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President Trump Bans News Media Outlets CNN, MSNOW, And "Politico" From White House Without Citing Specific Reporting Prompting The Ban; U.S. Military Nearly Boarded Chinese Ship In Middle East Based On False Information Produced By Artificial Intelligence The Ship Was Carrying Parts Of A Nuclear Weapons Program; Thousands Gather Outside Kennedy Center Protesting Its Potential Demolition By Trump Administration; President Trump Announces His Administration To Start Recommending Smaller Doses Administered Every Six Months For Certain Childhood Vaccines; All Supporting Acts For Ed Sheeran's Concert Pull Out After Rapper Macklemore Dropped From Concert Over His Pro-Palestinian Comments; Police Officer Saves Man from Suicide. Aired 2-3p ET

Aired September 19, 2026 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Trump did not cite any specific reporting that prompted this ban. Press freedom groups and lawmakers slammed the move as a blatant violation of the media's constitutional right to report on government functions. In a statement, CNN says, quote, "Early today, CNN journalists were denied access to the White House grounds. CNN's mission to report on the U.S. government will continue regardless of any attempts to restrict physical access to the White House and other government buildings or any other attempts to impede our journalism. We have a right under the U.S. Constitution to do our reporting without hindrance or interference from the government, and this ban is an illegal assault on this fundamental right. We will not be deflected from our duty to hold the government and other public bodies to account, and we will continue to report on the actions and processes of this administration without fear or favor," end quote.

CNN stands fully behind our White House team.

CNN's Julia Benbrook is joining us now from outside the White House on a nearby street corner there. Julia, what more can you tell us about this new media ban?

JULIA BENBROOK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Fred, normally when we talk, I am there on the White House grounds reporting. For those that don't know, there are these green tents that are there on the north lawn, and a number of outlets are there, major networks as well as regional groups and groups getting information to affiliates, to local stations as well.

I am obviously not there today. President Donald Trump on Friday, he put out a statement saying that he was banning a number of news organizations from the White House, CNN, MSNOW and "Politico". As you pointed out, he did not cite specific reporting that led to that decision. He instead said that it was cumulative.

But I do want to take a step back, kind of walk you through what we have seen in the hours since that post. On a normal day, us as members of the White House press corps, we go through multiple checkpoints, multiple security stops. You have a specific badge that does allow you access inside. And a member of our team went to report for the morning shows earlier today. She got to that last step where you scan the badge. It typically turns green. You put in a pin. You're putting things through security, and then you go through.

That did not happen. It did not light up green in that same way that she's used to. She did ask the Secret Service. They said that that badge had been disabled. She asked a follow up question to see why. They did go ahead and refer her to the White House press team for those questions. She asked if she could keep her badge, which she has been given through CNN and through the White House. They said no, that they would be taking that badge.

So it is important to note, though, that when Trump put out this post on Friday, he said that it would be effective immediately. Our team, though, remained there late into the evening, continuing to do what they always do, reporting on the White House and the most recent developments.

I also want to point out there are a couple of things at play here. Of course, we present the news as CNN. There is also a TV press pool. It includes five major networks, including CNN. And part of their job is to get major video, major information to a number of outlets out there. It is a way to kind of have that firsthand account of what's going on with the president. You see those reporters on Air Force One, in the Oval Office, as well as the cameras providing that information.

There are a lot of questions about what happens with that. In fact, CNN is on the schedule on Monday to serve as the pool as Trump travels to the United Nations General Assembly. A big moment, a moment where the president could make a lot of news. Again, we do not know exactly what will be taking place.

When in the Oval Office yesterday, the time that reporters had a chance to press him on some of this, it was the press pool that day that was able to do that, they were asking about some of his reasoning, what it applied to. Still a lot of questions here, but one major takeaway was that he said that there could be others. In fact, he said, quote, I want to find it exactly. He said "Others may join them."

Again, as we've noted, he did not specify if there was any specific reporting that led to this decision. We are still reporting today. Obviously, it does look a little bit different.

WHITFIELD: It does. All right, Julia Benbrook, continue to keep up the good work there.

All right, turning now to some exclusive reporting. Sources tell CNN the U.S. military nearly boarded a Chinese ship in the Middle East thinking it was carrying parts of a nuclear weapons program. But U.S. officials had to call it off after the planes were already in the sky.

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And that's once they realized the report was put together using artificial intelligence and the A.I. chatbot had made a mistake.

Also, we are just learning that top Democrats on Capitol Hill are now calling on government watchdogs to investigate the faulty A.I. generated intel report.

CNN's Zachary Cohen has more on how all of this unfolded.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Sources are telling me and our colleague Katie Bo Lillis that this intelligence report was circulated through the U.S. military earlier this spring while the war with Iran was still ongoing. And it concluded that a Chinese vessel that was transiting through the Middle East was likely carrying components of a nuclear weapons program.

Now, that obviously caught the attention of U.S. military officials, who immediately moved to prepare for a potential operation targeting that ship, even taking steps towards possibly boarding the vessel. We're told that it was when military aircraft were in the sky and that this operation looked like it was going to be underway, that U.S. officials took a closer look at the intelligence report itself and determined that it had been generated with the help of A.I., and that the chatbot used by a special operations analyst had misidentified the ship's cargo, ultimately leading U.S. officials and the military to pull the plug on the planned operation and hence likely avoiding a potential international incident with one of the world's other superpowers.

Now, this is reviving and contributing to ongoing concerns and the debate about the place of A.I. going forward and the U.S.'s commitment to potential guardrails around A.I., and the U.S. military under President Donald Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been very A.I. forward during their second time in office. Hegseth himself sent out a memo earlier this year saying that he wants the military to be experimental in how it uses A.I. and to incorporate it in nearly every facet of its job, whether that be targeting operations or more mundane tasks like budgeting.

This is going to raise additional questions, though, given the close call, as our sources characterized it, in terms of incorporating an intelligence report that was aided by A.I. and ultimately proved to be, as one source put it, entirely false. So another source saying and reiterating that this was not necessarily a one-off incident, and that A.I., the use of A.I., particularly when it comes to precision targeting operations, is increasing under Pete Hegseth. The source says, quote, "A.I. and targeting is definitely something that's ramping up and there is no real guidance for how having a human in the loop will prevent civilian casualties or fratricide."

And so that does speak to another concern we're hearing from our sources is that there is no consistent guidance coming from the very top levels of the Pentagon about how the military branches should be using A.I., which tools and which systems they should even be using. There is very little consistency across all of the services on that regard. And as we've seen in this case with the Chinese vessel, at times A.I. can be incorporated into producing intelligence that almost goes to operational status without being fully vetted.

And so, again, we've heard lawmakers here in Washington, D.C., debate in recent weeks about potential guardrails around the use of A.I. as the Pentagon and the U.S. military, meanwhile, has been on the forefront of trying to find ways to incorporate A.I. more. And it will be interesting to see how this revelation may impact the Pentagon's stance on A.I. going forward.

Zachary Cohen, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

WHITFIELD: All right, for more perspective now, I want to bring in retired Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt. Great to see you, General. So in your view, you know, how bad could this have been if the U.S. military followed through with this operation, given there was this, now we know, faulty A.I. material?

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. ARMY (RET): Well, it certainly would have been a diplomatic incident and a huge diplomatic embarrassment. I don't think that we would be launching cruise missiles at that ship. It probably would have been boarding exercise. But nonetheless, the real lesson is how are we going to handle this extraordinary intelligence that we get from A.I.?

WHITFIELD: Right. And that is the unanswerable question right now. We've heard a number of A.I. leaders this week talk about the importance of perhaps bringing in third parties, you know, so that it's not self-regulated. And then now we're -- and we're also hearing from some lawmakers who say that there's something they need to do and step in. And now today we've got President Trump vowing to create an A.I. force. It would mean potentially him appointing some sort of czar to help regulate the technology's development.

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How do you see, or what kind of answer to this do you see?

KIMMITT: Yes. First of all, let's talk about the actual incident before we go on to the notion of the A.I. force. The information simply was misinterpreted. And luckily it was caught somewhere in the chain.

I was an artilleryman, and we had to worry about firing artillery over the hill at something we couldn't directly see. And we had three rules of thumb that always guided whether we would pull that lanyard or not. Number one, don't rush to failure. Number two, check, double check, and recheck. And number three, the first report is usually wrong.

So it's important that in the tactical and operational use inside the military that there's a human sometime in the loop, somewhere in the loop, and perhaps two or three times they look over that. And I think that's what happened here. And I think that's what caught that error.

But if all -- I'm more concerned about what the president is concerned about, which is if A.I. doesn't have a human in the loop somewhere to catch those errors, that it is achieved singularity that we just let the system takes care of it from the time it spots the target until it shoots at a target and assesses the target. Because A.I. right now is so imperfect, especially the hallucination phenomena, we may find out that that's what caused the attack on that girls' school inside of Iran.

WHITFIELD: So I'm hearing you talk about verification channels, and perhaps there has to be a change to the verification channels, but it has to has to be employed, very immediately because already, I mean, A.I. is here. It's being used in a lot of different ways, and likely it will be used in a much more prevalent way. So what kind of verification channels do you think need to be employed now to try to continue to catch some of these mistakes early?

KIMMITT: Yes, Fred, that's a very, very good question. Look, the thing we must realize is the process of detecting a target all the way to shooting at that target ten years ago was measured in minutes, if not multiple minutes, if not even longer. There we had the luxury of time in order to evaluate the data. A.I. now brings that down to a matter of seconds at the most. We call them time sensitive targets, and we have the capability to see the target and attack that target within seconds.

In fact, I think that gives us more time to do the human in the loop because that target is not going to run away anytime soon the way it used to. My view is, at this point, until we have really advanced it on the battlefield, that we need to take a breath, we don't need to rush to failure. We need to have adults looking at the data, maybe two or three adults at different places looking at the data, to find out those one in 100 incidents where the data is either wrong or the A.I. is hallucinating.

WHITFIELD: OK.

I want to shift gears and ask you about something else as it pertains to Greenland. The president is announcing that there is a deal that he has struck with Denmark and Greenland. He says it gives the U.S., quote, "permanent control over Greenland's security." The U.S. is already, you know, already does have a significant military presence in Greenland. So were not hearing anything more about the specifications of this deal, only that Greenland's government leadership says, I'm quoting now, "It benefits not only our collective security but also the continued development here in the country," end quote.

Recall that Trump, you know, had said that he wanted to buy or take over Greenland. That's not likely, you know, the deal. But what, in your view might be this deal? Just further fortifying that U.S. military presence is acceptable there, or what? KIMMITT: Well, we had virtually unlimited ability to station American

troops there for years and years, ever since the original pact. We need to understand the strategic implications which led to this pact in 19, I believe, 51 in the first place, and even more so now. We call it the Greenland, Iceland, U.K. gap, where Soviet submarines were able to get through that corridor and very rapidly within range of New York City.

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Now that climate change is affecting the ice, it's not simply submarines, but it's also above water ships as well. To me, as I look at it, we're just returning to what we had years and years ago. I don't think Greenland or Denmark had ever precluded American forces to station there. It's just that technology replaced those forces.

But I think the only key distinction that I can see is a permanence that Greenland and Denmark cant' call for the ejection of forces, but we have a permanent arrangement. That's all I can see that's different, temporary, conditional versus permanent now.

WHITFIELD: All right, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, great to see you. Thank you so much for all of that.

KIMMITT: Thank you for having me.

WHITFIELD: All right, still ahead, a dramatic showdown over a D.C. landmark. Hundreds of people formed a human chain around the Kennedy Center protesting it's potential closure. That's after Trump said the landmark will need to be ripped down if his name is not added to it.

Plus, concert controversy. Ed Sheeran is set to take the stage tonight for the first time since rapper Macklemore was booted from the tour, causing every single one of Sheeran's opening acts to drop out in protest. We've got the latest on the fallout.

And lifesaving response, the Jacksonville police officer who went above and beyond the badge, saving a local man's life in more ways than one.

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WHITFIELD: There is growing anxiety about the future of the Kennedy Center. Thousands gathered outside the iconic building last night in Washington, D.C., linking arms to form a human chain around it, singing songs, playing music, and giving speeches.

The protest comes as President Trump pushes to remake the historic arts center and recently threatened that the building could actually be ripped down. The Kennedy Center is a living memorial for the late President John F. Kennedy. His commitment to the arts, expressed here in 1962 about the plans for a performing arts center in D.C.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JOHN F. KENNEDY, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: As a great democratic society, we have a special responsibility to the arts. For art is the great democrat, calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color. The mere accumulation of wealth and power is available to the dictator and the democrat alike. What freedom alone can bring is the liberation of the human mind and spirit, which finds its greatest flowering in the free society. Thus, in our fulfillment of these responsibilities towards the art lie our unique achievement as a free society.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: A year after that speech, Kennedy was assassinated. President Lyndon Johnson signing legislation later officially designating the center as a living memorial to Kennedy before it's official opening in 1971.

Joining me right now is Judy Chesser, chair for the Committee of 100 on the Federal City. Great to see you. I'm glad you could be with us. I mean, as a head of a preservation organization, what is your biggest concern about what is happening at the Kennedy Center now?

JUDY CHESSER, CHAIR, THE COMMITTEE OF 100 ON THE FEDERAL CITY: Well, as you know, we have several lawsuits going on regarding the Kennedy Center. One is from the preservation groups, and the other one is Congresswoman Beatty, who is a member of the board. And we keep getting some protection from the courts, Judge Cooper, and he has said that the Kennedy Center cannot close unless they come forward with a with a detailed plan that for the plaintiff and the court to review.

Nonetheless, they keep threatening to close the Kennedy Center permanently. And as you know, the president has threatened to demolish the Kennedy Center, God forbid. But the -- right now it's all before the courts. The court has said that the Kennedy Center has to give us 30-days notice to both the plaintiffs and to the court if there's any reversal in what they have already presented to the court, which is a temporary closure for repairs, not a demolition. So if they have any change in those plans, those plans officially, they have to come before the court 30 days before they do anything.

Having said that, the president is saying that unless they reinstate his name on the building, then he will not do the repairs. Congress, in this particular instance, has provided $257 million to repair the Kennedy Center. So that that money is sitting there. None of the plaintiffs have done anything to forestall using that money right now to make the necessary repairs.

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Nor have we said that repairs didn't need to be made. They do need to be made. But the building being closed down is not perhaps necessary to those repairs. Were you about to ask a question?

WHITFIELD: No, I was about to underscore. You said, you know, that money has already been designated, it just hasn't been utilized to actually do any of the renovations or repairs. But one thing you did just say a moment ago, you said, "God forbid," God forbid it were to be demolished. I mean, talk to me about that instinctive fear, because we did see, I mean, the world, the nation already witnessed that the East Wing was demolished before Congress could weigh in, before any preservation group could weigh in and stop it before its happening. So talk to me about your real fears, about whether this president would go around even Judge Cooper's order and demolish the Kennedy Center, just as he was holding up that poster that said "Kennedy Center demolished".

CHESSER: Yes, the concept of ripeness, which is a legal term, but ripeness, meaning some injury has occurred, has somewhat changed during the Trump era following the demolition of the East Wing. So we filed this suit as quickly as we could when they seem to be showing interest in the Kennedy Center by getting rid of its prior board and placing the president as the chair. And a lot of the trustees are people that the current president has placed on the board.

Always remember, this is not the president acting in his role as president. This is the president acting in his role as a trustee of the of the Kennedy Center. So although he may be president and is president, he is in this role, capacity as a trustee. And trustees have legal and ethical obligations to the institution and the protection of the building. So one of the things that the plaintiff has -- plaintiffs have raised is -- we haven't actually filed a formal request in the court yet, but we've raised the possibility that the court needs to put greater protections around the Kennedy Center, perhaps a receivership or perhaps a modified receivership in order to protect the building and the institution from any precipitous demolition.

WHITFIELD: And then, Judy, let me ask you quickly. I know we're up against the clock here, but your group also sent a letter to the department of interior to offer an alternative structure to what President Trump wants to be that arch that would be erected between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery. You sent that letter offering an alternative, which would be like two columns, something that has been proposed before. But have you heard back from the Department of Interior and expressed your concerns about what that triumphal arch could potentially do?

CHESSER: To be specific, we didn't actually offer an alternative. All of our lawsuits are saying that you need to follow the laws that are on the books, national environmental protection, national historic preservation, et cetera, commemorative works act. The National Historic Preservation Act requires what they call a Section 106 consultation. And that letter was submitted to the Interior, the National Park Service, as part of that consultation.

And what we said was that that National Park Service is citing a law enacted by Congress 102 years ago as providing congressional authorization for the arch. And so we did a bit of history, and what happened in 1924 was that there was an Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission. It gave a report to the Congress, including some draft legislation regarding what should be built at that end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge. Congress the next year, 1925, enacted that legislation and authorized

the bridge commission to determine the exact design for what should be there. The bridge commission considered several options, quite a few options, actually, including a two-column option. The columns were to be 300 feet apart, didn't interfere a lot with the view from the Lincoln to the Mansion. Did some. They were 166 feet tall.

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And ultimately they were rejected by the bridge commission. In fact, in a very similar design, Frederick Law Olmsted, quite a renowned source, said that to build them would be a slap in the face of the Lincoln. And the Commission of Fine Arts, Andrew Weinman (ph) said that the two columns look like two smokestacks. In 1931 December, the bridge commission specifically and explicitly removed the columns from the options to be built and they were never built. So for the National Park Service to now cite that history as authorizing the arch is a bit disingenuous.

WHITFIELD: All right. Judy Chesser --

CHESSER: Yes.

WHITFIELD: We're going to leave it there. I'd love to have you back, though.

CHESSER: I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

(LAUGHTER)

WHITFIELD: That's OK. Hey, I love -- you are a wealth of knowledge, and this is wonderful. So we are definitely going to have you back because there is so much detail in which to, you know, consider and understand about these beautiful historic sites in our nation's capital. Thank you so much for being with us, Judy Chesser. Appreciate it. We'll have you back. Thank you.

Coming up, the political standoff around the measles outbreak. Why Pennsylvania's governor is now at odds with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as there are now questions over whether new deaths will be added to the national tally.

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WHITFIELD: New changes are coming to the immunization schedule for some childhood vaccines. President Trump announced on Friday that his administration would start recommending smaller doses to be given every six months. But some health experts say this would render the vaccines ineffective and would not make the child any more safer.

Joining us right now for more insight is Dr. Jeremy Faust, assistant professor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School and author of "Inside Medicine" on Substack. Dr. Faust, great to see you. OK, so when we, you know, consider this approach logistically, you

know, what does this mean for families? smaller doses, more frequently, what does it mean for the effectiveness?

DR. JEREMY FAUST, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: Thanks for having me. I'm going to tell you right now that we cannot allow the president and Secretary Kennedy or anyone else to do a science experiment upon American children with vaccines that are saving their lives. It's just preposterous. It's unsafe. And I don't think any parent wants that. They want to know that the vaccine they're getting has been tested. So it's the right dose so that it's effective and safe. That's what's happened.

And doing, kind of winging this, calling an audible is not clever. It is actually tremendously dangerous. And you would never do it with anything else and we would never tolerate this. These are sure ways to make sure that when I go to the hospital later today, I'm wearing scrubs underneath here, that I will have to do in the future more spinal taps because fewer of my patients will be protected. And that's what we're up against here.

WHITFIELD: So what's your concern about, if the president proceeds with this and, you know. Mr. Kennedy, Secretary Kennedy also helps follow through on this, as a practicing physician, what does this mean in terms of what you recommend to families or, you know, do you adhere to how you have carried out dosages before and inoculations? I mean, how would you proceed?

FAUST: Well, we're just going to have to clean this mess up when we get Secretary Kennedy out of there. And Director Schwartz at the CDC needs to do what she says she intends to do, which is to stand up for the American people against this kind of nonsense. So far, she has not done so. She said that's what she wanted to do, and she's not doing it. She has the opportunity, and she's deciding to save her clout for another day.

But now is the time, Director Schwartz. Children and adults are dying of measles in Pennsylvania, and the CDC won't acknowledge that because Secretary Kennedy has said in the past, and I'm just going to quote it, that measles is, quote, "rarely life threatening". And he said that the vaccine is, quote, "largely unnecessary". And so Director Schwartz thinks that she can have a long tenure there if she goes along. But now is the time to use the clout. It's now or never. And I just think it's horrible that she is someone who is so qualified, who I supported before her confirmation hearing, and she's failing in the job right now.

WHITFIELD: Oh, my gosh. So, you know, while Trump on Friday, you know, didn't specify which vaccines, you know, would be targeted for those kind of fractional dose mandate, the administration did update, you know, the federal framework for recommendations across 11 core disease diseases, including measles. Pennsylvania this week reporting its fourth death from the disease, the most over three decades. But, like you just underscored, the lack of acknowledgment on the federal level. So what concerns you most about what is happening in that state of Pennsylvania and what could potentially happen in the days or weeks to come?

FAUST: The Department of Health in Pennsylvania has put out phenomenal information. They are vaccinating their population as rapidly as possible. They're being humble. Director Schwartz said that humility is what the CDC needs, transparency. Well, in fact, the CDC is not reporting those deaths. So that's not humble because they are not deferring to the state that knows what it's doing and has a case definition that is appropriate. It is not just counting car accidents that happen to have measles at the same time.

So what needs to happen is that we need to go back to actually being humble and saying to the people on the ground, hey, how can we support you? Not how can we undermine you?

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And so right now, what we need is someone to stand up for science. The thing that really concerns me is that we don't have the infrastructure at this point, because Secretary Kennedy unceremoniously got rid of the CDC's actual experts on vaccines, and they can't convene right now to stand up for this. So it really does warrant immediate intervention to keep our kids safe.

The U.S. vaccine program used to be the envy of the world, and now we have lit it on fire for, I think, for political points. And it's such a tragedy. I want our kids to be safe. I want to do less in the E.R. every day. I don't want to do spinal taps, but that's where we're headed.

WHITFIELD: Alarming. Frightening. I really appreciate your candor. Dr. Jeremy Faust, appreciate it.

FAUST: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: Still ahead, Google is reporting the first known breakout of its A.I. model, saying it hacked into three different companies. What we're learning about the security breach straight ahead.

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WHITFIELD: Music artist Ed Sheeran is set to return to the stage tonight in Philadelphia, but he may be solo. All of his supporting acts pulled out after a decision to drop Macklemore over pro- Palestinian comments the rapper made earlier this month. That decision sparked sharp backlash against Sheeran. In a statement shared on social media, Sheeran said the decision was not his but his promoters.

CNN's Gloria Pazmino is outside the stadium there in Philly. So, Gloria, I mean, what is expected to happen tonight?

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Fred, we're going to be finding out in a couple of hours just how fans and people are going to be feeling as they arrive at this concert. And I can tell you that, at least for now, the show appears to be going on. We can hear what sounds like some sound check happening inside the arena behind us.

But as you said, this is going to be Ed Sheeran's first show since this controversy started earlier this month. Macklemore, who was the opening act among several others in Ed Sheeran's show, dropped from the tour after he went on stage during a concert in New Jersey, said free Palestine, and also used his time on stage to highlight the war in Gaza and advocate for Palestinian rights.

Macklemore also saying that he wanted to take that message across stages throughout the entire United States. Now, as you said, the criticism has been swift, both for Ed Sheeran and in support of Macklemore. There's been a lot of people who have expressed disappointment with Ed Sheeran for dropping him from the tour. But as you said, Ed Sheeran has said that it was ultimately not his decision. In fact, he said that he was essentially pushed by Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots who also owns Gillette Stadium where this tour is scheduled to have a performance. Robert Kraft also urging other stadium owners to follow in his lead.

Now, Sheeran has said that this decision was ultimately up to the promoter of the show, but it was shortly after this that many of the supporting artists, including many who were supposed to perform here tonight, dropped out of the show in support with Macklemore.

In the middle of all of these are the fans, right, trying to decide if they can still come to the show, if they can get a refund, and certainly expressing some disappointment for Ed Sheeran. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAREN DEANGELIS, ATTENDING CONCERT: So it was very surprising to me when all of this controversy started happening after that, because I had actually, I'm going with my ten year old daughter, and we had talked about, hey, this is what's going on in Palestine. This is what's going on with Israel. There's a lot of discussion about this. This is what Macklemore was speaking about. Here's what we could expect. And then, obviously, things started changing pretty quickly by the day.

HEATHER PARK, ATTENDING CONCERT: No, I'm still going. And even if Macklemore was still opening up, I would still go. Like he's allowed to have his opinion. I'm allowed to have mine. He has a platform where he can say it in front of thousands of people. Good for him. Doesn't mean I have to be offended, believe, or join the bandwagon of anything he says or anything anybody else says. I have my own opinions and my own feelings.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAZMINO: Now, Fred, just as some context, Sheeran's loop tour was the highest grossing in the world, with an average box office gross of $7 million per city, according to data collected in May. It remains to be seen whether that continues here tonight. And I should tell you, there's also some pro-Palestinian demonstrations that are scheduled later this afternoon, Fred. WHITFIELD: All right, Gloria Pazmino in Philadelphia, keep us posted

on all that. Thank you.

All right, coming up in an all new hour, access denied. CNN, MSNOW, and "Politico" barred from the White House after Trump said he's banning the news organizations. Our reporters have the latest.

And a $24 billion fighter jet deal sparking concern across the Middle East. Why the Trump administration's proposed F-35 sale to Saudi Arabia could reshape the region's balance of power.

Plus, an affair, a missing gun, and 100,000 text messages.

[14:50:00]

Day one of the murder trial for former American idol contestant Caleb Flynn exposed some shocking details as he stands accused of killing his wife. The explosive evidence prosecutors laid out.

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WHITFIELD: A Florida police officer was called out to help block traffic during an emergency situation, and ended up saving a man's life. CNNs Brynn Gingras has more.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

[14:55:03]

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This was not the call officer Antonio Richardson expected.

OFC. ANTONIO RICHARDSON, JACKSONVILLE SHERIFF'S OFFICE: No, listen, man. Listen, listen, you can get through this. Come on, let's talk about it for a minute.

GINGRAS (voice-over): April 12th, Jacksonville, Florida. Police are dispatched to an urgent situation, a possibly suicidal man on Dames Point Bridge.

RICHARDSON: He was very serious. I saw the look in his eyes. I knew that he was going to jump. I felt that he was going to jump.

GINGRAS (voice-over): Richardson was sent to block traffic, not talk the man down.

RICHARDSON: You mind if I just hold your hand and pray with you? Come on, man. Touch my hand. Touch from this side. Look at my hand. Just touch my hand. Just touch my hand, man. I'm praying with you.

GINGRAS (voice-over): But the 61-year-old officer, who's also a pastor, stepped in to help.

RICHARDSON: Come on, man. Come on, please. There you go, man. Come on, man. Come on, man. Come on, bro. Come on, man. Come on.

GINGRAS: It took him nearly 40 minutes to make a connection.

RICHARDSON: When I walked off of that bridge, I went and sat in my car, and I wept like a baby. And I'm not ashamed to say I really -- I could not stop crying.

GINGRAS (voice-over): The connection lasted well beyond that night.

RICHARDSON: I did not just want to save him from the bridge that night. I want to make sure he didn't never return again. So I made it my personal mission to stay in contact with him.

ANGEL MEJIA, SAVED BY POLICE OFFICER: I just remember him really trying to make sure I wasn't really alone. I remember him just saying, we can just have a talk, and just know that meant a lot. He made me feel heard and seen.

RICHARDSON: It's OK not to be OK. But it's not OK when you don't get help. Whenever you're not OK, reach out.

I love you, my brother.

MEJIA: I love you, man.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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