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Germany's Far-Right AfD Party Scores Historic State-level Win; Russia, Ukraine Exchange Strikes After Peace Talks With U.S. Envoys; Fireworks Explosion Kills at Least 10 in Mexico; Trump PAC Spends $10 Million in Texas to Boost Ken Paxton's Senate Bid; Dems & GOP Battle for Key Senate Seats With 57 Days Until Midterms; Rob Reiner Wins Posthumous Emmy for Role in "The Bear". Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired September 07, 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]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": -- focusing school lessons on Germany's pre-Nazi days, but also mass deportations of non-ethnic German citizens. CNN's Fred Pleitgen joins us now live from Berlin.

So, Fred, how are Germany's national leaders reacting to this far- right victory?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Boris. Well, it's an absolute slap in the face of Germany's national leaders and you could see that today here. There were serious political shockwaves in the German capital Berlin, specifically among the ruling party of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

He came out earlier today in a press conference and he said that he was seeing the sign of the times that clearly they hadn't managed to connect with voters and clearly there's a lot of people here in this country, and specifically in that state, who believe that the policies here of the Friedrich Merz government are very much unpopular. I want to listen into some of the things that Friedrich Merz said. Let's listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRIEDRICH MERZ, GERMAN CHANCELLOR (through translator): We are all deeply shocked. This outcome was not expected in this form. We must of course accept it. These are the rules of our democracy. But yesterday, something changed not only in Saxony-Anhalt, but throughout Germany. This election result will have repercussions. It also has repercussions on the international situation. Just look at who sent congratulations yesterday.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PLEITGEN: So clearly Merz there acknowledging that pretty much the entire world was watching this election in a small German state. And if you look at the Alternative for Germany party, really the centerpiece of their policy is immigration and they have a very controversial thing that they call re-migration where they essentially call for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants from Germany, also those with criminal records as well.

And you were alluding a little bit, Boris, also some of the education policies they want to put in place, teaching less about Germany in World War II, about the Nazi era and more about the pre-World War I era. And then also, one of the things that's deeply controversial here in Germany as well, the AfD very openly calling for closer ties to Russia and ending all military and financial aid to Ukraine, not on a federal level, but of course, as you mentioned, right now, unclear whether or not they're going to put a government in place in that state.

SANCHEZ: Fred Pleitgen, thank you so much for the update from Berlin. Brianna?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Russia and Ukraine continuing to exchange strikes despite a renewed push by the U.S. over the weekend to end Russia's war on Ukraine. Russian drones hitting a tobacco factory in northern Ukraine earlier today and Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country's forces are, quote, "responding justly to Russian strikes," hitting its oil refineries.

U.S. Envoy, Steve Witkoff and the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, just returned from their first trip to Kyiv since the war began. They met with Zelenskyy, notably a day after Witkoff and Kushner sat down with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. The U.S. officials calling their talks substantive with Witkoff adding that he's, quote, "confident" there will be a good resolution. So let's talk about this and get a reality check here with CNN Global Affairs Analyst, Kim Dozier.

All right, Kim, is there anything about all of this that inspires actually confidence that there will be a good resolution as Witkoff puts it?

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Negotiators have to say that. Look, it's good that the dial has switched back to looking at Ukraine after this focus on Iran, that Witkoff and Kushner are putting their attention on this, because one thing it does is make Vladimir Putin at least pretend like he's going on with talks. His spokesman today said, after the Zelenskyy meeting that, yes, Russia could consider going back to three-way talks brokered by the U.S.

But the fact of the matter is, before the two U.S. envoys arrived in Kyiv and after, Russia was bombing the capital and killing people around the country, they even targeted the head of the SBU, Ukraine's FBI, just before the two men got to the capital. So it doesn't feel like much of a pause.

KEILAR: Yeah, just while Witkoff and Kushner were there, basically.

DOZIER: Yeah.

KEILAR: What did you make of the timing here of them going to see Putin in Moscow before seeing Zelenskyy in Kyiv?

DOZIER: Yeah, the bad news there is Putin always seems to be able to set the terms of the talks as Zelenskyy is reacting.

Basically, what the envoys were pushing for is a ceasefire ahead of the winter. But what we're hearing is that Putin sees this winter as an opportunity to make one more big push for territory, so that perhaps he could seize more of the territory in the Donbas, and that would give him a face-saving way to get out of this conflict.

KEILAR: So Zelenskyy said he discussed air defense needs, which you see when you describe what's happening, which is they're getting hit, and there's only this momentary pause while the U.S. envoys are there.

Russia hitting the British American Tobacco Company in northern Ukraine this morning. Is Zelenskyy going to actually get this help that he needs on air defenses? He's been asking for months for this.

DOZIER: Yeah, look, he can get promised a lot of extra air defense munitions, but the fact of the matter is it takes a while to get these off of the assembly line. He needs more Patriot missiles.

[13:35:00]

Plus, the Russians have innovated recently with something called a jet-powered drone. Ukraine is working on knocking them out of the sky, but just overnight, out of 90 drones that were fired, Ukraine was only able to knock down 70. And a lot of those that got through were these jet-powered drones.

And so it's just constant technical innovation, and U.S. and European defense munition assembly lines just aren't keeping up with the battlefield.

KEILAR: Republican Senator, John Kennedy was asked about the talks on NBC over the weekend by Kristen Welker, and here's some of what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY, (R-LA): I know we missed a big chance this past week when the House didn't pass the Russian sanctions bill. Vladimir Putin, this guy is a pirate. He's got blood under his fingernails. He doesn't care about a bunch of pretty talk.

You don't get any credit for kissing his [expletive]. You've got to show him you mean business. I'm not putting down any of the talk, and I think talk is good and it can be helpful, but I won't faint with surprise if our guys don't come out of there without a deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: What position is Putin in right now, and how much pressure could have been put on him to have sanctions in there before the talks?

DOZIER: There is a perfect opportunity for President Trump to get him over the barrel by saying, look, you are supplying weapons and intelligence to Iran, which is fighting our forces in the Gulf. Stop it. There's an opportunity to put more pressure economically and politically on Putin, but President Trump seems reluctant to do that.

KEILAR: Does the war here end realistically without Ukraine giving up a considerable amount of territory?

DOZIER: It's likely that the war is going to stretch on another couple of years. According to Ukrainian intelligence assessments, Russia has the capability, it has the supplies to keep going through 2028, which means Ukraine needs to find some way to survive, possibly until a new U.S. administration is really willing to put the screws on Moscow.

KEILAR: Kim, thank you so much. Really appreciate your insight on this.

Still ahead, at least 10 people dead after a fireworks explosion during a religious festival. You see the pictures here. We have some new details next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:42:00]

SANCHEZ: We're now just 57 days until the midterms, and President Donald Trump's super PAC, MAGA, Inc. is now opening up its coffers, supporting Republican Ken Paxton and his Senate campaign in Texas. It is spending about $10 million on ads against Democrat James Talarico, who's largely had the airwaves to himself for weeks this summer.

KEILAR: The two are locked in a tight race in a state that hasn't elected a Democratic Senator since the 1980s. MAGA, Inc. had more than $400 million in cash on hand at the end of July, and President Trump says he's committed to spending big to help Republicans win.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I'm going to spend whatever amount of money necessary to try and help us, and this is money from MAGA. This is my money that I can throw.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And beyond Texas, new attention is turning to key Senate battlegrounds in Michigan, Iowa, and Ohio. So let's talk about all of this with the Director for the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, Larry Sabato.

All right, Larry, so looking at Texas here, you have Elon Musk also just starting to spend money on Ken Paxton. Does Paxton have enough money at this point, do you think?

LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: No, he doesn't. What he has is a strong party base in a state that normally votes Republican, and reflexively so in many cases. That may save him in the end, but remember, if John Cornyn is in the Senate leadership -- Republican in the Senate leadership, had he been nominated and President Trump is the one who stopped his nomination and got Ken Paxton in, the Republicans wouldn't have to spend nearly as much to see Cornyn win.

So a lot of this is due to President Trump, and naturally, Republicans nationally, not just in Texas, have been turning to him and saying, OK, you got what you wanted, now ante up the money. And he's come up with $10 million, which sounds like a lot, but in Texas it really isn't.

SANCHEZ: Interesting. Notably, President Trump, at least recently in South Carolina, in that Republican primary, he was telling voters to act as though he was on the ballot. A new NBC News poll shows that his approval rating, though, is stuck in the mid 30s. Perhaps more notably, it reports a significant drop in the President's core supporters as well.

Just 41 percent of Republicans now strongly approve of the president's performance. That's down from 52 percent in the same survey that was conducted in the spring, in March and April. So how well is that going to work out in a general election if he's calling on voters to act as though he is on the ballot? Is that really a motivator in places like Texas?

SABATO: Well, Boris, it's a motivator for the hardcore base, for the MAGA base. And they have been unhappy about the forever war in Iraq. They've been unhappy about inflation. They've been unhappy about rising prices. And also, I think they've been paying attention to the stories about corruption and greed, some of which have come from your unit there at CNN.

[13:45:00]

So these people are not isolated from all of the issues that are affecting everybody else. Trump obviously doesn't see that. I guess, it isn't handed to him or it isn't in his feed daily, but he's having trouble even with parts of his base. There's still for him, at least a large majority are, but it's a lot different than the 85 to 90 percent that we saw in the beginning, and most of them approve strongly of what he was doing.

Now, it's much less than that and when you're not motivated in that way to show up to show support for your leader, you're not going to vote. That's what Republicans are really worried about in a midterm that will have at least a so-so turnout and so far, the Democrats have been dominating turnouts, primaries and special elections.

KEILAR: In Texas, do you think Democrats actually have an opportunity if they spend more aggressively and pin their hopes there or do you think there are better opportunities elsewhere for them?

SABATO: Democrats don't have a choice. In order to get 51 seats, they need 51 because 50/50 will be broken by J.D. Vance's tie and it may be 52, you know, if Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat of Pennsylvania decides to switch parties. They don't have the luxury of picking and choosing. They have to fight in every state that is potentially competitive and this is a tough map of the three Senate classes. The Senate is divided into three. This one is the toughest for Democrats, so that's bad news for the Democrats, but it's also good news if somehow they can take control of the Senate and they're not that far away from it.

SANCHEZ: To that point, which do you see is the most precarious seat for Republicans?

SABATO: For Republicans, well, you would start with Maine, although Democrats did Senator Susan Collins, the incumbent Republican, a great favor by first almost nominating a very flawed candidate. They've got a substitute but they lost a lot of momentum there. They can still win, we'll see, and there are several others. You know what's really amazed me for example is Alaska. That is the least likely state to turn competitive for Democrats, but it is.

It is competitive and the Republicans are having problems just not because so much of the other Dan Sullivan, who's also on the November ballot, against the incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan, but also Sullivan got 3 percent fewer votes than did the Republican Congressman who represents Alaska. That shows some defections from Sullivan himself.

So Mary Peltola, the Democratic candidate, incredibly has a real chance to win. End even if she doesn't, Republicans are going to have to spend money there, they're going to have to send organization there, so are Democrats. But that leaves more for Iowa and Ohio and other states that are not usually competitive for Democrats, but are this year.

SANCHEZ: A lot of surprisingly close contests. Larry Sabato, appreciate you looking in the crystal ball for us. Thanks so much.

SABATO: Thanks so much, appreciate it.

SANCHEZ: Now to some of the other headlines we're watching this hour. In Central Mexico, a fireworks explosion at a religious festival has killed at least 10 people. Look at this footage. More than 60 others were also injured. The blast was so strong it caused the wall to collapse. Officials are now investigating what caused the fireworks to suddenly explode.

Plus, Rob Reiner has been awarded a posthumous Emmy for his performance in FX's drama "The Bear." Reiner's award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy was announced last night at a special ceremony in Los Angeles, a week ahead of the main televised event.

It's now been nine months since Reiner was found dead alongside his wife, Michelle Singer Reiner, at their home in Brentwood. You might recall their son Nick has been charged with stabbing his parents to death and he's pleaded not guilty.

KEILAR: And in Italy, fully autonomous cars went head-to-head on the track. This is the third season of the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League. No cockpits or steering wheels, just supercomputers, GPS, radar and cameras.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARKO BERTOGNA, TEAM PRINCIPAL, UNIMORE RACING: Imola is a non- forgiving track. Let's say you achieve a very, very high speed and there are very, very little room for error.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: It is a five-car race and the cars are programmed not to collide with each other, but one still did. It crashed into another car that came to a stop when a sensor failed. Race organizers say that while the technology is far from perfect, it has noticeably evolved from its first year.

SANCHEZ: I wish we had footage of the crash.

KEILAR: I know.

SANCHEZ: (Inaudible).

KEILAR: I know. I want to see that. What does that -- what does that crash look like?

(LAUGH)

[13:50:00]

KEILAR: Still ahead, it's the Michigan clock controversy that just won't go away. We have some new reaction to one of the craziest conclusions to a college football game in recent memory.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:55:00]

KEILAR: University of Michigan football is giving new meaning to the phrase, wait just a second. It looked like the Wolverines had just been dealt a humiliating upset at the hands of Western Michigan after Michigan's first Hail Mary attempt sailed out of bounds as the clock appeared to hit triple zeros.

But upon further review, the referees determined there was actually still one second left. That led to a second and this time successful Hail Mary that won the game.

SANCHEZ: The Big Ten tried to clarify the ruling by saying that NBC's replay was apparently not in sync with the actual game clock that officials in the Big Ten Replay Center were looking at using in their review. Western Michigan's president spoke with CNN about that decision.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUSS KAVALHUNA, PRESIDENT, WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY: That's their process. They apply the process. There's also no appeal to that process. I got to say I'm not entirely enthused with the idea that folks at home and referees see different video, but the truth is we got to go forward. And this football team played its tail off and we're clearly the better team on the field and I'm really proud of that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Joining us now is Austin Meek. He's a Michigan Staff Writer for "The Athletic." Austin thanks for being with us.

What is the mood right now in Ann Arbor?

AUSTIN MEEK, MICHIGAN STAFF WRITER, THE ATHLETIC: Well I think Michigan fans and the Michigan program are certainly happy to have won that game and avoided an embarrassing loss in week one, but also I think everybody at Michigan understands Michigan got very, very lucky in this game. It, for all intents and purposes, appeared that the game was over. The clock said zeros.

Michigan got one more second and completed a Hail Mary pass, but everybody understands that Michigan got very fortunate to be able to win this game.

KEILAR: Yeah, and Western Michigan feeling robbed here, right? But you have the folks who are saying, yeah, the refs got this right, the clock wasn't actually at zero even if it showed zero. What's your read of the rule and how this played out on the field?

MEEK: Well, the problem is what people saw at home when they were watching on T.V., was not what the officials saw when they looked at the replay and what people see on T.V. is what shapes the perceptions of millions of people. That is the audience that is consuming this game and if they can't trust what they're seeing on the screen, it's hard to trust the outcome of the game. So I completely understand the controversy.

I completely understand why fans of Western Michigan were upset and I understand why fans of college football in general, who may not have been rooting for one team or the other, felt a little bit robbed by this outcome.

SANCHEZ: What did you think of the fans rushing the field? I mean that that seemed like it wouldn't happen on just like a regular game against this lower ranked, unranked opponent. Why did the fans just take off like that? Was that appropriate?

MEEK: It's a pretty rare thing for fans to rush the field after their team wins as a 30-point favorite. I think the only time I've seen that at Michigan Stadium was after Michigan beat Ohio State, which is obviously a much bigger game. I think it was just a spontaneous reaction to the moment and the improbability of it.

I think everybody in the stadium had accepted that Michigan was going to lose that game and for Michigan to win in the way they did, I'm not sure anybody really thought about it, I think it was just a gut reaction to run out on the field and celebrate.

KEILAR: Yeah, maybe going from despondent to relieved or thrilled, they sort of felt that oomph to head out there. I wonder what you think as you're saying people are looking at their TVs and that is shaping their perception of what's happening.

Does the NCAA need to rethink how the clock is shown to fans if it isn't actually reflecting the real time on the field? How do they fix that?

MEEK: Well, some of my colleagues at "The Athletic" have spoken to officiating experts who have said that the guidance in that situation is to go with what people see on T.V., recognizing just how powerful that image is. I think that makes sense. I think the Big Ten should look at its replay procedures and really come up with a plan to address this quickly if it happens again.

What happens if people see something on T.V. that doesn't match up with what the officials are seeing in the command center? There needs to be a plan to quickly address that because I think even in a couple hours after the game ended, there was room for a lot of conspiracy theories to happen about why the officials put that extra time back on the clock.

SANCHEZ: Some really compelling evidence being presented online, that's all I'm saying.

(LAUGH)

SANCHEZ: Austin, really quick, do you think that the college football clock should be like the NBA clock and show tenths of a second because you may wind up averting situations like this?

MEEK: Right. I think there are some things that potentially college football could take from college --