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Trump Says, $5,000 to Every U.S. Adult if Republicans Hold Congress; Trump Makes False Claim About Former Gov. Roy Cooper, Murder Suspect; NYPD Mounting Massive Security Operation for 9/11 Anniversary. Aired 7-7:30a ET
Aired September 10, 2026 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[07:00:00]
SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: President offers to pay every American adult $5,000, but only if they vote to keep his power, party in power. Is that even legal? How would he pay for it? The president takes center stage again today in Texas for the GOP's first ever midterm convention as fears of a blue wave intensify.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Breaking this morning, gas prices jump 6 more cents a gallon to a three-month high, the most expensive September ever, and now the president admits the boosted prices could be here for months more.
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: A frantic effort to find dozens of missing passengers after a ferry is engulfed in flames. At least five people are confirmed dead already. Officials are now expanding the search for more than 80 people unaccounted for.
I'm Kate Bolduan with Sara Sidner and John Berman. This is CNN News Central.
SIDNER: The president making some unprecedented claims as he implores Republicans to, quote, pretend that I'm on the ballot. The party is fighting to hold onto control of Congress, inviting voters to make the midterm elections a referendum on himself. The president will speak again tonight in Dallas after headlining night one of the GOP's first ever midterm convention, or as one Republican put it, a Trump-a- palooza.
During day one, he made this extraordinary promise to voters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, because of our economic, tremendous economic success, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: By the way, the price tag on that pledge would be more than a trillion dollars, with no detail on exactly where he'd get the money, how he'd pay for it.
This is at least the third time Donald Trump has floated cash payments to Americans since returning to office. There was also that $2,000 tariff rebate check and the $5,000 DOGE dividend he promised. Neither of those programs materialized.
Tonight, Vice President J.D. Vance is taking the stage before President Trump closes out the convention.
CNN's Steve Contorno is live at the convention site in Dallas. How would you describe what you were seeing and hearing on day one at the convention?
STEVE CONTORNO, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Good morning, Sara. Well, it certainly may look like a convention behind me and in this arena, but it has the feel of a Trump rally. And last night, the president's remarks were almost came verbatim from his campaign stump speech. Some of the lines go all the way back to his 2024 campaign for president.
But, look, not everybody has been paying attention to the president's every word, and there may be some people who are just now tuning into the midterms after Labor Day, and Trump was trying to speak to those people, and his message to them was, vote like you're voting for me. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: So, please, I ask you this as maybe more important even than the Trump dividend, please pretend that I'm running and get out and vote on November third or sooner. Because in actuality, I really am running.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CONTORNO: That message really lays bare the challenge for Trump and Republicans going into this midterm election because Trump voters have come out enthusiastically for him when he was on the ballot in 2016, 2020, and 2024, but not so much in those interim years. And that is a try -- who he is trying to speak to, trying to get those diehard Trump voters who may fall off during midterm elections to show up for once.
And tonight, it will be J.D. Vance's turn to speak to them. He will address this convention. Trump will also speak again, closing out his remark the event. And then we will also at some point hear from RFK Jr., which will be sort of an interesting dynamic because he brings obviously that MAHA element into the party, but he also has political ambitions that may extend beyond his time in the Trump administration.
[07:05:06]
We know J.D. Vance does as well. Sara?
SIDNER: Certainly. Steve Contorno, thank you so much for your reporting there. I appreciate it. John?
BERMAN: All right. The president did say a lot. I'm going to look over here. The president did say a lot in that nearly two-hour speech. Some of it, it turns out, not true.
Let's get to CNN Senior Reporter Daniel Dale for a fact-check on this. Daniel, great to see you this morning. You had a long night, as long as some people watching football. Look, the president talked about affordability. I want to play a little bit of what he said about prices.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We got eggs down lower than during my administration. And food prices and almost every other item are rapidly going down.
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BERMAN: Rapidly going down, Daniel?
DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: The part about eggs is true. The part about food prices and almost every o- other item rapidly going down is absolutely false. I call this a very important lie. Consumer price index data shows that we have a 3.4 percent most recent inflation rate, and that far more individual products are still getting more expensive rather than getting cheaper.
Now, since President Trump took office, overall food prices are up 4.3 percent. Grocery prices in particular are up 3.4 percent. Both are currently rising. So, there's a reason President Trump repeatedly invokes eggs when discussing affordability. That's because they're an extreme outlier on this issue. They are not the norm here, John.
BERMAN: So, the president talked about some of the candidates running for Senate, the Democratic candidates. He talked about James Talarico of Texas, Roy Cooper of North Carolina. Talarico, he said that, you know, he's going after gas and oil. He had plans for that. But I want to play one specific thing he said about Cooper.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: One monster, an absolute monster, with 14 prior arrests, nothing but trouble, violent person, stood up behind a beautiful 23- year-old woman, Iryna Zarutska, and slashed a knife from behind across her neck and killed her. Roy Cooper was the governor who released this animal into North Carolina society.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: So, what he's saying there about Roy Cooper, what's the real truth there?
DALE: Obviously a horrible case, but the fact is that then-Governor Cooper did not release the person charged with this murder. PolitiFact and the Charlotte Observer have done very good reporting on this. The state corrections department has told both of those outlets that the man in question was released after serving his sentence for another crime, released in September 2020.
The settlement between the state and a group suing over prison conditions amid the COVID pandemic, the settlement that resulted in some other offenders being released early happened in February 2021, so months after this particular man was released.
Now, this Republican attack appears to stem from the fact that this man, DeCarlos Brown Jr, did appear on a state list in relation to that February 2021 settlement. But the state corrections department explained that's because the settlement terms allowed the state to count certain people retroactively towards meeting the settlement, count certain people who had already been released from prison towards the settlement.
So, that's why the state says DeCarlos Brown Jr. was on that list, not again because he was released early, and certainly not because he was released early by then-Governor Cooper himself.
BERMAN: So, at the end of the speech, Daniel, the president said, quote, every single promise I made to you as a candidate, I've delivered on. Every single one, he says. That's a pretty high bar.
DALE: It's a high bar, and it's obviously not true. You and I and millions of other people remember him promising dozens of times on the campaign trail that he would end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of coming back to office, or even as president-elect before he took office. That war unfortunately still continues.
He also repeatedly made a high-profile promise to quickly end inflation. Again, we talked about how inflation continues, as many millions of Americans already know. In 2016, he famously campaigned on a promise to have Mexico pay for his border wall. That we know did not happen.
So, sure, he's kept a number of promises, but also broken a number of others.
BERMAN: Daniel Dale, long night for you, early morning. We appreciate you getting up for us. Always great to see you. Kate?
BOLDUAN: Also breaking overnight, OpenAI is now facing a Senate Homeland Security investigation over a major breach after it's A.I. agents went rogue and hacked another company. Remember that? Also, this comes as this top A.I. researcher is warning of the extreme havoc to come from A.I.
And it's being called a no fail mission, the massive counterterrorism plans in place now from law enforcement officials to make sure that 25 years after the 9/11 attacks, they're able to stop any threat before it occurs.
[07:10:01]
And dramatic dash cam video shows the moment a murder suspect steals a police cruiser and smashes directly into a home. My goodness.
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BOLDUAN: Tomorrow marks 25 years since the September 11th terror attacks. As the nation prepares for this solemn anniversary, the NYPD is ramping up security.
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JESSICA TISCH, NEW YORK CITY POLICE COMMISSIONER: You will see a massive security operation in place.
[07:15:03]
That operation reflects both the significance of the 25th anniversary and the attendance of dignitaries, former presidents, and other senior officials.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLDUAN: Fencing is seen going up around Lower Manhattan. There's going to be a lot of street closures, of course, and also the largest deployment of police officers in recent years. This is according to officials.
25 years after the largest attacks on U.S. soil, law enforcement officials in New York and beyond, they are managing a massive counterterrorism infrastructure, working -- and one of the big questions, well, before 9/11 and post, is about the sharing of intelligence so any threats seen can be stopped before another attack occurs.
A big question, and some of the big questions that CNN's Mark Morales has been asking, and joining us now to talk about this. What are you learning, because you got to talk to the top guy?
MARK MORALES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT REPORTER: Right. We sat down with the head of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Andrew Pachman. That's a group that really beefed up after 9/11, and it's made up of local, state, federal partners. And you have basically terrorism experts all in one room that are geared toward stopping another attack from happening.
And we sat down and we spoke to him, and he basically told us about how there is zero margin for error. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDREW PACHTMAN, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE, JOINT TERRORISM TASK FORCE IN NEW YORK: We are on a no-fail mission, so the bar of success is to prevent and to disrupt. And we understand that it's impossible to get ahead of every plot before steps can be taken that can prevent threats and risks to the American people. But our job is to do that. And every day, our job is to make sure nothing goes boom in New York City.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MORALES: Now, what he and what others talk about is this dynamic threat picture, which is a lot different now than it was 25 years ago. Back then, it was ISIS, it was Al-Qaeda, it was really centralized on those two groups. Now, what we're seeing is its affiliates of those groups, plus everything we're seeing here at home. BOLDUAN: It almost seems like it was easier then, which sounds crazy for me to say. Yes.
MORALES: Right. In a way it was more simpler, but now it's violent homegrown extremists, far-right, far-left, anti-government, and that's just the tip of the iceberg that so much of these folks are dealing with. And they're constantly recalibrating the response based on what they're seeing with other attacks.
So, the vehicle closures that we're going to be seeing down near Ground Zero, that's in response to ramming attacks, because we've seen so much of that happening. We're going to see drone mitigation teams down there because we're seeing a lot of drone attacks in other situations that happens. And that's been another key thing that's happened over the years.
As technology's gotten better, as terrorists and plots have gotten better, so have law enforcement, and they know that they have to be everywhere at the same time.
BOLDUAN: The idea of drone mitigation teams now in New York City when you know, when we know what drone technology has done elsewhere in terms of threats, attacks, warfare, it's quite something to think about, and, again, showing how big the threat landscape is that they need to cover in this no-fail mission.
It's good to see you, Mark. Thank you so much. Much more from Mark to come. Sara?
SIDNER: All right. Thank you to both of you.
Breaking overnight, new video showing the moment a Russian strike blows up a gas station in Ukraine. It comes as a Russian drone narrowly missed President Zelenskyy's plane.
All right, and Tetris taking on the White House. The popular game sending a warning after the Trump administration launched an arcade- themed game called Build the Wall.
Those stories and more ahead.
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[07:20:00]
SIDNER: This morning, Lindsay Clancy's fate remains unclear as a Massachusetts district attorney weighs whether to retry her for killing her three children. Clancy's attorney, Kevin Reddington, has said he will file a motion to dismiss the case entirely when he returns to court later this month, but remains open to a plea deal. In a new interview with Anderson Cooper, Reddington talked about what he's looking for in a plea deal.
CNN's Jean Casarez joining us now. Jean, what are you learning from him as he goes about doing several different interviews, one of which was with Anderson Cooper? JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Last night, you know, it's fascinating to just look at his mindset. First of all, Lindsay Clancy, Anderson asked him how is she doing after last week. He said she's maintaining. She's at Tewksbury Hospital, great medical care, great psychiatric care, but one-on-one monitoring for her welfare.
Now, he talked about that entertaining a plea deal. Remember, the defense here was not guilty based on lack of criminal responsibility, comprehending what's right and wrong. So, a plea deal conceivably would be pleading to something, and that's what he's alluding to, but he's got a hard, fast line, has to do with prison. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEVIN REDDINGTON, LINDSAY CLANCY'S ATTORNEY: No, I would not ever agree that she do any time in jail. She's too fragile. She's too -- she's damaged goods, and she does not deserve it. No, she needs to be treated for her mental health condition, has to have good physicians, and she has to have good medication. That's it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: The other big focus is September 29th. That's the next hearing. He is going to ask for the charges to be dismissed based on double jeopardy because he feels there was not manifest necessity to call for a mistrial, as the judge did, because he wanted that one juror questioned in open court is even what he wanted. Listen to what he has to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REDDINGTON: That's where you have the opportunity and request of the judge to have a hearing, which we didn't do. He just declared a mistrial. That's the difference. If you have a hearing, at least there's a basis for someone to determine if there is manifest necessity to declare a mistrial.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: Now, here's the challenge. I've been researching the case law.
SIDNER: Yes.
CASAREZ: It has to be an abuse of discretion of the judge. The jury sent out three notes. Final note said, with heavy heart, we have to tell you we can't do this. All the jurors were questioned individually while they were deliberating if they could follow the law and the instructions. They were under oath. They all said yes. So, that's going to be a tough one right there. We'll see what happens.
SIDNER: We will see what happens.
[07:25:00]
And when is the deadline for the district attorney, when we're expecting to hear whether or not they're going to retry the case?
CASAREZ: We may hear something in open court on September 29th.
SIDNER: All right, we will wait for that. Jean Casares, thank you for your reporting throughout this entire trial. I appreciate it. John?
BERMAN: All right, the highest gas prices September has ever seen, up 6 cents overnight. And wait until you hear how long the president says this surge is going to stick around.
And then this seems like it could be a problem. Thousands and thousands of Michigan drivers get licenses with someone else's picture.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I keep looking, I'm like, boy, that's a man in the bottom corner.
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