. I mean, this is happening in several parts of this city, Brianna.

And right now, I think folks are, the adrenaline from what they felt yesterday is starting to subside, and you've got a mix of confusion and trying to process it. One guy said, you know, as of now, it's just you want to have hope, but also you're realizing there's just so much to overcome.

KEILAR: Yeah, but in these hours after this happened, it is still that hour count.

[13:45:00]

We are just so hopeful as they are. You see the folks on that bucket brigade. They are hoping that this is going to end in something positive, and getting some people out of that building as they've been able to do so far.

David, thank you so much. We'll continue to check in with you about the scene there in Pereira. We really appreciate that live shot.

Ukraine bringing the war closer to Moscow, striking a warehouse that's the equivalent of Amazon in Russia. We're live from Kyiv right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:50:00]

SANCHEZ: Happening overnight, Russia launching deadly new strikes in Ukraine, killing six and injuring 19 in the city of Zaporizhzhia, according to authorities. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the attack involved North Korean ballistic missiles. In Kyiv, a Russian strike sparked a fire after damaging a warehouse, wounding at least one person. Attacks also hit the grounds of a children's hospital, but fortunately, no one was injured there. The Russian assault comes amid Ukraine's ongoing drone attacks on the warehouses of Russia's largest online retailer, Wildberries. Video shows a fire engulfing a warehouse near Ukraine's border.

Let's go to CNN Chief International Security Correspondent, Nick Paton-Walsh, who was on the ground in Kyiv with the latest. Nick, what are you seeing right now?

NICK PATON-WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Yeah, Boris, you join me in the wreckage of what was six days ago a shopping mall, but one of the many places in the capital, Kyiv, that have now become vulnerable to Russia's ballistic missiles, the waves of them that often come nightly, simply because Ukraine has run out of U.S.- designed, often supplied Patriot interceptor missiles.

For so many years of the war, Kyiv was a comparative bubble of safety. That is now over. And I have to tell you, the feeling here, a stark change from often seeing streets where people during air raid sirens would walk around non-chalantly, you'd wonder why they weren't paying more attention.

Today, we had one ballistic alert and people were running for the subway, simply because they know these missiles are going to get through. They got through here, they got through and hit, you mentioned that child's hospital. The patients were in the shelter then, but less lucky, Zaporizhzhia, a key city in the south where seven are now said to have been killed.

And these were employees of the same civilian enterprise who were running for the shelter and caught by a missile, a North Korean KN-23, when they tried to run for safety. That's what's changed remarkably here. And President Zelenskyy of Ukraine has been clear that the war seems to sort of change every three to six months or so.

Look, three months ago, I was here talking about how Ukraine's jump forward in technology of drones had given them kind of the upper hand to some degree. Now, the shoe seems to be somewhat on the other foot. Russia knows that Ukraine is basically out of Patriot interceptors because of the shortage of the use during the Gulf War, because of the general crisis across Europe and the U.S. in terms of these high-tech weapons.

President Trump did suggest he'd let Ukraine license their own production of those weapons. That seems to have stalled, if not fallen apart entirely. But every single night here, it's an urgent demand to bring back their ability, frankly, to sleep with some degree of safety.

On the other side too, in Russia, you mentioned the Wildberries, Amazon-like delivery system being hit. It seems that over 10 percent, according to some reports, of their capabilities have been taken out by Ukrainian attacks, Ukraine saying they're part of military logistical supplies. But just yesterday, 180 kilometers from the border with Russia in Voronezh in Russia, 16,000 square meters was hit by fire from a drone attack.

So both sides feeling the pain here, but it's important to point out Ukraine's retaliatory strikes into Russia are significantly dwarfed by the damage that's been done, often nightly, across Ukraine by this barrage of Russian ballistic missiles. We hear and see less now of drones being used by Russia. They seem to have decided and clearly recognized the weakness in Ukraine's air defenses.

They were using 60 a month back in May, I think, and now we're talking dozens, sometimes every single night. They know what gets through and they're upping it during the summer, bringing a new wave, frankly, of panic and terror in Ukraine and real fears about how bad it could get in the winter ahead, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Nick Paton-Walsh, live for us in Kyiv. Thank you so much for that report.

So a wave of storms is threatening to bring flash flooding to the Midwest and East today. Look at this image. We'll look at what towns are in danger when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:59:02]

KEILAR: Flash flooding and destructive winds are hitting large swaths of the Midwest. We've already seen tornado warnings issued for Chicago, and in Ohio, there have been water rescues and just crazy scenes on the roads.

CNN Meteorologist Derek Van Dam is joining us on this. Derek, what are you seeing?

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yeah, Brianna, you have to see this moment. Ohio Department of Transportation cameras captured a vehicle being caught off guard by straight-line winds flipping it in the air. You'll see it right there, right across Interstate-71. This is just outside of Columbus. That is because of the straight-line winds, not confirmed tornado, from that particular event.

But the multiple rounds of thunderstorms made the Chicago skyline look like this, ominous shelf clouds moving through, hurricane-force gusts. Now we can officially classify this as a derecho, which is a widespread severe windstorm lasting for over 250 miles, producing winds in excess of 75 miles per hour.

And there's some impressive satellite imagery coming out of this area. Gravity waves because of the explosive growth, lots of lightning. The wind has been responsible for knocking out the --