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Erin Burnett Outfront

Oil Spikes Amid Rationing And Fears Of Global Crisis; Trump Jr. & Wife Confirm Russian Oligarch Paid For Part Of Wedding; Supreme Court Rejects Trump's Plan To Limit Mail-In Voting In Midterms; Ex- OpenAI Researcher: 70 Percent Chance A.I. Leads To Global Catastrophe. Aired 7-8p ET

Aired September 14, 2026 - 19:00   ET

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

[19:00:18]

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: OUTFRONT next:

The breaking news, oil spiking and Trump playing a blame game, pointing the finger at Biden and Zelenskyy, as we are learning new details about who may really be calling the shots in Tehran tonight.

Plus, a Russian oligarch bankrolling Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding bash in the Bahamas. The president's son and his wife admit it and defend it. "Nothing to see here," they say. The editor of "ProPublica", which broke the story, is our guest.

And Trump dismissing concerns about A.I., calls it a hoax. I'll talk to the now former top researcher at OpenAI who resigned over his concerns about A.I., says he's not even saving for his own retirement.

Let's go OUTFRONT.

(MUSIC)

BURNETT: And good evening. I'm Erin Burnett.

OUTFRONT tonight on this Monday, the breaking news, oil price shock. Prices surging as high as $110 a barrel today on fears of a global crisis and rationing.

Today, Iran claims an oil tanker struck a number of mines while attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Just the latest example of why traffic in the strait is down by roughly 90 percent since before the war. And that's added up, the global stockpile of oil plunging by 95 million barrels last month alone. It's been in freefall.

And Trump right now is blaming others. First, he blamed Zelenskyy instead of Putin. Didn't mention the Iran war at all. But if you're going to talk about Zelensky and Putin, he blamed Zelensky for high diesel prices.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Let him go after targets, but not diesel fuel, because he's causing a shortage of diesel. This isn't done by the Middle East. This is done by what's happening with Russia and Ukraine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: And then he went on to Biden. And on this he posted, quote, "I hope everyone realizes that price increases throughout America were caused by sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden administration, not by, all caps, Trump."

Now he is referring to the COVID era inflation surge, but the reality is that Joe Biden has been out of office for more than 600 days.

And Trump then, after all that blaming, undermined himself when it came to blaming everyone else by admitting today that the blame for the shock at the pump for Americans actually is his. He posted today, and I quote, "Oil will drop like a rock as soon as the military conflict with Iran is over and that will not be long."

Okay, well, I guess that's an admission that the military conflict is the problem. Putting aside that he has said since the first week of March that the war would be a few weeks long and we are now seven months in and no end in sight, the situation did just get notably worse over the past few hours. Iran-backed militants have moved with alacrity, speed, plowing past Saudi Arabian defenses. They now control the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. That is a vital 20-mile-wide choke point at the southern entrance of the Red Sea.

So, there are three ways out for Middle Eastern oil, three of the big ones, if you look at it. The Hormuz, down 90 percent, Bab al-Mandeb, now Iranian-backed militants can control it, and a Saudi Arabian pipeline that bypasses the Straits.

Well, what about that one? That is now taken out. The militants delivering a devastating blow to the Saudi Arabian oil industry, they took out that key pipeline.

I mean, these are new images, and you can just see that the burn. They said they hit it in multiple points, extensive damage, damage which could even in good scenarios take weeks for Saudi Arabia to fix.

People are feeling the pain worldwide. And in America, it's just the beginning. Heating oil prices are now expected to soar 30 percent this year. And Costco tonight announces it's limiting how much of its Kirkland House brand motor oil drivers can buy. The supply squeeze is real.

And today, Iran responded to Trump's threats with a mocking post showing Trump claiming, you said you want a deal, and then a picture of a cat with a text, I said inshallah. "Inshallah" basically means throw up your hands and give up.

But let's say Iran actually does want to make a deal, does President Trump know who to talk to there?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We don't know who the leader is in Iran. Because remember regime change. Khomeini is gone. He's gone to greener pastures.

He's gone and all of his team is gone. Then a second group came in, they're all gone. And now you have the third group. And they were a little concerned about being gone too.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: Now, according to New York Times reporter Farnaz Fassahi, she's going to be with us in just a moment. She's covered Iran for more than 30 years. She says hardline factions inside Iran are now doing what they want. She is reporting that when the Iranians opened fire on three commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz back in July, the Iranian president, a relative moderate in all of this, was totally in the dark.

[19:05:00]

In fact, apparently the head of the Revolutionary Guard also was reportedly unaware of strike.

And as of tonight, the new ayatollah, the Supreme Leader, is still MIA, seven months since his father and family were killed. We have not seen him once since. We have not heard his voice. Iran's president is reportedly questioning if his messages with the Ayatollah are even legitimate.

All right. Kristen Holmes is OUTFRONT live outside the White House to begin our coverage tonight.

And, Kristen, what we're seeing with oil prices, this is a real spike, right? And we're back near record levels. How concerned is the White House tonight as it watches this and looks at this very substantial damage in Saudi Arabia, the straits closed?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I mean, Erin, this is almost the equivalent of a five-alarm fire for the White House and for Republicans as a whole. There is an understanding that, one, this was a self-inflicted wound, but two, there's almost nothing they can do to turn the tides on this short of ending the conflict in Iran. And there is no indication that this is going to end anytime soon.

So instead, what seeing is kind of a scramble from President Trump, from these administration officials to look for any kind of solution they can. We saw that they entered into this deal with Venezuela, but that wouldn't even go into effect for at the minimum two years.

So again, it comes back to the idea of trying to end what they have started with Iran and that might be why you saw President Trump post this today. He says that Iran is they want to make a deal quickly and badly and then he says this: I will determine whether or not the USA will choose to engage the concept of which we are open to.

This certainly seems as though President Trump is now floating yet again another lifeline to Iran to say the United States is somewhat interested in reopening these negotiations, which have been completely on hold, stalled out since mid-August.

We've heard President Trump say that he believes the gas prices are going to fall around the midterms. Again, that is not a belief that all Republicans have. And really, as you see this play out, you're also looking at what President Trump's legacy is going to be, not just for the midterms, but really long term if this war continues, which again might point to why he is now outwardly saying to Iran, we are open to the concept of conversation.

BURNETT: Yeah. All right, Kristen, thank you very much.

And of course, important to look at oil futures markets don't show prices coming down like that. And even if they were to come down, if conflict were to stop, the war were to stop, it takes a long time when you look at the hole that's been put in supplies. As for Venezuela, U.S. refineries can't even process that heavy sour oil.

OUTFRONT now, retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges and Farnaz Fassihi, New York Times reporter who's covered Iran for decades with a lot of breaking news here tonight to discuss with us.

So General Hodges, the East-West pipeline is what goes across Saudi Arabia. That was sort of the workaround, okay? If something happens with the straits, we got this big wide pipeline. Well, now it's been hitting multiple points. It's out.

The two straits are controlled by Iran and its militants. How severe is this moment?

LT. GEN. BEN HODGES (RET.), FORMER COMMANDING GENERAL, U.S. ARMY EUROPE: Well, certainly for the Saudis, it's a very severe moment. They don't have a way to export their product, and that's going to affect not only them, of course, but the rest of the world markets. But the thing is, the Saudis have an enormous amount of military capability, at least in terms of equipment that they have bought from the United States. Now we're going to find out if they know how to use it, if they have forces that are properly trained and can push back what the Houthis are doing in Yemen.

Yeah, of course, I remember when material was left behind in Afghanistan, the outrage that we heard. Farnaz, you have extensive new reporting, and in part, you found that the president of Iran was blindsided by the Iranian attacks earlier this summer that blew up the ceasefire with the United States, right, those attacks on those commercial tankers.

So, you know, we've heard about for quite a while that what you're seeing is a rise of hardliners, a shift even to the right of hardline clerics. But how much influence do the hardliners really have right now? I know you've got new details.

FARNAZ FASSIHI, NYT REPORTER; HAS COVERED IRAN FOR 30+ YEARS: Well, thank you for having me, Erin. I think that the events of the past two weeks show us that the hardline faction and not necessarily clerics, but the hardline faction within the Revolutionary Guards is gaining the upper hand. We're seeing the theater all across the region heat up. Iran for the first time struck U.S. naval vessels. It wasn't successful, but it tried at least three times, according to CENTCOM.

We're seeing what the Houthis are doing in Yemen, trying to take control of Bab el-Mandeb, the strategic passageway for Saudi oil and, of course, those attacks on oil infrastructure. The hardliners are the faction, we found out and my reporting found out, led by this very shadowy, very influential spy chief, a cleric named Hussein Taib, had covertly planned to attack those ships without even the chain of command knowing to basically upend the deal, because this is the faction that's driven by ideology and says we don't want to deal with the United States, we want to continue fighting, or we want to fight until we can get the kind of leverage that we want.

BURNETT: So, General Hodges, Trump posted today dismissing concerns about U.S. weapons stockpiles, which are so important in the context of an ongoing conflict that Farnaz is referring to. And what's interesting is, obviously, there's been extensive reporting about this. We know about the non-concur by the leaders of SOUTHCOM and EUROPECOM and Southern Asia, AsiaPac Command, because of concerns about munitions, right? We know that all this is real. It's a fact.

There was a remark, though, by CENTCOM Chief Admiral Brad Cooper that I know in that context took you by surprise. He got asked about the shortage of U.S. munitions, which, again, is a fact. He said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADM. BRAD COOPER, CENTCOM CHIEF: I'm not concerned at all. We're well- armed and ready for any contingency.

NORAH O'DONNELL, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT: You're not worried about any future threats?

COOPER: I'm not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: General Hodges, what stands out from that, aside from the fact that I know you've never heard a commander say any such thing?

HODGES: Yeah, I don't know any commander that's never been worried about does he have enough resources. Now, of course, Admiral Cooper knows what he has. He would know better than I would what he has. I just was surprised to hear him say, so matter of factly, I'm not worried, when in fact his own testimony was different in front of the Congress and based on all the other commanders and what we see happening.

And if you can go back to the administration even two years ago or right after they came into office, saying that we couldn't provide weapons to Ukraine because we were eating into our own stocks and didn't have enough. So, this just doesn't add up as I'm looking at it from the outside. And look, I know the admiral was under enormous pressure from the

secretary of defense, and he certainly, any commander is going to try and do their very best with what they have. I was surprised to hear him say he had no concerns.

BURNETT: So, Farnaz, the Iranian regime is watching the U.S. stockpile situation closely, and they know -- perhaps certainly more than the American public knows about the incredible damage done to U.S. bases in the Middle East, right, rendering some inoperable, as former CIA chief Petraeus has described it.

But we still have not seen the Ayatollah. Seven months now, not heard his voice, not seen him. You report in your article that the Ayatollah Khamenei's mother-in-law gave a lengthy video interview to a local reporter saying she had no news of the Ayatollah and his three children. Her husband told the Iranian news media in July, God willing, he is healthy.

So, this is his mother-in-law acting as if she knows nothing about whether he's alive or dead even. And you're learning Iran's president was questioning whether he was actually communicating with the ayatollah himself, as I know you had been describing with all of your incredible reporting, you know, the messengers, you know, to even get a message into supposedly the supreme leader.

What are you learning?

FASSIHI: Well, I'm learning that access to him is very difficult, that the messages that are going back and forth to him are now even being questioned at the highest level of the government on their authenticity, that when in May, Mr. Pezeshkian said that he had met with the Supreme Leader once since the war started, he didn't reveal what circumstances, but I learned that he had actually been placed in an ambulance with blacked-out windows and taken around for a ride, and somebody appeared on a screen saying, I'm an interlocutor with ayatollah, and took messages back and forth without the president really seeing or hearing his voice.

And later he told, confided in one of his aides that, I'm not certain I was really speaking with Mr. Khamenei. Since then, he has said that I've held a long meeting with the ayatollah, but he didn't say what directives he gave or what those conversations revealed.

So, you know, in Iran, among the general public, among politicians, there's open questioning of where is the supreme leader, what state of health he's in, and how long is he going to be sort of this phantom leader?

BURNETT: Yeah, phantom leader. I mean, at this point, there's no other word for it.

I thank both of you very much. I appreciate it.

FASSIHI: Thank you.

BURNETT: And next, Donald Trump Jr. and his wife defending, I guess, do you call hundreds of thousands of dollars of paying for your giant wedding party a wedding gift? I guess that's what it is when it comes from a Putin ally, the Russian oligarch, paying for part of Trump's three-day lavish wedding party in the Bahamas.

Why did Trump Jr., who's worth hundreds of millions of dollars since his father is president, need that help anyway?

[19:15:03]

Plus, Trump dismissing concerns about A.I., calling them a hoax. I'm going to talk to a now former top researcher at OpenAI who's resigned because of concerns about it.

And Gavin Newsom telling Jake Tapper that he won't run for president if former Vice President Kamala Harris throws her hat in the ring. So, does that mean she's not running?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BURNETT: Tonight, Donald Trump Jr. and his wife defending their lavish wedding reception that was funded by a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin. "ProPublica" revealing today that Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev was among only 50 wedding guests, so that's a pretty special circle.

[19:20:01]

Bettina Trump responded today, writing, quote, "Friendship doesn't require a political motive. Generosity doesn't automatically come with an agenda." And she went on to say, quote, "For anyone determined not to let the facts get in the way of a good story, no conspiracy no mystery."

Well, Kremlev, who you can see here getting an award from Putin in April, a month before the wedding, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Trump's three-day celebration spread across two private islands in the Bahamas. Oh, there's definitely a lot to unpack there. He reportedly paid for the fireworks. His team even helped plan the wedding that featured a five-tier funfetti cake airlifted in from Florida. Guests ferried in by helicopters and seaplanes, oceanfront villas.

The son of the president of the United States getting all of that from a Russian oligarch who just got an award from Vladimir Putin? Are you kidding me?

OUTFRONT now, Jesse Eisinger, editor of "ProPublica".

Okay, this story has captured everyone's attention, and deservedly so, Jesse.

JESSE EISINGER, ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR, PROPUBLICAN: Thank you.

BURNETT: Can we start with this? So, Donald Trump Jr.'s worth an estimated $300 million, a number which, by the way, has surged exponentially since his father went back into the White House. And yet a Russian oligarch close to Putin with all of those bona fides that I just laid out that you reported paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for their wedding bash. What more do you know about this Umar Kremlev?

EISINGER: Well, he's an absolutely interesting figure. As you pointed out, he's very close to Putin. Not only has he been conferred honors by Putin himself, but he's tied to the security services. He's close to the security services in Russia.

And he has been part of -- he's running the boxing association that actually is a kind of effort, a Putin effort for diplomacy, soft diplomacy around the world.

BURNETT: So, I mean, okay, Don Jr. and his wife, they're not disputing it, right?

EISINGER: No. yeah, yeah.

BURNETT: They came out and they said, oh, yeah, and, you know, just this is what friends do for each other.

EISINGER: It's very nice, yeah.

BURNETT: They call Kremlev a, quote/unquote, dear friend, and they say it was a last-minute thing, which, by the way, on its face is absurd, an event that massive is not a last-minute plan, and here's your check. So that doesn't add up.

But then they add, it's unfortunate something so personal and happy can be recast as something political or sinister simply because of who someone is or where they come from.

Okay, but there were only 50 people there, you're reporting. He's one of them. His office tells you they only met a couple years ago. Eric Trump tells you in a statement that he's never even heard of this guy, Kremlev, and yet here he is.

So, what's the deal between Kremlev and Don, Jr.?

EISINGER: Yes, well, their message is hashtag not all Russians or you know that we're smearing Russians -- now, that's not really the issue the issue here is that they've got very close ties in mysterious fashion to someone who's tied to Putin, an oligarch to Putin. And people don't really know much about him or this relationship and the relationship this close relationship has only blossomed supposedly over the last couple of years, which is pretty mysterious and people at the wedding itself who are puzzled at the presence, not only of Kremlev, but of his entire entourage, which was multiple Russians.

BURNETT: Which is pretty incredible, because, again, we're talking about this really exclusive small event that the president of the United States, Don Jr.'s father, didn't even--.

EISINGER: And this is an adversary of the United States, of course.

BURNETT: Yes, I mean, Vladimir -- OK, so a couple of things here. First of all, Jared Kushner was at the wedding. EISINGER: Yes.

BURNETT: Jared Kushner has not been confirmed in any official role by Congress, yet he is going back and forth to Moscow negotiating face- to-face with Vladimir Putin about peace in the Ukraine deal. And he's attending this event with this guy who's close to Putin and getting these awards from Putin, and we don't know anything about it.

EISINGER: Well, this is what intelligence experts would be worried about and said that they were worried about when we told them about the story, which is that this provides an entree to the Trump family in a very intimate setting, away from cameras, away from the public eye. And who knows, over the course of multiple days, you know, there's you know liquor flowing at a wedding.

And so this is the kind of thing that intelligence officials and experts say is absolutely a red flag and in addition on top of the money changing hands receiving this gift.

BURNETT: I mean, it's shocking. Honestly, the whole thing is shocking and staggering. I think that's why it's breaking through.

Kremlev, though, just before the wedding, he gets this personal order of friendship with Putin. It's not even just that he's an oligarch that one can assume because he goes back and forth from Russia as close to Putin. He's close to Putin. The Chinese state press reports that they were together with Xi Jinping as well.

EISINGER: Exactly. He was literally in China with Putin right before the wedding. He flew from China to the Bahamas to celebrate the wedding. And with Putin at the -- now they say he wasn't part of the official delegation, but Chinese state media, he flew from China to the Bahamas to celebrate the wedding. And with Putin at the, now they say he wasn't part of the official delegation, but Chinese state media did say he was part of the official delegation.

[19:25:01]

BURNETT: Right, right. It would defy belief to think that he wasn't, as you're pointing out, part of any security services effort at an event like this.

Jesse, thank you very much.

EISINGER: Thank you.

BURNETT: It's really incredible stuff.

And I want to go to Ty Cobb now, former Trump White House lawyer.

So, Ty, you just heard Jesse. A person this close, oligarch close to Putin, travels to China with Putin as part of a delegation. Then after that, he goes to the wedding that he paid for. Putin awards him Russia's order of friendship. By the way, Ukraine's imposed sanctions on Kremlev personally, citing his closeness to Putin.

Ty, what do you think is going on here?

TY COBB, FOREMR TRUMP WHITE HOUSE LAWYER: Well, I don't think you have to be very imaginative to try to connect these dots. You know, you've got Kremlev, who's a handpicked Putin stooge, who owes his entire fortune -- to the extent he has a fortune -- to Putin. And he runs the International Boxing Association, which is a discredited organization, that the Olympics had to force out to take over boxing. And it's typically referred to as an intensely corrupt, suspect group.

But, Gazprom, which is the Russian oil, state-owned Russian oil company, is the primary supporter and funder of Kremlev and his organization. And what does Trump do shortly after the wedding this week? He's telling Zelenskyy to stop bombing Russian oil refineries.

I don't think you have to be too creative to suggest that these favors for Gazprom are all part of this influence ceremony.

BURNETT: There is just on that, not just on the face of it, if he didn't ask Putin to stop bombing Ukrainian energy facilities, but the silence when Putin was aiming at the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and Ukraine. So, there's all that.

So I mentioned to Jesse the net worth of Donald Trump Jr., okay, Ty? "Forbes" says it's about $300 million. Now, they say that's six times higher than November 2024 when he was worth about $50 million, so right before the election.

So, to increase your net worth six times. And then you can go drill down on that and look at stakes and government preference and Defense Department contracts, right? And there's a lot, a lot of things to see there.

Why, Ty, would Donald Trump Jr. take this money, have this guy as one of 50 people at his wedding when he could just pay for it himself?

COBB: Because these guys are just in your face about it now. I mean, Donald Trump Jr.'s money has increased exponentially because the Trump family took $500 million from the UAE for one of their enterprises. The gifts are out there in just such huge amounts.

Keep in mind, you know, the president himself, you know, announced that he'd made over $2.2 billion last year. You know, much of it in crypto. Lutnick's net worth doubled last year.

You know, these people are all at the trough, you know, looting the Treasury and looting America for their own benefit. And they do it in a way that is really in the face of Americans to try to create a sense of hopelessness and confusion and make us relent to the inevitability of Trump's corruption.

BURNETT: I mean, Ty, I guess, and that is where I'd put the category of Don Jr.'s wife, Bettina, the comment was sometimes a wedding gift is simply a wedding gift. That's the comment.

COBB: Yeah, and I don't think -- I don't think that's the case when it comes from a Russian oligarch who's a, you know, thug. He's got a conviction for corruption. He's got a conviction for battery. And he's a Putin-owned official.

So, I think -- I think it's asking too much of America to suspend their disbelief into what's really obviously going on.

BURNETT: So I want to ask you one other thing, Ty, while I have you --

COBB: Sure.

BURNETT: -- and that is your friend Michael Luttig, prominent Republican judge. He criticized Republicans today, saying the GOP is preparing to steal the upcoming midterm elections, which I know is something about which you have written and spoken prolifically.

He writes, quote, "The catastrophic end could well come on January 3rd, 2027, when Trump and his Republican congressional allies waged the final battle in Trump's determined war to corrupt America's democracy and deliver a lasting political victory over the Democrats for his MAGA Republican party."

Now, this comes from Michael Luttig. So when you read this, I would imagine you agree with all of it.

COBB: Well, I'm very concerned about it. I think, and I've spoken to the judge about it. We've had exchanges about this.

BURNETT: Yeah.

COBB: You know, we both are very concerned about what's going to happen on January 3rd and actually very concerned about the interim between, you know, the elections in November, which will likely result in a democratically elected House of Representatives, assuming that people are seated.

You know, we're concerned that governors, secretaries of state, various commissions may not certify the real winners, that that the rogue clerk theory, which is the judge's thesis that we're discussing now, whether Mike Johnson fires the current clerk of the House, Kevin McCumber, who is by all accounts a very serious man and a decent man and somebody who could be relied upon to do the right thing, and replaces him with a lackey, somebody to just do the evil that Trump and Johnson intend.

And that is a very real threat. It's something that's important that people understand could happen. The courts would likely save us, but there would be a period of uncertainty in the interim that could make the country very vulnerable.

BURNETT: Ty, thank you very much.

Ty Cobb, as I said, former White House lawyer.

And next, Trump tonight pushing back against of the A.I. fear out there, major fear, calling that fear a hoax. A former top researcher at OpenAI who quit because of fears, those worries, is next.

And breaking news, Senator Mitch McConnell returning to Congress after that three-month mysterious absence.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:35:35]

BURNETT: Breaking news, the Supreme Court just dealing a major loss for Trump here in the past few seconds, rejecting his plan for new restrictions on mail-in voting. This comes just 50 days before the midterm elections. There have been two states that have already started mailing out ballots, others not far behind.

Joan Biskupic is OUTFRONT.

And, Joan, you're just getting this ruling. Obviously, this is hugely significant. What does it say? How did it break down among the justices?

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SENIOR SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Sure. Great to see you, Erin.

And here's the thing. We've been waiting weeks for this determination and hours late into today. And what the justices have said is that Donald Trump and his administration cannot go forward with this plan that would give the U.S. Postal Service and Department of Homeland Security so much more control over elections.

As you probably remember, states were going to have to submit lists of eligible voters to the U.S. postal system. They would have been required to have certain kind of envelopes with tracking barcodes, all sorts of things that were both questionable in terms of their lawfulness, but also unworkable -- the Postal Service workers were saying there's no way that this thing is going to be ready. The states had said that any kind of implementation of this would be catastrophic and result in chaos and widespread disenfranchisement.

So, what the justices said though, Erin, they did not explain the ruling. They just said no, that that the challenges would be likely to prevail, but two justices wrote separately to dissent and say they think that the challengers case should not have been accepted. So, we don't have any good rationale, but it was pretty obvious, I have to say, in looking at all the filings that had come in, just how much trouble this would have caused.

As I said, it not just would it have impinged on the state constitutional authority to run their own elections. It looked like this thing wasn't even set up well, the as you probably remember, Donald Trump had put out his executive order on March 31st, but the rule wasn't even finalized until August.

So, you know, here we are, as you just said, really just what do we have, seven weeks until the November 3rd midterms? It just could not have been put in place in addition to the likely unlawfulness that the just the majority cited. This order was not signed by any particular justice, but I say only specifically justices Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito broke off to dissent.

BURNETT: OK, all right, but obviously that means Roberts did not. So, you see this was not even in a sense a close split along party.

BISKUPIC: That's right. And I have to say, you know, the chief justice I'm sure Shepherd did a lot of this. The original challenge went through Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, but only because it came from a district that she handles. of the First Circuit, but I can't imagine that the Chief Justice did not have a strong hand in this.

And by virtue of the timing, Erin, that it came tonight, you could feel that there was momentum to try to get this out. Because when we ended the week last Friday, there was still so much uncertainty among election officials saying, what is going to happen? We're faced with these sets of proposals that we think are totally unworkable and mail- in ballots were already being distributed in some states.

So, this is going to make things much easier for state officials and what could have been, as lower court judges said, potentially catastrophic.

BURNETT: All right, Joan, thank you very much.

And let me go back to Ty Cobb, former Trump White House lawyer. Ty, luckily you had not actually unplugged before this happened. So you heard what Joan's reporting, obviously extremely significant. You heard it wasn't signed by a specific justice, but that obviously it was overwhelming to reject Trump's plan to limit mail-in voting, right? You only had Thomas and Alito going against that, dissenting.

What do you read into this?

COBB: So having not read it, it's very hard to say, but I agree with Joan's assessment that the Chief Justice is undoubtedly responsible for the speed at which this decision came down. I do think that this was not a close call constitutionally. There is no role for the president in the -- in the administration of the elections. You know, he has tried to assume authority over -- over balloting, and that the court clearly has rejected that, which is, which I think is important.

And I don't think it was close constitutionally. You know, there may be some quibbling by Thomas and Alito with regard to the propriety of taking it up in the way that it came to them, but it was an important it was important to get it out and I think there are many critics out there already who say that this languished way too long in the courts and it should have been stomped out you know weeks ago.

BURNETT: Looking at it, you got a seven-page dissent with Alito, Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas joins, dissenting from the die of application first day. So, they've got about seven pages there. But in terms of the actual ruling itself, Amy Coney Barrett, you've got Roberts, you've got Justice Kavanaugh all concurring with liberal justices.

I guess, Ty, is this a moment where Americans should be able to celebrate --

COBB: Yes.

BURNETT: -- that the Supreme Court has been able to speak with a more unified voice than we have seen?

COBB: Yes, no, I think -- I think that's the case, and I think we've seen, you know, from the tariff ruling to the birthright citizenship ruling to the ruling on the firing of Lisa Cook into the Federal Reserve, you know, even to the Roberts dissent recently on jurisdictional grounds that I think the evidence that Trump is an existential threat to democracy is, you know, clear to most Americans, and I think it's becoming increasingly clear to the Supreme Court, and I think that the action today helps us move forward and hopefully avoid some of the serious issues that the president is trying to impose upon us.

BURNETT: How do you expect Trump to respond to it?

COBB: I think he'll be critical of the judges. He has always responded to any slight with a visceral and angry reaction. He'll do the same here, whether he'll turn him into the enemies that, you know, he believes them to be in his demented, malignant, narcissistic mind. Hard to say, but I don't think he'll -- I don't think he'll respond with anything that approaches equanimity.

And I and I also believe that, you know, he will not stop his efforts to try to prevent, you know, the free and fair elections in America that are going to deprive him of the power that he now has.

BURNETT: All right. Ty Cobb, thank you very much.

And my panel's here with me now.

I'm just obviously looking at this. So, Lulu, we got seven pages for the dissent with Alito and Thomas, but the ruling itself, it's not signed by anyone. It's very short. Kavanaugh concurs with a very brief statement, but it's almost as if they don't -- I mean, I don't want to, you know, they're not putting out a rationale. They're just saying this is what it's going to be.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yeah, and democracy lives to fight another day in America. I agree that this isn't the end of it, but this is a very, very important ruling. Why? Because this goes to the heart of modern elections, right? We have huge swaths of the American public who vote by mail. We have the election already underway in its preliminary -- in many states.

And so, the fact that the Supreme Court has made this unequivocal statement is exceedingly important to send a message that these elections will be free and fair.

BURNETT: So then, Gretchen, what does Trump do? I mean, this is, as Ty points out, this is a significant failure when saying, okay, it's not going to end here, but then what between now and November?

GRETCHEN CARLSON, FORMER FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I hate to give any kind of a prediction, number one, and number two, I'd hate to give any ideas.

Look, I think that this is an example of the courts once again stepping in the highest court in the land and say, no can do, including, most importantly, the justices that Trump himself picked to serve on the Supreme Court, right? So, he'll come after them, no doubt, but this is it. It doesn't matter what he says after this.

Will he come up with something else? I mean, I think we would probably 100 percent all agree here that, yes, he will, but I don't want to put any ideas out into the ether as to what that might be.

JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You know, voting is part of the infrastructure, the architecture, the very heart of American democracy, and giving people more access to the vote is exactly what every generation of Americans has been trying to do, from giving women the right to vote in the 1920s to giving African Americans the right to vote after Jim Crow in the 1960s.

This is a part of what it is we're supposed to be doing as a nation to enfranchise people. So, I just believe that Donald Trump right now is doing everything he can to try to crib some of these votes wherever he can find them, whether it's redistricting or proposing new laws or who knows what he does on election day with some of the federal troops.

[19:45:05]

All these things are trying to just crib the numbers a little bit to see what he can eke out to keep that margin smaller for the Democrats.

CARLSON: And yet he votes mail-in voting.

BURNETT: Right, he does, again and again. So, we should say it's okay when he does it. Okay for me, but not for thee.

Okay, Lulu, other breaking news. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, widely seen as running for president. I don't really know anybody who thinks he isn't running for president. But he tells Jake Tapper that he is not going to run for president if Kamala Harris does.

So, he and Jake were having this conversation. Let me play this part.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST, "THE LEAD": It's going to be a lot of people.

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D), CALIFORNIA: Yeah.

TAPPER: It's a lot of Democrats.

NEWSOM: Thirty-one flavors.

TAPPER: And you're not even the only Californian.

NEWSOM: No, right, yeah.

TAPPER: You got Ro Khanna, Kamala.

NEWSOM: Yeah, I don't know if she runs, but we'll see.

TAPPER: I know she's called around.

NEWSOM: Yeah, but I wouldn't run if she ran.

TAPPER: If she runs, you will not.

NEWSOM: Of course not. Why would I? I wouldn't do that to her. I wouldn't do it to me. Why would I wouldn't do that to you? I wouldn't waste everyone's time. Who needs that?

TAPPER: What do you mean? That doesn't even make sense to me.

NEWSOM: I just I wouldn't. No, I wouldn't. First of all, electorally, it's a gift from God for everybody else. They enjoy the hell out of it. Mutual assured destruction. It services no greater good.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: I will just explain the location. Jake's doing this amazing new series where he's meeting people in a thing that they like. That's why the fly fishing.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Fly fishing. I was about to say great place for an interview. Okay, give me some ideas.

CARLSON: Not on purpose.

BURNETT: Right. But, you know, it got that candid, I mean, that back and forth, and Jake called it out like this sounds crazy.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, but I mean, so first of all, I think Gavin Newsom understands the truth, which is they're both from California. They've had these, you know, they eat from the same well, right? And that means money.

So, first of all, he's right. But second of all, I think what he's saying there is this needs to be sorted out by the Democratic Party before anyone gets on a debate stage. This needs to be sorted out because you're not going to turn the page on Biden --

BURNETT: Primary process.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Right, not a primary process before they even get there, because, you know, at the end of the day, I think most Democrats would probably say at this point they don't want to relitigate 2024 and Biden in 2028. And so, while people may like Kamala Harris, what people may appreciate Kamala Harris, what I've heard from most Democrats is they don't want another Kamala Harris run.

And so, what he is saying there is if you want to have a new candidacy, if you want to have a fresh crop of people, including me, who's the front runner, quote/unquote, you have to. to sort this out in advance.

BURNETT: So, Jamal, you worked for Kamala Harris, okay?

SIMMONS: Yeah.

BURNETT: So, you're sitting here with real knowledge of her and her psyche. How serious do you think she is about running again?

SIMMONS: Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom have been doing this tango for a long time, right? Two steps to the left, two steps to the right. They've been trying to avoid each other in electoral contests, I think, throughout their entire careers in California.

I think Gavin Newsom also knows she's tough to beat in a Democratic primary. She's already polling so far ahead of everyone. Now, those name ID polls than they are anything else.

And in California, they do come from the same well. I mean, they had the same political consultant. They had a lot of the same donors. This would be a very tough combat for him to win. So why do that, lose, or do that and then get blamed for it?

It's better for him to sit back and let it play out a little bit.

BURNETT: Do you really believe in that, Gretchen?

CARLSON: No. Why would he do a fly fishing interview with Jake Tapper, which is the perfect setting if you're running for president, unless you already know something. Like, maybe he knows Kamala isn't running. Maybe he knows she is. So that would be a way for him to put out there softly that he's not running.

BURNETT: So cynical.

CARLSON: Well, sorry. I'm a journalist. I know how to set up these interviews, and I know what you want to get.

BURNETT: I mean, why else would he take to go fly fishing?

CARLSON: Why would he do it?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: No, I'm certain he's running for president. I'm just not sure. I'm not sure that that's really what's behind it, but we'll see.

(CROSSTALK)

SIMMONS: And the ground -- the terrain is tough for Kamala Harris to run again. She's run a couple of times before. She's got to raise the money. She's got to get people to sign up. She's got to get staff. She's got to have a message that's compelling.

All those things we haven't seen from her yet. So, we'll see.

BURNETT: All right, we'll see. And I'll say Jake's going to be doing a lot of interviews like this. And if they come with revelations like that, you're going to want to watch them.

All right. Next, President Trump rejecting the growing concerns about A.I., calling them a hoax. A former A.I. researcher who puts the odds of a catastrophic A.I. disaster at around 70 percent to the point that he is not bothering to save for his own retirement. He's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:53:51]

BURNETT: Breaking news, President Trump dismissing artificial intelligence as a threat, calling the doomsday scenarios that have been swirling a hoax. The president posting, quote, "A.I. taking over the world, destroying humanity and other things bad is a hoax. No different from Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. Impeachment hoax number one, impeachment hoax number two, and all of the other hoaxes and scams that America was forced to endure."

I was emphasizing the all caps. Trump's comments comes just days after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said A.I. development needs to slow down.

OUTFRONT now, Daniel Kokotajlo. He was former scenario planning researcher at OpenAI before he resigned in 2024 over concerns about the risks of A.I. and that they were not being addressed. He is now the executive director of the nonprofit A.I. Futures Project.

And Daniel, so the president of the United States says that all the warnings about A.I. and the threats it may pose are a hoax alongside Russia, the impeachments, and Ukraine and others.

What do you say to that?

DANIEL KOKOTAJLO, AI FUTURES PROJECT EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FORMER OPENAI RESEARCHER: Well, I don't think it's a hoax. I think that tech industry lobbyists have unfortunately gotten too close to the president.

[19:55:00]

And I hope that he realizes that they're lying to him.

BURNETT: Okay, so when you say they're lying to him, you are sounding the alarm as loudly as you can. You are warning that the odds of a globally catastrophic A.I. outcome are around 70 percent. Like I said, you were a scenario planning researcher. Okay? So that meant that you were looking at scenarios of what could happen. That leads you to say there's a 70 percent chance of a globally catastrophic outcome.

So, can you explain any of those scenarios specifically in a way that we could understand what could really happen?

KOKOTAJLO: Yeah, sure. So, it's hard to explain on a very short segment the whole scenario, right? If you want to read a whole scenario, my organization put up one called A.I. 2027, which is an excellent thing to go read about this, but I'll attempt to be brief and try to summarize.

The A.I. companies are trying to make super intelligence. This is not a secret. This is not a conspiracy. They say on their websites that they're trying to make super intelligent A.I., which means A.I. that's better than the best humans at everything while also being faster and cheaper.

The next step, of course, which also they're not keeping secret is robots as well. So, they're going to have A.I.s doing all the physical tasks as well via robots, right?

So, their goal is to basically automate the entire economy using a combination of A.I.s and robots. And their plan for how to get there is to automate their own jobs first. So, they're already training giant swarms of A.I.s to autonomously write code, edit code, run experiments, analyze the experiments, and create new A.I.s and train new A.I.s.

They're already attempting to do this within the companies. And it seems like they might succeed within a few years at getting giant swarms of A.I.s that can automate the A.I. research process, at which point the A.I. research process will go faster. And then they'll start getting towards super intelligence as previously described.

So that's literally what the companies are planning to do. And you don't have to be an A.I. expert or A.I. researcher to reason about the consequences of that and how that could be very dangerous. And this is why it's actually the majority position in the field of A.I., according to surveys, that this really could result in human extinction.

I think I saw a number of something like the median A.I. researcher thinks there's an 18 percent chance of human extinction due to A.I.s. So, it's not a fringe view. It's something that people have been talking about before the A.I. industry even existed.

As for what the actual extinction might look like, well, that depends. I mean, once you have all the A.I.s running all these robots and so forth, who knows exactly how things will go, but probably things will go very fast. And if the A.I.s and robots don't actually care about humans and go rogue, then there's numerous ways that that could end very poorly for us.

BURNETT: So, okay, just to be clear, you -- this isn't just what you're saying, and I guess I see all these percents out there, but I know we're dealing with a group of people, you and your peers and your former peers, right? Who think that way, right? And odds and probabilities, right? There's a lot of math and statistics.

So, when you say 70 percent, it's not just what you're saying. It's actually your actions. I know that you are not saving for your own retirement. And people can look at you on the screen. If you're listening on the radio, I can tell everybody you're not old. You're not even middle-aged.

So, you're not saving for your own retirement because you don't think that they're going to have a retirement. How does that feel to really be doing that?

KOKOTAJLO: I mean, it's really scary. If you've been following the progress of A.I., as I have for about 10 years, it's really fast. Like the A.I.s this year are so much better at operating autonomously for long periods to do useful tasks such as coding and research, so much better than they were last year. And last year, they were so much better than the year before.

And if you plot the trend lines, it seems like they're going to be able to do all of the research process in just a few years, depending on how fast things go. So yeah, unless things slow down soon, we really will have super intelligent A.I. by the end of the decade.

BURNETT: Does regulation, is it even a conversation to have? I know Trump says he thinks we need less and we don't have a lot of time left rather than more. But I mean, I'm just saying when you're talking about super intelligence, that's like beyond our ability to do anything about it once you get there, right? Do regulations even matter at this point?

KOKOTAJLO: Yeah, that's why we need to regulate how we get there and whether we get there. And to a first approximation, we need to prevent the companies from doing this. This is an incredibly dangerous thing to do. And even if they somehow manage to stay in control of their superintelligent A.I.s, well, then it's a power grab over the rest of us because now all the jobs are being taken by this army of superintelligent A.I. controlled by a few tech companies, you know? Like they should not be allowed to do this.

BURNETT: All right. Well, Daniel, I appreciate your time. Obviously, it's a very sobering conversation, I think in part because so many of us feel so little control over what really happens here.

Thank you so much. I appreciate your taking the time to explain this. I hope everyone will read your full report.

And "AC360" begins now.