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Trump Unhappy over Israel Strike; Excerpts from Harris' Book; Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) is Interviewed about the Israel Strike; Manhunt in NYC for Murder Suspect; Trump Calls for Death Penalty in Charlotte Stabbing. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired September 10, 2025 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

LAURIE DAVIDSON, PLAYS "DANIEL" IN "THE GIRLFRIEND": So, two things that come to mind. One is that it poses a unique opportunity where Robin can direct me in a scene that she's in. Normally when you're directing, you have to wait politely until the end of the take before you go, that was terrible. It's all wrong. But -- but what Robin can do is adjust her performance to get something out of me, which is really unique.

And then also, we'd be doing scenes for like four days where she's mom and -- and -- and directing. And then on the fifth day, I'm doing maybe an intimate scene where you don't want your mom in the room, but she's directing. And it's like, mom, why are you here while I'm -- I'm doing this? So, that just -- that played into my mind even more, which is perfect for the show.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: That's so funny. And in one of those scenes it's literally you directing and being the mom literally in the room there. I'm not giving away too much.

When you -- when people watch the show, what do you want them leaving with after each episode?

ROBIN WRIGHT, PLAYS "LAURA" IN "THE GIRLFRIEND": I just want them to watch the second episode. Just be engaged enough to see where this ride is going to take you.

BERMAN: Well, listen, thank you both so much for being here.

WRIGHT: Oh, thank you.

BERMAN: It's a super exciting show to think about. The book also very wonderful.

All right, "The Girlfriend" is out today on Prime Video.

A brand new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

New this morning, President Trump says he is very unhappy about the Israeli strikes in Qatar. What does it do to U.S. credibility in the region? Recklessness. That is what Kamala Harris calls President Biden's

decision to run for re-election, and the failure of others in not weighing in.

And a mega-yacht could be yours. Get your bid in now. What the government is putting on sale and why.

Sara is out. She's on that mega-yacht. I'm John Berman, with Kate Bolduan. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: I knew it.

All right, this morning, we are learning more about Israel's deadly and unprecedented strike in Qatar targeting Hamas leaders. President Trump says that he is not thrilled. He also says he is very unhappy about that attack and promises a fuller statement on this whole situation at some point today. Two Israeli officials now tell CNN that the president spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone twice after the strike. But two sources also say Israel intentionally waited until the last minute to give the U.S. a heads up beforehand.

We're also now told that there is growing pessimism among the Israelis over how successful this attack really was. Qatar is a U.S. ally and a key mediator in the Gaza ceasefire talks. Now, a senior Hamas official says no discussions are happening in the aftermath of that attack.

CNN's Nic Robertson is in Doha for us.

And, Nic, so what are you hearing? There's a lot to learn about this strike. But also what -- where this now leaves any discussion of ceasefire proposals.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: It leaves it on hold, hanging in the air at the moment. And it will be down to the Qataris and what President Trump can say to them and what they hear from their regional allies. The president of the UAE. Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan, is in Doha now. He's just arrived. He's called Israel's acts treacherous. He's called them criminal. He's said that it -- that Qatar has a right to respond. There's been similar strong and supportive language for Qatar from the Saudi leadership as well. And these are countries that have, in the past decade, been at odds with one another.

There's remarkable unity at the moment. And that speaks to the need for a response of some description, diplomatic. And I don't think anyone's talking about a military response at the moment, but some shifting of the ground here to -- for Qatar to engage. I mean, look at what happened.

This is what we're hearing from officials here. Qatar said on Monday they were talking to Hamas about President Trump's new initiative, a peace deal potential for Gaza, that Hamas was due to deliver an answer later on Tuesday, even down to the time of the meeting that they were going to have to deliver that answer. And Qatar, in the meantime, had been on the phone with Israeli officials talking through where the talks were. The Qataris had publicly pushed Hamas to come up with a positive answer.

Qatar, in their view, was carrying a lot of diplomatic water here for the United States and trying to help Israel as well. And, of course, this, for them, looks like they've been let down, not just by Israel, but by the U.S. president. And the sense here is, what does it take for President Trump to lean on Prime Minister Netanyahu in such a way he understands that these sort of strikes in -- on the territory of U.S. allies is beyond the breach.

[09:05:07]

BOLDUAN: Nic, thank you so much for being there. We're so glad you're on the ground. Much more reporting to come from Nic Robertson there.

John.

BERMAN: All right, breaking this morning, excerpts from the new book by former Vice President Kamala Harris, they were just released in "The Atlantic," and she speaks in ways she really never has before about President Biden's decision to run for re-election. In a moment of self-criticism, she calls it "recklessness" that the decision was left to the president and first lady, that more people that did not weigh in. She also criticizes the Biden inner circle for how they treated her. She writes that as Republican critics called her the border czar, quote, "no one on the White House comms team helped me to effectively push back and explain what I had really been tasked to do, nor to highlight any of the progress I had achieved."

CNN's Isaac Dovere has been poring over these excerpts. He is with us now this morning.

I think what's grabbing the most headlines is how she talks about the decision for Joe Biden to seek re-election.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, look, and this was a hard decision, obviously, for Joe Biden. It was one that was debated a lot over the years, long before that debate happened last year. But Harris writes that she was in a tough position because anything that she would have said about it would have been interpreted as part of her own ambition to be president, as for sure it would have been. And she says that she feels like, in retrospect, as you said, it was recklessness to leave this and make it seem like a -- a personal decision for Joe Biden.

Of course, this isn't just politics or what happened with the campaign. It's Harris and a lot of other Democrats and others feeling very upset that Donald Trump won last year and not liking what he's been doing as president. And she feels clearly, in what she's written in this book, that some of that blame goes to Biden for how he handled what the run up to the campaign was.

BERMAN: And again, she really does lash out at the Biden inner circle for four years of how she was treated inside the White House.

DOVERE: That's right. And -- but I think notably here there's one topic that she discusses. A lot of people were interested what she was going to say about it in this book. And that's what -- what she made of the president's mental and physical situation. And she writes in the book about it. Again, this is just one chapter that's been excerpted this morning in "The Atlantic." The full book comes out in two weeks. But she writes, "on his worst day," on Bidens worst day, "he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best. But at 81, Joe got tired. That's when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles." But she writes, "I don't believe it was incapacity." And she said she would have said so if -- if she had felt that because she's more loyal to the country than to Biden.

BERMAN: Yes.

DOVERE: So, that's how she's threaded that needle.

BERMAN: And she also says she didn't -- she knows there was an idea of a conspiracy or a cover up there, suggesting she did not see that quite as much.

Isaac Dovere, great to see you. Thank you so much for this report.

DOVERE: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: Kate.

BOLDUAN: Joining us right now is Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell of California to talk more about this.

Thanks for coming in.

REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D-CA): Of course.

BOLDUAN: What do you think of this, first and foremost, from the former vice president, saying that, one, the Biden comms team worked against her. Also saying that it was recklessness amongst -- she even takes some of the responsibility herself to leave it to Joe and Jill Biden behind the scenes to make the call alone on whether to keep running for re-election or not. Do you agree?

SWALWELL: I don't have the luxury of writing a book right now, Kate. I'm in the arena. I don't get the opportunity to watch all of this and look back. I'm trying to protect my constituents from being unlawfully deported, from having their health care taken away, and from being sent to the next Donald Trump war. So, they can focus on the past. I'm focused entirely on the fight that's right in front of me.

BOLDUAN: How important do you think Kamala Harris' voice is in this fight that you're talking about right in front of you? She's going on this book tour. You know, she's going to be doing a lot of interviews. Do you think she should be front and center as the face of the Democratic Party?

SWALWELL: I -- I don't know what her position is. I know what my position is, which is, pass Prop 50 in California. November 4th, California voters go to the polls to get five seats back that were taken in the redistricting process in Texas. I'm doing that. Governor Newsom is doing that. And I think it would be helpful if Kamala Harris was going across California to help us get voters to do that. I expect that she will do that.

But, Kate, I -- again, I just don't have the luxury as -- as Rome burns, you know, to write a book about it right now. I'm -- I'm all in to try and save it.

BOLDUAN: Let's talk about something that is developing. It started developing on this show yesterday, and we're continuing to learn much more about it, is the Israeli strikes on Hamas targets inside of Qatar. President Trump says he is not happy about it. Big question is, what is the president going to do about it? What do you think the president should do in responding to this now?

[09:10:02]

SWALWELL: He should keep his promises. Donald Trump promised that all of the wars, from the Middle East to Ukraine, would end on day one, that prices would plummet and that jobs would soar. Well, Ukraine has never been weaker. The Middle East has never been more chaotic. The jobs numbers right now have never been worse since the last time Donald Trump was president. Right now, instead of going after MS-13 members, he's deporting people with work visas from Korea in the south. And as far as his health goes, Joe Biden looks like an Olympic athlete compared to the illnesses that he's hiding. Donald Trump is a broken man who has broken all of his promises, and we're all starting to pay for it. And we're going to be a broken country pretty soon.

BOLDUAN: On Jeffrey Epstein and the push to get the files in total released, or more at least, the White House is now saying that it would support a professional handwriting expert reviewing that birthday book page that allegedly -- allegedly was made by Donald Trump. The White House continues to say that it was not done by Donald Trump. Do you think that is the direction this is going?

SWALWELL: Sure we could bring in a handwriting expert, but I have two eyes. You have two eyes. Anyone who looks at that letter, which was provided by the Epstein estate, knows whose signature that was. And they should just release all the files for the sake of the victims so that they can receive justice.

I, as a former prosecutor, the simplest explanation is the right one, which is, if you were doing everything to bury something beneath the earth, there's probably a good reason for it. And there's a bigger theme here, Kate, which is, Donald Trump doesn't want us to believe our own eyes. He has commissioned this new hearing, this new committee in Congress, to revisit January 6th, something we all saw with our own eyes. He's telling us not to believe that the cost of beef and everything else we're buying right now is going up. Not to believe that the jobs numbers are going down. Not to believe that the Epstein files involve him. We all have eyes. We all can see. And we're not going to go in this direction. We're going to put the truth over Trump.

BOLDUAN: The White House press secretary yesterday tried to further explain what the president thinks is the hoax around all of this, as he has called it a hoax multiple times before. Let me play for you what Karoline Leavitt said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: So, what is the theory, since these documents came from the Epstein estate? Who is -- who is, I guess, in your view, faking this documents?

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I did not say the documents are a hoax. I said the entire narrative surrounding Jeffrey Epstein right now that is absorbing many of the liberal cable channels on -- on television is a hoax that is being perpetuated by opportunistic Democrats, like Ro Khanna and the others whom you saw on that press conference outside of Capitol Hill who are trying to push this hoax against the president of the United States.

REPORTER: But what does that --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Asked, what is the hoax? Karoline Leavitt says Democrats pretending to care about the victims of these crimes now.

What do you say to that?

SWALWELL: Well, Democrats are joined by Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Thomas Massie and others, people who are standing up for sexual assault victims. And again, he's telling us not to believe our own eyes.

Kate, he has more pictures -- there's more pictures of Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein than Donald Trump with Don Jr. I mean, we all know he was connected to this guy, and so he should just shoot straight with us.

BOLDUAN: I mean, Congressman, I take your point, but none of us have done an accounting of the number of pictures he has with any of his children versus with Jeffrey Epstein. Let's be clear.

But the point here is, would Democrats be in a better -- on better footing politically with this if they had been more vocal, more clearly vocal about wanting Jeffrey Epstein files released before this, before Trump came back into the office, because the circumstances that exist today are the circumstances that existed in the last administration. That is true.

SWALWELL: I did my homework on this. I expected you to ask. So, I went back and I found multiple occasions where I was calling on Labor Secretary Acosta to resign for his role in the Epstein plea deal under the Trump administration. So, I've been pretty consistent. I think Jamie Raskin and others, when you go back, you see that they've been consistent.

But we are all here now. And so, I think about the Disney movie "Frozen," which I watch every morning with my daughter. The best thing you can do is the next right thing. That's like the lesson from the movie, right? So, if you didn't say anything then, you have an opportunity to do something now.

So, we have an opportunity right now to do something for these victims. And so, let's find justice for them now.

BOLDUAN: I'm not sure -- I'm not sure to say congratulations for being a good father to watch the movie or I'm sorry because it will never leave your head, as a mother who has had to do the same.

SWALWELL: Condolences, yes.

BOLDUAN: But I digress.

Congressman, thank you for your time.

SWALWELL: My pleasure.

BOLDUAN: John.

[09:15:01]

BERMAN: All right, the family of the woman killed in the stabbing on a Charlotte train is now speaking out.

We've got brand new data just in on inflation. What it tells us about the economy and the sagging jobs market.

And an inside look at all the drama on a morning show. Not CNN NEWS CENTRAL. There is -- there is no drama here. There aren't even any chairs. All right, we'll talk about a fictional morning show.

BOLDUAN: There won't (ph) be chairs because we threw them at each other.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:20:02]

BERMAN: All right, developing this morning, a manhunt in New York City for a suspect wanted for a horrific double murder. Forty-two-year-old Jamal McGriff is on the run, suspected of killing an elderly couple inside their home in Queens. He is considered armed and dangerous. And we now have this picture put up by the New York police to help in this manhunt.

CNN's Mark Morales is here with the very latest.

What are you learning?

MARK MORALES, CNN REPORTER: Well, this is probably one of the more violent and grisly crimes that we've seen in the city in a while. And as we've said that the NYPD is actively looking for him. It's a full court press by them.

But also the Regional Fugitive Task Force. They're made up of federal and local law enforcement. They're designed to go after the worst of the worst, the most dangerous. And that's what we're dealing with right here.

His name is Jamal McGriff, 42 years old. He was on parole for a robbery that he did in 2006. So, he spent 16 years in prison.

And this all started on Monday when he was going door to door in this Queens neighborhood looking to see who would give him access to the home. His whole thing was he had a phone, the battery was dead, so he just wanted to come somewhere so he could charge his phone.

The victims ended up opening up their door. So, you see them on -- at around 10:00 in the morning you see him walking in through a back door. He's seen again, five hours later on a surveillance camera, walking around the neighborhood. A little bit after that, the home is on fire. So, firefighters and police raced to the home. They put the fire out. Once they go in, that's when they find the victims dead.

Frank Alton was found tied up to a pole in the basement with several stab wounds. His wife, Maureen, was on the first floor with several burn wounds to her -- to her body. And the police commissioner was saying that this was part of his M.O.

Also warning people not to open their door to people who they don't know. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JESSICA TISCH, NYPD COMMISSIONER: For the public, the message is clear, the suspect's M.O. is to go door to door asking for some kind of assistance until he can gain entry. So, do not allow anyone you don't know or who you are not expecting into your home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MORALES: And just for context, this comes at a time when the White House is talking about deploying National Guard troops to Democratically run major cities that seem to have a crime problem. The police commissioner, the mayor of New York City, they've all said, not only do they not have a crime problem, but they don't need the National Guard here in that capacity.

BERMAN: All right, Mark Morales, thank you. Keep us updated on this, because this manhunt is very much underway.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Heartbroken beyond words. That is what we are learning in a statement that's in part from the family of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, the Ukrainian woman who was murdered tragically on that train in Charlotte, North Carolina, caught on surveillance video. This morning, federal charges have been filed against the man who police say carried out that unprovoked attack.

And also this just in, President Trump is calling for the death penalty for this alleged suspect, 34-year-old Decarlos Brown.

CNN's Dianne Gallagher is following this in Charlotte for us this morning.

What more are we hearing from the family and what more are you learning?

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Kate.

First, I want to get to that post from President Donald Trump that he put on Truth Social this morning. Just to read it out to you. It says, "the animal who so violently killed the beautiful young lady from Ukraine who came to America searching for peace and safety should be given a quick, there is no doubt, trial and only awarded the death penalty. There can be no other option. President Donald J. Trump."

Now, of course, 34-year-old Decarlos Brown was charged with the state charges of first degree murder after he was arrested for killing, according to police, 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska. But yesterday, federal prosecutors did also issue that federal charge, one count of committing an act causing death on mass transportation system.

And Attorney General Pam Bondi promised that they would seek the maximum criminal sentence that would be either the death penalty or life in prison.

Now, her family also issued a lengthy statement yesterday, basically giving us a look at their last moments before they found out that she had been killed, and also issuing a call to action, demanding systemic change.

We learned that Iryna had just texted her boyfriend that she would be home soon. They became very concerned when she didn't show up at her apartment and her phone location services showed that she was still there at that light rail station. The family says their immediate priority is for the suspect to, quote, "be brought to justice and remain behind bars." But they're also calling for a full investigation into the circumstances that led to her death. They -- including what they called "lapses in security protocols and failures with the public transportation system."

Now, CNN has reached out to the Charlotte area transit system to see what their response is to some of those systemic issues that the family says is there.

[09:25:07]

Kate, the family is also asking the public and the media to stop sharing the unedited version of her killing, saying that it is disrespectful to Iryna's dignity and it is hard on their own grief.

BOLDUAN: Dianne, thank you for that reporting. Dianne Gallagher in Charlotte, North Carolina, for us.

There is new data just out this morning showing the impact of President Trump's tariffs and how it could dramatically increase the number of Americans living in poverty. Some more detail on that.

And today is the day that the president's declared emergency in D.C. expires. What that now means for everyone living in the district and the National Guard deployed there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:30:08]

BERMAN: All right, new data just in. It shows inflation