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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip

Kirk Shooting Suspect Not Talking To Investigators; Source Says, Suspect Confessed Kirk Murder To His Father; Widespread Misinformation Online On Charlie Kirk's Murder Suspect; MAGA Criticism On Kash Patel; MANA Nutrition CEO Selected For CNN's Champion For Change. Aired 10-11p ET

Aired September 12, 2025 - 22:00   ET

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

[22:00:00]

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone. I'm Abby Phillip in New York.

Our breaking news tonight, America's political world is searching for answers and trying to move forward after authorities say they have the man that assassinated Charlie Kirk. 22-year-old Tyler Robinson is being held without bail at a Utah jail on several charges, and he's expected to appear in court on Tuesday.

Sources tell CNN that he is not speaking to investigators right now. Investigators are also revealing the messages that he etched onto bullets, bullet casings near the crime scene. They include one that said, hey, fascist, catch. It's important to note, though, that despite initial reports that engravings are not related to transgender people.

Tonight, Kirk's widow spoke for the first time since her husband's killing and she vowed to never let his legacy die.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIKA KIRK, WIFE OF CHARLIE KIRK: The evildoers responsible for my husband's assassination have no idea what they have done. They killed Charlie because he preached a message of patriotism, faith, and of God's merciful love. If you thought that my husband's mission was powerful before, you have no idea. You have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country and this world. You have no idea.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: CNN's Ed Lavandera is in Spanish Fork, Utah, outside the prison where the suspect is being held tonight. The arrest ends a 33- hour manhunt. But it was the suspect's own father, his own family who turned him in. Ed, tell us about that.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Abby, it's kind of fascinating to think about where you think about where we were just 24 hours ago when we last spoke. We were coming out of the press briefing where authorities had released a new video of the suspect running across the rooftop at the campus of Utah Valley University and fleeing the scene, some new pictures. And it was clear that there was not many not many leads that had given authorities a sense of who this person was and where he might be.

And then within a couple of hours, the suspect, according to authorities, had been arrested. And that happened because the suspect, Tyler Robinson's father, we are told, recognized him from the latest images that were released just 24 hours ago, confronted his son about it. And according to what authorities and investigators are saying here, it was that confession to his father that led the father to reach out to a family friend. And then they contacted authorities and that's how all of this quickly came to be around 10:00 last night when Tyler Robinson was taken into custody and he was brought here to this jail in Utah County just nine miles away from the shooting scene and booked into the jail here just before 2:00 A.M. this morning.

And since then, we've learned a little bit more about the 22-year-old suspect. We know that he was involved in an electrical apprenticeship program. There was a man that he had worked with recently who described him as quiet, many people saying that they were surprised that he is being arrested and accused of this heinous crime.

And we also know that investigators are looking for the motive in all of this. They did say that that Tyler Robinson had a dislike, based on a conversation that he had with family members, did not like Charlie Kirk, but the context around that isn't really clear at this point. Like what was the reasons he didn't like Charlie Kirk? A lot of those details and motives haven't been spelled out quite yet.

We do know that Tyler Robinson was registered to vote but he had not registered as a Democrat or a Republican, had not voted in the last two general elections here in Utah. So, we have some sense of who this 22-year-old suspect is, but not a clearer picture as to what the motive might have been behind all of this.

[22:05:01]

I think a great deal of work still remains to be done on that front. Abby?

PHILLIP: Yes, there is so much that we don't know here and so much left to uncover through the investigative process, both from law enforcement and as journalists, you know, just comb through all the information out there.

Ed, we're going to continue to check in with you for updates as you get them. Thank you very much.

Now, with the nation on edge following Charlie Kirk's murder and the surge in political violence, the president was asked today about how he would bring the country together, and here is how he responded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don't want to see crime, they don't want to see crime. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Worried about the border.

TRUMP: They're saying, we don't want these people coming in. We don't want you burning our shopping centers. We don't want you shooting our people in the middle of the street. The radicals on the left are the problem, and they're vicious and they're horrible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Joining us at the table, Jamal Simmons, Lance Trover, Juliette Kayyem, Leah Wright Rigueur, and Elle Reeve.

Elle, I want to start with you because I think this debate about who this suspect was is raging right now. And we have all these little tidbits of clues. There are the markings on the bullets. But Spencer Cox, the governor, he said that this man came from a very normal family, no trauma in the upbringing, a religious family, registered Republicans, they had hunting licenses, that sort of thing, and yet he also said had recently become radicalized, fairly recently and under in a very short amount of time. What do you see in the profile of this person, the video game markings, all of that stuff that we're learning?

ELLE REEVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, from what we -- the little we do know about him is he was very into video games. Some of his friends have said they played video games with him. Many of these shell casing engravings are references to video games. We know that he had a Discord account, which is very common with gamers, although Discord says that they -- that he did not plan the shooting on Discord.

The thing to understand about these communities and what is really clear in what he wrote is like the culture of this is like so wrapped up in ironic detachment. It is really hard for normal people to understand. Everyone is combing through these little filings, trying to find some proof that he was their ideological enemy to use that like as part of a political debate. But like you have to take a step back and realize like this person wrote on a shell casing, like if you read this, you're gay, like it's a joke. It's meant to be a stupid joke. It's meant to conjure the image of like a grizzled law enforcement officer picking it up and reading it. And like while that image might be funny, like you have to take a step back and realize like he did this while killing a person.

PHILLIP: Yes. And it's hard then in that context to assign ideological blame, I think, is part of what seen seeming to be uncovered here, and yet that's exactly what the president and several conservatives have done.

And I just wonder, Lance, I mean, do you think that is, A, premature, or, B, just something that should be done right now when the country is sort of on this brink of being inflamed?

LANCE TROVER, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, I think this is a wakeup call for America and what we're going to be dealing with, particularly if you're a parent, I think. You know, you're talking about, the gaming. I mean, kids are on their games all the time. If you talk to counterterrorism and you know, experts and stuff, they would tell you there's basically three, you know, levels of -- there's like right wing extremism, there's left wing extremism, there's Islamic extremism. Those are basically the accepted three. I would argue, based on who he targeted in this instance, that he had -- was, you know, radicalized on the left, just given who he targeted.

But I do think that that is the question we're going to be facing as a country going forward is how did he become radicalized? What happened? How do these things happen and what is happening to our children? I think this is something parents across the country are going to have to deal with and we as a nation are going to have to deal with is how is this happening.

JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Abby, I just look at this and I think the truth doesn't always fit into our neat little boxes, right? And I think that those are -- those boxes may not be the way the world actually works. You probably know more about this than I do. But as I look at this young man, I don't see somebody who fits in any of these categories. He just seems like he's a disturbed individual who lives in a kind of a social media and gaming universe that the rest of us may not participate in, and he did something really abhor.

So, the thing I would just advise the president and some of the other folks who are making these claims is like, lower the temperature. Let's figure out what's going on. Let's deal with the broad context of what's happening. We have deaths happening all over the ideological spectrum. We all need to take a breath and figure it out.

PHILLIP: To that point, I mean, I want to play what Senator John Curtis, a Republican, said in response to a question from Jim Sciutto about Trump's comments, the ones that we played for you earlier.

[22:10:03]

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM SCIUTTO: Is that a fair description in your view?

SEN. JOHN CURTIS (R-UT): Well, I'll tell you what. For me, and that's the president's view, I would simply remove the word left or right and call it radicals. And in my opinion, they're coming from all directions and they're not healthy. And social media, you know, if you listen to our governor, one of the wisest things I think he said today is sign off of social media. It's everywhere you look.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Just radicals. I mean, Juliette, you spend a lot of time in the world of radicals. Maybe this is -- to Lance's point, are we at a point now where we need to expand our understanding of who falls into what kind of category, because maybe there is a whole new category that is emerging of the types of people who are likely to carry out these types of crimes? JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes. I mean, there's no -- in my world, there's like -- in counterterrorism, there's no such thing as a lone wolf anymore. So, we sort of think, oh, what happened to him? He was gaming or whatever. Because there is an ecosystem that's supporting, egging on, you know, giving this person an identity.

What's interesting in this case is, at least so far, his sort of social media bravado or talking to friends seems more limited than we've seen in other (INAUDIBLE). 24 hours later or 12 hours later, since the capture where the name was announced, we -- by now, we would've heard of, you know, well, he hated this person, or he got radicalized. It says, we're not seeing that yet. So, it is a little bit different.

I think the issue we need to focus on is not so much the ideology. It's just the violence. It's the permissive structure that has been created over the years in terms of violence as a sort of natural extension of our political differences. And I'm not going to get into right and left here. I will get into it somewhere else just to say is what we need now is leadership that we did not get from the president the last 48 hours. And that's why I think the Governor Cox has sort of emerged as this national figure in this debate is to recognize, you know, simply that, you know, political assassination is bad, ends with the period. I don't need counting buts, yes.

PHILLIP: It seems like Spencer Cox Yes is -- he understands the contrast that is being inherently created by his response and what we played from President Trump.

LEAH WRIGHT RIGUEUR, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. And I think actually he hit exactly the right tone. And I know there were a lot of people who came out and were a little bit critical of when he said, you know, we weren't expecting it to be one of our own, and then it was. And I think part of what we have to tap into there and what he was trying to tap into, there was this idea that, yes, this is homegrown, this is something. And I think part of the emphasis was really actually de- emphasizing this idea of left or right or ideology, but instead about this cadre of, you know, rapidly emerging and speeding towards young disaffected, deeply alienated, unhappy men that other people have been talking about in different siloed places. And that has become exacerbated since the onslaught of the pandemic.

PHILLIP: I mean, Elle, I wonder what -- I mean, can you fill in some blanks here? Like what does the young, disaffected gamer look like? I have to ask you this because a lot of people are asking what this means. A lot of people are talking about this word, Groyper. What does that even mean? And could this man be one of them?

REEVE: Yes. All this stuff used to be so fringe and now it's like at the center of politics and it's a little bit difficult for me to believe.

PHILLIP: Yes, it is a little wild.

REEVE: But Groypers are the fans of the far right podcaster, Nick Fuentes. He's been around for a very long time. He's at Charlottesville. He was at Jan 6th. Fuentes has long had a feud with Charlie Kirk or had. He would show at his events. His fans would show up at their events and they would ask Kirk leading questions intended to trigger Kirk into moving further to the right, particularly on immigration and gay rights.

So, Fuentes has totally disavowed this violence. He made a very forceful statement against that last night. But people are trying to tie this shooter to the Groypers because, and this is a little obscure, he posed in a squat in an Adidas track shoot for a Halloween costume. His mom posted that he was being a man in a meme. People have seen pictures of Pepe the Frog associated with alt-right dressed in that same track suit, doing the squat.

However, that meme itself is a reference to Eastern Europeans posing like that in Adidas track suits.

[22:15:04]

So, like, again, like it's like grasping it --

PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, it's also mixed up and then we're trying to decipher it and it's sort of like, to your point, Jamal, is he a Republican or is he a Democrat? Meanwhile, there's a whole other world out there that most of us at our age probably are not -- we don't have access to. And I think it's very it becomes very important whether or not this is just a permission structure for the camps to become further balkanized or whether or not that is actually the rationale that this man used to carry out this horrible crime.

SIMMONS: So -- and here's what happens. We try to fit into these boxes. We have people going through ideological camps. They're, you know, going back and forth with each other. And then all of a sudden, something happens in Utah between a couple of and it's a horrible incident. Now, you've got historically black colleges and universities that aren't involved in this at all. I mean, there's nothing about this entire incident that has to do with historically black colleges and universities, and they're all getting bomb threats.

My friend Garlin Gilchrist, lieutenant governor of Michigan, he had a bomb threat at his house, right? He's African American lieutenant governor running for governor. He had a bomb threat at his house. There are people who are being drawn into this because of the ideological fight who aren't really even a part of this, but because they wear a jersey perceived they're going to be attacked.

PHILLIP: All right. Next for us, conservatives are criticizing FBI Director Kash Patel for his handling of this case, including one source close to Charlie Kirk, calling it unacceptable.

Plus, the role of social media is taking serious heat as civil war mentions surge along with the hate and graphic videos. Who should be facing scrutiny here because of all of this?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:20:00]

PHILLIP: In these days since Charlie Kirk's death, the tragedy has been exploited on social media through gruesome videos of his final moments, or the hate being spewed in every direction, whether it's praise for the shooter or designating half the country as responsible for the assassination.

But how much is social media itself to blame for the current discourse in this country? Well, Utah's governor had this warning for America.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. SPENCER COX (R-UT): It is a cancer. You know, we're talking about it with our young people but I assure you, it's a cancer with old people too. And it's so addicting. And that's the piece. We're actually losing our free will. We're losing our agency because these algorithms know more about us than we know about ourselves. A.I.'s going to make it worse. And they're hijacking that, that system and making it impossible for us to break away and, again, and then leading us in these into these very dark corners that lead to tragic events.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Yes. You know, I thought about this all this week, right? When there were previous assassinations in this country, the one thing that was harder to come by was just mass knowledge of the one or two people out there inciting it further, except now on social media, that's the easiest thing to come by. And then the algorithm gets a hold of it and pushes it into people's feeds.

I mean, do people realize how they are being used by the algorithm in this way?

TROVER: That's a very good question. I actually don't know. But, you know, the other thing he talked about was how our adversaries, the governor also mentioned China and Russia using it to stoke the flames of division in this country. And I thought that was very interesting. And I think that's true.

And, again, I go back to, you know, how are kids radicalized? How are these things happening? Some of it does fall back to our adversaries, and how are they working the system here in America to try to drive a wedge between Americans.

KAYYEM: Can I just pick up on that? I was surprised a governor was saying that just because it's like in the super squirrely world of, you know, sort of federal intelligence, but he really took a sort of front, sort of leaning in role on the investigation itself. And what he was clearly seeing was that the Chinese and the Russians, they're sort of waiting on the sidelines for something like this to happen, and then they're like, okay, how do we create more of the divisions?

And we see it at elections. We saw it, you know, during race riots. They sort of want to create more of that and it was important for him to say a lot of the crap, that a lot of the stuff that you are seeing on social media is not even being generated by U.S. citizens or people in the United States. This is purposeful.

Look, I mean, you know, the Russians and the Chinese like to see us look this way. This is a good look for them, division.

PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, division, the talk of civil war, the idea that the country is at a breaking point, we're not going back, this changes everything forever, we'll never be the same. And that all sounds generically fine, but it's alluding to something that is catastrophic in nature and that is being amplified.

RIGUEUR: Absolutely. Well, I think there are two things going on. One, these are very old strategies, right? We can look back and we can look at World War II. We can look at the duration of the Cold War and see the way that, say, foreign adversaries or bad characters have used ideas of misinformation and disinformation as, in essence, to threaten national security. What has changed is the technology, and it makes it much faster.

I'll give you just an example. We talked about already the way that the accusations about the left spread like wildfire that were amplified by politicians, and also probably amplified by bad actors.

[22:25:09]

But at the same time, the second that things started coming out about like Nick Fuentes, that became amplified. And all of these -- you know, all of the, I think, basically watchers, right, digital watchers, social media watchers, noticed a spike in that. And so we don't actually know, and it's very hard for people to differentiate between what is true, what is news, what is misinformation, what is disinformation, as people then begin to use it for their own means.

And what that all works to do, one of the things that we know is that while social media can be wonderful in terms of amplifying democracy, we also know that it can be incredibly powerful in amplifying polarization. Polarization, ultimately, the worst it gets, can actually lead to increased political violence.

PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, I think at this point, you know, we're long past like the Arab Spring days of the internet, okay? Like we're in a different place now and it's a dark, dark place.

And, Elle, I want to play this report that you did in 2018 about the sort of the genre of young men that we were talking about earlier who's deep in this pretty dark part of the internet. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REEVE: Joey is 23 years old. He doesn't have a job. He's not in school. On a given day, je may not get up from his chair where he sits sometimes for two days straight smoking cigarettes and running chat rooms.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Honestly, I feel more real here, sitting in front of the computer. When I go outside, I almost depersonalize a little bit and feel like I'm playing a video game. I don't know what that is. It's just a state of mind. It's probably just a side effect of isolation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: So, this shooter, 22 years old, had gotten a full ride to college, took a leave of absence after one semester, never went back. He was doing an electrician program, but otherwise was -- I don't know that he was quite in that place, but perhaps was headed there.

REEVE: All we have to go on right now is that these memes were so important to him that he did this life-altering event, like with them branded on his weapons.

PHILLIP: Yes.

REEVE: Look, these chat rooms become someone's entire world. They become so fully detached from reality, and, of course, they would be laughing at all of us with like our hair and the lights and the building, trying to analyze what these things mean. And starting, in my opinion, with the Christchurch shooting in 2019, you started seeing these guys write memes on their guns, as the Christchurch shooter did.

And if you look at them, what's written there is the audience is not us. The audience is that online community. That's who they're trying to like make these references to. And I've read so many long just like discussions of like, what did the Christchurch shooter mean by like writing the name of this 12th century Georgian king on his gun? And it's like, it's not for you, it's for these kids on 8chan that's who he was posting for.

And it was very clear in his manifesto that he wanted to become a meme, and he did. He is a meme in that world. And many, many shooters since then have referenced him both in their manifestos and in the writings on their weapons.

PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, you know, one of the things about Spencer Cox is, and he talked about this, he has actually tried to deal with social media companies from a legal perspective, and it's tied up in the courts now. But these days, it's like, I don't know, Washington seems to have just thrown up their hands, nothing we can do here.

He's one of the rare lawmakers, frankly, that I'm still hearing from saying, hold on a second, this is tearing our democracy apart. This is ruining our children's adolescents. It's making them unable to learn all of this stuff. No one else wants to talk about this right now. It's not the entirety of the picture on this story, but it's definitely a big part of where we are as a society, it seems.

SIMMONS: It is. And we know there are some school districts that are now starting to ban cell phones during the day, which is great news, as far as I'm concerned. They can ban them a lot more of them. The thing about Spencer Cox that really struck me today was when he started talking about the one -- there's one person who's responsible for what happened and he's in custody, that is a direct contradiction of what the president of the United States said when he started talking about this tragedy initially, and he started blaming people. I think that what he did today, the governor of Utah, talking about off-ramps, it's time for us to all start looking for the off-ramps to get off here, I think that what he was doing was creating an entire new lane for MAGA world. And so for those people who don't want to go down the dark path, there is another alternative out there. And if we are at a place where, you know, Donald Trump is not running two or three years from now and there's another MAGA candidate running, I'm not voting for him, but I hope the people who are in that camp starts looking at people like Spencer Cox as a model for what they want in national leadership.

[22:30:08]

PHILLIP: Lance, what do you think about what Spencer Cox was putting on the table? Are you picking it up?

TROVER: Look, I think he did a great job today and I -- he's not the president of the United States. And let's remember, Donald Trump is a family, the entire White House, this is very personal to them. This is somebody that they knew on a deeply personal level. I mean, he essentially was -- I mean, Don, Jr. said he was like a little brother to them. They're struggling greatly with this right now. And I just think we need to remember that as we talk about the president and where these folks are right now.

KAYYEM: I think that's -- I mean, I think that personalization of this for everyone needs to sort of cut across. I think every political divide, I think one of the challenges is that if we focus, or if the president focuses too much on a political assassination that he identifies with the victim.

We certainly know there are lots of victims who are not on the right and he needs to -- he's not going to, but the leadership that's needed, as you said, to lower the temperature is the leadership that may come from a governor, may come from us, may come from journalists, everyone else is one that does not focus on the ideology of the victim or the perpetrator.

The people who are killed have in common that they have entered the arena, the political arena. And what makes us a country or what made us a great country and one that I think is intention right now is the ability to enter that arena and not fear your death or your children's death. And it's that piece of it that is irrespective of what your ideology is.

And I think part of what, you know, just to talk to you, part of what you're seeing out there is a sense that, you know, making fun of Pelosi's husband or the Minnesota state victims in the legislature, that the president needs to identify with all of them because they all entered the arena like he did.

And I think that's what you're hearing from people who didn't identify with the --

PHILLIP: Yeah.

KAYYEM: -- with the president.

PHILLIP: Yeah. I mean, that is in a nutshell the job of the presidency of the United States.

KAYYEM: Yeah. Yeah.

PHILLIP: Elle Reeve, thank you very much for joining us. Next for us, FBI Director Kash Patel's leadership is under scrutiny tonight after some false starts on the manhunt for Charlie Kirk's killer. And some of his biggest critics are actually key players in the MAGA universe. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:35:00]

PHILLIP: Tonight, is Kash Patel the right man to lead the FBI? Some of Patel's MAGA peers are now raising questions about that after his handling of the Charlie Kirk case. And those questions also are coming from inside the bureau. Right, you'll recall he posted on X that the subject was caught, but local authorities called that false. A source close to Kirk called that unacceptable.

The founder of the Proud Boys asked, "Why is the head of the FBI speculating like everyone not in the know? You're the person we are supposed to get the final truth from. It only proves you were a horrible pick for this position." Steve Bannon questioned why Patel was even in Utah.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE BANNON, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: I don't know why Kash flew out there, you know, thousands of miles to give us, hey, working partnerships and our great partnership in Utah. Okay, I got that. No offense to the law enforcement guys going to feature this. The public assumes that you're working together as partnerships.

There's certain assumptions when you walk to the microphone of information, we don't need time and time and time again. I tell my team, when these press conferences are scheduled, I don't know if I need to be for the first 10 minutes, because it's just going to be some all group thing about how great we are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: There is a lot more where that came from. It's interesting because, yeah, there are the public kind of misfires on the tweets. But there's also stuff behind the scenes.

"The New York Times" reported that there was a call very early on in this crisis where, "Mr. Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, made it clear they were under intense pressure to catch the killer of Mr. Kirk. They expressed themselves with such fierce urgency that in the view of some participants, it hinted at another motive to prove that they were up to the task. They called out support nets for failing to give them timely information. And he was incensed at the agents at the Salt Lake City office waited 12 hours to show him a photo of the suspect. Mr. Patel said he would not tolerate any more Mickey Mouse operations, an official on the call recounted. It was one of his few utterances without profanity."

This is literally hours, in the middle of a manhunt.

KAYYEM: Yes.

PHILLIP: I've never heard of anything like this before.

KAYYEM: I mean, his -- this we can all agree on. He was not qualified for the job. The deputy was not qualified for the job. The Senate thought that they wanted them in the jobs and, you know, guess what? Something major happens and they panic.

[22:39:56]

I mean, I -- I never saw that Director Patel at the press conference where he didn't speak, which I assume, I do not know, was because the governor did not want him to speak because he just looked like someone who could not rise to the occasion. He made big mistakes and he made big mistakes, let's be clear, that were so juvenile. It was like, I want to be the first one on Twitter to say this. I want to be the first one.

They didn't have the guy. At one stage they have an Arab-American guy who happened to be conservative. There's all these rumors coming out of ATF about some trans tie on the bullets that end up being shot down. He had no control; it was so embarrassing. But I sit here and I go, what did you think was going to happen to the FBI? I mean, like really? Did you really think that he was going to rise to the occasion?

PHILLIP: This is the type of test that really kind of puts it all on display. I mean, the argument was that Kash Patel was not qualified. Dan Bongino was not qualified for the role that he is in. And now, I mean, now it's the conservatives who are saying it.

Christopher Rufo says, "It's time for Republicans to assess whether Kash Patel is the right man to run the FBI. He performed terribly in the last few days. Not sure whether he has the operational expertise to investigate, infiltrate and disrupt the violent movements whatever ideology that threatened the peace of the United States."

TROVER: They found the guy in less than 36 hours. What's perfect police work? I mean --

PHILLIP: Hold on, hold on.

TROVER: No, I'm asking. What is the definition of perfect police work?

PHILLIP: I didn't say perfect police work --

TROVER: I'm not here to crap on --

PHILLIP: --but they -- I mean, as someone else put it, I didn't say this, but a right-leaning person put it this way. They got very lucky that that father called his son in because the reason that that man was caught was because they put -- the image is out there and the father responded to the call.

TROVER: Yes. That's what the FBI did. They did exactly what they were supposed. That's the whole reason he got caught is because the FBI put the photos out there. Had they not done that, we may not be dealing with it. But look, the post on X, I fully admit that was a mistake. I'm not going to sit here and argue with you about that. But they went out there with limited resources to deal with something and they got the guy in less than 36 hours. The Mangione guy took five days to find. So, I --

PHILLIP: Why do they have to be in limited resources?

KAYYEM: Because of DOGE.

TROVER: They have like six people on the ground. They had limited resource. I'm just saying, and what they had to deal with initially on the ground with what they had limited resources to deal with.

KAYYEM: That was actually --

PHILLIP: Those are police officers. I don't --

TOVER: Right. They did -- but then when they -- I'm just saying, they had limited resources when they got on the ground. They got through. They put the pictures out there. They're the ones who followed through. I fully get it on the X post, but I think there's some of this criticism's a little unfair given that they found the guy in like 35 hours.

KAYYEM: I know. I just want to say something though. The Bureau exists to serve Americans and to protect the safety and security of all Americans. No one could leave, no one looking at this, could leave the last 48 hours, regardless if he was caught or not, and believe the person running the Bureau is a good representative of that mission. That may be why people wanted him, right? They wanted to go after the FBI. They thought the FBI was the deep state, whatever. But there are consequences for those decisions. And so it's just ironic, I think, that much of the right wing --

TROVER: What -- what did he do -- let me ask you, what did he do wrong? I mean, if they got the guy, just because -- serious question.

KAYYEM: No, it's a good --

TROVER: What do you allege if he did wrong?

PHILLIP: Look, I don't know the inner -- we don't have all the details, right? But just the public things that have happened. The tweets that were not true, that were just sent out when there's no reason ever for the FBI director to be sending out messages like that about an ongoing investigation. But then the second thing, I mean, this reporting from "The Times" that suggests that he was berating --

KAYYEM: Yeah.

PHILLIP: -- people in the field office that were working their butts off like in the immediate aftermath of a crisis like this is very unusual, very unusual.

KAYYEM: Yeah. And I think the American people deserve to have confidence in the leadership of their law enforcement agencies. And I think in this instance, obviously, I don't think he was qualified. If you're looking at did, he elicit confidence in what the bureau, even if you say they were successful or that they were successful, did -- I don't think it's representative of -- I don't know why the administration would want that representation for the FBI.

RIGUEUR: I also think that there is a larger structural problem, right? So everyone has been talking about why was Kash Patel hired in the first place? He was hired for his political loyalty and for accusations of rooting out the deep state, but then immediately came in and one of the first things that we have seen over the last couple of months is the slashing of the Bureau.

Now, the Bureau didn't need to go through reform, but one of the things that has come out, especially we've seen this week, is a number of whistleblowers who have come out who have said, no, actually, the kind of cleaning of house that is happening is extremely detrimental. It's --

[22:45:05]

TROVER: And I think that's valid. I think those are valid questions about that. But I'm guessing in this instance, I'm not sure what the criticism is. They got the guy.

RIGUEUR: But one of the -- no, no, no. But one of the criticisms is that the person who should have, the FBI person, an expert who should have been there, was fired over the summer and no one knows why. And so part of the problem is that there was no infrastructure in place that would have led to a much speedier capture -- and a less and a more deliberate act on the part of the FBI as opposed to the father kind of just -- I mean, we are actually lucky that the father turned in his son.

PHILLIP: Yeah. And that's how it goes sometimes, but it could easily have not been that way. Everyone, thank you very much for joining us. I had the wife of Charlie Kirk speaking out for the first time since his murder with a message about whether the college tour on which he was killed will continue.

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[22:50:00]

PHILLIP: Tonight, I'd like to introduce you to a champion for change. All this week, we are sharing stories about men and women who are pioneering, innovating solutions to some of the world's toughest problems, like Anderson Cooper's champion, Mark Moore, who's fighting to end a global crisis of hunger. Through his company, MANA Nutrition, Mark has provided life-saving aid to millions of children.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Mark Moore's company, MANA Nutrition, helps save the lives of malnourished and starving children around the world. MANA Nutrition makes what's called ready to use therapeutic food, RUTF for short. It's made with peanut butter, powdered milk, sugar, and vitamins. A simple recipe that's revolutionary in the fight against hunger. It can bring severely malnourished kids back from the brink of death. Mark's factory is in rural Georgia, but he began working in Africa decades ago.

(On camera): When was the first time you went to Africa?

MARK MOORE, CEO, MANA NAUTRITION: I went in the late '80s and I was a college kid.

COOPER: What was it about Africa that changed you?

MOORE: I grew up in Flint thinking I was a poor kid. But then you go to Nairobi and you realize, you know, I was born on third base and that powerful experience just gets in your blood.

COOPER (voice-over): Nearly 20 years ago, Mark was an Africa specialist in the U.S. Senate when he saw a report, I did on this miraculous treatment that was saving kids' lives. Back then, it was made by just one French company. Their product was called Plumpy'Nut. They'd stopped eating and become listless and weak, so weak that when their mothers brought them to get Plumpy'Nut, the nurse put them in a van and sent them straight to the hospital.

Three days later, however, they were smacking their lips on Plumpy'Nut, almost ready to go home. Sometimes parents wait too long before bringing their child to doctors. We found Rashida Mamadou (ph) in intensive care. Just two hours later, Rashida's (ph) little heart stopped beating. Mark says that story changed his life.

MOORE: I just thought, how come I've never heard of this? This is kind of too good to be true.

COOPER (on camera): That's what I thought as well.

MOORE: And then I thought, well, somebody should do this in the U.S.

COOPER (voice-over): From that, MANA Nutrition was born, a nonprofit built next to a peanut field in Fitzgerald, Georgia, has been producing its own RUTF since 2010.

MOORE: So this map logs the 57 countries that MANA has gone to since it started.

COOPER (on camera): How many kids have you saved, do you think?

MOORE: At least 10 million, if you at the production numbers. MICHAEL NYENHUIS, CEO, UNICEF USA: There are a number of RUTF

suppliers around the world that we're able to tap into. MANA is one of the most crucial, especially as it comes to us being able to utilize U.S. government funding and so they're essential to the whole system. And we just couldn't do much of our work without him.

COOPER: Let's see you brother. How are you?

COOPER: There's got to be a lot of pride in the community.

MOORE: Very proud. Yeah.

COOPER: To do this work.

MOORE: Yeah. Great people. People are inspired and they make a difference.

COOPER (voice-over): We first met Mark in February after the State Department canceled all of MANA's USAID contracts.

MOORE: This is too important for us to have a pity party that we got cut.

COOPER (voice-over): Mark's determination paid off. Those orders for RUTF have been reinstated. And in late August, they got their first new order from the U.S. government in eight months.

(On camera): This whole thing is called Champions for Change. What's the change you've seen?

MOORE: Well, I'm not sure I'm a champion, but if I were to aspire to that, I would say any child deserves to meet their potential. I see children meeting their potential when before we were losing them to this useless death.

[22:55:02]

These aren't our kids, but the great human family, they're our kids.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIP: Incredible story there. Be sure to tune in Saturday at 10:00 p.m. Eastern for the "Champions for Change" one hour special hosted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta. We'll be right back.

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[23:59:59]

PHILLIP: Before we go, a quick programming note. This week, comedian Mae Martin and New York Times climate reporter David Gelles join "Have I Got News for You," and it airs Saturday.