Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Qatari PM Meeting Trump, Rubio After Israel's Doha Attack; U.N. Security Council Condemns Israeli Attack In Doha; DHS Says Suspect Killed, ICE Officer Hurt In Chicago Traffic Stop; 22-year-old Suspect In Custody In Kirk Shooting; Utah Governor Encourages Political Restraint After Kirk's Shooting; Trump Says He's Targeting Memphis In Crime Crackdown. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired September 12, 2025 - 13:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:31:41]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": A source tells CNN that the prime Minister of Qatar is expected to meet with top White House officials today. President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are going to be speaking directly with the prime minister. This of course, comes amid growing international condemnation over an Israeli attack in Doha earlier this week. Israel says they were targeting senior Hamas leadership in Qatar's capital, but the strike did kill a Qatari security officer.

Now, yesterday, the U.S. told the United Nation Security Council that the attack does not advance Israel nor America's interests. CNN's Jeremy Diamond joins us now live from Tel Aviv. And Jeremy, obviously, Secretary of State Rubio is expected in Israel in the coming days. What's at stake with this meeting?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Well, there is a lot at stake and that's because, Boris, over the last three days since the Israeli military carried out this strike in the Qatari capital, the shockwaves from that strike certainly have not diminished yet. I mean, we are still very unsure about where things are going to go, whether with regards to the U.S.-Qatari relationship with regards to how Qatar will respond to this Israeli strike. And also, of course, as it relates to the war in Gaza and the prospects of securing a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

And so, all of that is going to be on the agenda as not only Secretary Rubio meets today with the Qatari prime minister, but as President Trump himself is expected to meet with him as well. And then as Secretary Rubio takes all of that information and heads to Israel to discuss American priorities in the region, as well as the prospects of getting back to negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

I think it's really important to note the anger that we have heard in recent days from the Qatari prime minister in public, which I expect he will also be voicing in private, in these meetings with the president and with the secretary of state. He has also made clear that he wants to see a response to this Israeli strike, and he has talked about it in terms of something "meaningful" that actually deters Israel from carrying out such an attack again in the future. And of course, we also saw the United States yesterday, taking the very rare step of joining a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli strike in Qatar. Extremely rare considering the United States typically abstains or even vetoes resolutions that are critical of Israel at the Security Council.

And that really just gives you the backdrop of all of this to understand just how significant that strike was a few days ago, how it has pitted one U.S. ally against another, and very much the United States trying to remedy that, but also trying to get things back on track as it relates to a ceasefire and hostage release negotiations.

Qatar, of course, has been the key mediator in those negotiations and following this Israeli strike, their role in that mediation effort going forward has very much been thrust into uncertainty. And so, you can expect that that will also be a discussion. And finally, the Qatari prime minister will probably be seeking assurances that this will not happen again. We know that President Trump signaled in his statement in the immediacy of this strike that he had told the Qataris it will not happen again.

And yet since then, we've heard the Israeli prime minister strike quite a defiant tone, telling Qatar and other countries that might be harboring Hamas officials expel them or bring them to justice. If you don't, we will he said.

[13:35:00]

And so, you can expect that that will also be the subject of conversation. But a very consequential series of meetings today between the Qatari prime minister and senior U.S. officials to be followed by the secretary of state heading to Israel and conveying a lot of those messages as well. Boris?

SANCHEZ: Jeremy Diamond, live for us in Tel Aviv. Thank you so much. Brianna?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": We are breaking news out of Chicago where an ICE operation has turned deadly. CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is following this. Priscilla, what have you learned?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Brianna, recall that the administration has surged officers to the Chicago area where they have been conducting immigration enforcement operations. Well, we're learning that this morning, one of those operations turned deadly. Here's what we know about what unfolded in the Chicago suburbs. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement had participated in a vehicle stop of a driver. That driver, they say, had resisted arrest and had tried to drive off. And when did they did so, was dragging an agent who was involved in this operation. The agent who was being dragged by the vehicle, then was prompted to open fire.

They shot that driver. And we are told by the Department of Homeland Security that they are deceased and the agent has suffered serious injuries, but is in stable condition. Now, as far as who this person is, according to the Department of Homeland Security, this is someone who is in the United States illegally and had a history of reckless driving. But it's not immediately clear when he came into the country, what his nationality is, or really anything else about this individual's record other than what the department has said, and that we now know that he is deceased after this incident unfolded this morning.

Now, in a statement, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the following. "We are praying for the speedy recovery of our law enforcement officer. He followed his training used appropriate force and properly enforced the law to protect the public and law enforcement." She goes on to say that viral social media videos and activists encouraging illegal aliens to resist law enforcement not only spread misinformation, but also undermine public safety as well as the safety of our officers and those being apprehended.

Now, generally, after a situation like this, there would be an investigation at the local and the federal level to ensure what the department is saying here, that it was justifiable for the agent to open fire. So, that will be answered in the weeks to come as they do their own investigations. But as of now, what we do know is that this officer has suffered serious injuries and that the person at the center of this operation, who the administration says is an undocumented immigrant, is now dead. And again, Brianna, what was an operation, an immigration enforcement operation in the Chicago suburbs had now turned deadly.

KEILAR: Priscilla Alvarez, thank you for the latest there. And next, back to the latest in the investigation into the killing of Charlie Kirk. We are learning some new details about the 22-year-old suspect who is now in custody.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:42:27]

KEILAR: In the same week that we saw images of Charlie Kirk's murder flooding social media, yesterday, we saw HBCU's locked down over racially tinged threats. There was also a bomb threat that targeted Michigan's African American Lieutenant Governor and another at the Washington headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Recently, more than a dozen universities were targeted by false active shooter reports. It's all adding to what some mental health experts call a collective trauma. They can have distressing psychological effects on people.

If you're online, it can be pretty difficult to escape. Today, Utah's governor called social media a cancer on our society and he encouraged people to log off. Roxane Cohen Silver is a social health psychologist specializing in collective trauma and how people can cope with it. She's the distinguished Professor of Psychology, Medicine and Public Health and the Vice Provost of Institutional Research Assessment and Planning at the University of California, Irvine.

Thank you so much for being with us. Can you talk to us a little bit about this? How does this affect people psychologically, specifically viewing these violent events over and over again on social media?

ROXANE COHEN SILVER, COLLECTIVE TRAUMA PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCHER: One thing that I can say quite clearly, and first, thank you for having me. One thing that I can say quite clearly is that there is no psychological benefit to exposure to graphic gruesome images of violence and repeated exposure to these graphic images can be even more potent than just seeing something once.

KEILAR: So, explain that, the repeated exposure compared to say you see an event, maybe you even witnessed something in person. Why is that so different when someone is watching it over and over? And I will just use as an example that I was on X yesterday and in my feed, populated a snippet of the Charlie Kirk shooting over and over repeatedly. I had to scroll off it. But before I could, I think I saw it three different times and I was not seeking out that content. Why is it specifically that repetition? And how does that work?

COHEN SILVER: Well, when you are at an event, there's a beginning, a middle, and an end. When you are seeing something looping over and over again via media, it is almost as if there's no stop.

[13:45:00]

It just continues over and over again, and that seems to be psychologically -- it has some psychological consequences. We see that with increased and repeated exposure to these kinds of images. One has flashbacks, anxiety, distress, maybe nightmares, hypervigilance, difficulty sleeping. And we see very clearly in research that my colleagues and I have conducted over the past 20 years, that the kinds of images that people are seeing now are far more graphic and gruesome than they were before.

Moreover, decades ago, we only were exposed to these kinds of images on television. Maybe you heard about the stories on radio, print media. And at that time, there were editors who were monitoring what we saw. But, now with social media and what used to be called user- generated content, this is content that somebody may be filming on their phone. People are distributing this content without thinking about the potential psychological consequences for the recipient.

KEILAR: And what's the impact of political polarization on the mental health of Americans?

COHEN SILVER: Well, it's very clear right now that political polarization is leading to increased stress. My colleagues and I have been studying the kinds of stressors that have been upsetting people, certainly since the beginning of the pandemic. And in fact, political polarization was one of the most stressful experiences reported by a nationally representative sample. We know that these things, this political polarization is leading to social conflict even within a family or within a social network.

And we know that people are seeing these kinds of graphic images and the kinds of stories that you were describing. It's all bad news all the time. And the political polarization, I believe, is only making it worse. KEILAR: So Professor, how can people cope with this?

COHEN SILVER: Well, my recommendation is that people monitor the amount of time that they are spending engaged with bad news in social media, in what -- witnessing graphic images. I think people should be very conscious about the amount of time that they're spending. I personally have not seen the videos. I am avoiding quite deliberately, not the news, but the graphic and gruesome images. And I think it's very, very important that people pay attention to how much time they're spending.

People can engage in doom scrolling, where they click on one bad story and then the next and the next. And it's very difficult to extricate oneself from that. But it's very important that we pay attention to how much time we are spending and we do our best to not click on these graphic images.

KEILAR: Yeah, it helps when you outline the stakes as you just have. Roxane Cohen Silver, thank you so much for being with us.

COHEN SILVER: Thank you very much for having me.

KEILAR: President Trump announcing plans to deploy National Guard troops to another American city. We'll have that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:52:57]

SANCHEZ: Today, President Donald Trump revealing the next stop in his crime crackdown, the city of Memphis. The announcement coming just days after his federal takeover of D.C. Police officially ended.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We're going to Memphis. Memphis is --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's the next city.

TRUMP: -- deeply troubled. And the mayor is happy. He's a Democrat mayor. The mayor is happy. And the governor, Tennessee, the governor is happy, deeply troubled. We're going to fix that just like we did Washington.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: CNN's Alayna Treene is at the White House with more details. Alayna, what are you learning?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yeah, look, I mean, he is now going, as he mentioned, going to turn his attention to take the model of what he's done here in Washington, D.C. with federalizing D.C.'s police force, putting out federal agents on the street and sending the National Guard. He's planning on using that model now in Memphis. A couple of important things to point out about Memphis though. One, it is a Democratic city, but it is in a blue -- it is a blue state or -- a blue city in a red state. Sorry there. And that does make this a little bit easier. I'm told in my conversations with people here at the White House. We know that the president had been saying he wanted to bring his crime push to Chicago.

But part of the reason it's been difficult for them to do that, of course, we are seeing them move forward with their immigration operation, but he has not yet sent the National Guard there or tried to do this domestic crime push because, essentially, Illinois's Governor J.B. Pritzker has said that he doesn't want them there and that he doesn't want the National Guard coming. And that has created some issues. I'm told the president has talked about this directly with Tennessee's governor, a Republican governor, and that essentially he's been given the green light.

And so that's part of why they're now turning their attention to Memphis. But one thing to keep in mind as well is, if you look at the crime rates of different cities across the country, Memphis actually had the highest violent crime rate last year among U.S. cities with a population over 250,000 people. That's according to a CNN review of FBI data.

[13:55:00]

If you look, it's actually worse, the crime in Memphis than in some of the other cities he's been targeting, at least with rhetoric so far. Places like of course, D.C. but also Chicago and Baltimore.

Now, one thing that I am also told, Boris, from some of my conversations with people here at the White House is while they are modeling what they're going to do in Memphis after Washington, D.C., it's of course very different. DC is not a state. The president had far more leeway to do what he wanted to do here. Like I said, with federalizing the metropolitan police force. Here, there's going to be some differences I'm told about what Memphis will look like. But all to say, this is just the start of what the president wants to do on a much larger scale. It's not just Memphis he wants to go to, to bring this crime push, but many other cities as well. Memphis, though for now, in part because the governor is allowing this to happen.

SANCHEZ: Alayna Treene, live for us at the White House. Thank you so much. Still plenty more news to come this afternoon on "CNN News Central." We're following the latest on the suspect arrested in the killing of Charlie Kirk. Stay with CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)