Return to Transcripts main page

CNN This Morning

Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-CA) is Interviewed about A.I.; Mamdani Accused of Supporting Hamas; NYT Journalist Speaks about Education. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired September 23, 2026 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

JULIA MANCHESTER, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "THE HILL": In a statewide race like New York as well. So, I think we shouldn't forget the New York politics (INAUDIBLE).

ANTJUAN SEAWRIGHT, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: And just a reminder, she is barnstorming the state of New York right now. She gave $300,000 to the (INAUDIBLE) campaign. And she's going from the top of the state to the bottom of the state campaigning for New York Democrats. If there's a signal to be sent, there's your signal.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Which is Senate, not president.

SEAWRIGHT: Signal, Senate. Signal, Senate.

CORNISH: Straight ahead on CNN THIS MORNING, President Trump -- I got to fan myself. Antjuan, says the U.S. has a new name for A.I. He wants to now call it superintelligence. Whatever he calls it, the big question is, does China want to help regulate it? We've got Congressman Sam Liccardo. He has a proposal. He's going to join us next.

And later on CNN, the Trump's Justice Department responding to the lawsuit over banning some media organizations from the White House. We're going to talk about what is in this latest legal filing in our next hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:35:23]

CORNISH: OK. A few hours before China's Xi Jinping arrives in the U.S., the president is trying to rebrand artificial intelligence this way.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Here and after officially called "superintelligence." Changing the name. And that the use of the word "artificial" makes intelligence fake. It makes it sound fake. From this point forward, all of United States' documents, and

hopefully the world's, will be changed to use the much more accurate term "super" as opposed to "artificial."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So, is this rebrand serious? Is it just a way to shift the narrative? We've got concerns about A.I. that are basically a flashpoint for voters in the midterms. And we've got warnings about the risks of A.I. to humanity coming from the industry itself. And then not to mention the protests around data centers and their impact to communities around the country.

There's a new CNN poll that finds 64 percent of voters say data centers and A.I. are, quote, "very important" factors when it comes to their midterm vote.

I'm bringing in Democratic Congressman Sam Liccardo of California. He serves on the Artificial Intelligence Caucus.

I was today years old when I learned there was a caucus.

What do you do? Because the House speaker went home. And I see no sign of actual movement at the congressional level to pass legislation around A.I.

REP. SAM LICCARDO (D-CA): It's true, Audie. And we have several bills ready to go. Unfortunately, the speaker decided it was more important to go on vacation than to take action.

CORNISH: Are they bipartisan bills?

LICCARDO: Several are, actually. One by Lori Trahan and Jay Obernolte, for example, contains many sensible, safety regulations that simply are not being considered because this Congress isn't serious and this administration isn't serious about moving forward.

CORNISH: Now, I want to talk about the air quotes "rebrand." People are joking about this because he's like, "artificial" sounds fake, which is not really what that means. But it's interesting because there is an actual technical term about superintelligence. That's not the stuff in your phone. That's not the stuff you're using to, you know, Google vacations. But the question about the risk is about getting to that point.

Is the president actually signaling some seriousness when he talks about this shift in language, and I hope what follows is tone?

LICCARDO: I never want to speculate about whether or not the president is serious. These ideas come into his head --

CORNISH: But they're changing it on all government documents, right? Like --

LICCARDO: Apparently so. He's changing the name of lakes. But the reality is that no human wins a race to superintelligence. We

need sensible safeguards. There's a lot of things we can be doing today. There's a lot of things the president can be doing, starting with actually engaging the technical experts in the private sectors and the university, as well as the think tanks, to engage with their counterparts in China, to work out the technical standards that are going to be required if we're going to have safeguards to actually apply to Chinese models.

CORNISH: So, you're talking about kind of third-party, independent world of things. Here's what the president said about that at the U.N. on Tuesday when he was talking about how to control A.I.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now.

But I'm not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the industrial revolution.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Is what you're talking about a globalist scheme? Like, is this just piling on regulation that's going to hurt a growing industry?

LICCARDO: We have to sit down with China. That's the bottom line. We can't enact regulation that's going to somehow or another only apply to American companies when we know that Chinese models are actually being more widely used than American models are, including in the United States.

One model alone, Kwong, has been downloaded a billion times. So, these Chinese open models are ubiquitous. We have to do something about regulating them. That means we actually have to be in conversation with China, or else we are going to be missing the boat, and we are all going to be at risk.

CORNISH: You were there also talking about what China -- the idea of a kind of red phone between the two countries. Here is, I believe, Marco Rubio describing how that would work.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: And one of the things that Scott has talked about, and I saw him do interviews about this as well, is some -- like the equivalent of a hotline that we had during the Cold War, where if there is an A.I. incident that's dangerous and could impact economies or societies and even lead to a conflict between nation states, we would have the ability to immediately hotline the Chinese and warn them about it, or vice versa. It's not a bad idea. It's one we'll explore with the Chinese, among others.

(END VIDEO CLIP) LICCARDO: Well, in 48 hours, we've gone from the president calling this a hoax, to the secretary of state talking about red phones.

[06:40:05]

Look, the reality is, the way we avoid the need to use red phones is by establishing red lines in advance. And that is going to require negotiation with the other superpower in this race. And that's China. Just as we sat down with the USSR during the worst of the Cold War, this is the way that we can enable all of us to protect our lives.

CORNISH: I want to ask you about something that is affecting people's lives right now. The White House Fraud Task Force says it's going to remove more than 760,000 Obamacare enrollees. They have been trying to root out fraud. They have been trying to make sure people who are enrolled have filled out the paperwork to do so. And here's how Vice President Vance has justified it

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're going to do some additional verification. We expect that most of these people are fraudulently enrolled. But we're going to do some additional verification on about 419,000 people. We're going to make sure that they are, first of all, legal residents of the United States of America. And second of all, we're going to make sure that they actually meet the income threshold requirements in order to receive these Obamacare benefits.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So, all of this sounds reasonable, making sure the people who qualify receive the benefits that they deserve.

LICCARDO: We can all agree that there's fraud in the system. One way you root out fraud is by having an inspector general that actually understands the system and understands where the fraud is. For example, inspector generals were able to identify close to $60 billion of fraud last year alone. The problem is, they fired all the inspector generals, or at least 17 of them, in the very first two weeks of the administration. And now it's amateur hour. And we don't know whether what they're producing is actually the results of cuts that respond to fraud or, in fact, kicking innocent people off the rolls that critically need this.

CORNISH: So, you think of this 760,000 there are people who are wrongly being considered?

LICCARDO: We can't know exactly how many are legitimate or not. We'll find out. The problem is, we don't know anything from what they have said so far. We do know there is fraud. Whether or not they're actually rooting it out or they're simply hurting people in poverty, or working people who critically need this service, we just don't know.

CORNISH: OK. Well, Congressman, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate your time.

LICCARDO: It's great to be with you, Audie.

CORNISH: Next on CNN THIS MORNING, what would you do for your child's education? You've got journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who spent her career defending public education, now her own kids are questioning if that was the right decision.

Plus, this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: Shame on you for inciting riots against New York Jews.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: You've got the leader of Israel hitting back after New York's mayor, Mamdani, calls him a, quote, "war criminal." Is Netanyahu answering Mamdani or simply talking to voters in a difficult election back home?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:47:00]

CORNISH: So, the mayor of New York first called for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu back in July. Now, the Israeli prime minister is responding.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: Shame on you, Mr. Mamdani. Shame on you for supporting the Hamas terrorist monsters who butchered our people. Shame on you for inciting riots against New York Jews. I'm coming to the U.N. I'm going to tell the truth about our heroic soldiers, and I'm going to tell the truth about you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Netanyahu addresses the U.N. General Assembly in New York tomorrow.

The group chat is back.

Before we begin, I want to play you Mamdani's response to the accusation that he supports Hamas from Netanyahu.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI (D), NEW YORK CITY: We all know that what the prime minister has said in that video is not true. What we do know to actually be the truth when it comes to the prime minister is that he is the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. And as the prime minister, he is the architect of a horrific genocide against Palestinians.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: This caught my ear when he mentioned the ICC, because I know the administration has been in a conversation about the International Criminal Court.

MANCHESTER: Yes.

CORNISH: Is any of this tied to Netanyahu or --

MANCHESTER: Look, I think when Zohran Mamdani brings up the ICC in regard to Netanyahu, he knows that he can't enforce that arrest warrant.

CORNISH: Yes.

MANCHESTER: I think what you're seeing from Mamdani and Netanyahu, and particularly from Netanyahu right now, is them throwing red meat to their own political bases. Netanyahu, right now, his party, the Likud Party in Israel, is facing a very uphill re-election battle as he -- and he wants to try to --

CORNISH: Uphill, you said.

MANCHESTER: Uphill, yes, as he wants to try to -- I should say, not Likud itself, but he's trying to keep conservatives in Israel, that conservative coalition together. And Israeli conservatives and many conservatives in general do not like Zohran Mamdani. So, this is red meat to that conservative base in Israel.

CORNISH: Yes.

MANCHESTER: And it comes at a time as Netanyahu can't necessarily rely on President Trump to rally that base. You notice, President Trump hasn't formally endorsed Netanyahu or his party for election ahead --

CORNISH: That's not a given. Would they do like an official endorsement?

MANCHESTER: It's -- he hasn't really been talking about it, I don't think.

CORNISH: Not helpful then. Yes.

MANCHESTER: Not helpful. No.

CORNISH: OK. So, in the meantime, obviously in the U.S., views of Israel have shifted in both parties, among Democrats specifically, of course. But the number of Americans who view Israel as an ally or friend has dropped 12 percentage points.

Are we going to see, like, Netanyahu talking about Mamdani in his U.N. General speech?

TERRY SCHILLING, PRESIDENT, American PRINCIPLES PROJECT: I think so. Look, I --

CORNISH: This is the U.N.

SCHILLING: I --

CORNISH: And you're in a war.

SCHILLING: I get it. But I think -- I think the obvious thing is, is that Netanyahu is probably at his weakest point politically since October 7th.

CORNISH: Yes, we're going to put up the polling while you're talking from the "Times of Israel." It's pretty striking.

SCHILLING: And so I think what he's doing here is he's obviously campaigning, trying to build up his base in Israel, showing I'm going to go to where all of our enemies are surrounding us and give it right to them. It'll be interesting to see if this plays out well.

[06:50:01]

But I think that this is ultimately a power play. He's vulnerable because of this Iran war thing, especially in America. I think that's been increasing his unpopularity here.

SEAWRIGHT: I think that he's doing what Donald Trump often does, trying to distract from the reality that exists for him politically.

CORNISH: Oh, like find a foil.

SEAWRIGHT: He's been -- he's been a failure, like Donald Trump. He's a liability, like Donald Trump. And I think that both of them have this one thing in common where they try to deflect and distract the news cycle from talking about their liability and the issues that exist because of them. And so, him picking a fight with Zohran Mamdani is a distraction.

MANCHESTER: And just to add on that, look at what happened yesterday. You had the administration acknowledge that there was communication in meetings with the Iranian delegation at the United Nations. President Trump saying, we could make a deal with Iran after the midterms.

Netanyahu, as a defender of Israel, an opponent of Iran, doesn't want to hear that.

CORNISH: Yes.

SEAWRIGHT: And I will tell you, one of the most striking things that I saw in his reelection video when he basically said, we finally have someone, i.e. Donald Trump, who basically I can control in this country, that should send a strong signal in this country about the two of them and what -- and how -- and how things were --

CORNISH: Yes. Well, in the meantime, just reminding people, "Times of Israel" finding 33 percent of Israelis, only 33 percent saying Netanyahu is the best candidate for prime minister. And almost 60 percent saying they would prefer someone else.

SEAWRIGHT: Trump-like numbers.

CORNISH: I want to turn to something else that's been in my group chats. Basically, there are parents grappling with this issue. Where do you send your kids to school? What is the right school? How will those choices shape their future? Well, here's the thing, "New York Times" journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones has been wrestling with that extremely publicly. She's the author of the "1619 Project." And she had written a lot about modern school segregation, about racial justice. Ten years ago she decided to send her daughter to a low income, mostly black local school in Brooklyn. And she wrote about it.

Now here we are, fast forward, in a new essay she's fearing that decision to challenge New York City's unequal school system, a betrayal. And the person who says that is her own daughter.

I'm bringing it to the group chat because Terry has a bunch of kids, and I have some kids. And one of the things that brought me to sort of reckon with is what brought her to reckon with. Her daughter saying, quote, "so you had the money to send me to one of the best schools and you chose not to?" Words that Hannah-Jones describes as being hurled at her, "because other kids are disadvantaged, you didn't want to put me in a great school?"

And the rest of the story is about her reckoning and so many people on social media have been going back and forth about this.

SCHILLING: Yes, look, I like these types of exposures because it shows how much we actually have in common.

I don't agree with Nikole Hannah-Jones on essentially anything except this. I had to pull -- my kids all were in Fairfax County Public Schools. I went to a great public middle school, a great public high school, but I decided to pull my kids out of Fairfax County Public Schools because of the quality of education. A third of kids can read at grade level, can read proficiently, do math proficiently. It's a disaster. And our kids, frankly, should not be experiments. We should not be trying to prove things with them. We should be strengthening our kids, informing them. And putting them into the lion's den, which a lot of these public schools are --

SEAWRIGHT: But --

CORNISH: Well, that's -- hold on one second, that's very interesting. I want to play what social media was saying, just to get some black parents into this discussion.

Here's what we were seeing online.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I understand you want to fight for racial equality, that you want to fight for all black kids, but your child is suffering, actively suffering. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I do not think that Nikole Hannah-Jones' decision

was radical. I think that (EXPLETIVE DELETED) was performative. When your child pays the educational cost while you receive the moral credibility, the platform, and eventually the essay, that is not collective justice. That is extreme selfishness, singing itself as virtue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SEAWRIGHT: My sister's a high school principal. Almost 30 year educator. And what I believe about this is, we have to fundamentally strengthen the public school system, because that's where the majority of African American kids are going to go. They cannot afford to go to private schools. They cannot get transportation to these schools. Parents are working, et cetera. So, if we do not put our kids into public schools, whether some agree they're bad or not, because a lot of times public schools get the bad rap and they're not -- they're not that bad.

I came from a public school system. So, we have to invest into the public school system.

CORNISH: Can I first tell you, especially reading her article at length, she talks about what it's like to be a parent of color, and you don't get responses. You can be the most active parent, but if the school system does not respond to you and your child's needs, then it's a struggle. And that is a difference.

I was a kid on an integrated bussing program, so I've been to different environments and felt the difference. And I think it's interesting to see her reckoning with this.

[06:55:01]

There's one thing to say you're living your values.

MANCHESTER: Right.

CORNISH: It's another thing to actually do it. And very few people talk about the difference publicly.

MANCHESTER: Well, and this is really interesting from -- just from a personal perspective for me reading this. I'm an only child. My parents had the resources to send me to private school. And I went to a private school where I got a wonderful education growing up.

However, I think a lot of us coming out of that private school, going into college, going into the real world, it felt like a bubble.

CORNISH: Yes.

MANCHESTER: And we certainly were not exposed to the struggles that, you know, very bluntly, people outside of our community, the non --

CORNISH: Here was Sunny Hostin talking about that on "The View." I didn't expect this take, but here's how her family handled the same choice.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SUNNY HOSTIN, CO-HOST, "THE VIEW": This is a very difficult decision for black parents in particular, because I made a very different decision. I sent my children to private schools. A predominantly white private school. And so, while they didn't suffer academically, they excelled. It was a well-funded school. A private school. A well- resourced school. They suffered a different type of pain. There was psychological trauma. There was racism that they experienced. They were bullied.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So, the choice for black parents are, is there a school that does not meet the academic needs versus is there a school that could have, you know, psychological damage on your child?

SCHILLING: Well, I --

CORNISH: And I raise it to you too because it's a political jump ball. Conservatives have always said, you know what guys, you're right. Here's school choice. And drawn a coalition of black parents who do home schooling, who do school choice, the charter school system is built on this premise. And she exposed that this is still an issue.

SEAWRIGHT: Look, I just believe we have to invest in our public school system, strengthen it. We need good school board members, and we need to make sure that the technology and the education is diverse and prepares kids to compete in an ever-changing global society. If you want to send your kids to private school, fine, but do not do that at the expense of trying to say the public school system is bad.

SCHILLING: No, no, no. First of all, I like school choice as like a medium solution to the failing public school solution. But we have to fix these public schools.

And, Antjuan, they're getting funded crazy numbers. And the worst the school districts are doing.

They're -- in Chicago, I'm from Illinois, so it's a --

SEAWRIGHT: I don't have that experience in South Carolina. Sorry.

SCHILLING: Well -- no, no, South Carolina is Different. But in these schools in Chicago, there are -- I think there were three schools that didn't have A single child that could read at grade level or do math at grade level, and they were getting $27,000 per pupil. I think if people actually unpack these school board decisions and these budgets and see how much the schools are getting paid to fail these kids, I think they'd be outraged.

CORNISH: Well, the interesting thing about this article is the person who did that searching for stats was her daughter.

SCHILLING: Yes. CORNISH: And then turned around and said, mom, how did you make this decision? And I just rue the day. I know there, by the grace of God go I, as my child questions my own decisions. They're going to public school.

Tell me what's happening in your world, in your group chat.

MANCHESTER: Well, yesterday was the first day of fall. I was very excited. And I was thinking in the morning, you know, we need to be --

CORNISH: This sounds like the beginning of a poem.

MANCHESTER: It -- well, it sort of is. Just keep listening. At the beginning of the morning I was thinking, wow, wouldn't it be great if we got a Taylor Swift album drop today?

CORNISH: Oh.

MANCHESTER: And what do we have?

CORNISH: What do you have?

MANCHESTER: Her teasing "Patient Zero," which is, of course, her new single that is coming out later this week. It is just -- it's the cherry on top at the beginning of fall.

CORNISH: That's what you like?

MANCHESTER: That's what I like.

CORNISH: A pumpkin spice latte, a puzzle.

MANCHESTER: A puzzle and Taylor Swift.

CORNISH: And Taylor Swift.

MANCHESTER: Yes.

CORNISH: OK, what about you?

SCHILLING: We're all talking about the beatification of Bishop Fulton Sheen. He's a Catholic hero. He had this awesome show on NBC primetime called "Life Is Worth Living." And there are so many gems. I had -- I never watched the show live, obviously. It was before I was born. But I'm seeing these clips. He had this awesome clip the other day explaining the importance of love and getting that definition right. Love requires sacrifice. He points out that love, without sacrifice, is just affectionism and romanticism. It's kind of worthless. And suffering without love is just violence and tyranny. And, I don't know, I -- we could use a Fulton Sheen today.

CORNISH: I love it. I love it.

OK.

SEAWRIGHT: There was an article in "The Washington Post" yesterday about a physician and a pharmacist whose insurance premiums went up to six -- went up $1,600 a month. So, they decided to decline health care. Yesterday, coming to --

CORNISH: Declient?

SEAWRIGHT: Decline health care.

CORNISH: Oh, decline. Oh, oh.

SEAWRIGHT: Yesterday in the airport, a lady stopped me and told me that her insurance premium went up $2,300 a month. And she has a rare form of cancer. And she cannot afford to have insurance. And she said, I've already sent the signal to my children that we may be the last -- these may be my last days.

CORNISH: And that is the kind of thing that moves through group chats in an interesting way because it moves through as a GoFundMe. It moves through, you know what I mean? People don't get into a policy discussion about the end of their Medicare or Medicaid. They just start struggling. And you can feel like you're alone.

[07:00:01]

And it sounds like you are not alone. So, we see you. Keep talking about it.

I want to thank you all for being here this morning. I really appreciate it, as always.

SEAWRIGHT: Thank you.

CORNISH: And I want to thank you for choosing to wake up with us. You could be a lot of places, but you choose to be with us. And I'm glad you are. We've got the latest polling coming up ahead of these midterms. Stay with us.