Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Veterans, Lawmakers Protest Trump's Proposed Triumphal Arch; Christa Pike's Lawyers Speak After She Survives Botched Execution; Passenger Speaks About Helping Overpower Flydubai Attacker. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired October 01, 2026 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: New today, protesters gathered at the site of President Trump's proposed Triumphal Arch in Washington, demanding the administration abandon plans for this 250-foot structure that he wants to build between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, just outside of the cemetery. Members of Congress, veterans, and historic preservationists are among those voicing opposition to this project.

[14:35:00]

President Trump recently said the arch would double as a top-grade military complex able to stage drones and snipers while storing ammunition. My next guest, John Gunderson, is a Vietnam War veteran who is suing to block construction. John, thank you so much for being with us here in studio.

Thank you for having me.

KEILAR: Talk to us a little bit about your biggest objection when it comes to this arch that would be right there at the promenade going into the cemetery.

JON GUNDERSEN, VIETNAM WAR VETERAN SUING TRUMP ADMIN OVER ARCH: Well, I think you hit the nail on the head. It's a gargantuan Arch, 250 feet tall, bigger than the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial, Arc de Triomphe, and it's blocking the view from the Arlington National Cemetery, which is a sacred site for veterans. And from that site, you used to be able to see the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, all the iconic structures.

Now we have this monumental, gargantuan arch that's blocking that view. And that's a sacred ground. You have all the funerals there, up to 30 a day.

This arch, they'll put tourists on top of it, and those tourists will be viewing these sacred funerals. It's inappropriate. It's obscene.

KEILAR: You're talking about the observation deck, 161 feet in the air that is being proposed. It wasn't in the original plan, but it is now part of the plan. You have a lot of friends buried in the cemetery. Talk to us about what that would mean or what it would mean for there to be construction noise or observation during their services as they will continue to be buried there.

GUNDERSEN: And the Arlington National Cemetery was built as a unifying place for rest between North and South, and it's always been so. You have the Kennedy grave, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers. These are sacred places.

So now the president, at first, he puts it up at an arch, and now he's using national security. Think about this. Putting snipers there, putting ammo dumps, putting drones there, it makes it a military target.

So you wouldn't do that. There's no military logic. And then putting an observation tower there, again, is a desecration for those who are served.

If I can say one thing about Vietnam Memorial, when we came home, we weren't greeted as heroes. So that was a tough time. It was a controversial war.

What the Vietnam Memorial does, it talks about the simple soldier. Everybody is engraved there, and I have friends who are on that wall. The private, the general, treated the same.

There's no man on horseback. There's no president. It's for those dedicated in the sacrifices of the American soldiers.

KEILAR: And you filed this lawsuit. There's also to the cemeteries a bit like that, too, right? There's this uniformity to the graves.

You filed this lawsuit in February. The National Capital Planning Commission is eying November for final approval. So you have last week the administration saying it's going to end this key part of the review, assessing the impact of the arch, effectively evading the federal historical preservation law.

Once the Secretary of the Interior formally is notified of this, it teased him to bring this up for final review in front of the Planning Commission. Are you concerned that this could be inevitable at this point, this timeline?

GUNDERSEN: Of course. We saw what happened with the East Wing and the ballroom, that Trump went against all recommendations. This monument should have been vetted by Congress, should have been vetted by veterans.

Nobody asked me about it. Nobody asked the Gold Star families up there. So what we want to do is stop it from being done, hopefully till after the elections in November, have it fully vetted.

And we're not against honoring veterans. We're all for that. But it's a little ironic that a man had five deferments, didn't go to Vietnam because of bone spurs or what somebody called fallen arches.

Ironic he would have a major arch dedicated to him.

KEILAR: You feel that it's dedicated to him, not to Triumph?

GUNDERSEN: Well, he was asked, he was asked, who should it be named after? And he said, me.

KEILAR: Jon Gundersen, thank you so much for your service. Thank you for joining us today.

GUNDERSEN: My pleasure. Thank you for having me here.

KEILAR: Thank you.

Coming up, many questions surrounding the apparent hijacking attempt of a flight to Israel, what weapon was used and how an untrained passenger was able to stabilize the plane. We'll have a panel of experts joining us next.

[14:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Breaking news to CNN. Attorneys for Christa Pike just spoke out. She's the death row murderer who is still alive despite the fact that the state of Tennessee tried to execute her last night.

She was given two doses of pentobarbital before the Tennessee Department of Corrections stopped the process. Here is one of her lawyers regarding her current condition.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RANDY SPIVEY, ATTORNEY FOR CHRISTA PIKE: We do know that she is alive right now and receiving life-saving medical care. The state of Tennessee has shown us again that they are not capable of carrying out an execution consistent with basic human dignity. Last night was not just inefficient, it was cruel, and it was torturous.

It was also predictable. Christa's legal team told the state of Tennessee and the courts that her medical conditions would cause her to suffer an agonizing death. The state and the court dismiss Christa's concerns.

The governor's call for an independent review does not go far enough.

[14:45:00]

After having endured solitary confinement for more than 20 years and a full attempt to kill her by lethal injection, Christa has endured punishment greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty. The governor must commute Christa's sentence now.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KEILAR: Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of 19-year- old Colleen Slemmer. She was murdered and tortured. Slemmer's mother witnessed this botched execution last night.

Let's go to CNN senior national correspondent Ryan Young with the latest. Ryan, what are you expecting to hear? What else from Pike's lawyers?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There is so much involved in this case. Last hour, we talked about this news conference that lasted about 35 minutes here. You heard that sound bite right there that talked about something that almost seemed indescribable.

At some point, they even turned out the lights in the room as they were trying to administer this cocktail, this poison that was supposed to take her life. In fact, that second dose was given a full 40 minutes after that first dose. But then you actually hear her lawyers talk about the fact that as they were trying to use these needles, Christa was actually sort of comforting the people who were putting the needles in.

She was even trying to direct them to what part of her body where they might be able to find a vein. Apparently, this is something that's been an issue for her throughout her life. And she was really concerned about how this would go.

So she was thanking them at one point. Apparently, they got her spiritual advisor out of the room, but people could hear her choking for her life. And so this was very difficult for those folks in the room.

And you could see the pain in the lawyer's face as they talked about this, really trying to drill down on her condition right now. We're just told she's in critical condition and not sure where this is going to go next. But let's take a listen to what one of those lawyers said just a few minutes ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SPIVEY: Last night, the execution team attempted to establish an IV line for an hour. I counted at least seven needles used in her left arm alone, one of which appeared to be bent when it was pulled from her arm after an unsuccessful attempt. The state continued its efforts despite the very complications that we had warned about in court months earlier.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: So one thing as I look over my notes here, the ambulance was on its way around 8:50. And so a lot of us were in this chat room trying to ask these lawyers the question about, did they see the doctors who were in the room trying to save her life before the ambulance arrived? And it didn't appear that way.

And of course, there's a lot of conversation about what does the government do next? What does the governor do next? And so we haven't heard from him outside the statements they made just about doing this investigation.

But obviously, now, there's going to be a lot of scrutiny from around the world about what happened last night.

SANCHEZ: Ryan Young, thanks so much for the update.

Today, we're learning more details on the heroic people on board that Flydubai jet who helped save the plane from an apparent hijacking attempt. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the co-pilot used an axe to attack the captain before passengers were able to rush into the cockpit to subdue him.

KEILAR: Yes, one passenger spoke with CNN about the chaos during the flight. Here's part of that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZVIKA MAMES, FLYDUBAI PASSENGER: I heard my wife scream, screaming, and I had my daughters screaming, we don't want to die. Father, we don't want to die. And this, you know, this is and I'm getting emotional right now as well.

And when you hear that your daughters are crying for help, you do whatever you can to help them. And that's the trigger that pushed me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: We're joined now by CNN aviation analyst Peter Goelz and retired FBI supervisory special agent Rich Kolko, who is also a retired Navy commander and pilot. Peter, I mean, first you, what do you think about what we're hearing from that passenger and other passengers?

PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, it certainly is reflective of the courageous passengers in Shanksville. They took the effort to try and prevent that tragedy. And I think what we learned from that is you're never, if you're a terrorist, you're never going to have a free shot at this again.

People are going to step up and they're going to fight for their lives and fight for getting out of this terrible situation. It was an extraordinary act of courage that the captain was able to unlock the door of the cockpit, shows some of the unintended consequences of an armored cockpit. Once you're in, you're in and you may have the wrong people inside.

But this was an extraordinary event of really courageous people.

SANCHEZ: Rich, what questions do you think the investigation has to answer at this point?

RICHARD KOLKO, RETIRED FBI SUPERVISORY SPECIAL AGENT: Oh, it's very simple. They have to start with who did this and why.

[14:50:00] Was he alone, part of a plot, radicalized, mental health issues. The advantage here, the guy's alive. They've actually got somebody they can talk to. And that makes a big difference.

A lot of these events, there's people are gone. So they've got the airplane, they've got the evidence, they've got the person, they can go to the family, they can go to the computer, the same things that they do in any kind of investigation like this. We'll have to see how they do it in Dubai a little differently than they do it here in the U.S. But I'm sure that they'll get answers.

SANCHEZ: To that point, Peter, part of the investigation and figuring out this person's motives. I think to apply the lessons from that to the future, how do airlines, especially airlines based overseas, try to ensure that when traveling internationally in a region where there is conflict and globally, frankly, how do they ensure that their pilots are vetted and perhaps not liable to do something like this?

GOELZ: This is a very challenging piece of activity that has to be taken on by the airlines, by the oversight people. The Saudi Arabians are going to be responsible for the first investigation, the preliminary. I'm not sure how in-depth they're going to be.

I'm not sure they really want to know what's happening given the complex politics of the region. But we need to know whether foreign carriers are putting their pilots through the most rigorous background checks possible. The Israelis require that pilots who are flying in and out of Israel be national -- state nationals of countries that have relations with Israel.

So we'll start there. And if this guy was radicalized, somebody should have known about it.

KEILAR: Yes, and Israel didn't have any warning, right, Rich? I mean, that's one of the questions is Israeli officials, they do normally go name by name as they are looking at who is coming in, the pilots that are coming in, and the idea that an Omani national was coming in and that was not scrutinized or even just denied outright is raising a lot of questions. What do you wonder here?

KOLKO: Well, Israel's got a very layered security procedure for everybody flying into the country. Everybody always says El Al does a great job, and they do a great job. But they've got a fleet of 40 or 50 airplanes.

Makes it a little easier than the U.S. airlines, which have hundreds if not thousands of airplanes. But the Israeli security services, whatever country sends an airplane into Israel, they go through those lists. They go through the pilots.

They go through the mechanics. They do that work. Sounds like something might have slipped through the cracks here, and that'll be a big, big part of the investigation.

SANCHEZ: You mentioned the layered part with different countries looking at this incident. There were four American citizens on this flight, dual nationals. What role should the U.S. play in the investigation?

GOELZ: Well, the U.S. will have a role in the ICAO-sponsored investigation. The NTSB is the accredited rep to those types of investigations. But this is going to be a criminal and intelligence investigation.

They'll play a minimal role. If they need help on deciphering the boxes, the voice recorder or the data recorder, they'll do that. But we're going to push internally to see that there are stronger background checks done of anybody inside these armored cockpits.

KEILAR: How amazed, Rich, are you that we're here, we're talking about this, every one of them alive, they survived. It's unbelievable.

KOLKO: I actually talked to a 737 captain friend of mine this morning. And the normal descent from altitude is 1,000 to 1,500 feet per minute. If you've got to get down quick, it's maybe 3,000 feet per minute.

This airplane was going down probably about 20,000 feet per minute. That would have glued everybody to the ceiling or bouncing off the floor. And the fact that they could have this fight and somebody could reach in there and get the yoke and pull it back, that would have taken 100 pounds of pressure just to get that yoke going back in the right direction.

And then get another pilot into the seat to fly and land that plane safely. Absolutely amazing.

GOELZ: Extraordinary. And that they happened to be two deadheading pilots on the plane. I'm not sure they arrested the dive.

Landing that plane without a trained pilot would have been a prescription for a real tragedy. Thank God there were two pilots on board who stepped in and landed the plane. And the damage to the tail of the plane shows how violent that dive was.

Those planes are put together well. And that he lost so much of his tail section is just extraordinary.

SANCHEZ: You see it there in the images we're sharing with our viewers. Peter, Rich, thanks for joining us.

KOLKO: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Now to some of the other headlines we're watching this hour. The Supreme Court agreeing to review one of President Trump's most aggressive and controversial policies, sending migrants who entered the country illegally to mandatory detention without a bond hearing. It's the latest sign that the justices plan to make immigration a central part of their new term, which starts next week.

[14:55:00]

Also, a man now behind bars after planning what officials described as a violent attack on the state capitol in Texas. The state's Department of Public Safety says it received a tip Tuesday night about a plot scheduled for today in Austin. Just hours later, a SWAT team arrested a 40-year-old man at a home in Converse, Texas, near San Antonio.

Officials have ramped up security at the state capitol as the man remains in federal custody awaiting charges.

KEILAR: And heavy rain slammed parts of Texas, leaving roads flooded in the Fort Worth area. You see in these pictures here. Storms also hitting Lincoln, Nebraska, which just set a new single day rainfall record of more than six inches. That's more than two months worth of rain compared to Lincoln's average.

Record level moisture from El Nino in the Pacific Ocean and remnants of Hurricane Polo are boosting storms across the central U.S.

And still ahead, the Justice Department is going all the way back to the Watergate era to explain whether President Nixon got a raw deal. You heard that right. We'll have details straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

END