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Trump Again Asks Voters to Pretend That I'm on the Ballot; Politico Reports, in Public, Top Republicans Believe House is a Lost Cause; Federal Judge Says Trump Press Ban Likely Violate First Amendment. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired October 14, 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: Election Day just 20 days away. President Trump heading back on the road, hoping to save Republicans Congressional races, headed to Arizona and Montana as the midterms gain even closer.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The investigation into the deadly rollercoaster incident at Six Flags. What we're learning about the teacher who was killed.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: And there is some wild new video in, showing a moment a whale crashes right into a fishing boat. Yes.

I'm Kate Bolduan with John Berman and Sara Sidner. This is CNN News Central.

SIDNER: This morning, no rest for anyone, including President Trump in the middle of holding six rallies in six days. Here he is getting off Air Force One overnight in Nevada after traveling thousands of miles to Alaska. Just hours from now, he'll head to Arizona and later to Montana, a state he won by 20 points in 2024.

Georgia is next on Friday, then Kentucky on Saturday. His goal, saving Republicans in red and battleground states with just 20 days until the midterms. And in Alaska last night, he repeated a plea he's made for weeks now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I want you to do me one big favor. Pretend that I'm on the ballot, because here's what happens. Every time I've been on the ballot, we win. So, pretend, if you will, I'm on the ballot, and actually I am on the ballot, because they will destroy everything that we built.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: But is that what Republicans really want?

Let's take a closer look at one of the key states that we're watching, Texas. Trump's approval there is underwater, 46 percent in a brand-new Marist poll. 38 percent of likely voters say their vote for Congress is mainly a vote against the president. 27 percent say it's mainly for him, and it could make a difference in a Senate race that is this tight at this point. Only two points separate Democrat James Talarico and Ken Paxton, the Republican Trump-endorsed. CNN is hosting a town hall tonight with Talarico.

CNN's Alayna Treene live this morning at the White House. What are you learning?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Look, I want to get into a little bit of what the president was saying last night while in Alaska, of course, another deeply red state, one he had won by a hefty margins in all three elections. Just in 2024 alone, the president won the state by 13 percentage points.

But one of the things that really stuck out to me, Sara, about his speech in Alaska last night was you know, him offering these pardons. And I bring this up because in recent weeks as he's been crisscrossing the country, going to a lot of these different states to try and boost energy among his base and Republican supporters, he's been offering a variety of different financial awards to voters, kind of dangling a carrot in front of them ahead of the November 3rd elections.

At one point, he had offered $500 Obamacare refund checks. He's also offered $90 to seniors to offset Medicare premiums, and $5,000, of course, that was a big thing he tried to unveil in the Dallas convention in September, $5,000 checks for every American adult that he called the Trump dividend.

Well, last night while in Alaska, he had a new thing that he added to his sort of gift basket, pardons. And he called up to the stage at one point two diesel executives who had pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Air Act and said that he was pardoning them. He actually quipped as well toward the end of it that he loves doing this stuff. He said, this is worth the eight hours on the plane.

And I think that just gives you a sense of kind of how Republicans and the president himself are trying to pull out all the different stops that they can to try and convince Republicans to go out and vote on November 3rd, and, of course, vote for the candidates.

Last night he was stumping for Dan Sullivan, an incumbent senator who's facing a tough race there in his Senate campaign, who was also talking about other Republicans in the state. But one thing he did as well is he slammed ranked choice voting, something that Alaska has, a little bit different from other state. He called it a Democratic scam, saying that the voters in the state need to go out and repeal it in this election.

And he also, though, went back to another kind of foe that Republicans have r- been painting as this Democratic boogeyman. He talked about Abdul El-Sayed very far away from Alaska, of course. Abdul El-Sayed is the Democrat who is the nominee for Senate in Michigan, using familiar language and rhetoric to try and paint him as kind of a picture of what Democrats look like moving forward.

[07:05:06]

But, really, when it comes down to it, the president had a similar message, and the same strategy that he's been deploying in past states. In Alaska last night is the same strategy we're going to see him deploy today when he goes to Montana and Arizona. He really is trying to boost the energy and enthusiasm among his supporters.

And it comes, as we know, a lot of people behind the scenes are very concerned about this enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans, and whether or not Republicans are actually going to turn out on November 3rd. And it does come as well as we've seen more early voting starting.

We know early voting has been happening in Ohio, a place that the president was earlier this week. It's also been happening in Georgia, where the president is going on Friday. Georgia early voting started yesterday. Concerns there about what they're seeing with more Democrats voting early. So, all of this as the president has a very aggressive campaign schedule for the next couple days and the next couple weeks as they count down to November 3rd. Sara?

SIDNER: Yes. Some Republicans worrying that may hurt their chances. We will see.

Alayna Treene, thank you so much. I appreciate it. John?

BERMAN: All right. Overnight, some new reporting on where Republicans are throwing in the towel, giving up on some Republican incumbents in House races. Both Politico and The New York Times report that in New Jersey, Republicans are halting spending at a national level for Tom Kean Jr, the Republican incumbent. This was a race, you can see two years ago, he won by five points. This time around, they don't think that's enough. National Republicans stop spending money there.

One other race where Republicans apparently are removing their national spend, all the way out here in Iowa. You can see in the race here that the district includes Davenport, the first district. Mariannette Miller-Meeks barely won this race two years ago. This is basically a 50/50 district, and now national Republicans have halted their national spending here. It gives you a sense they don't think they can hang on to a 50/50 district in this environment. National Republicans love Mariannette Miller-Meeks, so this is a big concession of where and how they spend their money. That's news in the battle for the House.

In terms of the battle for the Senate, all eyes on Texas. That is the site of the big CNN town hall with Democratic Senate Candidate James Talarico.

I want to get right to CNN Senior Political Analyst Mark Preston, who helped set this major event up for tonight. We'll get to the town hall in just a second.

First, I want to give voters a sense of what the messaging has been from the White House the last couple of days. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Ilhan, somebody was asking me, I don't know what they're doing with her, but I can tell you this, she's a disaster. She comes in from a country without laws, without police, without military, without -- all they do is shoot each other, and she comes into our country and she says, I have a constitutional right. She's got a constitutional right.

You look at the guy running in Michigan, he's a jihadist. He's a jihadist, running against a very good candidate very strong, very good, Mike Rogers, very good candidate. But this guy's a jihadist.

J.D. VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: Before we get started, I love you too, sir, in a totally platonic way. To be clear, I'm the vice president, not James Talarico.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: That's what we call a single entendre from the vice president, J.D. Vance, with a swipe at James Talarico there. What do you hear in those comments?

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, John, you know, first of all, subtlety's out the window at this point, right? 20 days left until Election Day. Right now, as Alayna was saying, Republicans are trying to fire up the MAGA base because they know that if they can't get all of their MAGA voters out right now, then they are in deep trouble across the country.

You just ticked off a bunch of races where they're now having to abandon to try to put money elsewhere to try to shore up Republican support. But here's what we're seeing right now. We're seeing xenophobia front and center right now. It's coming straight from the president's own mouth. We're also seeing these culture wars.

I mean, John, I feel like you and I are back 25 years and we're talking about Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition. We're talking about these culture wars right now being introduced into this campaign at a time right now where the economy is the number one issue on people's minds.

You know, we see Donald Trump right now talking this way, and he's hoping that it works in some of these specific cases. Up in Michigan, he's trying to alienate any of the white voters up there who may be considering voting for Abdul El-Sayed, to try to shore up Mike Rogers there.

But the political implications about this though, John, is the fact that this doesn't just play in Michigan. The president's words carry well beyond a state's borders, and then you're going to have the problem for Donald Trump and also J.D. Vance. You're going to have the problem of alienating voters across the country. We're talking about just regular Republicans, young voters, and people who are just focused on the economy.

[07:10:04] BERMAN: Let's talk about Texas tonight. Of course, Texas, a state that Donald Trump won by a lot, more than 13 points. The site of the town hall, the CNN town hall tonight, you've set up town halls and debates for CNN longer than I've been alive. What should we be watching for tonight?

PRESTON: Well, I mean, look, interesting model we have tonight. Look, the CNN town hall that everyone has come to love for the last ten years or so was birthed out of this whole idea of just let's allow voters to directly question the candidates. Let them ask the question. Well, that's worked for ten years right now, and now we're going to expand it a little bit, the hybrid model, taking Jubilee a media company that is more -- you know, more of a digital company. And what it does is that it allows the conversation to go from just a direct question to maybe a challenge, to where the person gets to have a conversation beyond the first question.

And I think we'll see from James Talarico tonight, how does he handle some of these questions from Texas voters, Democrats, Republicans, independents, all who will be in the audience? I should note as well, Ken Paxton was invited to do this as well. He has not even replied to the invitation to participate in it. And I will note as well that the likes of the late Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, Pete Buttigieg, they've all done the Jubilee town hall.

So, it'll be interesting to see tonight in this new format across, you know, our digital audiences and across our television audiences how James Talarico does in this very tight race.

BERMAN: That town hall, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time on CNN, streaming on CNN All Access, the CNN Jubilee town hall moderated by Erin Burnett. Do not miss it.

Mark Preston, thank you very much. Kate?

BOLDUAN: We're learning some new details about what happened on the Six Flags rollercoaster that led to a man reportedly falling to his death on the ride. Now, at least ten other roller coasters have been closed as police are investigating.

And an important update on Pope Leo, after undergoing surgery, the Vatican confirms he has lung cancer. We have more detail on this coming in as well.

And the incredible video showing a surge in water levels at the largest waterfall system in the world, and now tourists are being told to stay away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

BOLDUAN: Overnight, a federal judge extended its order and tells the White House now that it must allow CNN, MS NOW, and Politico full access to the White House while the legal fight over the president's press ban plays out. The judge also wrote that the president's ban likely violated the First Amendment, that the president's own comments bolstered the court's conclusion the ban likely amounted to, quote unquote, retaliation and viewpoint discrimination. The judge also wrote that the government did not provide any evidence to justify their concerns about national security surrounding this.

CNN's Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter has much more on this. And, Brian, this came in late last night. Tell us more about the ruling.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Right. Nearly a month after the president announced this ban out of nowhere in September. We finally have a ruling from the court that's going to be a longer term position. At first, the judge put that temporary restraining order into effect. It only lasted two weeks.

The judge extended it for a few more days while he was writing this ruling that came in overnight. And now, this is long-term protection for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, and it extends beyond those three in a more philosophical way because this will make it much less likely that the president's going to try this stunt against The New York Times, or the A.P., or Reuters, or ABC tomorrow. This is now very clear from the judge.

And part of what he said is so important about the president's rationale for this ban. He rejected the argument that this was about national security, and he referred back to the president's own words. Trump repeatedly talked about negative coverage that he didn't like, and that, Judge Timothy Kelly says, is the likely reason for the ban.

Here is more of from Kelly's ruling overnight. He wrote, quote, there's no evidence in the record that President Trump made the decision to revoke the plaintiffs' hard passes on national security grounds from the get-go, nor at any time has he directly stated that national security was the reason for his decision.

In the end, the defendants, meaning the Justice Department and the Trump administration, did not even bother to identify what specific information in any of these reporting incidents was allegedly classified or sensitive.

So, the judge saw through the pretext, the excuses, that the Justice Department came up with after this ban was implemented, saw right through those and rejected those. The judge also didn't have much room to maneuver because of precedents that have been set by this court in Washington in the past.

So, it was very clear from the beginning this was unconstitutional, it was a violation of the First Amendment, and now you have this Trump- appointed federal judge agreeing with the attorneys in the case, the CNN, MS NOW, Politico attorneys, and saying, if this ever does go to trial, the media outlets are likely to win.

BOLDUAN: And what are the attorneys saying in response to this for the media outlets?

STELTER: Ted Boutrous is the outside counsel who was hired to represent the three media outlets. Here's what he texted me overnight. He said, when the president issued his, quote, ban on the free press, those are words that the president used in, out of his own mouth, ban on the free press, the president blatantly and explicitly violated due process and the First Amendment.

Since then, the president has repeatedly, candidly, and consistently admitted in public that he banned our clients from the White House to punish reporting he doesn't like and to try to force journalists to cover him in ways he prefers. So, that's the comment from Ted Boutrous, the attorney for the media outlets.

This doesn't mean the entire matter goes away, however. This is a preliminary injunction because this is normally what happens at an early phase of a legal battle before there is a trial. So, it remains to be seen what the Justice Department will do next. Will the Trump administration appeal this ruling? Will it head toward a trial?

So far, the White House has not responded to CNN's request for comment about this.

[07:20:02]

But for now, CNN, those other banned outlets, they remain back at work at the White House where they belong.

BOLDUAN: Yes. Brian, thank you so much for jumping on and bringing us an update, I really appreciate it. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. Ahead, new CNN reporting about cracks within President Trump's MAGA base, are the president's most loyal supporters questioning their allegiance now?

And the perseverance of -- Perseverance, NASA's Mars rover sets a new driving record. We'll explain and show you the pictures, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNER: This morning, investigators are working to determine how a man fell to his death from a rollercoaster at Six Flags over Georgia. Police have now identified the man, Hassam Kariem. He worked at a charter school in Atlanta as an I.T. manager, technology teacher, and robotics coach. The school called him a cherished member who worked for the district for more than 12 years.

Officials say he was ejected from the Goliath rollercoaster and struck other passengers before falling. There are still so many questions as to how this happened. Police, the makers of Goliath, and Georgia's insurance commissioner's office, which oversees amusement park safety, are all investigating this, including looking into whether the park and its staff followed proper safety procedures.

[07:25:08]

Six Flags has temporarily closed now at least ten roller coasters across several of its parks in the United States and Canada out of what it says in an abundance of caution. Joining me now is CNN Legal Analyst and Criminal Defense Attorney Joey Jackson. You have all of these groups who are investigating this. I want to give you some information about what a witness told CNN, that she was in line in the ride at Goliath when a cart pulled up with an empty seat in it, and other riders were in hysterics.

She said that the safety bar on the empty seat appeared to be loose, and another young passenger was covered in blood and injured, and that there are several groups now, as you heard, looking into this. Legally, does the victim's family need to prove something to hold Six Flags liable for his death? I mean, when you see this, if there was an equipment failure, what happened?

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Sara, good morning to you. Tragic and unimaginable, right? Just think about the impact, not only, right, just everybody around this passenger, his family, the other people who were injured. Wow.

Starting generic and then going specific. Whenever you look at these claims, you're looking for any negligence. What is that? We know it is carelessness in layman's terms, but you really identify four different things, right? Duty, breach, causation, damages. What does that mean?

Number one, duty. If you're on a ride, certainly the Six Flags and the operators have a duty to actually make sure that you're safe, and that you can have the ride in peace and enjoyment. Number two, breach. Is there a violation of some safety or other protocol wherein the duty that they owe you of safety has been breached? Causation, what specifically was involved that might have caused this? And then damages, and that's the injury.

And so when you look at this, you're going to be examining a number of things, like what? Like number one, was that lap bar properly secured? Was there an error with respect to the employees? Was there a safety protocol that was not followed? Was there a design or manufacturing defect? Was there an equipment failure? Had it been inspected recently? What was the nature of that inspection? Were they on notice that there was a problem in the past of any type?

And then you're going to look at any design defects. Should have just been a lap bar? Should it have been a shoulder strap or something else?

And so when you look at these cases, Sara, unlike a criminal case where you have this beyond a reasonable doubt standard, the high standard, it's a lot different in civil cases. It's what we call a preponderance, and again, all these legal terms. Preponderance is it more likely than not that there was some type of failure that led to this?

And so, of course, there's a lot of unanswered questions. That's why investigations are done. The investigators will examine the specifics of these things and determine what specifically went wrong.

SIDNER: It is such a disturbing story. I mean, anyone who has ridden a rollercoaster can just imagine how this all happened and went down and an awful scene for those who were there to witness it as well, a lot of kids.

Joey Jackson, thank you so much. I appreciate it. We will be in touch. I know you'll be back soon, as always.

JACKSON: Thank you, Sara.

SIDNER: I appreciate you. John?

BERMAN: All right, the Wall Street Journal reports Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton caught in pictures partying in Dubai with a woman who is not his wife, and two fugitives from American justice.

And a suspect makes a break for it, diving headfirst through a window to escape police.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:30:00]