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The Situation Room

Bills Beat Lions; Congress Passes Russia Sanctions Bill; GOP Facing Headwinds Ahead of Midterm Elections. Aired 10:30a-11a ET

Aired September 18, 2026 - 10:30   ET

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

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[10:33:57]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Happening now: Warren Buffett is stepping down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. The 96-year-old will remain on the board as chairman emeritus. His son will take over the chairman role.

President Trump's golf course renovation here in Washington could cost up to $49 million. In a document reviewed by CNN, the National Park Service says it will start soliciting bids to remake a public golf course in East Potomac Park into a professional course in January.

And a fiery fighter jet crash. This video captures the aftermath of an F-16 fighter jet crashing in Michigan, yes, in Michigan, during a training exercise. The witness who took this video described hearing explosions coming from the fire. Thankfully, the pilot was able to safely eject and is receiving treatment at a hospital.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Happening now: Republicans facing strong economic headwinds with the midterm elections just 46 days away. There's a new FOX News poll that's out that finds 63 percent of voters think the Trump administration has made the economy worse.

[10:35:06]

And more and more polls are showing Democrats gaining an edge in congressional matchups against Republicans. This week, Vice President J.D. Vance had this message for voters:

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J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There's a lot of good that's been done, but there's a lot of work left to do. Don't give power to the people who caused the problems that we're fixing. Give us another chance or give us another couple of years to continue to work on the amazing things that we have been doing for the past two years.

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BROWN: CNN political commentator and former Trump White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin joins us now.

So, as you well know, Alyssa, voters are sour on the economy. Voters also give President Trump low marks on his overall job approval. Only 36 percent approved of his job in a CNN poll of polls. If you were advising the president, what are the top things you would tell him about midterm messaging as Americans struggle with the higher prices?

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, listen, the president's got to get on message. He has to acknowledge that people are economically suffering. They're struggling right now.

It's kind of remarkable. He's fallen into a similar trap that he was actually very critical of Joe Biden for falling into, which is saying things are actually getting better. They're better than you feel that they are. And that didn't work for Joe Biden.

So, simply saying the economy is doing better than you feel is not a good message. He should be focusing on the few wins that he has to point to. Most of the country supports what he did in securing the border. I would be traveling all over and saying I ended the border crisis on day one.

However, that is very different than talking about these sort of mass deportations, which are deeply unpopular with the American public, especially moderates and independents that you need to turn out. And, finally, stop talking about renovations, ballrooms, projects.

Americans are struggling right now to make ends meet. So when they hear a fight over the Kennedy Center, or I'm building my ballroom or I'm doing this, it feels so out of touch with the day-to-day struggle that the public is having.

And, actually, I would add one final. Give Republicans who need space from you space to be able to create some distance. That's not in -- that's not something the president tends to do. But if you're Susan Collins right now, if you're Mike Lawler, you need to be able to be a little bit critical of this White House.

BROWN: And we're seeing other Republicans, actually in a surprise, come out and speak directly against President Trump, one of them being Florida Republican Congresswoman Maria Salazar. She came out against him on one of his signature issues when it comes to the immigration enforcement.

Let's take a look at this campaign ad.

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REP. MARIA SALAZAR (R-FL): Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. In July, 50 percent of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So, just for context, this is a district Trump won two years ago by almost 15 points. What does it say that this Republican who was just endorsed by Trump months ago is now criticizing him in this way?

FARAH GRIFFIN: I mean, it's remarkable. She must have internal polls that show that she's deeply underwater, because you so rarely see such a direct rebuke from a Republican of this White House.

But she's spot on. Listen, securing the border is popular. That's something I don't understand why the president doesn't talk about that success more. But the immigration enforcement tactics are deeply unpopular. And it still -- it honestly saddens me that I feel like this White House just missed such an opportunity.

Donald Trump was reelected with this incredible coalition, something we didn't think that Republicans could do, getting a record number of Hispanic voters, getting a record number of black voters, winning the popular vote, but then so quickly bleeding that support because of his excessive actions on immigration enforcement.

Now is the time to be talking about getting people back to work, bringing down inflation, keeping the border secured. But if you have been in this country for 20 years, 10 years, you're showing up for your appointments, you're trying to get through the legal way, that's where the messaging needs to shift.

And I don't think the White House understands that.

BROWN: I'm curious what your reaction is also to this Republican strategist, as you well know, Karl Rove, who's breaking with his party and voting for a Democrat in a Texas state race after the Republican candidate Bo French shared this controversial post.

Rove says this about the Republican Party in "The Wall Street Journal" -- quote -- "They are just -- they are just asking questions, Jew haters, misogynists who worship hypermasculinity, conspiracy nuts seeking clicks for profit, and religious bigots who won't differentiate between Muslim terrorists and Muslim American patriots. These people are diminishing the Republican Party, not building it."

Do you see this as an isolated protest or a larger warning sign for the party?

FARAH GRIFFIN: I think it's a larger warning sign.

Erick Erickson, a conservative commentator, is out with an incredible Substack piece that I would recommend all Americans read, talking about this portion within the Republican Party that is catering to a nationalistic, bigoted, racist element within the Republican base.

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Now, the left has its own issues. They have certainly got issues with antisemitism and others, but it's important political parties police their own ranks and they not diminish what they stand for in order to kind of cater to the small, small minority of the American public.

And, in this case, I applaud Karl Rove. I think that the statement and the sentiment posted by that railroad commissioner candidate in Texas is really just disgusting and not something any American should support. And I think you're going to hear more and more Republicans come out. John Cornyn also criticized that candidate.

BROWN: Yes, that got a lot of scrutiny.

I want to take a listen to a couple of promises Trump made during the RNC Midterm Convention in Texas and at a campaign rally in North Carolina for Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley. Let's listen.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.

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TRUMP: We spent more than $2 billion in FEMA for funding, and you're waiting for some additional money to take care of some of the back -- and I'm going to get that to you, Michael. Now, if Michael loses, I'm not sending it, OK? No, I'm only kidding.

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BROWN: How helpful are those comments?

FARAH GRIFFIN: Well, listen, it's not going to happen, first and foremost. It would take an act of Congress to pass these payments to the American public, and that's not going to happen.

It also would increase inflation at a time when inflation is far too high, and it would add to the deficit when the deficit is already far too high. But I think the most notable part of it, and why I would advise the president not to echo this sentiment, is, he's saying you will get this only if Republicans win.

That's hardly saying, I'm here in service of the whole country. I want to help all Americans who are struggling right now. But it's something that Republicans would criticize Democrats if they were to do. And it's also just simply never going to happen.

BROWN: All right, Alyssa Farah Griffin, great to see you. Thank you so much -- Wolf.

FARAH GRIFFIN: Thank you.

BLITZER: And coming up: taming the Lions. My Buffalo Bills trounced Detroit in their first regular season home game at the Bills' brand- new stadium in Orchard Park, New York, just outside Buffalo.

CNN's Andy Scholes is following all of this for us -- Andy.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Yes, Wolf, new stadium, same old Josh Allen. He came up with five more touchdowns, Wolf. Hear what Allen had to say about the team's new digs coming up.

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BLITZER: Happening now: Ukrainian officials say at least two people were killed, several others were injured after a Russian drone attack overnight. And it comes after lawmakers here in Washington approved a new Russia sanctions bill named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham.

It's intended to put pressure on the Russian economy and force Vladimir Putin to end his war against Ukraine. The bill is now waiting for President Trump's signature.

Joining us now is CNN political and national security analyst David Sanger. He's the White House and national security correspondent for "The New York Times."

David, good morning. Thanks very much for joining us.

Will this new sanctions legislation -- we assume Trump will sign it into law -- make a difference, or has diplomacy, for all practical purposes, failed?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, Wolf, whether or not it'll make a difference in part depends on what the president decides to do with it.

There's nothing in the sanctions bill that requires the president to put on sanctions. He can waive them at any point that he wants. And so, while he was very reluctant to have a new sanctions bill go through, and it took a long time, and Lindsey Graham pushed on this before he passed away in July, and it was finally passed in his name, it doesn't actually require the president to do very much.

And then there's this countervailing concept, which my colleague Anton Troianovski wrote about in "The Times" this morning, which is that quietly the U.S. has also floated the idea of doing business deals with the Russians in advance of any peace agreement as a way of sort of luring them to it.

Well, that would be the opposite of sanctions. So I think we have got an administration that really has not yet publicly signaled which way it's going to go.

BLITZER: While I have you, David, let's turn to another huge debate ongoing here in Washington, regulating artificial intelligence, AI. How big of a national security threat is AI today.

SANGER: Well, AI can pose a national security threat in a couple of different ways, but the one that we're the most concerned about right now is that these new models provide an ability to hack into systems at a speed and with a sophistication that we have not seen before in the cyber age.

Back in our initial concerns about cyber capabilities, the code was still being written by humans. They still had to go find vulnerabilities in an electric power grid or in a water system or in a corporate computer network.

Now these new AI agents will do that scanning for them very quickly and design the attack. So it's a scale and speed problem. It also would allow for much better cyber defense, because if you're using AI to scan your own networks for vulnerabilities, you could plug them a whole lot faster.

So, we're in a race right now between offense and defense, and I suspect, at the beginning at least, probably the advantage is going to go to the offense.

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BLITZER: President Trump, as you know, has expressed very little appetite to actually regulate AI, calling concerns about the technology, in his word, a hoax.

He seems to be concerned that China potentially could overtake the U.S. in the AI race. Do you share that fear?

SANGER: Certainly, it's a very close race. And while I think the U.S. is ahead in many things, including the amount of sheer compute that is available, the Chinese models are quite good. They're open-source, which means that people could download them and customize them, and they're lower-cost.

But I think that that is no particular reason to allow an unsafe product on the roads. The Chinese make cars. We make cars. Just because we're concerned about the Chinese taking over the global market does not mean that we drop regulations for airbags or bumpers or safety evaluations of self-driving features.

So it's not one or the other. And I think the most interesting question right now is, are the industry's own warnings and their own regulations actually going to outpace the government's? And that's the strange part here. We're in an example of industry here raising the alarm, not outside users and not the government itself.

BLITZER: I want to quickly move to the Middle East, David, while I have you. The U.S., as you know, has just approved a potential $24 billion sale of F-35 jets to Saudi Arabia.

This happened just days after "The Washington Post" reported that the Trump administration is preparing a multibillion-dollar sale of bombs to Israel. We should note any delivery would be -- still be years away. Is the Trump administration, from your perspective, playing both sides here?

SANGER: Well, the U.S. has been playing both sides of this even before the Trump administration. Obviously, the arms industry is interested in selling to American allies. And Saudi -- the Saudis and the Israelis both fit in that category.

The concern about the Saudi sale is sort of twofold. The Israelis worry that it erodes their military edge. And the way the American law is written on this is that Israel's supposed to always have a quantitative and qualitative edge over other allies. So that's the Israeli objection.

The internal U.S. intelligence objection to the Saudi sale is that the Chinese may have access to the F-35 technology, because they do a lot of arms sales of their own, mostly missile technology, with the Saudis. The Saudis deny this. It may be years before we know the answer to this, because the U.S. is so backed up on F-35 production that it might be years before these planes are actually delivered.

BLITZER: David Sanger, helping us appreciate what's going on, thank you very, very much -- Pamela.

BROWN: All right, Wolf, here is what's coming up all new at the top of the hour.

Arrested by ICE, new video you see right here of two teens taken into custody. Their mom says they're U.S. citizens and were on their way to enlist in the Marines.

Plus, COVID shots delayed for some of the most vulnerable people. Why half of American children still can't get the updated vaccine, even though it was approved several weeks ago.

And exploited in the Burnerverse. It's an online community of sports fans where explicit images of women are going viral. With federal and state laws in place to protect victims, why is it so hard to hold offenders accountable?

That's all new next hour.

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BLITZER: It's a great day here in THE SITUATION ROOM. That's because my Buffalo Bills are undefeated right now. They won their first regular season home game in their brand-new and very beautiful stadium, beating the Detroit Lions 41-31.

BROWN: Undefeated. But how long they can they keep it going, Wolf?

BLITZER: Two games, undefeated.

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BROWN: Two games.

All right, let's go to CNN sports anchor Andy Scholes.

Andy, every year, Wolf says the Bills can go all the way.

BLITZER: They could go all the way.

BROWN: They could go all the way. Can they, in your view? How are they doing so far?

SCHOLES: Hey, hey, they got a new stadium. Maybe it's -- they're going to turn over a new leaf and finally go all the way this year, Wolf, and win the Super Bowl for you.

But if the offense is going to look this good all season, I mean, good luck to everyone else, right, because Josh Allen and the bunch looking unstoppable again as they opened up the brand-new Highmark Stadium. Now, the new digs right next to the old stadium, this one cost $2.1 billion.

And the Bills' offense is putting on a show on opening night. First quarter, Allen, he read the blitz perfectly here to Josh Palmer, wide- open, 43-yard touchdown. That made it 14-0. Then, in the second quarter, Allen still had it going as he throws a strike over the middle to Dalton Kincaid. It was 27-7 at that point.

Allen finished with three passing touchdowns, two more rushing. He now has 10 career games with at least two passing and rushing touchdowns. No other player in the history of the NFL has more than four. The Bills win big, 41-31, to open Highmark Stadium.

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JOSH ALLEN, BUFFALO BILLS: Yes, it was awesome.

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