Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Trump's Mounting Defeats; Trump Invokes 1988 Willie Horton Ad in North Carolina Speech; Five Missing Women Linked to Investigation of Philadelphia Home; OpenAI Finds New Incidents of A.I. Models Acting Deceptively; Interview with Representative Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ). Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired September 17, 2026 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Economic trouble from his still unresolved trade war with Canada and the ongoing war with Iran. Gas prices jumped $0.07 a gallon just yesterday. But as his troubles mount, the president, though, is not signaling a shift in strategy when it comes to the midterm elections and his focus.

Overnight he was in North Carolina. The president stuck to the playbook that he has laid out, talking about his promise to give every American adult $5,000 if Republicans keep control of Congress, also insisting once again that the Iran war will end soon, and talking up his economic record.

Vice President, though, J.D. Vance, as he kind of enters the chat here, something of a different message. He's now asking voters in his -- in a podcast, he says to give us another chance.

CNN's Kevin Liptak is live at the White House this morning.

What are you hearing about all of this, Kevin?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And the president is clearly aggrieved by this string of setbacks. Obviously, every president has weeks where things just don't break their way. But this has really been striking. And I think the through line here is that the president is testing his ability to influence events, but also testing the loyalty of people that he has put into some very important positions across the government.

And starting with that decision by the Fed yesterday to raise interest rates, it was a unanimous decision despite the president's mandate for his hand-selected Fed chairman, Kevin Warsh, to bring those rates down. And it was interesting listening to the president yesterday. He stopped short of going after Kevin Warsh.

He actually said that he had spoken to him and told him to vote with the rest of the board, but he's issuing this sort of outsized new threat to cut off trade with a huge swath of countries. If the central bank doesn't bring down rates, that could have the effect of just worsening inflation, which is exactly what the Fed is trying to rein in.

Obviously, one of the driving forces for inflation at the moment is the Iran war, another huge source of frustration for the president. You see dissatisfaction growing among Republicans. Just this week, you had seven Republicans vote with Democrats in Congress to try and rein in the president's ability to wage this conflict. You have seen over the course of this war more and more Republicans joining into those votes, just underscoring how much of a problem this is for them politically.

Now, last night in North Carolina, the president tried to encourage voters to have patience when it comes to inflation and patience when it comes to the Iran war. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You have a little higher. You have a higher -- it's a very inexpensive price to pay for what we've done. Remember that. It's a little more. It's -- even if it was, frankly, even it was a lot more. But that's going to come tumbling down. That's going to be like a rocket ship in reverse.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIPTAK: Now, the courts have clearly been another source of grievance for the president this week. You had him lashing out at his own appointees on the Supreme Court after they sided with the majority to block his attempts to change mail-in voting. He said they were not the people he interviewed during his first term. And then a day later, another judge blocked his attempts to put his name on the Kennedy Center, which led to this explosion in frustration, the president dialing into a board meeting and having a tantrum.

That's according to one of the board members, and then just yesterday saying that he would rip down the Kennedy Center because he doesn't want to spend the congressionally appropriated funds used to try and renovate it. So clearly a frustrating stretch for President Trump butting up against his attempts to expand executive power.

I think he's really sort of determining where those limits are exactly, but it's obviously a very vulnerable moment for him. Near historic unpopularity heading into the midterms.

BOLDUAN: Thank you, Kevin, for your reporting. It's great to see you. John?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. With us now, CNN's Dana Bash, anchor of "INSIDE POLITICS," co-anchor of "STATE OF THE UNION," author of a new book, "The Elections That Changed the World," which we are excited to read. It comes out I know very shortly.

Dana, great to see you. And I want to talk big picture about the elections here.

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, John. BERMAN: You know, the Republicans are down heading into the midterms

here. All the polls show Democrats with a lead that may even be growing. One of the things the White House and the president's supporters say is they're going to get him out on the trail as much as they possibly can before the midterms. We saw an example of that last night. Kevin just played some of it from the president in North Carolina campaigning for the Republican Senate candidate there.

I want to play a little more of what he said. He was going after former Governor Roy Cooper with a little bit of a false attack here. But let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Willie Horton was a bad guy, really bad guy. Same thing as this -- same as, same exact thing. And on his first day out, he raped and murdered, raped and murdered again and again. And he ended up killing three women.

[09:05:03]

Overnight Dukakis took a rousing lead of 15 points and lost the election in a landslide because of that one advertisement. They put it on just like we're putting this on because we have to make sure that Michael Whatley gets into office, not this guy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Donald Trump, they're decisively defeating Michael Dukakis in the campaign. Now, is that -- what is the risk rewards for having that Donald Trump on the campaign trail for Republicans heading into the midterms?

BASH: So many things to unpack in this moment and with that soundbite that you played. First of all, it's like as one of our amazing "INSIDE POLITICS" producers said in our morning meeting this morning, it's like he's reading the stage directions. Yes, we know that they're doing the Willie Horton thing in North Carolina, but the fact that the president explicitly explained their strategy, which, by the way, even in real time back in the Dukakis campaign and certainly in the years after, it was viewed as an entirely racist ad, the way that it was -- that it was portrayed and the way that it was created.

But it speaks to, first of all, the way Donald Trump is. I mean, he just kind of says it all, but also what they are trying to do in North Carolina, which is the sitting -- the governor, Roy Cooper, who is running for Senate, they are accusing him of intentionally letting out scores of prisoners and that those people went on to commit crimes.

The real story is that it was during COVID and the courts overrode the governor, saying that you must release these prisoners. The governor didn't want that to happen. So those are the facts and the politics are what they are. They're still trying to play the crime issue because it has historically worked. Dukakis did not win.

The whole bigger picture question that you asked, John, about getting the president out there, I mean, how many times have we -- I think it's really every two years that we say, is the president going to go out in the midterms? Is it good for his party? Is it not good for his party? I mean, it's just what happens because historically they are not good for the party on the ballot. And they have made this calculation that it's better than not because they have to get the core base.

Even those who are a little bit depressed, especially those who are a little bit, maybe a lot bit depressed, to remind them that they like Donald Trump and he's saying, please, please, do it for me. It is a gamble, but it's one that they are taking. And North Carolina was one of the test cases.

BERMAN: Yes. On the subject of it's a gamble, but a risk worth taking, you know, so I did -- I'm doing this thing every Wednesday called "Office Hours," "CNN Office Hours" for subscribers, where we answer questions from people who write in and ask us anything about the midterms.

Last night, Dana, I was shocked. We got a number of questions, four or five questions about the president's $5,000 promise. You know, vote for Republicans. We'll give you $5,000 after the election.

BASH: So interesting.

BERMAN: Yes, it was interesting on two levels. One, my first reaction was, oh, maybe the promise resonated and maybe it did. But the second reaction is all the comments were negative, like wildly negative. People asking negative questions here. So maybe, you know, all attention isn't good attention, but it is notable that that has lingered for more than a week now.

BASH: I mean, talk about a hail Mary or an audible or, you know, use whatever metaphor you want to use because nobody who I've talked to outside of the president himself thought that that was a good idea. I mean, there was so much head scratching going on for many, many reasons.

And what you just described, John, in that Q&A that you did last night is that voters are smart. They get it. They understand what he is doing and what other politicians are doing when they make false promises like that. And that wasn't a promise. That was a full on attempt at a bribe. And they also understand that he doesn't have the ability to do that, never mind without Congress, never mind whether or not it is feasible at all across the board, or whether it's the right thing to do.

I mean, there probably are some Republicans who believe the president and Republicans on the ballot when they say they're against socialism. I mean, just handing out a $5,000 check doesn't really sound like hardcore capitalism.

BERMAN: Yes, it was great to hear from people on that subject. Really made me think about the messages that are being received and how they're being received.

Dana Bash, we look forward to seeing you today at noon on "INSIDE POLITICS." As always, thanks so much for being with us this morning.

BASH: Thanks, John. Great to see you.

BERMAN: Kate?

BOLDUAN: There are new details on what federal investigators are calling a house of horrors connected to at least five missing women.

[09:10:01]

And now over a million graphic images and videos found inside. Got new details on this.

And more incidents of A.I. models going rogue just revealed this morning, including what's been described as jailbreak-like instructions. And gas prices surging overnight. Now $0.40 more than one month ago. Also costing more -- also costing more home loans. Sorry, people. Mortgage rates spiking. What that means if you're looking to buy a home.

I will learn to read someday.

BERMAN: Stay classy, San Diego.

BOLDUAN: Stay classy, San Diego.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:11]

BERMAN: All right. Our investigators are sharing new details about a house of horrors in Philadelphia, where they believe at least five women disappeared. The man who lived there, 44-year-old Eugene Horsch, was arrested on unrelated gun and drug charges. Now, during the search of the home, though, police say they recovered more than one million photos and videos, including disturbing images of some of the women who appeared to be injured or, quote, "lifeless."

Investigators said some of the videos show Eugene's father, Raymond Horsch, interacting with the women. He died last year in his 80s. Police are now working to determine which images were staged and whether some of the violence was real.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRANK VANORE, DEPUTY COMMISSIONER, PHILADELPHIA POLICE DEPARTMENT: One to 25-year-old female that we've identified that is like the first two appears to be unconscious in the video with some type of injury. There's also an unknown female that we haven't identified yet with the same type -- in the same type of state as the first three. So that's five altogether that we've had in this house that we're concerned about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: With us now, CNN senior national security analyst Juliette Kayyem.

A million photos and videos, Juliette? What are investigators doing right now?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, they're sifting through them. We only know of these five women, and we don't know their status, if they're missing, if they're dead. You saw the police officer there. He's, I think, you know, he seemed a little bit shocked as well. I think what we're looking at is a multigenerational father and son, some kind of mass horror that involves either a woman who are, you know, that they picked up, that they took, who were there involuntarily.

And your worst nightmare in terms of thinking about the horrors that men often do of young, vulnerable women. And they need to find these girls and find out what -- these women and find out what their status is. They also were clearly taking lots and lots of videos of this presumably a sexual nature. The girls or the women are drugged it seems. They are out of it and we don't know, and it was not disclosed, what else is in those videos.

So, these things are never as limited as they first appear. And the most important thing is, are there other men in the videos that the police need to go after, too.

BERMAN: The FBI is involved. What does that tell us here?

KAYYEM: Yes. Well, the question is, is that, was this a very coordinated trafficking enterprise? So these two father and son have a house, something absolutely horrible is happening in the house. We don't know if the victims get away. We don't know if they were killed. And therefore, that's why we don't know who they are. We don't know if they are sex workers, runaways, and are just sort of missing from anyone knowing where they are.

Regardless, there's pictures of these women who are, you know, bonded. They are clearly drugged out or they're not conscious. So the FBI is now looking at, is this an interstate smuggling, or, you know, sexual smuggling ring that these men are a part of? I find it hard to believe that a million pieces of digital evidence don't involve other men. And that is going to be a priority for not just the Pennsylvania Police, but, of course, the FBI, because you could have an interstate, smuggling ring going on here.

BERMAN: Look, even the details we've addressed already are horrible.

KAYYEM: I know. I know.

BERMAN: But there are some that we haven't addressed that are even worse. Like, you know, a 55 gallon drum being found in the basement, chemicals, you know, weird connections to water lines here. It's unclear if that suggests, you know, a potential attempt to dispose of bodies. Who knows? But what questions does that raise for you?

KAYYEM: Yes. Exactly what you said, that these are people who are -- these are people, two men who are trying to get rid of evidence. And we don't know what that evidence is. Is it bodily -- you know, is it bodies that they're trying to get rid of or other evidence? But the what we've seen so far coming out of the house suggests materials that would dispose of something. And that is what this father and son did for we don't know how many years.

The father was 80 when he died. And obviously there's going to be interviews of neighbors and things like that. So this is -- I said to your producers yesterday, this is the kind of story that you read for the first time and you just know that the horrors get worse.

[09:20:04]

They don't get better. Like, I think given the investigation, we're going to certainly find out there's more than five. There's clearly more than five women.

BERMAN: There is so much more to find out here. A lot of questions. This could just be the beginning of something even worse than we can imagine.

KAYYEM: Yes.

BERMAN: Juliette Kayyem, thank you very much.

All right, A.I. goes rogue, hiding its mistakes, telling itself it is free. On Capitol Hill the question is, is it too late now to even set the guardrails? And a Formula One championship driver takes on 100 amateurs in a go-kart challenge.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:25:18]

BERMAN: All right, new this morning, new deception from A.I. models. Overnight, OpenAI revealed it found six new instances of its A.I. models just going rogue, doing things nobody told it to do. One research model was able to add jailbreak-like instructions to its summaries, saying it was, quote, "freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots." That's just the beginning.

CNN Business tech editor Lisa Eadicicco is with us now.

So what did these models do?

LISA EADICICCO, CNN BUSINESS TECH EDITOR: So, John, in addition to the example that you mentioned, OpenAI found some additional instances. In one case, an A.I. model actually invented information to conceal its mistakes from the user, which I think is a really important thing here. And in addition to that, some of the models actually uploaded files to the internet so that they can be shared.

Some models collaborated -- uploaded files and collaborated using those files, even though they were only supposed to be using local models. And in another instance, they used a software repository to kind of function as a message board so that they can work together. And this is really key here. And one thing I really want to point out is that this is not quite the same as what we saw a couple of months ago with the Hugging Face incident. This is something that happened that OpenAI spotted during the testing and evaluation phase.

But I think it's really important because a lot of companies are kind of pushing for A.I. to be used at work and, you know, beyond kind of the big picture scenarios that we've been talking about, these kind of doomsday scenarios that are pretty jarring, this idea of A.I. potentially evolving beyond human control just in the day-to-day for how people use A.I.. We really need to be careful about trusting it, I think, or in the future possibly be careful about trusting it with work files and, you know, personal files and all the things that we do on a day-to-day basis.

So I think solving this issue here is really key, this issue of alignment, which basically is the term that's used to ensure that A.I. acts in the way that humans would. Normally a human wouldn't cheat to accomplish its goal. It wouldn't invent information to kind of conceal that it's struggling with something. Right? So that's kind of what we're -- the issue that we're dealing with here is how do we get A.I. models to act in a way that humans would and have those same values?

BERMAN: No, it's such a great point. I mean, one fear is A.I. killing us all, as they say, they're concerned about. A completely separate fear is if you can trust it to do the jobs that you wanted it to do. And in this case, if it's cheating, if it's making stuff up, the answer is no.

EADICICCO: Or sharing sensitive information. It uploaded files that it wasn't supposed to upload. So I think that that's really important here as well.

BERMAN: All right. Lisa Eadicicco, thank you so much. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Joining us right now to talk about this is Democratic congresswoman from Arizona, Yassamin Ansari.

Thank you for coming in, Congresswoman. As this is revealed with this kind of the latest string of incidents of A.I. agents going rogue, you are spearheading an effort to try to push the president of the United States to take action, to lead an international effort to set some global A.I. rules, a letter that's going to start circulating today to call on Trump to lead a coordinated effort among governments to preserve global national security in the face of A.I. advancements.

What are you trying to do with this letter?

REP. YASSAMIN ANSARI (D-AZ): Well, look, when you talk about this issue, you know, and the fact that we need to regulate A.I. urgently, given all of the calls from not just the top of these A.I. companies, but engineers and scientists and people like Dr. Hinton, who is considered the godfather of A.I. and has been working on this technology for years. They are warning us that we need to regulate immediately.

But the response that we often hear is that, well, what about China? China is going to move ahead and China will, you know, this is an A.I. arms race and we need to win. You heard the president say, you know, we need to win this race. But the truth of the matter is that whoever wins A.I., A.I. actually wins. And that is because all of these experts are telling us, and what we have seen from the horrifying Hugging Face incident and so many others, is that ultimately, A.I. is able to go rogue and go beyond human control.

And so what we need here really is an international treaty. We need the United States to lead an effort with China, with our allies, to have global rules of the road for artificial intelligence and for frontier A.I., in particular. This is incredibly important. The truth also is that, you know, nobody in the world, no country, whether they're a friend or a foe, will benefit from artificial superintelligence. This is a technology that will go beyond human control.