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CNN Reporter Describes Being Turned Away from White House; Trump to Attend Key U.N. Gathering as Saudi-Houthi Conflict Escalates; Officials Say, ICE Agent Shot, Wounded Venezuelan Man in Austin. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired September 21, 2026 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, the press fights back. News outlets, including CNN, file a lawsuit against the White House after being banned by the president.

Deciding mode, President Trump weighs his options as Houthis increase their attacks on Saudi Arabia. How the move could escalate the war with Iran.

Plus this, shot by ICE. Protests erupt in Austin, Texas, after a Venezuelan man is shot by an agent while making a delivery for DoorDash.

And top grade military complex. President Trump has new plans for a massive triumphal arch he's building, what he now says will be stored inside the 250-foot structure.

And A.I. force? Amid growing calls for guardrails, the president proposes appointing an A.I. czar, but only high-I.Q. individuals need apply. And this comes as Google's Gemini becomes the latest A.I. model to go rogue during testing.

Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Pamela Brown. Wolf Blitzer is off, and you're in The Situation Room.

Happening now, CNN is joining forces with MS NOW and Politico and have filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the Trump administration, specifically the president's decision to ban the three news outlets from access to the White House. CNN's Betsy Klein describes what happened when she arrived for work Saturday morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BETSY KLEIN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: So, I walk in, I tap my badge, and it beeps a couple of different times. It turns red, blue, and green, and it didn't accept my PIN number. The Secret Service agent in the guardhouse with whom I have been friendly in the past asked to see my badge, and I handed it over to him. He told me that it had been deactivated. I asked him if he could provide an explanation as to why it had been deactivated. He said he had no further information.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So, there's a lot to break down here. Joining us is CNN Chief White House Correspondent and Anchor of The Source Kaitlan Collins and CNN Crime And Justice Correspondent Katelyn Polantz.

Kaitlan Collins you have some new reporting on President Trump's aide, Natalie Harp, and her possible role in all of this. What are you learning?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Pam. I mean, as you know, the president has complained about negative coverage for decades, long before he was actually president. And so a big question after Friday was, why now? What drove the president to try to ban these outlets from covering him now in this moment in time, to deny us access to the White House grounds, deny us access to Air Force One, which we were supposed to be flying with the president on today for his trip to New York. He's got a big week here in New York, meeting with world leaders and delivering a speech before the United Nations General Assembly.

And my colleague, Kevin Liptak, and I are told that last week the president was shown a graphic by Natalie Harp, that's the close aide who is often traveling with him, who is in the Oval Office, on Air Force One. She showed him a graphic of negative coverage from Politico, and it enraged the president. He was infuriated by it, we are told. And after seeing that graphic and subsequent press clips and television clips of coverage that he thought wasn't fair or favorable to his administration, he moved to ban these three outlets from covering him.

And that is why that came on Friday in a move that was not a well- coordinated or thought-out strategy from the White House. It's certainly something he's wanted to do for a long time. But when he announced this on Friday, it actually caught a lot of people off guard.

As I noted, you know, this press pool rotation, Pam, as you know from covering the White House, works where we rotate every single day. It was already clear that CNN was covering the president's trip to New York last week. We had already manifested, myself and several of our colleagues, to be on Air Force One with the president today.

But because of this decision to ban us and the president's anger, apparently, over that graphic that Natalie Harp showed him last week, that is why CNN today, despite being assigned to the pool, is not at the White House. We're not being granted access. We cannot go to the grounds. We cannot go to Joint Base Andrews to board Air Force One. And also, with this news about the T.V. pool coverage, sticking with CNN on this, that means there will be no camera from a major T.V outlet traveling with the president or covering his trip here. And, obviously, that is significant in and of itself as this plays out in the courts.

BROWN: Yes, just if -- just for our viewers who don't understand why the pool is important, tell us just a little bit more about the significance of what you just said about that, Kaitlan.

[10:05:06]

COLLINS: Yes. Understandably, a lot of people don't -- aren't familiar with the press pool. It's something that is kind of a reporter's thing that we work on, but it has existed since the FDR era. And as you know, the Oval Office, while historical, is not a huge space.

And so when you see a picture like this, this is what's happening behind the cameras, and one person goes in for each outlet representing the radio, representing T.V., representing print. And they go in because it's a resource issue, it's obviously incredibly expensive to cover the president, but also it's a space issue because you can't fit every reporter inside the Oval Office. And so one person is designated as the representative for the T.V. outlets that day.

When I'm in the Oval Office asking questions on behalf of CNN, I'm also asking on behalf of our colleagues at Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, and then we take the video that we have of the president, the audio of the president's comments, and, of course, the editorial, our Q&As with him, and we distribute it to everyone. Everyone can use it.

And so that is a process that has been in place. It is one this White House is very familiar with, especially given the president prioritizes the T.V. pool. We know how much he values television coverage of his statements, of his addresses, of his announcements, and so this is certainly something the White House is also familiar with.

And so by taking this step, the White House is not only punishing CNN, and MS NOW, and Politico, they're also affecting those other outlets who rely on this coverage to facilitate their own coverage, to inform their viewers. And so what you're seeing play out today, the solidarity, the lawsuits, this would be happening had a Democratic president tried to do this to Fox News as well.

And I think that's really important for everyone to understand.

BROWN: Yes, I completely agree. And also, it's not just about the fact that CNN is part of this. No matter who was banned, we would be taking the same action alongside the other networks with this lawsuit. Katelyn, tell us about that.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Pam. This is a major First Amendment case. It's going to draw a lot of attention and scrutiny from the courts in Washington, D.C. The Federal District Court will be the first court. One judge will look at it. I'm waiting to see the documents hit the court docket, the public place where the court hosts those records.

But we do understand that a legal team representing all three news outlets, CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, all three that were banned by Trump on Friday could not access the White House grounds on Saturday to do their jobs. All three are coming together to file this and to ask for emergency intervention from a judge. The arguments here, there are two very key arguments. One of them that the news outlets are making, and this is according to a draft version of the lawsuit that I've been able to see, one of them is that there hasn't been due process. There's not been a process a notice given to these outlets that they were going to be banned and losing their press credentials. There isn't any explanation as to why that would be. That's the due process argument, that that would be a violation of the Constitution alone.

There's also a very significant First Amendment claim here, the idea that these press outlets, CNN included, are being discriminated against by Donald Trump because he believes, and he said this on Friday, they're running, quote/unquote, negative stories.

Now, Donald Trump this morning was posting on social media saying that this was a national security issue. That comes many days later than the president already said he just didn't like the coverage. We also have that reporting from Kaitlan and Kevin Liptak this morning about Natalie Harp showing him a Politico -- something that they had published that he was unhappy about.

A judge is going to look at all of those things, look at the evidence of how things played out over the past several days, and what's next. That's what I'm going to be looking at today. Who is the judge is going to be my first question. How quickly are they going to want to address the fact that this lawsuit is before them and that there's an emergency request for intervention?

And then also, how does the judge view all of the cases before in the federal court going back to 1977 in D.C., where courts have repeatedly found that press credentials have to be restored to people where the White House arbitrarily and abruptly takes them away? All of that is going to be looked at.

But there are several court cases out there previously, including in more recent years, Jim Acosta- Brian Karem from Playboy Magazine, the Associated Press. In all of those, the law in the D.C. federal court is that courts just can't lose their press credentials because the president doesn't like them.

BROWN: So, how soon could we get a decision?

POLANTZ: Well, we could get a decision at any time, given that this -- as soon as this hits the docket, once it gets assigned to the judge, the ball is really going to be in the judge's court on how fast they want to move.

[10:10:08]

But the way this works is we're asking for the type of emergency intervention where a judge can move extremely quickly. There could be initial decisions, rulings, plans, hearings scheduled as soon as today.

BROWN: Yes. And I want to go back to Kaitlan Collins, because as I mentioned, Kaitlan, we'd be covering this regardless if whether CNN was a part of this ban. Tell us a little bit more how other media outlets are showing solidarity with CNN and the other banned news outlets.

COLLINS: I think there's a realization that if this could happen to CNN, it could happen to anyone. It's not specific to us. It's -- this is an administration where the president has complained heavily about Fox News' coverage. I mean, he really doesn't like any coverage that is critical or scrutinizing his actions and his announcements.

And so seeing the president take this step though, Pam, as Kaitlan's mentioning, that she's watching what's playing out in the courts, and obviously we'll see how they decide here. I've talked to several people in the administration who do not think that this is going to bear out under legal scrutiny, but we'll see what the courts decide.

But just from a perspective of a political perspective, as we are getting closer to the midterms and the president has faced a string of setbacks lately about coverage that he doesn't like, it's not just the coverage, it's the actual news in and of itself that he doesn't like, the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, the Supreme Court ruling against him when it comes to mail-in ballots, the price of diesel, and the questions over how that's affecting Republicans' chances in the midterm elections with bad economic sentiment in this country from Americans in terms of how the president is handling the Iran war and the economy overall.

The president also really values T.V. coverage of what he does. He is someone who is old school. He watches television regularly, as you know, and complains about the coverage sometimes. But he's always one of the most loyal viewers to any network, watching what his allies are saying about him on television, watching what his political challengers are saying about him on television.

So, this week he has several major events, starting today with a meeting here in New York City with Mayor Zohran Mamdani, leading to several meetings with world leaders. He has a major speech tomorrow at the United Nations. He has a state visit with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, coming up. All of those are things that typically would have a television camera inside the room from the president's own press pool.

When he speaks under the wing on Air Force One, when maybe all of a sudden decides to hold a press availability in the Oval Office, those are all moments that people see because of the T.V. camera that's in there.

And so it is a real question of what this looks like now that the Fox News bureau chief, Brian Bouton, put out that statement earlier saying that the T.V. pool has been suspended. There will be no camera from NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, or ABC with the president when he travels to New York today, and that will subsequently affect the coverage which often the president is seeking.

BROWN: Yes, important point. Kaitlan Collins, Katelyn Polantz, thank you both. Well, happening now, President Trump, as Kaitlan just noted, is due in New York in a few hours to kick off a big week on the international stage, including an address before the U.N. General Assembly tomorrow.

But the gathering of world leaders is taking place under growing concerns about the widening Iran conflict and further disruptions to the world's oil supply, case in point, the renewed fighting in Yemen between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels who seized control of a critical maritime choke point in the Red Sea.

The regional conflict has fueled a spike in gas prices, including diesel, now reaching a high above $6.50 on average. That's according to AAA.

So, for more, let's go live now to CNN National Security Correspondent Kylie Atwood in New York. Kylie, what can we expect from President Trump's discussions on Iran and just the wider situation in the region?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pamela, as we understand it, talking to sources from the region, talking to sources in the administration, it's not really clear that there will be any monumental breakthrough when President Trump meets with these GCC leaders here in New York this week at the United Nations General Assembly.

And the reason for that is, as you stated, this conflict with Iran is escalating. It is widening in the region as we see just over the weekend, that dramatic back and forth that has continued between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia, the Houthis starting to try to consolidate some of their gains along the Red Sea, along those ports in Yemen. And there is considerable attention, obviously, by the kingdom, the Saudi Arabia kingdom paid to this.

I am told that the kingdom is likely to try and focus on that Houthi confrontation when they meet with President Trump this week. And of course there are questions about how much U.S. support would actually be given to that conflict. Would any actual direct U.S. military support beyond the intelligence and the targeting support be provided?

But on the flip side of that coin, you also have the other countries that'll be at the table, not necessarily on the same page about how to draw an end to this wider Iran war conflict, and President Trump not being clear about what the administration's strategy is.

[10:15:08]

This comes off the heels of the U.N. ambassador, President Trump's ambassador, Mike Waltz, telling our colleague over the weekend that effectively there isn't a clear timeline for how the Trump administration views resolving this conflict.

Listen, to what he said just yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MIKE WALTZ, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: I don't -- I wouldn't necessarily put a timeline on it, but I think the president is focused on his clear objectives, that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon and that they are welcome to come back to the table when they're ready to negotiate in good faith. And meanwhile maximum pressure will stay in place on the regime's economy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ATWOOD: Now, obviously another topic that is on everyone's minds is artificial intelligence. It'll be interesting to see what President Trump says on the world stage about A.I., obviously going into his state visit later this week with President Xi coming to Washington, and also after Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said yesterday that the U.S. had proposed putting together a safety mechanism between the U.S. and China when it comes to A.I.

So, we'll watch and see how that develops. But we know that Trump himself has been demeaning of those safety concerns that have been coming up, dismissive of them, focused more on the economic gains that A.I. has given to the United States, on the need to compete with China continually on the A.I. front. So, this is all something that all of the world leaders are going to be watching to see what President Trump says on that. Pam?

BROWN: All right, Kylie Atwood, thank you so much.

And still ahead here in the Situation Room, a shooting near a synagogue in Ontario as the community gathered for a holy day. What we're learning about the incident.

Plus, Patrick Clancy is breaking his silence after his ex-wife Lindsay's high-profile murder trial ended in a mistrial. What he believes drove Lindsay to kill their three young children, and what he said about his feelings toward her today.

You're with us. Stay with us. We're in The Situation Room.

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[10:20:00]

BROWN: Happening now, officials say a Venezuelan man is in custody after he was shot and wounded by an ICE agent yesterday in Austin, Texas. The man was identified as 28-year-old Wilbur Rafael Garces Perez according to a family lawyer. Federal authorities have yet to reveal what led up to the shooting, but said Perez is undocumented and was under a deportation order, something that the family denies.

Let's go live now to CNN senior national correspondent in Austin with the very latest. What more are you learning, Ed?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Pamela. Well, the videos that have emerged of this shooting here in North Austin raise serious questions about whether or not the situation justified that kind of potentially deadly force. The 28-year-old Venezuelan immigrant, a DoorDash driver, has been released from the hospital. He was treated and released and is now in immigration custody as his family and his attorneys try to gather more information on as to what his fate will be.

As you mentioned the Department of Homeland Security says that he has a deportation order. The attorney for the family says that there's not clear if that is indeed the case, that the wife had no idea or no information that her husband was facing deportation.

But that shooting took place just underneath the overpass here in North Austin. And some of the videos you can see, and some newly obtained video with CNN shows the moments after the shooting, where you can see in one of the videos a wound in the back of the 28-year- old Venezuelan immigrant. And in that video, you also hear him say that the ICE officer rammed his vehicle with their vehicle and then shot him through the back.

In the video, you can also see two bullet holes in the rear passenger window of that vehicle as well. The good news is that the Venezuelan immigrant has been treated. He is in stable condition. It appears that this will not be life-threatening injuries. But there are serious questions that not only are, is the family and the -- and local officials here asking about whether or not there should be an independent investigation into all of this.

And what is interesting, Pamela, is that in recent shootings over the course of the last year, the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement have put out oftentimes detailed videos saying that a migrant weaponized their vehicle or attacked an officer some sort of information that would justify the shooting, often described as a self-defense tactic.

But in this statement that the Department of Homeland Security has released so far, there are no real details as to what led up to the shooting and why the ICE officer felt the need to fire his weapon at the immigrant here on the streets of Austin. So, that difference, I think, in the way all of this is being communicated is something to watch out for.

The attorney and some family members, we understand, will be speaking with reporters later today as the family tries to gather more information as to what led to the shooting. Pamela?

BROWN: All right. Ed Lavandera, thank you so much. Keep us posted on the latest out there.

And coming up, some of the top A.I. companies in the world hit with a major new lawsuit. What paying customers are accusing them of, next.

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[10:25:00]

BROWN: Well, police in Canada are stepping up security around places of worship after a terrifying shooting outside an Ontario synagogue on Yom Kippur. You can actually hear the moment gunfire erupted right outside the sanctuary.

The brave officer hired to protect the congregation intercepted the armed gunman as he approached the building. That officer was wounded in the exchange. The synagogue's president says congregants crouched on the floor as bullets sprayed through the stained glass windows.

And you can see the damage right here. Thankfully, no one inside the synagogue was injured, and authorities have not said what led to the incident. But, wow, thank goodness for that security guard who just jumped into action there.

And we are hearing from Lindsay Clancy's ex-husband for the first time since a judge declared a mistrial in the murder case against her. Patrick Clancy sat down in an exclusive interview with CBS's 60 Minutes last night, and he discussed the trial's impact, how he forgave his ex-wife, and what he believes led to the deaths of his three young children.

[10:30:08]

Here's a clip.