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Court Filing: RFK Jr. To Endorse Trump For President; Pilot Accused Of Trying To Shut Off Engines Midair Speaks Out; Husband Accused Of Killing Missing Woman In Virginia; RFK Jr. Speaks On Future Of His Campaign; Confusion Over Whether RFK Jr. Is Endorsing Trump. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired August 23, 2024 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: But I will say that the other side, Donald Trump's team, very much thinks that this could help him in a race that is razor thin margin.

They are looking at the people who potentially were supporting RFK as people who would come to Donald Trump. Those were votes, they believe, that were being taken, at least some of them, from Donald Trump.

Particularly, this became important as Kamala Harris went to the top of the ticket. It was a little bit more unclear when Joe Biden was at the top of the ticket where those votes we're coming from.

But when we saw Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket, there was a sense of urgency among Trump's team that eventually RFK was going to drop out and it will be very important for Donald Trump to secure that endorsement so that he could get those supporters.

And I do want to mention one other thing. Do they believe every person who is going to vote for RFK is going to vote for Donald Trump if he endorses him? No, they don't.

But again, they believe that this election is going to be determined in the margins. And they believe any single vote that they can get is important for Donald Trump.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All right, Kristen Holmes, thank you so much.

And we'll be watching this. We're keeping an eye on this event live in Phoenix. It's been delayed a bit, a little bit. And we know now with some breaking news what we may be hearing, ahead here.

Stay with CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:35:49]

KEILAR: Now, for the first time, a former Alaska Airlines pilot accused of trying to shut down his plane's engines in midair -- you may remember this -- is speaking out.

Joseph Emerson is awaiting trial on one charge of endangering an aircraft and 83 counts of reckless endangerment, one for each person onboard that plane,

He was off duty as a pilot. He was just catching a ride in the cockpit last October when other crew members actually prevented him from turning off the engines.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Emerson is blaming a lack of sleep and a reaction to psychedelic mushrooms that he says he took just two days before his flight.

Here's how he views what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSEPH EMERSON, FORMER ALASKA AIRLINE PILOT: I hadn't really been sleeping a lot the night that I took the magic mushrooms and I did not sleep that night.

And so this cumulative sleep deficit, I believe may have also impacted just my perception of what was going on.

There was a feeling of being trapped, like, am I trapped in this -- in this airplane and this is not real. I need to wake up.

There are two red handles in front of my face. I'm thinking that I was going to wake up, thinking this is my way to get out of this non-real reality. And I reached up and I grabbed it and I pulled the levers.

What I thought is, this is going to wake me up. I know what those levers do in a real airplane, right? And I need to wake up from. It's 30 seconds of my life I wish you could change and I can't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Emerson has pleaded not guilty. He says he'd been struggling with depression after the death of his best friend.

A disturbing update now in the search for a mom who has been missing for over three weeks in Virginia. Police have just accused her husband of killing her after finding brand-new evidenced both inside and outside of the couple's home.

KEILAR: We have CNN's Jean Casarez, who is joining us now with the latest on this.

Jean, the husband in this case has been charged with concealing a body, has not been charged with murder. Explain this to us. What did police find here?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And that is the thing that is a little perplexing. Because they do not have, they believe, the evidence at this point to charge him with murder, but they do believe beyond a reasonable doubt they can prove concealment of a body. His arraignment was today. He's being held on no bond. But Mamta Kafle Bhatt is 28-years-old. She has a 1-year-old daughter. And within that complaint, it does state exactly what authorities believe happened to her.

And we want to show you. It says, "There was evidence in the residence indicating the body was inside the residence and dragged out of the residence."

They have been doing so many searches, so much forensic testing in that home. And these are their conclusions at this point.

But the timeline shows us that there has been quite a bit of time where she has been missing.

First of all, on July 27th, that was the last time that she reported to work at the University of Virginia Health Prince William Medical Center in Virginia. She was a part of the surgery unit. The last time they saw her there.

On July 28th, that was the last time that she spoke with a friend. Then her husband says that the last time he saw was at the dinner table on July 31st. And then on August 5th, finally, is when he reported her missing.

But it also says in the complaint that they believe that he murdered her on July 30th, the day before he says was the last time he saw her alive.

I want you to listen to one of her very close friends who spoke out because the Nepalese community there in Virginia is supporting her, backing her, and they want to know the truth.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOLLY WIRTH, FRIEND OF MAMTA KAFLE BHATT: I think we're all in a state of shock. Again, the details that came out were way more horrifying than I would have expected.

It sounds whatever happened in that house reached a high level of brutality. And that makes me sad to think that my mom has suffered greatly in her last -- what appears to be her last moments.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[14:40:01]

CASAREZ: And that 1-year-old child is in state custody right now. But Mamta's mother is in Nepal and she is asking for an emergency visa to get to Virginia as fast as she can, as the grandmother, to at least have partial custody of that little baby -- Brianna?

KEILAR: Yes, that is the most heartbreaking part of all of this.

Jean Casarez, thank you for the very latest there.

And we are waiting right now on two big events. Both Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. are about to speak, as a court filing in Pennsylvania reveals Kennedy plans to exit the race and endorse former President Trump.

Stay with CNN. We're keeping an eye on this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:45:00]

SANCHEZ: Let's get you straight out to Phoenix where we are expecting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. is set to drop out of his quest for the White House and endorsed former President Donald Trump.

Here's RFK Jr..

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., (I), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: -- allegiance to long before I was old enough to vote. I attended my first Democratic convention at the age of 6 in 1960. And back then, the Democrats we're the champions of the Constitution, of civil rights.

The Democrats stood against authoritarianism, against censorship, against colonialism, imperialism and unjust wars. We were the party of labor, of the working class.

The Democrats were the party of government transparency and the champion of the environment. Our party was the bulwark against big- money interests and corporate power.

True to its name, it was the party of democracy. As you know, I left that party in October because it had departed so dramatically on the core values that I grew up with.

It had become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big ag and big money. When it abandoned democracy by canceling the primary to conceal the cognitive decline of the sitting president, I left the party to run as an Independent.

The mainstream of American politics and journalism derided my decision. Conventionalism said that it would be impossible even to get on the ballot as an Independent because each state poses an insurmountable tank of arbitrary rules for collecting signatures.

I would need over one million signatures, something no presidential candidate in history had ever achieved.

And then I'd need a team of attorneys and millions of dollars to handle all of the legal challenges from the DNC. The nadir -- the naysayers told us that we we're climbing a glass version of Mount Impossible.

So the first thing I want to tell you is that we proved them wrong. We did it because, beneath the radar of mainstream media organs, we inspired a massive Independent political movement. More than 100,000 volunteers sprang into action, hopeful that they could reverse our nation's decline. Many worked 10-hour days, sometimes in blizzards and places of heat.

They sacrificed family time, personal commitments and asleep month after month, energized by a shared vision of a nation healed of its divisions. They setup tables at churches and farmers market and canvased door to door.

In Utah and New Hampshire, volunteers collected signatures in the snowstorms, convincing each supporter they stopped in the frigid cold to take off the gloves and to sign legibly.

During a heat wave in Nevada, I had a tall athletic volunteer who cheerfully told me that he had lost 25 pounds collecting signatures in 117-degree heat.

Despite this effort, young Americans donated their lunch money and senior citizens gave up their -- part of their Social Security checks.

Our 50-state organization collected those millions of signatures and more. No presidential campaign in history -- political -- American political history has ever done that.

And so I want to thank all of those dedicated volunteers and congratulate the campaign staff who coordinated this and performed this logistical feat.

Your accomplishments were regarded as impossible. You carried me up that glass mountain. You pulled off a miracle. You achieved what all the pundits said could never be done.

You have my deepest gratitude. And I'm never going to forget that, not just for what you did for my campaign, but for the sacrifices you made because you love our country.

You showed everyone that democracy is still possible here. It continues to survive. And the press and the witness of human energies that still thrive needs a canvas of neglect and of official and institutional corruption.

Today, I'm here to tell you that I will not allow your efforts to go to waste. I'm here to tell you that I will leverage your tremendous accomplishments to serve the ideals that we share, the ideals of peace, of prosperity, of freedom, of health, all the ideals that motivated my campaign.

[14:50:08]

I'm here today to describe the path forward that you opened with your commitment and with your heart and labors.

Now, in an honest system, I believe that I would have won the election.

In a system that, like my father and my uncles thrived in, a system that has open debates with fair primaries, the regularly scheduled debate with their primaries and with a truly independent media untainted by government propaganda and censorship, in a system with nonpartisan courts and election boards, everything would be different.

After all, the polls consistently showed me beating each of the other candidates, both in favorability and also in head-to-head matchups.

I'm sorry to say that, while democracy may still be alive at the grass roots, it has become a little more than a slogan for our political institutions, for our media and for our government and, most sadly of all for me, the Democratic Party, in the name of saving democracy, the Democratic Party set itself to dismantling it.

Lacking confidence in its candidate, that it's candidate could win in a fair election at the voting booth, the DNC waged continual legal warfare against both President Trump and myself.

Each time that our volunteers turned in those towering boxes of signatures needed to get on the ballot, the DNC dragged us into court state after state attempting to erase their work and to subvert the will of the voters who had signed those petitions.

It deployed DNC-aligned judges to throw me and other candidates off the ballot and to throw President Trump in jail.

It ran a sham primary that was rigged to prevent any serious challenge to President Biden.

Then when a predictively bungled debate performance precipitated the palace coup against President Biden, the same shadowy DNC operatives appointed his successor, also without an election.

They installed a candidate who was so unpopular with voters that she dropped out in 2020 without winning a single delegate.

My uncle and my father both relished debate. They prided themselves on their capacity to go toe to toe with any opponent in the battle over ideas.

They would be astonished to learn of a Democratic Party presidential nominee who, like Vice President Harris, has not appeared in a single interview or an unscripted encounter with voters for 35 --

SANCHEZ: You've been listening to Independent candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from Phoenix outlining what led him to his quixotic quest for the White House to now dropping out and relinquishing the title of Democrat.

He had a series of complaints about the party. We're, of course, going to continue watching his remarks.

There's a back-and-forth over whether he's going to endorse former President Donald Trump. We're going to bring that down on the other side of a quick break.

Stay with CNN. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:57:49]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

KEILAR: All right, Robert Kennedy Jr.'s speaking on the future of his campaign, as we we're expecting that this is it for him. And that he is moving towards an endorsement of former President Trump.

Which is really kind of interesting here, Boris. And we've been talking about this, is that there's a court filing in Pennsylvania where he's withdrawing from a ballot access challenge there.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

KEILAR: And he's saying it's because he's -- or a lawyer, whoever wrote it, I'm assuming his lawyer -- is saying that it's because he's endorsing Trump today.

But then his campaign is like, no, no, no, that's not what's happening.

SANCHEZ: Yes. A campaign spokesperson putting a statement out, too, saying --

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: -- saying that's not what's happened, exactly. Right?

SANCHEZ: Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly.

Campaign spokesperson, Stefanie Spear, is saying that Kennedy has not endorsed Trump.

She says, quote, "Mr. Kennedy has not endorsed Trump. The filing" -- the filing in Pennsylvania -- "was made by an attorney and not reviewed by the campaign."

A campaign adviser, Del Bigtree, then told CNN that he was not aware of the filing and said, quote, "I'm surprised to see that."

Again, this comes as, in a not very far away venue from where RFK Jr. is in Phoenix right now, Donald Trump is expected later tonight. And they've been touting a special guest.

And over the last two days, Trump has made statements seeming to appeal to some of the more out-there rhetoric of RFK Jr., on vaccines, on conspiracy theories about September 11th. So this pushback from the campaign comes at a strange time.

We are obviously monitoring his remarks.

We want to go to CNN's Alayna Treene, who is at the venue where we're expecting President Trump later. Alayna, a bit of confusion here about, will he or won't he? But it seems like the writing is on the wall and we can expect what's coming later tonight.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: I think that's right, Boris and Brianna. From all of my conversations with Donald Trump's team, they will not guarantee that this is going to happen.

[14:59:48]

But they have been working toward this for a very long time. Even before the Republican National Convention in July, there were talks taking place between Donald Trump's orbit and RFK Jr.'s campaign.

And part of that was really led by Donald Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.. He was really the leader, I'm told, behind a lot of that back-channeling, trying to see if they could find a way to get RFK Jr.. to end his campaign and endorse the former president.