Is Trump Losing His Grip on the GOP?

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I'm not here because I want anyone to feel sorry for me. I'm here because what happened changed my life. Law suits are being filed, and attorneys say a hundred more could be on the way. From ABC News, this is Start Here, I'm Brad Milky. On Tuesday, President Trump walked into the United Nations and publicly floated the idea of not just continuing the war in Iran, but escalating it. Well, on Wednesday, it was Iran's turn. Trump must understand that the Iranian people will not bow to force and will make aggressors regret their actions. Iran's president, Masoud Paseşkyan, issued a blistering speech of his own, accusing the U.S. and Israel of terrorism, but perhaps more importantly in the big picture, was this did not sound like a guy desperately seeking a peace deal. No one in this region will have security on their own. Either we will build security together, or we will endure insecurity together. He seemed to be saying, we're happy to keep this going as long as you guys are. And if you're a Republican in Washington, that is not what you want to hear. Yesterday, a new poll from CNN found Trump's approval rating at a record low. And when you ask respondents if they would pick a generic Democrat or a generic Republican in November, Democrats have a sizable advantage. Perhaps sensing that discontent over the last 48 hours, where you're seeing more and more Republicans do something they've rarely done, publicly break with the president. Let's start with ABC's Capitol Hill correspondent, J.O. Brian J. I feel like I've heard the term "lockstep" more in the last couple of years than at any other point in my life, as we're always saying, Republicans and the president are in lockstep together, is something changing here. Yeah, that is starting to fray a little bit, Brad. As we get closer and closer to November, 40 days now, until those critical midterms. And some of it is because of the polling that Americans have seen, and these politicians have seen, just like we have, that New CNN poll, a one number that stood out to me, is it's got 33% of Americans approving Trump's overall job performance, 67% disapprove. After that, to this time in his first term, September of 2018, as we were going ahead to those midterms, right, his approval rating was 36% than 58% disapprove. Look how those midterms turned out, Democrats took back the House, and his numbers are worse this time around. When you start to break down the issues, it gets even worse for the president, just 27% of Americans, according to the CNN poll, approve of Trump's handling of the economy. And when it comes to the war in Iran, only 26% approve of his handling of that, 73% disapprove. And it's on that issue of Iran, Brad, that we've seen some of the biggest breaks as of late, with congressional Republicans, and those running for reelection, or in some cases, running for election in those upcoming midterms. Well, this is the thing, because we always see bad approval ratings for sitting presidents. It just seems like the thing over the last 15, 20 years, president Trump is no exception. His numbers are worse, but then you also hear people be like, and yet nothing ever changes. That's generally because so many Republican lawmakers don't act like anything's changing. So like, what form does this discontent take with Republican lawmakers? What are they actually saying? Top of the list right now, Brad, is the war in Iran and its impacts on the economy. Those are really kind of mixed into one. We've tracked at least 16 Republicans who were either current incumbents in Congress and are running for reelection, or candidates in critical races come November, who have called for a swift end now to the war in Iran. A good example of that is Mike Rogers in Michigan. He came out with an ad, in which he says point blank, "The war with Iran needs to end and end quickly. When it does, energy costs will plummet." And look, there are Republicans who have said they agree with the president's reasoning for this war, namely that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon, but they are also incredibly mindful of the economic consequences here. Record high gas prices, record high diesel prices, "I think it's going to be hard to explain to voters. I think voters are going to say, "What have you done for me in a way that actually helps me and my family?" Has Trump made the job of winning the Senate for Thune easier or harder? Harder. And in an election that's going to be defined by the economy, when you look at critical Senate races in swing states like Michigan, those issues rock it to the top and often what we've seen anecdotally from voters that we've talked to and in the polling is that the president gets blamed for the state of the economy in those areas and Republicans have to play defense on that fact. I think we all want to see it come to an end. There's no question about this. I asked John Thune, the top Republican in the Senate yesterday about all of this, because he's got some top Republicans running for the Senate races he needs to win come November who were distancing themselves from this war. I asked him, "Do you agree with them that the war in Iran should end now, does the president have a responsibility to do that?" Well, I think the president and his team have a responsibility to protect the American people. And he said something that we've heard from a number of Republicans on Capitol Hill Brad, which shows you that there isn't like a massive break with Trump, but there are some cracks in the resolve. But Thune did say he believes that the military objectives in Iran that the president set out to do have been achieved. And for someone who chooses his words carefully, like John Thune, that was notable. And it's interesting, Jay, that once you start complaining about one thing, lots of issues make up the electorate. Right? So once you start complaining about one thing, there's room to start complaining about other things. And so I've been noticing it's not even just Iran and the economy where we're starting to see noise, right? Of course, and again, that seems notable in itself. Perhaps the biggest issue that we've seen additional Republican breaks with the president, aside from Iran and the economy, is immigration. And that was put on full display last week by a Florida congresswoman named Maria Salazar. Maria Salazar is in a competitive race in Florida as well, a district that is heavily Latino. And she made this striking video in which she's standing literally in front of the White House. She doesn't work anywhere near the White House. We had to go down Pennsylvania Avenue to shoot this. And Maria Salazar, who's a former news anchor, is standing there in front of the White House, and she says, "Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far." That was a clear acknowledgement of the fact that in certain communities, particularly Latino communities, there is a feeling that some of these ice enforcement tactics have stepped over a line. Now, the administration disputes that and says they're just doing what they promise voters that they would do on the campaign trail, which is conduct mass deportations. But there are some Republicans who are even pushing back on that. You might remember Paul Page, he was the governor of Maine, now he's running for Congress. And recently, he said at a campaign event that a relative of his is in the process of being deported from the U.S. under the president's policy. He didn't elaborate much on the case, and we don't know much of the details, but according to LaPage, he said that he and Trump disagree on this, and that LaPage believes he should not be deported. He essentially said he supported the president's immigration policies, but he only supported people being deported who came in under the Biden administration. Those were his words, not someone who's been here for more than a decade. And so there is this continued sense, Brad, and we've seen this from a number of Republicans, particularly on the immigration issue, of this kind of buyer's remorse. Voting for these mass deportation policies of the president, then when they see them being carried out, recognizing that they are impacting communities in their states, in their districts, and in some cases, in Paul LaPage's case, in their own families. It's really interesting, and not even just because there's disagreement, like in every election we've covered, there are lawmakers who say like, well, I'm not down with everything my president does. The difference is that President Trump has inspired that kind of fealty among so many Republicans, and to see that perhaps even just showing small cracks, this close to the election, it is a big deal, all right, Jail Bryan, at the Capitol now, thank you. Next up on start here, FBI agents weren't the only ones doing the surveilling, hackers might have been collecting information on them, we're back in a bit. Today I want to tell you about an exciting new deal from our friends at CozyEarth. 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That's right, 50% off, but hurry, this deal is only for a very limited time. Get yourself the bedding of your dreams, right now go to abcsecretsavings.com/starthere for 50% off the best bedding you will ever sleep on. That's abcsecretsavings.com/starthere. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all day comfy grip. Try new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. This week, the FBI made a concerning statement. They said they were investigating, quote, claims of unauthorized activity on their website. What does that mean? Well, turns out some hackers have been claiming they successfully breached FBI.gov, specifically the part of the site that deals with employees and job listings. But the FBI wasn't talking much, and hackers don't really send out press releases. So how do you find out what really happened here? That's where someone like Joseph Cox comes in. He's the co-founder of the TechSight 404 Media, which actually scooped this shadowy claim. Joseph, this has become a really big story in the last 48 hours. I mean, who is this group and what do they say they did? Yeah, so shiny hunters, most people have probably not heard of this hacking group, but they are quite prolific now. They breach all sorts of companies all the time. They actually do target government agencies and organizations as well. What they're saying they've done is that they've breached this website that you laid out at the top of the show, and they say that they have data on all FBI employees and applicants. And that would include pretty sensitive stuff, like those FBI agents and officials' names, physical addresses, phone numbers, and I think really concerningly information on who their spouses or their parents might be as well. Oh, I was going to ask why would this be so significant, like there are data breaches all the time, but that information you just laid out makes me start wondering about like pressure points and about blackmail and things like is that the concern here? Yeah, so shiny hunters comes broadly from a very large community of hackers and cybercriminals that do sometimes turn to physical violence. I've covered this sort of community for a long time, and sometimes it involves throwing a brick for a window or firing a gun at somebody's window. And these criminal groups have targeted law enforcement investigators before, including the FBI and potentially their family members as well. The idea that with this data, the cybercriminals or other criminals who may get hold of the data, they could then target FBI officials or their spouses for extortion, intimidation, retaliation, all sorts of things. It is basically a road map for criminals to follow to find targets they may want to mess with. There is also the nation state threat here as well. I was going through the information and it includes the job titles of these FBI personnel. I found very sensitive jobs such as working on surveillance infrastructure and techniques and interception and then Reuters found there are people in there specifically working to investigate Russia and China. You can only really imagine how valuable this data would be to the Russian or the Chinese state. But so I guess what do you think the end goal would be? Would it be for the hackers? Is it hey, stop investigating us? FBI, is it give us a payoff? Just pay us some money and we'll give you your data back. What's the end game? So that's where it gets a little bit unclear. Usually shiny hunters is very financially focused. They will breach a company, they will steal the data, they will threaten to release it publicly unless the company or the target organization or whatever doesn't pay a hefty ransom. That's what usually happens. Right. It's different here because shiny hunters has not released this data. It has provided a quite sizable sample to some journalists including myself. But they're not saying, oh, the FBI has to give us 10 million dollars or whatever. Shiny Hunters is saying we want the FBI to correct a quite obscure cybercrime report that the agency published recently that talks about shiny hunters and the hacking group took some issue with some of the claims in there. I frankly don't think it's really worth getting into the claims. It's kind of very much in the weeds at this point. But it ends up being like a like a get our name out of your mouth FBI sort of a message. Kind of and like specifically get those allegations out of your mouth. Yeah. And it's different in that they did tell me explicitly that being shiny hunters that, you know, they're not after money this time. So that is different to what they're normally trying to do. How does the FBI respond to this? I mean, how could the FBI respond to this? Well, we got the data and I verified it and I did that by looking up names and addresses and phone numbers in this FBI database with other compromised information verified it that way. I contact the FBI and the agency does not respond at first. I don't think that's particularly unusual when these breaches are happening at a very quick speed and a very quick clip and agency doesn't always get back to you straight away. And eventually a few hours later, they say, look, we are investigating these claims. And then more recently, they said much the same thing in a public social media post. So the FBI has not sort of admitted this breach, although, you know, the evidence that I've obtained and then Reuters has done some verification as well. Like it all points to this data breach being very much legitimate and real. The FBI says this is still investigating, essentially. Yeah, ABC got a statement from the FBI describing claims of a hack, but they were also saying the point of breach is still undetermined whether a third party or the FBI's enterprise that certainly sounds like there was a breach of some sort, a Joseph Cox from 404 media who broke it all. Thank you. Absolutely, thank you. When I was growing up in Southern California, which theme park you went to depended on your family's vibe. You went to Disneyland for the whimsy. Now, I work for a company owned by Disney, so guess what? One I enjoyed. You went to Not's Berry Farm for a little more grownup excitement, especially when it was not scary farm in October. But if you were just a thrill seeker, you were in it just for the roller coasters. You made the trip to six flags. Well, yesterday, several new lawsuits were filed claiming that one of these roller coasters is doing more than thrilling people. It's hurting them. We want transparency. We want the public to know about the dangers of riding these roller coasters. Specifically, the plaintiffs alleged they've been causing brain injuries. Magic Mountain as a business seems to think that it's okay, that if people voluntarily choose to ride a roller coaster, then they've assumed the risk. No. ABC's Cana Whitworth is in Southern California right now, home to six flags. Magic Mountain. We spent so much time talking about brain injuries among athletes in recent years. I mean, every type of person uses roller coasters, what is happening here? You know, I actually thought about that same parallel, Brad, because you think about what's happening to your brain inside your head when you're doing these activities. And I'm sitting here staring at the one roller coaster in particular that seems to be at the center of all of this is called the X2. And they say that, you know, it's a non-stop thrill ride. So thrill seekers come to ride. And it has apparently been a problem for decades, according to lawyers. Many of them reported those injuries. Some were discouraged from reporting them. Some were told they couldn't get medical care. There's a whole new round of lawsuits now that they're dealing with. It's really three of them. And what lawyers are saying, Brad, is that look, these families, they come to Magic Mountain for entertainment. They want family fun. And instead, they're suffering catastrophic brain damage. Yeah, how do these injuries, according to the plaintiffs, at least? How are these injuries presenting themselves? How bad does this get? Well, so, Brad, I'm actually looking at it right now. Admittedly, I have not been on it, but I'm looking at it. And it's intense, right? So it's touted as downright scary. It twists. It also spins riders at speeds. By the way, Brad, the top out at nearly 80 miles an hour. And so that's the concern here. That particular configuration that design leads to more force on the brain, rotational force and angular force. And there's these three new lawsuits. And in these three new lawsuits, there's two incidents that really stand out. There's a woman named Pamela Geon. I was confused and disoriented. And I remember seeing the fear in my daughter's eyes and how scared she was. And she claims that she collapsed after leaving the ride and had to be rushed to the hospital where Brad, she needed to emerge. agency brain surgery. My family had to tell me what had happened. They told me I began having convulsions and had to be and I was taken to the park's first aid station and then to the hospital. And six days after panelist incident Brad, there's a 25 year old woman her name is Naomi Greer Wilkinson and her family says that she lost consciousness shortly after riding that same X-2 roller coaster. Naomi is not a typical girl so I cannot represent her in a typical way. This is shameful. This is according to her lawyers who also say Brad, she's unable to speak and needs a ventilator to breathe. I can stand here and tell you my story. Naomi can stand here today and tell you hers. Standing beside her parents is especially difficult for me because I think about my own daughters. And they decided to close the ride down the next day. Yeah, it was about to say how is six flags responding to all this? Because I mean, if rollercoasters are seen as dangerous and that's a huge part of this kind of theme parks business model. So this is a big deal. Right. So six flags magic mountain is telling ABC News the ride remains closed at this time. They say it's been closed ever since the evening of July 12 and that it's their policy not to comment on any pending litigation. But the thing is Brad, according to these lawyers, this is not isolated. That this has been going on for decades. No ride that gambles with a customer's potential for permanent brain damage is worth it. No ride like that should be allowed to exist. The ride had some initial problems. They claim when it was built in 2002 and they say that in the last two years alone more than a hundred people have come forward alleging some kind of brain injury. And sadly, Brad, it was last month, a family of Christopher Holly, they settled a wrongful death lawsuit. They say that their 22 year old son died of blunt head trauma a day after he rode the X two with his brother. It's supposed to be the four of us. We weren't supposed to lose one of our one of our boys and not that way. And his brother Brad described the ride as violent. Yeah, six flags, not admitting any responsibility as part of that settlement. Presumably, these rights have been inspected many, many times over the years. They have to be licensed by state authorities. That also is because though when you're talking about roller coasters that are this tall that go this fast, you do want to be absolutely sure it's not just about being thrilling, but also safe. A can of what worth there at six flags in Southern California right now. Thank you. Yeah, you got it, Brad. All right, one more quick break. When we come back, who are these guys roaming the New York City sewers? And do you think they could introduce me to the Ninja Turtles? One last thing is next. [Music] [Music] The UN General Assembly has seen a lot of strange things. There was the time the Libby Indictator Muammar Qadafi, rather than stay at a local hotel, tried to set up a better intent in central park. There was Nikita Khrushchev, not just banging his fists on the table, but banging his shoe. Maybe the strangest moment from this year's conference was happening outside on or even under the streets. On Wednesday morning, surveillance cameras caught three unidentified people climbing out of a manhole on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Like something out of an old cops and robbers movie, they poked their heads up, screed up a ladder, and get whisked away in a couple of getaway cars. Now, keep in mind, this was just blocks away from the UN. So authorities had to take this seriously, because, you know, are they terrorists? Are they guys planning a heist? Are they lizard people telling our world leaders what to do? But bizarrely, this is just the latest in a series of mole men spotted around New York emerging from its sewers. Videos abhorred into our colleagues at WABC. At least three people seen here wearing overalls and headlamps seen emerging from a manhole in Midtown Manhattan. In a June surveillance video in Brooklyn capturing another group climbing out of a manhole, one person almost struck by a car while exiting. So what are they actually doing? Well, there is a history of urban spelunkers exploring the sewers they're not allowed to go in. There's also regular maintenance in a city with 7,000 miles of underground pipes. Authorities say what's happening here is none of that. They say this is more likely underground scavenging, a kind of urban treasure hunt. I wouldn't go down there myself for anything, so I don't know why they would do that. Sanitation workers will often describe the wide range of stuff they'll find in the bowels of the city. Beyond the really gross things like the wet wipes and the hair and the fat deposits known as fatbirds, you got wildlife ranging from rats to raccoons to the occasional fish, and then there are the valuables and teaks, cash and the grand prize of the sewer claw game, the engagement ring. In many countries, there is a rich culture of scavenging. In places like Brazil and India, it is a huge part of the economy. People roving through dumps and garbage piles, dusting off whatever they can use or resell. In desperately poor areas of Venezuela is not unusual to see someone patrolling the sewer systems, hunting for coins or copper, whatever they can find. Well, in recent years, there has been this huge influx of Venezuelan asylum seekers. Many have wound up in New York City. Cops say they are growing more and more convinced that these are organized Venezuelan crews, searching for valuables where civilians aren't allowed to be. Now, that doesn't mean it's not dangerous or illegal, please say it very much is, but it should also put UN diplomats at ease, unless perhaps they dropped a ring down the drain recently. That thing is gone. And no, before you ask, they are not running into those fabled New York City sewer alligators down there. I did way too much research on this, despite urban myths about blind albino gators born in the city sewer system. Experts say there has never been any evidence supporting that, and that cold-blooded repiles cannot handle winters down there anyway. See, I know my audience, I know what you guys were actually wondering this whole time. I'm here for you. I'm Brad Noki. I'll see you tomorrow. [Music] [Music]