Translation of assimilieren

The entire American mass media is now focusing on this event after Monday night's Halloween disaster, in which two people were accused. Only nine others will participate in the coming season.
A good friend of mine. He works currently in NY but is a Swiss lawyer, excellent and very intelligent. Shall I ask him? OK, sounds great. Maybe we can add his words and expressions (from the law field) as well.
To be honest, we did not understand one word of what he was saying, because his English was so terrible. Or maybe it wasn't and it was only his accent which we could not grasp. To us it was Chinese.