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Kentucky Voters To Decide Fate Of Trump Foe Massie; President Trump's Approval Rating Hits Second-Term Low; Three Killed In Shooting At San Diego's Largest Mosque. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired May 19, 2026 - 04:00   ET

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

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[04:00:37]

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, everybody. This is CNN Newsroom Polo Sandoval live in New York. And here's what's coming your way. President Trump's attempt to oust a member of his own party will be put to the test as voters head back to the polls in just a matter of hours. And Trump says that he's putting strikes on Iran on hold, but warns that the U.S. is prepared for a full scale assault in if a deal can't be reached.

Plus, a deadly shooting at a San Diego mosque leaves a community shaken. What we're learning about one of the victims whose actions likely self-likely help save lives.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Live from New York, this is CNN Newsroom with Polo Sandoval.

SANDOVAL: And in just a few hours, American voters in six states will start heading back to the polls for the latest primary elections. They'll be determining who lands on the ballot in the crucial November midterms, which could change the balance of power in Washington. Some of the most closely watched races are currently unfolding in Kentucky, Georgia and in Pennsylvania. And as Donald Trump's retribution campaign against his perceived political enemies kicks into high gear, is deter -- he is determined to oust Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky and is throwing all of his weight behind his Republican challenger, Ed Gallrein.

Massie angering the president by opposing parts of his agenda, including the war with Iran and the so called Big Beautiful Bill. You may remember Massie also voted with Democrats to release the Epstein files.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm in the Oval Office and we're in a fight against the worst congressman in the history of our country. His name is Thomas Massie. He's from Kentucky. I hope you're going to put him out of business.

(END VIDEO CLIP) SANDOVAL: And on Monday, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth made a rare wartime visit to Kentucky campaigning for Massie's opponent. And he claimed that he was there on his own accord.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE HEGSETH, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: President Trump does not need more people in Washington who are trying to make a point, especially from his own party. He needs people willing to help him win, to vote with him when it matters the most. And too often, Thomas Massie has acted like his job is to stand apart from the movement that President Trump leads instead of strengthening it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANDOVAL: We'll get you some political analysis in a moment. But first, CNN's Jeff Zeleny reports.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF U.S. NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: One of the most expensive and certainly vitriolic Republican primary campaigns is coming to a close here in Kentucky as voters on Tuesday will decide this primary race between Congressman Thomas Massie and challenger Ed Gallrein. Now, President Trump has been keeping a very close watch on this, endorsing Gallrein, also handpicking him for the position. But Thomas Massie, who's running for his eighth term, has a long connection with voters here as well. We caught up with him right before the final event here in Vanceburg, Kentucky. He spoke with an air of optimism.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. THOMAS MASSIE (R-KY): I think I'm going to win, actually. I think that's why they're panicked. Look, why would the president post on social media 10 times in 24 hours? Why would the secretary of war come to Kentucky if they thought they had this in the bag? They're desperate because they're in with both feet and they pushed in all their chips.

When they lose this, it's going to be cataclysmic for the -- for the establishment in D.C.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: On the final day of campaigning, Gallrein brought in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, an unusual trip for a Defense secretary to be on the campaign trail. He called Massie an

obstructionist and urged voters here to send him out of office. So there's no doubt there is a test here of loyalties between President Trump and Congressman Thomas Massie, who grew up right here in this district. It is one of the latest examples potentially, of the revenge tour that President Trump is trying to enact on Republicans who do not fall in line with him.

Massie said he believes that voters like what he's done in office. Of course, the primary on Tuesday will determine the outcome of this race. Jeff Zeleny, CNN, Vanceburg, Kentucky.

SANDOVAL: All right. For more on this, I'm joined by CNN political commentator and Republican strategist Brad Todd.

Brad, welcome back to CNN.

BRAD TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Thanks, Polo. Good to be with you.

SANDOVAL: So, Brad, voters in Northeastern Kentucky, they have been telling CNN that the primary race in the state's 4th congressional district, it's certainly gotten nastier by the day. Obviously, it's going to be a main focus. What do you believe will be at stake beyond Representative Thomas Massie fighting to keep a seat?

[04:05:11]

TODD: Well, you know, it's an interesting case because the president has gone after a member of his own party and that's unusual for presidents. But Thomas Massie is certainly an unusual character. He's been a consistent critic of President Trump. He formerly was in the hard right part of the Republican conference, but in recent years he's moved over and voted with Democrats on a lot of issues like tax cuts, border security, even the Second Amendment.

He voted actually to depose the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, a Republican. That's never been done in the history of the country where a sitting speaker had a coup inside his own party and Thomas Massie was a leader of that coup. So he's really become quite the apostate to Republicans and that's why he's in trouble.

SANDOVAL: Yes. Picking up on what you left there, on what you said, that he certainly has been a critic on multiple subjects. Do you think that there's perhaps also his call to release the Epstein files that may also have been a factor in terms of gaining the focus of the president, and with that is rage.

TODD: I don't think it's a major factor. I think if you look back five years ago during the COVID pandemic during Trump's first term, Thomas Massie forced the entire House to come back to vote on the CARES Act, which was Trump's health care relief act during the pandemic. And Trump back then called him a third rate loser, I think was the phrase. So their feud really goes back a long way.

And if you look at the tax and border security bill, it really was the signature domestic accomplishment of this administration. Almost every Republican voted for it, but Tom Massie did not. And so I think that with or without the Epstein files, Donald Trump was going to come for Tom Massie in this race. But more importantly, I think the voters of Kentucky have had enough of Tom Massie. You know, it's a conservative district.

It spans the suburbs from Louisville, Kentucky, home of the Kentucky Derby to the Cincinnati suburbs in Northern Kentucky. It's a very conservative electorate and it's a very Republican electorate. And I just don't think they're going to put up with Tom Massie's chicanery.

I've worked on the race a little bit, working for an outside group advertising in the race. So I followed it pretty closely. And, you know, here at the end, Tom Massie has tried to claim he and President Trump are aligned on almost everything, that's been his advertising. So I think that tells you a little bit about what he thinks the voters in his district want to see.

SANDOVAL: Ultimately, though, Brad, do you think that this primary is widely seen as loyalty to President Trump truly being tested?

TODD: I think it's more loyalty to the Republican Party. You know, I mean, Mike Johnson is a Republican speaker, trying to bring Mike Johnson out of the speaker's chair, working with Democrats to do that, working against tax cuts and border security. Those are Republican conservative principles. And Tom Massie spent the bulk of his career being one of the most far right, hard right Republicans.

But for some reason, he got crossways with Mike Johnson, he got crossways with President Trump, and he was willing to vote with the most liberal members of the Congress to do it. And you can't do that and get away with it if you represent a conservative district.

SANDOVAL: And finally, just from your position, as we move on past these primaries, what do you see as the biggest obstacles for the GOP come midterms? I mean, there's some of that fresh polling, that CNN poll of polls showing that Trump's average approval rating now stand at 36 percent. That's 62 percent disapproving of the president's performance.

TODD: Well, midterms typically are a referendum on the party in power. And so Republicans have to do better with independent voters in the middle. And we also have to get out Republican voters who are irregular voters. You know, in our current coalition in the United States, the less frequent voters tend to be Republicans and the voters who vote all the time tend to be Democrats.

This is a non-presidential election year, and so turnout will be a little bit lower. Republicans have to get their voters out at the same level Democrats get their voters out. The lowest propensity Republicans happen to really be big fans of President Trump, and so Democrats make him an issue in this election at their own peril. I think he's probably -- his unpopularity is probably baked in the cake with Independents. And so I think it's possible Democrats will actually try to make this election about something other than Donald Trump.

If I were them, that's probably what I would do. I would probably not risk bringing out Trump's most ardent supporters who are lower propensity voters and argue about things that voters in the middle who are torn between the two parties, the issues they care about. But we'll see if Democrats can resist that. You know, Democrat base voters hate Donald Trump, and we'll see if they want to feed their own base or work for the middle.

SANDOVAL: Brad Todd, always a pleasure speaking to you. Thank you so much for your time.

TODD: Thank you, Polo. Thank you.

SANDOVAL: President Trump is defending the creation of a nearly $1.8 billion fund that's meant to compensate some of his allies who say that they were unfairly targeted by the previous presidential administration. Critics, they call it a slush fund, but the Justice Department calling it an anti-weaponization fund. And it could be used to compensate the January 6th rioters who broke into and then trashed the U.S. Capitol. The President downplaying his involvement in this initiative that will be like -- that will be paid for by American taxpayers. But it seems that his fingerprints are all over it.

[04:10:26]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I know very little about it. I wasn't involved in the whole creation of it and the negotiation. But this is reimbursing people that were horribly treated. Horribly treated. It's anti-weaponization.

They've been weaponized. I do believe there has to be compensation for people that were destroyed. You have families absolutely destroyed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANDOVAL: Here's CNN's Paula Reid with more.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Up to $1.8 billion taxpayer money could soon be headed to some of President Trump's allies after the Trump Justice Department announced the formation of a fund for anyone who feels they have been wrongly targeted by a federal investigation. Now the Justice Department says that anyone can file a claim for an apology and or monetary settlement. They insist there is no partisan requirement. But all these claims are going to be vetted by a group of five people selected by the attorney general. They're going to consult with Congress on one of them.

But the president can fire any of these people if he doesn't like how they are vetting these claims. Now, when it comes to how this all came about, this was negotiated as part of a way for the president to drop his ongoing $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. So this was all put together by the president's personal lawyers, along with lawyers from administration at DOJ, at the White House, at the IRS. There was no actual outside voice here.

Now, this is already resulting in political pushback. We also expect that there will be significant litigation around this fund.

Paula Reid, CNN, Washington.

SANDOVAL: Let's turn out to the war in Iran where a fragile cease fire between Washington and Tehran is still in place. U.S. President Donald Trump says that he will hold off on a Tuesday plan to attack Iran as negotiations to end the war grow more serious. But President Trump says that he has instructed some of his leadership to be prepared to go forward with a full large scale assault of Iran on a -- on a moment's notice in the event that an acceptable deal is not reached, said the president. And this as a source is telling CNN that the U.S. believes that Iran's latest proposal to end the war did not offer any big -- a big enough concessions on some critical sticking points like Tehran's nuclear enrichment program.

For more now, let's go to Leila Gharagozlou joining me from Abu Dhabi.

Leila, even after, after months of war, is there a sense in Tehran that there is still possibly a diplomatic route that could be followed?

LEILA GHARAGOZLOU, CNN PRODUCER: Yes, the Iranians have said that they are open to diplomacy. The Iranian president even said that they are open to having discussions, but they will not surrender. So they're very specific about what they're looking for in this and they definitely have their red lines. But what we're hearing from the Iranians is that fundamentally this comes down to an issue of trust.

Over weekend, Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, said point blank that the biggest obstacle to negotiations has been trust and the U.S. contradictory messaging. And this was also echoed again this morning by the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson who said that they are going to join this diplomatic process from a place of distrust because the U.S. has time and again undermined the negotiation process. So that's really what the Iranians are thinking. But they are willing to involve themselves in diplomatic negotiations. They just are very clear about their red lines and they do think that the president keeps moving these goalposts on them. So that has been one of the bigger issues.

Now, where these diplomatic negotiations go and what they're willing to concede we have to see. And it remains to be known. I mean, the U.S. has said that they don't really see any sort of concessions in the way that they want as of yet. But President Trump has struck a rather positive note. So we're going to have to see how things go over the next couple of days.

SANDOVAL: All right, Leila, thank you so much for that live report from Abu Dhabi.

Straight ahead here on CNN Newsroom we'll get to the latest on a deadly shooting at San Diego's largest mosque. What we're learning about the investigation and also two teenage suspects believed to have been involved. Plus, Vladimir Putin heading to China. We're live from Beijing with a preview of the Russian leaders visit.

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[04:18:32]

SANDOVAL: We're following some new developments in Southern California where the Islamic center of San Diego, which is the city's largest mosque, says that it will remain closed until further notice as its community continues to mourn a deadly shooting there on Monday. Three people were killed, including a security guard who was being hailed a hero by the local police chief, who also said that his actions, quote, "undoubtedly saved lives." A friend of his spoke out after the shooting.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I truly know in my heart from knowing that man that he was sacrificing his life and took that bullet, knowing that I'd rather take it than the kids. And that is what makes me emotional.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANDOVAL: Two teen suspects were found dead in a car near the mosque and we've now learned that one of them was a high school wrestler who was enrolled in an online schooling program. A law enforcement source identifying him as Cain Clark. CNN's Sherrell Hubbard with more.

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SHERRELL HUBBARD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Scores of.

Police cars responded to the Islamic Center of San Diego Monday following reports of an active shooter.

CHIEF SCOTT WAHL, SAN DIEGO POLICE DEPT.: We have three confirmed adults that are deceased at the Islamic Center.

HUBBARD (voice-over): Police say a security guard was among those killed at the mosque. Authorities are still trying to determine the details surrounding the shooting, but police believe that two people found dead in a car nearby from apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds were the suspects. Chief Scott Wahl provided additional information about the mother who alerted them about her son.

[04:20:06]

WAHL: She believed her son was suicidal and she began to share information that several of her weapons were missing, her vehicle was missing in addition to her son.

HUBBARD (voice-over): Police say they are considering the shooting a hate crime. The Islamic Center in San Diego is the largest mosque in San Diego County, according to its website. The site includes a school.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Look as they're bringing people out of the building.

HUBBARD (voice-over): And police say no children were hurt.

WAHL: I tell you what got watching the kids come running out, just thankful to be alive.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I could hear the officers shouting to evacuate in the background. And it was, you know, paralyzing and so frightening. And at the same time, you know, I had to drop everything and come directly to make sure, you know, our community is safe and they're OK and they know that they're not alone in this really insane time.

HUBBARD (voice-over): I'm Sherrell Hubbard reporting.

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SANDOVAL: Joining me now is CNN Senior National Security Analyst Juliette Kayyem.

Juliette, thank you so much for joining us.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Thanks for having me.

SANDOVAL: Give us a sense of where investigators likely started in trying to piece this together and perhaps trying to pinpoint the source of what may have inspired Monday's shooting.

KAYYEM: Yes, and that is, I think, the key at this stage since we do have a lot of evidence. Suspects are both dead. Their families seem to be cooperative in the sense that it was one of the mothers who came forward to say that she was worried about what was about to unfold. Their weapons are in possession of the police, the cars, manifestos or statements that -- the notice that they've written are. So they are -- you know, it's early days, but that's creating a storyline of which that this is sort of a hate crime, as the police said, against the Muslim community.

And so the police will now begin or investigators will now begin to unwind that. What was the source of their radicalization? Did they have outside people pushing them? Was it more that they were absorbing information? And how did two separate people, friends but still not from the same family or not known as two people who might come together for violence, how did that happen?

That sort of two assailants in an attack like this is not -- it's uncommon. It's just rare.

SANDOVAL: I wonder if you could just expand on that last point, too, Juliette. I mean, how surprised were you when you heard from investigators in their briefing saying that, you know, they have two suspects? And, you know, you raise a really important point too here, the question of how these two individuals may have been drawn to one another. I don't believe they were directly related?

KAYYEM: No. And I mean, so look, I think of the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston Marathon killers, those are brothers. And one was probably in a power position over the other. You have the Columbine friends, long known as friends, who had -- who were sort of isolated from the rest of the community. This are going to look for that kind of same sort of potential relationship.

Were there ties online? Were there -- were they visiting the same sites? Were they part of any clubs that sort of drew them in greater into this kind of violence? And radicalization is not like an on off switch. There are moments in which these things are happening. And they are -- and people who become radicalized are feeding off of the language of hate, the language of Islamophobia that we may be hearing today or that we are hearing today in many quarters. So this is just another example of why all of our language needs to begin to -- we need to, those of us with profiles, politicians in particular, need to understand that there are people who are interpreting that as sort of free rein for violence.

SANDOVAL: Right. And just to remind viewers, already multiple law enforcement sources telling CNN that there was hate speech on one of the weapons, according to the early investigation findings. And also that suicide note that was located that apparently, as you mentioned a little while ago, some writings about what's being described as racial pride, according to investigators.

If there is perhaps a takeaway from this to try just increase awareness, I mean, we've seen rises in anti-Semitism also in Islamophobic attacks, not just in the U.S. but around the world. I mean, what can officials all the way to the White House do to try to basically curb these kinds of cases that we continue to see, in your view?

KAYYEM: Well, I think it's to recognize that ideologies may differ throughout the world. We may not like people, we may feel more comfortable with our own people, but what is not permissive is to utilize, condone, flirt with violence as a sort of natural extension of that. And that comes from the language of annihilation, the language of my country, not your country. That comes from the president of the United States and it comes from other quarters of our political discourse. But no one has the same, you know, sort of positioning as we do in -- as the president of the United States does.

[04:25:31]

And I think we have to be very clear about that. We can all begin to tone down this rhetoric but it's very important that we also recognize that leadership has an important role in radicalization. I think that it's important when you mentioned anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, they aren't -- they aren't opposed to each other.

In other words, what --

SANDOVAL: Yes.

KAYYEM: -- the forces that hate Jewish Americans or in the forces that hate Muslim Americans are the same forces that all of us have to condemn. It's not a zero sum game. And I think it's important to remember that.

SANDOVAL: Yes, it's the same forces that targeted --

KAYYEM: Yes.

SANDOVAL: -- you know, an African American community in Buffalo, New York or Hispanic Americans in an El Paso Walmart years ago. So it's an important reminder. KAYYEM: Exactly. You're right.

SANDOVAL: Juliette Kayyem, it's always -- really appreciate your conversation -- our conversation. Thank you for your time.

KAYYEM: Thank you.

SANDOVAL: The largest commuter rail system in the United States, it is set to be back up and running again today. This after a tentative deal to end a three-day strike. Workers from Long Island Railroad they walked out on Saturday after negotiations with their unions broke down. The terms of the deal, they're not yet publicly known but New York's governor says that it will be increasing workers' pay and that's without any impact to rioters or taxpayers.

Nearly 300,000 commuters use that rail service in the New York City area on a typical weekday. So it's going to be a busy day today.

And still to come, a look at how Iran is preparing if the U.S. resumes strikes on the country. Stay with us. You're watching CNN.

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