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News Helicopter Crashes in Los Angeles, Killing 3 People; Poll: Democrats Hold 13-Point Lead on Generic Congressional Ballot; Charlie Kirk's Family Blames Utah Officials for Security Failures; Kennedy Center Board Votes to Close After Effing Crazy Trump Call. Aired 8:00- 8:30a ET

Aired September 16, 2026 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Cubs loss, they clinched their fourth straight NL Central title. All right, here you go, cuteness overload. You've heard of Braves legend, Chipper Jones.

Meet Chipper Jones. That cat, throwing out the first pitch, Kate. Braves Chipotle affiliate, Gwyneth.

Yep, hosting the first ever Purr at the Park. Staff member rescued this little fella from traffic last month. Team adopted him.

He's become a fan favorite. Lots of fans bringing their fur babies and donated pet supplies, Kate. The scouting report on Chipper Jones is good.

Say he's tough, has like nine lives. Problem is, he only throws like eight meows per hour. So we'll wish him the best of luck.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: I don't even know what to do with you sometimes. I really don't. I'm still stuck on skinny jeans on a sea lion. And also by the way --

WIRE: I forgot I had sea lions for you today.

BOLDUAN: This is why we were a match made in heaven. The moment I saw that champagne, those champagne bottles popping, I was like, that's a waste of good champagne. And you said the same thing.

WIRE: And you're like, how many days till Friday? Let's go.

BOLDUAN: I know as well. I mean, it can be Friday every day. You just, it's a state of mind, Coy.

It's a state of mind. Love you, dear. Thank you.

WIRE: You too.

BOLDUAN: A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: The living memorial to JFK closed for now after a quote, effing crazy call from President Trump to his handpicked Kennedy center board. It's all over not being able to put Trump's name on the building. Now the president is threatening to close it permanently.

Also breaking overnight, a helicopter crash kills a TV news crew covering a story in Los Angeles. A bystander on the ground also killed. What officials are revealing about the tragedy this morning.

And new video showing a terrifying moment that a stolen car speeds down a boardwalk, striking a pedestrian and narrowly missing others, bystanders jumped into action.

I'm Sara Sidner with Kate Bolduan and John Berman. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BOLDUAN: So this morning it is unclear what caused a tragedy to unfold. A news helicopter to crash and two people on board dead. One person, a bystander on the ground killed as well.

I'm going to show you the scene hours after the crash. Just look at that tragic crash in a Los Angeles neighborhood. The pilot and the journalist on board, they were covering, like other news helicopters were, a bus crash that had happened nearby when something very clearly goes wrong in their helicopter.

A live video feed of their camera captured the moments leading up to the crash. Knowing what we know now of how it ended, this is distressing to watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Pull. Can you pull, you can't pull up?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: And then the feed goes out. This morning, NTSB investigators are expected to arrive on the scene to begin their hard work here. CNN's Pete Muntean is joining us now.

I was talking to Mary Schiavo earlier, there's a lot not known, but a lot they will learn very quickly. Bring us up to speed, Pete.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: You know, Kate, that video, hard to watch, but it will contain some major clues for investigators. More on that in a second. Here's what we know right now about what L.A. Mayor Karen Bass called a heartbreaking night in Los Angeles. This helicopter from KNBC was covering a fatal collision of an SUV with a city bus.

And witnesses nearby say it was clear that something was wrong with the helicopter as it came crashing down not far away from that scene. The helicopter was destroyed to the point that LAFD firefighters said they could not make out the tail number. NBC4 identified the people killed on board as aerial reporter Eliana Moreno and pilot George Marciniw, both employees of contract helicopter operator Angel City Air. Moreno had been reporting from the air over Southern California since 2010. She and Marciniw had flown together since about 2023. A third person on the ground also killed. The flight tracking shows this helicopter departed from Van Nuys Airport, was airborne about an hour and 15 minutes, mostly orbiting around the scene at a slow airspeed. This is over a very populated area, so not a lot of clear areas to put down in case there was a problem.

You can hear in that video from on board the helicopter that turbine engine begins to roll back, a horn sounds in the cockpit. That is the oral warning for the low main rotor RPM, a critical problem, especially in a single engine helicopter, an AS350 like this. The main rotor, if it's not spinning fast enough, then there's not enough lift to keep the helicopter in the air.

Usually pilots follow a procedure to make a controlled emergency descent. It's called an auto rotation in a helicopter. NTSB investigators will of course want to look at the maintenance history of the helicopter.

[08:05:00]

These are so very complex machines, and at low altitude, there is very little margin for error -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Very clearly. Pete, thank you so much for the update on this. We'll see what we can learn also later today -- John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: We've got brand new numbers out just this morning on the race for control of Congress. This is a Marquette Law University poll. It finds Democrats now hold a 13-point lead on the generic congressional ballot test -- that's among likely voters -- 54 percent to 41 percent. 13 points is about as big as we've seen. It's about up from a six-point lead in this same poll in July.

The New York Times, out just yesterday, found about a nine-point lead for Democrats. Again, that's a lot, and in the face of these electoral headwinds, the president is making headlines today in his battle with the Kennedy Center in Washington, threatened to keep the arts mecca closed unless his name goes back on it. With us now, CNN's Jake Tapper, anchor of "THE LEAD", Rugged Outdoorsman, and now the host of "OUT OF OFFICE" on CNN, All Access.

Jake, it's great to see you this morning. Actually, I mean that. I'm not even being cynical or facetious there.

I mean all that. Listen, the poll from Marquette, the 13-point lead, you know, it's a big lead, and I just find it striking that so many of the days of the week on the calendar are still made up of fights like we saw yesterday between President Trump and the Kennedy Center over getting his name on it. And the question, I think, facing Republicans across the country is, you know, how much is the president focused on the things that will be determinative in their races?

What are you hearing?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: I mean, I think that's exactly the problem. The problem is that these polls and the Marquette University Law School poll and then the CNN/New York Times poll showing Democrats with a distinct advantage in the generic ballot, especially among independent voters, suggest that Republicans in general are outperforming President Trump, but that President Trump is an albatross. He's an anchor.

And if you dive deeper into the numbers, you see that voters, including his own most reliably loyal voters, white voters without college degrees, are increasingly dissatisfied with the president's performance on key issues, including inflation, including the economy overall, including the war in Iran. His numbers really started to plunge in February with the war in Iran. And as you know, instead of trying to resolve the war in Iran with any show, with any display of seriousness, or focusing laser-like on the economy -- and keep in mind the economy, of course, is one of two issues where President Trump can credit his views or his positions as why he got elected in 2024.

Instead of doing that, he is focused on these legacy projects. So I'll call them that to be polite. The idea of the ballroom, the idea of the arch, the idea of the reflecting pool, the idea of the Kennedy Center, which he is now, he and his hand-picked board are going to shut down and maybe who even knows what they're going to do to it, unless his name goes on top of it, despite what judges are ruling over and over again.

He does seem to be focused on these building projects, which is, you know, I guess, psychologically, we know he's a builder, he's a real estate developer, and he's 80, he's thinking about his legacy, but that is not where Republicans would like him to be focused. According to these polls, they want him to be focused on their needs and not his.

BERMAN: Yes, it doesn't make gas more affordable. This has to do with 2026, but of course it's never too early to look at 2028. And you were out fly fishing with Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, a really, really interesting interview.

A lot of us have heard the back and forth on Kamala Harris, but there was also a section where you talked to Governor Newsom also, about sort of COVID. I want to play that exchange. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): There needs to be like a 9-11 commission on COVID.

TAPPER: Yes.

NEWSOM: You know, what we did right, what we did wrong. Yes, and look, everyone's a genius in hindsight. So, you know, coulda, woulda.

TAPPER: Well, what would you do differently?

NEWSOM: I had a whole chapter just about Purell. We were running around doing price gouging legislation against Purell, and everyone was thinking it was a Purell-based crisis. I mean, you know, we --

TAPPER: People were scrubbing their groceries.

NEWSOM: Yes, I mean, DeSantis was closing down his beaches before we closed ours. I mean, the idea that we closed beaches was insane, in hindsight. Obviously, the schools taking too long.

A lot of districts were open, but the big ones weren't. LA refused. And I regret that, obviously.

TAPPER: I remember just like pushing people, experts, like when can we open the schools?

[08:10:00]

Why are restaurants open, but schools aren't?

NEWSOM: Yes, yes.

TAPPER: And this is in a much smaller version, what you were no doubt going through, which is teachers were like going online and accusing me of wanting to kill them.

NEWSOM: Everybody was fearful. I remember it was, you're about to reopen them, and then there's a new wave.

TAPPER: Right.

NEWSOM: All of a sudden there's a new variant that comes out.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Some of the most telling moment there was maybe the sigh from Governor Newsom there. To what extent do you think there'll still be a reckoning for some leaders in this going forward?

TAPPER (on camera): Well, I mean, I think it's used right now very much as a cudgel to attack people. But the truth of the matter is that a lot of people made mistakes during COVID. And you see Governor Newsom there, I think sincerely, most sincerely with that sigh, thinking about how much he regrets the schools closing and that there wasn't more that was done to reopen them.

We see the damage that with that closing the schools obviously did to kids when it comes to education and learning.

One of the reasons that we're trying this experiment with this longer form digital show, where we go out to where people want to go. And I want to apologize to all the fishermen out there for my horrendous cast. I'm just very embarrassed by how bad that is. In any case, was to get them out of the studio, away from the talking points, and really try to get a real conversation.

So we're going to have another one of these next month. But I think that the more -- John, you and I always think like, it'd be great if you could put sodium pentothal into these people before we do the interview, so they can just tell us what they really think. This is an attempt at that, to get them in a comfortable place, talk about their biographies, et cetera. But I think that that was sincere.

I mean, I think he got elected for a lot of things, for a lot of reasons in 2018. COVID was not one of them, and yet it ended up being the defining legacy for so many governors.

BERMAN: You know, maybe rivers can serve as truth serum. Jake Tapper, it really was a terrific interview. It's great to see you this morning.

We look forward to talking to you throughout this midterm season. And we'll see you later on "THE LEAD" at 5 p.m. Thanks so much -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right, breaking overnight. Charlie Kirk's family has filed a legal notice accusing officials at Utah Valley University of stunning security failures in connection with Kirk's assassination.

Also, it is decision day for the Federal Reserve. We are standing by to see if it will raise interest rates for the first time in years, despite President Trump's demanding to lower them.

And the European Union is now proposing banning all social media use for children under the age of 13. All those stories and more, ahead.

[08:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: So overnight, we have learned that the family of Charlie Kirk is making some new legal moves, saying that failures, security failures by Utah officials, including at Utah Valley University, basically led to Charlie Kirk's death, signaling the potential of a new lawsuit to come.

CNN's Brynn Gingras is following this one. Brynn, what are they doing? What are they saying?

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, exactly what you said there. This is basically putting the university on notice, the state on notice. This is something that is filed before we see a wrongful death lawsuit filed.

So essentially, it's talking about all the security lapses that Charlie Kirk's family said happened right before his death about a year ago now, if you can believe that. So basically saying that one of the big things was there wasn't even enough security on campus for a crowd this size. If you remember, there was thousands of people that showed up for him to speak and to see him debating with these students.

They claim at least there were six officers, six campus officers that were at that scene. There was no security checks. There was nothing that you would see typically if you were to go to a sporting event at that school, they say.

That was never --

BOLDUAN: They had thousands of people, right?

GINGRAS: Exactly, any event. So, you know, metal detectors, those sort of things. They also didn't have drones flying around because this area was sort of in, they called it like a fishbowl. Essentially, all these tall buildings around this area where he was going to be speaking.

They basically said that they didn't monitor any of those rooftops. As we know, of course, it's alleged that Tyler Robinson took that fatal shot from a rooftop. And that is something else that they actually pointed out.

In a text message, they said, the Kirk family and Turning Point, said that they received a text message from a student group basically saying that, hey, there's this rooftop and you should be aware of it. And Turning Point text the chief of the campus police saying, "Hello, Chief Long -- we received this message today from the student group. There is student roof access pretty close to where Charlie Kirk will set up at Utah Valley, the Sorenson Student Center, as a couple of staircases that go up to the walkways on the roof."

And they basically said that the chief responded -- there you go -- "I got you covered." Essentially saying, OK, he took ownership of this security matter. We didn't really have to think anything about it. And of course, we know that they believe that wasn't the case, obviously.

Another big one I do want to point out is they also didn't have ambulances. If you remember from that day, Charlie Kirk was basically, his body was put into a private SUV and brought to the hospital.

So these are a bunch of things that they've listed in this notice saying we intend to sue. At this point, they have not said how much they are looking to claim. But that's, of course, something that we might see when the suit is actually filed.

BOLDUAN: Yes, what comes out in this is quite interesting.

GINGRAS: It's alarming.

BOLDUAN: It's alarming.

GINGRAS: Yes.

BOLDUAN: I was like, what word am I going to pick here? Thanks, Brynn.

GINGRAS: All right.

BOLDUAN: Really appreciate it -- Sara.

[08:20:00]

SIDNER: All right, could Canada be the next member of the European Union? It's still not in Europe. And how will the U.S. react to the news?

Also, Ed Sheeran's tour is falling apart. All of his opening acts have quit after Malcolm Moore was dropped over what he said on stage regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Those stories and more ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNER: No name. No reopening. That's the new threat from President Trump over the Kennedy Center.

His hand-pegged board voted to close the memorial for JFK for renovations. After a judge again said Trump cannot put his name on the building. This morning, we're getting new details about the president's chaotic call with the board.

Which one source called effing crazy. Democratic Congressman Joyce Beatty, who is behind the lawsuit blocking Trump's demands to have his name there, says Trump simply threw a tantrum.

CNN's Alayna Treene is live at the White House for us this morning. What are you learning, Alayna?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I mean, it was effing crazy. That is how that one source, as you mentioned, Sara, described this very tense meeting.

[08:25:00]

During which the Kennedy Center board actually voted to close down the building for two years for renovations. And the president himself had called in to the meeting. Now, we were told that the president got into this lengthy and bitter back and forth with the Democratic Congresswoman Joyce Beatty.

Her lawsuit is actually the one that has prevented the president from adding his name to the front of the building. According to these sources, the president screamed at the congresswoman and berated her for getting the courts involved. He also blamed her for what he argued was the decline of the Kennedy Center.

Now, Beatty, for her part, has argued that she told the president that he had put the Kennedy Center deep into debt. And she also framed all of this as the president throwing a tantrum. She did that during an interview with CNN's Kaitlin Collins. Let's listen to what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOYCE BEATTY (D-OH): The president threw a tantrum. I was not going to let him tell me that he thought I was incompetent. So I responded by telling him I knew he was incompetent.

He wanted to blame me if someone died, if something happened, if the ceiling fell in. And I reminded him, he has us at war, and people are dying.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: Now, Sara, this tense exchange came just moments after a federal judge had dealt a big blow to the President and Kennedy Center officials, essentially stopping them from moving forward with these plans to re-add the president's name to the front of the building, as well as from moving forward with some of these renovations. Cooper, the U.S. District Judge Casey Cooper, said on Tuesday that the proposal, which would have added an inscription thanking the President for renovating and restoring the institution's edifice, as well as a move to rename the center's campus after him, Cooper said, it bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted. He went on to say, simply put, defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress's blessing.

Now, I will note, the Kennedy Center, as I mentioned, did vote yesterday to shutter the Kennedy Center for two years. But before they're able to officially do that, they're going to need to secure a ruling reversing Cooper's decision here. We're told that the Justice Department is expected to file that request by Friday.

The President, for his part, Sara, is essentially arguing that if his name is not re-added to the building, then he does not want to move forward with these renovations. He wrote in a True Social post yesterday that the closing will take place immediately. However, the renovation and reconstruction, which is a very large and complex job, cannot begin until such time as the D.C. Circuit Court rules on the board's approved name. That's what he wrote on social media. All to say, this has been a very crazy, aggressive fight that the President and the Kennedy Center board has really been wrapped into with the courts. Beatty, for her part, argues that she's going to continue to fight this until, essentially, it's done.

She said that this proposal that they are putting forth is unlawful, so we'll have to see where this leads.

SIDNER: We've got a lot going on behind you there, as well, there. Alayna Treene, thank you so much, live from the White House for us this morning -- John.

BERMAN: Right. A brand new scene investigation shows Russian spy satellites could be helping Iran target U.S. assets.

And then a stolen car speeds down a busy boardwalk before crashing the driver, then chased down by bystanders.

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[08:30:00]