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The Situation Room

New Cancer Treatment; CIA Chief Visits Moscow; Interview With Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday; Meta Settles Landmark Case. Aired 10:30a-11a ET

Aired August 27, 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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WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Happening now: Several U.S. states nationwide are now celebrating a truly historic settlement with the social media giant Meta. The parent company for Instagram and Facebook announced yesterday it will pay approximately $18 billion, yes, billion dollars, to resolve a multistate lawsuit.

The suit claimed Meta intentionally designed addictive platforms that harmed young people's mental health. The company must also make changes, like establishing daily time limits for teen users. Meta did not admit wrongdoing as part of the deal.

Joining us now in THE SITUATION ROOM is Pennsylvania's Republican attorney general, Dave Sunday.

Attorney General, thanks so much for joining us.

DAVE SUNDAY, PENNSYLVANIA ATTORNEY GENERAL: Yes.

BLITZER: I know you were part of this major lawsuit. What specifically does Pennsylvania achieve monetarily and otherwise, for that matter, with this settlement?

SUNDAY: So thank you for having me, Wolf.

Monetarily, we're looking at a at $516 million, up to around $729 million. That's monetarily. The important part of this, however, is definitely the injunctive relief. As a father who happens to also be an attorney general, I can't tell you how happy I am that we were able to achieve this really important first step in protecting children, not only in Pennsylvania, but throughout the country.

Attorneys general, we worked very hard together. This was a major collaborative effort, and I'm very proud of the results.

BLITZER: Meta has long denied that its platforms actually harm children and call the state's claims in this lawsuit -- and I'm quoting Meta now, -- "unsubstantiated." Is it a loss that the company did not admit wrongdoing as part of this settlement? I know they didn't formally admit wrongdoing, but they're paying billions of dollars. That would seem to suggest they did something wrong.

SUNDAY: So my duty first and foremost is to protect children. And so when you look at their admission of wrongdoing, when you look at the monetary amount of the settlement, what we -- what has driven us through this entire process is making sure we can get the changes in place.

When you talk about the time restrictions, when you talk about children and teenagers not being able to get on the app from midnight until 6:00 a.m., when you talk about how the comparison tools have been minimized, how they can't look at how many likes they receive anymore.

Parents now have the ability to turn off the algorithm. I mean, this is unbelievably important. And at the end of the day, 30 years from now, I don't want to be the attorney general who didn't stand up and protect children with this injunctive relief.

BLITZER: You announced a different lawsuit earlier this week, Attorney General...

SUNDAY: I did.

BLITZER: ... this one against Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, arguing it fails to protect kids from compulsively using its platform.

CNN has reached out to Snap for comment, and the company disputes those allegations, to other news outlets as well. What do you aim to accomplish with this lawsuit in particular?

SUNDAY: Well, when you look at Snapchat, I mean, there are two -- there's two main thrusts of our lawsuit. The first one is that Snapchat is not providing accurate information to the App Store. The App Store is what parents use, the ratings on the App Store, to figure out, hey, is this safe for my kid or not?

We want to make sure parents have the accurate and correct information to make these decisions to protect their children. On the other side of it, we are also claiming that Snap is unbelievably addictive. The one thing about Snapchat that's different than a lot of these other platforms is the -- is the fact that these what we call Snaps, they disappear.

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And so kids think that this information disappears. And the reality is, it doesn't. We know through investigations and through my work as a prosecutor that oftentimes bad actors and predators, they use that specific capability to try to help lure kids get to them, and that causes obviously a tremendous amount of harm.

And we are going to -- I mean, we will litigate this to the end if we have to.

BLITZER: The Pennsylvania attorney general, Dave Sunday, congratulations to you and the other state attorneys general for this huge, huge win.

Appreciate you joining us. Thank you very much.

SUNDAY: Thank you. Thank you.

BLITZER: And just ahead: surprise visit. What we're now learning, new information about why America's spy chief made an unannounced trip to Moscow.

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BLITZER: Just in, Ratko Mladic has just died at the age of 84. The Bosnian Serb general was known as the Butcher of Bosnia.

And he orchestrated the Srebrenica massacre, where 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed. Mladic was also behind the siege of Sarajevo during the Balkan wars in the '90s. A United Nations-established court found him guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, persecution, extermination, murder, terror, unlawful attacks on civilians, and hostage-taking. He's now dead.

Also happening now, conflicting information on why the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, made a surprise trip to Moscow this week. Here's President Trump's explanation.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He's there very sort of semi-routine. I hate to disappoint people. We would like to see the war with Ukraine end.

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BLITZER: But now we're learning that the visit was specifically designed to warn Russian President Vladimir Putin against attacking NATO allies.

Recent intelligence assessments have indicated Putin could try to test NATO's resolve by launching a limited attack on another NATO allied country.

CNN global affairs commentator Sabrina Singh is here with me in THE SITUATION ROOM.

Sabrina, despite Trump's comments, what does Ratcliffe's visit signal to you about the seriousness of the U.S. concerns?

SABRINA SINGH, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: Well, I think what it signals is that the U.S. is taking very seriously the possible threat that Vladimir Putin will use this moment to expand his war in Ukraine to other NATO countries.

And the United States, this administration in particular, cannot afford that right now. Our stockpiles are too low. We do not have enough forces that we would be able to surge to the region. And I think what Ratcliffe in particular is worried about, should Article 5 be invoked, because we have seen incursions of Russian missiles and drones into NATO countries' airspaces, that would mean that the United States would have to honor its commitment to Article 5 and against any assault into a NATO country.

And we just don't have the stockpiles, the depth in our magazines to do that right now.

BLITZER: Article 5 says an attack on any NATO ally is an attack on all NATO allies, and the U.S. presumably would have to respond.

What are the chances that Russia could actually carry out another attempt and go against a NATO ally in Europe?

SINGH: Well, I think Vladimir Putin is willing to take the risk.

I mean, he has a very -- as we know, a very close relationship with Iran. Iran has given Russia the licensing to produce Shahed drones in country. And what is alarming right now is our Eastern flank in Europe does not have the counterdrone capabilities needed to really combat Russian drone incursions.

On top of that, Russia could activate cyberattacks on NATO countries. So I think Vladimir Putin is willing to push the line as far as he can go. And in fact during the Biden administration, Bill Burns warned against attacking or invading Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin basically brushed that aside.

So I think Putin is willing to take risks if it means that he could potentially expand his country's ambitions into a country like Moldova or even to Romania.

BLITZER: We're told the CIA director, Ratcliffe, reportedly used the trip to also encourage Russia to cut off economic and military support for Iran. Is that something Russia would get behind, you think?

SINGH: I don't think they're going to get involved in that. I mean, Russia has a very close military and economic relationship with Iran. We know that Iran is obviously supplying Shahed drones to Russia. Russia in turn is supplying targeting information that we believe Iran used to target U.S. bases in the region.

And, economically, I mean, they're not as close as -- large trading partner as China with Iran, but they still share economic ties. So I think Putin -- if Ratcliffe is putting pressure on Putin to get Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, I'm not really sure how far that will go, other than some nice pleasantries and words from Russia.

BLITZER: Wouldn't the Russians be concerned if the president lives up to his threat to impose sanctions against any country that deals economically with Iran? SINGH: Absolutely, they should be concerned, but also Russia has

existed under severe sanctions, and they still are. I mean, their war machine is continuing. They are getting support from North Korea with more soldiers going to the front line.

And, frankly, the economy, it's not as bad as I would say Iran's is, but, yes, I mean, secondary sanctions are always a concern for any country.

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BLITZER: Yes, certainly, indeed.

All right, Sabrina Singh, thank you very, very much.

And coming up here in THE SITUATION ROOM: It's one of the most aggressive and deadliest cancers. Now, how a move by the FDA could increase a person's chance of surviving pancreatic cancer.

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BLITZER: The FDA has now approved a promising new drug that's been proven to help people with one of the deadliest types of cancer live longer.

The new drug called Rasonque got the expedited green light after it was shown to double the survival rate of patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer. The drug works to block proteins that fuel tumor growth in most pancreatic cancer cases.

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Joining us now, Dr. Wungki Park, the gastrointestinal medical oncologist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who has been involved in these clinical trials of the drug.

And I know, Dr. Park, you said this drug could be a paradigm shift in how pancreatic cancer is -- treatment. So how significant is this approval?

DR. WUNGKI PARK, MEMORIAL SLOAN KETTERING CANCER CENTER: Thank you for having me, Wolf.

This is a major, a major turning point for pancreatic cancer. Decades of research have brought us this pill to directly target the main driver, what's called the RAS, for pancreatic cancer, and many more cancers in the future, I believe.

And in a randomized clinical trial called RASolute 302, median over survival was 13.2 months compared to 6.7 months on chemotherapy. This is not a cure, but the patients whose metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma that had already progressed after initial chemotherapy now can receive daraxonrasib, so-called Rasonque.

So this is a really, really meaningful advance. We're very happy about this. BLITZER: Well, we're grateful to you and everyone else involved in

this.

The drug is designed to block tumor growth in many pancreatic cancers. I know you have compared the mutations in pancreatic cancer to a broken traffic light in cancer cells. So how does this drug actually stop the cells from growing?

PARK: Yes, thank you.

So that analogy is really to kind of a compare to something we know. RAS is a growth signal switch inside many cells in our bodies. And in pancreatic cancer, this switch is kind of on a stuck -- an on state. So it keeps telling the cancer cells to divide and grow.

This drug blocks those signals, and what makes this development so important is that RAS comes in different mutations, in different format, and daraxonrasib does not target just one mutation, but most of these mutations that are very pertinent and important for pancreatic cancer. So the impact is huge.

BLITZER: About 67,000 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year. So what symptoms should people watch out for? And when is it time to go ahead and actually schedule a visit with the doctor?

PARK: Thank you.

So I think this is a very good moment for awareness. And the biggest challenge we had for pancreatic cancer so far is that the diagnosis is often very delayed because often, unless, until the cancer has grown to a certain degree, you would not have enough symptoms that are specific to point for pancreatic cancer.

So things that are displayed here, like belly pain, which spreads to the sides onto the back, like a band-like distribution. And a lot of patients are really working with their diets, so it's already always kind of confusing, but weight loss that is a little bit too easy and going on and escalating for a long period of time.

And if your skin turns yellow, especially the white part of your eye, if it turns yellow, that's quite a dangerous sign. So I would definitely seek experts' opinion and go and get checked out by your primary care doctor.

BLITZER: Good advice indeed.

This drug, as you know, was one of the first products accepted by the FDA's new expedited review process, which aims to accelerate reviews on certain therapies down to 30 or to 60 days, rather than 10 months to a year. How significant could this rapid review process that has now begun be for patients going forward?

PARK: Absolutely.

So, a lot of us working on this field and taking care of patients with such a high unmet need, this type of a new program is really exciting and really helped to deliver this into the real practice. So it's a really huge, huge impact, and we're very grateful for this.

We obviously wanted this for earlier, but this is really still much faster than any other regular regulatory review process. So I would believe this is a huge impact. And, yesterday, after the approval, a lot of us were very emotional and happy and thrilled.

And it was very, very mixed, historical, monumental feeling that we will always remember in our history.

BLITZER: Well, we're grateful to you and grateful to all the other physicians who have been involved in this.

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Dr. Wungki Park, thanks so much for joining us.

And here's what's coming up all new right at the top of the hour.

Kennedy Center fight. A judge could decide whether President Trump can etch his name into the performing arts center.

Plus, the Tate brothers in court right now. Andrew and Tristan Tate are fighting extradition to the United Kingdom on rape and sex trafficking charges, allegations both of them deny.

And, later, a SITUATION ROOM special report: a CNN investigation into the Trump administration's deportation deals to send migrants to very dangerous countries they have never been to.

That's all new in the next hour.

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