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The Lead with Jake Tapper

CNN, MS NOW, Politico Back At White House As Media Ban Lawsuit Proceeds; Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), Is Interviewed About Trump Courts Chinese Communist Leader With W.H. Visit Full Of Pomp; Experts Warn Limits On Diesel Exports Won't Lower Prices; China Is Holding Sensitive F-35 Parts Diverted to Hong Kong. Aired 5-6p ET

Aired September 24, 2026 - 17:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Thanks very much, my panel. Really appreciate all of you. Great to be here in New York with you. Thanks to you at home for watching as well. Don't go anywhere, Jake Tapper is standing by for The Lead.

Hey, Jake.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Hey, Kasie. How you doing?

HUNT: Very well. How are you?

TAPPER: Good, good. I'm worried about the Phillies, but good. We'll look for more tomorrow in The Arena.

HUNT: Those are the Birds. All right. See you soon.

[17:00:30]

TAPPER: CNN is back on White House grounds after the White House initially defied the judge's orders to let us back. The Lead starts right now. A legal victory for the freedom of the press. CNN, MS NOW and Politico after President Trump tried to ban all of us from White House grounds because he does not think the United States of America should allow negative coverage of him. But that was round one. The top attorney fighting this case will be here on The Lead as press access at the White House is tested and a judge lays out next steps.

Plus, drama at the United Nations. Diplomats walking out on Benjamin Netanyahu as the Israeli prime minister also faced protests outside. We'll show you the moments.

And an idea to lower the skyrocketing price of diesel fuel endorsed by President Trump. But I'm going to talk to an oil executive who says this plan will probably only drive costs up.

Hello First Amendment lovers, and welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper. We have breaking news in our Law and Justice Lead. President Trump's White house ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico has failed for now. Those networks, including us at CNN, are now allowed back into the White House after a late night order from Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee we should note. Judge Kelly found in part that the administration did not give sufficient notice or an opportunity to appeal the ban before it was announced late last week.

He also addressed the Trump administration's argument that reporting from CNN, MS NOW and Politico somehow endangered national security. The judge writing, quote, "The sorts of stories defendants identify are routine. Nothing in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of plaintiffs hard passes was motivated by national security concerns. Certainly that's not what President Trump said when he announced that he was banning plaintiffs from the White House. Instead, he focused on the alleged lack of truthfulness and negativity of plaintiffs reporting."

Judge Kelly is referring to this all-time baffler.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There's something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Something wrong with the country that allows people to write purposely negative stories. I will never, never get over that. The judge granted the network's temporary restraining order for 14 days. The court will then hear next steps in the lawsuit. In just a moment I'm going to talk to the lead attorney for CNN, MS NOW on Politico.

But despite last night's court order, before noon today, the White House repeatedly denied access to reporters from CNN and the other previously banned outlets. In a court filing, the White House claims access was eventually restored and available at the White house gate by 9:55 a.m. Eastern, which is, of course, several hours after CNN's live coverage of the day begins. But beyond that, here's a look at CNN White House reporter Betsy Klein being denied access in the 11:00 a.m. Eastern hour. The Trump White House not telling the truth. Imagine that.

A short time later we see a smiling Betsy. She was finally allowed back in to do her job. Plus, as of now, T.V. pool coverage of the president remains in limbo because it remains unclear whether the White House has reinstated CNN there. But one report we are getting out of the non T.V. White House pool is that President Trump today during his visit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, quote, "made a joke about how the Chinese had the friendliest press corps," unquote, and remarked on how Chinese reporters asked Xi for permission to speak. A reminder, of course, that China is an authoritarian country with repressive restrictions on free speech and the media.

So Trump's joke, is it funny? Well, maybe to some people, certainly not to Chinese journalist Zhang Zhan, who reported on the COVID 19 pandemic and was eventually sentenced to four years in prison, convicted for the wild charge of, quote, "picking quarrels and provoking trouble." Or Jimmy Lai, also probably not laughing. He was the Hong Kong media tycoon sentenced to 20 years in prison, accused of conspiring to endanger national security. The old national security reasoning sounds pretty familiar.

Let's get to CNN Senior White House Correspondent Kristen Holmes, who is actually corresponding from the White House, what a concept.

Kristen, you're there. It's still unclear whether CNN is going to be allowed to rejoin the T.V. press pool. So where does this stand and what was going on behind the scenes today as the White House tried to reinstate press passes, or so they claimed?

[17:05:01]

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, we've actually just seen a really astounding post on Truth Social by President Trump. He is clearly very angry that there has been no coverage of his meeting and welcome to President Xi. And he lashed out at CNN and MS NOW, the two organizations whose badges he revoked.

I want to read to you part of this because it is just fundamentally not true. It says "CNN and MSDNC, to show you how fake they are today, refused to cover one of the biggest and most beautiful events to take place in many years, the arrival at the White House of the highly respected president of China." Then it goes on to say, "Because they are fake news and because they knew how good it would be, they didn't want credit to be given to, quote, "Trump," they refused to be there."

So either somebody in President Trump's administration or the press office is lying to President Trump or he does not have a fundamental understanding of what exactly happened today or he himself is not telling the truth in this post. And I do want to be very clear to the president of the United States that we would have covered this event had you not banned CNN and MS NOW and Politico. If the pool had not been revoked, pool access for CNN, the pool would have covered this event. And in fact, at the time that President Xi Jinping arrived at the White House at 10:00 a.m. Betsy Klein was still standing on a corner without her press badge, having tried to get in multiple times after 9:00 a.m., after 5:30 a.m. and yet still was not granted access even at 11:30 as that welcome was still going on, she still did not have access until 12:00 when that welcome was wrapping up.

And again, CNN would have covered this, as would the pool, if they had not been banned and kicked out of the press pool rotation. And that is why there were not cameras there. And that is why reporters were not there from the T.V. press pool today. And that is the only reason why, because at this point there was already a court order and CNN had already tried to get back into the White House to fulfill their responsibilities and to cover this event.

TAPPER: So, and also, I mean, I'm pretty sure President Trump was eager to, for instance, show -- have images out there of president -- of the president showing Xi Jinping the new helipad and stuff like that. But he's the one that made it so those images were not shown. And my understanding is that the timing of this ban also caused angst not only among American officials, but Chinese officials? HOLMES: That's true. I was told by a number of U.S. officials that Chinese officials had told Trump advisers they had expressed concern how would this affect the coverage of the trip? I mean, you have to remember that President Xi, when he is coming to the United States, when he's having this lavish welcome, he wants that to be splayed across every American T.V. set as well. This is something that is highly curated.

And by this I mean the presidential coverage of the president of China. That's why they have state T.V., so that they can control the coverage of the president. They wanted to see those pictures, those welcome pictures. Also last night, when President Trump was greeting President Xi on the tarmac at JBA, something that has not been done in modern history, that was something else that went virtually uncovered because of the fact that CNN had been taken out of the pool and the pool had band together waiting to hear about that access.

So we still don't know what tonight is going to look like. He seems to be saying in this post that the media will be in attendance at the state dinner. We have not heard if that means that there's going to be pool coverage, which again would require CNN to be let back into the press pool for then the press pool to begin operating. But everyone stands ready for that to happen.

TAPPER: Kristen Holmes at the White House, thanks so much.

Joining us now to discuss, Ted Boutrous. He is the lead attorney representing CNN, MS NOW and Politico in this First Amendment lawsuit.

Ted, it's a big win. When you read Judge Kelly's order, what stood out to you the most and were you surprised at all by his order that went in your, our, the First Amendment's favor?

TED BOUTROUS, ATTORNEY REPRESENTING CNN, MS NOW, AND POLITICO: We were very gratified that he issued it so swiftly. And it goes to the point Kristen Holmes is just making. He issued at one in the morning in part because we argued so many things were happening at the White House today. So we were very pleased with the order.

What jumped out at me were a couple of things. One, he emphasized the importance of freedom of the press, that interest. He also was very skeptical of this national security justification after the fact that the government came up with in trying to support the ban on the free press, as President Trump called it. So we were very pleased.

And also just the clarity and the firmness with which he applied the governing law in the D.C. Circuit there in terms of the liberty interest that reporters have to the White House and to be in the White House when they have a hard pass, it's a really fundamental principle that he enforced here. So we're very pleased with the order and glad to see the reporters back there at the White House.

TAPPER: We should note that it's a temporary restraining order that allows us back into the White House. It's in effect for 14 days. What do you think the Trump administration is going to try next?

[17:10:09]

BOUTROUS: They're probably going to try to put some meat on the bones of this baseless national security argument. You know, the problem they have is that President Trump laid it out in detail in his social media posts, the posts he's making even as we're on together, apparently, that the reason he ordered this ban on CNN and MS NOW and Politico and their reporters, because he doesn't like the content of the reporting. He doesn't like the viewpoint being expressed, the editorial choices. It's classic viewpoint discrimination, one of the most egregious types of First Amendment violation. So they're going to try to come up with some other rationale.

But even when they do that, they're just complaining about reporting. As you noted, this idea that reporters shouldn't be able to write negative stories when that's what they are seeing, when they are just reporting the facts. That's what the First Amendment's all about. That's what freedom of press is all about. So even when they assert these national security complaints, they're really saying they don't want reporters who will actually scrutinize the conduct of government officials.

But that is what the First Amendment is all about.

TAPPER: So the T.V. press pool, and that's this band of five networks or cable channels that take turns covering the president, that's for the T.V. press pool, it's in a holding pattern because the others in solidarity refused to cover the president because CNN was kicked out. And it still remains unclear whether the White House is going to allow CNN to rejoin the press pool. So is CNN's ability to take part in pool coverage, is that part of the case? I mean, what could happen there if Trump allows CNN into the building but doesn't let CNN go back into the press pool?

BOUTROUS: We believe that is covered by the temporary restraining order. We raised this very issue in our motion. We are -- and we asked the judge to issue an order to grant our motion restoring the access to CNN and its reporters that it had before this ban was imposed. So we think that restoration of access means back into the pool, which is good for President Trump and the administration, and it's good for the American people to get the pool back up and running the television pool. And the administration is just shooting itself in the foot by doing this.

And it's very gratifying to see the other members of the pool in solidarity saying, we're not going to do this if this is the way you're going to treat journalists. But it makes no sense for them not to let CNN back into the pool. It's been part of the pool for decades and plays an important role, as you know, Jake, that you fund -- that the networks fund, they share the costs. It's a great service to the White House and to the American people. And I'm hopeful they will -- they will get that back straightened out today.

TAPPER: So the Trump administration's lawyers argued, as you note, that the media ban was about national security, even though President Trump on Friday said nothing about national security. Not in his Truth Social post, not when he said there's something wrong with the country that allows people to be purposely negative in their reporting. Judge Kelly said he was skeptical of this partly because of Trump's own remarks. Then today, during Chinese leader Xi Jinping's visit, Trump joked that China has the friendliest press corps.

Obviously, there's no freedom of the press in China. They lock reporters up on a whim. Will comments like these continue to hurt the president's in court in this case?

BOUTROUS: He, as I said, argued in the hearing yesterday, he is our lead witness in terms of showing this antipathy towards independent journalism and towards content. And that joke is not very funny. He's basically saying he likes an authoritarian government where there's no freedom of the press. And that is just more evidence for us that this is all about trying to control independent journalism and the viewpoint -- editorial viewpoint of journalists. So, you know, right up till now, President Trump is creating more evidence that proves our case.

And as you point out, we now go to the preliminary injunction phase. We've got an expedited schedule. Our opening brief is due Monday, so it'll be another exciting weekend for the team. But we're ready to go. And so that -- all the evidence that comes up now will go into the preliminary injunction phase, where we'll argue for a longer injunction while the case plays out.

And we feel very good about our arguments. We, in addition to the due process arguments, as you know, we've got powerful First Amendment arguments that will be fleshed out in this next phase.

TAPPER: And the last time I saw the press pool band together was when the Obama White House in 2009 tried to do this to Fox. Not to kick him out, not to take away their credentials, but just to remove them from the pool as a protest. And we all banded together and Obama was wrong and Fox was right. And I hope that principle continues. Presidents don't get to pick who covers them.

[17:15:21]

Ted Boutrous, thank you so much.

BOUTROUS: Thank you for having me.

TAPPER: In just a few hours, more special treatment at the White House for Chinese leader Xi Jinping. President Trump's going to host of state dinner. Coming up next, the recent track record of President Xi's government. That begs the question, why on earth are we giving this guy a state dinner?

And a big interview just moments ago, CNN's Anderson Cooper sat down with the CEO of Nvidia. What the tech giant just told CNN about AI warnings and the calls for regulation. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Breaking news in our World Lead, tonight President Trump is pulling out all the stops for Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Xi is the leader not only of the country, but the communist party in China. He also fits the classic definition of a strongman and a dictator. Xi's visit so far has included a rare greeting on the Runway at Joint Base Andrews, complete with a red carpet greeting. Performance by the U.S. Marine Corps Band flyover.

[17:20:08]

This afternoon, President Trump gave Xi a private tour of his new helipad and a peek inside Marine One, all before a lavish state dinner tonight at the White House. My invitation must have been lost in the mail. This morning, President Trump posted on social media, quote, "I met President Xi at the plane airport yesterday and he looks strong, vibrant and fit. Better than ever. Madam Xi, of course, beautiful. President DJT."

A refresher on who we're exactly rolling out the red carpet for, China spies on the United States a lot. Remember the spy balloon the U.S. shot down in 2023? That was China. The nation run by communists steals American trade secrets and intellectual property from U.S. businesses and universities all the time. China engages in cyber warfare against the United States all the time.

Just last month, Chinese hackers attacked NASA, the Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Senate. China jails U.S. citizens, two of whom are considered wrongfully detained right now, a designation made by Trump's current State Department. A vast majority of the fentanyl traffic to the United States that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year uses chemicals largely sourced to China, according to Trump's own Drug Enforcement Agency.

Now, beyond what China does to us here in the United States, the country rolling out the red carpet for President Xi, China is horribly repressive to their own people, the Chinese people. China is also accused of committing, quote, genocide and crimes against humanity, primarily against Muslim Uyghurs according to a 2024 State Department report. China continuously threatens Taiwan's sovereignty, an actual ally of the United States, to which the U.S. currently supplies millions of dollars' worth of arms. And in July, President Trump announced a, quote, "bombshell finding." Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The People's Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China's illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files. The Chinese government wanted U.S. president to lose the next election. And the reason they wanted me to lose is because they knew I was wise to them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Wise to them. OK. A CNN analysis after the speech found he offered little new evidence. All this begs the question, why is President Trump treating our historically closest ally, Canada, like an enemy and rolling out the red carpet for China, which is at the very least, an adversary? Democratic Congressman from Illinois Raja Krishnamoorthi joins us now. He's the top Democrat on the Select Committee on China.

Congressman, Secretary of State Rubio argues that China is one of the biggest economic and military powerhouses in the world, which is true and it would be, quote, "irresponsible" to not at least try to engage with Xi at the highest levels, that's according to the New York Times. Does Rubio have a point?

REP. RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI (D-IL): Of course he does, and we should engage with him. But this type of pomp and circumstance, literally rolling out the red carpet for Xi Jinping, doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for the reasons that you said. Another thing that he's doing to us right now is he's using the Chinese economic playbook to dump goods across the world, including the United States, to basically undercut Chinese competition here and destroy entire industries nascent in the United States.

In addition, they're fueling the Iranian and the Russian war machine, and they're providing satellite imagery to the Iranians as they go after our soldiers in the Middle East. And so, for all those reasons and others, I think this kind of lavishness seems a little bit off the mark.

TAPPER: Xi announced that the U.S. and China have a responsibility to, quote, "manage AI for good," unquote, after Trump said earlier on Truth Social, quote, "I want to leave it exactly where it is. That is China's position also. Our guardrail is the Department of Justice." What do you make of that?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: What I make of it is that I think that nothing of consequence is going to come out of this summit. With regard to the issue that I think I saw yesterday, 63 percent of Americans believe artificial intelligence is going to potentially end humanity. There's a moderate risk, according to 63 percent of Americans. And Trump responds by trying to rename artificial intelligence as, quote, unquote, "superintelligence." And the most that's going to come out of this summit is some kind of incident or emergency hotline instead of trying to come to an agreement about how to avoid those incidents or emergencies with regard to artificial intelligence.

[17:25:13]

TAPPER: Illinois Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi from the Special Committee on China, thank you so much.

Coming up next, an oil executive will join me. He's strongly pushing back on this Trump endorsed idea to stop shipping diesel fuel overseas. Hear why he's so adamantly against it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: In our Money Lead, a dire warning after President Trump floated the idea of banning U.S. diesel exports to help bring down prices in this country. Now the theory is that if oil companies send less diesel overseas, then the supply of diesel here at home increases and then that will help drive down fuel costs which are crucial for truck deliveries, farm equipment and the rest, supply and demand.

[17:30:03]

However, more than 30 groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute, sent the President a letter warning that a diesel export ban would actually backfire.

So let's bring in Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute. Diesel, as I don't need to tell you, is now at $6.51 a gallon, only slightly down from its new record high in history of 6.53, according to AAA. Your letter to the President says export bans would lead to less fuel production, tighter supplies, rising costs for American families, farmers and truckers.

How so? Because that does seem to contradict what we know about or what we think we know about supply and demand. More supply, less demand, prices down.

MIKE SOMMERS, CEO, AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE: Well, let's back up a little bit. From a one barrel of oil, you get gasoline, you get diesel, you get, and you get jet fuel. So if any one of those, if you cease producing any one of those, you don't get the other two.

TAPPER: And you can't just ban diesel, you have to ban all of them? The export, I mean.

SOMMERS: With the -- with a barrel of oil, you have to produce all three --

TAPPER: OK.

SOMMERS: -- because they're different weights, essentially. So the issue that we have here is that if you're banning the export of diesel, you're essentially going to back up the entire system. So that means you're not producing oil or natural gas, you're not producing jet fuel, you're not producing gasoline. So you back up the entire system if you're not exporting that diesel.

We produce surplus diesel here in the United States and we export that to foreign users.

TAPPER: Yes.

SOMMERS: So the consequence is that if we're not able to export that, you're backing up the entire system and costs go up for jet fuel and for gasoline at the same time.

TAPPER: So let's say that President Trump listens to your advice and doesn't ban the export of diesel. I don't know that's going to happen, but who knows? What do you see happening to fuel prices as we head into the fall harvest and home heating season?

SOMMERS: Well, there will be a short term cut in the price of diesel, but at the same time, you'll see a simultaneous increase in jet fuel and gasoline as a consequence of that. So what we need is these export markets so that we can make sure that the system still works.

TAPPER: So you're telling me if President Trump bans the export of diesel, goes through that, then diesel prices will momentarily go down. But the rest of us who just use regular gasoline or flying airplanes will see prices go up and that will.

SOMMERS: Also only be a short term cut in diesel. Long term, you're going to see shortages. You're going to see increased prices for diesel over the long term. We need the diesel export market so that we can produce these other fuels that are exporting to other parts of the world. You're also going to see huge increases in diesel prices all over the world. And that's bad for our allies, that's bad for the world energy system.

TAPPER: So according to AAA, a regular gallon of gas unleaded is $4.48 a buck 50 more than before the Iran war. What is going to have to happen to bring these prices down?

SOMMERS: Well, there are a couple of big things that happen to happen. First of all, you have to get the Strait up Hormuz unclogged.

TAPPER: It's still clogged.

SOMMERS: It's still clogged, but they're finally getting through almost 18 million barrels a day through both the strait and the pipelines that go through the Middle East. So that and it was 20 million before the war. So we are clearing the system a little bit. At the same time, though, the biggest issue that we're dealing with is a lack of refining capacity throughout the world.

If you think about the fact that because of the war in Ukraine and Russia and of course in the Middle East, about 10 percent of global refineries are currently offline. And when you take 10 percent of global refineries offline, that means we don't have the refining capacity to produce gasoline, jet fuel and diesel.

TAPPER: All right, Mike Sommers, thank you so much. Good to see you as always.

SOMMERS: Thank you.

TAPPER: A big event coming up next Wednesday. CNN's hosting a debate in the California race for governor. I'm going to moderate alongside my colleague Dana Bash. That's next Wednesday, September 30th at 6:00 p.m. Pacific, 9:00 p.m. Eastern. We're going to carry it live on all CNN platforms.

Still ahead, American fighter jet parts mistakenly sent to Hong Kong. How did that happen? Well, the Chinese leaders here in D.C. maybe Trump will ask for those parts back. We're getting into the story next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:38:25] TAPPER: We're back continuing in our World Lead at an urgent effort right now at the Pentagon to retrieve and find out how a shipment of F-35 stealth aircraft parts bound for the U.S. ended up diverted to Hong Kong.

The Australian government confirms that the parts were mistakenly rerouted this summer. Bloomberg reports that these parts, including a cockpit canopy and a weapons bay door that's coated in radar absorbing material, are now in the hands of the Chinese government. The situation is raising grave concern across the national security community given China now has access to key components of America's highly classified weapon system.

And this couldn't come in a more pressing moment as President Trump is currently meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. My panel joins me now. Kylie, this has triggered some pretty significant concern and risks. What do we know about how it happened?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, it's a pretty interesting story because it happened at least in June, if not before, because according to these reports from Politico and Bloomberg, this was based on reports that were given to congressional staff that happened in June. Now we're in September.

And what happened was that this was parts of the F-35, of course, the most advanced fighter jet in the world, arguably that were going to the United States for repairs. They were supposed to go through South Korea, come to the United States. They got diverted when they were in South Korea and instead went to Hong Kong.

And the thing is that this happened more than three months ago now and the Pentagon is acknowledging that they still don't have these parts. I want to read to you what the Pentagon spokesperson said. We're actively working with U.S. authorities and industry partners to retrieve these components, investigate the incident and place safeguards to avoid future occurrence.

[17:40:08]

So obviously they're still focused on this. And to your point, it's not good for the Chinese to have these components, to be able to perhaps work them into their own military developments. But it also could be something that President Xi or President Trump feels like he needs to bring up during this discussion, giving China leverage in the state visit.

TAPPER: Sabrina saying a major concern here is that China could study the parts and not only potentially copy them for their own flights, but reverse engineer the technology to be able to shoot down F-35 or whatever. How devastating might this be for America's national security? And do you think that it was, it's being brought up by Trump to Xi.

SABRINA SINGH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I would certainly, if, you know, we were advising, if I was advising the President, I think this would be one of the points that I push. We need those parts back. How did this happen? An investigation would certainly need to play out, but I think this is incredibly damaging and embarrassing for the United States.

I mean, these are -- this is our most sophisticated aircraft platform that our military uses. And the proprietary information and some of the parts that aren't were rerouted, can be devastating, not only to reverse engineer, but these are the fighters that can evade detection. I mean, they are very sophisticated.

And you'll remember when President Putin came to Alaska, the, the red slating that you saw on the fighter jets, that was to protect key components of the F-35 from photographs. So the fact that this has now fallen into the wrong hands, I would hope that the president is pushing President Xi on how to get these back. But it's almost -- it's a bit a little too late at this point because I would assume Chinese intelligence has at least taken photographs of this.

TAPPER: I just don't even know how this happens. How do they ship these things? It's not like a.

ATWOOD: UPS apparently.

TAPPER: UPS?

ATWOOD: That's according to the reporting from Bloomberg. Yes.

TAPPER: UPS. It's not a Christmas sweater. All right, Kylie, you were in New York yesterday at the UN. You caught up with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who you cover. You asked him about the fate of the U.S. Arms sale to Taiwan. Matter of much controversy. Let's play some of that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: Any arms sales we do with anyone on the planet near about Taiwan, with any country on the planet, has to be balanced with what our combatant commanders around the world are telling us are their minimum needs in case of a conflict in their region.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So there's been a lot of questions about the delays for this $14 billion deal.

ATWOOD: Yes. And I do think it's important to note that the secretary clearly didn't want to talk about this. In his answer to me, he spoke about U.S. arms sales broadly. He really didn't delve into the question specifically about this $14 billion arms sale that has been held up to Taiwan. He did note, however, that last year there was a $11 billion arms sale from the U.S. to Taiwan that the administration did greenlight. And he also quickly quipped to me, saying yes when I asked if the administration remains committed to regular and increased arms sales to Taiwan.

So it indicates that, at least from his perspective, the administration remains committed. But we have heard from President Trump earlier this year saying that these arms sales who are a negotiating tip for him going into conversations with Xi. So it's pretty clear that Trump views them as something that he can use at the table.

The question is, would he be willing to actually pull back on any of those arms sales, or is he just using them to try and get something else out of China and then follow through on these arms sales? We really don't know the answer to that.

TAPPER: And, Kylie, you have some new reporting on Iran.

ATWOOD: Yes. So the foreign minister of Iran met with U.S. officials earlier this week in New York. And our colleague Jennifer Hansler joined, just met with Foreign Minister Araghchi and some other reporters, and he said that the Iranians put a proposal on the table. This was during that meeting on Monday that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and that would also restart negotiations to a final deal between the United States and Iran.

Now, final deal is the key descriptor there because we really don't know if the Iranians said that they would get into negotiations over their nuclear program. We know from Trump administration officials that they really aren't looking to reopen this strait unless they also have commitments from Iran on their nuclear program. Questions over that approach by the Trump administration, but that is where they are at.

And we heard from Secretary Rubio earlier this week saying effectively that the Strait of Hormuz problem is a challenge, but they feel like the U.S. military escorts are doing a good job for them. So we'll have to watch and see if, if the Trump administration actually commits to going forward with this proposal from Iran.

We should note that it. It says that there are seven days that the United States has to take certain actions that would put this into work.

TAPPER: Your response? Go ahead.

SINGH: I mean, we don't have the fine details of this potential plan. I think my question is, what does traffic through the Strait look like? Is Iran going to charge some type of fee or toll which the U.S. and Marco Rubio and JD Vance said is basically a non-starter.

[17:45:02]

I think Iran still retains the ability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz. So that will be something that I think they bring to the table of saying we're going to maintain control because that's the way that they can retain power when it comes to this longer term deal on the nuclear program. I mean that is going to be the major sticking point for both sides.

And I think Iran has shown that they are willing to run down the clock as long as possible and retain that upper hand because they're willing to incur the economic costs. And this president is seeing gas prices, diesel prices going up every single day. The economic costs are coming to a head and they're going to come to a head in the midterms.

TAPPER: Thanks everyone. Really appreciate it. CNN's Anderson Cooper is coming up next with some of his brand new interview moments ago with the CEO of INVIDIA, one of the most valuable companies in the world. What the tech giant said about AI and the warnings that AI development is moving too fast. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:50:00]

TAPPER: Now the latest installment of our continuing series, A Friend or Foe. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is betting on friend. His company not only dominates the AI chip market, but has stakes in companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic. CNN's Anderson Cooper just sat down with Wang and joins us now.

So Anderson, Huang is expected to attend tonight's White House state dinner for the Chinese president Xi Jinping. What did he have to tell you?

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR, ANDERSON COOPER 360: We talked a lot about that. We talked a little bit about the dinner, what, what he may be talking to Xi Jinping about. But we talked mostly about regulation and safety concerns that have been raised, obviously. You know, I talked to Dario Amodei last week as well as a number of other folks current, formally, formerly worked at Anthropic.

I asked him about the calls for regulation by Amodei and others. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: The people who are working closest, the people who are on the front lines of the frontier models, the frontier of this technology, they seem worried. Whether it's researchers, engineers, or the CEOs. Dario Almodei, Sam Altman, they are raising alarms, saying we need regulation. Aren't they the ones closest to these models who would know best about what is needed?

JENSEN HUANG, CEO, NVIDIA: If they're worried about it, they should just stop. If the product is not safe, just don't release it.

COOPER: It's that simple. I mean, these are multibillion dollar companies. The competition --

HUANG: No, that's what every company does. That's what we do. That's what a car company would do. That's what anybody would do. Of course --

COOPER: Companies that have gone forward with products that are not safe or are risky and they go forward anyway because of competition. That's why there's regulation. HUANG: Well, if a regulation is necessary, if they don't have self, first of all, they ought to have self-restraint. If they're telling everybody that their product is unsafe, they obviously know it. They're publicly admitting it. They ought to just not release it. OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: So he's also very, you know, look, he's a -- he's an AI optimist. He wants an acceleration of safety protocols and acceleration of this technology. He is obviously all in on this. I mean, his company is, you know, the biggest provider of chips, obviously. And I talked to him about the concerns by whistleblowers, the concerns that have been coming out of former employees at Anthropic, concerns about, you know, civilization being wiped --

TAPPER: Yes.

COOPER: -- out in a matter of four years, something he categorically dismisses. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HUANG: It's not grounded on science. It's not grounded on facts. It doesn't make any sense.

COOPER: You said there's zero chance of that.

HUANG: I said there's zero chance that is end of humanity by 2030. 2030 is around the corner.

COOPER: Do you think there's a risk to humanity in the next 10 years?

HUANG: If. We don't build society safely? If we don't build technology safely? Of course there's going to be risk, but there's a lot of people working on really, really genuinely good technologies.

COOPER: But there is, I mean, on a 10 year timeframe, a longer time frame. Now let's not quibble about the years, but there is an existential risk in this technology --

HUANG: If we don't build it safely.

COOPER: If it's not built safely.

HUANG: Yes. So let's build it safely. Let's build a safely.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Of course.

TAPPER: Easier said than done, right? I mean --

COOPER: Yes. I mean what's so interesting about this is, you know, in July he was talking about sandboxing, you know, models and agents and that can be secured and can be done safely. What we saw in July in the Hugging Face attack against Hugging Face and open air itself by these, you know, some swarm of 1,200 agents or several hundred agents was that they broke out of the sandbox, the sandbox was not secure and they gained access to the Internet.

TAPPER: Every day we read a story where OpenAI, anthropic, and this is just what they're admitting to --

COOPER: Right.

TAPPER: -- says, oh, this company, you know, these agents, these AI agents did this.

COOPER: Yes.

TAPPER: There's this report out of Australia, hacking Australia --

COOPER: Yes.

TAPPER: -- you know, and that's just what we know about.

COOPER: Yes.

TAPPER: I saw another report where AI is able to find out what who like anonymous Reddit commentators are. And even if you give people like a six-month head start, remove everything, they can still figure out who you are.

COOPER: Jensen makes the argument. This is an engineering issue. He sees AI essentially as software. And obviously there's a lot of people who work closely with this who kind of think of it as, you know, another kind of being or another kind of life form. He does not believe that. He views this as a math problem, as a software problem. And he says this is just a question of putting more compute on the issue and getting better safety protocols.

[17:55:00]

TAPPER: Yes, well, of course he's also worth $180 billion with that everything continuing as it is.

COOPER: Yes.

TAPPER: Cooper, thanks so much. And you can watch Anderson's entire interview with the CEO of Nvidia coming tonight on AC360. That's 8:00 Eastern right here on CNN.

Up next, CNN media access restored at the White House. But will you see images from tonight's lavish state dinner, the president's brand new comments on this legal fight and how that impacts White House press coverage. Coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper this hour, CNN back at the White House after a judge ordered the administration to restore access to the three media outlets banned by Trump last week.

[18:00:00]

But the fight's far from over with the president already vowing to appeal. We're going to check in with CNN's Kaitlan Collins at the White House in moments.

Plus, more than 40 million Americans will --