Tonight on 360, the race is now a race, how the post-Labor Day sprints for the Winehouse got off to a start in breaking news that a top-trumb volunteer was just barred from the campaign for saying a key battleground state is no longer a battleground state. Also tonight, why the entire race could end up like this, tied at 269 electoral votes apiece, and how one district in one state might unlock it. Also tonight, as protests continue in Israel after the execution of six Israeli hostages in Gaza, we look at the long, brave efforts of John Poland and Rachel Goldberg to bring their son, Kirsch, and all the hostages in Gaza home. Good evening, thanks for joining us.
We begin tonight with breaking news of the Trump campaign tonight, flatly denying report that it is effectively writing off the state of New Hampshire. Word came in an email from a top campaign volunteer, now a former top volunteer, in it, Tom Mountain writes that the campaign has, quote, determined that New Hampshire is no longer a battleground state. He went on to say, this means the campaign is suspending all resources, staffers, supplies, speakers, et cetera, to New Hampshire. A Trump campaign spokesperson tells CNN what he said is not true.
We'll have more in this shortly. It's happening 63 days until the election, and just seven days until the first and so far only debate that the two sides have actually agreed to, which takes place in Philadelphia. And in a sign of how much Pennsylvania matters this time, CNN has learned that Vice President Harris will be preparing for that debate in Pittsburgh, arriving on Thursday and staying five days there until Tuesday, before traveling to Philadelphia for the event itself. She was just in Pittsburgh yesterday, reminding voters that ballots started going out in two weeks, and saying this when some of the crowds started yelling that the former president was going to jail.
The court handles that. On that note, two major legal developments for the former president, his lawyers, and of court filing late today, signaled he'll be pleading not guilty to the revised election interference indictment that special counsel Jackson has secured last week. And a federal district judge also, late today, denied the former president's request to move his hush money case, which ended in 34 felony convictions, to federal court. The judge finding there's nothing in the Supreme Court's presidential immunity ruling that ulcers his view that the payments were private on official acts.
Mr. Trump has also focused heavily on Pennsylvania. He'll be there for a televised town hall tomorrow with Fox's Sean Hannity, who aired a conversation with him today on his radio show. In it, he talked again about his trip to Arlington National Cemetery last week, with the parents of troops killed in the pullout from Afghanistan.
During the visit, which he made into a campaign video, the army says his people were made aware of federal laws against that, and that the cemetery worker who reminded them was, quote, abruptly pushed aside. Here's what the former president said about it today to Sean Hannity. And everything was good and I left, and we said to invite everybody, and we love, love. There was no conflict, there was no fight, there was no anything.
And I get home that night, and I get like a call that from one of the people that is pressed, sir, there's a story that your people got into a tremendous fight with people representing the cemetery. It was totally false. I get enough publicity, believe me, I'd like to get less publicity. But to be clear, the former president was there, the request of family members, and as he's mentioned many times, some are upset at the Biden administration, both for how the Afghan pullout was handled and how they personally were treated by the White House in the wake of it all.
None of that changes, the fact that Donald Trump is saying that the United States Army is lying, or that he has a long record of badmouthing, serving and retired officers, some of whom he referred to an actor early as my generals. And others, according to one of those generals, former chief F. John Kelly as suckers and losers, now some of whom, like the late Senator John McCain, endured years of torture in the north, it means prison, even turning down his captors offered to release him early, because his father was a Navy Admiral at the time. He hit me, he's not a war hero.
He's a war hero. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured, okay? I hate to tell you.
Well, today I'm the lead, Senator Jacobi, John McCain's son, Jim, who's a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, calls what happened to a violation. There's three generations of McCain's that are buried there. It's a violation because these rules are set in place. The people who are buried there don't have an opinion.
The point of Arlington Cemetery is to go and show respect for the men and women who have given their lives to this country. When you make it political, you take away the respect of the people who are there. And Jim McCain recently became registered Democrat and now says he's voting for Kamala Harris. Joining us now is seen in political commentators, David Urban, Kate Bedoung, also Zolan Keyno-Young, seen in political analysts and White House correspondent for The New York Times.
So David, what do you make of this idea that New Hampshire may no longer be in play for the Trump campaign? The campaign saying it's not true, most Republican operatives in the state will see and that this volunteer's assessment is accurate. Anderson, I know better than the second guess, anybody what's going on in a state other than Pennsylvania. My world is solely focused on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
And if the campaign says New Hampshire's in play, I believe it's in play. Kate, how aggressive do you think the Harris campaign should be in New Hampshire? Well, look, I think ultimately New Hampshire is a state that is going to come home in vote blue, I think. But, you know, I think what we're seeing here is a reflection of the fact that the Trump, the map for Trump, the paths for Trump have dramatically shrunk since Kamala Harris went to the top of the ticket.
Now that does not mean that Kamala Harris has the election in the bag. That doesn't mean that she has the new Hampshire in the bag. But it is demonstrably true as you look at where the campaigns are spending. You see that Harris clearly has potential path through the Rust Belt and also through the Sun Belt.
Trump, it's looking less like he has fewer and fewer options. So I think, you know, for the campaign, for the Harris campaign, it's an opportunity to be on offense, an opportunity to force the Trump campaign to spend in places where they might not otherwise want to spend places like North Carolina, where, you know, the Trump campaign is being forced to ramp up their spending because they're seeing Harris making moves there. So I think what the Harris campaign is doing overall is putting in place an aggressive strategy to try to put the Trump campaign on the defensive in some of these states that, you know, just six weeks ago, they felt really confident they were going to be able to win. So does it surprise you that the former president is still talking about what happened at Arlington and picking up a message, like picking a fight with the Army now?
I mean, is that going to win him new voters? I guess there's two questions there. Does it surprise me? Not necessarily, right?
I mean, this is sort of Groundhog Day in a sense. We often hear from Republican strategists, allies of the former president that they want the Trump campaign and the former president to focus his messaging on the political vulnerabilities of the Biden administration, whether that be the economy, whether that be immigration, or even in this case with this visit, the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And often that discipline is not there. The focus on that messaging does not stay, but you see it devolve into personal attacks or distractions, which seem to occur with this case.
Look, the fact is this statement that he made on Sean Hannity does undermine the initial statements that his campaign made in the wake of this evidently clash with this official at Arlington Cemetery. Right after that event, his campaign said that they were going to release footage showing the physical blocking here, criticized that employee at the National Cemetery. That doesn't align with the comments that we heard from that clip, at least from Hannity today. That was mentally unstable.
David, does it make sense to you that he would still be out there talking about this? Is there something that he gets out of it? Look, Anderson, here's what I think, the only thing, Echo and Zolan said, what I find amazing is that we're talking about this kind of shuffle back and forth between staffers rather than the larger issue of how these young men and women got killed or why they got killed in the first place. The disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the fact that the current vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, has been asked for three and a half years to meet with these family members, by their family members themselves, and that she's denied to meet with them.
That's not what you're talking about. That's not what you're talking about. That's not what Donald Trump is talking about. He's talking about the campaign video that was put out, claiming that he doesn't want publicity, when clearly they did want to get this thing out there.
Anderson, the families asked, I've watched the videos now, the families asked for the cameras to be there so they can memorialize this. I understand that Arlington does have a policy, the Army does have a policy, and Kate and I and Anderson, you've seen that presidential, when the president's walking, there are people 30 yards in front of the president and behind the president. I am sure that what he said is true. He did not see any of this.
He probably wasn't aware that there was a shuffle if there was one that took place. He came and went without notice. I'm certain of it. I'm sure the family members didn't know either.
And yet, Kate, they did put out a campaign video of it with images, not just pictures. It was text on top of it. You now have the active duty son of the late Republican Senator John McCain, speaking out against the former president's actions at Arlington endorsing Harris. Do you think an endorsement like that actually has any impact on independent voters?
Well, I think what it does is remind people of the long history that Donald Trump has, of demeaning people who served obviously very personally, as we heard in the Soundback of the show, demeaning his father in a really brutal way after he served as a prisoner of war on behalf of this country in uniform. So I think what it does is it reminds people that Donald Trump is an unpalatable option. It reminds independent voters, you know, I don't like the way this man speaks of people who have both given the ultimate sacrifice for this country and also made the sacrifice of putting on the uniform, deploying, serving. Americans are proud of their military and they're proud of veterans and the idea that we're going to re-elect a president who says these kinds of things.
I think that is a really off-putting thing for independent voters. I think what John McCain's son did today was quite brave and courageous. And yes, I do think it matters because it helps paint a picture of somebody that most Americans would say that's not the way I want somebody who's serving in the Oval Office to talk about people who serve this country in uniform. So the former president released a new video today seeking to tie Vice President Harris to President Joe Biden's record in the White House.
Do you think President Biden is actually going to be used by the Harris campaign moving forward? We're about to see a good sample size of that this week. The president is scheduled to travel. For some of the visits, not necessarily next to the vice president, but he's hitting the campaign trail.
He's getting back there. There's an interesting balance that we'll be watching here. When it comes to policy and Vice President Harris' policy platform, she does represent incumbency. She was part of this White House and we have not seen much evidence that she's going to break obviously from the present that she served with.
However, you are starting to see some differences in tone. And let's be honest, in a campaign tone matters. An emphasis on trying to lower consumer prices, which has been a concern for voters consistently in the past couple of years. And emphasis not so much just on talking about job growth and manufacturing, but to address the cost of living that Americans are feeling.
That's stuff that I would hear from even allies of the White House Democratic groups that they want a messaging to focus on that housing cost as well. So I'm curious to see though, how much of this is exclusively even a slight change in tone, but still the same policy platform? Or what we actually see breaks? Thus far, I don't think we are seeing that because once again, for as much as some are framing the Vice President has a change candidate.
And I understand that in some ways. This is also something that's been a part of the White House the past three years. So it'll be interesting to see that balance. David, you talked on this program about things you have said to the former president about policy and the king of policy.
But last week, he retweeted, he reposted vulgar post-truth social post about Vice President Harris and Hillary Clinton. You talked about a sex act. It was incredibly demeaning for women. It was misogynistic and all sorts of things.
This is how we addressed that post on a podcast today. Let's listen. I do a lot of reposting. The ones you get in trouble with are the repost because you find down deep they're into some group that you're not supposed to be reposting.
You don't even know if those groups are good, better, and different. So he's literally said this before about it's just a repost, it's I didn't post it, it's a repost. He continues to do it, even though he acknowledges he has no idea who these people are, and he didn't address the incredibly demeaning text of this. You don't have to dig deep to see how offensive and misogynistic it is.
Anderson, I'm hopeful he's going to start reposting some of my tweets where I talk about the issues about fracking. I don't think he's going to do that. He's going to do that. He's going to do it.
I'm going to ask him, because I'm going to ask him to repost his Zola. I like what Zola was just saying. You know, Kamala Harris is trying to run as a change candidate, but she can't run as a change candidate because she's trying to change from the administration that she's a part of. I'm going to send him some of Zola's tweets and ask him to retreat some of those, right?
I think he's spot on. Listen, whether Joe Biden is going to campaign with Kamala Harris is something we're going to have to wait and see because I just heard James Carvel a little bit earlier today saying his advice is, you know, saw Joe Biden off, cut him away, float free, be a part of this. You cannot, if you're tied to Joe Biden, she's going to sink like an anchor. He's going to be like an anchor around her because the Biden-Harris administration is incredibly unpopular.
Her only shot is to change and to run as an independent candidate. I'm going to hope Donald Trump will retweet my tweets and Zola's not Kate. We'll see how we'll see how we'll work. We'll see how we'll see how we'll check in tomorrow.
We're coming up next good to single electoral vote in Nebraska to determine who wins the White House. It's the stuff of political fiction, but it has the potential to become reality Jeff Zellini explains how. Plus, as protesters and Israel continued to Manatees far deal, we remember the six hostages whose bodies were recovered in underground tunnel in Gaza this weekend, including Americans' early, per sch Goldberg polar. Twizzlers keep the fun going.
Yeah, I know. I just stopped whenever you were listening to you to tell you that Twizzlers keep the fun going. Well, irony isn't my forte, but twisty-chewy, yummy Twizzlers sure is. So think of Twizzlers as a little palate cleanser for whatever's queued up, which, by the way, should be coming very soon.
Like any second now, okay Twizzlers, time to keep the fun going. Given all the focus on Pennsylvania by candidates, campaign reporters and certainly are panel members, tonight there's also the possibility that the road to the White House runs through deep red Nebraska. That's because Nebraska divides up its electoral votes between its deep red areas and one that's not only up for grabs, but could also break a potential electoral college tie. So, you know, Jeff Zellany explains.
These blue dots are popping up on lawns across Omaha. Signs of a campaign were not only every vote counts, but where every electoral vote is critical. We debated back and forth and we went forth and said, well, I think the mystery is kind of cool. And it turned out to be a huge win.
Because it's starting conversations. Exactly. We had no idea. And then that's the important part because as soon as you start the conversation, you have a full conversation.
Ruth Hibner Brown and her husband Jason are suddenly having more conversations about the blue dot, symbolizing a democratic island in a sea of Nebraska red and the state's unique way of dividing electoral votes. It's plausible that we could have a tie and that whole notion of oh my vote doesn't matter. Kind of gets really tossed out the window because this could be it. This could be the deciding factor for all of the pathways for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump to reach the White House.
The race for 270 electoral votes could come down to Nebraska's sprawling second district. And here's why. A single electoral vote surrounding Omaha could keep the race from becoming a 269-269 tie, decided by the House of Representatives. Well hello Nebraska.
A not so super open for Democrats could be Tim Walz, who was born and raised here before moving two states away to Minnesota. Tony Vargas believes the Harris Walls ticket will also help Democrats win control of Congress, starting with his race here, which is among the country's most competitive. We have suburban, we have rural, we have urban, we have all different walks of life, you know, all different races of ethnicity, socioeconomic, but really this is a truly independent place. Republican Congressman Don Bacon has thrived and survived politically because of that independent streak of the district.
Trump won here in 2016 but lost in 2020. Bacon said Trump runs the risk of losing again if he doesn't focus on inflation and immigration. When you talk about DEI, race, make it come up with nicknames, it doesn't play well in this district. They won't talk with you.
This is an issue district. For months Trump and his allies have sought to change Nebraska's election law and award all electoral votes to the statewide winner, rather than by Congressional district. A process shared only by Maine. You better get me on the hard, you understand that?
For now Republicans are working to defeat Harris here in a district that extends through Omaha's western suburbs to rural towns like Wahoo, where Stephen and Sonya Pete's are ready for change. I would like just to see, you know, some hope. I don't see it now. Which of those candidates do you think gets the closest to bringing you hope?
I would say Trump. Absolutely Trump. I have a feeling that he is a person who sticks to his word. He means what he says.
They question what Harris stands for and are not sold on walls no matter where he grew up. Back in the Dundee neighborhood of Omaha, the blue dots are in such high demand, Jason Brown ran out of spray paint. Orders are stacking up, he said, and not only from Democrats, but from independents who may decide the election. Oh, it doesn't mean, oh my God, I've become a Democrat.
No, you're voting for what you feel is right for the future. So in short, the blue wall needs the blue dot right here in Omaha. That's how the math works out. Of course, both sides, the Harris campaign and the Trump campaign have many paths to victory.
But for all the talk about Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin, those are the most likely paths. But again, that is one vote short of the 270 needed. That's why so much money, time and attention is being spent right here in Nebraska on that blue dot. And there's nine weeks from tonight on election night.
If our eyes are on Nebraska, we'll know this race is incredibly still tight. Yeah, that was incredible. It's only thank you, John King has a closer look at this. John, how could the election play out in Nebraska?
Incredible is the right word. Mythical is another word that gets used. Just look, let's put up Anderson. We have some technical issues here, so I can't do this with my hands tonight.
But if you look at the map right there, that's what Jeff was just talking about. If Kamala Harris wins the blue wall states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, wins all the other states that we view as likely or solid Democrat. Donald Trump wins the Sun Belt states in that scenario. You see Georgia, you see Arizona, and you see even Nevada, right?
Then if Nebraska is already, you see that little white in the top corner there, that's that congressional district, Nebraska too. And the map played like that. You're at 269, 269, it gets thrown to the House of Representatives. We talk about this every four years.
We've never had to deal with it, but in a close race like this, it's one of those possibilities. You have to study for it. It's why Jeff's yelling to get the free-snaking Omaha. We talked about reporting earlier about the Trump campaign in New Hampshire.
How much does New Hampshire matter? Well, New Hampshire matters less now. Back, remember, after the debate, the Trump campaign thought a lot more states were going to be in play if Joe Biden stayed as the candidate. And so they were looking at making a run at New Hampshire.
They were looking at making a run at Virginia. They thought New Mexico might be in play. Democrats were saying even Colorado might come back into play. It was the oh my God moment for the Democrats.
But the truth is, this volunteer got told you're no longer welcome for speaking the truth. I mean, because they're not spending any money on television there. Yes, Donald Trump does have a hardcore group of supporters in New Hampshire who work very hard and they are very passionate, but New Hampshire has trended away. Hillary Clinton won it narrowly.
Biden won it by more. Here's what you can tell. Is Donald Trump spending any money in the Boston TV markets to influence New Hampshire? The answer is no.
We'll see if he does. I doubt it. So the election's now nine weeks away. I mean, what are you personally watching for?
Nine weeks away from tonight. We count votes. You ready? Get your espresso machine.
He's ready everybody. So let's look at some different dynamics. One is where is Harris today compared to Biden? Let's look at the gender gap.
Let's look among women voters, female voters. Look right there. Harris with a 13-point advantage over Trump right now. That's one poll, the ABC Ipsos poll last week.
Look at 2020. That's Joe Biden on the ballot. He had a slightly bigger advantage. If you're in the Harris campaign, you want to get to where that Biden number was.
If you look to where Harris is right now, she's exactly the same as Hillary Clinton was. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but lost in the Electoral College. So if you're Kamala Harris, you're looking at that number, you're saying you've made improvement, but you want to get to where Biden was in 2020. So that is a source of she's ahead, but she needs more there.
And let's flip it now and look at male voters. This is where she's actually in a somewhat better shape. If you look at the numbers among male voters here, she's at 46 percent. Again, just one poll.
So don't over invest in this. But that's pretty close. A five point split Trump advantage among men. Look at Biden in 2020 and look at Hillary Clinton even worse in 2016.
So on gender issues, Harris is in good shape. She'd like to be in stronger shape with female voters. And Duncan, appreciate it. Thanks very much.
Coming up, protest and heartbreak after six October 7th hostages were found murdered in a tunnel in Gaza with a weekend, including an American Israeli, Hirsch Goldberg Pollock. His story was a conversation with the parents of another young American Israeli still held hostage right now when we return. Our breaking news this weekend that IDF forces recovered the bodies of six hostages, including 23 year old Israeli American Hirsch Goldberg Pollock. They'd all been murdered in a tunnel in Gaza.
The story became one of the most well known, in part because of the tireless efforts of his two parents, Rachel Goldberg and John Pollock, to advocate for their son, Hirsch and all the other hostages. We warn you some of the video you're about to see his graphic. Five days after the October 7th massacre at the Novam Music Festival site, an Israeli soldier showed me a disturbing video of a young Israeli man with his left hand blown off, being kidnapped, loaded into a pickup truck. I didn't know who he was, but four days later, by coincidence, I interviewed John Pollan in Rachel Goldberg for the first time on CNN.
When I turned on my phone, which I don't normally use on the Jewish Sabbath, that's when I saw two texts pop up at 810, 811 in the morning. The first one said, I love you, and the second one said, I'm sorry. And immediately, I knew something horrible. Must have been happening or was about to happen.
I didn't know they were the parents of the young man I'd seen in that video until John said this during our interview. And we know from three eyewitness accounts of survivors that basically there were at least 11 grenades thrown into the bomb shelter. Our son by all accounts of the witnesses had his left arm blown off at some point during the attack. That's when I realized I'd seen their son, and they had no idea the video of him being taken hostage existed.
I waited until the interview was over and called them, and then sent them the video I had. I met with them a week later. First of all, it's a crazy sequence of events that we talk to you through a computer screen and then get a phone call from you saying, I have a video of your son. I didn't want to say a lot of television.
Which we so appreciated. Of course. The way everything has unfolded, the gentleness that you used, because at the end of the day you're a journalist and journalist want a story. And that could have been dealt with in many other ways that we're not kind and gentle.
Seeing that video in general gave us a dose of optimism. How are you able to get through each other? I personally feel like we have to keep running to the end of the Earth to save him. And we have to try to go believing that somehow he got treatment and he's there.
They showed me Hirsch's room, which Rachel would visit to feel close to him. We have a porch that's facing south, and I've been out Friday night, and I was screaming to him. Because Friday night, you know, we bless our children traditionally, and Jewish homes, you bless your children on Friday night. So I was screaming, it's a traditional blessing from the Bible.
What does the blessing say? It says, may God bless you and keep you. May God stay shined upon you and be gracious to you. May God's countenance be lifted up toward you and give you peace.
In the weeks after Rachel and John worked tirelessly to raise awareness about Hirsch and the other hostages. Rachel, you're wearing a tag that says 26. Do you want to tell people what that is? Well, this morning I realized, you know what, it's day 26, and I don't know if anyone is really counting.
I don't know how many people really care every single day until these people come home. I'm going to be wearing what day it is. So this is my new fashion statement. The weeks turned into months.
This was them in April. We're living on another planet, so I don't know that we comprehend time the way that you do or normal people. We feel that everybody has failed. Our leaders, all of them, have failed to make this suffering on all sides stop.
We feel that we as parents have failed, because as a parent, your job is to keep your children safe. Then suddenly, a few weeks later, Hamas released this hostage video of Hirsch. It was the first proof his parents had. He was alive.
We were sobbing tears and emotional overwhelmed feelings were just abounding. We weren't even listening to what he was saying, just hearing his voice and seeing him moving and that he was alive. Then in late June, another video was released by the hostages and missing families for this one taken on October 7th moments after the first video I'd sent them in. You had so much concern about whether Hirsch had made it out just from his injury alone.
You see a tourniquet being put on later on in the video. Do you think that probably saved his life? Well, I'm happy that for whatever reasons that he was obviously treated, because as we all know on day 201, we had a video released that shows Hirsch with a stump where that jagged bone had been. But we know from day 201, thank God, that he is alive.
129 days later, that hope became heartbreak. On day 330, Hirsch Goldberg Poland's body was found with five other hostages. Alexander Lopenoff, Carmel Gott, Almaag Sarusi, Aden Yerushami, and Ori Dennino. Israel says they were executed in a tunnel in Gaza shot to death at close range.
According to the Israeli Prime Minister's office, there are believed to be about 101 hostages still remaining in Gaza. 35 are believed to be dead. Short time ago, I spoke with Orna and Ronan Neutra, whose son, Omer, is another Israeli American still being held captive. Orna, Ronan, thank you for talking with me today.
I know you consider John Poland and Rachel Goldberg Poland family. How are you dealing with what's happened? We're completely devastated, Anderson. This shouldn't have happened.
Hirsch was supposed to come out in the first days of a deal that's been on the table for a long time now, and it's just completely outrageous and devastating that this is what happened. Hirsch managed to survive 11 most terrible months with the monsters of Hamas in Gaza, and yet was murdered and executed a couple of days ago in a most brutal way. It's just heartbreaking. Rachel yesterday at the funeral said that she hopes that Hirsch's death will be at what she called a turning point in this horrible situation.
And John said maybe just maybe your death, meaning Hirsch's death is the stone, the fuel that will bring home the remaining 101 hostages. Do you think that's possible? Do you feel like something may be different now for Omer and the others? You know, it's not a clear path.
We're seeing still many challenges. In the region, we're seeing a Prime Minister that is not willing to make the compromises needed to reach a deal to bring our son and the other hostages back. We sure see the Israeli public pouring in big numbers into the streets and telling the Israeli government that this event of the six hostages that were murdered a few days back is just unacceptable that this will continue. And we're just hoping that this outpour outrage that we see in Israel is going to affect the government and be beneath the nail of himself to reach that so desired deal and get the hostages back.
As we know, this is urgent, and among them are 22-year-old son. Who, by the way, turns 23 on October 14th, and this will be his second birthday being held hostage. Very true. It's true.
Think about that. Think that far, and we really hope that a deal that the US government is working so hard with the partners in the region will be cut between Israel and Hamas. And the two leaders, Hamas leader and the Israeli government must reach that deal or else the one CR deal was coming back. Do you have faith in the Prime Minister in Netanyahu?
He asked for forgiveness that the six-murdered hostages weren't brought back alive. He also said Hamas will pay a heavy price for this. Do you think he has the hostages front and center in his priorities? Unfortunately, not.
We met him in the White House with President Biden. We looked him in the eyes. And unfortunately, our feeling is that he has his own political future ahead of him rather than the safety of our son. It's not just our son.
I don't believe that he has the interest of the Israeli people. As his top priority, anyone that's looking at this can see that Israelis need the hostages to come home for them to be able to recover from this, to move forward. But the first step would be to bring the hostages back, to make the families whole, to bring back some sense of security, right? This was a breach between the Israeli government and its people.
As you know, in a statement on Monday, Hamas has said that its terrorists have been given new instructions, as they said, on how to deal with hostages. If the IDF approaches and they released an illustrated poster of a terrorist with a gun standing behind a hostage, how do you remain? I mean, how do you hold on to hope? How do you get through each day?
Anderson, we really have no choice. You know, the thought of our son sitting there, like these young people that were just murdered, waiting to be saved, is what's driving us. And we wake up every morning and we stay laser focused. We have no choice.
We have to bring them back. We have to bring him back. Horna and Ronan, thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Anderson.
We're pretty sure to. Let's go ahead. Report from Ukraine, which is seeing some of the deadliest Russian strikes of the war. New Russian airstrikes on Ukraine tonight, regional officials in the northeastern part of the country reporting a university campus was hit.
It falls a strike that killed at least 51 people who would in hundreds more at a military academy. Seeing as Fred Platon has the latest from inside Ukraine. Parts of the military educational facility almost completely destroyed. Dozens killed here.
The Ukrainians say when two Russian ballistic missiles struck, leaving those on the ground with no time to get to bomb shelters. More than 200 were also wounded and a nearby hospital damaged Ukraine's president, I rate. Oh boy, your school won't. I don't see Skanal.
The Russian scum will undoubtedly be held accountable for this strike. And once again, we urge everyone in the world who has the power to stop this terror. Ed defense systems and missiles are needed in Ukraine, not an warehouse somewhere, long-range strikes that can defend against Russian terror are needed now, not sometime later. Russia has been accelerating its aerial bombardment of Ukraine's cities and infrastructure.
A massive barrage aiming for the capital Kiev early Monday, just as children were gearing up for the first day of school after summer break. One of the places damaged a management college. We're snagging, we're going to run. I got up and it already started to boom.
We ran out into the yard near the dormitory. We heard something flying and something being shut down. What? On Sunday, within 40 people injured after Russian airstrikes on the northeastern city of Harkett, responders desperately trying to save the victims.
There's an ambulance on the other side, the photographer says, we won't be able to carry him there, she answers. While Ukraine's air defenses often take down Russian missiles, the consequences can be devastating when they don't. The strikes on Poltava were one of the deadliest single attacks since the start of the war. We were on hand when a ballistic missile annihilated a funeral wake in eastern Ukraine in October of last year, killing 59 people.
And 46 were killed in Neapro in January 2023 when a heavy cruise missile blew a giant hole into an apartment block. The Ukrainians say the reason why the damage here is so extensive is that this building was hit with a cruise missile called the KH22. That's designed to destroy aircraft carrier strike roofs and obviously when it hit the building, it completely annihilated it, burying dozens of people underneath. Now yet another mass casualty strike leaving Ukraine's leadership angry and vowing revenge.
So you can see Anderson this country really in shock after what happened at that military educational facility. The Ukrainians are saying that the type of cruise missiles that were used by the Russians today extremely difficult to take down. They say they need more of the US supplied patriots surfaced to air missile systems because they're among the only ones that can take such missiles down. The Ukrainians are also saying they'd like to be able to hit the potential launch site of such missiles, but they need permission from the US to strike deeper into Russian territory using some of those longer distance US provided weapons.
However, the Ukrainians are also acknowledging that something must have gone wrong with operational security and they say they've launched an investigation to see how the security of personalities can be approved. Anderson? I'd like to thank very much of next politics then and now we've got two months ago, what's shaping up to be hit at 2024 presidential election. As soon as Danabash takes a deep dive into one of the most contentious and little-known contests in her history in her new book, America's Deadliest Election.
She joins me next. I love learning about something in American history that's largely forgotten and my colleague Danabash has written a new book about a governor's race in Louisiana in the decade after the Civil War, which she calls America's deadly selection. I've never heard of it and it's an incredible story that draws parallels to the political climate today. Danabash joins me now.
The book is fascinating. I had no idea that this had occurred and it's so incredible to me how much of American history just kind of disappears. We think, you know, well, things have never been this contentious. Things have never, you know, our politics is, you know, is so potentially violent now.
I mean, American history is, this is a prime example of how political violence has a long history here. Political violence is unfortunately part of the fabric of our country. We start by talking about 1872. You're focusing on two elections, the Deadliest Elections in American history, 1872 gubernatorial elections in Louisiana.
In Louisiana, during Reconstruction, the segregationists, the Democrats in the South saw what happened in 1870 and said, wait a minute. Like, our way of life is gone post-Civil War, but it will really be gone if we allow blacks to vote the way that they did in this past election. So that's when they began to intimidate and to murder, frankly, people who tried to come to the ballot box. And there was so much corruption in that election, Anderson, that nobody would concede in the next election.
There actually ended up being two separate governors in Louisiana at the same time, both of whom claimed they were the legitimate governors in Louisiana. There was a massacre of these black men called the Colfax Massacre. It was so bloody, 150 black men Anderson were slaughtered, and it was because all they wanted to do was vote. The people who did the murdering, white men, of course, they, it was pretty much understood that they could not get prosecuted in the state court.
So the federal government stepped in, and what happened as a result of that, they tried them on civil rights charges. And the Supreme Court ruled in that famous ruling called Crookshank that the federal government doesn't have a role there. It's the state government, that ruling, which came from this election in 1872, ushered in the Jim Crow laws in the South for 100 years. The, um, the, the grand parish prisoners, you write, quickly became heroes.
They were hailed as good, decent southern boys, sons of the confederate, these people who had taken, who had committed this massacre. You said every movement needs symbols around which people can rally. I mean, again, just the parallels of, you know, a group of people who have broken the laws being hailed as heroes and, you know, good, decent people and sort of, you know, things are so polarized then, you know, obviously, there's so much polarization now. So much polarization, and there are a lot of parallels.
Not just that, but if you fast forward to the 1876 election, which we also talk about here, the presidential election, because this corruption that I just described four years earlier in Louisiana was also taking place in other states, when the Congress got the electors, slates of electors, four states, they couldn't actually admit them. And there was a debate then about what the vice president's role should be or could be in determining which, uh, which slates of electors he could accept. And it was determined then, just like my Pence determined, that he was just ceremonial. If the, I mean, if the former president loses again, do you think he goes quietly?
No, do you? No. No. I mean, I can't imagine there won't be endless court battles at the very least.
Which is fine. I mean, the court battles are like, that's the way it's supposed to work. You're allowed to. And we saw and we covered day in and day out all of the challenges that they made in courts of law.
The question is what happens afterwards when, or if the courts decide as they did in 2020 that there was no evidence that they put forward of the widespread fraud that he claimed. No. The book is America's Deadliest Election Den of Ash. Congratulations.
Thank you. Thanks for having me Anderson. That's it for us. The news continues.
The source with Kaitlyn Collins starts now. See them all. From the Descendants of History makers involved in the Louisiana Purchase to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, discover the untold stories of American expansion in the CNN original series This Land, premiering June 7 on CNN. Hey, I'm Anderson Cooper.
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