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Sinking Latino Support for GOP Could Swing Midterms; Obama: Trump Administration Investigation of Rep. Omar Appalling; Elon Musk Says He Will Give SpaceX Shares to Every Kid in America; Elizabeth Holmes Documentary Becomes Surprise Hit. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired October 19, 2026 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Just two years ago a historic breakthrough with Latino voters propelled President Trump to a second term and helped his party take control of Congress. But if Election Day mirrors recent polling those voters could shift significantly back into Democrats favor. Republicans are facing increasingly strong headwinds with Latino voters on key issues from the cost of living, to cuts in health care funding, to Trump's aggressive enforcement of immigration policy. CNN's Arlette signs has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MAYUMI CASTRO FERNANDEZ, VOLUNTEER: We have to make a difference.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Mayumi Castro Fernandez is knocking doors in Miami for this election. But, this time, she's walking a different path after regretting her vote for President Trump in 2024.

CASTRO FERNANDEZ: The gas, the food, everything goes up. He don't make one promise that he did in that time.

SAENZ (voice-over): She's among the Latino voters who could decide the midterm elections, as an NBC News-Telemundo poll showed only 27 percent of Latino voters approve of Trump's performance.

SAENZ: President Trump flipped Miami-Dade County in the last election, the first Republican to win here since 1988. And that victory was fueled in large part by Hispanic voters.

SAENZ (through translator): Are you happy with President Trump, or no?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I am extremely happy.

[14:35:00]

SAENZ (through translator): With President Trump?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Number one in the world. SAENZ (voice-over): Domino Park in little Havana sits in the 27 congressional district, where two former TV anchors are facing off, GOP Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar and Democrat Eliott Rodriguez.

ELIOTT RODRIGUEZ (D), FLORIDA CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: We did not vote for this economy.

SAENZ (voice-over): Salazar won by more than 20 points in 2024 but is now facing deep voter anxiety over the cost of living and Trump's aggressive immigration enforcement. As south Florida feels the sting of Trump's immigration crackdown, Salazar pushed back with this ad.

REP. MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR (R-FL): Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far.

RODRIGUEZ: I think voters in this district are smart enough to see through this and see this as crocodile tears. She voted for these policies.

SAENZ (voice-over): Karina Castillo, a Venezuelan American in a neighboring district, voted for Trump in 2024 but now regrets it, in part because of his immigration actions.

KARINA CASTILLO, INDEPENDENT VOTER: I saw all the executive orders that he signed, and I start comparing to the Constitution of the United States. I saw all the violations of the law. At the time I got scared.

SAENZ (voice-over): Kevin Cooper, chair of the Miami-Dade GOP, argues the Democratic alternative doesn't sit well with many voters who have fled socialist countries and may see similarities.

KEVIN COOPER, CHAIR, MIAMI-DADE, FLORIDA, GOP: Are we going to be free, or are we going to continue to embrace socialism from the left? And the left cannot win. That's not an ideology that people here are willing to accept.

SAENZ (voice-over): Castro Fernandez is turning her frustration into action, canvassing with her local union.

CASTRO FERNANDEZ: We need to change. I changed my mind. They can change too.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: Our thanks to Arlette Saenz from that report -- Brianna.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Former President Barack Obama now criticizing the Trump administration's investigation into Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. In a lengthy social media post, Obama called the probe, quote, appalling, while slamming the search of the Democratic lawmakers' D.C. home. He writes, "The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president."

CNN previously reported the search was related to an immigration fraud probe investigating whether Omar's father lied about her age when she obtained her U.S. citizenship in 2000. Here's Trump Border Czar Tom Homan defending the investigation on Fox.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM HOMAN, BORDER CZAR: I've been told I have a strong case, and we'll let the evidence lead where it leads.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Would this involve denaturalizing and then deporting her if it turns out that there is some kind of immigration fraud?

HOMAN: Of course, if you lie during naturalization process, there is a process to denaturalize somebody. We've done it before.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: CNN's Brian Todd is with us now on this story. Brian, what else did former President Obama say about this?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: He said it should outrage all Americans, Brianna, among other things. I'll get to his statement in just a second. It wasn't too long ago, you know, that there was this adage in American politics, kind of an unwritten rule, an unwritten tradition, that former presidents don't weigh in on their successors and don't criticize their successors.

Well, in the era of Trump, that has kind of gone out the window. Still an extraordinary move by former President Barack Obama on Sunday on social media, saying that this was an appalling move, this search of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's home on October 12th. He said, quote, "This was done to uncover a non-existent smoking gun from 20 years ago."

Here is more of what former President Obama had to say yesterday on social media. Quote, "The fact that any president or any administration is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar's political views. Because if this becomes the new normal, there's no reason to believe it will stop with her or that future presidents in either party won't do the same." Now, as Brianna mentioned, CNN has previously reported that this investigation, this search was related to an immigration fraud probe investigating whether Ilhan Omar's father might have lied about her age when she got her citizenship in the year 2000.

Ilhan Omar has denied any wrongdoing there, saying that she legally got her citizenship then after fleeing Somalia in 1995. We should point out Ilhan Omar has not been charged with a crime, and the Justice Department has not provided any evidence against her, actually. Here is a statement from Ilhan Omar's attorney, "This vindictive, retributive, and politically motivated criminal investigation into one of the president's chief congressional critics violates Representative Omar's constitutional rights and threatens the separation of powers."

But the Justice Department is defending the search and defending its methods in the search. Here's a statement from a Justice Department spokesperson to CNN, quote, "Our attorneys and law enforcement partners complied with all court orders and legal obligations as they always do. Leaking a letter to the press right after sending it is not good faith, it is a publicity play."

[14:40:00]

So they have an issue with how some of this news got out, but clearly, Brianna, there's just serious fallout with President Obama taking the extraordinary step yesterday of laying this all out on social media and really blistering his successor and blistering the administration over this.

KEILAR: And what are other Democrats saying? Are they defending her?

TODD: They are. House Democratic leaders are calling this, quote, deeply disturbing. They're saying it raises, quote, serious questions about the continued corrupt weaponization of the federal government against Donald Trump's adversaries.

We also have to say it is extraordinary for the timing. The Justice Department, as you know Brianna, does not like to do investigative activity 60 days prior to an election or within 60 days prior to an election, to avoid the appearance of any political maneuvering, any political bias.

This was done on October 12th, a week ago today, less than a month before the midterms.

KEILAR: Important to note. Brian, thank you so much for the reporting.

An investigation is underway after a military service member died rappelling from the ceiling onto the field before a University of Texas at San Antonio football game where the military was being honored.

We have stopped the video to avoid showing the moment of impact. That service member has been identified as Air Force Technical Sergeant Ian Patterson. He was assigned to the 6th Combat Training Squadron.

He served in the Air Force for 15 years. That fall at the Alamo Dome occurred with fans in the stands. You saw them there.

The band was assembled nearby on the field. Sergeant Patterson was one of four service members who were scheduled to participate in the pregame rappelling demonstration. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:45:00]

SANCHEZ: Elon Musk, the richest person on planet Earth, is now promising to give every child in America a share of SpaceX. His announcement comes just months after his $2 trillion aerospace and artificial intelligence company went public. CNN's Anna Cooban has more on this announcement, which is still thin on details. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNA COOBAN, CNN BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS REPORTER: So Elon Musk is promising every kid in America a stake in his $2 trillion rocket and AI company. He announced in a post on X Monday that next year he would give one share of SpaceX to every child in America. Each share was valued at around $146 at market close on Friday.

And so now crunching the numbers, if we take the U.S. Census Bureau's latest estimates, there were roughly 73 million people aged under 18 in America in 2024. And if we multiply that figure by the SpaceX share price, that would make the potential giveaway by Musk worth around $10.7 billion. But the details around this are pretty scant.

It's not clear exactly how those shares would be distributed to the tens of millions of potentially eligible American children, or whether all of them would indeed be eligible. There is some precedent, however. Earlier this month, the Treasury Department automatically signed up millions of under 18s to Trump Accounts, a new federal savings and investment vehicle.

And in July, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and her husband pledged to donate one SpaceX share to roughly 2 million children already signed up to one of these accounts. Now Musk's offer came in response to an announcement by AI giant Anthropic on Sunday that it would commit at least 5 percent of its shares, worth about $48 billion, to a fund that would make donations for the public benefit. AI companies are facing mounting public backlash over the safety of their products.

Anthropic itself has recently said that AI poses existential risks to humanity, as well as the technology's impact on people's jobs and the environmental and social impact of data centers. So perhaps Musk's offer, if it does come, would go some way to softening the public perception.

Anna Cooban, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: All right, thanks to Anna for that report. Now to some of the other headlines we're watching this hour. The Supreme Court is rejecting an appeal brought by alleged 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other defendants accused of plotting the terror attack.

Justices are backing the Pentagon decision by former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to throw out the plea deals for the alleged conspirators. The decision puts the case back in the hands of military courts that have struggled for years to set a trial.

Also, an expedition to the South Pacific to search for the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's lost plane has come up empty. Researchers from Purdue University and the Archaeological Legacy Institute says they found no conclusive evidence that Earhart's plane landed on or near a similar small remote island south of her original pit stop nearly 90 years ago. The group set out to examine a blurry object in a lagoon first detected via satellite in 2020. In a statement, researchers said evidence from the scene confirmed the image was likely a collection of large trees.

By the time the team arrived, a good portion of the debris had washed away.

And a mini-stampede on the streets of Kansas City, Missouri. More than 100 cattle got loose after the semi-truck carrying them tipped over. Neighbors and local wranglers stepped in to help police round up the stray livestock. Let's watch this technique here. Ah, they took it off.

After hours of searching, authorities say all the surviving cattle have been accounted for. They're fortunately all OK.

Still to come, the story of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is now a box office phenomenon. Ahead, how you can see everything became one of the biggest documentary releases in decades.

[14:50:27]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: It is the documentary that is sending shockwaves through the movie industry. "You Can See Everything" about disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes just scored the biggest opening for a non- music documentary in more than two decades. This brought in more than $15 million on fewer than 900 screens. For reference, most studio blockbusters debut somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000 screens. The doc's success is even more amazing when you consider that it is almost three hours long.

[14:55:00]

So a lot of sitting there and watching and people stuck around for it. The directors here, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, worked on the project in secret for years, filming Holmes in the weeks just before she went to prison in 2023. Here's a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've never been suspicious that she's ever lied to you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, never.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We still have this weird feeling that there's somethings that I'm not seeing.

ELIZABETH HOLMES: Because I don't have anything to hide.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know what you're feeling.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No you don't

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Joining us now is CNN's chief media analyst, Brian Stelter. And, Brian, you know, one of our producers said you have to see this. It's really great.

And I looked and I thought, wait, I'm going to have to sit still for three hours to see it. But you say it's great. Tell us.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: That's what my wife said as well. She was skeptical going into a three-hour movie on Saturday night. But we entered a, you know, jam-packed theater.

Most of these showings across the country, Brianna, were sold out. And within an hour, I think everyone understood why. This movie is transcendent and gripping and funny and uncomfortable and all the things all at once.

It really defies categorization. Yes, it is a documentary, but there's also someone in it who might be up for a best actress prize. I'm not going to spoil it, but it goes in so many different directions and it's so layered.

And that is why people are talking about this film right after they see it and for days on end. And honestly, for A24, the distributor, this is a best-case scenario because all the buzz is going to build into a second and third and fourth weekend for this movie. It was only in about 800 theaters last weekend.

That's why it made about $15 million. It would have made even more money, but there were all those sold-out showings. So as it opens wide in the coming days and then eventually gets to streaming months from now, a lot of people are going to have different opportunities to see it for themselves and to unpack all the layers.

You know, it's about Elizabeth Holmes, yes, but it's really about truth and about lying and about manipulation and, you know, on from there.

KEILAR: Just like mesmerized by some of these scenes here. So the first teaser, of course, became a social media sensation. Endless memes, right?

Endless memes from that thing. How much did that contribute to the success? Or is it because Holmes is really just such a fascinating figure?

Is it all of the above?

STELTER: I think it's all of the above. And yes, a lot of it does have to do with Elizabeth Holmes and the con that she pulled off with Theranos. She was convicted.

She was sent to prison in 2023. Nathan Fielder was able to spend time, many weeks with Holmes right before she went to prison. And that is the starting point of the documentary. Trying to understand this person who was able to pull off this dramatic fraud. She insists that she's innocent. Trying to look into her eyes and understand that and process it is a lot of why the film works so well.

But then it goes beyond that into questions about truth and deception much more broadly. And about whether anyone can ever really know the truth about someone else. So I think that's why it works on so many different levels, so many different layers.

It's why people walk out of the theater and they're all talking about it and buzzing about it afterward. And why I've heard a lot of people say they could have watched three more hours. Even though that's hard to believe, that's how viewers end up feeling when they see it.

KEILAR: Is this going to change the documentary genre, you think?

STELTER: I think it absolutely is. I mean, Nathan Fielder and his co- director, they are testing the limits of what documentary can do. And there's a lot of talk in Hollywood about this film being up for Best Picture when the Oscars take place in a few months.

Now, I think if Oscar voters were voting right now, it would definitely be nominated. We'll always see what happens now at the end of the year. But it's definitely because it mixes forms and plays with the rules of documentary film.

That's one of the reasons why Hollywood types are so intrigued by this.

KEILAR: All right. And then turning now from the big screen, Brian, to the small screen. You have some news about Jon Stewart and The Daily Show.

STELTER: Yes, this was just announced a few minutes ago, and it's a big deal for comedy fans. Jon Stewart is going to stay at The Daily Show not just for one year. He's been renewing his deal one year at a time, which has left people wondering about his future.

But Comedy Central announced a few minutes ago he's renewing through the end of 2028. So through the next presidential election cycle. And this is notable for a couple of reasons.

Number one, Jon Stewart, he's been back on The Daily Show once a week. He's been doing the show on a short-term basis. His friend Stephen Colbert was canceled last year, and that took effect earlier this year.

Stewart was outspoken about that, criticizing his parent company. People wondered if he might be the next to be canceled. He has been one of the most outspoken critics of President Trump on U.S. TV. But Stewart is staying in place. And that's notable also because Comedy Central, now owned by Skydance, now CNN's sister, that is also notable because Skydance had cozied up to the Trump administration while trying to get the CNN and Warner deal approved. So Jon Stewart remaining in place through the end of 2028. END