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The Situation Room

New WNBA Record; Psychiatrist Takes Stand in Lindsay Clancy Trial; President Biden's Cancer Progressing?. Aired 10:30a-11a ET

Aired August 10, 2026 - 10:30   ET

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

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PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Happening now: At least 13 people are dead and dozens more injured after a Ukrainian drone strikes deep within Russia. Ukrainian armed forces say they targeted a major technologically advanced oil refinery. The strike marks the deadliest attack to hit Russia in more than two years.

And, in New York, federal prosecutors are taking over the case against the captain of a boat that capsized Saturday night and killed a young mother and her 5-month-old daughter. Well, this is new video of authorities recovering the boat near the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, and the boat was eventually lifted from the water by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers crane vessels.

Authorities are investigating whether the captain was running an illegal charter without the required credentials and safety equipment. Sources tell CNN that investigators believe the boat likely was over capacity.

And $905 million up for grabs tonight. No one matched all of Saturday's Powerball numbers, making this jackpot the largest of 2026 and the eighth largest of all time. The next drawing is scheduled for 10:59 p.m. Eastern.

Happening now: Hunter Biden says former President Biden's cancer is getting worse.

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HUNTER BIDEN, SON OF JOE BIDEN: It's not good. The cancer has spread. It has metastasized into his bones and further. It's very painful. And it's very debilitating in many respects.

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BROWN: The former president revealed he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer back in May of 2025, less than four months after he left the White House.

With us now to talk about all of this is Dr. Mark Litwin, professor of urology and public health at UCLA.

Thanks for coming on.

So, the former president, as I mentioned, announced his diagnosis roughly 14 months ago. And, at that time we learned of it, Biden's team said the cancer had metastasized to the bone. Now Hunter Biden says it's spread even further. How much more serious is this, in your view?

DR. MARK LITWIN, UCLA: Well, metastatic prostate cancer is, by definition, serious. We often think about prostate cancer as a slow- growing, indolent kind of a disease, but once it has metastasized, once it gets into the bones, the lymph nodes, it's really not considered curable.

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So from the outset, we knew it was a very high-grade tumor. We knew it was very serious from the very beginning. And it is taking a course now that one might expect.

BROWN: And he's 83 years old. What is a prognosis for someone of his age with a cancer like this?

LITWIN: It's interesting.

The treatments for metastatic prostate cancer have dramatically improved over the last 10, 20 years. Most prostate cancer treatment for someone like him is focused on eliminating testosterone from the body that feeds the cancer. Once that's done, then we add additional drugs that will even ratchet the testosterone down even further, several drugs developed actually at UCLA, where I work.

And then, beyond that, there are treatments for the painful bony lesions as well. Overall, probably about a third of men with what he has will live five years. So the survivals are not horrible, but, obviously, they're not great either.

So this is a highly lethal cancer, and it's very uncertain exactly what's going to -- how it's going to play out for him.

BROWN: And so you have mentioned the treatment options, because this cancer appears to be more hormone-sensitive, right?

LITWIN: Prostate cancers in general are hormone-sensitive when they start out.

And all that means is that we can use testosterone blockers to help treat the patient, because most all prostate cancers require testosterone to live and to grow. And by knocking out testosterone, that's really the first line of therapy.

And when people say that a tumor is hormone-sensitive, that's what's meant. Eventually, most prostate cancers that are hormone-sensitive become hormone-insensitive, and then we go to additional treatments. There's never been a better time to have prostate cancer than 2026, but it's not a good diagnosis once it's been metastasized to go to the bones, and, as the family said, beyond, which may mean liver, may mean lungs.

There's no way to know without they're specifying.

BROWN: And you heard Hunter Biden talk about how painful it has been for his father. Talk a little bit more about that, the pain associated with this.

LITWIN: Yes, typically, the bone spread is what causes the pain, because as the tumors set themselves up in various bones of the body, often the spine, but also the -- what we call the long bones of the body, like the arm bones and the leg bones, they expand in a way that causes severe pain.

That pain is very treatable. We have many medications to treat it. We have many medications that we administer that target the bone and that target the bone pain in particular. So there's a lot of great treatment for it, but there's no question it can be a very painful condition.

BROWN: And you have raised the potential cognitive impact of his cancer. What are the links between prostate cancer and the brain?

LITWIN: Virtually none, straight up, virtually none. Prostate cancer doesn't spread to the brain, or it's almost unheard of for it to spread to the brain.

So the cognitive impacts of prostate cancer in particular, really, there are none in particular, other than just a person suffering from an advanced cancer, which can create a burden, a psychological or mental burden, on him. But there are no direct cognitive effects from prostate cancer itself.

BROWN: All right, Dr. Mark Litwin, thank you so much. Appreciate you coming on.

LITWIN: My pleasure.

BROWN: And coming up: It's a trial 30 years in the making. Jury selection begins today for the only person charged in the shooting death of rapper Tupac Shakur.

And happening now: The psychiatrist who treated the mother accused of murdering her three children is back on the stand.

Our Jean Casarez is following this case for us -- Jean.

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The defense attorney is aggressively questioning Jennifer Tufts, the main psychiatrist for Lindsay Clancy, saying, you treated a seriously ill patient one month after medical school.

We will have more right after this.

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BROWN: Happening now: The trial of Lindsay Clancy, a former Massachusetts nurse accused of killing her three young children, is back under way and gripping the nation's attention.

Clancy has pleaded not guilty. Her defense argues she is not criminally responsible for the murders because she was in the midst of a psychotic episode stemming from severe postpartum mental illness.

Dr. Jennifer Tufts, a psychiatrist who treated Clancy, returned to the stand for cross-examination this morning.

So let's go live now to CNN's Jean Casarez, who has been covering this trial from the very start.

Jean, what stands out from today's testimony so far?

CASAREZ: The aggressive nature of the defense attorney. He's just -- he's not relenting as he is going on because his passion, his zealous advocacy for Lindsay Clancy, begins to question the witness, saying that you were brand-new. You were one month out of medical school, your residency, and you took on Lindsay Clancy as a patient.

Yes.

You had on your Web site postpartum depression. Were you an expert in postpartum depression? Answer: It was an interest of mine. Did you ever have Lindsay Clancy sign a release so you could get the prior medical records? Because she took Prozac during nursing school. She said, no, I look at the patient before me.

He asked her if she'd ever been to any symposiums that focused on postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis. She said no. And then was the pivotal question. You treated her 14 times from September 2022 to January, the day before she killed her children, actually, in 2023. Did you ever see her personally in your office? No, it was only telemedicine.

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Watch this.

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KEVIN REDDINGTON, ATTORNEY FOR LINDSAY CLANCY: Until you came in this courtroom Friday, you never saw this woman in person. Did you?

DR. JENNIFER TUFTS, PSYCHIATRIST: Correct.

REDDINGTON: Were you ever concerned about her mental health as a person?

TUFTS: Absolutely.

REDDINGTON: She was crying. She told you symptoms that she couldn't get out of bed. Isn't that right?

TUFTS: At one time, she said it was -- it was difficult to get out of bed. But...

REDDINGTON: Oh, difficult to get out -- why was it difficult for Lindsay Clancy to get out of bed?

TUFTS: Because she was very depressed.

REDDINGTON: And did you give her a hug? Oh, no, you're on telemedicine. So you couldn't give her a hug, could you? You didn't have any chance to even look at her in person, did you?

TUFTS: I could look at her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CASAREZ: Now, in prosecution direct testimony on Friday, Dr. Tufts talked about all the medications that she tried to help Lindsay Clancy with. Lindsay Clancy didn't take many of them. She didn't want to. She was a professional herself. She was a labor and delivery nurse.

Lindsay Clancy on her own went to other providers, got medication on her own, and Lindsay Clancy even said, according to the testimony on Friday: "I think this is my fault. I have gone to too many providers. They have given me too many things, and I'm not keeping track of them myself."

BROWN: All right, Jean Casarez, thank you so much.

And you can catch the trial live on CNN All Access, and you can find it on CNN.com/Watch.

And for more analysis, I want to bring in Dr. Noa Sterling. She is a board certified OB-GYN, a mother of three, and founder of the Obi app, which screens mothers' mental health during pregnancy and postpartum.

Doctor, I first just want to get your reaction to what Jean laid out there, that this doctor treated Lindsay Clancy 14 times all over telemedicine, and the defense is really honing in on that.

DR. NOA STERLING, OBSTETRICIAN/GYNECOLOGIST: Yes, I mean, the thing about postpartum mental health is, it's rarely something that just a single prescription is going to fix, right?

This is a family issue. This is a systemic issue within what's going on with a family. So you really do need to look at, what are the stressors? What else is happening in her life? And it needs to be a comprehensive plan with a therapist, with a psychiatrist.

So, oftentimes, it needs to be multidisciplinary.

BROWN: Is the fact that this was all over telemedicine versus in- person, is that an important distinction to you?

STERLING: Listen, I think that you can provide effective psychiatric treatment over telemedicine, but it's not right for everyone.

And so you have to -- if you have a patient in front of you that you think that this person really needs to be in the same room with a provider, because there is a difference being physically present with someone. So I'm not saying that it can't be good, but, in some cases, it is better for a patient to go into an office and to physically sit across from another person and look into their eyes.

BROWN: The question at the center of this trial is, of course, whether Lindsay Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time of these killings in 2023 and whether the killings can be blamed on that.

You have been very open about the challenges you faced after your pregnancies. I have openly discussed my struggles with postpartum OCD. And the only reason I do it is to just get the word out, because I needed help at the time. I know you did too.

Why do you think so many moms see pieces of themselves in this story, even if they didn't have postpartum psychosis?

STERLING: Oh, my goodness, I mean, there's so much about this.

The first thing I think that we perceive -- we see that just there's a complete lack of support for postpartum, OK? One six-week appointment is woefully inadequate. Not everybody who has postpartum mental health issues has them in the first six weeks. They can come up later. They can come when your period resumes.

They can come when you wean from breast-feeding. They can come when another stressor is introduced into your life. So this one visit at six weeks is not adequate. We have -- this is not like small -- oh, Lindsay fell through some small cracks.

These are giant cracks, and the majority of people who are falling through that -- falling through these cracks are poor, they're black and brown, and we don't ever hear about it. The reason why we're hearing about Lindsay is because she had all of these advantages, and she still was not able to crawl her way out of this postpartum mental health.

And that's how a lot of women survive the first year. They are crawling their way out, and we need to do a paradigm shift here when we think about postpartum mental health. This is not a women's issue to put off to the side.

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This is a human being issue. This is a family issue. This is where all the people in this world come from. And if we are not supporting the people who are building the human race, I really don't know what that says about us as a society, as a health care system.

BROWN: So we're going to dig a little bit deeper into that point you make, because I think it's an important one. But just for all of those moms out there who might be dealing with

postpartum mental health issues, could you just explain the differences between intrusive thoughts, postpartum depression, and postpartum psychosis? And just how rare is postpartum psychosis?

STERLING: OK, so first of all, postpartum psychosis is rare. It's one to two per 1,000 births, OK? So we're talking about way less than 1 percent.

Now, I'm going to make it really simple to delineate postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, and we will -- we can kind of put postpartum OCD under that umbrella, because it is -- it's a very similar -- it's very similar to the anxiety, and then postpartum psychosis.

Postpartum depression, sad, hopeless, feeling guilty. Postpartum anxiety, worried, frantic, fearful. Postpartum OCD, you have the added compulsions. People feel like they need to do certain things or check certain things in order to relieve the anxiety. Postpartum psychosis is very different.

You are not in touch with reality. So, postpartum psychosis really is off on its own. It's very different from the other mental health disorders.

BROWN: And just to add on the OCD part, just because I went through it, the compulsions don't necessarily -- they're not necessarily outward, like going to check on your baby multiple times a day. It can also be inward, like reassuring yourself that that's that something bad isn't going to happen, that you're not going to lose control, because those intrusive thoughts get really bad, and you're just constantly reassuring yourself.

So, but -- so, on Lindsay Clancy, her psychiatrist said the day before she killed her kids, she said she was doing all right, but had a racing heart, she was feeling a little anxious.

STERLING: Yes.

BROWN: And the psychiatrist said she never indicated she would harm herself or others. I wonder, what do you make of that?

STERLING: Yes.

I mean, yes, you're not psychotic until you're psychotic, OK? So you can be in a room with somebody, talk to them, leave the room, and come back in, and they have gone into psychosis while you were gone. So psychosis is not something that just kind of gradually builds up.

You go from being in touch with reality to not in touch with reality.

BROWN: So, basically, you're saying you can go in and out of it.

STERLING: Yes.

BROWN: All right. Dr. Noa Sterling, thank you so much for coming on for this really

important conversation.

And to anyone in need of emotional support, please know that help is available. You can reach the national mental health hotline at 988.

We will be right back.

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BROWN: A record-setting night for Minnesota Lynx star Kayla McBride, as the team sets its sights on the postseason.

So let's go live now to CNN sports anchor Coy Wire with the latest -- Coy.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: How awesome when we get to witness history?

Minnesota entered yesterday's game with the Wings looking to become the first team to clinch a playoff spot. They did that. And Kayla McBride made history by drilling a WNBA single-record 10 three- pointers. She learned to hoop on the blacktops of Erie, Pennsylvania, often the only girl out there, now history, one of the best shooters on the planet, a career high 43 points, as her Lynx win 103-90. They have now won 12 of their last 13. Previous record of nine made threes in the game had been done by six different players.

Braves ace Chris Sale got ejected before their game against the Yankees even started. Called for a controversial bulk on Saturday by umpire Dan Merzel, Sale was yapping at him as he walked by the dugout yesterday, and Merzel was like, you're out of here. You're not going to talk to me like that.

As for the game, the Yankees' Trent Grisham launched a homer and tied it in the eighth inning, so it went to extras. And Michael Harris II delivered the knockout blow. Braves win 2-1, snapping a four-game skid against the Yankees.

Now, somebody needs to check Milwaukee's Luis Lara's cleats for rocket boosters. Extra innings, potential go-ahead run for Minnesota, Lara tracks it down, risking it all to keep it tied at three. Then, in the bottom of the 10th, Jake Bauers, all ready with a home run, says, I got you, game-winning knock. Brewers take it 4-3. Lara saved the game with the glove, while Bauers ended it with the bat.

Little League Softball World Series, and one day after throwing 109 pitches with 11 strikeouts and a shutout, Clayton, North Carolina, star Anna-Lynn Clark comes right back and throws 93 more pitches, six strikeouts as Clayton beats Owensboro, Kentucky 2-0, back-to-back shutouts, more than 200 pitches in two days for Anna-Lynn. It's North Carolina's fourth Little League Softball World Series title.

Finally, what do soccer players and magicians have in common? Both can pull off disappearing acts, leaving crowds speechless. Coritiba captain Jacy, he scored, and there he goes to celebrate. All of a sudden, he's gone. He falls straight into an open players tunnel. Thankfully, he popped back up, kept playing before, later leaving with a minor ankle injury.

But the cruelest trick of all, Pamela, the goal was disallowed for offsides. So, the man disappeared, and then so did his goal. Now you see him. Now you don't.

(LAUGHTER)

WIRE: Speaking of that, you didn't hit a trapdoor on our boy Wolf, did you?