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Kimmel Defends Joke After First Lady, Trump Say He Should be Fired; Suspect Charged With Attempting to Assassinate Trump; High- Stakes Royal Visit by King Charles to White House, Congress. Aired 7- 7:30a ET

Aired April 28, 2026 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Jimmy Kimel fights back, responding to calls from the president and first lady he'd be fired or pulled from the air. Kimmel now explains his joke, speaks against hateful rhetoric, and tells the first lady to talk to her husband.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Make way for the king. Now, he's already navigated the twists and turns of a very difficult Washington, D.C., garden party. Now, we're standing by for his speech to Congress. New details on what he plans to say and definitely not say.

Then a carnival ride nightmare. What caused the cable to snap and what happened to all those people strapped in.

I'm John Berman with Kate Bolduan. Sara is in Los Angeles this morning. This is CNN News Central.

BOLDUAN: All right. Let's get to that breaking news overnight, a battle over free speech in the midst of a spike in political violence. Jimmy Kimmel is now responding after both the president and the first lady called for him to be fired all over a joke he told that drew new attention after the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Here is what he said days before the dinner.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY KIMMEL, HOST, JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE!: And, of course, our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Then after the attack on the dinner, the first lady has called for ABC to get rid of Kimmel. The president joined in on that posting this, that Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.

Jimmy Kimmel isn't backing down. He's pushing back overnight, explaining his joke and defending his right to free speech.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KIMMEL: It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he's almost 80 and she's younger than I am. It was not, by any stretch, of the definition a call to assassination, and they know that.

I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do. And I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: This is all part of the larger finger-pointing blame game, if you will, that's happening in Washington on far beyond after that dinner shooting, Republicans accusing Democrats of inspiring political violence, Democrats telling Republicans to essentially look in the mirror.

Alayna Treene is live at the White House to start us off this morning. Alayna, what are you hearing about this now or what are you expecting to hear in the coming moments?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. There's a lot I take away from kind of what we saw, where we saw kind of the conversation, at least, around the shooting on Saturday night end up yesterday.

You know, I'd note that in the immediate aftermath of that shooting when me and our other colleagues, several other reporters had raced over from the Washington Hilton back to the White House to hear the president speak in that brief press conference he did at the White House, I mean, he had called for unity. And he had also been very clear that he believed that in that moment he felt like Democrats, Republicans, but also reporters, which sometimes I think some people conflate with being liberal, you know, he was saying that everyone was unified and that everyone was doing a good job about how they were discussing how the nights unfolded. That very much was a different conversation that we started to hear play out yesterday and really throughout the afternoon, Kate.

Now, one of the things, just going back to this Kimmel back and forth, a couple takeaways I have. One, I thought it was pretty remarkable to see the first lady come out with that statement saying, enough is enough, it is time for ABC to take a stand. She was the first one actually who came out to criticize Kimmel and call for his firing. And that is rare for someone as intensely private as the first lady, who often does not get involved in these types of disputes.

And all of that came as well as we saw the press secretary, the deputy attorney, or, excuse me, the acting attorney general now, Todd Blanche, come out and saying that it is time to end the political violence, blaming Democrats in the media and using Kimmel kind of as their chief example of why they believe that a lot of the political violence in this country is due to rhetoric on the left. Now, of course, I will say we did see the back and forth kind of play out yesterday. You heard Democrats, we saw the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, come out and condemn what the president was saying. We saw Trump issue a series -- and not just him, a lot of his top administration officials, issues a series of different rebukes trying to argue that what the left has done has resulted in a lot of the political violence trained on him in recent years.

[07:05:05]

This is a conversation, though, I should note, that we've had many times in the last several years, this blame game back and forth.

And before I go, Kate, I just want to mention one quick thing, the thing about Kimmel that's also interesting, is the last time we had this conversation about him potentially getting fired for comments he made, came at the last time we saw the president go to Windsor for a royal visit. We now have the royals back here, just a weird kind of coincidence, I think, as we're seeing all this play out publicly.

BOLDUAN: That is quite a strange one, right? Oh, quite a moment. And a lot about to happen, as you mentioned with this royal visit happening at the very same time.

It's good to see Alayna. Thank you so very much.

Let's go over to Sara now. Hey, Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Hey, Kate.

This morning we are learning more about 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, the man now charged with trying to assassinate the president. He showed little emotion during his first court appearance Monday, only answering yes and no to the judge when addressed.

FBI Director Kash Patel says investigators have now gained access to his phone. Authorities are also tracking his travel and looking at his online activity.

A CNN analysis of Allen's social media found nearly 5,000 posts on X and Blue Sky, accounts linked to him, show a shift towards political rage in the last couple of years. Those posts compared Trump to Hitler and shared conspiracies at the first assassination attempt on the president was staged.

With me now is CNN Senior Law Enforcement Analyst Andy McCabe. I'm curious, there are some details that we are still trying to understand about this. What is the most important detail that you learned from the DOJ timeline so far? And what questions do you have about it?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Yes. So, we learned a few interesting things yesterday from the filing of the charging document. Cole, of course, was -- or I'm sorry, Allen was presented in court and arraigned, and the document was released.

So, I would say, first, we expected to see a charge based on the shooting of the U.S. Secret Service agent that had been suggested by the U.S. attorney and the deputy -- or, I'm sorry, the acting attorney general, and, of course, that didn't happen. And I think what that tells us is that the government is just not perfectly sure who fired the projectile, the bullet that actually hit the Secret Service agent.

So, there's still some, you know, a bit of the fog of war around that exchange. They'll be able to figure this out likely when the forensic examinations come back from all the different firearms and the things they collect there. So, that was not in the document.

But what was was the charge, the much more serious charge of attempt to assassinate the president. I don't think anybody's surprised by the fact that he was charged with that. We expected we'd see it eventually.

But, really, what it signifies to me, Sara, is that the evidence the government has already on day three of the investigation is so incredibly strong against Allen for the attempted assassination, that they were able to bring that charge right off the top.

So, it's just an incredibly strong case. It's hard to understand even how his attorney will make, you know, a significant defense to these charges. He'll defend himself, but, boy, you don't see this one going to trial.

SIDNER: Yes. I mean, you have comments that the family has clearly talked to police and made -- you've got the writings and the social media from the suspect in this case. So, they're gathering quite a bit of evidence.

I do want to ask you one of the big pieces of evidence that they now have access to is his phone. What do you make of what they'll be able to learn from going through his own phone?

MCCABE: Sure. So, the phone's really going to let the investigators look backwards across his life, at least over the last several weeks, and to uncover things like, for instance, we learned yesterday that he actually reserved the hotel room on April 6th. So, that fact alone shows a very high degree of pre-planning. We know he was thinking about committing this assassination from at least the beginning of the month and maybe even further back, and the phone could unlock some of those mysteries.

It will also tell us whether or not he actually -- before the night in question, did he share his plans about what he was going to do with anyone else? We know he is very connected to his family and to his students that he teaches in California, to his employer. These are all the people that he addressed his sort of confessional message that he sent on the night of the attack. In fact, really, minutes before he went downstairs and tried to attack the ballroom, he sent that message via scheduled email.

So, we're going to be able to see what the relationships are between Allen and those people and whether or not anyone had any sense that he was going to do this or potentially even supported it in any way.

[07:10:09]

We'll also see the social media posts, a lot of which we've gotten already, and show a pretty radicalized person in the last few years.

SIDNER: Andy McCabe, it's always good to talk to you. There is a lot to uncover here, I think, and some questions left. But, certainly, there's a lot of evidence that's being gathered at this moment. I do appreciate it. John?

BERMAN: All right. Breaking this morning, gas prices reach a new high for the year, the biggest one-day increase in a month. So, why the jump this morning?

A string of tornadoes rips across the country in this deadly outbreak could reach its peak today.

And then avert your eyes if you're afraid of heights or carnival rides. This one's got both here. What happens when that cable snapped midair?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

BERMAN: So, this morning, he managed the garden party. Can he manage Congress? We're talking about King Charles preparing at this very moment to speak before a joint meeting of Congress. He did hit a D.C. garden party yesterday, which was largely off-the-record. Today will very much be on. And if you are playing a drinking game or you take a sip every time he mentions friendship and shared experience, you will likely not be thirsty.

With us this morning, CNN Anchor and Business Editor-at-Large Richard Quest. Richard, great to see you this morning.

We were analyzing the tea spread that was served yesterday, wondering if there was cucumber and salmon or just, you know, both or one or the other. But, listen. he's got a mission today. He comes at a very important time between the relationship between the United States and the U.K. One might use the word fraught.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN ANCHOR AND BUSINESS EDITOR-AT-LARGE: Right. Well, certainly, we would use the word fraught and fraying would be good words to use. But the point is, this is the man for the job.

Now, he's been doing this for 60-odd years. There is nothing that fazes him, per se. He knows exactly what his role is. The government, the U.K government, has tasked him to come here on a state visit, celebrating the 250th anniversary at a time when relations are pretty much at an all-time low. You've got to go back decades to really get to that sort of nadir.

But what's interesting is the king in what we believe is going to be, yes, there'll be friendship, there'll be common values. They'll talk about how they are going to come together. But he's going to admit that there have been differences, and that admitting differences does not mean the whole thing's about to fall over and come down round your ears, because that's the bit that will enable him to bridge the gap between the current British government and the administration.

BERMAN: And the big sticking point, the current one is Iran, you know, big difference between the British government and the U.S. and Iran. How closely do you expect him to, you know, toe the line there?

QUEST: He's not going to mention it, per se, but let's be clear, this difference isn't just between the British government and the U.S. You heard what Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said yesterday, let's wait and see the president's reaction to that. He basically said the U.S. nation was being humiliated by Iran.

So, what the king has to do is basically -- look, the relationship is strong. Come here, you all. Brit, American, what the king has to do --

BERMAN: This is what it's going to look like.

QUEST: Now, he's basically got to say together, they've got to say, look, we've been around a long time, you and I, we know each other. We know what's going on here. Let's not make the whole thing fall apart just because we have a disagreement over there. Do we agree? Thank you. Then we go and we go like that.

BERMAN: That's diplomacy. You completely won me over. Like it doesn't matter what was said, the way you said it won me over completely. And if the king does that today --

QUEST: Oh, look at those sandwiches, beautifully. The look at them, that the crusts are cut off. I'm guessing that's honey from the White House hives, just a pure guess, because there's a lot of it, by the look of it.

BERMAN: We will try to get a second source on that.

Richard Quest, thank you.

QUEST: Try and get me some to taste.

BERMAN: Thank you for bringing us together this morning, quite literally. I appreciate it. Kate?

BOLDUAN: The king and the president and the ghost of the queen looking over you both.

BERMAN: Yes.

QUEST: Mom (ph).

BOLDUAN: Let's start to this. I have never had Richard Quest vouch me. We should also just replay that over and over again.

Let's star to this, the man accused of killing a Florida grad student is expected in court very soon, and there are new details now, the suspect allegedly using ChatGPT to plan the attack. And the biggest moment from the Rays-Guardians game did not happen on the field. It happened in the bleachers, man versus young girl. What went down, that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

BOLDUAN: Orlando Magic are now one game away from eliminating top seed, the Detroit Pistons.

CNN's Coy Wire is here. Is that why I heard screaming from the other room while I was trying to sleep last night from my hubs?

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Yes. Yes, absolutely. Good morning, sunshine.

An eighth seed one win away from knocking off a one seed, we're talking David versus Goliath, but David just hit Goliath with a poster dunk. Abra kadabra, , the Orlando magic pulling playoff rabbits out of hats, stunning, top seeded Pistons, 94-88, now with a three-one series lead putting the east's number one seed on the brink of elimination.

This dunk by Jamal Cain, gravity, never heard of it. Cain showing Jalen Duren he has frequent flyer-myer (ph) to the rim. Hit three point game until late, but Desmond Bane drains three of his team-high 22, Orlando looking to become just the seventh eighth seed ever to beat a one in a series. Game five is Wednesday in Detroit.

Holy hockey pucks, the NHL playoffs just keep delivering insanity. Vegas was up 3-0 over Utah, but the Mammoth comes storming out of the ice age, scoring four unanswered goals, including Clayton Keller's shot with a little pinball wizardry off of Shea Theodore to give Utah the lead.

But Vegas would tie it up, send it to O.T., and that is where, who else, Shea Theodore hammers home his first career playoff overtime goal. It's the game winner, 5-4, Vegas evening the series at two.

[07:25:00]

Hold on. Did someone just say comeback? Allyson Felix, the most decorated woman in Olympic track history, is lacing them back up at 40, Kate, some four years after hanging up her cleats. 11 Olympic medals, 20 world championship medals, two kids, zero limits.

She told Times, let's go after the thing. Let's be vulnerable. That's not just a quote. That's a mic drop in motion, Kate. And eyes are on L.A. 2028 now in Allyson Felix's case. Apparently, greatness doesn't retire without reloads.

The Pittsburgh Pirates' Konnor Griffin hit his first career home run on his 20th birthday on Friday, and yesterday his teammates had a surprise in their clubhouse. He returned from the road trip and there was a big old bouncy house for the young fellow, and he took full advantage, from home run to fun run for him. All right, sticking in baseball, something you have to see here. File this under sometimes it just takes a little extra time to do the right thing. Raising Guardians in Cleveland, a fan bobbles a home run ball hit by Daniel Schneemann. It rolls toward a kid. The man, you know, kind of pries it away. Tampa reporter comes to the rescue, gives the girl ball. She's all smiles now. And turns out there's an even half plot twist, Kate, to this story. The girl's mom says the man later gave the ball to her daughter. So, in the end, she gets two souvenir baseballs from the game, turning an awkward moment into kind of sweeter.

BOLDUAN: I mean, there you go. All is well in the end. And that little girl, man, I love those shades. She's looking quite fly.

WIRE: She is cool. She is cool.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. Oh, Coy, thank you. Yes, J.B.?

BERMAN: I want a bouncy castle.

BOLDUAN: You want to a bouncy castle?

BERMAN: I want bouncy house like Konnor Griffin.

BOLDUAN: Which is really hilarious, because, Coy, you probably know this as well. John Berman hates when anyone knows it's his birthday.

BERMAN: Oh, yes. I'm not saying I want it for my birthday. I want it right now. I want a castle now.

WIRE: (INAUDIBLE,. Kate.

BERMAN: Yes. I mean, the guy's 20, he can't drink. So, he gets a bouncy castle instead. He has to have a kid's birthday party. I like it.

BOLDUAN: Yes. I mean, we can just -- anyway, yes, we're emotionally all 12 here. So --

BERMAN: You know, who needs a bouncy castle?

BOLDUAN: Tell me.

BERMAN: Elon Musk and Sam Altman.

Billionaire Thunderdome, the two men face off in court with the future of A.I. on the line.

And then breaking this morning, a man pleads guilty to plotting a terror attack on Taylor Swift's Eras Tour.

And breaking overnight, Jimmy Kimmel responds, what he said after the latest call from the president and first lady to get him fired.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KIMMEL: You know, how sometimes you wake up in the morning and the first lady puts out a statement demanding you be fired from your job. We've all been there, right?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:30:00]