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Russian Media: Deadly Drone Strike In Moscow Region; Senate Judiciary Cmte. To Vote On Blanche Nomination Tuesday; CNN Analyzes Right-Wing Coverage Of Reflecting Pool Fallout. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired August 04, 2026 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:30:00]
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POLO SANDOVAL, CNN ANCHOR: Russian officials are reporting a new deadly drone strike in the Moscow region. The state-run TASS News agency citing local officials who say that five people were killed and six others wounded, and all this comes just a day after Russian authorities blamed debris from a Ukrainian drone for killing at least seven people on a crowded beach in southern Russia.
They report at least three of the victims were children. Now we do want to warn you that the video is disturbing. Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation says that the drone was shot down by Russian air defenses. CNN's analysis of the video finds that seconds before this explosion, automatic gun fire from at least three weapons can be heard, and during the gunfire, the drone veers sharply and then dives into the beach. It appears to have overshot a Russian radar installation just west of where it crashed.
In the coming hours, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to meet for a potential vote on Todd Blanche, President Trump's pick for Attorney General. Blanche's confirmation is likely to advance after he formally rescinded Trump's so-called anti-weaponization fund on Sunday, and the move came after two key Republican senators threatened to withhold their votes until there was written assurance that the program was indeed dead.
Senator John Cornyn's office confirmed a deal was reached with the Justice Department to formally terminate the program. Sources familiar with the matter tell CNN that the White House was deeply involved in those negotiations, but on Monday Trump denied seeing the details of the deal.
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REPORTER: Mr. President, did you sign on Todd Blanche's (inaudible)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I didn't look at it. All I know is that Todd Blanche is -- is great. He's going to do a great job. Everybody knows it, and I understand there's been a sign off. But I didn't -- I don't know what they agreed. I think Todd Blanche agreed to reconfirm things that he's already said, and what he said was OK. (END VIDEO CLIP)
SANDOVAL: And during that same Oval Office exchange with reporters, President Trump also blasted the U.S. attorney for D.C., Jeanine Pirro, as sources tell CNN that he is considering firing her, and this after Pirro's decision to drop charges against several people that the president claimed vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
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In a court filing, Pirro's office concluded that the issues with the pool stemmed from a flawed renovation. A senior administration official says that the move appears to have caught President Trump off guard. In fact, earlier journalist Gretchen Carlson echoed a similar sentiment.
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GRETCHEN CARLSON, JOURNALIST AND CO-FOUNDER, LIFT OUR VOICES: I think that Trump was blindsided by this. This is his legacy. Like these monuments to himself are the legacies, and the idea that somehow those are -- are now going to be tarnished in a way in which he did not plan is something that just makes him irate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANDOVAL: And then there's this one of the men who stands accused of vandalizing the monument is former Olympic canoeist David Hearn. He has previously pleaded not guilty in D.C. Superior Court. The judge has not officially dropped the charges against Hearn, but his lawyers are expected to file a response to Pirro's request for Hearn's case to be dismissed.
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JOSH KOB, ATTORNEY FOR DAVID HEARN: On the record now, before the court, in their motion to dismiss the indictment, is documentary evidence from the Department of Interior and now from the Department of Justice, saying that in all likelihood the damage that happened at the Reflecting Pool was not because of vandalism, and that they would not be able to prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt.
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SANDOVAL: And a source confirming that President Trump met with Pirro as well as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum at the White House on Monday. Sources say that Pirro was not fired at that meeting. She also did not resign. Pirro has a long history with the president as well as right wing media, which finds itself in something of a predicament as tensions simmer between the former Fox News host and the Trump Administration.
CNN's Brian Stelter takes a closer look at how conservative news outlets have been covering the Reflecting Pool fallout.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Hey there, yeah. President
Trump and Jeanine Pirro have been friends for more than 30 years, so this schism between Trump and Pirro is big news almost everywhere, but it's not breaking through in right wing media, and I'm intrigued by that because Pirro is a product of right-wing media. She spent more than a decade on Fox News as one of Trump's staunchest supporters, but now her former network is not coming to her defense at all.
Even though the truth about Trump's Reflecting Pool mess seems to be on her side. So, backing up a bit here, Trump's claims about the Reflecting Pool being targeted by vandals were already made Fox News story earlier this summer. Fox was all in back when people were arrested in June. The network spent hours covering the story, featuring Pirro and hyping the president's claims about the matter.
But Pirro crossed Trump last Friday by undermining his vandalism cries, dropping the cases against several people, and saying in a court filing that the Interior Department was not initially forthcoming about the situation. The reality, according to Pirro's office, was quote a botched installation and not vandalism.
So, the story has fallen apart, as many observers believed it would all along, but Fox is barely interested in covering that story. Perhaps reluctant to speak truth to power, knowing the president is the network's number one viewer. Fox only covered this dispute one time on Monday for under a minute, heavily favoring the president's perspective. So why does this matter?
Well, because it's a pattern that repeats itself over and over again. Trump -- pro-Trump commentators and influencers will take a claim by Trump really seriously at first, even if it's hard to believe or silly or ridiculous, and then when the claim is disproven or disputed or debunked, those same commentators will barely post about it, barely talk about it, barely acknowledge it at all. They just move on.
The result is that Trump fans who rely on these media figures are left with incomplete information or just plain bogus information. Over the weekend, Trump said to Pirro, "I don't know what she was thinking by dropping the charges." But Pirro's office laid out that thinking pretty clearly in its legal filing. So, there's some willful ignorance going on here with MAGA media, not wanting to really face what happened at the Reflecting Pool. Brian Stelter, CNN, New York.
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SANDOVAL: And still on the way, why a family whose lives and futures were built and based in the United States have found a sense of safety this time in Mexico.
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SANDOVAL: The leader of Britain's right-wing Reform UK party is proposing using the military to stop asylum seekers from crossing the English Channel. Nigel Farage says that his so-called Operation Fortress would intercept asylum seekers in small boats before turning them back.
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NIGEL FARAGE, LEADER, REFORM UK: We are very confident that our policy of securely picking people up and safely taking them back to France. We are entirely confident that that falls within other conventions of international law. The Australians faced all of these problems many years ago. They tried offshore processing.
They tried a number of things, and in the end, what worked was towing the boats back to Indonesia. And since then, hardly a boat has landed in Australia. I am entirely confident that under a Reform government, within a fortnight, there would be no more boats.
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SANDOVAL: But Reform UK is facing growing political pressure. Farage's party has lost its lead in opinion polls for the first time in a year. He is currently running in a by-election for the parliament seat that he resigned from, and as he faces investigations, of course, into alleged financial improprieties.
A couple who were brought to the United States as children, they have made the grueling decision to leave the only homes that they've ever known to escape what they describe as persecution from the Trump administration's harsh immigration policies.
A Dominguez family, including their four U.S.-born children, are now adjusting to life in Mexico, and the transition has not been easy as CNN's Carolina Peguero reports.
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CAROLINA PEGUERO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: With songs and prayers, this young Mexican couple of pastors held their final church service in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Months later, from their kitchen table of their new home in Morelos, Mexico. Abdiel and Adilene Dominguez share why they decided to leave the United States.
ABDIEL DOMINGUEZ, BROUGHT TO U.S. AS A CHILD: It's one thing to say we're going to move to another city, and another thing. To say we're going to move to another state, but then to move to another country, it's -- it's a big, big move. So, we prayed a lot. We -- we asked God for guidance.
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PEGUERO: In the last year, the Dominguez family says that along with their community, they have been targeted by the Trump Administration and its anti-immigration policies.
ADILENE DOMINGUEZ, BROUGHT TO U.S. AS A CHILD: That wasn't just us. It was thousands of other families that were going through the same things. Yeah.
ABDIEL DOMINGUEZ: Just the fear that paralyzed the -- the whole state, the whole country, I think. They felt the fear, the fear that -- the fear that we were fearing.
PEGUERO: Both Dreamers recipients say their resources and livelihood became limited because they couldn't work or go out. Together with their four children, they felt trapped in their own home.
ADILENE DOMINGUEZ: They saw a lot of parents being taken away, and so that's why they agreed with also coming. And so, there's a song that I sing to my son every night, and it's "You're my sunshine, my little sunshine. You know, please don't take my sunshine away." And so, singing that song, it's like has a deeper meaning now, because that's singing that song there, it was just like I don't want them to take them away.
PEGUERO: They drove several hours to the Chicago airport, accompanied by loved ones, so they could give them their final goodbyes. Now in Mexico, they still haven't been able to adjust to their new life.
ABDIEL DOMINGUEZ: Like in the Wizard of Oz, you know, like when she said you're no longer, I think she says you're no longer in Kansas, you know, or -- or something like that. We feel like we're -- we're -- we're somewhere down south the U.S. You know, living in a small- town (inaudible), but we just -- we just got to keep busy, keep our kids busy and just trust in God, you know, and know that God has -- has good things for us, better things for us.
PEGUERO: Carolina Peguero, CNN.
SANDOVAL: And robots that look like humans are being integrated into real life work environments. Just ahead, we go to China for an update on the use of A.I. on factory floors.
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SANDOVAL: China testing humanoid robots in real work environments. The goal is set to move beyond traditional industrial robots that follow fixed programs and instead use artificial intelligence so that the bots can learn and even adapt on factory floors. CNN's Mike Valerio is in Beijing with more.
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MIKE VALERIO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So why are we lifting with robots? Well, this underground lab in Beijing offers a glimpse of what's next for China's humanoid workforce. Forget robot backflips, China is now trying to build humanoid robots that can actually work on factory floors. Tell us why a factory of the future needs a humanoid robot like this.
YULI ZHAO, CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER, GALBOT: One is that currently the industrial robots, they can only work with a fixed program routine.
VALERIO: For decades, factory robots have repeated the same movements thousands of times. Chinese robotics company Galbot is betting the next generation will need something more, machines that can learn and adapt using A.I.. All right, so I can do this. It's not fun, and again, this robot would not complain and could probably do it more efficiently than I could for six hours. Good job. High five.
Companies like Unitree are already selling humanoid robots here in Beijing. Some are inspecting factories, but certainly many more are already entertaining crowds across China. But getting them to work on assembly lines, that is a much harder challenge.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: China's robot (inaudible) industry is in a very early commercialization stage. I think maybe two years is enough. Two years, you will see lots of robotic in (inaudible) factory.
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SANDOVAL: A woman from New Zealand shattered the women's and men's records for one of the world's toughest endurance challenges. Ultra- runner Sophie Woods ran more than 1,200 miles, or nearly 2,000 kilometers, across eight European countries in what is called the Via Alpina. The 42-year-old powered through rugged terrain, drastic elevation changes, and also plenty of extreme heat, and she did it in just 29 days.
The previous record for this punishing route was previously held by Jake Catterall, who completed that run in about 36 days. In the last hour I got a chance to speak with Sophie and who's the new record holder, and I asked what made her want to take on such an extreme challenge, and here's what she told me.
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SOPHIE WOODS, NEW VIA ALPINA RECORD HOLDER: So, I had a bit of a complicated last couple of years. We were trying to have a child and went through IVF, and when that didn't pan out, I wanted my life to look different. I've raced ultra-marathons for the last decade, and I kind of was just like, "Is this what I'm just going to keep doing? Am I just going to keep showing up to the same races?"
And so, my husband, I think he could see that I needed a bigger challenge, and he suggested the Via Alpina and I just thought, Wow, what a -- what a chance to see the Alps and to run, you know, to be supported like that for a month.
SANDOVAL: We're seeing some of the incredible images that from Zoe (ph). Just an absolute beautiful landscape. I'm curious, what goes through your mind, you mention, you know, the years leading up to this, and sort of redefining what your life looked like. What -- did you even set this as a goal when you first started this that you wanted to break this record?
WOODS: I mean, look, I -- personally, I think 30 days is enough to be running. Was kind of how we looked at it. I, you know, the -- the aim for me was to finish no matter what. Like that, I was there for the adventure. If it took me 45 days, 50 days, I'd still be out there. The fact that we managed to come in under the time that I had expected is purely down to Zoe and George supporting me.
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SANDOVAL: A big congratulations to Sophie, and we do have another super athlete to tell you about. He's a Polish man who's recovering after swimming for more than 54 hours without resting from Sweden to Poland, and all while raising funds for cancer care. According to CNN affiliate TVN24, he is now the first person to have completed the 99- mile crossing.
His feat across the Baltic Sea started on Friday and lasted the weekend. This was his fifth attempt. Donations for his fundraiser for the Cancer Fighters Foundation are still pouring in. They've already surpassed $220,000.
And archeologists and conservation experts, they have resumed their work to preserve Libya's Roman heritage after years'-long interruption. The work by French archeological mission is currently taking place at Via Salene and the ancient city of Leptis Magna. It's a UNESCO-listed site.
Work initially started at Leptis Magna in 1986, but it was halted by instability in 2011, following the revolts that ousted former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Archeologists say that this year they're focused on restoring the eastern baths of that site and also uncovering a pedestrian walkway.
And one of Colombia's most active volcanoes is now under an Orange alert in case of a possible eruption. Increased volcanic activity started last month with the highest levels recorded since observations started more than three decades ago. Colombia's Geological Service has already warned people not to approach the volcano's upper areas, along with two other neighboring volcanoes.
With those incredible images, we do want to thank you so much for joining us. I'm Polo Sandoval in New York. Our coverage continues with CNN Headline Express.
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