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Trump Announces Auto-Enrollment for Childhood Savings Accounts; Trump Says U.S. Doesn't Think Russian Lab Tech's Death Was From Bioweapon; Tropical Storm Isaias to Threaten Gulf Coast as Hurricane; Stocks Lightly Lower After Tuesday's Record High for S&P 500. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired October 07, 2026 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- who might be considering whether they should put their wealth into these Trump accounts for our children?

MICHAEL DELL, FOUNDER & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, DELL TECHNOLOGIES: Well, you know, Brad called me in 2021 and told me about this idea. I talked to Susan about it. We immediately thought it was a fabulous idea. And to be clear, it's not a red idea or a blue idea or, you know, it's a red, white, blue idea.

And what we believe is that the most important investment you can make is in children. And that's why we set up a foundation focused on children back in 1999. And when we heard about this idea, we thought, wow, this would be not only great for newborns, but it would be a platform for families and employers and philanthropists to immediately and directly impact the futures for these children.

And Brad and I and Susan, we've had many discussions with other philanthropists. I think there will be a number of additional announcements coming in the weeks and months to come. And, you know, ultimately, we couldn't be more excited about what this will become over time as children start to understand the power of compounding and what all of this means for their futures.

SUSAN DELL, WIFE OF MICHAEL DELL: I just want to add, I think that this is clearly the most important, impactful initiative that America's Children in America really has ever known. I mean, this is going to affect everyone's lives, not just children's lives, but parents and grandparents who worry about these children and work hard to take care of these children. So this is something that's going to touch everyone.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, after this week's leaked recordings from Ken Paxton, do you have any regrets about endorsing his campaign?

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: No, no, no. He was a great attorney general. I think he'll be a great Senator. Ken Paxton was great. He was considered the best, or certainly one of the few bests, but the best attorney general in the whole country. And no, I would have no regrets at all.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, what are your thoughts with James Blair and Chris LaCavita about their potential conflicts of interest with some of the (inaudible) that they work with?

TRUMP: Well, they don't have a conflict because they're independent people. They don't work for me. They are consultants, and I assume they have a lot of clients. So I don't know who their clients are. If I thought they had a conflict with here, I would terminate. But all they are is consultants. They don't work in the White House. They're not sitting around a cabinet table or anything like that. They're consultants, and I'm sure they have other clients.

I'm sure they have many clients. But that would be true with everybody in Washington.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Will you ask for their client list?

TRUMP: I would ask them, sure.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, thank you. Mr. President, we've been seeing chaos play out in France. You posted online what's happening in France is out of control mass migration. Could that happen here in the United States?

TRUMP: Well, we stopped it. We had the worst you could call it migration. But we had 25 million people pour into our country illegally. They should not have been allowed. And they were from places you don't want to know about, and they committed, many of them, very, very bad crimes. They were drug dealers.

There were many prisoners released into our country, where countries like Venezuela and others would release 100 percent of their prisoners, and they'd bus them over to our border, and they'd just walk into our country. This is what we had, 25 million. We've gotten most of them out.

We've gotten the bad one, the worst of the worst, as we call them. We've gotten them out. But that was a terrible thing. It was that something like that could be allowed to happen. And now we have a totally -- we went from the worst border in the country's history to the best. We've had, as you know, the people that make the list are bureaucrat people.

I don't know. They're Democrats, Republicans. But for the last 17 months, zero people have crossed the border. Now, it's almost impossible to believe, but we've had zero people illegally coming into our country from the border. So we went from the worst border in the history -- I think of the world. I don't think there's any country, third-world country, I don't care, where 25 million people could cross. But we had 25 million people come in, and now we have nobody coming in except if they come in legally. They do come in legally. They have to go and take tests and all of that. They have to show they can love our country. But you see the numbers, they come out. We just had the next -- last month, and it was zero. So 17 months in a row, zero. The caravans are no longer -- we had caravans of people -- 25,000, 30,000 people in a caravan coming up from various South American countries.

But it was really from the world that just formed, and they'd walk right into our country. And we didn't know if they were good or they were bad. Many were very bad. Yeah, please.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, a hurricane is forecast to hit the Gulf Coast this weekend.

[13:35:00]

Are you still planning to visit Alabama and go to the football game on Saturday?

TRUMP: Well, hurricane and football -- I love Alabama. I got to go to the game. I can't be awfully hard (ph). Look, I mean, if there's an emergency, if there's a hurricane, I don't want to do anything to take the focus of all of the great people that work on those things. You know, they have some tremendously great people.

I don't want to take the focus off, but so we'll have to see. I hadn't heard about a hurricane. A hurricane is going in the vicinity of Alabama? That's not good. Certainly, I'm going to let the hurricane determine. I want people to be safe. That's all.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Nobel Peace Prize is due to be awarded on Friday. Do you have any regrets about how you've used your time behind that desk?

TRUMP: The Nobel Peace Prize will be Friday? Well, last time they gave it to a young lady who's a fabulous person. And she said she didn't deserve it that I deserved it. And she gave it to me and I said, wow, what an honor. I settled eight wars. Another one is coming. I got all the hostages back. I did things that nobody else has ever done.

I'm not bragging. I'm just telling you the facts. No president probably has settled any wars. I settled eight wars and big ones, big ones, saved millions and millions of lives. And when Maria gave me that Nobel Prize, she said not only should he get it for this year, but there's never been anybody in the history of the Nobel Prize that deserves it more.

I did. I settled eight wars and I've stopped maybe the total obliteration of the world because Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. And that's a positive thing, very positive thing. And other presidents should have done it before me or somebody should have done it. So I don't know what their decision is going to be. They have a reputation for maybe not giving it to people like me, but I -- whether I get it or not, I have done far more and I think it would be a great discredit to them. And I'm not saying that out of scorn. I'm saying that when you settle eight wars and nobody's ever -- I'll bet you, if you look at the Nobel Prize, look, Obama got it and he didn't do anything. He still doesn't know what he got it for.

He got it when he got elected right at the beginning and he had no idea why he got it. Well, in my case, I said, I didn't know that they're doing it, but you're right. It is about that time. But I was very honored to receive it indirectly last time by the recipient who said nobody in history deserves it more than President Trump.

And since then, we've done a lot. Since then I've settled, think of it, eight wars and got all the hostages back and stopped a lot of wars from happening by using the powers of tariffs and lots of other things as a threat against certain countries, so that they did not partake in killing people. So --

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have heard that you want to turn part of your golf club in West Palm into a retreat for future presidents.

TRUMP: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Similar to Camp David. Are you going to call it Camp Donald?

TRUMP: Well, it's already called Trump International. It's one of the best golf courses in the world. So it's built. It's all built. It's been in operation for over 20 years, but very successful, and everybody wants to go there. And the advantage is this was suggested to me by the military and Secret Service. There are no high buildings looming over it. There are no houses on it. So you don't have houses we have to inspect rooms.

Seems that all presidents play golf and it was asked -- I was asked by Secret Service and the military who got used to it because it's -- if I go there, they'll see that it's about as safe as they could possibly get. It's only about two minutes away from the airport.

So they literally would be at that site and they could spend the weekend there, like a retreat, like sort of a Camp David retreat. And they asked if I'd be willing to do it? And I said I would be. This wouldn't be for me. This would be for all future presidents and if they want to do that, I'd be certainly (inaudible). It has a couple of advantages.

Number one, it doesn't have houses, which is a real luxury when you can do something and you don't have houses, you know down the fairways that you have hundreds of houses all over the place. So you don't have houses with people hiding behind windows.

You don't have high buildings looming over it. There's no high building looming over it, which is no good either and they can get maximum safety. It's a very -- it's a very -- it's a great idea and it'll be used a lot and the other advantage is it is right next to the airport.

(CROSSTALK)

[13:40:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You started telling midterm voters that if Democrats win control of Congress, they will impeach you. For what?

TRUMP: They don't know because they were asked that question, two, I saw two Congressmen and a Senator so far asked that question. They said, well, President Trump has created the greatest economy.

When you see the real economy, what's happening with factories being built all over the country, it was -- today, it came out. There's never been a time like this ever where $21 trillion, that's even a lot of money for Brad and Michael and Susan, $21 trillion is being built this year into our country.

We said, so President Trump has done a lot. You could add the eight wars to it. You could add the biggest tax cuts in history, all these things. What would you impeach him for? And all three didn't know. They said, we don't know. I don't know. One of them was just dumbfounded by the question. He said, yeah, we would impeach him. And what would you exactly impeach him for? Well, I don't know. Let's see. Let's see. That's it.

So that's as far as I get. With that being said, I could have done very bad things to Hillary Clinton. I could have done very, very bad things to Joe Biden. I could have done very bad things to Barack Hussein Obama. I thought it was inappropriate to do so because you have to treat the office of the presidency with respect.

Then I found out that they impeached me twice. And I certainly, even to this moment, I have -- I can do whatever I want if I want. They've done some very bad things. You just mentioned it. It was just mentioned in the form of a question. What they did is very illegal, what they did, many illegal things. But I view the presidency as a very sacred position, very sacred position, very important, very sacred, a position where it has to be treated properly.

They talk about the word impeachment. It was a very seldom used word. With all of the years, it's happened very seldom. They went after me twice. I won overwhelmingly. It was thrown out. Both of them were thrown out overwhelmingly. I was never even worried about it. But -- and you -- oftentimes, you have that one lunatic who starts screaming, impeach him, impeach him. He I think he lost his -- he lost for Congressman Green, Congressman Green. He's a lunatic.

He's a low-IQ person. But you can't treat the presidency with disrespect. And again, I've had my shot and still do at Biden and Hillary Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama. And I've had plenty of people say, let's go get them. And I said, no, you can't do that to the presidency.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you spoken with Putin yet? Have you spoken with Vladimir Putin yet about the -- ?

TRUMP: I have a call set up. Today is his birthday. Today is Vladimir Putin's birthday. I'm sure you're going to celebrate it. Are you going to celebrate his birthday? Now, I have a call set up. I will --

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On election integrity before the midterms. A lot of Americans are very concerned. And they also believe that activists, judges and Democrats tried to make it impossible to get that integrity before the midterms.

In terms of accounting for the election machines, are there any new updates on measures that DHS will take to hold the states accountable if they don't comply with the new paper ballot (inaudible)?

TRUMP: Well, we're going to be watching very carefully the election because we need honest elections. We need fair reporting. We need borders. You know, there are certain things that our country needs. One of them is honest elections. It's a big deal. We're going to be watching very, very closely.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The mortgage rates today rose to 7.49 percent. That's the highest of your second term. What you do -- is there anything you can do about that?

TRUMP: Well, I have a Fed that I hope is -- I think Kevin is great, but Kevin is one vote out of a board with numerous people that were put on by Obama and Biden, and a couple by me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (inaudible).

TRUMP: So you have a board that would like to see the country do badly, in my opinion, because I think interest rates should come down. Michael and Brad would understand this, and Susan. We have a country that makes other countries very rich. If we didn't make them rich, we would have a country that would be the greatest AAA credit in history.

There are numerous countries where we have deficits with them. They have big surpluses. We don't. We don't need to do that. I mean, if you look at Canada, if you look at Mexico, if you look at Switzerland, big, big, beautiful deficit.

And yet they're considered super prime. They're considered elite. Well, if we decided not to buy watches from Switzerland, they wouldn't be elite anymore.

[13:45:00]

And we would save about $40 billion. We can do all of that, but I'd like keep things on an even keel and we're doing so well that I don't want to do that. But our interest rate should be the lowest. We should pay lower than any other country.

The lowest rate right now is Switzerland. And as I said, we have a -- we contribute to Switzerland --

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": We've been listening to President Trump in the Oval Office, taking questions from reporters. Two notable points. One, the president was asked directly whether this incident at a Russian plague lab was the result of the Kremlin working on a bioweapon.

The president's saying, we don't think so. We're going to find out. If you listen to them, to the Russians, he says, it is under control. We hope it is. He also noted that he has a call set up with Vladimir Putin, who the president noted is celebrating a birthday. We should note that the Kremlin said that they were unaware of any call set up between the two leaders. So that is a space to monitor.

And separately, as the president will soon depart for Texas, he was asked about any regrets that he might have over endorsing Attorney General, Ken Paxton in the Senate race over James Cornyn, the Republican incumbent. The president saying that he does not have any regrets about that, that Paxton has been a great state A.G.

Polling, of course, indicates that his opponent, James Talarico, has a lead over Paxton, who has been controversial for a multitude of reasons.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": That's right. And he also talked about how he could have gone after Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

SANCHEZ: Yeah.

KEILAR: But he didn't. So I guess, sort of saying that he's used some restraint in that regard. We are going to continue to monitor what is happening here as the president is taking questions from reporters after announcing this auto enrollment in Trump accounts. We'll get in a quick break and be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:51:05]

KEILAR: We are keeping a close eye on the Gulf, where we could soon see our first hurricane of the year in the Atlantic Basin. Tropical Storm Isaias is barreling north. It's expected to rapidly gain power. We have CNN's Derek Van Dam joining us on this.

All right, Derek, what's the latest update on Isaias?

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yeah, Brianna, we had thought we could sneak past this entire hurricane season without getting an Atlantic hurricane. But unfortunately now, we're staring down a tropical storm that is likely to strengthen into the first and the earliest Atlantic hurricane on record. Here it is. Tropical Storm Isaias cozying up across the Bay of Campeche. And there's a lot of record ocean warmth there that acts like high-octane fuel for budding and developing hurricanes. In fact, we've had the hurricane hunters flying around the storm, sampling the environment, getting an indication of what's to come, getting a fix on the center.

This is their latest projection. This is the forecast passed from the National Hurricane Center. They forecast the potential, at least, for rapid development. And you can see how this is teetering on a high-end Category 2 at its peak intensity sometime on Thursday, well south of the Gulf Coast. But it will be in a weakening phase as it reaches the coastline, but just how much it actually weakens is still to be determined. It will be a very powerful storm system.

Hey, you know what? When we talk about what we can actually provide you on air, it's not always possible to get all the information out to you. You have the opportunity to download the latest CNN Weather app, get all of the information and a direct link to the meteorologists and experts here at the CNN Weather Center. I'm actually controlling this live on the app right now, tracking Isaias and its path.

Go to the iOS download store right now and you can get the latest app right for you to use for free. Brianna?

KEILAR: All right, Derek Van Dam, thank you so much.

Talk about awkward timing. Listen, I don't know if Mean Girls has anything on this Texas Senate race. President Trump is about to campaign with Texas Senate candidate, Ken Paxton less than 24 hours after leaked audio revealed Paxton speaking very candidly about the Iran War.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:58:04]

SANCHEZ: Let's check where markets are right now. The Dow modestly lower, only down about 300 points. That's a day after we saw a record high for the S&P 500, a record that was really driven by a handful of tech stocks.

Let's check in with CNN's Matt Egan. Matt, what is your read on where markets are right now?

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Boris, as you mentioned, stocks are retreating today, but only just a bit, and again, from all-time highs. Earlier the Dow was down twice as much. At one point, it was down 600 points or a little over 1 percent. So, it's certainly bounced off those worst levels.

The big focus, though, has been on the selling in the bond market. Remember, the more that bonds sell off, the higher that rates go. The 10-year Treasury rate today got as high as 5.36 percent. That's the highest level since 2002. Think about that. The last time bond rates were this high, Facebook didn't even exist, neither did MySpace. LeBron James was still in high school. So, it's been a bit, and that's important because the higher rates go, the more expensive it is to borrow. But you mentioned the focus on the A.I. boom. That has just been such a big driver of the stock market this year. But some investors are warning that this spending and borrowing in the tech space has gotten out of hand.

Michael Burry, the big short investor who famously called the housing mortgage meltdown before the 2008 financial crisis, he put out another warning calling this all a bubble. He said on X that the stock market is quite obviously in its first stage of grief denial. Per 2000 and 2008, this stage lasts six to nine months. So, he's basically arguing that Wall Street is refusing to believe that the good times are over and that eventually reality will set in.

Of course, we've heard similar warnings from Burry before. And it's famously very hard to time anything in the market, right? Alan Greenspan warned of a rational exuberance years before the dot-com bubble actually imploded.

Big picture though, Boris, when you think about it, the fact that the Fed has been hiking interest rates, the fact that bond rates have gone up so much, that the war continues --