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Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA) is Interviewed about China; Polls on the Race for Senate; REK CEO Cix is Interviewed about Robot Boxing. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired September 25, 2026 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Mow is Congressman Eugene Vindman from Virginia, a Democrat on the Armed Services and Agriculture Committee.

Congressman, thanks so much for being with us.

I know you've been concerned, along with several other members of Congress, about what China is doing and what role they might be playing in helping Iran. What would you like to see the Trump administration do about this, or how would you like to see them address it?

REP. EUGENE VINDMAN (D-VA): Well, John, first of all, thanks for having me. Second of all, I'm very concerned, I'm very disturbed by the fact that China is providing support, intelligence support to Iran to target American service members, likely resulting in casualties and destruction of American military equipment. And I, and my Democratic veteran colleagues in the House Armed Services Committee, have put pressure, demanding that the president address this issue. I mean, at the very least, he ought to be addressing this issue.

And, John, you know, there's this Chinese term kowtow, which means to bow and to show submission. And it seems to me that this president, President Trump, is remarkably weak and kowtowing to the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.

BERMAN: The president, obviously, is now in day three of meetings with Xi. Just moments ago he posted on social media about the discussions they've had on A.I. He says "very productive meeting with President Xi for both the U.S. and China. Tremendous things will be happening. Like almost everyone else, he seemed to like calling the poorly and inaccurately named artificial intelligence to a far more accurate and important name, superintelligence. That would be super. Everyone last night agreed."

What do you think the president can walk away with after these meetings? What do you think he has achieved, whether it be on A.I. or other things?

VINDMAN: Look, these meetings seem to be mostly ceremony. High on ceremony and low on substance. And so, even in the context of A.I., it seems like the Chinese president is leading President Trump in this direction. President Trump has repeatedly minimized the dangers of A.I., the need for A.I. regulation. And it is President Xi that has -- seems to be proposing that there is some sort of regime that China and America agree to.

So, again, this is an area where our president is yielding to Chinese leadership. And, frankly, unacceptable. This is one of the major dangers we face over the coming years, and America should be leading in this area.

BERMAN: So, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said over the last day that in his last meetings with President Trump, which we believe were on the sidelines at the United Nations, that President Trump committed that Ukraine would be able to build its own Patriot missiles. Now, this is something that the president had said he would do before then seem to back off a little. Now, President Zelenskyy says that the -- our president, the U.S. president, has committed.

You're on the Armed Services Committee. Have you seen any signs of a firm U.S. commitment yet? And what difference would that make?

VINDMAN: Look, the bottom line is, we're aware of plans that have been drawn up by American manufacturers that are, as of -- as of at least last week or so, are sitting on the desk of the secretary of defense for approval. I don't know what the timeline is for that approval, but I know that this is a long process. And this president has made these promises before, it's been months now, with very little progress in this regard.

In the meantime, the Ukrainians are facing what is likely to be the harshest winter they've faced during this war. I was just in Ukraine less than two weeks ago, and the Russians were flying jet powered drones over our heads. They knew American -- senior American officials, there were seven members of Congress, three Republican senators, four members of the House, including a Republican that were in the city -- and they flew those drones to intimidate us, to terrorize the population.

Again, this president should have taken a much firmer tone with the Russians. The Russians will not yield until they are pressured. And the House passing the sanctions package, the Lindsey Graham sanctions package, is a step. Really, the president needs to implement those immediately.

BERMAN: Congressman, I mentioned not only you're on Armed Services. You're on the Agriculture Committee. I'm actually on my way to Virginia for the Farm Aid concert Saturday night in Virginia Beach, which is a great event, by the way, raising money for farmers who tell us they are suffering largely.

[09:35:00]

What are you hearing from farmers in Virginia, and how do you think the government can help them?

VINDMAN: Well, first of all, welcome to Virginia. We're glad to have you.

Look, I have done numerous farm tours over the last few months. And farmers are under tremendous pressure. They're under tremendous pressure because a good swath of fertilizer comes from the Middle East. And so the Iran War has affected the prices of fertilizer, diesel is limited coming out of the Middle East. The Iran war has caused those prices to spike north of $6. So, farmers are under tremendous pressure.

The president started this war in the Middle East without a plan, without ever coming to the American people. Here we are, seven months into this conflict, and with really no signs of it abating. And you know who's bearing the cost of it? It's the American people, in blood and treasure, our farmers, at the grocery store, and at the gas station.

BERMAN: Congressman Eugene Vindman from Virginia, appreciate you being with us this morning. Thank you.

Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, keeping an eye on the weather. We're seeing big waves crashing along the outer banks in North Carolina. We're tracking the very powerful storm that's gaining strength, taking aim all along the East Coast. A rare, early fall nor'easter. Some 40 million people are in its path.

And Sara Sidner takes on a human fighting robot. Or at least talks to the CEO of a company that's making them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Activate direct (ph) mode. Come on. Direct mode. All right, go for it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:41:06]

BERMAN: Thirty-nine days, we think, until the midterm elections. Where do things stand?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Yes, we think.

BERMAN: Well, I say we think because I haven't actually counted myself.

ENTEN: Oh, OK.

BERMAN: I've just sort of picked the number. Thirty-nine days until the midterms, we think. So, where do things stand in the race for the U.S. Senate?

With us now, CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten. ENTEN: Yes.

BERMAN: Control of the U.S. Senate, at one point, seemed out of reach for Democrats. What about now?

ENTEN: I think that people who have not been paying attention would be quite surprised to find that Democrats are actually the favorite now to take back the United States Senate.

And why do I say that? Just take a look here. 2026 Senate. This is a result -- if the results, in fact, match the polls. Now, of course, I'll note, it's September and the polls aren't perfect. But if the polls are exactly right and they hold, look at this, Democrats get 53 seats after all said and done, Republicans, 47 seats. Why? They flip Maine. They flip Ohio. They flip Iowa. They flip Texas. They flip North Carolina. And they flip Alaska, which has very much been in the news. And they hold all the states that they are, at this point, potentially in danger of losing. The bottom line is this, this has been a great month if you're a Democrat or you're rooting for the Democrats in terms of the polling. Pretty much all of the polls that have come in have been really, really good. Dare I say, the polling suggests a blue wave is absolutely building.

BERMAN: Three quick caveats. Number one, you talk about Maine here. You're talking about the average of the polls in Maine.

ENTEN: Correct.

BERMAN: Because people are going to go, oh, well, "The New York Times" poll shows Susan Collins heads. It does. It does. But the average right now is still --

ENTEN: Yes, but there were two other polls that showed her behind.

BERMAN: Also, it's September. And polls aren't perfect. We've stipulated that.

What are the prediction markets saying about this?

ENTEN: Yes, OK. So, you say, OK, you know, but the polls, they've been underestimating Republicans in the past. We can look at the prediction markets, right? We can look at the prediction markets. They say the same story. Basically, chance to win the Senate at this point. Now Democrats have a 61 percent chance to win the United States Senate. At this point in the 2024 cycle, it was just a 25 percent chance, right? Republicans were favored back in the 2025 cycle.

And you go back to the 2018 cycle, you see the prediction markets saying that Republicans were favored then as well. And, of course, they gained seats in that cycle. So, as I steal the words out of Johnny B.'s mouth, the bottom line is this, the prediction markets are agreeing with the polls. The prediction markets have been good in the past. And, listen, right now the Kalshi prediction market has Democrats favored to win back the United States Senate with a 61 percent chance. BERMAN: You talked about 2018 because what some Republicans say is,

hey, look, Republicans lost the House then but we actually gained seats in the Senate. They say that's what could happen this time.

ENTEN: No, this is a completely different picture. And it all has to do with President Trump. Look at this. OK, Trump's average net approval in the key Senate states that year. Back in 2018, right, look at that, Trump was above water. Trump was actually a positive in the key Senate races that year, right? The map was really red. States like Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota, right?

But look now, minus 19 points. President Trump is 23 points less popular in the key Senate races this year than they were in the 2018 cycle.

BERMAN: And you can even look at the states in play.

ENTEN: You can look at the states in play. Look at this, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Texas. Look at this. President Trump's net approval rating, minus ten or worse in all of them. And, of course, he won all these states except for Maine, which, of course, he is the furthest underwater. President Trump is a drag on the Republican Party. That is a key difference from 2018. Now, Democrats are absolutely favored to take back the Senate. Of course, it's still September.

BERMAN: Harry Enten, thank you very much.

ENTEN: Thank you, my friend.

BERMAN: This September.

A lot of news this morning. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:49:09]

BOLDUAN: Very wild moments in a Phoenix courtroom as a father attacks the man convicted of killing his son-in-law. You can see him just lunge toward the defendant. He hits him multiple times in the courtroom. He was arrested, ultimately released, after all of this. This happened as the defendant was being sentenced to life in prison for the murder of that 27-year-old son-in-law, who was on maternity -- sorry, military leave at the time.

Today, cities across the country are celebrating Dolly Parton Appreciation Day. The date, September 25th, is a play on the country legend's hit "9 to 5."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DOLLY PARSON, MUSICIAN (singing): Working 9 to 5. What a way to make a living. Barely getting by. It's all taking and no giving.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BOLDUAN: Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, for one, they're donating 100 percent of the proceeds from their Friends in Low Places Bar to the Nashville Public Library and Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.

[09:50:09]

And their events and celebrations in cities across the country.

Speaking of music, Taylor Swift is out with new music this morning. She dropped four new songs at midnight from "The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore," including a new single, "Patient Zero."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TAYLOR SWIFT, MUSICIAN (Singing): When the toxins take their hold, you'd rather die than let go. But if you're sick of him, I got you, I was patient zero.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: So, there's also a music video starring Dakota Johnson and Colin Farrell. He -- that is set to release during Sunday's video music awards.

$13.5 billion. That is how much Americans are expected to spend on Halloween this year. The most popular purchase is obviously candy. Ninety-six percent of shoppers spending Halloween dollars buying sweets for trick or treaters. The National Retail Federation, though, estimates that people will be shelling out $4.4 billion alone on costumes. That includes about 920 million on pet costumes, because why not.

Sara.

SIDNER: Man versus robot in the boxing ring. In San Francisco, a social media influencer faced off against large humanoid robots in a cage match. As you might imagine, when you see how large these things are, you can imagine what might happen to the human. The robots are controlled professionally, by the way, by UFC and MMA fighters.

(VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: All seemed to be going well for the human until there was a major kick that took him down.

Joining me now is Cix. He's the founder and CEO of REK, the humanoid robot combat sports league.

First of all, give me a sense of how the robot works because, in this case, there's like guys from MMA telling it what to do. How hard is it to control?

CIX, CEO, REK: You effectively use something that looks kind of like a controller, but it has semi-autonomy on top of it. So, I mean, it's basically like controlling a real-life video game.

SIDNER: So, you can control it with just a controller and you're throwing the punches.

I do wonder, is this a fair fight?

CIX: Ah, so, for now. I would say for now.

SIDNER: OK.

CIX: We intentionally didn't get an actual UFC fighter. We thought Frankie and his just crazy antics was the perfect person to start with. He reached out to us on social media about two months ago, and he kept begging to do it over and over again. And we were like, you know what, this is -- this feels like the perfect guy to fight against the terminator for the first time. You know, ever since then, we have, like, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people begging, begging, please let me fight the robots. But we'll get to actual UFC fighters pretty soon. But, yes, we just updated his A.I. recently. So, he's even more scary now. So, yes.

SIDNER: You have hundreds of people wanting to fight a robot that, in this instance, I think kind of won the fight. I mean, is there a huge demand for this? Who's demanding this?

CIX: Well, I mean, people like watching crazy things. I -- you know, when we first started this, our whole pitch was, oh, we have the robots fight so no one gets hurt. But I guess people really just like getting hurt, especially Americans. So, yes, you want to -- we can activate the terminator mode here. Do you want to do that real quick? OK, so he's (INAUDIBLE) in terminator mode.

SIDNER: Watch out. He looks like he's about to take you out, man.

CIX: Yes, yes, you know.

SIDNER: Look, I do have to ask you a couple of questions here.

You know, people are very concerned about A.I. Is there -- are you looking at trying to put A.I. inside these robots? Because I don't know if you looked at some of the comments after this video went out, but there are people saying, look, what are we just creating our own doom right now? Like, what do you think about people being worried about this?

CIX: Yes, I mean, they are scary. It's like fighting a, you know, motorized baseball bat. But I think when you put it into actual comparison terms of like, we have $400 drones that you can put a C4 on and blow up somebody's car. I mean, in terms of, like, actual war mechanics, I think we're pretty far away from something like this being any type of realistic, you know, form of war machine.

But I think that what it does, though, is it really gives this kind of like physicality to A.I. Like, you know, we're a part of this whole conversation of how scary A.I. is. And, you know, the best manifestation of that in a physical sense is a robot, right?

[09:55:01] So, terminator here is doing a really good job of kind of embodying that zeitgeist of fear. But, you know, in reality, he's not going to be in any type of wartime scenario anytime soon.

SIDNER: Give us some sense of how this guy works. Can you -- can you control him right now and show us a little bit about how he works?

CIX: Yes. Let's show some moves here. Hopefully he doesn't kill me. All right.

SIDNER: That's the hope.

CIX: All right, let's show what he can do.

Oh, boy. Bring him a little closer to the camera over here.

All right. Oh, Jesus. OK. All right, activate the REK mode. Come on. REK mode. All right, go for it.

SIDNER: And, ladies and gentlemen, there we have it. The problem with robots.

Thanks for joining us.

BOLDUAN: And there she is.

SIDNER: And I'm back.

BOLDUAN: Yes, exactly.

SIDNER: So, my takeaway is this. If A.I. or robots are going to kill us, we're going to be the ones training them to do so.

BERMAN: Yes.

SIDNER: Yes.

BERMAN: I mean is that the message of -- that they want to send?

SIDNER: I don't know, but it's the one that's being sent.

BOLDUAN: Yes. Yes. I think we should all just go fight the robots.

BERMAN: I feel way better.

Thank you all for joining us. This has been CNN NEWS CENTRAL. "THE SITUATION ROOM" is next.

SIDNER: Oh, boy.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)