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Trump, Harris Campaigns Both Won the Debate; Historic Spacewalk for Polaris Dawn Mission Begins Today; Lawmakers urge President Biden to Ease Restrictions on Ukrainian Weapons; Georgia Women Voters React to the Presidential Debate; Winston Churchill's Famous Portrait Recovers After it was Stolen Two Years Ago. Aired 3-4a ET

Aired September 12, 2024 - 03:00   ET

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

[03:00:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to all of you watching us here in the United States, Canada and around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is "CNN Newsroom."

Team Trump does damage control after a disappointing debate night, while Vice President Kamala Harris rides a fresh wave of momentum as she gets back on the campaign trail.

And with the high stakes election less than two months away, America's top diplomat reassures Ukraine it will have the support of the United States no matter who wins the White House in November.

Plus, delayed but undaunted. The crew of the SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission prepares for a historic spacewalk, the first by an entirely civilian astronaut crew.

UNKNOWN (voice-over): Live from Atlanta, this is "CNN Newsroom" with Kim Brunhuber.

BRUNHUBER: We begin this hour with the battleground blitz in the U.S. presidential election. The vice president has two campaign events scheduled for today in North Carolina. Trump heads west to Arizona and Nevada. That comes after the first and possibly only debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

Many supporters of the former president are publicly praising his performance, but in private they're expressing concern. Now some tell CNN it was a wash at best and a loss at worst.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., TRUMP ADVISER: Vice president Harris clearly won the debate in terms of her delivery, her polish, her organization and her preparation.

TREY GOWDY (R), FORMER SOUTH CAROLINA REPRESENTATIVE: I know the president listed several people that he had fired during his administration he may want to add to that the people that prepped him for the debate last night. He it was the land of missed opportunities.

SEN. MIKE BRAUN (R-IN): I don't think you should say stuff that maybe they'd make it harder for people to vote for him.

REPORTER: Do you think Trump took the bait on occasions?

SEN. THOM TILIS (R-NC): I do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: The first absentee ballots for the US election are already in the mail in the state of Alabama and others will go out in the coming weeks. More now on what's in store over the next 54 days from CNN's Kristen Holmes.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN U.S. NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Former President Donald Trump playing defense, trying to insist he won the debate.

DONALD TRUMP (R), U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: When you don't win it's like a fighter. When a fighter has a bad fight, gets knocked out or loses the fight, the first thing he says is we want a rematch. I would do NBC, I'd do Fox too. I'd do Fox too, but right now we have to determine whether or not we even want to do it.

HOLMES (voice-over): Earlier, a moment of civility among the rivals, Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris shaking hands as they commemorated the September 11th terror attacks at ground zero in New York. It came less than 12 hours after the handshake Harris initiated ahead of a fiery, intense debate in Philadelphia.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS (D), U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Kamala Harris, let's have a good debate.

That is why so many military leaders who you have worked with have told me you are a disgrace.

TRUMP: She goes down as the worst vice president in the history of our country.

HOLMES (voice-over): Harris successfully goading her Republican rival on a range of issues.

HARRIS: The values I bring to the importance of home ownership, knowing not everybody got handed $400 million on a silver platter and then filed bankruptcy six times.

TRUMP: First of all, I wasn't given $400 million. I wish I was, but I was given a fraction of that, a tiny fraction, and have built it into many, many billions of dollars, many, many billions.

HOLMES (voice-over): From his legal woes. HARRIS: Well, I think this is so rich coming from someone who has been

prosecuted for national security crimes, economic crimes, election interference, has been found liable for sexual assault.

TRUMP: Excuse me. Every one of those cases was started by them against their political opponent. And I'm winning most of them and I will win the rest on appeal.

HOLMES (voice-over): To the size of his campaign rallies.

HARRIS: And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.

TRUMP: People don't go to her rallies. There's no reason to go. People don't leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.

HOLMES (voice-over): In that same breath, Trump also promoting false claims that immigrants in Ohio were stealing and eating pets.

TRUMP: In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there.

HARRIS: You talk about extreme.

HOLMES (voice-over): Trump taking aim at Harris' record as vice president.

TRUMP: So she just started by saying, she's gonna do this, she's gonna do that, she's gonna do all these wonderful things. Why hasn't she done it? She's been there for three and a half years.

HOLMES (voice-over): On policy, the two candidates clashing over their stances on abortion rights.

HARRIS: The government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.

TRUMP: They have abortion in the ninth month.

HARRIS: That is not happening, it's insulting to the women of America.

[03:05:03]

HOLMES (voice-over): Afterward, both campaigns claiming victory.

TRUMP: It was the best debate I've ever personally that I've had.

HOLMES (voice-over): But Harris emphasizing there's still work to be done.

HARRIS: Today was a good day. We got to work tomorrow. We got 56 days to go. We got a lot of work to do.

HOLMES: Now, Donald Trump's advisors are essentially saying the same thing you just heard there from Vice President Kamala Harris, that there is still a lot of work to be done. And those Republicans I spoke to who were disappointed in Donald Trump's debate demeanor on Tuesday night say they don't actually think it's going to hurt him in the long run, but they do note that this is going to be an incredibly tight race with razor thin margins and there is a lot of work to be done.

Donald Trump himself, he'll be on the campaign trail really nonstop for at least the next week. He's going on the West Coast tour. Kamala Harris also hitting the ground running. There are just over 50 days left to go. Both sides realize how serious and how critical this time is.

Kristen Holmes, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: Now I want to bring in Natasha Lindstaedt, who's a professor of government at the University of Essex, and she joins me now from Colchester, England. Good to see you again. Thanks so much for being here.

So listen. Too early to know definitively if the dynamics of the race have shifted, but what's your impression based on sort of the polls from what we've seen about people thinking who they thought won. What effect might that have on the campaign going forward?

NATASHA LINDSTAEDT, PROF. OF GOVERNMENT, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX: Well, the Harris campaign has to be elated with her debate performance because Trump just got himself into a mess of lies and he seemed incoherent.

And Harris really cornered him. She baited him. Of course he took the bait. She dictated she was in control. She came across as very presidential and the snap poll done by CNN showed that 63 percent of those debate watchers felt that she did win the debate.

Now, I would expect that she's going to get a little bit of a bump from this, but it's still early on as the report already mentioned, there's still plenty of time for things to change. And actually the polls are still incredibly close. And one of the worrying things is those that were watching the debate are still a 20 point lead for Trump in terms of the way they feel he can handle the economy versus Harris.

So she definitely has a lot of work to do in terms of winning over those last 5 percent of voters who I would imagine are Republican leaning but don't like Trump and think that they were better off when he was in charge.

In addition to doing that, she's going to have to mobilize her base of supporters to actually vote on election day, getting them out with early voting, particularly in the state of Pennsylvania where there's early voting, and then also trying to target these unlikely voters that would lean towards voting for her, getting them to the polls is something that Democrats have really struggled with year on year on out. Getting people to vote that would normally maybe their views might be aligned with them, but that don't bother to vote on election day. So she definitely has a lot to do, but I'm sure her campaign is incredibly happy with her debate performance.

BRUNHUBER: Yeah, given that, you know, one could make a case, I guess, for both candidates about why they might not want a second debate. Donald Trump might be afraid of a repeat of the last one and Harris might have less incentive to do it again, given how well the first one went. So what do you think? Will there be a round two?

LINDSTAEDT: I think there might be a round two, but I don't think either of them should debate again. Now, in Trump's case, I don't think he should debate again because it doesn't really matter that much for his supporters how he does in debates; they don't seem to really care and he doesn't have the discipline to do what he would need to do which would be to focus on immigration and the economy. He didn't really ask that question of you know why haven't you done all these things you said you're going to do until like the hundredth minute.

He doesn't perform well in debates in spite of the fact that I think he thinks he does. And so I don't think he should debate again. And if I were Harris, because she just had an amazing debate, almost a masterclass on how to debate Trump, what does she have to gain by debating again? Could she sell her message, articulate her policy message in other forms? If we look at what happened in the 2016 election, Trump versus Clinton, only 24 percent felt, according to a CNN poll, felt that Trump had won the debate that first debate and Clinton still lost.

So Harris might be better off just going on the campaign trail and trying to get through to people what her policies are, because that was one of the criticisms, at least, of some of the undecided voters.

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BRUNHUBER: Yeah. Speaking of undecided voters, maybe this will help. Kamala Harris, a lot has been made of Taylor Swift's endorsement of her. Now, the data is kind of mixed about the effect of celebrities making political endorsements in general.

They don't actually convince anyone to change their vote, but it might encourage people to actually get out and vote. I mean, you talked about sort of the turnout and unlikely voters. So what effect do you think the endorsement will have?

LINDSTAEDT: That is really hard to say. I've looked at the impact of celebrity endorsements and whether it matters or whether it backfires. And we do know when Taylor Swift posted on Instagram several years back, she was able to get 35,000 people to register to vote. So she may impact getting people to vote.

I mean, she did say in her post, she was trying to encourage people to make up their minds and make their own decisions, but she was clearly endorsing Harris. She has over 250 million followers on Instagram. We don't know how many of those are eligible voters in the U S so it's very difficult to tell, but that was something that Trump's campaign was actually fearing.

And we know he was fearing this because he tried to insinuate that Harris, that Taylor Swift actually was endorsing him erroneously. So it's this X factor that's hard to tell, but in a race that is so incredibly close, these types of things could matter.

BRUNHUBER: Absolutely. We'll have to see what difference it makes. Natasha Lindstaedt, thank you so much for being here with us. I really appreciate it.

LINDSTAEDT: Thanks for having me.

BRUNHUBER: Alright, we're following developments along the U.S. Gulf Coast where power outages are growing in Louisiana hours after Francine made landfall as a category two hurricane. It's now weakened to a tropical storm as it pushes further inland, but it's still bringing with it heavy rain and winds that's now spread to Mississippi and into parts of Florida and the Panhandle and Alabama.

Now, the storm roared ashore Wednesday afternoon in Terrebonne Parish in southern Louisiana. Dangerous wind and heavy rain pounded the area, leading to flooding, downed trees and power outages. Right now, almost 400,000 homes and businesses across the state are without power.

Images and video taken from one marina in Louisiana show Francine's fury. Now these are the shots taken before the storm made landfall. The owners of CoCo Marina say it took just a few hours for floodwaters to move in. A picnic table said to be at least three feet tall was almost completely submerged. The National Weather Service says between six to eight inches of rain have fallen in the New Orleans area, and that's more than a month's worth of rain over the past several hours.

Three wildfires in Southern California have burned dozens of homes and towns and cities east of Los Angeles. Relatives of a family of seven say they're devastated after the home they lived in for more than 30 years was burned to the ground in the airport fire in Orange County. The family had less than 10 minutes to grab their backpacks, laptops and pets before the fire engulfed the house.

The Bridge Fire in San Bernardino County is now the largest in the state, scorching about 48,000 acres or 19,000 hectares in two days. Thousands have been forced to evacuate as the flames tore through the area. And the lifts at a nearby ski resort have also been damaged by the fire. One resident whose house was spared says he was stunned by just how fast the fire raced through the community. Here he is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE DEVESTERN, WRIGHTWOOD RESIDENT: Looking outside looking in it was pretty scary a lot. It's a lot more surreal than you can realize. When you're outside looking the flames you don't realize how scary and how chaotic it is. It was like a movie yesterday. Everybody burning out going to the gas station gas in the car is up trying to get out here before they got burnt. It was -- it was scary a lot more, a lot more real than you realize.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: All right still to come putting new technology to the test in the depths of space. The first commercial spacewalk to happen hours from now will have the latest stay with us.

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[03:15:00]

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BRUNHUBER: An all-civilian SpaceX crew is set to make history in just a few hours, hundreds of miles above the Earth. They'll attempt the first commercial spacewalk after leaving the safety of their Crew Dragon capsule and also test out a brand new spacesuit design. Now the capsule doesn't have an airlock, so the entire interior will be exposed to the vacuum of space during the spacewalk.

We're going to go live now to Washington and CNN's space and defense correspondent, Kristin Fisher. So Kristin, the spacewalk was supposed to have happened about an hour ago, delayed a couple of hours. Now any idea what could be causing the delay?

KRISTIN FISHER, CNN SPACE AND DEFENSE CORRESPONDENT: No, SpaceX has not given a reason, Kim, but that's entirely within SpaceX's right to do that. And that's because this is an entirely private company- operated vehicle and spacewalk, and the astronauts conducting this spacewalk are private citizens, non-professional, non-government astronauts. And so we're so used to watching NASA astronauts do spacewalks.

And in that case, NASA as a government agency, is required to tell us things about it, but SpaceX doesn't have to. And that's exactly what makes what we're about to see this morning, hopefully, so unique, the world's first commercial spacewalk.

So Kim, in terms of what could have happened, it's all sorts of things. It could have been anything from some of the astronauts still suffering from space sickness, a really common thing that many astronauts encounter when they go to space. Or it could be something like SpaceX having issues with getting the spacecraft down to the right pressure.

Basically because the spacecraft is opening up the hatch, all four astronauts inside are going to be exposed to the vacuum of space, they have to get the pressure inside the spacecraft equal to what it is outside the spacecraft essentially.

And so think of it as though, you know how scuba divers, if they rise to the surface too quickly they get decompression sickness or commonly known as the bends.

[03:20:01] Same thing can happen to NASA astronauts. So this is the first time SpaceX has ever done something like this. First time they've ever opened up their spacecraft to do a spacewalk. So maybe they're having issues with that or it could be a whole host of other things. But as of now we just don't know the why. All we know is that the spacewalk now is slated to start just before 6 a.m. Eastern time, Kim.

BRUNHUBER: Interesting. And you've touched on sort of one or two things that make this mission very different from what we've seen before. So take us through some of the other things like the suit itself and the mechanisms that we're going to see if everything goes according to plan.

FISHER: So it's the first time that a spacewalk has ever been conducted outside of this type of spacecraft, a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. As I mentioned, it's also the first time that non- professional astronauts will ever be conducting a spacewalk in the history of the world.

It's also the first time that SpaceX is ever going to use or any people are going to wear this specific spacesuit out into the vacuum of space. And you know, keep in mind, up until this point, for the last 40 years, NASA astronauts up at the International Space Station on the space shuttle before that have been using these EVA suits called the EMUs. For 40 years, that's how long they were, long ago they were designed. And NASA's been trying to get new ones for at least a decade now.

SpaceX was able to develop these in under two and a half years. So it's really a remarkable suit, quite different. It has a display in the visor. That's pretty new. But the whole purpose of this spacewalk is to test out how this space suit feels and moves in space so that they can get this data back to the SpaceX engineers. And hopefully someday some iteration of this space suit will be used on Mars.

One more thing, Kim, you know, we've been talking so much about the spacewalk because it is the highlight of this mission really, but this crew, the Polaris Dawn crew has already achieved some pretty historic milestones specifically.

They've just become the first humans to travel this far in space since the end of the Apollo program, those Apollo astronauts back in 1972. And the two female crew members just traveled became the two female astronauts to travel the furthest into space ever. So some big historic firsts have of course already happened, but we're still waiting for the big spacewalk in just a few hours, Kim.

BRUNHUBER: Still waiting, that's it. All right, Kristin Fisher in Washington, good to have you. Thank you so much.

And now for more on this, I want to go to Sarah Treadwell, who's a NASA Solar System Ambassador, joining us from Rockford, Illinois. Thank you so much for being here with us at this hour. You know, probably just as disappointed as we are that this hasn't happened yet. Can you shed any more light on what might have caused this delay? SARAH TREADWELL, NASA SOLAR SYSTEM AMBASSADOR: No, I think your

reporter that you just spoke with really kind of hit it on the head. Who really knows what their delay is being caused by and truthfully that's sort of the way that SpaceX operates so we're kind of used to that surprise element.

BRUNHUBER: Well listen, I want to hear more about how this is actually going to happen. So the crew won't just be kind of floating around out there. Talk to us about the Skywalker handrails and also the umbilical cord, this literally life-giving mechanism that we're going to see as they do that spacewalk.

TREADWELL: Yeah, the Skywalker, which I think is a really cool name, is going to be able to keep them a little bit safer and actually help them design, or not design, test the suit better, because the idea is eventually to use the suit, you know, for a multitude of missions.

And so they want to make sure that they know that the range of motion and that all the joint and, you know, different points of contact work very well. So free floating doesn't really give them a lot of information. By having the Skywalker, they're actually going to simulate a little bit better like an astronaut outside in space doing work on a spacecraft.

BRUNHUBER: Now it's just not the two who will be doing the spacewalk who will be exposed to space. As we said, the Crew Dragon doesn't have an airlock so it'll be the entire interior that will be exposed to space during the spacewalk. So what are the concerns there?

TREADWELL: Well, the biggest concern obviously is what again was mentioned, the depressurization and developing decompression sickness. I actually am a scuba diver myself and so I understand this very well.

[03:25:04]

You don't want to unpressurize too quickly because then the nitrogen in your body doesn't have enough time to properly get out of your system and that is very, very dangerous, which fortunately they tried to mitigate with the pre-breathing depressurization that happened in the capsule over the pretty much the whole time that they were out in space.

And again, you mentioned the umbilical cord, they're going to be still connected to the capsule. The capsule will still be able to give them power and communications and oxygen. So there should be a very good backup system to keep them safe no matter what happens.

BRUNHUBER: Yeah, certainly hope so. Listen, we heard from a reporter there about what makes the spacewalk unique including the suit itself. As I understand there have only really been two types of suits before the U.S. one and the Russian one or the Soviet one I guess back in the day. So this new one is kind of the first new one for decades. So put this suit into context of what we've seen before. How different is it not just in terms of how it works but also how it was made?

TREADWELL: Yeah the previous suits that we've seen from NASA in particular are basically their own little worlds. They have those huge packs on the back that feed them their oxygen. And they also have these little tubes inside that provide water through them. And that keeps them either warm or cold, depending on what the outside temperatures are and what they need to adjust inside.

These SpaceX suits are going to be completely different in the fact that they don't have that pack that's going to be providing the food, or not the food, the oxygen and the water they use in those other suits, it's not going to be there at all. So they are going to have a thermal layer that's going to hopefully protect them from those extreme temperature shifts.

The design, we just kind of got the first really good insider look from it yesterday when the, or two days ago, I suppose, when they launched and they had some of the spacesuit designers give some information about the build and they basically just took the existing suits that they had and they said, okay, what do we need to do now to make this possible for astronauts to go out into the vacuum of space with this.

Beyond that, I don't really know exactly how it was built compared to a NASA suit, but I do think that these are really high tech. They're really cool, really new, and I know that this is what everybody is really excited about to see how these actually function when put under the test of the vacuum of space.

BRUNHUBER: Yeah, absolutely. So the fact that the two doing the spacewalk are civilians, not NASA astronauts, what difference does that make? And if all goes according to plan, which we hope, what could it mean, do you think, for the future of space travel?

TREADWELL: Well, I think that they have, first of all, two very experienced people, even though they are civilians. Sarah is an engineer. She worked with the Inspiration 4 crew before this, and Jared was the commander for Inspiration 4, and that was the first private astronaut space flight that happened a couple of years ago.

So they do have very, very capable and well-trained people to do this. So I think that saying that they're civilians is, it kind of makes it seem like they have no idea what they're doing, but they actually are very well experienced within the space sex ecosystem.

I think that this is a huge step forward for the private space industry. This is a huge step forward for getting us to have more, it's been said over and over, but redundancy the more options we have for space exploration, the faster it's going to go. So I think that this is just a first of many, many more steps that we're going to see coming up from not only SpaceX, but the other companies as well.

BRUNHUBER: All right. We'll be watching in just over two hours from now. Let's hope. Sarah Treadwell, really great to get your expertise on this. Thank you so much.

TREADWELL: Thank you.

BRUNHUBER: Condemnation from the U.N. after another deadly Israeli attack on a school in Gaza where thousands of Palestinians were seeking shelter from the Moor. What we know about the latest incident coming up. Stay with us.

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[03:30:00]

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KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR: U.N. officials are condemning a deadly Israeli airstrike on a U.N. school that had been sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza. Gaza Civil Defense says at least 18 people, including six U.N. staff, were killed and 44 others wounded.

Israel claims Hamas terrorists were using the location to plan and execute attacks. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency says more than 12,000 displaced Palestinians been sheltering at the defunct school. And it's the fifth time the compound has been targeted since last October.

Israeli military operations are still ongoing in the West Bank. The Palestinian Health Ministry says in Ramallah, Israeli airstrikes killed at least eight Palestinians in two separate incidents on Wednesday.

Local officials say some of the victims were young people in their teens and 20's were unarmed and sitting near a mosque. Israel's foreign minister says the raids are meant to target terrorists and thwart an alleged attempt by Iran to establish an eastern front against Israel.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden condemned the killing of an American activist by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank. CNN's Paula Hancocks is following all the developments from Abu Dhabi. So, Paula, let's start there with Biden's comments. What more can you tell us?

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kim, this was a protest back on September 7th, excuse me, 6th when a Turkish-American activist was shot and killed.

Now, we did hear from the U.S. president initially that he said apparently it was an accident, the gun, the fire may have ricocheted. But now there has been an internal, initial investigation by the Israeli military, which they say they are sharing with the Biden administration.

He has been more strong in his statement in condemning what happened, saying, quote, "I am outraged and deeply saddened by the death of Aysenur Eygi. The shooting that led to her death is totally unacceptable. There must be full accountability. And Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again."

[03:35:09]

Now, we have actually heard some stronger statements from those around him. The vice president Kamala Harris saying that shooting is unacceptable, but also saying that it raises legitimate questions about the conduct of the Israeli military in the West Bank and going one step further the U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken saying that the Israeli security forces need to make some fundamental changes to their rules of engagement.

Now the family of the activist has been calling for an independent investigation, not just the Israeli one as of now the Biden administration is resisting that. What we've heard from that initial IDF investigation is they say that the shot was not aimed at the activist but at a quote key instigator of a violent riot. Not pointing out who that instigator is. It has been rejected though by the family. They say they do want an independent investigation. Kim?

BRUNHUBER: All right and Paula, I want to go back to that strike on a U.N. school in Gaza. What more are we learning about that and the reaction?

HANCOCKS: So this is the fifth time that this school has been hit by Israeli military this year alone. Now we know from UNRWA, the group of the U.N. that looks after the Palestinian refugees, some 12,000 Palestinians who are displaced were staying there at the time, including a number of employees of the U.N. units.

We know that they were there according to UNRWA to give out humanitarian aid. Six of their employees were also killed in this airstrike. We understand there were two airstrikes, according to UNRWA and those on the ground and the Gaza civil defense, also saying that at least 18 in all were killed, more than 44 injured.

Now the Israeli military say that Hamas was using as a command and control center and that they did all they could to try and mitigate civilian harm, a very similar response to what we hear from the IDF when it comes to many of these attacks. It has been condemned though, especially by those within the U.N., saying that schools should never be targeted, that those who are displaced and sheltering in this area should never be targeted as well.

In response Israel consistently says that Hamas uses these kind of structures and these kind of facilities to carry out and to plan attacks against Israel and this is why they have to target these exact areas. Kim?

BRUNHUBER: All right. I appreciate the updates. Paula Hancocks in Abu Dhabi. Thanks so much.

NATO's outgoing chief says the mission in Afghanistan was a catastrophe for the military alliance. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spoke with CNN's Christiane Amanpour as he prepares to step down at the end of this month.

The U.S. and its allies pulled out of Afghanistan in August 2021 after almost 20 years of fighting the Taliban. The militant group is now back in power despite all the efforts by the U.S.-led coalition and $2 trillion spent by Washington alone. As Stoltenberg says, NATO's ultimate goal in Afghanistan was simply a step too far. Here he is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENS STOLTENBERG, OUTGOING NATO SECRETARY-GENERAL: Afghanistan, that is and was painful because we tried something that we didn't achieve. We tried to build a democratic, free Afghanistan with equal rights for men and women. We realized after some years that it was too ambitious, that was something that required too much because the reality was that we didn't have the resources, the will to do that for decades.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And yes, yet it was more than 20 years, there was like trillions of dollars spent, lots of people and now we can safely say that it's gone 360 back to Taliban 1.0 I mean that is a catastrophe in fact.

STOLTENBERG: Yeah, extremely bad and a catastrophe not least for the people of Afghanistan in particular women and I met many women, members of parliament, journalists who begged us to stay and for many years I promised that we will stay. We were going to live on a conditions based approach but after 20 years and after paying a high price in blood and treasure we realized, NATO allies realized, the United States realized that we could not continue this and therefore we made the decision to leave Afghanistan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: And you can tune in Thursday to see the full interview with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. That's at 1 p.m. Eastern 6 p.m. in London.

[03:29:58]

The White House is facing mounting pressure from U.S. lawmakers to remove weapons restrictions on Ukraine. Both Republicans and Democrats are urging President Biden to allow Kyiv to use Western weapons systems to strike military targets deep inside Russian territory.

They say the current limit puts Ukraine at a disadvantage, especially as Russia steps up its own long-range attacks on Ukrainian cities. Now this comes as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary where Ukrainian leaders echoed the appeal for fewer restrictions.

CNN's Fred Pleitgen has the latest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Long distance weapons for Ukraine and the use of those weapons certainly was topic number one as Secretary of State Blinken visited to Kyiv together with his British counterpart in what can only be described as a diplomatic show of force and show of support for the Ukrainians. Of course, Ukraine now also has a new foreign minister as well.

However, as far as that topic of those long distance weapons is concerned, there really wasn't much in the way of substance. One of the things that the secretary of state said is that he did have that discussion with Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and that he would take the points that were made in that discussion back to Washington, talk it over with President Biden, that President Biden would then debate all of this with his British counterpart when they meet later this week.

However, the Secretary of State did reiterate that the United States wants Ukraine to win and is in it for the long haul.

ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: We want Ukraine to win. And we're fully committed to keep marshaling the support that it needs for its brave defenders and citizens to do just that. Our collective message to Putin is clear. Our support will not wane. Our unity will not break.

PLEITGEN: Both the Secretary of State and his British counterpart announced substantial new aid packages for Ukraine, the Brits in terms of military support, the U.S. in terms of civilian support for Ukraine, especially in terms of repairing damaged energy infrastructure, which of course can be very important when the winter comes.

But one of the things that's also clear is that this visit comes as Ukraine remains on the back foot especially in the east of the country. And one of the things that Ukrainian forces have been telling us on the ground is that right now they're not only outmanned by the Russians, but they are also outgunned. One of the big problems that they have is Russia's aerial campaign, not just against Ukrainian cities, but of course also against Ukraine's frontline troops.

And that's why the Ukrainians say it's absolutely important for them to be able to strike Russia deep inside Russian territory with those Western weapons.

Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Kyiv.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: All right, coming up next here on "CNN Newsroom," a group of women voters in Georgia reacts to the U.S. presidential debate and will share who they think came out on top. Stay with us.

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[03:45:00]

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BRUNHUBER: All right. More reaction now from the U.S. presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. For months CNN has been following the 2024 campaign with a group of women voters here in the battleground state of Georgia. Our Randi Kaye returned Tuesday night to watch the debate with them and get their take on the outcome.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In Macon, Georgia, we watched the presidential debate with these five women. All of them were undecided months ago when we first started visiting with them.

UNKNOWN: Seeing this debate, I immediately noticed how much older than her he is.

EMILY AMOS, UNDECIDED GEORGIAN VOTER: He was not ready for her.

UNKNOWN: I think that he just did not expect her to come as hard as she did. I think that he underestimated her and then showed up.

KAYE HLAVATY, GEORGIA VOTER: I didn't think she was going to be the person that went in for the jugular.

AMOS: I think that she came prepared for a tussle, and he met his match.

KAY BELIVEAU, GEORGIAN VOTER: He could have done a better job. He really could have. So I was a little disappointed in him.

KAYE: What did you make of her right off the top, walking over to his podium, putting out her hand, introducing herself as Kamala Harris?

BELIVEAU: I just think she was making a statement. I'm here. I'm in charge.

KAYE: How many of you think Donald Trump won the debate? Raise your hand.

I believe, hands down, it was Kamala.

HLAVATY: I think that Donald Trump came to say what he wanted to say. Kamala was very rehearsed.

AMOS: You are not going to bully a prosecutor, period.

KAYE: What did you make of when she said that Trump was fired by -- this was another moment -- Trump was fired by 81 million people, and he's clearly having a hard time processing that?

UNKNOWN: I think that absolutely rattled him.

KAYE: Yes.

UNKNOWN: It knocked him off of whatever high horse he was on at that moment.

KAYE: How many of you believe Donald Trump looked more presidential tonight than Kamala Harris? Raise your hand.

How many of you believe Kamala Harris looked more presidential tonight? I saw you were about to raise your hand.

BELIVEAU: I was halfway up for Kamala Harris.

AMOS: Don't put it up.

BELIVEAU: It was painful. It's painful to raise my hand thinking, yes, she looked a little a little more presidential, but I still, I'm sorry. All in all, I don't believe what she says. I think she says what she thinks people want to hear.

KAYE: How do you think Trump did in answering the question about calling out Kamala Harris for her race? His response was, I don't really care about her race.

AMOS: By him simply saying that, I don't care, I don't care, that lets me know you actually do care because you would have never brought it up. It would have never even slipped out of your mouth if it wasn't an issue.

KAYE: Did anybody hear a solid plan on anything from Donald Trump tonight?

HLAVATY: Absolutely not.

BRITNEY DANIELS, GEORGIAN VOTER: I did not.

BELIVEAU: He could have been more to the point telling us more about what the plans are, what does he plan to do?

DANIELS: We're suffering from the economy, the most, the middle class, lower class people. And Trump did not state that at all, as he really didn't mention anything about his policies. He avoided all of those questions about just straight policy.

KAYE: You were still undecided after the last meeting as a group. You were wanting to hear more from Kamala Harris. Did you hear enough at this debate to decide?

AMOS: Not 100 percent decide. And I'm feeling really, really promising in her direction. I wasn't quite sure what Kamala Harris was about, what her policies were, what she stood for. And tonight, she answered a lot of those questions for me and I want to hear more.

KAYE: More like how she's going to get it done?

AMOS: Right, exactly, yeah. Specifically, obviously, about the small businesses. I want to hear how it's going to get done because I do understand when money gets moved around, the money has to come from somewhere. Where are you going to pull that money from?

KAYE: Where do you stand after the debate?

HLAVATY: I truly believe Kamala Harris is a great spokesman and she will represent our country well. Will she lead our country well? I still think Trump has the experience to go forward and be the leader instead of the spokesman.

KAYE: And just to sum up for you, because you were considering Kamala last time we spoke, what was it about this debate that made you say, I'm going to go back to Trump?

[03:50:08]

HLAVATY: Where has she been the last three and a half years? And why can we expect something different now?

KAYE: Kamala Harris' team is already asking for another debate. If you were Donald Trump, would you debate her again?

DANIELS: Oh, I don't know.

BELIVEAU: Yes, he needs to. He should.

AMOS: But he probably won't.

KAYE: And why do you think he needs to?

BELIVEAU: To answer questions. We really didn't get a lot of answers tonight. We need to know more, some solid information.

KAYE: All of the women in our group felt that Donald Trump did poorly, including the Republican women. In fact, one of the Republicans in our group gave Kamala Harris a glowing review, saying that she was energetic and smooth on the debate stage, though she is still voting for Donald Trump, not because she likes Donald Trump, but because she likes his policies.

The independent in the group who is leaning Harris at this point is a small business owner, and she really liked what she was hearing from Kamala Harris about her plan for small business owners, even though that plan is not fully hatched. And then the two Democrats in the group really seem to like that Kamala Harris, sort of, broke that fourth wall where she turned to the camera and spoke directly to the viewer and the voter and they really connected with that and that did cement their vote.

Randi Kaye, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill got angry when a photographer pulled his cigar right out of his mouth. Ahead, how it resulted in one of the most famous photos in history and how the stolen portrait is on its way home. Stay with us.

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[03:55:00]

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BRUNHUBER: One of the world's most famous photo portraits is heading back to its owner after being stolen more than two years ago. Nicknamed the Roaring Lion, it shows Winston Churchill in 1941 scowling after Canadian photographer Youssef Karsh snatched the trademark cigar from the British Prime Minister's mouth. Now the portrait was displayed inside the Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa, Canada's capital, where Karsh once lived. It was stolen and replaced with a fake. Now police say they've recovered it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GENEVIEVE DUMAS, GENERAL MANAGER, FAIRMONT CHATEAU LAURIER HOTEL: We've been waiting for this day for over two years now and I'm beyond excited. I can guarantee you that once the portrait is back it's going to be very secured, armed and it's not going to move from the wall. That's for sure. We've learned our lesson. We're not specialists in art but we're becoming so.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: Police say the photo was trafficked to Italy and sold with neither the auction house nor the buyer knowing its history. A man in Canada is facing multiple charges. The photo will be handed over to Canadian officials later this month.

All right. Thanks so much for joining me. I'm Kim Brunhuber, in Atlanta. The news continues with Max Foster in London.

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