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VP Vance Debates College Students In Honor Of Charlie Kirk; Food Charities Extend A Lifeline As SNAP Benefits Run Out; How Horror Movies Help Us Cope With Today's Scary Realities. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired October 31, 2025 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:05]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've been warned that living -- living by the coast, by the sea that one day reclaim back its land. And that's what happened. It's hard to express. It's hell on Earth as well, right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Catastrophic, too mild of a description. This coastal town of Black River, Jamaica is now being compared to hell on Earth after Hurricane Melissa.

Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. I want to thank you for being with us on "CNN This Morning." It's half past the hour. And here's what's happening right now.

The mayor of Black River, Jamaica, says the entire community is homeless. This is the aftermath of the more than 15-foot storm surge. The area's colorful homes and historical buildings reduced to rubble.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no looting there. You just try to survive. Survive is a wise thing right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: The storm wiped out the town's relief supplies and rendered emergency vehicles inoperable due to water damage.

And the Defense Department has ordered thousands of National Guard personnel to complete civil unrest training over the next several months. It's another sign. The Trump administration plans to send more uniformed military forces into U.S. cities, as many as 23,000 service members are being readied for the mission.

And no more Mickey for YouTube TV subscribers, at least the mouse is out. Disney has yanked all of its channels off the platform. That includes ESPN, ABC, the Disney Channel, National Geographic, and more. Two media giants hope they basically fail to reach a new carriage agreement. And so their talks will continue.

And King Charles takes the extraordinary step of stripping his brother Prince Andrew of his royal titles. He's also evicting him from the royal estate in Windsor. It's the most dramatic attempt yet to squash the scandal over the Princes' ties to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

And prove me wrong. That's the late Charlie Kirk's legacy. Now the vice president is trying to take up that mantle appearing at Turning Point USA campus events like this one at the University of Mississippi, where Vance found himself in an unexpected moment.

When a student confronted the vice president about his focus on the U.S. as a Christian nation, given his marriage to Usha Vance, a practicing Hindu.

And the student also asked about the administration's hard line stance on immigration.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How can you as a vice president stand there and say that we have too many of them now and we are going to take them out to people who are here rightfully so by paying the money that you guys ask us. You gave us the path and now -- now, how can you stop it and tell us we don't belong here anymore?

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The United States should -- should lower its levels of immigration in the future.

Just because one person or 10 people or 100 people came in legally and contributed to the -- to the United States of America, does that mean that we're there by committed to let in a million or 10 million or 100 million people a year in the future?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[06:35:10]

CORNISH: So Vance is using these campus stories, not just to honor Kirk's legacy, but to test his political future with voters who don't agree on what the future of America should look like.

So the "Group Chat" is back. I wanted to bring it to you guys because it's very rare to have an unscripted moment with -- with the vice president.

It's very rare for somebody in the position of like the student and immigrant to stand up and say, I'm not coming to you offensively, but I genuinely don't believe why you are breaking the American dream, right, as an immigrant.

I'm interested in you, Lulu, what you hear and maybe the way she phrased the question or the way he answered it.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: First of all, an extraordinary moment because we do not hear. She was eloquent. She was fair. And she was rooting it in her own experience.

But the question is, of course, the question that many people have. What is the vision of America that this administration has? And what you hear there, J.D. Vance, doing is what he often does. When I interviewed him about this, he often goes to this, which is, why should we get in -- let in 100 million people, 10 million people? He takes the maximalist position.

Of course nobody wants open borders. Of course nobody wants 100 million people, you know, coming into America. But that's not the question she was asking.

She was simply asking, why are you trying to prioritize certain types of people? Why are we now having refugees that are white coming in? Why are you saying that this is a Christian nation only?

When you indeed, J.D. Vance, are married to someone who's a practicing Hindu. I interviewed him and it was the first time he really talked about his marriage to Usha Vance. And, you know, in that conversation, you know, he said, yes, she is a practicing Hindu. We are raising our children as Christian. But as he said there, he would like her to convert. But this is a very strange political marriage.

CORNISH: Yes. Let me let Bradley come in here because also, again, it's the Turning Point USA tour, right? Like -- so he's not just anywhere. It's also talking to the up-and-comers of the base. It's not just students who come there to be like, oh, I have an opposing point of view. So the message is like, you got to calibrate.

BRADLEY DEVLIN, POLITICS EDITOR, THE DAILY SIGNAL: Yes, you got to calibrate. And one of the Charlie's other slogans is, if you disagree, get to the front of the line. And I -- I love how the vice president last night unscripted. For an hour asked questions of young voters, he talked about, for quite some time with this young woman about the issue of immigration.

He also talked to a young man who's questioning our relationship to Israel about the United States' Israel policy, about Trump's Israel policy. And so he covered that for an hour.

And I just can't help but notice the contrast between this administration versus the administration of Joe Biden who had prepared people he was going to select in the briefing room and Kamala Harris who, whenever she came to a studio, had a bunch of demand.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Kamala --

CORNISH: Yes, yes. It's also a priority, right?

DEVLIN: She had a bunch of writers. I mean, and it was edited from CBS.

CORNISH: Yes. But everybody has different priorities. There's someone -- there's a Democrat who's going to come on next week and tell me that I can't believe vice president was there and not hatching the -- fixing the government shutdown. You know what I mean?

And it's just interesting. This -- this is the priority.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I would say that's an entirely fair point, just but not be lied or just not supported by the reality of look at the coverage of the Defense Department right now or even, quite frankly, the White House briefing room, the kinds of questions that are asked of the president that are coming from smaller, more right or far-right organizations that are hand selected, that -- you know, they too are pretty guilty of selecting friendly audience --

CORNISH: Yes.

WILLIAMS: -- you know, friendly media who will be favorable to them. I think, look, everybody does it to some extent, but I -- I don't think it's just Harris and Biden concern.

CORNISH: It's also been a --

DEVLIN: But she said in her intro. I mean, this is --

CORNISH: Yes.

DEVLIN: -- this is a rare unscripted moment --

WILLIAMS: Yes.

DEVLIN: -- for an extended period of time.

And I don't know. I feel pretty proud of that young woman for doing that. Because at the end of day, these are the people who work for us.

You mentioned these that Vance should be working to fix the government shutdown. Sure. But Vance should also be directly communicating to the American people. Because at the end of the day, these people work for us, not the other way around.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I -- I have -- I -- to be clear, I think it's great that he did it.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And I think, and this moment shows, the fact that there's so much focus on this moment shows that there should be more of it. And I think, to Elliot's point, it shouldn't only be answering to the American people, you know, it should also be talking to journalists.

It should be sitting down for extended interviews with outlets that are fair and are there to represent the American people.

I mean, there is a lot of things that need to happen here.

CORNISH: Yes. And in the meantime, it was just a fascinating moment because we talk about immigrants on this show. We talk about people being rounded up. We don't always get to talk to them just because of the way this was structured. It was interesting to hear that voice.

You guys stay with me. And also, you stay with me because if you ever miss a show, you should know we're a podcast.

Look, there's a QR code, scan it, find it, "CNN This Morning" available anywhere you get your podcast. And, of course, CNN is streaming.

[06:40:04]

Next on "CNN This Morning," this time tomorrow, funding for SNAP benefits will be expired. Millions of Americans will be facing hunger. I'm going to talk to a man who is trying to feed people in his community.

Plus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This thing in your house is a demon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When did this start?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: From cheap thrills to cultural reflection in an age defined by fear or horror films, the healthiest thing to watch.

And fright night, can you sue if you're costume malfunctions? The spooky reality next when we lawyer up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CORNISH: OK. With just hours to go until a lapse in federal SNAP benefits, families nationwide are scrambling to make plans for a shortage of food, farmers bracing for a loss in business. And since people who rely on those benefits won't be able to use them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[06:45:04]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're a family that utilizes SNAP ourselves and I'm sure that there's lots of other farmers that do as well. So in addition to those funds being lost for us, it's our customers.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Honestly, sometimes I wonder if I'm failing as a mom, because that -- that's hard, you know. Your kids are hungry and you can't just hand them an apple when they're hungry or give them a peanut butter sandwich.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Food banks and food drives across the country are now trying to at least fill some of the gaps. Volunteers at one donation drive in New Jersey filled an entire football field with food kits.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You don't know what people could be going through right now. And like we just got to be appreciative of like what we have and also just help out people in need. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's awesome see to such an extent how much we can help. And I think doing stuff like this is overall really important. And I think we can inspire a lot of people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Joining me to talk about this, Daniel Dermer, founder and CEO of Dermer Dreams. Welcome to "CNN This Morning." Good morning.

We're hearing --

DANIEL DERMER, FOUNDER, DERMER DREAMS: Thank you.

CORNISH: Yes. We're hearing -- yes, thank you. We're hearing about people who may be turning to food aid for the first time. Is that something you're hearing? And if so, what are their needs?

DERMER: Oh, they're absolutely -- we've been planning our food drive over the past year. We challenged our students to do 100-yard food drive challenge to fill an entire football field with food.

And before what I wanted to say this morning, which is so important is before this news topic of SNAP came up, a few months ago, we were standing on the field designing the 100-yard food drive challenge with different food banks that partnered with us across the state.

And I worked with a big food bank down in Red Bank, New Jersey. And my dear man Wallace turned to me. And he said, Mr. D, I've never seen it like this before. And it's getting worse every single day.

The look that I see on the people who run these food banks who kill themselves to try to keep up with the demand is now a look of fear. It is absolute fear where it has become back in months ago we were already talking about a hunger crisis.

If SNAP goes away tomorrow, we can take this hunger crisis now and we can absolutely turn it into an absolute disaster. And I need people to understand that if SNAP even comes back in two weeks from now, it's not something where we're all going to go out and start to have some party like hunger has been solved. OK?

CORNISH: Yes.

DERMER: People should understand that in every town in America now, you're seeing 30, 40 percent of lines of food banks going up. And we're here at Dermer Dreams to do everything we can to fight that with our students.

CORNISH: Now, I'm wondering if this is also kind of compounding the food aid cuts to programs like USAID that happened under DOGE. Because I was reading earlier in the year about food banks having to ration, make smaller packages, et cetera.

DERMER: It's coming from everywhere now. I mean, again, I want to highlight today that I know SNAP is something everybody's talking about on the news in the last few days. But before this even started, all of these programs have been taken away. Children, little boys and girls are going to bed at night where their parents are choosing the meal that they're going to eat. You understand?

New Jersey, this past weekend, stepped it up. This past Sunday, we had 1,000 students across New Jersey who came and filled the entire 100- yard Rumson-Fair Haven football field with donated food.

The great people of New Jersey filled their yellow bags, and together, their communities came together and they made the Dermer Dreams come true, and my personal dream come true.

Not only on Sunday did we raise over a quarter of a million pounds of food for people --

CORNISH:

DERMER: -- who are food insecure. But we passed our initial goal of raising over one million pounds for families out there.

CORNISH: Daniel, I have to let you go. But before I do, I need to ask, people to look at efforts that are being made by people like you. They'll say, why can't the private sector come in here and help? Should the government be doing this in the first place?

Kind of what's your response to the idea that corporations or nonprofits like yours can fill these gaps?

DERMER: It's very simple. The solution is not in politics. The solution is in people. When you look at what happened this past weekend, we had thousands of people across the state, hundreds of people standing on a football field to fill an entire field with a quarter of a million pounds of food for people that they don't even know.

And what I wanted to come on today and ask people, right, is if you could look at Dermer Dreams as an example. We started after Superstorm Sandy. We've never asked a political party, race, creed, religion. We all stand on the field together to feed people and feed fellow Americans who are dying out there with their families out there.

[06:50:00]

So the solution is in the people. And I'm calling on everybody for a town -- a -- a nationwide food drive. If we don't solve the SNAP problem in the next few weeks on Saturday, November 22nd, I'm calling for every town in America.

It's very simple. You just have to deliver right to your local food bank. If we don't have SNAPs out by that time, I'm asking all of you for the little boys and girls out there who are starving, we get up that morning, including me. And I drive down to lunch break to deliver, even if it's a bottle of water.

But I ask everybody across the country to do this, to help us solve this disaster for little boys and girls.

CORNISH: Daniel Dermer is founder and CEO of Dermer Dreams doing food assistance. Thank you.

DERMER: Thank you so much.

CORNISH: OK. Well, we're in this time of the year where people kind of seek out scares. But when they get more than what they bargained for, they actually file lawsuits.

So earlier this month, there was a woman who filed a lawsuit against a Kansas City haunted house because it left her with two broken ankles. The suit called the attraction dangerously unsafe.

And then, you know, those like creepy contacts people wear with their costumes? Well, some costume shops have actually been sued for selling lenses without a prescription.

And then there's Halloween hazards posed by your own lawn decorations. There's a law firm that provides guidance for how to avoid slip and fall cases from rotten pumpkins or loose extension cords.

So it's time now to lawyer up. Elliot is back. And, Elliot, it is, of course, a time of litigation like most holidays in the US. What is it that these case -- like how seriously are these cases taken?

WILLIAMS: Well, particularly the haunted house ones are not. And there's a basic concept in the law of assumption of risk. Yes, you may be dying to be scared when you go into a haunted house. And you've ultimately signed a waiver accepting that things are going to happen.

Now, often, someone and this happens all the time, Audie, someone goes into a haunted house. This happens at Six Flags at their -- their -- the fight of terror celebration, whatever it might be, where clowns pop out holding chainsaws or whatever else, someone scares trips, falls, breaks their ankle and sues Six Flags.

Well, you've assumed the risk, you know, you're going to be frightened. And the park has behaved in not an unreasonable way. People all -- almost always lose these cases.

CORNISH: I want to ask you about the liability cases that are like product liability. Like somehow something you've purchased doesn't work correctly.

WILLIAMS: Right.

CORNISH: Is that a thing?

WILLIAMS: Yes. Either it doesn't work correctly or it does. And both of those are important points in the law. So sometimes people will have a product that -- that operates exactly as it's supposed to, but it hurts them or if a product breaks and hurts them.

The -- the best example of this of all time, this is probably about -- this is 20 years ago or so, a woman and her husband, just as Mary had a little lamb and Mary and a little lamb that she puts hundreds of cotton balls on him and then he lights a cigarette and sets himself on fire.

CORNISH: I can't --

WILLIAMS: This is why -- no. Listen, no one told him engulfed in flames. Well, she sued Johnson & Johnson for something like a million dollars and won. That got overturned.

The point is cotton balls, you are aware of the fact that they're going to get set on fire. They're operating as they do. You can't sue Johnson & Johnson because you're cotton balls will caught on fire.

CORNISH: But you can try. OK.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

CORNISH: Scary enough, except there's more.

WILLIAMS: There's more.

CORNISH: We want to talk next about the fact that it feels like it's been Halloween all year at the box office. Horror films crossed the billion dollar mark this year well before spooky season.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This thing in your house is a demon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When did this start?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So thanks to franchises like "The Conjuring," "Final Destination," originals like wes -- like "Weapons" and "Sinners." The new Frankenstein already being talked about around Oscars.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Then I saw it, your name.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Victor Frankenstein.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So if that doesn't strike fear in your heart, maybe this will the "Scream" franchise just dropped the trailer for its seventh film.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not hiding (INAUDIBLE). Not this time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: But frankly, I'm the kind of person who reads spoilers ahead of time to ward off nightmares. I'm not equipped to understand why this is such a big year for horror.

And that's why this week on "The Assignment" podcast, I spoke with horror writer, Tananarive Due, about why the genre resonates now and why horror films are able to wrestle with our fears around invasion and race and gender in a way that frankly our politics can't.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TANANARIVE DUE, UCLA PROFESSOR, WRITER: So I, as a viewer, have to be scared and the -- the one thing that will scare me as a viewer, most reliably, is when the protagonists are deeply scared for their lives.

[06:55:06]

CORNISH: Maybe that's why I think it's so complex doing very stark political things or kind of eat the rich type horror because it almost, I don't know, something is sapped from it when you feel the weight of our current politics so plainly.

DUE: Yes, that's where metaphor is useful. Zombies go steam and is hunting people, I'm with that. But racist hunting people has crossed a line from horror to the horrific and to the realistic. And that to me is not entertaining.

CORNISH: And yet "Sinners" is one of the biggest films of this year.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So we talked more about that. And she also pointed out something like a movie like "Get Out." There's a scene where someone is abducted in the opening scenes of the film. And I have to admit I thought about this Chicago directive that's like, ICE, please don't go to trick or treating. Please don't make that the scene of a raid. That is horrific experience if someone loses their parent on a Halloween trip.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I have a theory about this that basically when we look at what was really popular before in franchises, it was the superhero movies, right? This was what everyone was going to see and it was a form of, again, culture digest what we're experiencing, what we're looking for.

It is a mirror sometimes, an adverse mirror of what's happening. We were looking for escape. We were looking for someone to save us from our fears.

Now, actually, what we're seeing with these horror franchises is what you exactly point to. People actually going in and seeing their reality reflected in a way that -- that --

CORNISH: It's easily handled, right? There's a revolution.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: That is easily handled, right. You don't want to escape from it now. You actually want to confront it but maybe in a way that is less, you know, visceral. WILLIAMS: That was the genius of the movie "Get Out" more than anything else. It -- it's unquestionably a horror movie or a thriller, whatever you wish to call it, but it was about racism. It was about race but still a horror movie.

CORNISH: Yes.

WILLIAMS: You can watch the film and be frightened. And it was -- I -- maybe I don't watch enough movies, but it was the first film I saw that took -- that took horror and it wasn't a guy with a chainsaw.

CORNISH: Yes.

WILLIAMS: Or whatever else.

CORNISH: Well, we talked about there's a lot of people who entered into horror through this what's called prestige adjacent horror films like "Midsommar" or "Hereditary" that deal with things like trauma and it -- it just gets more elaborate.

Bradley, are you -- I'm putting you on the spot. Are you actually a horror fan at all?

DEVLIN: Oh, no. I am not a horror fan. I mean, they just keep coming back to the box office like Michael Myers though, you know.

CORNISH: Yes.

DEVLIN: I think -- I think the original Halloween is the scariest I can do. That's a scary movie, but it's nothing like what I see a lot of at the box of office today which is I think in tying -- ties to the rise of the religious nuns, actually, that there's more conjuring type paranormal activity type --

CORNISH: Yes.

DEVLIN: -- movies coming out now.

And I think as the kind of spiritual life and -- and -- and mysticism of our society declines, there's inevitably going to be kind of something that simulates that in our own culture. And I think that's why we see these types of movies.

CORNISH: Where people -- the flip side people's fears of the theocracy, like, that's the other thing I think the way different directors approach addressing all genre addresses real-life issues and how we're wrestling with them in real time.

All right. Since horror is not in your group chat, I got to ask you, Bradley, what is?

DEVLIN: Lamar Jackson. Fantasy managers do not despair. He's back four touchdowns last night. I'm so excited to see him back healthy on the field. There's nobody more electric.

CORNISH: OK. Lulu. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Halloween. But again, something scary story, not only about how much more expensive Halloween candy is this year, but the fact that they're not actually putting chocolate in it anymore because --

CORNISH: I'm obsessed.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Because chocolate has gone through the roof. It comes from West Africa. There's been a drought also tariffs, et cetera, et cetera. So now they're saying, milk -- they're not using milk chocolate anymore in some of these candies. They're using, you know, sort of like chocolate adjacent words because they're not using cocoa powder anymore, which is so horrible.

CORNISH: Well, there is still chocolate, but there's more weird fillings. And it turns out that might be an economic decision rather than our case.

DEVLIN: Lulu, that was something for tomorrow.

CORNISH: Oh, really? Really?

DEVLIN: You ruined it for me.

CORNISH: No, no. People can't just on Monday when I'm just going to have a bowl of chocolate adjacent food.

WILLIAMS: OK mom.

CORNISH: You. Let's go in.

WILLIAMS: No. But you know what, the New York City mayor's race, and as you know, Audie, I've got a book coming out next year --

CORNISH: Yes.

WILLIAMS: -- all about vigilantes and New York City in the 1980s. And we cover politics -- I cover politics a lot in the book.

Curtis Sliwa who I interviewed twice --

CORNISH: Yes.

WILLIAMS: -- for my book, has been a fixture in New York City politics since the 1980s. And the -- the city, yes, it's a -- it's a blue city, but it's gone from Koch to (INAUDIBLE) to Beame to Dinkins to Giuliani to Adams. And they just are constantly flipping from these hyper progressive folks to real moderates as the city sort of struggles to find its identity to these politicians.

CORNISH: And the hinge is crime, right? The hinge is always crime.

WILLIAMS: And the hinge is crime. And that is every time in Curtis Sliwa, that's why he was -- that's what causes rise is a public safety guy.

CORNISH: All right. And that is the story everyone is going to be talking about next week. You can join us then.

In the meantime, I want to thank you for waking up with us. The headlines are next. "CNN News Central" starts now.