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Milton Strengthens Into Cat 1 Hurricane, Threatening Florida Coast; Volunteer Pilots Fly Supply To Hard-hit Areas In North Carolina; Heavy Strikes Pound Beirut As Israel Issues New Evacuation Orders; Israel Launches New Military Operation In Northern Gaza; Harris Weights More Breaks With Biden 30 Days Before Election; Fight For Latino Voters In Battleground Pennsylvania; Historic Spike In Antisemitic Incidents. Aired 4-5p ET

Aired October 06, 2024 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:35]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining me. I'm Omar Jimenez in for Fredricka Whitfield. We start this hour with breaking news.

Hurricane Milton is now a category one hurricane, threatening Florida's west coast with devastating storm surge, flooding, and damaging winds. It's forecast to intensify into at least a category three storm before making landfall in just a few days.

We have a team covering this dangerous storm. CNN correspondent Rafael Romo and CNN meteorologist Elisa Raffa are here.

I'm going to start with you, Rafael, though. What are we learning as far as preparations and other things go?

RAFAEL ROMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Omar, this is a very serious situation. In addition to declaring of state of emergency in 51 counties, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has ordered management sites to remain open 24/7 so that many areas covered by debris after Hurricane Helene can be cleared before the arrival of Milton, which became a hurricane this afternoon. More than 800 Guardsmen are currently deployed for debris removal, but DeSantis said there will soon be up to 4,000 available.

We also heard from Florida Senator Rick Scott, who earlier said that Milton has the potential of causing much greater damage than Helene which pummeled Florida only 10 days ago. With Helene, Scott said over a million households were left without power. Milton has the potential of having an impact that will be much worse.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RICK SCOTT (R-FL): It seems like a lot of storms have become water events. We've got an all with this one. We're going to have storm surge. We're going to have flooding. We're going to have massive winds and guess what it means? You're going to lose power. (END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMO: We heard a similar assessment from Governor DeSantis earlier today, who also said that Florida is going to see a lot of power outages, and that is something that people should prepare for, adding that crews are already getting staged to restore electricity as soon as possible. His emergency management director warned people that evacuations will be necessary at a level Florida hasn't probably seen since 2017 when Hurricane Irma hit the peninsula.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody says people should realize that evacuating is a life or death decision.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ASHLEY MOODY, ATTORNEY GENERAL, FLORIDA: If they say get out and it's going to hit us like this and they can't predict exactly that storm surge, and you are in an evacuation zone you probably need to write your name in permanent marker on your arm so that people know who you are when they get to you afterwards.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMO: And more than 500,000 people in Pinellas County where people were getting sandbags ready earlier could be ordered to evacuate Monday as well.

Many of these people, Omar, were also impacted by Helene and have yet to recover from it. Manatee County located just north of Sarasota earlier announced that they will begin evacuations Monday afternoon in preparation for the storm's arrival -- Omar.

JIMENEZ: And as you mentioned, coming right on the heels of Helene.

Rafael Romo, thank you so much.

I want to bring in Elisa Raffa in the CNN Weather Center because where is Milton now? What should we be expecting with this?

ELISA RAFFA, AMS METEOROLOGIST: So it's sitting in the Gulf of Mexico right now. And that is fueling its intensification. It was able to rapidly intensify from yesterday. And we are expecting it to rapidly intensify again because it is sitting in ocean temperatures that are incredibly warm. Winds at its center right now are 80 miles per hour. That makes it a category one hurricane and it's sitting about 800 miles west and southwest of Tampa Bay.

It will continue its trek in these very warm Gulf waters, which is why we are anticipating it becoming a major category three hurricane and it could maintain that major hurricane status as it heads towards the west coast of Florida. Notice, too, you know, how the cone really just swallows the entire peninsula. We're looking at impacts no matter where that eye goes across the entire peninsula. The damaging winds and the heavy rain, storm surge up and down the coast as well.

And I want to point this out, too. Like I mentioned, we're looking at an intensifying again because we have these very warm ocean temperatures in the middle and upper 80s. That's what caused the rapid intensification over the last 24 hours and will cause it again over the next 24 hours. But when you look at the spaghetti plots, as we call them, look at the spread. This is just where the center might go.

You see as far north as Cedar Key or as far south as Naples. So this is what we're really meaning to eyeball very closely because this will determine who gets the worst storm surge. No matter where the hurricane goes, everyone is going to get it on the outer bands of the heavy rain and the damaging winds.

[16:05:02]

So that storm surge forecast will be incredibly important and really determined by where that center goes. So we'll continue to find, again, it's skirting across the Gulf as we go through the next two days, kind of scrapes past the Yucatan Peninsula. Then by Tuesday night we're already finding the outer bands coming in. Rain already coming in. Gusty winds as well. That landfall, that center most dangerous part of the storm starts to come in by Wednesday. And again, somewhere on that west coast of Florida.

If that eye goes just a little bit to the north of Tampa, that would mean a worst-case scenario as far as storm surge for Tampa Bay. Again, either way, no matter what the winds do, we're looking at heavy rain, we're looking at heavy rain on the order of five to eight inches. And again, look at how it covers the entire peninsula. Some isolated totals could be 10 to 12 inches of rain, which would cause flash and urban flooding, not just on the coast, but even places farther inland -- Omar.

JIMENEZ: Elisa Raffa and Rafael Romo, thank you both.

Now, while Hurricane Milton strengthens, residents across several states are still struggling to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Now the death toll from the storm has risen to at least 227 people. Nearly half of those killed were in North Carolina, where entire communities remain cut off by landslides and collapsed roads and bridges.

President Biden is deploying an additional 500 troops to help with recovery efforts in that state. And FEMA is putting up a Web site to stop rumors including one claiming aid -- one claiming that aid trucks are being blocked. FEMA says that is not happening.

Joining me now, Doug Jackson, chairman of Operation Airdrop, and Matt McSwain, founder of "Operation Helo," and alongside Matt is Dr. Lindsey Duch, the VP of health policy at ALG Senior. They've been a lifeline to many of the desperate storm survivors in North Carolina so thank you all for being here.

Doug, I want to start with you because officials say hundreds of people are still missing or stranded in the wake of this storm. Can you tell us what you saw? I know you've just returned after days in the disaster zone. DOUG JACKSON, CHAIRMAN, OPERATION AIRDROP: Yes. It's devastating. I

have done -- I've been doing this now for quite a few years. We've done about 13 missions and I was not prepared for what I saw out there and the people that I've talked to. I interviewed couple of individuals that in a very, very hard hit area and what they had to tell me was just -- it was, their homes are gone. They're living -- what they have is, what they have around them is all they have left in this world. And it's absolutely devastating for them. It's hard to describe. Never seen anything like it.

JIMENEZ: And, you know, some of the images that have been coming out of there are just, as you talked about, they are hard to describe. Just the magnitude of what we've seen here.

And Matt, you took this really powerful picture of a couple sitting in front of a store. I believe we have it here if we want to put it up here. What did they -- what did they tell you?

MATT MCSWAIN, FOUNDER, OPERATION HELO: Yes. So picture came from a friend of mine, Tony Marx, who were out on a mission. I think him and Brad Womble (PH). They encountered this couple in a remote town after LZ was found and walked up to the building and this elderly couple was sitting there and refused to leave because their great grandson, 8 years old, was dead in the rafters. They had no way to get him out or didn't know what to do with him.

JIMENEZ: And I mean, just to see them sitting there with so much destruction around them, I mean, it's a reminder of how much people are dealing with behind images like this, but also when you see it on a big scale. These are individual people whose individual lives have been completely torn apart in many senses. And some of the most vulnerable here are some of those seniors.

And Dr. Duch, I know you work with seniors specifically. Based on the conversations you've had and interactions with folks in the area, are seniors getting what you think they need here?

DR. LINDSEY DUCH, VOLUNTEER, OPERATION HELO: No, I do not. I've been able to go out on several of these missions myself as well as coordinating the efforts on the ground here, and every time we land and see a community, you know, they do the best they can to support the seniors, but they have no sustainable water supply. They have no sustainable power, even the power they do have is intermittent because the power lines are still down. It's not that the lines are down. The polls are gone.

So these seniors are coming into a cold snap. They have no way to regulate their body heat. They have no sustainable way to get their medications. And they're -- and the staff, even if they were able to shelter in place and stay at a community center or assisted living, the staff have no homes. So now we have no staff to take care of the seniors because the staff have nowhere to live. It is -- no, it's not a sustainable situation.

[16:10:02]

JIMENEZ: And it shows just how this ripples out into so many different aspects of society.

And Doug, I want to also go back to some of the work that you and Matt do as well because how did the two of you get involved in this, I mean, really incredible what can be life-saving work here?

JACKSON: Well, our team Operation Airdrop was deploying over to Concord, which by the way when they finished up, they had flown 673 flights. They've been over 400,000 pounds by air and 700,000 pounds by truck for a total of almost 1.2 million pounds of supplies out of one airport. But when we were deploying there, I called my good friend Matt and I said, Matt, this is not something we can we can deal with fixed-wing aircraft like we're doing over at Concord.

We're going to need helicopters. Can you get some? He said absolutely. I said I'll be there. I packed my bags, left the next morning. I got on the ground there, sometime around noon on Sunday, I believe it was. And I was absolutely blown away, Matt already had like 30 helicopters on the ground. They were already flying supplies out that he had gotten donated just literally overnight.

And from there it just exploded. Matt can give you the phone numbers, but they've had something like 70 aircraft -- over 70 helicopters.

JIMENEZ: And Matt, let me bring you in on that. Can you just tell me about the effort that it's taken to stand up some of the work that you all have been able to do there?

MCSWAIN: Yes. So Doug arrived on the scene Sunday and me and my good friend and co-founder of "Operation Helo," Eric Robinson and Tony Marx were in a meeting, and we came up to the Hickory Airport, which was the closest to the, you know, the DZ line, I'm going to call it. The closest airport that had fuel and sustainability because we knew we're about to base out of here.

So during this whole mission we didn't know what we didn't know, right? So we start calling friends, start calling buddies, social medias. We're pilots, we're in that world. People started showing up. How can we help? There was no military presence, there was no military help. There was no FEMA. There was no nothing. Still no FEMA, still no military, still no nothing. We're begging. This is day eight, nine now. And we're tired.

Man, we've been -- but if we go home, mom and pop won't get their medicine and they die. So that's why we're still forging on, but going digressing, going back to the helicopter operations. This isn't something that we've ever seen before. This is -- the communities that we're trying to get to we have forged over 400 LZ's into the mountains, into the remote locations. It's not that these people don't have power.

They don't have windows and doors on their home if they even have a home. So we're flying over 400 missions per day. We have over 90 helicopters registered. We got 40 squat codes the FAA gave us. We're doing the best we can to keep these people alive. We need the military here. We want to go home. We want to turn this over to an operation. We want some help. We need some help. I don't know what else to do to get it.

JIMENEZ: Yes, and as you --

DUCH: And let me just reiterate, Omar, you know, not only are we foraging these new LD's but we're mapping new typography.

MCSWAIN: Yes, right behind us. I want to speak. We have an officer behind us that has been taken care of. We got over marked LZ's, we got true movement on the ground. We've got helicopter movement on the ground. We can fully track. We're integrated. We are integrated with the military. They are watching what we're doing. But for some reason they won't show up. So yes, I hope that answered your question.

JIMENEZ: Well, and as you mentioned that President Biden has mentioned he's going to be sending around 500 more troops to help with some of the efforts that you guys are talking about as well, and FEMA has continued to build up its presence, but there are gaps that only people like you have been able to fill especially in the initial stages of this. So really appreciate the work you guys have been doing.

Doug Jackson, Matt McSwain, Dr. Lindsey Duch, really appreciate your time.

MCSWAIN: Thank you.

DUCH: Thank you.

JIMENEZ: All right. Still to come the Israeli military ramps up troops near Gaza and hit southern Beirut with airstrikes ahead of the events that will mark one year since Hamas' attacks in Israel. We're live in the region, stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:18:53]

JIMENEZ: All right. New today, Israel's military is mounting renewed attacks on Hamas in Gaza. After launching airstrikes overnight, the IDF says it began a new ground assault after seeing signs that the group is rebuilding.

Also happening today, Israel once again pounding Beirut's southern and suburbs with attacks. CNN crews saying they are some of the most intense since the current conflict began. Israel says it's targeting Hezbollah weapons facilities and issued new evacuation orders for parts of Beirut.

And it comes as Israel begins to mark one year since the October 7th Hamas attack sparking the war in Gaza. Now, earlier in Tel Aviv's Hostage Square, there were tributes to the victims and hostages.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond is live in Tel Aviv and Ben Wedeman is in Beirut for us.

Ben, I want to start with you because as I understand we just saw explosions behind you? What can you tell us?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Just about three or four minutes ago, as I was preparing for this live shot, there was a very large explosion behind me in the southern suburbs. Here it is.

[16:20:09]

WEDEMAN: OK. That's my camera man Sharbel (PH) telling me to get out of the way because I was looking in the wrong direction. But that's the second or the third within the last hour. In fact, about an hour ago, the Arabic spokesman for the Israeli military put out warnings on Twitter that strikes were coming. The first one came just 40 minutes after that strike and it's important to note that there are still many civilians living in that part of the city, although many have also fled.

Oftentimes they're not glued to their phones or their computers to get these warnings. So they're a real source of worry for those who are still down in the southern suburbs of Beirut. And certainly what we saw overnight Saturday into Sunday was very intense Israeli bombing of the southern suburbs. According to the official Lebanese news agency, more than 30 strikes. That is probably the most intense we've seen since the night when Hassan Nasrallah was killed Friday before last when there really were intense strikes on the southern suburbs.

As far as what's going on outside of Beirut, yet again the Arabic spokesman for the Israeli media put out more evacuation orders for approximately 25 villages in the south. At this point they've put out these warnings to around 125 villages telling the people to go north of the Awali River, which is about 50 kilometers north of the border with Israel. We're talking about an area that encompasses about 25 percent of Lebanon's entire area.

And so it does appear that even though until now the Israelis have launched limited raids on Lebanese territory. We do know that they are reinforcing their forces on the northern border and the expectation is that sooner rather than later there will be a full-scale Israeli invasion of the south. And in preparation for that, clearly, they're telling everybody to get out of the area and it's been proceeded now for two weeks of intense bombings in the south.

The worry is of course that Israel is going to do as many Israeli officials have threatened in the past is to copy the example of Beirut or rather Gaza and paste it onto Lebanon -- Omar.

JIMENEZ: Of course, we will see. Ben Wedeman, please stay safe. Obviously, it was a pretty significant explosion behind you that you that you showed us.

Jeremy, I want to bring you in here because, look, we know there's an Israeli operation right now into southern Lebanon, but also we were learning about an Israeli operation in Gaza as well. What is Israel saying about its military operations in Gaza as of now?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Well, even as the Israeli military is intensifying its operations in Lebanon, it is also continuing to do so in the Gaza Strip and it is notable of course that as we are standing here on the eve of October -- of the anniversary of October 7th, one year of the war in Gaza, the Israeli military still going back into areas that it had previously operated in, previously carried out major offensives in, and now going back into the Jabalya Refugee Camp in northern Gaza for the fourth time during this war after they say that Hamas has begun to reconstitute in that area.

And of course, a lot of Israeli military analyst who I've spoken to say that this raises serious questions about the Israeli government's long-term strategy for Gaza and the lack of an alternative to Hamas governance inside the Gaza Strip. In addition to that, of course, as the Israeli military now encircles Jabalya, they've also issued evacuation orders for the majority of the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

This could force hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes once again after a year of constant displacements at a time when nearly every single Gazan has had to move from their home at least once. And many of them multiple, multiple times. People who were fleeing this morning after the Israeli military carried out airstrikes and artillery strikes on Jabalya overnight. They said that they were afraid of what could come next and whether or not they would truly find safety in this designated humanitarian zone where they were heading to as the Israeli military has also struck that area as well -- Omar.

JIMENEZ: Jeremy Diamond, thank you so much as always.

All right, everyone, coming up for us with just one month left until the 2024 election, the candidates are racing to make their final pitch to voters including a major media blitz --

(DEFECTIVE VIDEO)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:40:24]

JIMENEZ: Now with the election just weeks away, Vice President Harris is trying to forge her own path to the White House.

CNN senior reporter Isaac Dovere has new reporting about this delicate balancing act Harris and her campaign are doing in this final stretch of the election.

So, Isaac, what did you find?

ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Omar. The story up on our site right now has one person telling this to me the ultimate balancing act here. This is of course very tricky for Kamala Harris as she is in this final month. How to lead, but also substantially differentiates herself from Joe Biden in a way that makes her look like she is part of change that a lot of voters say they want, is not just a continuation of the Biden administration as Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have accused her of being. And you see, for example, on what's going on in the Middle East right

now. How can she for political reasons may be say that she wants to be in a different place from Joe Biden. But of course then be at his side in the situation room when it comes to the actual work of figuring out what to do about that situation. On the economy as well.

And when you look at the broader points of this remind you in the debate that Kamala Harris had with Donald Trump a couple of weeks ago, one of the best lines and the way it was received by voters that the Harris campaign found was when she said, I am not Joe Biden.

Now, Omar, compare that to what happened on Friday when Joe Biden stopped into the White House briefing room for the first time ever. This is what he said about her.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: She was a major player in everything we've done including passage of legislation which we were told we could never pass. And so she's been -- and her staff is interlocked with mine in terms of all the things we're doing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DOVERE: I can tell you, Omar, that that was a situation where the White House gave the Harris campaign a heads up just a short time before that the president was going to come out. It was not coordinated and that a lot of Harris aides were not happy about that. They don't want the reminder of Joe Biden, the reminder of that closeness there. So in these last couple of weeks of the campaign, what we're going to see is things when it comes to some policy proposals, some promises about what she would do as president, and also just things that she will be talking about, efforts to really make that differentiation from Joe Biden clear and also to increase and amp up that contrast to Donald Trump.

JIMENEZ: Well, it's a dynamic that's not going anywhere.

DOVERE: That's right.

JIMENEZ: I mean, it has to this point and it will be even more critical in this final stretch as you mentioned.

Isaac Dovere, really appreciate your time and reporting.

DOVERE: Thank you.

JIMENEZ: All right. Also, recent nationwide polling of Latino voters shows that a majority of Latinos polled may back Harris, but inflation and worries about the overall economy have given Trump a way to potentially peel off some of that support.

Our Danny Freeman examines the Latino vote in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DANNY FREEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fresh off his vice presidential debate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was in Redding, Pennsylvania, stopping at a Puerto Rican owned restaurant to boost support among the city's majority Latino population.

GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: This thing's going to come down to our blue wall states, come down to Pennsylvania, might come right through this restaurant.

FREEMAN: At the same time, just four blocks away, the Trump campaign was holding its own phone bank specifically targeting Latinos in the Lehigh Valley.

(Speaking in foreign language) President Trump? What are the three reasons you are supporting President Trump?

MARCIA HERAS, TRUMP SUPPORTER: OK. (Speaking in Foreign Language).

FREEMAN: Family.

HERAS: (Speaking in Foreign Language).

FREEMAN: Life.

HERAS: (Speaking in Foreign Language).

FREEMAN: And end of war.

(Voice-over): The dueling outreach just the latest sign both campaigns understand the importance of Latino voters in the Keystone State.

In 2020, President Joe Biden beat former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania by about 80,000 votes. But with this race still extremely tight, the estimated 615,000 eligible Latino voters here could easily help decide the November outcome.

While recent national polls show Harris doing better than Biden was with Latino voters, they also show Trump outperforming past Republicans among this group, which in recent elections has solidly backed Democrats.

At a Harris campaign event this week in Allentown, another deeply Latino city, there were plenty of voters excited about the vice president.

This man told me he feels Harris represents hope and will help small businesses, but there were warning signs, too.

(Speaking in foreign language) You're not going to stay home. You're going to vote?

HECTOR SANTANA, UNDECIDED VOTER: (Speaking in Foreign Language).

FREEMAN: Today you have not made a decision who you're going to vote for.

SANTANA: No.

CARMEN DANCSECS, MORTGAGE LENDER: I think we have too many people that are kind of like on shaky waters. They don't know where they stand.

[16:45:00]

FREEMAN (voice-over): To energize this community in Pennsylvania, the Harris campaign is turning to volunteers like Yamelisa Taveras. The campaign featuring the Allentown small business owner and mom in a new ad focused on healthcare this week.

YAMELISA TAVERAS, HARRIS SUPPORTER: I believe we have a great shot with Harris-Walz. However, the campaign can do more. There's still so many people on the fence. And having those conversations and knowing that there truly are a lot of people that can benefit from so much more information.

FREEMAN: For their part, the Trump campaign is turning to men like Daniel Campo. The Venezuelan born pilot recently spoke at a Trump rally in northeastern Pennsylvania. But Campo said his biggest challenge when canvassing Latino neighborhoods are people who feel the former president is prejudiced against Latinos.

How do you convince them to vote for him?

DANIEL CAMPO, TRUMP SUPPORTER: So are you going to invite him to your wedding? Are you going to invite him to your birthday party or your kid's birthday party? You have somebody that did the job and did a good job and you're hiring him again for that job. You're not inviting him to your wedding.

FREEMAN (voice-over): Danny Freeman, CNN, Allentown, Pennsylvania.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JIMENEZ: And as we know, those margins are going to make the difference.

Danny Freeman, thank you so much.

Next, almost one year since Hamas' brutal attack on Israel, the Anti- Defamation League says there is a historic spike in anti-Jewish threats across the United States. We have the details.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:50:48]

JIMENEZ: As we mark the one-year anniversary of the October 7th attacks in Israel, a new report is detailing the rising threats facing Jewish Americans. Now the Anti-Defamation League says they've tracked more antisemitic incidents in the last 12 months than at any point since they began tracking threats 45 years ago.

CNN's Josh Campbell joins us now with more.

So, Josh, I mean, what more does this report say about these threats?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, my friend, really troubling figures out from ADL. Over 10,000 incidents since October 7th, they say essentially the statistics have tripled over the last year when it comes to antisemitic incidents. So take a look at some of the specific numbers. What ADL says is they recorded at least 8,015 incidents of verbal or written antisemitic harassment, at least 1840 incidents of vandalism, at least 150 incidents of actual physical assault.

They point to college campuses as the particular flashpoint that we all saw, you know, earlier this year with that protests erupting. Now the head of the ADL was on with our colleague Dana Bash today on "STATE OF THE UNION." He spoke about this very dire milestone that they've seen with these figures. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JONATHAN GREENBLATT, CEO AND NATIONAL DIRECTOR, ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE: ADL has been around for over 110 years, and we've never seen data like this before. Think about it. Like we are honoring, commemorating the solemn anniversary of the murder of 1200 people, simply because they were Jewish, right? They were slaughtered, they were tortured, they were killed, they were kidnapped. And yet here in the United States, that triggered a tsunami of anti-Jewish hate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMPBELL: Now these figures appear to track with statistics from the FBI. I want you to listen here to FBI director Christopher Wray. He testified just after the October 7th attack, talking about the outsized nature of threats against Jews in this country. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTOPHER WRAY, FBI DIRECTOR: The Jewish community is uniquely, uniquely targeted by pretty much every terrorist organization across the spectrum. And when you look at a group that makes up 2.4 percent, roughly of the American population, it should be jarring to everyone that that same population accounts for something like 60 percent of all religious based hate crimes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMPBELL: And finally, Omar, tomorrow obviously the one-year anniversary of October 7th, we're learning that the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, had issued a public advisory indicating that that anniversary along with continued Middle East turmoil could serve as a motivator for acts of violence. They're asking people to be aware, to be vigilant, as they're out and about. Certainly a very cautious effort right now by law enforcement.

JIMENEZ: Yes, of course. Josh Campbell, thank you so much for the reporting.

Everyone else, we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:53:00]

JIMENEZ: "Saturday Night Live" had some fun with the vice presidential debate last night as the show took aim at J.D. Vance and Tim Walz for their somewhat friendly face-off last week. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHLOE FINEMAN, COMEDIAN: We begin tonight with the topic of Israel.

Senator Vance, how would you solve the ongoing crisis in the Middle East?

BOWEN YANG, COMEDIAN: Yes. That is such an important question, Margaret. One that deserves an answer because it's important. And it's a question that you asked of me tonight.

(LAUGHTER)

FINEMAN: You're not going to answer, are you?

YANG: No, I'm not.

HEIDI GARDNER, COMEDIAN: Governor Walz, you claimed you were in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre when you were home in Minnesota. Can you explain that?

JIM GAFFIGAN, COMEDIAN: So I think what happened is I went to EPCOT. You can go around the whole world in -- I had a couple in the Germany section, and I thought I went to China. Anyway, I'm a knucklehead but I'm sure this guy has some things he'd want to, you know, back out of as well.

YANG: He's right about that. That's an area where a lot of common ground --

GAFFIGAN: -- area where we have a lot of common ground.

(LAUGHTER)

MAYA RUDOLPH, COMEDIAN: Why are they friends? Why are they vibing?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: Maybe it's just because things did seem to be a little cordial in the VP debate. Maybe that's weird these days.

Before we go, a quick programming note tonight, go behind the scenes of Ellen's trailblazing coming out episode. A new episode of CNN's "TV ON THE EDGE, MOMENTS THAT SHAPED OUR CULTURE" premieres tonight at 9:00 on CNN. Here's a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DAVA SAVEL, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER AND WRITER, ELLEN: Do you remember the entire audience being pulled out?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

TRACY NEWMAN, WRITER, ELLEN: Yes.

SAVEL: And they had to sweep it with dogs and whatever.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You had people calling you up and threatening you.

NEWMAN: Yes. And also she had a stalker. I'm short with blond hair also, so I had the same stalker.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow.