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Trump Rallies In Florida, 11 Days Before Midterm Election; GOP Candidate Again Defends His Incendiary Attack Ad; DOJ Brings Criminal Charges Against FBI Officials It Believes Hampered Biden Corruption Investigation; Father Who Killed Oregon School Shooter Speaks Out. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired October 23, 2026 - 15:00   ET

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

ANNA STEWART, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And she says that is one of the key reasons why she decided to distance herself from her father and to not allow him to meet her children.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All right, Anna, thank you so much for the latest. There are obviously a lot of interest in that story.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

Focus on Florida. The President rallying for a Republican candidate who just weeks ago nixed references to Trump from his own website.

Plus, a new twist in the Hunter Biden investigation saga. Two former senior FBI officials now face charges for allegedly lying to Congress about what they knew about Hunter Biden's laptop.

And then later, the father who fatally shot the gunman at his daughter's Oregon elementary school recounts the frightening moments before the deadly encounter. We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

Down the stretch they come, with just 11 days until the midterm election, President Trump is rallying in Fort Myers, Florida, as he tries to energize Republicans to hit the polls. Let's go to CNN's Adam Cancryn, who is at that campaign stop.

Adam, what's the latest?

ADAM CANCRYN, CNN REPORTER: Well, this is the closing message here. This is the closing run for the President. He's going from state to state pretty much daily at this point, up until the midterms. And the message really has been the same. If you were a voter for Trump in 2024, you need to come out for Republicans up and down the ballot in 2026. Otherwise, they risk a wipeout to Democrats, both in the House and in the Senate.

And that's kind of what you're hearing from Trump here right now. It's what we've heard from candidates all throughout the day so far today. Listen to how Trump put it earlier today before he came down here to Florida.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think there's great Republican enthusiasm. We're sold out at every single place I go. And every single place I go, people that are down are now winning.

Every place I've gone to, I've helped. And every -- every place wants me. The one problem is I'm one person.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CANCRYN: Now, that has been kind of what we have heard. That's the -- the real major hope we've heard from Trump and his advisors, that if they can get -- they can get people to turn out, to be excited, then Republicans can salvage these midterms. The problem is that here and also pretty much everywhere else that Trump has gone has been a deep red state or district. These are voters that Trump kind of had in the bag in 2024. He's having to now make a renewed appeal to them and not really even trying to go into the purple districts, into the independent districts. That will really determine the balance of power, especially in the House, potentially in the Senate.

So, a tough uphill climb here that Trump and Republicans down the ballot are engaged in. Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Adam, live for us from Fort Myers, Florida. Thank you so much.

And we're joined now to discuss the midterms with CNN's Chief National Affairs Analyst and anchor of "The Arena," Kasie Hunt.

I mean, how are you seeing Trump's blitz here? Is this him really trying to draw out these low propensity voters or should he be going to purple districts?

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, I think that they have clearly made the decision, right, that the way he can help is to get people who don't vote in midterm elections, but voted for him for president to actually show up in a situation like this. And if you talk to people who are running in states, you know, talk to Susan Collins, probably less interested in actually having the President show up because reminding people in places -- in purple places that he is actually president is -- I mean, his approval rating is at its essentially lowest ever, right? So, that doesn't -- that doesn't help.

He, of course, has wanted this election to be about him, right? When he has talked and had these strategy meetings, he has wanted to show some of his strategist's videos of himself that he would like to see in these midterm campaign ads. But that's really just not what the reality is in some of these really close races.

KEILAR: Would it help if it really was about him? Is he accurate on that, where his every place I've gone to, I've helped, he says.

HUNT: It's impossible to know, right? I mean, we're not going to really learn that until election night when we get a sense of whether or not the electorate is actually -- one of the things that we've seen to the extent there have been polling errors in the last -- in recent elections, a big part of it has been underestimating Republicans that have showed up or voters, right? Maybe not even people who are typically very political at all showing up for Donald Trump. That has been underestimated, right? And that is essentially what they are trying to do here.

They are trying to get those people out. And -- and it's -- there's just really no way to answer the question until we know who actually votes on election day.

[15:05:07]

KEILAR: So, the Cook Political Report moved 19 races to favor Democrats today. It seems like every few days we're seeing this shift from the Cook Political Report. How are you seeing this?

HUNT: Yes. Republicans that I've talked to, honestly, they had their worst week probably last week, maybe the week before. And the question that they are raising with me now is whether or not they -- is -- is whether or not voters are starting to -- in consultant parlance come home, right? Remember that they are Republicans, right? Because there is a big difference, right?

You might be upset about what the President's doing. You might be unhappy with his policies. But you still may never have actually showed up and voted for a Democrat. And there are voters who are going to remember that here in the final days. However, the ratings movements from Cook really underscore the broader themes, which are that Democrats seem to be heading for something that is closer to a wave than not. And my big question is, are those expectations in this final week going to end up being a problem for them, right?

Because that narrative can, in fact, take hold. And you saw this a little bit in 2022, where there was this expectation that Republicans were going to do so well, that there was going to be this red wave that when Democrats did a little less worse than expected, it seemed like a big victory for them, right? So, that's a dynamic at play, too.

KEILAR: So, young voters, this is really interesting what we're seeing. Take us through this and how this compares to what we saw in -- in the last -- the -- the last time we saw young voters coming out. Is this a little bit of a shift?

HUNT: Well, I think that you've seen a number of places where the President made inroads in 2024 because you're seeing some of it as well with Latino voters, Hispanic voters and black voters, but young voters as well. There's just an erosion, right, with the President and his overall approval rating in a way that digs into or eats into the advantage that Trump, when he was at the top of the ticket, was able to bring to the Republican Party.

So, it is one factor of many, but it could be critical.

KEILAR: Yes, they're fickle, right? They are when they're younger.

So, one of the big stories, obviously, we're covering is this Ohio gubernatorial race and this ad from Vivek Ramaswamy featuring the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton. Ultimately, as you see the President, the Vice President and now Ramaswamy today, just fully doubling down on it. Do you -- how do you see this actually working right now or what the calculation is about how this may or may not work?

HUNT: The way that the President, the Vice President and Ramaswamy are handling this is really the classic approach that we have seen from Donald Trump from the get go, which is that he has always simply insisted or denied whatever was going on, right? That sort of doubling down strategy.

The question that I have is, first of all, whether that works for anybody aside from Donald Trump, right? Vivek Ramaswamy's unfavorable rating is incredibly high. People simply do not like him very much. And I think this contributes in many ways to -- to that image, adds to that image among voters. If you look at -- there was one former Republican congressman from Ohio who looked at this and said, listen, the bottom is going to fall out of this race, right?

The -- this is unacceptable to most people. This is showing them the things about Amy Acton that are quite frankly, the most sympathetic, right, pieces of her story, because maybe people see that ad they have one initial reaction and then they learn something that they maybe didn't know before, which is the circumstances of that estrangement. And frankly, the sympathy shifts.

Every -- all of the rest of the Republican Party for the most part in Ohio, aside from the President, Vice President and Vivek himself, are showing that. I think the question I have, and I've had this throughout the Trump era, and every single time we've tried to answer it, the President, people have declined essentially, Republicans have declined to turn on President Trump.

The political environment is so negative now, is so nasty, it seems to have turned people away from politics, generally speaking. I don't know if this is the time that it changes, because I feel like every single time we say, oh, this is definitely beyond the pale. This is definitely the point where we're all going to decide none of this is okay with anyone. It's never been true.

But I think the question is whether it is now. There are some new variables with President Trump that -- where his approval rating is. An increased perception that he is just like other politicians, right? That was something that protected him, I think, with voters. They saw him as somebody who was outside of the system, who was going to break the system in a way that was going to help him. And some of these narratives around him putting his name on buildings, his family enriching themselves while people are really struggling to put groceries on the table, I think that you have seen an erosion in the perception that that's who he is.

[15:10:09]

And I think that this ad, his embrace of the ad, contributes to this idea that, like, all of this is just beneath us, right? KEILAR: You're saying you don't know that happened. You don't know that that happened about this idea that the stepfather was indicted for sexual assault of Amy Acton when she was nine to 12 years old. He's dismissing. You don't even know if that happened today.

HUNT: Yes. Well, I mean, just think about it, right? I mean, this is a woman who is now running for governor, right? She has had a -- she's the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in a very large American state, right? After having gone through the experience of having her and her younger brother removed from her mother's custody, which is an incredibly high legal bar, right? For a state to have to cross and who has not made this the centerpiece of her campaign, has avoided talking about it until now when Vivek Ramaswamy, her opponent, goes -- finds her estranged mother, puts the estranged mother in an ad. And it turns out the story is that the stepfather was arrested for rape and the mother stood by, right?

KEILAR: For decades until he died.

HUNT: For decades.

KEILAR: Yes.

HUNT: Right. I mean ...

KEILAR: By the stepfather, not the daughter.

HUNT: ... what -- what does that say about the willingness of the Ramaswamy campaign to essentially do anything to win? I -- I struggle to see how that generates sympathy with voters.

KEILAR: Yes. We'll find out soon.

HUNT: We will.

KEILAR: Kasie Hunt, thank you so much.

HUNT: Thanks, Brianna.

KEILAR: And of course, tune into "The Arena" at top of the hour. Kasie's going to talk with Democratic Mississippi Senate candidate Scott Colom and also Senator Cory Booker.

Still to come, two former FBI officials are facing charges for allegedly lying to Congress. DOJ arguing they hampered the Biden corruption investigation.

Plus, the man, the father, who fatally shot a school shooter in Oregon, is recounting that deadly attack. What he said made him spring into action outside of his kid's elementary school that day.

And then later, A.I. found a critical cybersecurity vulnerability that impacts 70 percent of the Internet. What you should do to protect your data. We have that and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [15:16:38]

KEILAR: First on CNN, two former FBI officials are facing charges for allegedly lying to Congress as -- this according to people briefed on the matter and court documents. The charges are part of a probe that focused on whether FBI investigators sought to minimize allegations of Biden family corruption and evidence of Hunter Biden's laptop. CNN Crime and Justice Correspondent Katelyn Polantz is with us now.

Katelyn, what are you learning about this case?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, this is a brand new case unsealed this morning and these two former FBI officials, they were indeed in court to face a judge for the very first time. The two former FBI officials, they were essentially top intelligence people in Washington for the FBI, especially in 2019 and 2020 when they were both having a leading role in a task force that was looking at Russian disinformation in the 2020 election, when Joe Biden was running and Donald Trump was running. They were trying to monitor what disinformation might be coming in there.

These two people, their names are Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides. In 2023, they were asked both separately in interviews by the House Judiciary Committee that was wanting to investigate how the federal government handled the Hunter Biden probes. They were asked about how much they knew about those Hunter Biden probes.

The Justice Department in this filing today, the criminal complaint against these two says that they falsely told the House that they didn't know much about the Hunter Biden investigations or even about his laptop that had been seized and was unfurling much of the investigative effort at that time. They said they didn't know much about it, but the Justice Department now says that that is a lie, that they did know that they had more information about Hunter Biden investigations at a time when they were also looking at whether that information was becoming part of disinformation in the election.

So, many years ago, a lot of back and forth. Now it is these criminal charges. One thing that is important to note here is that the Justice Department, if they take these to trial, they're going to have to prove that this somehow impeded Congress's ability to do its job investigating what had happened with the Hunter Biden investigations. They say that at least one of these officials, because of the answers they gave to Congress, was escaping awkward questions about Hunter Biden and his laptop, and that the House committee would have been much more aggressive in trying to get more information about the Hunter Biden investigations at that time if they had not made these misrepresentations.

But also, this comes at a moment where we're now talking about Hunter Biden two weeks before this midterm election. There's a lot of Republicans out there who have wanted to see these -- these officials or any FBI officials held to account in some way because of these investigations Republicans have long pushed. So, it -- it's a fascinating new case, but it rests upon information from several years ago. KEILAR: Why allegedly would they have wanted to minimize what they knew while talking to Congress?

POLANTZ: Well, that would be something that we'll have to wait to see what their defense lawyers say.

[15:20:04]

But one thing I should point out is that Floris has several lawyers who are her defense lawyers now saying this morning that the Justice Department is accusing her falsely of a crime that's all based on the say-so of politicians, and this is all about pushing a false narrative of some level of government corruption as a way to score political points by this Justice Department.

Interesting. Katelyn, thank you so much. This isn't the last of this story for sure, so we'll be talking about it ahead, I'm sure.

POLANTZ: For a million years.

KEILAR: A million years. Hopefully not that many.

All right, so ahead we're hearing for the first time from the father who stopped a school shooter at his daughter's elementary school in Oregon. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:25:26]

KEILAR: For the first time since last week's deadly shooting at an Oregon elementary school, we're hearing from the man who stopped it. Kaylub Giamanco, who happens to be a military veteran, says it was a series of seemingly insignificant decisions that placed him outside of his daughter's school at the exact moment, the very right time, like deciding to go home for lunch, even though he had packed his lunch. He had food in his truck.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAYLUB GIAMANCO, STOPPED SCHOOL SHOOTER: I had my lunch in the truck, but I had to run into town to match some stone and two bolts that I had to have for the job. And so, I called my wife right as I was about to leave Pronghorn, I said, hey, sweetie, we had those tacos last night. Those were really yummy. Could -- do you mind reheating some of those tacos? I'm going to go ahead and stop home instead. And so, I headed home.

And as I turned onto Brentwood, I was approximately a hundred yards behind a red Toyota pickup truck, and I had seen a man in black, and I had seen a rifle. And then, I saw him fire two times towards the Toyota pickup truck, and then one time into the field where there was a lawnmower. And so, I had seen the red truck continue on, and at this point, the gunman had thrown his rifle up and over the fence. And that's when panic fled into my brain, and I was just -- that's when I opened my center console, and I just said, no, no, no, no, no. And I grabbed my gun, and I put the magazine in it, and I racked the action. And then, I proceeded into the parking lot, and I saw him walking all the way across the school, and I just was in full panic, like, no, there's children, there's babies in there.

And I told my Siri to call 911. And the dispatch -- dispatch had picked up, and I was, you know, reporting the incident. But she was asking questions that -- they frustrated me, and I understand there's protocol, but she was asking me, you know, do I know the person, all of these things. And I said, I'm sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die. And I hopped over the fence, and as he was passing on the other side of the wall ball court, I ran to the wall ball court so that he couldn't see me, and so I strafed along the wall ball court.

And then, at this point, he reached the double doors, and I heard him fire two shots into the doors. And as he was firing those two shots, I ran from the wall ball court to the building and got prone, and then I started going along the windows.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, Giamanco goes on to describe making his way into the school. And I want to warn you that you're about to hear descriptions of gun violence that involves kids.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GIAMANCO: And that's when I started hearing children pleading for their lives, and then I started hearing gunfire. And I just started army crawling faster and faster, and I told myself, I'm -- this is probably the last thing that I'm ever going to do. And I just crawled faster and faster, and I went prone around a recycle bin that was sitting there into the corridor where the doors were. And that's when I crawled through the bottom window that was shot out and continued on to the rug inside where there's a little breezeway with stairs, and then the special needs classroom was to my left.

At that point, I was on the ground, on my hands and knees. I re-racked my weapon to make sure that a live round came out so that I knew that I was ready to go. And then I peeked through the window, and at this point, I found my opportunity, and I seen a teacher on the left struggling with the gunman on the right with the rifle. And I knew that they were both side to me, and I knew that he did not know that I was there. And so at that point, I swung the door out and open, and I stepped in, and I fired. And they dropped to the ground, and the teacher sprang out of the building, thinking that I was a second shooter, and I could see the fear in her eyes. And that -- that did hurt a lot, but I could see the fear in her eyes. She left the room, and this happens in seconds.

And then, I looked down at the gunman, and he was scrambling for his weapon. And I looked at him, and I shot him two more times to make sure that he couldn't move because I was afraid of him shooting anybody else.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[15:30:08]