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Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) is Interviewed about Ukraine; Polls on Midterm Elections; Social Media Platforms Restoring Users' Control. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired October 22, 2026 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Fire crews that were heading there, they could even sense it.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Yes.

BOLDUAN: So, Omar, thank you very much. Really appreciate it.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, websites around the world go dark after A.I. finds a critical flaw affecting a whopping 70 percent of the internet.

And seizing control of your digital destiny. The new features that allow you to control your own algorithm.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Breaking this morning, a Russian attack on a market in the Kharkiv region has killed at least two people the mayor says there. And then after a night -- this follows a night of other huge strikes on Kyiv. None of the ballistic missiles that hit Kyiv were intercepted, that's according to Ukraine's air force, Ukrainian officials tell CNN's Jim Sciutto that because of the shortage of interceptor missiles and deliveries that have not arrived.

[09:35:06]

The Pentagon denies holding them up.

With us now is Congressman Marlin Stutzman, a Republican from Indiana.

Congressman, it's great to see you this morning.

The mayor of Kharkiv says that the Russian attack this morning targeted civilians at lunchtime. Does that sound like the act of a humanitarian, an attack like that?

REP. MARLIN STUTZMAN (R-IN): No, absolutely not. Again, I mean, Putin is a monster. Putin continues to show by his actions that he's not serious about ending this war. You know, negotiations always, with a dictator like him, are difficult because at some point you hope there's a breaking point that, you know, they're going to decide to, you know, end the war. But in this case, it obviously appears that there's no intention of doing so.

BERMAN: When you heard -- well, let me play the sound. I want to know how you felt when you heard Donald Trump's envoy, peace envoy, Steve Witkoff, say this. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE WITKOFF, U.S. SPECIAL ENVOY: You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian. You are a humanitarian also, sir. And I salute that. And I commend you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So, what did you think when you heard that, Congressman?

STUTZMAN: Well, I don't believe you -- Putin is a humanitarian. He, again, is -- and he has invaded Ukraine. He has killed thousands to millions of people in Ukraine. He's, obviously, getting desperate, using North Korean soldiers. This is a -- I understand the difficulty that President Trump is in by negotiating with a person like him, but we're watching his actions. He can say one thing, but his actions show another. And that's why we passed the sanctions bill in Congress, to give President Trump that ability to use to bring down heavy sanctions on Russia. That -- I think that's the only pressure -- the same pressure that we're using in Iran with making sure that they don't have the ability to sell oil and gas. It needs to be the same pressure that we use here.

Yes, we're going to see higher fuel prices because of this. But if we want to end this war in Ukraine from Russia, we're going to have to put maximum financial pressure, or else there's going to have to be some other force used.

BERMAN: You've been incredibly consistent on your support for Ukraine and your criticism of Russia here. You just cited the sanctions bill that passed with bipartisan majorities. But didn't President Trump just suspend that bill, which you voted for with large bipartisan majorities?

STUTZMAN: Well, again, I mean, you know, it is a tool for him to use. You know, with Congress moving, you know, very slow, I believe that, you know, we gave President Trump every tool available to him that he asked for. He asked for a sanctions bill. But then, of course, he's going to finish the final negotiations and he can slap these on at any point.

And so, you know, while he negotiates with Putin day to day, it becomes very challenging because these guys have just shown, whether in Iran or in Russia, they cannot be trusted. And so, it becomes very complicated. You know, whether it's Europe, NATO, the world at large, we need to come together and stop these two circumstances where we know we have zealots in Iran that need to be removed and, you know, Putin, at some point, has to be kept under control, which is a very -- it's a very tough task because his ability to sell oil and gas to Europe and to China.

BERMAN: Congressman, your district borders Ohio. You share, you know, a large border with Ohio. You can see Ohio from your doorstep practically. Have you seen the ads that Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has been airing about Amy Acton.

STUTZMAN: No, I haven't. You know, we have Fort Wayne Media, the South Bend Media where we're at. But, no, I've not seen those.

BERMAN: You are aware that he has an ad that features Amy Acton's mother, a woman with whom Amy Acton has been estranged for 45 years. A woman with whom sided with her stepfather, accused and charged with abuse, both sexual and physical abuse, against the daughter. How appropriate do you think an ad like that is?

STUTZMAN: Well, again, I don't I don't know the circumstances there. And unfortunately, you know, political campaigns sometimes bring out the worst in people. And, you know, I don't know -- you know, obviously family circumstances happen. And when politics and political campaigns come to a head, you know, people make decisions that probably don't bring the family back together. So, I just know one thing, I'll be praying for their family because, more than anything, family relationships are most important.

BERMAN: Would you run this ad if you were Vivek Ramaswamy?

STUTZMAN: Well, I haven't seen it. I think it's more important to keep family out of political ads.

[09:40:03]

I mean, there's times that it happens, you know.

BERMAN: Right.

STUTZMAN: People do get involved in one way or the other. If she made that comment publicly, I'm sure that somebody's going to jump on that. But I think that it's very unfortunate that family matters get into political campaigns.

BERMAN: And very quickly, Congressman, I was reading a story, which I wasn't aware of. You've taken a stand against Flock cameras collecting personal data because you had your own experience with them. You know, very quickly, what kind of regulation would you like to see?

STUTZMAN: Well, I -- first of all, I don't want to see the federal government having just free access to the database. They, you know, need to get warrants for any sort of information from Flock cameras.

I don't like Flock cameras. They sit out on the roadway, just as you showed there, and they take, you know, photos of cars going by. Now, when it happened to me, it was about three years ago, so it was still fairly new. And I pulled into a driveway and all of a sudden a police officer was right behind me. And I said, sir, can I help you? And he said, well, your car came up in my database as a vehicle that the registration had expired. And so, I pulled it out and it had been. It was in my wife's name rather than my name. And I'm not blaming my wife. It's something that I should have taken care of. But it was just surprising.

So, I went back out and asked him later. I'm like, how did you know that my car, even though you were never behind me and saw that my tag had expired, what it was? And he showed me the Flock camera capability and the system. And so, I just think it's too much. I mean, where does it end? We have over 200,000 Flock cameras around the country. Surveillance by the federal government is very dangerous on a consistent basis like this.

BERMAN: Congressman Marlin Stutzman, I appreciate the disclaimer about which member of the couple gets the car registered there. Thank you very much for your time this morning.

Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we talk a lot about candidates, two candidates. But what about the polling? Oh, yes, we talk about that too. But do Americans trust polls anymore? Harry Enten is on deck to discuss.

And later, newly released footage shows the moment an officer pulled a man out of a car moments before that car exploded in a ball of fire.

That story and more, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:46:37]

BERMAN: Twelve days to go until the midterm elections and we've seen all kinds of new polling this week about the battle for control of Congress and who has the advantage. With us now, CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten.

And that polling seems to be telling a consistent story.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: To me it is telling a very consistent story when we're looking nationally. You know it really does look very much like, dare I say, a blue wave.

And, you know, yes, the numbers differ a little bit across this, but this is the national congressional ballot polls out since Monday. Look at this, we've got 12-point advantage. We've got a 12-point advantage for Democrats. We've got Democrats by 11. We've got Democrats by ten. And even on the low end, we've got Democrats by seven points. To me, these are all within the margin of error of each other. They are clearly showing that Democrats are leading nationally by anywhere from high single digits to low double digits.

BERMAN: When we talk about this figure in general, the congressional ballot test, how accurate has that been over time? ENTEN: Yes, OK. So, this is what I think is so notable, right, where

we -- I focused in on a lot -- in a couple of segments this week on the potential for polling errors on the state level. And I think that has a lot of Democrats very worried.

But here's the thing. The national congressional ballot test has actually been quite predictive of what happens in the fall elections. You can see it right here.

OK, let's take a look. The national congressional ballot versus the final result. And, you know, in Trump's first midterm, look at this, it was simpatico. It was simpatico. It was a zero point gap between ultimately happened nationally in terms of the House vote and what the polls suggested would happen.

How about in 2024? The last election. There was just a one, two point gap, maybe a slight underestimation of Republicans. But overall, very close. There were polls that nailed it exactly dead on. So, for all of this worry that you have about the state polling errors, the national polling in this case is indicating the exact same thing that the state level polling is showing, is that is Democrats are vastly outperforming where they were back in 2024.

BERMAN: OK, so talk to me about it, because the margins we're seeing right now and how much better it is for Democrats than it was two years ago, what might that portend in the election?

ENTEN: OK, this is what I think is so important. Just take a look here. OK, swing to the Democrats from 2024. What we're seeing is essentially about a 10 to 15 point shift in the direction of Democrats. Now, why is that so important? Because in order to win those key Senate races in those red states, what do Democrats need? They need a swing of about 11 to 14 points. Ergo, what we're seeing in the national polling very much comports with what Democrats need to get in order to flip control of the United States Senate. You throw that in with historically unpopular Republican candidates, Democratic candidates who are above water, that is favorable greater than unfavorable in these key Senate races, and it really makes a whole heck of a lot of sense.

And when you put it all together, you can see it right here. Take a look at the Kalshi prediction markets. Chance that Democrats win the Senate. A year ago it was just 28 percent. Look at this, up like a rocket. We're talking about a two in three chance. Now that's not a 100 percent chance. But the polling to me is telling a consistent story, and that is Democrats are on the way up where Republican chances are falling.

BERMAN: Harry Enten, thank you very much.

ENTEN: Thank you, my friend.

BERMAN: A very, very good explanation.

ENTEN: I try.

BERMAN: A lot of news this morning. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:54:21]

SIDNER: New this morning, a change to your social media feed that may give you more control over what you see and hear. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok are moving away from automated algorithm recommendations and introducing new features that let you customize your feed.

CNN's Clare Duffy here with me now to discuss.

A lot of people complain about getting people in their feed that they don't want, but this sounds like some work on my part.

CLARE DUFFY, CNN TECH REPORTER: Yes. Yes, it is really interesting because for years these platforms have moved in the direction of relying on their own algorithms to recommend content. The thinking being that because they collect so much data on their users, they might know better than users themselves what they want to see and be able to recommend content they wouldn't otherwise find. But as you said, that leaves users sometimes complaining that they're seeing irrelevant content, sometimes even toxic content.

[09:55:05]

So, now we are seeing these platforms trying to give some more control back to users.

And I'll run you through these features that we've seen all of these platforms roll out. You've got TikTok's Managed Topics, which lets you adjust on a sliding scale how much you want to see certain kinds of topics like fitness or beauty in your feed. You've got Instagram and Facebook's Your Algorithm, where you can add or remove topics that you do or do not want to see in your feed. And then YouTube just recently added custom feeds where you've still got your main feed with the recommendations, but you can create custom feeds around certain topics like late night ASMR relaxation videos.

And I recently tested this out on Instagram. I am expecting a child.

BERMAN: Yes.

DUFFY: As you can imagine, I am getting my feed flooded with pregnancy videos, birth stories, nursery reveals.

SIDNER: Bombarded, yes.

DUFFY: It was too much. And so, I went into Instagram Your Algorithm. I said, stop showing me pregnancy and birth videos. You can still show me newborn parenting information. And that has been really helpful for me.

SIDNER: Really?

DUFFY: Yes.

SIDNER: So, it stopped? The bombardment stopped, and you got exactly kind of what you wanted?

DUFFY: You start -- I mean you're not getting completely rid of the recommendations, but you're getting recommendations that are focused around what you really want to see. And in large part this is because of artificial intelligence being able to better understand what these words that we say really mean.

SIDNER: Clare Duffy, very interesting. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

DUFFY: Thank you.

SIDNER: ASMR. Let's go out like this.

Thank you for joining us. "THE SITUATION ROOM" is up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)