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Inside Politics

22-Year-Old Man Arrested In Connection With Charlie Kirk Murder; Lawmakers In Fear After Kirk Shooting, Call For More Security; Secy. Lutnick's Hack To Down-Time With Trump: 1A.M. Phone Calls; HBO Max Medical Drama "The Pitt" Nominated For 13 Emmys. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired September 12, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

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[12:33:53]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Now more on our top story, law enforcement in Utah have a suspect in custody, custody rather, in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk. His name is Tyler Robinson, 22 years old, and he was turned in after a 33-hour manhunt. We're going to continue to follow and bring you any new information on that important angle of this tragedy.

Here in Washington, the murder of Charlie Kirk unleashed a universal sense of fear. Lawmakers, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, they're calling for more security. Here's just a sample of what we're hearing from members of Congress.

Randy Fine, Republican of Florida, "I had to talk -- I had to have a talk with my 17 year old son last night who asked me not to run again because he's worried his dad's going to get killed." Democrat Jared Moskowitz, "Not many of them will say it publicly, but they're running to the speaker talking about security. People are scared. They are really scared."

And there's even more you can read there on the screen. That's what you were referring to.

MARIANNA SOTOMAYOR, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Yes, no, there is this real fear. And it was going on even before this flashpoint happened. You know, you talk about the Minnesota shootings earlier this year, even before this flashpoint happened.

[12:35:03]

You know, you talk about the Minnesota shootings earlier this year. That actually caused a lot of lawmakers to go to the Speaker, to go to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. And they actually did come together in a bipartisan agreement to give more funds to lawmakers so that they can both fortify their homes, cars back home in their district, but also be able to hire more security, particularly at political events.

BASH: Yes. SOTOMAYOR: And even before this happened, there were literally conversations earlier this week on the Hill of should we appropriate more money so that we can have more secure political events? Because the real fear is, is constituents are not going to turn out.

BASH: Right.

SOTOMAYOR: They don't feel safe.

BASH: And just to put a finer point on this, David, threats to members of Congress, this is according to the U.S. Capitol Police, 14,000 so far just in this year. And that's the context there, up 56 percent year over year.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: I mean, this is clearly part of what increased polarization does, but it is also what part of increased connectivity does in an algorithmic driven universe that we live in right now where, you know, enragement is the coin of the realm. And that is what generates interest in this attention economy.

And this is the toxic nature of our politics. That is why we're in such a precarious moment, because you put a political assassination of Charlie Cook right in the middle of this and you can see how potentially explosive that can become. We saw Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez, I think, announced that she was postponing an event that she planned to tour in North Carolina this weekend because of security concerns.

BASH: Yes, no, and I've talked to others who are doing it as well. If only there were billionaires who controlled the algorithms that made the society in which we're living so much more toxic.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I think that social media has become an even more scary place in the last several years. And, I mean, the situation surrounding this is part of that. I mean, people accusing people without knowledge, using names of strangers that they said were responsible. They were not. We know who's responsible now.

I think that's obviously part of it. I do just want to say one thing about the politics of all this and the politicians. Part of being a politician is interacting with people because you're supposed to be representing the people and people want to get to know the person who is representing them and bringing their concerns to Washington.

Part of the appeal of Charlie Kirk was that he was so accessible, that he was there on these campuses talking to these kids. And so if you take out the accessibility of these politicians, what do you have? How do you even figure out who you're going to vote for?

BASH: Which is why violence is so, so toxic generally, but particularly, particularly in a free and open democracy.

Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

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BASH: Topping our political radar, Missouri's state Senate is expected to approve a new congressional map today. It effectively eliminates a Kansas city-based district represented by longtime Democratic Congressman Emanuel Cleaver. Now, Missouri will be the second red state to redraw its map to help Republicans ahead of the midterms next year. That, of course, is after Texas did it last month.

And Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick finds a hack to win one-on-one time with President Trump. It starts with a 1:00 a.m. text message that Lutnick claims is more of a how are you instead of a you up? And President Trump usually calls shortly after there just to hang out.

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HOWARD LUTNICK, COMMERCE SECRETARY: He says, you know, if I call anybody else this late, first thing I hear is the phone bouncing on the floor. And then they go, oh, you know, he goes, when I call you, you say, hey, what's up?

And when we talk that late at night, we just chat. OK, we're not -- there's no objective. We're not like deep into something. We're just talking about the day, talking about tomorrow, talking about golf, talking about sports.

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BASH: Coming up, he is the star of a hit series that's racking up more than a dozen Emmy nominations. Noah Wyle of "The Pitt" joins me up next for our Friday much needed political palate cleanser.

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[12:48:14]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, Dave, what's a good word?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 52 in the waiting room and it's not even seven.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're always working the shift, by the way.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Got a little slack today. It's the anniversary of Dr. Adamson's death.

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BASH: "The Pitt" is one of the favorites going into this Sunday's Emmys, the medical drama, which airs on HBO Max, our sister network. Takes viewers into the chaos, pressure and drama of working in an emergency room during just one 15-hour shift.

Joining me now is the star, writer, and producer of the hit show, "The Pitt." You see him there, Noah Wyle, nominated for an Emmy as outstanding lead actor in a drama. That show is on Sunday. There you see him.

Hi, Noah. Thank you so much for being here. Congratulations on your nomination. Thirteen Emmy nominations altogether for "The Pitt." I think you know this. I have a lot of doctors in my family. They're all obsessed with the show, largely because they say it is so authentic.

I know that's something you strive to do. Talk about that versus the last time you were on a hit medical show, which was 30 years ago. Hard to believe. How did you and the creator, John Wells, who's the creator of "ER," want to approach "The Pitt" differently?

NOAH WYLE, ACTOR, WRITER, PRODUCER, "THE PITT": I would add that there's a third. Good morning, first of all. Thank you so much for having me on. It's wonderful to talk to you.

Scott Gemmell, I actually was really the primary creative force behind this incarnation of the medical drama. 30 years ago, "ER" set out to be the most authentic medical drama that had been done to date. And we were pretty successful in that endeavor.

So much has changed in medicine in the last 30 years. So much has changed in the sophistication of viewing habits and viewers that it was a challenge to try to reinvent the genre and add something different that hadn't been brought to it before.

[12:50:16]

So that was what we tried to do is, can we be even more authentic than we were before? Can we pull more of the artifice away, the music, the sound design, and really embed you in an immersive experience to a larger degree.

BASH: Yes. Well, you definitely nailed it. It's really focused on the pressure that the human beings, the health care workers, not just doctors, nurses and everybody else who works in that "ER" feel, especially in a post-pandemic world.

COVID is back in the news. RFK Jr. questioning the efficacy of COVID vaccines. And a lot of people kind of want to forget about COVID. Why did you feel it was necessary to tell the story of health care workers and the effects of COVID on them?

WYLE: Well, I think the intention was twofold. It was to tell the story of the aggregate toll that our practitioners are undergoing in their tours of duty. But it was also to sort of highlight the two different health care systems that exist in this country, depending on where you live, how much money you make, the color of your skin.

Access to health care and access to good health care information was really shown to be disproportionate. And I was interested in telling both those stories about the challenges facing health care workers and the challenges facing our health care system.

BASH: And Noah, you don't directly address politics in "The Pitt," but the political and cultural flashpoints of the moment, there are lots of them that are undercurrent throughout the show, like vaccine hesitancy. I want to watch a clip.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are your children vaccinated against measles?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.

WYLE: The MMR vaccine is perfectly safe. Measles is not.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're concerned about inflammation and possible damage to Flynn's (ph) brain and spinal cord.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The measles got to his brain?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, his head CT was normal, but the only way to find out if he's OK is to perform a lumbar puncture.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A spinal tap?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I've read about kids who've been paralyzed from a spinal tap.

WYLE: There is zero risk of paralysis.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What about bleeding or infection?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a perfectly safe procedure. We do it every day.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: Noah, talk about your decision to create that storyline.

WYLE: We meet with a lot of experts in the health care sphere before we start running our show, and those experts come from every vector that you can imagine. And we spoke to a lot of infectious disease folks about vaccination rates in this country and what would happen if they continued to decline. What would we see more cases of?

Measles was one of them, and we just chose it not arbitrarily, but because it seemed like there was a good chance that that would be one to raise its head. And we kind of had to look into a crystal ball when we wrote those episodes 10 months earlier. And it just happened to be one of those unfortunate coincidences that week that that episode aired, there was a major outbreak of measles in the American Southwest. And it became a larger news story than it may have been because we had played up the fact that this is going to happen.

BASH: Your character on "The Pitt" is Jewish and makes several references to his Jewish faith. Why was it important to have that as a pretty key part of Dr. Robby's character and what you wanted to develop with him?

WYLE: Well, it was an attempt to try to create a character that is a little closer to the bone than maybe I've played before. And in early conversations with John Wells and Scott Gemmell, you know, John asked me where my family was from. And I told him a little bit about the Ukrainian-Jewish side of my father's family.

And I've never played a Jewish character before. I've never really explored that aspect of my own blood memory. But I was curious about playing a character who was raised with a sense of faith, but really wasn't practicing and was almost in denial of his faith.

Somebody who turned to science and other things for validation of the human experience. And then as the show goes on and as he has to face his demons that he's not dealt with and he loses all those lifelines and anchors that previously had kept him tethered to sanity.

With nothing else to fall back on, it was interesting to use a prayer, a very simple prayer as the last thing that he would cling to, almost like a childlike nursery rhyme, try and find some solace. And in that prayer, begin to find the meaning that he needs to have to get off that floor.

[12:55:15]

BASH: Yes. And the sort of collision between science and faith and the fact that, as you said, Dr. Robby, you needed that faith even in the face of all of the training in science. It was really, really powerful.

Noah Wyle, congratulations on the success of the show, of the Emmy nominations. I'm, you know, certainly an objective journalist in this particular instance. I am very biased. I will be rooting for you on Sunday. No pressure.

Thanks for being here.

WYLE: Thank you so much.

BASH: Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after the break.

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