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How the President is Doing in House Battleground Districts; Interview with Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA): White House Defends New Ads as Public Service Announcements; SpaceX Attempts to Launch Most Powerful Rocket Ever Into Orbit. Aired 8:30-9:00a ET

Aired September 28, 2026 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00]

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Now with a second interview, it got more aggressive. The detective says to Caleb Flynn, that shot was so close range and with all of my experience, somebody wanted her dead. Somebody had a motive to kill her.

He said it was basically point blank range and normally blood splatter would be on the wall, but everything went down into the bed. Did you have marriage problems? And he was aggressively asking them him about their marriage.

Do you argue? The neighbors are saying you argued a lot and pushing, pushing, pushing. And he refused to say that they had any marriage problems at all, that they loved each other.

And they went to church and they came home. And so we will see where it goes today with this lengthy video that's moments away.

DANNY FREEMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, but the video, I mean, just you played, it's so stunning to see that raw emotion. But again, we'll see what a jury ultimately thinks of how he did there.

CASAREZ: And he's had a lot of raw emotion in the courtroom to for the jury to see. All right, Jean, thank you so much.

FREEMAN: Jean, thank you so much.

CASAREZ: Thank you.

FREEMAN: Good to see you, appreciate it.

All right to this now. Critics blast yet another taxpayer funded political ad from the White House as sources in the president's inner circle admit hope is dimming that Republicans can hold onto Congress in the midterms. That in a bit.

Plus, the U.S. has two new visitors, and they brought their own bamboo. Meet the two giant pandas now calling Atlanta home, after a quick break.

[08:35:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: There's new reporting into CNN today that President Trump's advisors are essentially bracing for impact when it comes to November. One telling CNN, the best case scenario now is that Republicans can hold onto the Senate and likely still definitely lose the House. Here's a quote for you from an advisor.

"It's obviously going to be effing rough," end quote. CNN's Harry Enten running the numbers on maybe what is driving that. National polls is often what the focus is.

But you are looking at how the president is doing in House battleground districts. And what are you seeing?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Yes, I will tell you, they're right. It's going to be effing rough because the levy has been breached. The blue wave is coming over the wall, Speaker Johnson and President Trump.

And you can see it here. You can just look at President Trump's approval ratings. Isn't that approval ratings in the year's key House district?

You know, back in September of 2018, when Democrats easily won back the House, President Trump was at minus eight points. Not very good, his disapproval rating was eight points higher than his approval rating. But look at this year.

Look at the key districts this year. President Trump is even worse. He's twice as unpopular in this year's key races and the key districts this year than he was back in 2018 when Democrats easily got back majority.

He's now 16 points underwater in the key House districts. Simply put, mathematically, this equals a Democratic majority for the House of Representatives.

BOLDUAN: What's driving this? What are you seeing is why it's worse than eight years ago?

ENTEN: Yes, why is it worse than eight years ago? Why are you twice as underwater as you were eight years ago, President Trump? Well, it comes to this.

It's the economy. Given your key House districts in September, look right now, look at where President Trump's economic approval rating is. It's just 37 percent.

It is way, way under 50 percent. We're talking about a net approval rating of about minus 26 points in the key House districts in terms of Trump's economic net approval rating. But look back in 2018, a positive view of the economy.

77 percent in that year's key House districts said they had a positive view of the economy. This, of course, is about a 40-point difference. Now, these are slightly different metrics, but they really tell you that back in 2018, the clear majority of those in the key House districts viewed the economy positively.

Now, you see when it comes to President Trump, the clear majority disapprove of the job that President Trump is doing in the economy. Just 37 percent approve. And that, again, is a mathematical equation.

To go back to the top of the segment, it's going to be effing rough for Republicans come this November.

BOLDUAN: One thing also unique about this midterm is that it's coming after this whole wave of mid-decade redistricting, right, that was really driven mostly in red states, but blue states also did it as well.

ENTEN: Sure.

BOLDUAN: What are you seeing with that? Is that looking to have an impact, keep Democrats from having bigger gains, have any impact whatsoever?

ENTEN: This was the key question, Kate. Kate is asking the key question here, right? We thought that the national environment was going to be tough for Republicans, but of course, when it came to those gerrymandering wars, essentially, the Republicans came out ahead and it was like, OK, you have a battle on one hand, you have a battle on the other.

Where are these two going to meet? Who's going to be able to overcome the other barrier that the other side has sort of set up for them? Well, it's the Democrats who overcome the barrier because you can see it here.

OK, the average House forecast for Democrats, these take into account polling, they take into account political report inside elections, those expert forecasts. Look at this, the average seat forecast for the Democrats is to get 236 seats, way more than the 218 needed for a majority, and the chance of a majority at this point, 91 percent, and I should point out that the Kalshi prediction market really does line up with these odds. At this point, it looks like Democrats are going to have a very merry November, indeed, at least when it comes to the House of Representatives.

BOLDUAN: All right, let us see.

ENTEN: We'll see, we'll see. We still got a month or so to go.

BOLDUAN: But early voting is already happening in certain states.

ENTEN: That's true.

BOLDUAN: I keep saying this. It is election day in certain places already. All right, thanks, Harry.

ENTEN: Thanks.

BOLDUAN: Danny.

FREEMAN: Now, ahead of election day, the White House has launched yet another ad featuring the president front and center.

[08:40:00]

In this spot, President Trump warns about what he calls the, quote, final battle against communists and the deep state, and here's how it ends.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FREEMAN: So this is the third such ad to air in recent days, and it played during at least two NFL games over the weekend. The White House calls them public service announcements. Well, joining me now is Democratic Congressman Suhas Subramanyam of Virginia.

And Congressman, that's exactly where I want to start because we saw this second now government-funded ad that while the White House says it's a public service announcement, it really sure felt like a campaign ad. Is there any role for House oversight here? A government watchdog group, Common Cause, suggested it could violate rules against using taxpayer dollars for propaganda.

REP. SUHAS SUBRAMANYAM (D-VA), OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: Oh, it absolutely violates those rules. It's a political ad. It's very clear.

We have the same restrictions on us as members of Congress, and if a member of Congress put up that ad right now, they would face consequences. So should the president. He should not be above the law, but this isn't a surprise that the president is breaking campaign finance laws.

This is the guy who paid off a woman, hush money with campaign funds, right? So he's used to breaking campaign laws. What I will say is I've talked to a lot of people, a lot of people saw that.

I saw that over and over again during Football Sunday, and people are reminded of the fact that this November is all about the president, and this election is all about the president, and he's made it about himself. And that's a good thing if you're a Democrat.

FREEMAN: Well, I want to touch on that a little bit more because that was something that our colleague Alayna Treene was talking about. Does this ad in your mind, or these types of ads, does it actually energize members of your party because it plays into some of the ideas that you continue to speak about?

SUBRAMANYAM: Absolutely. I've had so many people text me saying, oh gosh, another Trump ad. I forgot to early vote.

I'm going to go vote this week. There's so many people who are upset with the failed policies and broken promises of this administration. And so when the president puts his face on TV all the time to say that this is the final battle, then people are energized to vote against Republicans.

And remember, Republicans vote -- they work for the president. That's what Mike Johnson said, and Democrats work for the people. And so when you see the president on TV all the time, we remember that, and you vote against these Republican candidates who are, in many cases, trying to distance themselves from his policies.

FREEMAN: Congressman, you heard Harry Enten speak about the Democrats' good chances of taking back the House come November. I'm curious though, if Democrats do in fact take control of the House, what is your pitch to Americans as your biggest priority for day one? Is it to investigate President Trump, his actions, his family, or try to work actively towards bringing relief to people who continue to face brutally high costs of living?

SUBRAMANYAM: The biggest thing is Congress is supposed to be a co- equal branch of government with the executive branch. We don't work for the president as members of Congress. We work for our constituents.

We work for the American people. And so, yes, we have an entire agenda on healthcare, on lowering costs, on so many issues, and we're going to put that front and center because we work for the people, and we're going to do what's best for the people. And now if the president has been breaking the law like he has over the past year and a half, it's our job on the Oversight Committee to actually provide oversight over the president and not shield him like Republicans have on the Oversight Committee.

And so we can do both, and we need to do both.

FREEMAN: Congressman, earlier this month, you introduced legislation focusing on regulating data centers and their creation. Of course, another big issue for so many voters across the country. Your district in Virginia has hundreds of data centers, as I understand it.

Have you had any progress with these bills? Do you get the sense that this Republican House is interested in working with you on this?

SUBRAMANYAM: Yes, what's interesting is last year when I was trying to move some of these bills and trying to get Republicans to join me on these, they wouldn't join me. They kept checking with industry to see if it's OK, right? And now many of them are seeing pushback from their own Republican constituents.

And so they're starting to be more supportive of this, which is great. But I think this is something we needed to address many years ago. And hopefully this can be bipartisan.

But certainly I'm getting more support on the Democratic side for reining in the overreach of data centers.

FREEMAN: All right, Congressman Suhas Subramanyam, thank you so much for getting up early and for chatting about a range of issues this morning. Really do appreciate it -- Kate. BOLDUAN: All right, SpaceX is about to attempt to launch its most powerful rocket ever and for the first time into orbit. We are watching now. You can see the countdown clock ticking down.

[08:45:00]

Let's check back in with CNN aerospace analyst, Miles O'Brien, for more. Talk about, Miles, bring everyone up to speed again, on why we are watching this so closely and what's happening in these final, as I skew into the monitor, four minutes and 20 seconds. Yes, well, Kate, first of all, we got to remark.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AEROSPACE ANALYST: Yes, well, Kate, first of all, we got to remark. It's quite a beautiful morning on the Gulf Coast of Texas for this launch of the Falcon Super Heavy, which is the silver cylinder at the bottom and the darker part at the top is what they call the ship or starship. And the combination is by far the most powerful, tallest, biggest, any metric you like, rocket ever attempted.

18 million pounds of thrust, which is about twice as much as the space launch system, which NASA has developed. And on top of that, the goal here is to create something that is completely reuseable. Rocket scientists have been working on this since the beginning. It's a very difficult problem. The space shuttle was partially reusable but never really reusable in the sense that an airliner would be.

The goal here is to make it routine so that we can think about a spacefaring civilization. But that's a big goal that's many years away. Elon Musk would like to colonize Mars, but in the short-term, NASA is watching this one very closely because that black ship on top there, Starship, a version of it will be modified to become a lunar lander for the Artemis program.

And if this vehicle can't safely get to orbit -- and this would be the first time it gets to orbit today if they are successful -- if it can't get to orbit, you're certainly not going to get to the moon. So this is a very crucial step. The idea is to go into orbit, do six laps around the Earth, just shy of a 10-hour mission.

They'll work out all kinds of issues, understand how good the heat shield is, whether all the rockets are firing properly. And they will also deliver 26 Starlink satellites. This becomes the first official commercial Starship launch.

So a lot at stake here for SpaceX, for Elon Musk, and for NASA as it looks toward a return to the moon.

FREEMAN: Miles, can you tell us why this is so important specifically for SpaceX as a company? It obviously just had its IPO this year. Is a lot riding on the success of this mission today?

O'BRIEN: Absolutely. The company is shifting toward an all-Starship future. It is indicating that it is going to phase out the workhorse, the Falcon 9, which has had hundreds and hundreds of launches, has changed the whole equation for getting payloads to low-Earth orbit. They're doubling down, putting all their chips on the table for Starship. And so if this mission doesn't do well today, it'll be a setback. Ultimately, they need to get to orbit in order to continue on this vision and create a Starship infrastructure that would feed low- Earth orbit and perhaps allow for expeditions that go farther into space.

BOLDUAN: One of the things, of course, is the big question, Miles, is the return. And eventually, you and I were talking about earlier, this needs to be reusable in order for it to be what they've all, cost- effective --in quote marks, of course -- over time. But there have been concerns about the heat shield upon reentry before.

I was just reading a little bit more about that and something they've had to really kind of work and address.

O'BRIEN: You know, interestingly, on the last flight, Flight 13, the ship landed pretty much intact in the Indian Ocean. And they were able to get a vessel out to it and recover it. And also a team of engineers and technicians who were crawling around the top of this floating Starship.

It turns out it's a pretty good buoy, not a boat, but a good buoy. And they were able to really analyze a lot of these tiles to see what was going on and try to make some improvements. You know interestingly, ultimately, it was the tiles that was the problem and the difficulty on the space shuttle.

So they're going to have to solve this.

BOLDUAN: Yes. Miles, let's listen in together. It looks like they're counting down now, almost hitting the 10-second mark.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pitching downrange.

[08:50:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. Little more than... All right, a little more than 35 seconds into the flight. 33 out of 33 engines lit on super heavy. The window's shaking a bit here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Avionics, power and telemetry normal.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Coming up on max Q, maximum aerodynamic pressure on the rocket. All right, so we're through maximum aerodynamic pressure. Stress is going to come down now as we start flying through the upper parts of Earth's atmosphere. Still seeing 33 out of 33 lit on the booster.

Might have one of those center. 13 just went out. Still flying on 32 out of 33.

Next major event coming up is going to be hot staging. That's when we are going to look to light all six engines on the ship while it's still attached to the booster. That's going to push it away.

That's going to come in about 40 seconds from now. So once we get there, the clamps holding the two vehicles together at that interstage are going to release. We'll light the six engines on ship.

We've got a very specific startup sequence, so we're hopefully going to kick the booster in the right direction. That helps us maximize performance, use the least amount of propellant, and might just give us a cool view of the ship flying away. We'll see.

All right, coming up on hot staging. First MECO powering down to all but five of those engines on the booster.

Down to five. Six engines start up on the ship, separation away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Boost back startup.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Looks like we have 31 out of the 33 on the boost back for the initial phase. Down to three on the booster. So it's boost back burn will initialing shorting. And shut down.

All right, so boost back burn complete. Seeing six engines on the ship. All right, so that was the first of two burns to send it back to Earth.

The next one is going to be the landing burn where we're going to look to light up to 13 of the center engines. We'll see if we'll be able to relight. We've had two of the 13 go out so far.

BOLDUAN: All right, we've been watching this big moment. And Miles is here with me and Danny as well. Just for kind of orientation. On the left, I believe that's the -- I'm going to make this up. I think I'm right. Miles.

I think on the left of the screen was the booster coming back to Earth and the right of the screen was the ship. But now we're watching the ship, which is heading for orbit.

FREEMAN: You got it, you got it, yes.

BOLDUAN: OK. I mean, obviously, I'm the expert here. I mean, no matter what you think about anything.

It is always awe inspiring to see just the power of that thing upon launch. But tell me what you saw. Tell us what you saw, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Well, yes, you sort of had to feel it to really understand it. I have not had the experience of seeing a super heavy Starship launch, but I'm sure it would shake the feelings out of your teeth probably. What we saw there was all but flawless.

There were a couple of motors, engines that that shut down along the way. There are 33 engines at the bottom of the super heavy 33 Raptor engines. And on the way uphill, as they call it, one of them went out. And I think a couple of others have gone out now. Now, as we watch the descent of that super heavy first stage, they don't need all 33 to do that. It's just a fraction of that.

So we'll see how this goes. Now, just to be clear, the ultimate goal here is for the lower stage, as well as the ship, eventually to be caught by this giant chopstick device on the launch pad. Today, they're not going to try that, though.

That'll be something if this is a successful mission, they'll probably try it the next time. They will try for a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico, not far from what they call Starbase in Texas.

[08:55:00]

And as you see, the super heavy stage coming down. We'll be able to watch that. And if it's a nice soft landing, that will prove to them that they were -- what should be able to catch it again.

They've done that in the past, but that's just not part of this particular mission architecture as they focus on getting the ship itself into orbit. And it's well on its way there. It's ultimately about eight minutes of rocket burning before they can declare themselves in low Earth orbit, traveling about 17,500 miles an hour, which is what you need to maintain that kind of constant freefall that is an orbit.

But very shortly here, I think we're going to see this lower stage arrive on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. It should be quite a show here -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: So cool.

FREEMAN: It's incredible. And then, Miles, just quickly, are we expecting that booster that's falling down now, is that supposed to be recoverable? Because you said it's not going to look like what we've seen before it landing on that chopstick thing.

You said this is going to likely just hit the Gulf?

O'BRIEN: Yes, but they're aiming to do it in a gentle way, Danny. The idea is not a splashdown, but kind of a simulated arrival. Here we go.

Watch it now. And as you can see, what happens is the same rockets which push it into orbit now relight. And, you know, you can imagine it's like balancing a broomstick on your finger here to try to make this all work.

There it goes. And nice, gentle landing in the Gulf. Oh, well, you know, that that.

BOLDUAN: Well, maybe they forgot to waterproof the cameras. Maybe they forgot to waterproof the cameras.

(CROSSTALK) O'BRIEN: Well, as I say, the goal here was not to reuse this. This this was not their primary mission. But I think what they're looking for is were they able to control it well as it came down, control it well enough that they could safely bring it in to land and near the launch structure with the giant chopsticks to grab it.

So, you know, we'll see what they say about the data that they got if they feel comfortable about it. Next time, that's what we might likely see. And that's quite a sight to see.

You can see if you look at the launch structure itself, you can see these giant arms that stick out. And that's what would grab the super heavy booster.

BOLDUAN: Also giving us a moment to appreciate Earth from sub-orbit once again in this image from the ship. I mean, it is just so cool to see.

FREEMAN: Gorgeous.

BOLDUAN: Once it gets -- if it gets into orbit. If this goes as planned, Miles, it's going to go around the planet around Earth six times. Then what's what is this? Yes, it's to prove it can do it, right?

That's what we're trying to do here.

O'BRIEN: Yes. Well, you're nowhere in space if you don't get to orbit, right? And this is it.

This is this is the key milestone for this program right now. It's been a long ride. I mean, Elon Musk first laid out this idea about 10 years ago in Mexico. And this is it's the iterations and the engineering to get here has been extraordinary. But here we are.

BOLDUAN: Here we are, Miles. I always love it. I always love an excuse to have a chance to speak with you again.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. We're going to continue to watch it -- watch this and see as it unfolds before us.

FREEMAN: In orbit.

BOLDUAN: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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