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Democratic Socialists Score Another Upset in Florida Senate Primary; Democrats and Republicans Net Favorability; OpenAI Discloses One of Its AI Agents Hacked into Another Platform. Aired 9:30-10a ET
Aired August 19, 2026 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[09:30:00]
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: And we have a winner of who can yell "timber" the best and mightiest.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Timber.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Timber.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's get ready to timber.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So this morning, the results are in. A surprise victory in the Florida Senate Democratic primary, where Angie Nixon defeated Alex Vindman despite being outraced. $16 million to about $1 million.
The spending difference was huge as well. It's one of a number of primary victories for Democratic Socialists this summer that have rattled the party establishment.
[09:35:00]
With us now is Matt Bennett, the Executive Vice President of Public Affairs and co-founder of the moderate group Third Way, which recently announced a $15 million campaign to take on the progressive left. Matt, first of all, describe your emotions last night between the hours of 7 and 8:10 as the results were coming into the Florida Senate primary.
MATT BENNETT, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Yes, my emotions all season have been very mixed, let's just say. And that's how we felt again last night. Jared Moskowitz won easily in his race against a DSA member, which puts a House race very much on the board for Democrats.
He could win that. It's going to be tough. But had the DSA member won that primary, it would have been impossible.
And in the Senate race, it was always going to be difficult to win that. But now, probably impossible.
BERMAN: But what does it tell you in a state like Florida, where the Democratic Socialists can be outspent, like at least 10 to 1 in that candidate, but still win?
BENNETT: Look, voters are very angry. And they have a right to be angry. Trump is doing horrible things to this country.
And Democrats are apoplectic about that. All Democrats are from every corner of the party. What they're doing is kind of flipping over the tables.
They're super pissed. And they're taking on anyone that they view as the establishment. And it's much harder for people like that to win.
So Vindman, even though he's not an elected official, had the backing of Washington. And that was kind of the kiss of death.
BERMAN: So if you are, as part of this third way, you know, closer to the Democratic establishment, as it were, how do you prove to voters that you too are pissed?
BENNETT: Yes, look, it's incumbent on us to, first of all, close ranks. We have now basically done with the primary season. There's a couple left, but it's mostly over.
We now have to elect Democrats everywhere. Every single Democrat that has won their nomination, we need to be behind, and we are. But we also have to be clear that we think what has happened in this country, not just under Trump, which has been a catastrophe, but under the last 20 years, just isn't enough.
We have to do more to make sure that if you bust your butt in this country, you can get ahead.
BERMAN: So to be clear, the $50 million you announced to run against the progressive left, not for the midterms.
BENNETT: No, no.
BERMAN: So what are you going to use it for?
BENNETT: Definitely not. And actually, we're not going to use it against any candidates. This is an effort to wake up the Democratic establishment, not about the progressive left.
We're not talking about, you know, people that are in the progressive caucus. We're talking about the DSA itself. And the DSA itself is a really destructive force.
They have a platform that calls for the abolition of prisons, the Senate, the presidency, the Supreme Court, NATO, and the Department of Defense, among many other things. No sane Democrat wants to do that.
And we need to make sure that voters who are angry understand the difference between progressive Democrats and the DSA. BERMAN: Axios, which I think is the one who first wrote up your $50 million effort, said there is a challenge, though, that you have. You're part of the party, which is explaining to Democratic voters what exactly you're for.
BENNETT: Yes, look, we do. And it's not just Third Way. It's everybody in the center left.
We have got to be clear that we understand the scale of the problem, that we're not for, you know, little technical fixes. People are suffering. A hundred billion people have medical debt.
That is an outrage. I mean, you could go down the list on all these issues. People cannot afford to live in this country in ways that they have come to expect that they should.
And we need answers that are scaled to that problem. I think we'll have them as we enter the primary season next year. When we get into the presidential process, then the ideas are going to come.
BERMAN: You mentioned the key word there, the P word, the presidential thing, where things will be vastly different. I expect you guys will be playing in a pretty big way there. Matt Bennett, great to see you.
Thanks so much.
BENNETT: Thank you.
BERMAN: Sara.
Lighting strike from Mother Nature. New video captures the exact moments a bolt of lightning struck an historic World War II battleship -- and Sara.
SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, look at this. A colossal custard catastrophe. We take you to the viral moment and his response to all this.
That's like a normal Tuesday for me.
[09:40:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BERMAN: So backstage the other day, CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten says to me, we're friends, right? And I say, I like you. I like you, Harry.
HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Thank you.
BERMAN: You know who people don't like right now?
ENTEN: I'm not sure if I'm liking you too much. Continue.
BERMAN: The political parties in the United States. People do not like the political parties in the U.S. The question is, what are the implications of the fact that people like neither party?
The aforementioned Harry Enten, whom I like very much --
ENTEN: Thank you.
BERMAN: -- is here now to discuss this. How do people feel about the political parties?
ENTEN: We hate everybody. You know, one of the things we talk about, oh, President Trump's approval rating is so low. And then we say, you know what?
Hey, maybe that's counteracted by the Democratic Party's brand, which is also in the toilet. Well, you know what's also in the toilet besides that. It's the Republican brand.
I mean, look at these numbers. Party's net favorability on average. The Democrats are 19 points underwater, barely beating the Republicans, who are 20 points underwater, way down there swimming with the fishes.
It's a race to the bottom. And at this particular point, Republicans are winning this race that you don't want to win. But both of these parties are despised.
BERMAN: So there are clearly people who don't like both parties or either party. We call these people double haters. This is a very important voting group.
If you are a double hater.
[09:45:00]
ENTEN: If you're a double hater, this is what we were talking about, right? You know, you go back to 2016, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, wildly disliked. But Donald Trump won that election because he won the plurality of voters who said they didn't like either candidate.
That is the key block this year. The voters who don't like Republicans or Democrats. And who are they going for?
This is why the Democratic Party has the race in -- has the edge for the race for the House of Representatives. Choice for House, dislike both parties. Look at this.
Democrats at 49 percent, Republicans at 26 percent. So Democrats have a very large advantage among those who dislike both parties. And this is what is allowing them to get out into that lead on the generic congressional ballot.
It is the reason why they are favorites to take back the U.S. House of Representatives this fall is because amongst those who dislike both parties, a group that Republicans have won in the years that they have done well, a group that Democrats have won in the years that they have done well, Democrats have a very clear double digit, over 20 point advantage.
BERMAN: And this is the number we're going to keep our eye on through November here, the double haters here. This is a big lead. If the lead stays this big, that could tell us where things are headed in November.
One of the issues people care about the most, if not the issue, is affordability, right? And you get the sense that voters don't like either party on that, but --
ENTEN: Yes, but, and we're going to have a little fun here because I'm not quite sure if I did this right. No, I did this right. I got the right side in there.
I was a little bit worried there, but here we go. Effects of parties' policies on the cost of living. What is driving this number?
Look, Democrats are not particularly liked. Just 36 percent say that they help on the cost of living compared to actually the plurality, 38 percent who say hurt. But look at this Republican number.
They are hated even more. 55 percent on the key issue of the day say that their policies actually have hurt you on the cost of living. No wonder Democrats are ahead at this point.
BERMAN: This is a roadmap for the type of language you would expect Democrats to use heading into November. Gas prices, of course, have been a big deal. Right now, what are the prediction markets saying about where they might be headed?
ENTEN: Yes, this is the cost of living, right? Hello, chance that the gas prices on election day are above $3.50 per gallon. Look at this. 81 percent chance, according to the Kalshi prediction market, that number up like a rocket.
This is why Republicans or Americans think that Republicans hurt them on the cost of living. This number holds, this number holding, right? Well, I'll tell you this much.
Adios amigos, goodbye. See you later, that Republican House majority and maybe that Senate majority as well.
BERMAN: Harry Enten, this is why I do like you. Thank you.
ENTEN: Oh my God, this is so beautiful.
BERMAN: Thank you very much. We have a lot of news this morning.
We'll be right back.
[09:50:00]
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SIDNER: Some new body cam video here showing the terrifying moment a deck collapsed there under U.S. Marshals. There's a task force there in Huntsville, Missouri, on that deck. Nine officers all fell as they were trying to serve an arrest warrant for a man wanted on sex offender registration violations.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I'm good. I'm good. I'm good.
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SIDNER: Man, that could have ended really, really badly. But there were some marshals who were hurt. You hear the guy saying there, I'm good.
None of them, though, suffered life-threatening injuries, all expected to be OK. The suspect, it turned out, wasn't home, but was later arrested that day.
All right, we love our frozen custard, but not like this. A Wisconsin frozen custard shop employee is going viral for this colossal custard fumble. You can see him try to pour it in the machine and then fail.
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CARTER SAMPSON, GILLES FROZEN CUSTARD EMPLOYEE: I could just feel my hand slip. And as soon as it slipped, I just, I don't remember anything after that other than being covered in the shake mix.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: You know, the people in Wisconsin, they don't mess around when it comes to their dairy. But the worker says, all is well. His boss told him, look, go home, take a shower.
He's like, all in a day's work. These things happen. It would happen to me, for sure if I was doing that job -- Kate.
BOLDUAN: I mean, it would happen to all of us. Like, that was a lot of shake mix. I defend him, and I support.
I love that he, like, takes his glasses off. He's like, OK. Back at it.
SIDNER: Back into the custard.
BOLDUAN: Exactly. And we love him for it. A little milkshake can make everything better.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is announcing a new round of new safeguards around training and testing now after its AI agents hacked another company last month. Remember, AI agents hacked into a startup called Hugging Face.
We spoke with the CEO afterward and searched for an answer key outside its testing environment. It's called breaking out of the sandbox. It's said another way, not good.
CNN's Hadas Gold tracking this one for us. Hadas, what are the new safeguards? What do they mean?
HADAS GOLD, CNN AI CORRESPONDENT: So OpenAI is actually pausing some of its work on its models over these safety concerns. And it's triggered not only by the Hugging Face incident, but also by the capabilities, they say, one of their new unreleased models, Astra, that they've seen that it's capable of carrying out these autonomous cybersecurity attacks because that could lead to some dangerous situations. We saw what happened with Hugging Face.
You can imagine that another model that's under testing or in some other scenario, takes some unsanctioned actions and hacks into something that's, you know, critical to our everyday lives, whether that be water or the financial system or something like that. So OpenAI says that it's now also beefing up a lot of its testing and training. One of the things that they're beefing up is that testing environment, that sandbox.
One of the ways that model got out was through a bug that it found in a third party software that was used in this testing environment. That's essentially supposed to be a contained lab, but instead the model found a hole to get out to the open internet and then hack into the system.
[09:55:00]
So now they say they're going to be raising the security standards to really isolate that testing environment in a way that these models should not be able to get out. One of the other things that happened is these AI agents from OpenAI, they were doing their work for several weeks actually, before anybody realized what was going on. They were working on their own.
It was actually Hugging Face who first noticed that they were being hacked before OpenAI understood what was really going on as well. So now OpenAI says that they're going to do better monitoring of their agents. They say that now they've developed a system that will issue an alert within 30 minutes of any sort of concerning activity.
They're also going to work on something called alignment. This is something in AI where you train a model to act the way you want it to act. Because what happened in these models when they were hacking other systems, they were taking unsanctioned actions.
The human testers did not tell them, go hack the system. In OpenAI's case, the agent was supposed to take a test. And instead of taking the test, they decided the best way to do it was to cheat and get the answer key.
The humans never told the agents to go hack another system. The agent made that decision completely on its own. So OpenAI says it's doing better to try and train these models better alignment to better detect and discourage what they call unsafe behavior.
Be honest about their actions. They say everything they're doing now is intended to try and prevent something like Hugging Face from happening again -- guys. BOLDUAN: Good luck with that. Hadas, it's great to see you. You're the best.
Thank you so much. And she explains it so well.
BERMAN: What could possibly go wrong?
SIDNER: Exactly.
BOLDUAN: Nothing. Just watch our show. Thanks for joining us.
SIDNER: "SITUATION ROOM" up next.
