Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
Suspect Detained After Apparent Trump Assassination Attempt; Sean "Diddy" Combs Arrested in New York; E.U. Leaders Grapple with Far-Right Pressure to Curb Migration; At Least 17 Killed in Flooding Across Central Europe; Historic Rainfall in North Carolina Floods Streets and Homes; Trump: Suspect Acted on the Rhetoric of Biden and Harris; Federal Judges Hear Arguments on Potential TikTok Ban. Aired 12-12:45a ET
Aired September 17, 2024 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[00:00:42]
LYNDA KINKADE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Welcome. Ahead on the CNN NEWSROOM.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Driver, take two steps to your right. Take two steps to your right.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KINKADE: Dramatic footage of the moment the suspect in the apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump is arrested. The latest details on that incident ahead.
Also, Sean "Diddy" Combs arrested in New York after being the target of a months-long sex trafficking probe. And rescue and recovery is underway after catastrophic flooding in Europe, as the region experiences some of the worst rain it's seen in decades.
ANNOUNCER: Live from Atlanta, this is CNN NEWSROOM, with Lynda Kinkade.
KINKADE: First this hour we have new details on the investigation into the apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Florida. We're now learning the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, may have been laying in wait for nearly 12 hours along the tree line at the Trump International Golf Club before he was spotted by a Secret Service agent and fled in a car.
The moment of Routh's arrest a short time later caught on a body cam video. You can see him with his hands up as officers quickly handcuff him. He appeared in court Monday and was charged with two federal gun related crimes. Officials say additional charges may be possible. The Secret Service says the suspect did not have a line of sight on Trump and the Palm Beach County sheriff says the suspect, quote, "didn't even get close to getting a round off." Trump is praising the Secret Service and other law enforcement for
their actions and is publicly recounting what appears to be a second attempt on his life.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I was playing golf with some of my friends who was on a Sunday morning, and very peaceful, very beautiful weather. Everything was beautiful. Nice place to be. And all of a sudden we heard shots being fired in the air. And I guess probably four or five, and it sounded like bullets, but what do I know about that? But Secret Service knew immediately they were bullets. And they grabbed me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KINKADE: CNN's Randi Kaye is following developments from Palm Beach County, Florida, and filed this report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ryan Wesley Routh may have been laying in wait from his spot in the bushes at Trump International Golf Club for nearly 12 hours. That's according to court documents unsealed today, showing Routh's phone was in the vicinity of the area starting as early as 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning. Prosecutors also revealed in court documents that the serial number on the rifle recovered from the area where Routh was spotted was unreadable to the naked eye.
Just before 2:00 p.m. Secret Service noticed the barrel of a rifle poking through a fence at Trump International Golf Club. Trump was somewhere between the fifth and sixth hole at the time.
CHARLES RAMSEY, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: When you look at the map, you see a roadway very close to holes five and six, which it would make sense that that would be a location if you were going to try to take a shot, it would be closer and would give you opportunity to do so and also give you an escape route.
KAYE: The Secret Service fired on the man with the gun before he fled. A quick thinking witness at the scene provided authorities with a description of the suspect, as well as a picture of the car and license plate. Martin County deputies detained Routh a short time later. CNN obtained this bodycam video of Routh's arrest.
SHERIFF WILLIAM D. SNYDER, MARTIN COUNTY, FLORIDA: The witness from the incident at Trump International was flown to the scene by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and he was able to make a positive I.D.
KAYE: In the bushes at the golf club, authorities recovered an SKS style rifle with a scope, two backpacks equipped with ceramic tiles for a makeshift bulletproof vest, and a GoPro. Since then, a complicated picture has emerged of Ryan Routh, a 58-year-old small business owner from Hawaii. CNN has learned that Routh supported Trump in 2016, but later dismissed him as a buffoon and a fool. Routh also mentioned Trump in his book titled "Ukraine's Unwinnable
War." Routh traveled to Ukraine in 2022 and encouraged others to sign up to fight. He did an interview with AFP news agency from Kyiv in April that year.
[00:05:01]
RYAN WESLEY ROUTH, SUSPECT: Putin is a terrorist and he needs to be ended.
KAYE: Court documents also detail past run-ins with the law, including felony convictions in North Carolina. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to felony possession of a weapon of mass destruction and carrying a concealed weapon. Other charges over the years included possession of stolen goods, driving without a registration and failing to pay his taxes on time.
Still, unanswered questions remain, including how safe is Trump and others given the current political environment.
ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Everywhere the former president goes and the current president and other candidates go, they're going to have to start thinking differently about the threat assessment.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAYE (on-camera): And a bit more information from that press briefing, we did learn that the FBI interviewed seven civilian witnesses at the scene, so they're trying to gather more information. We also now know that they are processing the suspect's items found at this scene. That would include that SKS rifle with the scope, also the two backpacks and the GoPro. They collected DNA from those items and have sent that to Quantico. They're also processing his vehicle.
But questions do still remain. So far the FBI says there isn't any indication that he worked with anyone else on this. It does look like he acted alone, but they couldn't say that for sure. And the FBI is still trying to figure out just how long he was at the state of Florida before this.
Randi Kaye, CNN, Palm Beach County, Florida.
KINKADE: Well, this second apparent attempt on Donald Trump's life is raising new concerns about whether the Secret Service can adequately protect the former president. Well, the acting director of the Secret Service is commending the agents for their actions Sunday. He also says more support and resources are needed, a sentiment echoed by the U.S. president Joe Biden.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The one thing I want make clear, the Service needs more help, and I think the Congress should respond to their needs if they in fact need more Service people. So that's what we're going to be talking about. (END VIDEO CLIP)
KINKADE: Joining me now from Palm Springs, California, is Bobby Chacon, a retired FBI special agent and former leader of an FBI dive team.
Good to have you with us.
BOBBY CHACON, RETIRED FBI SPECIAL AGENT: Thank you, Lynda.
KINKADE: So two attempted assassination attempts on a former president in as many months. How unusual is this and does it point to an issue with the Secret Service or intelligence or some other problem?
CHACON: Well, the last time in my life I can remember this is the '70s when I was in high school and Gerald Ford I think was shot twice or shot at twice within a short period of time. But certainly never like this, never anything this close to ending his life as it happened in Pennsylvania, and like we saw this weekend. So, yes, this is I think we're starting to get into unprecedented territory and, you know, everybody is worried about now the next attempt.
This is a man who, you know, Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism, has put a price on his head. So they certainly have more sophisticated ways of carrying out an attack than, say, either of the two shooters that we've seen so far. And so, yes, there is serious concern about Trump safety and, you know, and whether or not the Secret Service is getting all the resources that they need.
KINKADE: And let's talk about the man arrested, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58 years old. He's voted Democrat in the past. He's also voted for Trump and now regrets it. The FBI is exploring whether he acted alone. What will law enforcement be doing right now to get answers to that question but also to questions around his motivation?
CHACON: Well, the FBI has something called the SOMEX, which is a social media exploitation team. And they are experts at just diving into the digital footprint, seeing, you know, who he was associated with, who he chatted with, who he liked, you know, posts of and who liked his post. I mean, the data they can access and analyze is tremendous. So they have a good picture of his -- at least his online persona right now.
They've also probably been talking to friends, family, co-workers, professional associates, anybody that he had contact with on a regular basis in his life. They probably to get a picture of him as a person because sometimes we know that online persona could be different than the person. So they're doing both of those things to develop a bigger picture of who he was.
I mean, it's a political assassination. So the implied motive is always in a political assassination as always you don't want that person to ascend to power or you want them out of power. I mean, Hinckley was a one-off because he shot Reagan because he was obsessed with an actress and so that was I think an outlier. Most political assassinations have the implied motive of you want to stop that person from getting power or staying in power.
KINKADE: I wonder if we can just show some footage of Trump on his golf course for our viewers. It was filmed by our crews who were stationed outside his club on public land while he was in office. You can clearly see Trump in his red cap. You see him going around in his golf buggy. Now this is the golf club that reportedly charges over $300,000 in initiation phase before the annual membership fees.
[00:10:05]
And according to cell phone data, it indicates from the scene on the weekend that Routh may have spent nearly 12 hours on Sunday near the area where he was spotted in the bushes with his rifle. How much onus is there on Trump to improve security at his own property?
CHACON: Well, I mean, look, property, you know, always has a property line and he was outside the property. So in other words, he probably wasn't literally inside the fence line. He looked like he was outside the fence pointing the rifle through the fence. You know, as we have heard, he was there for almost 12 hours. So he probably went in there, you know, because he knew on Sunday mornings early, as soon as it's laid up, people are walking their dogs, they're jogging, whatever.
So he went in there while it was still dark in the middle of the night, off his car a little down the road and then got himself inside those thick, heavy bushes so no one could see him in there. He brought food with them. He brought everything he needed to carry out this attack. So, I mean, I think that the security at the golf course was probably not an issue because, you know, golf courses are huge.
I live on a golf course here in California. I mean, you couldn't possibly encapsulate it. You know, they had a fence up. He was outside that fence pointing the rifle through the fence, and like I said, he went in under the cover of darkness. That's why he was there for 12 hours. He didn't want to try to get themselves into those bushes in daylight when somebody might have seen him.
KINKADE: Can you explain for us how the protection of a sitting president compares to that of a former president?
CHACON: Yes, I mean, a sitting president has so much more resources allocated to them. And even the vice president, you know, because they are -- obviously they are under more of a threat usually. And so 24/7, more people on every shift, more people around the house, around the family and as presidents leave office the longer they're out of office, the longer they're out of public life, you know, the older they get, the less public appearances they make, they scaled down that security detail, you know, as the person gets older and stays out of public life more.
So as a prior president, he has a fairly substantial detail, but nowhere near what a sitting president has. They go everywhere, motorcades, just larger motorcades, more support. It's just a much larger detail and much more resources dedicated to a sitting president.
KINKADE: We'll see if resources with the Secret Service change going forward. '
Bobby Chacon, good to get your insight. Thanks so much for your time.
CHACON: Thanks for having me.
KINKADE: Well, rapper and music producer Sean "Diddy" Combs has been arrested in New York. That's according to his attorney. A source telling CNN that he was detained Monday night at a New York City hotel. The Manhattan U.S. attorney said in a statement that the indictment against Combs will be unsealed Tuesday morning.
Combs became the target of a federal sex trafficking probe earlier this year. And since last November, the embattled musician has been hit with 10 lawsuits, nine directly accusing him of sexual assault. He's denied any wrongdoing.
Well, joining us now from Los Angeles is Areva Martin, a civil rights attorney and legal affairs commentator.
Thanks so much for your time tonight.
AREVA MARTIN, LEGAL AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: Hi, Lynda.
KINKADE: So this rapper was arrested in the lobby of a New York City hotel in Midtown Manhattan. He's been served a grand jury indictment that's expected to be unsealed tomorrow. Just explain what that means.
MARTIN: Yes. Essentially what we know, Lynda, is that the grand jury in Manhattan have been meeting now for months. Individuals have been impaneled for the grand jury. If you think of a jury, which we often hear a lot of, grand juries meet in secret and evidence is presented to them by a prosecutor and after the conclusion of the presentation of that evidence they make a determination about whether there's enough evidence there to indict an individual or not.
So apparently in this case, after evidence has been presented, it could be witnesses, it could be documents, it could be videotape, it could be audio tape, could be a wide range of evidence that was presented to the grand jury. The subject of the investigation is not present, not allowed to testify. And what we know is that it's fairly low bar in terms of getting an indictment once evidence has been presented by a prosecutor to a grand jury.
We know that this indictment is under seal, but the Manhattan Southern District, the U.S. attorney's office has said they will unseal this indictment tomorrow. So we'll learn what the charges are tomorrow. At this point we can guess what they are based on the raid on Sean Combs' home in March earlier of this year, as well as the multiple, multiple lawsuits and the myriad of allegations of sex trafficking, rape and sexual assault that have been made in civil lawsuits.
[00:15:02]
KINKADE: Yes. So speak to us more about what you think those charges will be given that he has had this wave of lawsuits from, as you say, sexual assault to physical abuse by his former girlfriend, to sex trafficking. What charges could be included?
MARTIN: Yes, what we know about Sean Combs is decades ago, there have been allegations of him having a temper, of him having violent outbursts, of him using physical force and using violence against others, including women that he had relationships with. Cassie Ventura, someone he was in a relationship for a number of years, filed an explosive lawsuit in November of 2023 making allegations that he gave her drugs, that he forced her to have sex with other men while he watched, that he raped her as recently as 2018, that he beat her.
And then CNN released this videotape of him, Sean Combs, literally beating and dragging Cassie through a hotel in Los Angeles. So I would not be surprised and based on what was alleged in Cassie's lawsuit, based on what we saw on that video, based on the other lawsuits that you mentioned that have been filed that this indictment involves both sex trafficking as well as rape and sexual assault charges, all very serious felony charges.
KINKADE: And of course, he's girlfriend filed a lawsuit against him last November, and then the video emerged of an assault in a hotel. Why has it taken so long then for this indictment, do you think?
MARTIN: Well, it hasn't really been that long if you think about it. From what we know publicly, the lawsuit was filed in November of 2023, it was settled very quickly, but it opened the door for other lawsuits to be filed. The raid by Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies happened in March of this year. So here we are in mid- September. These cases can be very complex.
The allegations involved from the civil lawsuits involve multiple locations. They involve multiple people. There are allegations of there being videotape, an audio tape, so when you think about the enormity of the allegations that have been made against him, the timeframe is not that expansive and this was something that for many people, you know, was expected once the lawsuits were filed, once the raid happened. So not a lot of surprises that there has been an indictment now issued by this Manhattan grand jury.
KINKADE: There'll be a lot of interest in this tomorrow and going forward.
Areva Martin, good to get your insight. Thanks so much.
MARTIN: Thank you, Lynda.
KINKADE: And still to come, European leaders are struggling with pressure from far-right groups to crack down on migration. How they're responding, next. Plus the death toll from Storm Boris rises in Central Europe in some of the worst flooding the region has seen in decades.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[00:20:00]
KINKADE: Welcome back. Germany has placed new temporary restrictions on all its land borders, giving Berlin the power to reject anyone coming into the country. Of course, the country is part of the Schengen border free zone, but it is allowed to put temporary border controls in place. Germany's interior minister says the move is, quote, "a tough stance against irregular migration." She says it's meant to protect German citizens from cross-border crime and Islamist terrorism.
It comes as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government faces pressure from far-right opposition groups to crack down on migration and asylum seekers. But Germany's European neighbors aren't happy with the new restrictions and neither are human rights groups.
Immigration was at the top of the agenda as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met in Rome. Starmer who leads a center-left coalition says his talks with the right-wing leader will help the U.K. tackle the problem of migrants arriving on small boats. He says the two countries share a common challenge in irregular migration and will collaborate and cooperate. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIORGIA MELONI, ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER (through translator): Every week, thousands of migrants are crossing the Mediterranean to illegally reach Italy and have access in Europe. And many of them also cross the channel to access the U.K. So this is a problem which has affected the whole of Europe. And with Prime Minister Starmer, we have agreed that the first thing to be done is to intensify our fight against human trafficking. And we need to do so by further uniting our forces and enhancing security.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KINKADE: CNN European affairs commentator Dominic Thomas joins us now from Los Angeles.
Good to have you with us. I think we might have one problem with your audio.
Dominic, can you count for me, one, two, three?
DOMINIC THOMAS, CNN EUROPEAN AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight --
KINKADE: OK. We have got you now loud and clear. Good to have you with us.
THOMAS: Thank you so much.
KINKADE: Thanks, Dominic. So a growing number of European countries are tightening their borders. So is Europe dealing with a migration crisis or rather a political crisis right now?
THOMAS: I think, Lynda, honestly, when you look at the question, it's really more of a political crisis. And so this is why. So first of all, Europe has a very significant demographic problem with an aging population, and on top of that, it's got a significant labor shortage. So there's some inconsistency in the ways in which these governments have been responding.
Chancellor Scholz of Germany just recently signed a deal with the Kenyan government to bring thousands of workers to Italy through legal paths and to perform work in a labor economy in which there are significant shortages. So in fact, I think really the question is, there's more of an anti-immigration crisis in Europe today, and we've been -- we've seen far-right political groups shaping elections and discussions around these questions in Europe for over a decade now.
And it seems that opposition leaders been unable or rather leaders have been unable to kind of counter these narratives, and instead are going down the road of pandering and kind of mainstreaming these particular groups. And what we see across the board is a kind of scapegoating of immigrants and blaming them for the social ills that the countries are facing rather than tackling the real issues at hand.
And this is an issue that doesn't just impact Europe. We see it in other elections around the world, too, Lynda.
KINKADE: Yes, exactly right. And I want to bring out some of those numbers, Dominic, because when you look over the past decade this year so far in the first eight months almost 121,000 migrants have come to Europe, but that pales in significance compared to last year, which saw 270,000 migrants in total. And of course, back in 2015, where over a million migrants came to Europe at the height of what was a migrant crisis then.
So why now? Is it because there are -- it is more about the pressure from right-wing parties?
THOMAS: Yes, well, looking at, you know, statistics is always sort of issue. It doesn't really matter at the end of the day what you do with those statistics, whether they're accurate, correct, based on science, research, et cetera. It's the way in which they're being instrumentalized, right? And the ways in which this is sort of playing out on social media with misinformation campaigns and so on.
What we have seen is that far-right parties have been extremely effective in shaping the outcomes of elections so in a context like Germany today, where you had the E.U. elections in June, which saw German -- the German government, the French government come to perform, holding those elections against far-right parties. We saw just a few weeks ago in the big state elections in the east of Germany, two areas in which the sitting coalition came way down on the list. And you have a federal election coming up in less than a year in Germany now.
[00:25:01]
So you have Chancellor Scholz aiming to sort of through demonstrable actions here by closing the borders to try to show that he's doing something about this. The problem is that all the research shows is that the more of these mainstream, centrist or centrist left, centrist right governments tried to pander to the far right, the better far- right parties actually do.
And everybody would argue that they would be far better off dealing with the real issues, the sort of social inequalities and so on that drive people into the hands of these far right political groups through fear-mongering and social anxiety and so on. And they prefer to go down this road of sort of ever strengthening legislation to show that they can deal with these particular issues, Lynda.
KINKADE: Yes. And it was interesting listening to the British prime minister after he met with the Italian prime minister. I just want to play some sound for our viewers of what he had to say. Here's Starmer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEIR STARMER, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: Here there's been some quite dramatic reduction, so I want to understand how that came about. It looks as though that's down to the upstream work that's being done in some of the countries where people are coming from.
I've long believed, by the way, that prevention and stopping people traveling in the first place is one of the best ways to deal with this particular issue. So I'm very interested to know how that upstream work.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KINKADE: So when you listen to the British prime minister, why so many years after Brexit is immigration such an important issue in the U.K.?
THOMAS: Yes, it's extraordinary, Lynda. I mean, we've been talking about this for eight years. And the Brexit debate was shaped around the question and instrumentalized around the question of immigration. It was the number one issue for those that voted to leave the European Union. And here we are, all these years later, now in the recent election, yes, Keir Starmer's center, center left government won, but the party that came third was of course Nigel Farage's Reform Party, an outgrowth of the UKIP and Brexit Party with, you know, 14 percent of the vote.
So that immigration question is still extraordinarily important. What is so complex about what Keir Starmer doing here is that the scale of the question he's talking about when it comes to immigration in the U.K. and the crossings of the channel compared to the Mediterranean just simply don't compare. Secondly, the vast majority of people that come into the U.K. do so through legal paths, to study and to work in those particular areas.
And he himself struck down the Rwandan deportation scheme which was the scheme by the previous government to deport migrants and have them processed in Rwanda. And what he's talking to Meloni here, the prime minister of Italy, about is the contract deal that she's just signed with Albania to take migrants that are rescued in the Mediterranean and to process them offshore and to outsource the control over migration to a third party country in which human rights record is appalling. So there's a huge contradiction here and as much as he's claiming to
do this out of sort of interest for the question and so on, the fact is that he is ramping up anti-immigration rhetoric and encouraging a kind of security response rather than dealing with the humanitarian issues. And even one could argue, yet again, instrumentalizing the question of migration and making into a problem that it actually really is not when it comes to contemporary U.K. society, Lynda.
KINKADE: You make some really great points. Dominic Thomas, good to have you in the program as always. Thanks so much.
THOMAS: Thank you, Lynda.
KINKADE: Well, at least 17 people have been killed across Central Europe in some of the worst rain and flooding the region has seen in decades. Police in the Czech Republic had to rescue people trapped in their homes on Monday after a barrier between two rivers broke open. Thousands more are without hot water and electricity.
CNN's Melissa Bell has more on the severe weather impacting several countries.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The death toll continues to rise across parts of Central and Eastern Europe as Storm Boris continues to cause devastation. Extreme rainfall in some parts have caused rivers' levels to rise, banks to burst, and extensive damage to infrastructure with tens of thousands of residents having to be evacuated.
The death toll continuing to climb and whilst along the hardest hit region between the Czech Republic and Poland, some of the water levels appear now to be receding, there are fears that it is a widening circle of damage that threatens even further south towards Hungary, Budapest, and Slovakia, with weather experts predicting that this kind of extreme weather could be something the European continent needs to be better prepared for and to get used to. Europe now the fastest warming continent in the world.
Melissa Bell, CNN, Paris.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KINKADE: In North Carolina a storm dumped historic amounts of rain on Monday. The National Weather Service calls it a once-in-a-1,000-year rainfall event. Torrential downpours flooded streets and homes in a matter of hours. One school in Carolina Beach was shut down and students dismissed after classrooms started flooding. Crews rescued people from their homes, offices, and cars.
[00:30:09]
One homeowner told CNN that up to two and a half centimeters of rain suddenly flooded the first floor of their house. The storm system is expected to weaken by midweek.
In Texas, an SUV crashed into a natural gas pipeline Monday morning, sparking a massive fire. This is about 40 kilometers Southeast of Houston. The flames have raged for hours.
Four first responders suffered heat-related injuries and were treated at the scene. The fires damaged houses, melted vehicles, caused power outages, and forced the evacuation of 100 homes.
Crews are letting the natural gas fire burn itself out.
Well, still to come, after another apparent attempt on his life, why Donald Trump is blaming President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for what happened at his golf club on Sunday.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KINKADE: Welcome back. I'm Lynda Kinkade, and you're watching CNN NEWSROOM.
Donald Trump is blaming President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for the apparent assassination attempt at Trump's Florida golf club on Sunday.
Speaking with FOX News, Trump claimed the suspect believed their, quote, "rhetoric" and acted on it. He echoed that statement in a lengthy social media post, saying in part, "Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!"
CNN's Kristen Holmes has more on how Trump is handling the recent threats.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Former President Donald Trump reacting to that apparent second assassination attempt during an event on Twitter Spaces on Monday night.
HOLMES (voice-over): He praised law enforcement, went through the events of what happened that Sunday on his golf course. He also blamed --
HOLMES: -- political rhetoric for the events.
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE (via phone): It worked out well, and Secret Service did an excellent job. And they have the man behind bars, and hopefully, he's going to be there for a long time. Dangerous person, very, very dangerous person. But I appreciate the comments very much.
Well, there's a lot of rhetoric going around. A lot of people think that the Democrats, when they talk about a threat to democracy and all of this. And it seems that both of these people were radical leftists.
HOLMES: Now, in addition to talking about what happened on Sunday, he also went into extraordinary detail about the events --
HOLMES (voice-over): -- of his first assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, talking about local doctors, talking about a man giving CPR to someone who had been hit by a bullet.
Now, I've talked to a number of sources close to the former president who describe his mindset since that second apparent assassination attempt as in good spirits; that he has been joking around. At one point, he said that it interrupted a great or wonderful game of golf at the time of the -- that there was gunfire exchanged.
[00:35:11]
I talked to another source who spoke to him and said that he was asking about the media coverage around the event. A third source who was briefed on a conversation with Donald Trump said that he was defiant about winning in November.
But one thing is clear: he is handling at least part of the response differently to this second apparent assassination attempt than he did to what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania.
He has gone all in on attacking the Biden administration, Democrats, and saying their political rhetoric is what led to the events on Sunday.
HOLMES: Kristen Holmes, CNN, West Palm Beach, Florida.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KINKADE: Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his military to add 180,000 more troops starting in December. That would bring Russia's troop total to about one-and-a-half million.
It's the third time Putin has expanded the military ranks since launching his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The news comes one week after Russia stepped up its efforts to drive Ukrainian troops out of Kursk and as Russian forces are inching forward in Ukraine's Eastern Donbas region.
Well, still ahead, should TikTok stay, or should it go? Federal judges in Washington have heard arguments for and against a potential U.S. ban. We'll bring you details on the hearing.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KINKADE: Welcome back. I'm Lynda Kinkade.
A mayoral debate in Brazil turned ugly Sunday with one candidate sending another to the hospital for treatment.
Video shows Jose Luiz Datena swinging a chair at his counterpart, Pablo Marcal, on live television.
Datena was expelled from the debate but said in a statement that his opponent had brought up dismissed sexual harassment allegations and that he does not regret his actions.
Marcal, who suffered trauma to his chest and wrist, has compared it to July's assassination attempt on Donald Trump and vows to take legal action.
The Titan submersible, which imploded last year on its way to the Titanic, may have failed due to a worn-out line of glue. That's according to testimony from a former OceanGate contractor at a hearing Monday into the deadly incident.
During that hearing, investigators released the first image showing the wreckage of the catastrophic implosion, which killed all five people on board.
The contractor said he believes the Titan imploded because of a line of glue holding it together was too worn down to withstand the pressure of another deep dive.
He also revealed to investigators that he had previously raised concerns about the Titan's integrity with the OceanGate leadership, no less than six times.
A trio of federal judges in Washington spent more than two hours Monday hearing arguments on the issue of TikTok's Chinese ownership.
[00:40:08]
TikTok emphasized its argument that a potential ban on the app in the U.S. is unconstitutional.
CNN's Clare Duffy reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CLARE DUFFY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: During this hearing, we heard from an attorney for TikTok, an attorney for TikTok creators, who sued to challenge the ban, and an attorney for the U.S. government defending the law.
Each of them technically only had a short more time to present their case --
DUFFY (voice-over): -- but the hearing ended up stretching on for about two hours because of some pretty tough questioning from this panel of three judges, especially for TikTok.
Essentially, the judges are having to consider two key questions here. First, does this law violate the First Amendment? And then, if it does, is there sufficient justification, in terms of these national security concerns, to crack down on speech in this way?
DUFFY: TikTok, of course, is arguing the law is an illegal and unjustified violation of the First Amendment rights --
DUFFY (voice-over): of the app and its U.S. users. And in this hearing, TikTok attorney really hammered on that point. He
argued that, for the government to restrict the speech of a specific entity in this way, it would need to face strict scrutiny and have sufficient justification.
And he said that given all that we've seen publicly from the government at this point --
DUFFY: -- is essentially hypothetical concerns that the Chinese government could potentially seek to access U.S. user data from TikTok. He said that bar has not been met.
But the judges did push back pretty hard in questioning here --
DUFFY (voice-over): -- asking if the law would really violate the First Amendment when it still does leave room for TikTok to operate in the U.S., just not under Chinese control.
Now, it's not clear how the judges will rule based on today's hearing, but we're expecting to get a decision in the coming weeks --
DUFFY: -- and for the losing side to appeal so that this can go to the Supreme Court before January 19, which is the deadline for a TikTok sale or a ban.
Clare Duffy, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KINKADE: The battle for control of Rupert Murdoch's media empire is playing out in a Nevada courtroom. The 93-year-old is reportedly trying to change the terms of his family trust.
Murdochs empire includes FOX News, "The Wall Street Journal," as well as "The Sun" and "The Times" in the U.K. to name just a few.
"The New York Times" reports the billionaire wants to ensure his eldest son, Lachlan, remains in control of all of it.
The judge has denied a request by CNN and other news organizations to open the hearings to the public.
Well, that does it for this edition of CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Lynda Kinkade. I'll be back with much more news at the top of the hour. For now, stick around. WORLD SPORT is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[00:45:36]
(WORLD SPORT)
