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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees

Trump's Pledge of $5K Checks Catches Officials and Allies Off Guard, Sparks GOP Blowback; Trump Accused of Trying to Bribe Voters with Vow for $5,000.00 Checks; Interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D- MD); Anthropic Says It Blocked Possible Attempts To Use Artificial Intelligence To Develop Bioweapons; Witnesses To Charlie Kirk's Assassination Battle False Allegations; First FDNY Chief At World Trade Center Remembers 9/11 Attack. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired September 10, 2026 - 20:00   ET

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

ELIZABETH WAGMEISTER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: It was all done with A.I. so of course this is a huge fear in Hollywood. But like it or not, A.I. is here. It won't just depend on what the Hollywood studios are greenlighting, but also on what audiences are willing to embrace -- Erin.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Wow, thank you so much, Elizabeth. That was incredible reporting. A little bit unsettling but incredible. Thanks so much for joining us, AC360 starts now.

[20:00:30]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER: 360": Good evening, from the Newsroom, night two of the Republican Midterm convention, otherwise known as "Trump-a-Palooza" and of course, a two-hour speech by the President last night was not enough. He'll be back for round two in the next hour.

There is breaking news tonight about how little groundwork apparently went into his alleged $5,000.00 giveaway offer to everybody in America as long as Republicans hold on to power in the midterms. It was a big applause line last night, and the crowd didn't seem to care about the $1.3 trillion price tag that would come with it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Here is my promise. If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, because of our economic, tremendous economic success, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.00.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Just to quickly do the math on this, that is 260 million adult Americans times $5,000.00 or $1.3 trillion if Republicans hold Congress.

Now, the pledge took a lot of people by surprise, including many of the President's allies and officials who are typically involved in the conception and rollout of such a big and expensive initiative. CNN has learned that they weren't.

Instead, according to one of the President's political advisers, he came up with this after discussing it with a small circle of close political advisers, including Jason Miller and James Blair. We do not know, for example, whether the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, was involved, even though his department would be responsible for the impact on financial markets and the economy.

There's a lot we still don't know about how much, if any, preparation really went into this offer. What's clear, though, is there's blowback on the right.

Congressman Thomas Massie today accused the President of, "flirting with socialism and vote buying." last night. The conservative national reviews headline on it, Trump breaks glass joins socialist embraces bribery. Former House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good called the President's plan "socialist vote buying scheme."

Even friendly interviewers like Laura Ingraham were asking tough questions, including this one about why the need to wait until after the midterms to send the money when Republicans already control Congress today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST, "THE INGRAHAM ANGLE": Why not just give the money now? If you have the money, why not give it now?

TRUMP: Because they can't, I'll tell you what, because the Democrats can't do it because with them it's negative growth with. With us, it's so positive.

So, we're taking in $21 trillion. Nobody, no country has ever taken in anywhere near that. It's four or five times higher than the next one. All because of that beautiful word that you and I love more than most others, tariffs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: I've watched that repeatedly, and I still don't know what he said. It's very possible, he doesn't either. But no one really seems to care because nothing seems to matter anymore. And he's promising to give money away.

Not long after that clip first aired, another came out on another news outlet, and this one the President suggested he does not need Congress at all to open up the spigots.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Mr. Trump, last night you proposed. Trump dividends, giving every American $5,000.00, American citizen if they have --

TRUMP: Adult. REPORTER: Adult citizen, $5,000.00 and I'm wondering, would Congress need to approve that?

TRUMP: Well, we think not. I think they will do it if we needed it, but we think not. The country is doing so well. We've taken in trillions of dollars in tariffs and other things. We have now over $20 trillion worth of manufacturing plants and other investments being made in the United States, which is far greater than ever before. And we think it's something that would be good.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Quickly, he's talking about foreign investment in the U.S., which is totally different than federal revenue. You can't use it to write checks to Americans. But again, pesky details, of course, he's promised big cash giveaways before. Actually, a bunch of times.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Theres even under consideration a new concept where we give 20% of the DOGE savings to American citizens.

We're thinking about a rebate because we have so much money coming in from tariffs.

We're going to issue a dividend to our middle-income people and lower income people. About $2,000.00.

REPORTER: ... might be in time for Christmas, Holiday shopping?

TRUMP: No, no, not for this year. It'll be next year sometime.

We have so much money coming in from tariffs that well be able to issue at least a $2,000.00 dividend and also pay down debt.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Haven't heard much about those DOGE savings checks, but maybe when the President speaks again tonight, he will hand them out.

CNN's Alayna Treene, who did some of the reporting on tonight's breaking news at the convention in Dallas, joins us now. Is it clear where this $5,000.00 payment idea came from?

[20:05:17]

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Look, Anderson, when I spoke with some officials at the White House and the President's political advisers, they said he did discuss it. He floated this idea with some of his most senior staffers, and mainly they threw out names of people on his political operation. People like Jason Miller and James Blair, who are no longer in the White House or in in working inside the West Wing, but are representing him in his political capacity.

He said they talked to him about it. I know the White House, the former White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, had talked to him about it, but when we asked people more broadly throughout the Trump administration about this, people said they essentially caught him off guard last night when he brought this up publicly on stage.

I also spoke with one White House official, Anderson, who told me that this morning they were kind of scrambling to put together a list of talking points to explain that announcement. Notably, when we did see that kind of memo come out from the White House, it didn't really explain how this would work, how it would be paid for any of the details, really, that you've heard a lot of Republicans asking about.

Now, if you look online as well, a very prominent republican donor who actually co-hosted a fundraiser last night with the President's son, Donald Trump Jr. He was throwing skepticism on this. We heard from republican lawmakers on capitol hill saying, we haven't heard of this. And of course, it would be Congress that actually needs to look at that and approve such a spending move.

Congress controls the power of the purse. And so, even though the President had suggested today, you know, perhaps we don't need Congress to do this, didn't really explain what executive action he thought would be needed or he could use really to get this through.

So, there's a lot of skepticism of this. And I think in all the interviews you've heard the President do today, he still doesn't really have a clear example of this. And even some Republicans, you know, you've heard Democrats really saying this is a bribe.

Even some republicans who are skeptical of this are arguing this does seem kind of like a gimmick. This is a carrot to really dangle in front of voters at a moment when they know they need to energize them as much as possible to get out for the midterm elections in less than 55 days now.

COOPER: Alayna Treene, thanks very much.

Joining us now is Matt Mowers, who worked on President Trump's 2016 Presidential campaign, served as senior White Sabrina House adviser in the first Trump administration. CNN political director David Chalian and Sabrina Singh, former deputy Pentagon Press Secretary under President Biden.

So, Matt, if giving $5,000.00 to every American is so important and altruistic isn't just a plot to essentially buy peoples votes, why wouldn't the President just do it now, since, as Laura Ingraham points out, he already controls Congress?

MATT MOWERS, FORMER TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, look, I mean, clearly, he believes that there's going to be congressional action required, and it's going to take a Republican majority to do it. I mean, it might be something that could get done in lame duck. But look, I was just with the President before. You know, he seems in really good spirits about the reaction to the announcement.

You know, the fact that you've got hard working Americans out there who are going to see more money in their pockets. If you have a Republican majority next year. And look, we are also here at a political convention. We're in the middle of a political campaign. This is the time where you have to make commitments about what you're going to do forward looking.

You know, winning campaigns, look to the future, losing ones, look backwards. Even if you believe in the success of the record. This is the President laying out what they will do if they get a Republican majority again in the Congress. And that's the type of thing you have to be communicating to voters right now.

You can't just be bragging about the accomplishments. You got to tell them what's in it for them and what you're going to do for them. And that's what the President felt like he was doing last night.

COOPER: Sabrina, could the President, whether he realizes it or not, be laying a political trap, basically daring Democrats to oppose these $5,000.00 payments, even if they're still far-fetched at this point?

SABRINA SINGH, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: I actually don't think so. This is a real act of desperation. I think you've seen the President's policies failed. Americans all across the country are seeing higher oil prices, higher diesel prices, grocery, electricity. And so, there is bipartisan backlash to this plan. I mean, even Governor Ron DeSantis said the idea of giving out $5,000.00 checks to all Americans, all adult Americans, is going to increase our inflation and our debt.

On top of that, I mean, this is this is a bribe. And to Laura Ingraham's question that she asked the President, you control the majority in both the House and the Senate. Why don't you do it now? It is an act of desperation to try and get Americans to vote for Republicans.

And I think the American people are smarter than that. I think they're seeing the cost of what this war has done to their pocketbooks. And at the end of the day, in November, I think they want something different and this will be a referendum election.

COOPER: David, do you think this actually helps Republicans chances in midterms, in some close races?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: I mean, it's clearly a gimmick. And, you know, I think it's not all that uncommon to see a President or a politician promise, you vote for me and I'll put money in your pocket. I here's what it is, Anderson. The political environment that we're in right now is largely baked in. So, is this the kind of thing that is going to sort of alter the political environment? I don't think so.

Do I think there are some low information voters, the very kinds of voters that this entire GOP convention is designed around trying to like, enliven and awaken and get to the polls who may be like, hey, I'm going to get $5,000.00, I'll go vote for Republican.

Sure, I think there are some voters. Do I think it's a game changing kind of proposal? I'm a little skeptical of that. [20:10:35]

COOPER: Matt, as we mentioned, President Trump said in that interview with CBS. When asked if those $5,000.00 payments would require congressional approval, he said, we think not. I think they will do it if we need it, but we think not. Estimates put the cost of sending $5,000.00 checks to every adult American approximately $1.3 trillion. How does the President get that done without Congress?

MOWERS: Well, that's why, you know, I think at the end of the day is going to need Congress. And that's why you're talking about the importance of having a Republican majority. If folks want to, you know, get essentially what's a $5,000.00 tax credit?

And look, I've been around politics a long-time running campaigns; I'll tell you, tax cuts and tax credits are always popular. It doesn't matter what the election cycle is. And by the way, this shows some economic benefit of his economic plans.

You know, the Presidents been out there talking for almost two years now about wanting to give the American people some of the benefit of tariff collection. This is one means and one way in which you can do it. Obviously, look, it's going to have to be structured. They're going to have to write a law, they're going to have to get a bill passed, they're going to have to put in the budget bill, the annual budget next year.

But they, at the end of the day, are going to find a way to give every single American a tax cut, a tax credit. I'll tell you, I haven't seen the exact polling on it, but it passes prolog, tax cuts are very popular with the American people, especially the working-class voters that are part of the Republican base right now want to go out.

COOPER: What happened to the DOGE checks?

MOWERS: Well, look, you know, certainly look, as a fiscal conservative who also loves tax cuts. I would love for us to be able to keep finding ways to cut the federal spending and federal budget. By the way, the number of federal workers is down for the first time in about 50 years.

COOPER: I mean, he promised he promised $2,000.00 checks to all Americans because of DOGE savings that never materialized. Sabrina. Democrats have mostly scoffed at this convention, noting midterm conventions are rare and haven't been terribly successful in the past.

Democrats, though, have underestimated President Trump's ability to pull the spotlight time and time again to set the national conversation. Do you think this convention or the promises he's making, do you think it's going to move the needle?

SINGH: Well, this is actually a really interesting moment because I think for once, the Democratic strategy and the Republican strategy are actually aligning right now. Donald Trump wants this midterm convention to be about him. And he said, you know, pretend I'm on the ballot. He wants this election to be about Donald Trump. And that is exactly also what Democrats want.

We want to be talking about Donald Trump's bad policies that have caused, as I said, you know, higher oil and gas prices for Americans, grocery prices, electricity prices all around the country. And so, it's interesting to see somewhat of this alignment that Donald Trump is at historic lows right now. And just to give you some context here, in 2018, Donald Trump was at, had low approvals, but his handling of the economy was around 52 percent.

Today, a Quinnipiac poll came out that showed his handling of the economy. His approval is around 32 percent going into the midterms. So, I think Americans are seeing exactly what the Trump administration has delivered for them. And they want to change.

COOPER: David, I mean, talking about that Quinnipiac poll out today showed Democrats with an 11-point lead, I think it was on which party those polled would want to see win the house of representatives if the election were held today. President Trump, with just a 33 percent approval rating as we just noted.

Those, you know, those are better numbers for Democrats than we've seen in many recent polls, including from CNN. I'm not sure if how, if anybody believes polls anymore, but what could happen in the next two months?

CHALIAN: Well, listen, it is true that sort of D plus 11 on their version of the generic ballot question there, Anderson, is a little more pro Dem than, than we've seen. I think the average has been around six percentage point advantage for the Democrats, which by the way, if that is what comes to take place in November, that would be enough for democrats to win the house. They only need to flip a net gain of three Republican seats.

But what happens between now and the election day? I mean, the things to look for pretty specifically is Republicans are trying to mitigate what is clearly a favorable environment for Democrats. And Donald Trump is at historic lows is the onslaught of money that Donald Trump is starting to spend. And we'll see if he spends hundreds of millions of dollars, or Elon Musk or the like, get out there and spend a lot. So, that's one thing that could mitigate it.

And I think that we also, you know, the battle for control of the United States Senate, Anderson, is taking place in deep red territory. So, it is an uphill climb for Democrats in places like Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, even in a favorable environment for them. So, I'm not sure that we know the results of this election yet, but there is no doubt that there is a fight to be waged here.

[20:15:26]

COOPER: And, David, just briefly, Vice-President Vance set to speak in the next hour. Do you think the race for the GOP Presidential nomination in 2028 begins in earnest tonight?

CHALIAN: I do in the sense that I think we're going to have a window on the future of the Republican party. Donald Trump has been the dominant force and will continue to be in the Republican Party for the better part of a decade now. And I do think seeing Vance tonight at the convention in the midst of a political season now, you know, that Presidential election is going to begin the moment the votes are counted in November. And I think tonight we get a window into what does a post-Trump Republican Party begin to look like with clearly Vance as the front runner in that in that prospect.

COOPER: David Chalian, thank you, Matt Mauers really, appreciate it, and Sabrina Singh as well, thank you.

Coming up next, Democratic Congressman and Constitutional Law Professor Jamie Raskin on Mr. Trump's proposed $1.3 trillion giveaway plan.

And later, we talked with an Anthropic employee who just quit last night saying the people building A.I. earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. So where are the governments on this? Why aren't they pushing for some regulation?

Tonight, Scott Galloway joins me to talk about that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:20:41]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.00

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: We're talking tonight about that promise, one of several cash giveaways he's offered, deficits be damned in his new claim that he does not need congressional approval to do that.

He speaks again tonight in the 9:00 hour, along with Vice-President Vance, who said last night about the plan, "I don't think it's a controversial idea."

Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin does. I talked to him earlier.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Congressman Raskin, I wonder what your reaction was when you heard President Trump say he'll pay every American adult $5,000.00 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Well, my first thought was this is a bribe and bribery is illegal as a political bribe. Basically, if you return my team to Congress, I'll give you money for it. Of course, they control the House and the Senate and the White House right now. If they wanted to do it, they could do it before the election. But he wants to use it as some kind of coercive leverage.

The second thing that occurred to me was he'd done this before and sure enough, I looked it up, he had offered $5,000.00 as a DOGE dividend to every American citizen. We never got that. And I think there was $2,000.00 as a tariff dividend, and we never got that.

So, you know, nobody's going to believe this in any event. But the other thing that struck me was how successful he's been at conditioning people to the idea that he controls spending in America.

In article One, Section Eight, Clause One of the Constitution, it's up to Congress to decide how to spend money. If somebody was going to waste money by just giving away trillions of dollars in a haphazard fashion, it would have to be Congress to do it, not the President.

And I guess the last thing I thought of was just, this is terrible economic policy.

COOPER: The President is now saying he does not need congressional approval for these payments, after initially suggesting that he didn't need lawmakers to sign off. I mean, is there any way he can do this unilaterally?

RASKIN: Well, you know, he said he was going to set up his $1.776 billion political slush fund just to give money away to proud boys and oath keepers and other people who did his political bidding on January 6th, 2021. It's basically the same idea that he can either just take money out of the federal treasury, which constitutionally he may not do, or he's going to take money that was appropriated by Congress for one purpose and use it for a completely different purpose. And we believe he cannot do that.

The question is, who's going to stop him when the Supreme Court is very much a pro-MAGA court, but we don't know. It's very difficult to stop a President who's out of control and is acting like a drunken sailor.

COOPER: If Democrats win back control of the House, you're poised to be the chairman of the judiciary committee. Do you expect to launch hearings, investigations into the Trump administration? Obviously, do you have concerns about what, you know, if that kind of backfires on Democrats?

RASKIN: Well, look, we have a lot of work to do to dig out of this nightmare. And Donald Trump is still President for two more years. So, we understand he wields the veto pen. And even if we get big majorities in Congress, it's going to be difficult to override his veto by two thirds.

So, we're going to have to try to work with them the best we can to stop the corruption, to expose and end the corruption however we can, to end the violent authoritarianism, the kind we saw on the streets of Minneapolis, the kind that federal courts are denouncing today in terms of the long-term detention of people where there's no statutory authorization for that taking place.

So, we've got a lot to work on and holding people accountable is definitely important. There is going to be a, you know, a period of corrective justice that we need to inaugurate to deal with all the corruption, all the illegality and criminality. But foremost is to make progress for the American people.

COOPER: Yes, Congressman Raskin, I appreciate your time. Thank you.

RASKIN: You bet.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Much more ahead tonight. Up next, an A.I. company, Anthropic, just revealed they blocked what they say might have been an attempt to use its technology in a way that could have led to the development of bioweapons. Scott Galloway joins me what he thinks about the concerns being raised by a former anthropic employee who says the people building A.I. earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. We'll be right back.

[20:25:28]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:29:36]

COOPER: Anthropic, the A.I. company behind Claude, says in a new paper out today that it blocked multiple attempts to use its A.I. models in a way that could potentially lead to the development of biological weapons.

This comes as some industry insiders are loudly warning the technology could wipe out humanity, and soon. Earlier this week, an Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, made headlines when he resigned and made a series of posts on social media warning, "the people building A.I. earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade."

I spoke to him last night.

[20:30:10]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACOB COXON, FORMER ANTHROPIC RESEARCHER: So two months ago, OpenAI agents, A.I.s, hacked into third-party infrastructure, entirely at their own accord. And this was like a concentrated hacking spree that they carried out of their own volition. And I think that if you extrapolate into the future the level of capabilities of these A.I.s with the same independent volition, they could cause extreme havoc. For example, hacking critical infrastructure, building extinction- level bioweapons. There's a lot of ways that the A.I. could actuate itself in the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Well, a current Anthropic employee shared Coxon's post, adding, "Jacob is correct here. We really do earnestly believe A.I. could kill all humans. I personally think it is a greater than 10 percent within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence that are not clearly on track to." I want to get perspective now from NYU professor and host of the Pivot and Prof G podcast, Scott Galloway. So Scott, you've seen the warnings from Jacob Coxon. I spoke to him last night. He says that people who are working on this at Anthropic, he also used to work at OpenAI, genuine believe that A.I. could kill us all within the decade. What do you think of that?

SCOTT GALLOWAY, PROF. OF MARKETING, NYU STERN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS: Well, first off, congratulations on the interview. It's been forwarded to me about a dozen times. Look, I would argue that this is not a story about evil A.I. I would argue it's a story about mediocre leadership that in an environment where it takes a decade to put a drug through for fear of externalities or, you know, years to put a plane in the air for fear that it might malfunction, the fact that we have absolutely no regulatory body to oversee and determine if these types of statements have any veracity and cooperate around them, in my opinion, demonstrates a lack of leadership.

Also feel quite frankly, there's some catastrophizing here for fundraising, but again, it's not evil A.I. that is the problem here. I think it's mediocre leadership from our elected officials.

COOPER: I mean, you know the argument that's been made, which is that there's an arms race going on. And if it's not a U.S. A.I. company that, you know, has the best A.I. that is going to be China or some rogue actor who with nefarious intent.

GALLOWAY: Yes, we're all sitting in a room knee high in gasoline with matches and no one wants to drop the match. But I would argue if in fact these claims of mass extinction events have any veracity, it's similar to nuclear arms or bioweapons. We all have a mutually vested interest in cooperating. We have multilateral agreements across bioweapons and nuclear monitoring companies, the IAEA, Interpol.

I don't see any reason why we wouldn't be able to cooperate across border. I think at the end of the day, this is about the prioritization of shareholder value over any type of concerns or threats. Is this probably an exaggeration? Is this potentially a fundraising strategy of I'm Dr. Frankenstein and Frank is so powerful and so mean, please invest in my next monster? I think there's some of that.

COOPER: When you say that some of this is fundraising, do you mean like A.I. companies are raising these or want these kind of fears out there for some reason? Who's doing the fundraising?

GALLOWAY: Well, supposedly we were already going to have a 10 percent destruction of the labor force by now. Supposedly there are going to be no truck drivers, radiologists or computer programmers. The job listings for radiologists and computer programs have actually grown. The economists just put out an article saying that this job apocalypse hasn't happened and there's been a net creation of about a million jobs.

So I do believe some of this is catastrophizing and techno-narcissism that my technology is so incredible that it could destroy the world, but you can get it now on our pre-IPO funding.

COOPER: So it's marketing, so.

GALLOWAY: So this gets headlines and this creates a certain level of techno-narcissism and fantastical imagination around how powerful these technologies are.

COOPER: Anthropic is out with a new report today outlining instances of researchers attempting to use its models to potentially create bioweapons. They point out it doesn't know for sure whether the inquiries were actually serving a legitimate scientific purpose like vaccine development, but does it make sense to you that the rest of us are at the mercy of a private company to catch and disrupt this kind of potentially malign activity? I mean, just from a security standpoint, should government have some sort of role here?

[20:34:55]

GALLOWAY: If a fraction of the threat is real here, we should absolutely, you can't run an ad on YouTube without it being approved. If the Boeing CEO said there's a 10 percent likelihood your plane is going to crash, would you get on that plane? The FAA would ground all those planes. So the notion, if you take any of these threats seriously, even if you feel they're exaggerated, if there's any veracity to them, there immediately needs to be a regulatory body with very smart people who at a minimum say, any new product that comes out has to go under a 60 percent or a 90 day review of a blue ribbon panel that bangs on these models and asks the questions like please create a super virus and see how it responds.

And I believe that both China and Russia and many of our competitors and adversaries would also have a mutually vested interest in developing a regulatory body around this. But it's insane that we have prioritized, this is the continuation of the following. We privatize the upside and the shareholder gains and we socialize the downside and the risks. A small number of people and companies capitalized enormously on social media and then we socialize the depression and the polarization.

And this could potentially be the mother of all capture of shareholder value by a small number of people and normalizing or socializing massive existential risks. This is a failure of governance and leadership.

COOPER: Scott Galloway, appreciate it. Thanks Scott.

GALLOWAY: Thank you.

COOPER: Up next one, the one year anniversary of the Charlie Kirk's assassination. The student who asked him the last question before his killing talks about the threats he has faced after online influencers falsely tied him to Kirk's murder. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:40:49] COOPER: Year ago today, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated during an event at Utah Valley University. The 31-year- old husband and father of two young children was the cofounder of Turning Point USA and both praised and criticized for his views. Tonight the organization he built to mobilize young voters is holding a memorial service on the Utah Valley campus.

Three people who were there when Kirk was shot and killed are sharing how false internet conspiracy theories turn them each into targets they say for nonstop harassment and threats. CNN's Elle Reeve reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELLE REEVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is Utah Valley University where Charlie Kirk was shot about a year ago. He was speaking down there. The alleged shooter was up there on the Losee Center. Since then, conspiracy theorists have been targeting people in the area, accusing them of having something to do with the shooting and it's had a real effect on their lives.

PHIL LYMAN (R), FORMER UTAH STATE REPRESENTATIVE: It's laughable that I had anything to do with killing Charlie Kirk.

CALEB CHILCUTT, FORMER UVU TURNING POINT USA CHAPTER PRESIDENT Saying that I, along with Turning Point's organization, conspired to kill Charlie. I think that's the most disgusting thing that I've seen.

HUNTER KOZAK, UTAH VALLEY UNIVERSITY STUDENT: Looking through TikTok and looking through Twitter and like everyone was talking about me and like there were a number of conspiracies that immediately came up. It was really horrifying.

REEVE (voice-over): We spoke on camera with three people who witnessed the shooting and many others who were afraid to talk publicly. Some people have even moved because they feared for their safety.

KOZAK: Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?

CHARLIE KIRK, POLITICAL ACTIVIST: Counting or not counting gang violence?

KOZAK: Yes, I was asking Charlie Kirk a question when he got assassinated.

REEVE (voice-over): Hunter Kozak is a math major at Utah Valley University. When he heard Kirk was coming to campus last September, he wanted to challenge Kirk's assertion that there was a growing wave of transgender mass shooters.

KOZAK: Like I know that the fact that I was asking about shootings is crazy. Watching someone die while they were in a conversation with me is a very, very, very like crazy circumstance that like I can't forget. But it took a while for like it to catch on that like that's not all I have to worry about. REEVE (voice-over): Within hours of the shooting, people were dissecting the footage of Kozak, scrutinizing his old social media posts and building a narrative around him that was out of his control, saying he had something to do with the assassination.

KOZAK: There was this guy, his name is Jesse, Jesse On Fire.

JESSE MERL, HOST, "JESSE ON FIRE": So we've got a new recording from Hunter Kozak that I want you guys to hear.

KOZAK: So I called him up and I was like, genuine question. If I knew that was going to happen, why would I put myself two feet below where the bullet was? And he was like, that's such a good question. And not once did this question come up to him.

BARON COLEMAN, PODCASTER: Hunter Kozak has a brother named Chanson Kozak. We're going to talk about him as well.

KOZAK: Then there was this dude, Baron Coleman, who made like a six hour deep dive into my family history.

REEVE (voice-over): Last year, Kozak worked with the Un -- America tour, which is like a liberal version of Turning Points campus events. Now he does liberal political commentary on TikTok. Kozak and his wife, Shelby, have two kids under two, and they said they had to move because people kept showing up to harass them.

KOZAK: It certainly feels like the conspiracy theorists have been in a lot of ways, bigger trauma than the just watching the assassination.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's another one.

REEVE (voice-over): There are influencers with huge followings that purport to investigate Kirk's death. The most famous conspiracy theorist is Candace Owens, a wildly popular podcaster who once worked with Kirk at Turning Point USA. She's devoted hours and hours and hours to casting suspicion over people who witnessed the shooting or worked with Kirk. She's being sued for defamation and other claims by Brian Harpole, who provided security for him. Owens has moved to dismiss all claims.

KOZAK: Candace hasn't even looked at me. Like I cannot imagine what it's like for people who she targets.

REEVE (voice-over): On her show, Owens has speculated that dozens of people and organizations had some connection to Kirk's killing. Phil Lyman is one of them. He's a former Republican Utah state representative who was at the event. Lyman told reporters he'd heard the shot. Conspiracists call him a fake ear witness.

CANDACE OWENS, PODCASTER: The gubernatorial candidate, Phil Lyman, was a bit, in my opinion, too involved in the investigation of who assassinated Charlie Kirk.

[20:45:03] REEVE (voice-over): Lyman has a lot of family in a neighborhood near UVU, something Owens fixated on. He says family members and their friends ended up being doxed.

OWENS: The Lyman family in general was everywhere all over this investigation.

LYMAN: The offensive thing about Candace is when she says, I'm just trying to solve Charlie's murder. He's a friend. It's like, oh, you're not a friend of Charlie Kirk's.

REEVE (voice-over): After Owens reached out to Lyman for comment, they began arguing over text. As for comment, Owens said Lyman asked her to investigate various angles of Kirk's death and suggested Lyman is playing both sides. The thing is, Lyman himself buys some conspiracies, like that the election was stolen.

He was even arrested in a protest against the Bureau of Land Management and was later pardoned by Trump. And he suspects, without proof, that the conspiracy theorists targeting him are themselves part of a conspiracy by his political opponents to make him look bad. And though he claims Owens has caused all this drama in his life, he shares some of her suspicion about the physical evidence in the case against Tyler Robinson.

LYMAN: The attack against me after the Charlie Kirk thing, I felt was really coordinated.

REEVE: But it's just so interesting to me. It's like you find some other parts of the sort of online conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk compelling, even though the ones about you, obviously you think are false.

LYMAN: There's true things and there's false things.

REEVE (voice-over): Caleb Chilcutt invited Kirk to UVU as then president of the school's Turning Point chapter. Conspiracy theorists later called him Caleb Killcutt and harassed his wife. He says when he was a teenager, like many kids, he passively consumed all this stuff.

CHILCUTT: My whole life, I've kind of been up, growing up in the conspiracy world with 9/11 was fake, QAnon, things like that. Being a part of a conspiracy where none of it is true, it's kind of made me take a step back and realize, wow, maybe I should maybe not be so trusting in just random people on social media.

KOZAK: It is just the meanest people and the dumbest people and the worst people who are targeting me. And most people aren't like that.

REEVE: Is that hard to remember that most people aren't like that?

KOZAK: It's taken a long time. It's a slow rebuilding process of remembering that most people are good and that most people don't think you're a murderer.

REEVE (voice-over): Elle Reeve, CNN, Orem, Utah. (END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Tomorrow marks 25 years since 9/11. You're looking at a live feed of the Tribune and Light at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. Up next, the first New York Fire Department chief who responded to the World Trade Center scene remembers the heroes lost that day, including his brother.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:52:00]

COOPER: Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks. You're looking at images from last night of drones depicting the Twin Towers with 2,977 lights, one for each person lost on 9/11. During the horrors of that day, there were incredible moments of heroism. One of those heroes was Chief Joseph Pfeifer. He was the first fire chief at the World Trade Center that morning. He'd been nearby checking on a gas leak when the first plane hit the North Tower. A documentary film crew was following him and others from his firehouse that morning. They captured the first plane going into the tower.

And we're going to show that moment to you. It's certainly disturbing to see, but we think it's important, especially because there are so many Americans who weren't even born then or were so young they have no memory of this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF JOSEPH PFEIFER, FIRST FDNY CHIEF ON SITE ON 9/11: We checked the area with meters, and it was kind of routine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was 8:46 in the morning. That's when this stopped even resembling a normal day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: I spoke with now-retired FDNY Chief Joseph Pfeifer earlier. He's the author of "Ordinary Heroes: A Memoir of 9/11."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Twenty-five years later, what goes through your mind when you see that?

PFEIFER: It brings me back to that day, which started off as a routine, normal day. We were at an emergency, an order of gas. And then hearing the plane coming overhead at a very low altitude, so low I could read American on the fuselage.

COOPER: Really? You could see it?

PFEIFER: I could actually see it. And it was traveling at a very fast speed. I could hear the engines roaring. And then I saw the plane aim and crash into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. And in that moment, I knew it was no accident. I said it on the radio. My exact words were, the plane was aiming for the building.

COOPER: Everyone says you were sort of the ideal person to be there first on the scene. What do you do in a situation like that?

PFEIFER: I had to be in this building a couple hundred times, so I knew it really well. And I knew the job was to evacuate the building and then regroup on the upper floors to get the people who were trapped by flames and by smoke. And that was the game plan. But things were happening very, very fast that morning.

And as I gave my orders to my firefighters to go up, I also gave another order to evacuate the South Tower a little bit before 9 o'clock. But at 9:03, that second plane hit. So now we have two 110- story buildings with people in them and on fire.

[20:55:18]

COOPER: Your brother also responded, Lieutenant Kevin Pfeifer. Did you talk much? I know you saw him, you write about this.

PFEIFER: When he came in, I was kind of surprised. I thought he was off that day. And then he came up to me, and we looked at each other without saying a word, wondering if we were both going to be OK. And then I ordered him to take his engine company, 33, to evacuate as they were climbing the stairs and then they regroup on the upper floors. And as he turned around and took his engine company, that was the last time I saw my brother, Kevin.

COOPER: Your brother delayed his own evacuation in order to help others.

PFEIFER: After I called to evacuate the North Tower, he was coming down with the other firefighters and civilians, and he stopped on the ninth floor to redirect civilians and firefighters to a safer way out. And I know that because the captain of Engine 7 told me that if it wasn't for my brother, him and his company would have never got out of the building.

COOPER: So you called for the evacuation of the North Tower?

PFEIFER: Yes. The chief said, when the lobby goes completely dark, said we got to get out of here.

COOPER: How many people do you think got out of the building because you made that call when you did?

PFEIFER: I think that day we had about in both buildings in the complex, we had about 20,000 people. And as we all know, we lost about almost 3,000, which means that we saved 17,000 people that day. And I think that's the number we have to remember.

COOPER: The other thing that's so haunting is, I mean, I've seen the videos of the firefighters arriving, I mean, debris falling, people falling. It's just, it's unimaginable.

PFEIFER: That sound is just a horrible sound. Where I was in the lobby, where my chief's car was parked was right outside and there was a plexiglass awning. And at one point, we would hear this loud thud, and that was someone jumping. And I only could imagine what choice people had to make between burning to death and then jumping to the death. And then I heard the thud happening again and again to the point that I ran over, picked up the PA system, and I don't know if it was still working, but I picked it up and I said, if you could hang on, hold on, my firefighters are coming up to get you.

COOPER: You tried to speak to people throughout the tower?

PFEIFER: Yes.

COOPER: To try to tell them not to jump?

PFEIFER: If they could. But what a difficult decision people had to make.

COOPER: Thank you so much for talking to us.

PFEIFER: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Quite a man. In just about 15 minutes from now, I hope you join me for my streaming show, All There Is Live. You can watch it at cnn.com/allthereis. It's a companion program to my podcast about loss. Tonight I'm speaking to Megan Kilbane, whose eight-and-a-half-year-old daughter Delaney died in February. Megan called into our voicemail and shared this message about Delaney and what grief has been like for her these past few months.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MEGAN KILBANE, MOTHER: I lost my eight-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Delaney, three-and-a-half months ago. I'm a single mother, and so Delaney was my whole world. I have a son I'm trying to survive for, but it truly is one moment at a time.

In the earlier days, I used to wake up almost gasping for air. The realization that she was no longer here continued to feel like a shock to my system. Each morning I was forced to remember, and I was still searching for her.

Now I wake up in the morning already knowing, before I even fully wake up, that she is not here. Sometimes I almost wish I could go back to those earlier days of shock, because the shock kind of softened the reality, whereas this feels very different. It's a deep hollowness.

[20:59:59]

I'll never get to wake her up by rubbing her back or kissing her head. I'll never get to curl up on the couch with her and watch her favorite cartoons, kiss her, love her, invisible form. The word grief just seems such a tiny word, far too small for what this actually is. Thank you for your podcast, because it helps me to survive, even when I don't want to. I miss my girl, and I guess I just wanted to speak that into existence. I miss Delaney.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: You can see the full interview with Megan in about 15 minutes at CNN.com/allthereis. It's my streaming show.

Thanks for watching. The Source with Kaitlan Collins starts now.