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Former U.S. Marine Robert Gilman Released from Detention in Russia; Race to Rescue Survivors After Devastating Colombia Earthquake; Iran's Supreme Leader Reshapes Military Leadership; July was the Hottest Month in the U.S. Since Records Began in 1895. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired August 11, 2026 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

JENNIFER HANSLER, CNN SENIOR REPORTER AND WRITER, NATIONAL SECURITY: He was released on humanitarian grounds from Russian detention today amid those concerns for his health and allegations that he was tortured both physically and psychologically while he was in Russian detention for more than four years. Trump indicated he had spoken with President Vladimir Putin about the case and that Putin agreed to release him on those humanitarian grounds. Nothing was exchanged or given to secure his release.

Now, this is something that the U.S. had been pushing the Russian government for some time to release him on that humanitarian condition because of those concerns about his health. His advocate said he had slipped into a state of psychosis just weeks ago, so he is on his way back for treatment now -- Boris.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Yes, and we're hoping for a smooth and speedy recovery for him. Jennifer Hansler, thank you so much for that report from the State Department.

Still to come, some leadership changes underway in the Iranian military. So will they hurt or help prospects for a peace deal with the U.S.? That story straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:35:00]

SANCHEZ: We want to get you back to the breaking news we've been following today. Search and rescue operations intensifying in Colombia following a devastating 7.4 magnitude earthquake on Monday. At least 224 people have died.

We've been watching crews in Pereira as they move debris in search of survivors. Let's go to CNN's David Culver who's on the scene watching all of this as it happens and joining us now by phone. David, what are you seeing there?

DAVID CULVER, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Neighbors tell me, Boris, that three of the dead came out of that collapsed apartment building and they're hoping to try to get to at least two others that are believed to be inside. A little girl, according to one business owner, and an older woman. But I've heard from other neighbors who say, no, there are even more people inside.

This effort has just grown in the past hour or so since we last talked to you guys. And you can see there's now multiple lines that they've built out here. And what you're seeing is the buckets will come from the source.

We have a camera that's a bit closer so you can get a sense of what's happening up there as they are the ones actively on top of this massive pile of rubble and calling out and waiting for responses. And we've heard at times that they have been getting responses. We ourselves have not heard those responses, though rescuers who are close enough to the source have.

And they have silenced everyone, hundreds of people that have filled this square so that they can hear anyone calling out. And then as soon as they're able to resume the work, they start to shout orders and those are relayed all the way down. And you can see there's an inner line that they're bringing massive amounts of concrete and rubble.

And you've got mangled metal and plastic and all sorts of things, even furniture from some of the homes. We've even seen some personal items that they have brought out because remember this was an apartment building too. And we've even seen at times they've had these massive slabs.

I don't know if you can see this. David, you can show here. I mean, this is longer than probably six feet long.

You've seen two or three people just dragging these massive slabs of concrete. Mind you, it is 90 plus degrees out here, intense sun. And even some of these volunteers, because you'll note you don't have a lot of folks in uniform.

You have a few of the Pereira folks who are up there. And Pereira has like a fire department up there and some of the visiting officials from other jurisdictions helping out. But most of the people are locals.

And this is a city known as a city without law.

SANCHEZ: And again, we've been having difficulties connecting with David in part because of some of the infrastructure issues in Colombia. These are live images, though, coming from Pereira where you see that heavy equipment has been moved in trying to get to what is believed to be survivors of this earthquake that are now trapped underground. We're going to keep checking back in with David on the progress of that rescue effort and monitor this as we get new developments and hope for signs of life -- Brianna.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Iran's new supreme leader is reshuffling the country's military leadership and experts say the promotion of more than a half dozen hardliners to top security positions suggests a more complicated picture for the U.S. The shakeup coming as President Trump says the U.S. and Iran are semi-negotiating. Tehran says no talks are happening at all. Both sides are demanding compensation now as a precondition for talks.

Iran is also calling for the withdrawal of all American troops from the region and the release of billions of dollars in frozen assets as a condition for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Let's talk about this now with retired Army Major General Randy Manor. He's a former deputy commanding general of the U.S. 3rd Army in Kuwait. All right, General, what does the shakeup of the Iranian military leadership tell you? The supreme leader has purportedly named an IRGC veteran as national security chief and then elevated these six hardliners to top security positions.

MAJ. GEN. RANDY MANNER, U.S. ARMY (RET.): It further complicates the entire situation and makes any kind of a reasonable solution to continue to be eluded by both sides. The Iranians know that they have the upper hand in terms of the bargaining position. It is my opinion this is going to harden their demands.

And of course we have our own president who is backtracking and now saying that he expects compensation. It is probably true that there are some limited negotiations ongoing, but quite frankly they are probably not substantial. And so again, the world waits.

KEILAR: Yes, I mean, so tell us where we are right now because Trump says Hormuz is open, but actual shipping data indicates it very much is not.

[14:40:00]

And Trump says the U.S. is in low-key -- is low-keying negotiations with Iran. There's been relatively little military activity. Are we just seeing this in sort of a waiting game right now?

MANNER: It's literally a waiting game. You have both sides who are refusing to move, and the Iranians are again in the upper hand. The whole idea that this is about nuclear materials we know to be a complete farce.

The president himself said he destroyed their nuclear capability two wars ago. And the problem is the Iranians now have something much more powerful than a nuclear weapon.

It's called they now can control the Strait at any point to eliminate -- or excuse me, significantly reduce the oil that goes through there. I mean, there are estimates that this is costing the world somewhere between $1 trillion to $3 trillion. And of course the American share about that is somewhere about half a trillion dollars.

It's shocking how much the negative impact has been on the world because of this venture of our president.

KEILAR: We also learned overnight about the secret plane switch by the president last month when he was flying out of Turkey for the NATO summit on an alternate military plane as part of an elaborate ruse that was prompted by an Iranian threat. What are the possibilities of the actual scope of that threat? MANNER: It's difficult to say. And why I say it in that way is because the Iranians would, on one side, perhaps want Trump to be out of being the president. On the other hand, the Iranians also know that with Trump in, quite frankly they're in significant control of the situation.

So I think this, quite frankly, is propaganda on both sides. I think it's the Iranians doing saber-rattling against the president. It's our president doing saber-rattling against the Iranians.

I think that the true amount of threat to the president probably is, quite frankly, pretty low. So, again, it's so difficult to see or to understand how much you can really trust on either side about what they're saying in public.

KEILAR: Let's talk about how big this war is actually getting here. A Saudi-owned commercial vessel was reportedly struck by a missile while it was moving through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea. The Iran-backed Houthis warned last month that they would target any Saudi ship transiting that, Strait.

They've also claimed other recent attacks, various ones, on Saudi assets. Do you consider this another front in the war at this point? How do you see it?

MANNER: It's an escalation of the situation in the Middle East. One other very striking development was that Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey signed a pact that an attack against any is an attack against all. The Israelis, in my opinion, this is backfiring on them because now they have three very powerful Muslim nations that are, quite frankly, united where they were not united previously.

And one of them happens to have a nuclear weapon capability. So I think this is getting more and more difficult. It's getting more and more dangerous in the Middle East.

And, quite frankly, in that entire hemisphere.

KEILAR: All right. Major General Randy Manner, we thank you so much for being with us.

MANNER: Thank you.

KEILAR: Still to come, it has been, you know it, a brutally hot summer. It has been bad, right? So we're going to break down the factors that are driving that, what has turned July into the hottest month ever recorded in the U.S., and how that heat is also driving up your health care costs.

[14:45:00]

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SANCHEZ: If this summer has felt unusually hot, that's not your imagination. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed July was the single hottest month ever recorded in the United States, breaking records dating all the way back to 1895.

Our chief climate correspondent Bill Weir joins us now. Bill, great to see you as always. All of this was driven by those heat domes that we've been experiencing?

BILL WEIR, CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Well, a lot of this was driven by climate change, Boris, which then leads to these heat domes, which is also an El Nino year. But all of those factors adding up to put this one on top. And just for context, this is for 1,500 months in a row, going back to the Grover Cleveland administration, U.S. government has been tracking monthly temperatures. July 26, number one. A lot of people who like to cast doubt on climate science say, what about the Dust Bowl in 1936? Blows past the Dust Bowl.

We can stop talking about the Dust Bowl. This is it. 76.9 degrees. That's 3.3 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average. It was 3.7 degrees above when it comes to overnight lows. And that's why it was so bad.

Number of monthly records broken, over 600 heat records of different types. Fewer than 50 cold records in the same time. And on a planet in balance, those two numbers should balance out.

229 cities now 2.6 degrees warmer in July. And as mentioned, the causes of this, man-made climate change, all those gigatons of carbon floating above us, holding the sun's heat in, causing those heat domes. And then, again, the El Nino year, which is kind of like already having a fever, you know, a three and a half degree fever, and then getting into a sauna for a year in an El Nino year is what's going to send these up.

[14:50:00]

And so this could be one of the coolest Julys of the rest of our lives, given the state of things, but here we are.

SANCHEZ: Yes, tough when you think about it that way. It's also notable that the data, this record-breaking data, the way it was released was unusual, wasn't it?

WEIR: Yes, this typically comes out on NOAA's homepage, National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. Instead, this was buried on some obscure environmental reporting with an anodyne headline and a picture of a horse. Some anonymous sources have told my colleague, Andrew Friedman, as he reports in today's CNN Weather newsletter -- which you should definitely get -- but that people within NOAA are deliberately trying to signal there's nothing to see here in order to keep these reports flowing.

They're afraid Donald Trump will shut all of these down in his animosity against climate science, but it's out there. The information may be harder to find, but knowledge is power in these days. And so we'll keep tabs on it best we can, even if they try to move this information from the public eye.

SANCHEZ: The headline was a picture of a horse? WEIR: Yes, a grazing horse, a thumbnail. And I can give you the actual

headline was "Assessing the U.S. temperatures and precipitation in July 2026."

SANCHEZ: Talk about bearing the lead. Yes, Bill Weir. Bill Weir, thank you so much for that report -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Now to some of the other headlines that we're watching this hour, including a setback for the Chinese space program.

That was a rocket exploding less than a minute and a half after blasting off on Monday night. It was supposed to carry a satellite into orbit, but China's state run news agency says it experienced an anomaly during flight without providing any more information there. This particular rocket has only failed one other time, and that was during its maiden flight back in 2020.

Also, the Department of Transportation and the FAA just installed a new radar at Newark Liberty International Airport. The spinning arm is part of a surface awareness system designed to monitor aircraft on the ground to prevent accidents.

That radar replaces a 30-year-old dome that served a similar purpose but was breaking often. The FAA aims to install a total of 53 new systems at the country's 44 busiest airports.

And some sad news. Jackie, the beloved California bald eagle, and the Internet sensation died on Monday after being treated for an illness at the vet. For over a decade, nature lovers could tune in to a video feed, like this one, of Jackie and her partner Shadow. You see him there, tending to their nest, living their lives.

The pair lived in the trees near Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains. A local nonprofit installed that camera that you see there that we all got to enjoy back in 2015 to capture the highs and lows of the annual breeding season. Jackie became a symbol of the recovery of the bald eagle, a species that was once on the brink of extinction.

And still to come, FIFA's president facing calls to resign, but Gianni Infantino is getting a forceful defense from a powerful ally.

[14:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: We're looking at live pictures now as we closely monitor what is happening in Colombia, specifically here. This is Pereira, where people are working to try to rescue people who are trapped under the rubble. And in that particular area that you're looking at, neighbors had said that they heard some folks overnight.

So they are very much concentrating on this area. This was a 7.4 magnitude quake. It's a critical time in the search for survivors.

Their chances of survival, of course, are dwindling with each passing hour. We're going to go to CNN's reporter on the ground, David Culver, here in just a few minutes for an update.

In the meantime, FIFA president Gianni Infantino is receiving public backing from President Trump after there have been a lot of calls for him to resign. The president said in a social media post that FIFA would be making a terrible mistake if they even considered replacing Infantino. The criticism towards Infantino is stemming from the handling of a now-scrap proposal which planned to sell off a portion of the commercial and operational rights of the World Cup and other competitions to private investors.

CNN's Andy Scholz has the latest on this FIFA fight.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Well, President Trump is now defending FIFA president Gianni Infantino as calls for him to resign continue to get stronger. President Trump has got a very good relationship with Infantino, posting on Truth Social Monday night, saying "FIFA would be making a terrible mistake if for any reason they even considered replacing President Gianni Infantino. He is fantastic, having just presided over the most successful World Cup by four times ever presented. If he is gone, it will never be as successful or profitable again. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President DJT.

Now, that post comes right after the soccer governing bodies from Europe, North America, and Asia jointly said that Infantino's failed commercial proposal for the World Cup was a fundamental breach of trust.

Now, they released a letter which read in part, "Leadership in football is not a possession. It is not about holding or demanding power to be held. It is a duty of service to the football family that entrusts it."

Now, it went on to add, "When trust is broken through deception, when an individual places himself above the collective that entrusted ...

END