Senator Ted Cruz Endorses Donald Trump; Man Shoots Five in Washington Mall
CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: It's 10:00 here and so grateful for your company as always. I'm Christi Paul.</s>VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Victor Blackwell. Good to be with you. This is CNN newsroom.</s>PAUL: And we're going to start with what's new this morning. Donald Trump thanking Ted Cruz for his surprising endorsement. He tweeted, in fact, "The Ted Cruz endorsement was a wonderful surprise. I greatly appreciate his support. We'll have a tremendous victory on November 8th."</s>BLACKWELL: Cruz's support now comes just days before the presidential debate. And this is really a complete 180 for the Texas senator who had called Trump a pathological liar, a bully. Here's what Cruz said yesterday.</s>SEN. TED CRUZ, (R) FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I made a promise I would support the Republican nominee. That's a promise I made to the people across this country. And I thought about it, prayed about it, what to do. What my conscience told me is I need to keep my word.</s>PAUL: Now, meanwhile Hillary Clinton is picking up a surprising endorsement of her own. "The Cincinnati Inquirer," one of Ohio's largest newspapers is back being her after supporting Republican presidential candidates for nearly 100 years. I want to bring in CNN's Sunlen Serfaty here. So let's talk about Ted Cruz. How much credence to people give this endorsement based on all the back and forth that really got very nasty during the primaries between Cruz and Trump?</s>SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It sure did, Christi. I think it was only 160 days ago or so that Senator Cruz once called Trump a pathological liar, and who can forget that big showing he did at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland when he told Republicans in the room to "vote your conscience." So this certainly is a complete 180, and certainly Senator Cruz' words do have some credence with the tried and true conservatives in the party. And we saw quickly the Trump campaign and Donald Trump himself tweeting out thank you to Senator Cruz. But certainly this does have a lot to do with Senator Cruz's own political ambitions. He's facing a primary challenge in his Senate race and the potential that he might be in the presidential mix for 2020, certainly something he felt that he needed to do at this point when he sees others coalescing around Donald Trump and his campaign.</s>PAUL: So I was reading that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are looking at tapes of each other in other debates to prep for what's coming up Monday, 9:00 p.m. right here on CNN, the big debate. What are you hearing about debate strategies for both?</s>SERFATY: Well, it does definitely seem that they are taking a page from certain playbooks. They are studying the quirks of each other during their past debate performances. But it seem like they are distinct in how they are prepping, how much they are prepping for this debate. We know that Hillary Clinton first started about a month ago. She largely has been absent on the campaign trail, this week really prepping. We know that she's reading briefing books on Donald Trump's policy and really trying, it seems, to get a window into his personality. What things set him off in past debates, even talking to the author of "The Art of the Deal," who wrote that book on Donald Trump, to get a window into his personality, figure out what makes him tick, potentially figure out what could potentially get under the skin at the debate stage. We also know that she is running through some mock debates and she does have someone standing in for Donald Trump, someone on her staff, a longtime aide. Donald Trump by comparison has been out campaigning this week, and yes, he is running through some briefing books of his own. He's watching clips of Hillary Clinton's debate performances. We know he's meeting with RNC Chair Reince Preibus this weekend prepping for the debate, but it doesn't seem like he's going to do a full scale mock debate. He said he's never done it in the past. He doesn't think he'll do it right now, Christi.</s>PAUL: Hey, Sunlen Serfay, we appreciate it. Thank you so much. We're also following, we should point out, some breaking news out of Washington state this morning. At the top of the hour state police are expected to give an update on this ongoing manhunt for this man. Please take a look at your screen here. Police say he opened fire inside a shopping mall, killed five people. Tom Fuentes, CNN senior law enforcement analyst and former FBI assistant director is with us now. Tom, thank you for being with. So this man as we understand it, walks into this mall at 7:00 p.m. last night, just about an hour outside of Seattle, shoots five people, all of whom have now died. He walks out, and it looks as though he's walking towards the interstate. He's not leaving in a car that they could see. Witnesses say the saw him walking towards Interstate 5 and then essentially just disappeared. Where do you start at this point looking for this man as we are now how many hours later?</s>TOM FUENTES, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, Christi, they've taken the first step and that is publishing a pretty clear photo of him, and he's holding the rifle. So it's inside the mall. And, you know, putting that out over the Internet and media, TV media and other social media, has been a very great first step because somebody should be able to recognize him from that photo if they know him, if they are a friend, family, colleague, neighbor, that's a pretty clear picture of him. But also the next step would be you would want to alert everybody in the area, including the FBI has an office in Vancouver, Canada, notify them, to notify the Canadian authorities because Burlington, Washington is about halfway between Seattle and the Canadian border. So it's only about another hour north on Interstate 5 to the Canadian border. So it's possible he used that rifle, went out, could have carjacked somebody and driven off that way, stolen their car, any number of things. So that's the preliminary step, get his photo out there and do the broadcast of being on the lookout for him.</s>PAUL: Which they have done. Authorities have been very diligent in making sure this area that is primarily commercial as we under it, that people are staying indoors, that they are not going to that area specifically. I know K-9s were there overnight last night. This is a 400 plus -- 400,000 plus-square-foot facility in this mall. Does it seem odd to you, tom that somebody could just walk into a mall, shoot, walk out and disappear?</s>FUENTES: No, I don't think so because it would depend on the mall. If there's no security at all, we don't expect security at every single door of every single mall. We don't have that already. But if that mall did not have nearby security at the time he opens fire and then walks out -- I think most people if they see somebody holding a rifle and they hear shots they are going to be reluctant to approach him. They are heading for cover and not be in a position to stop him and he would be able to just walk right out.</s>PAUL: Certainly there would be surveillance video of the parking lot, would there not?</s>FUENTES: There would. But that's wouldn't be even as clear as what we have here with the picture of him inside the mall. It's brightly lit. We have a pretty good photo of him. Now the surveillance in the parking lot, certainly they will try to pick him out leaving the mall and see if there was a car waiting for him or if he left the area of camera coverage on foot, in which case then they wouldn't know if he had another waiting let's say a couple blocks away where the cameras wouldn't cover it. So they will be looking at every possible camera angle that they may have in the area and certainly alerting the local population to see, because it's possible he could do a home invasion or a carjacking as I mentioned.</s>PAUL: We were talking about that earlier. Had there been a carjacking we would think we would have heard about it by now some 12 hours later unless of course there was a carjacking and he took that person with him. We just don't know. Tom Fuentes, always appreciate your expertise. Thank you, sir.</s>FUENTES: You're welcome.</s>BLACKWELL: Charlotte police are now under fire for not releasing the video of the deadly shooting of Keith Scott. Now there are more rallies and protests planned, one coming up in just a few hours, demanding justice.