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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Says, Core Objectives in Iran are Nearing Completion; Trump Tells Countries to Take Oil from Strait or Buy It from U.S.; Trump Suggests He is Absolutely Considering Withdrawing from NATO. Trump Considers Withdrawing From NATO; Sources Say Trump Is Considering Another Shake Up; Trump Attends SCOTUS Hearing on Birthright Citizenship. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired April 01, 2026 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening. I'm Abby Philip in New York.
Breaking news tonight, the war with Iran is, quote, nearing completion, according to President Trump. Just moments ago, he delivered his first major national address on the war and he assured Americans that everything is going as planned.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Tonight. I'm pleased to say that these core strategic objectives are nearing completion.
We've done all of it. Their navy is gone, their air force is gone, their missiles are just about used up or beaten. Taken together, these actions will cripple Iran military, crush their ability to support terrorist proxies and deny them the ability to build a nuclear bomb. Our armed forces have been extraordinary.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, Trump says that the two to three-week timeline that he said earlier this week still holds, and he downplayed the length of the war so far. He compared it to how long the U.S. was involved in other wars, like World War I and World War II, as well as Iraq and Afghanistan. And he again went after allies for not helping the efforts to secure the Strait of Hormuz.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: To those countries that can't get fuel, many of which refuse to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, we had to do it ourselves, I have a suggestion. Number one, buy oil from the United States of America. We have plenty. We have so much. And, number two, build up some delayed courage, should have done it before, should have done it with us, as we asked, go to the strait and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves.
(END VIDEO CLIP) PHILLIP: If you were looking for some new insights from the president about how this war is going, where it's headed, how exactly it might end, I'm not sure that you got it today. The president basically repeated a lot of the things that he's been saying in Truth Social posts, except he said it out loud.
REENA NINAN, FOREIGN AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yes. I mean, that was sort of the big surprise of the speech. Everyone was waiting for some sort of moment. We didn't see it, but it's sort of very much like the Trump doctrine, escalate fast, exit faster, and then declare victory. And I think that's what he did tonight in the speech.
PHILLIP: Peter?
PETER MEIJER, CO-FOUNDER AND HEAD OF STRATEGY, THE NEW INDUSTRIAL CORPORATION: I was expecting something significant, if there was something significant to announce. I think the fact that, you know, well, what do we see teased over the past couple of days? It was threatening to pull out of NATO. It was threatening ground operations, whether to secure the highly enriched uranium or to seize Kharg Island. We have a Marine Expeditionary Unit in that area.
The fact that he didn't mention that doesn't mean that was never on the table. It means that, frankly, this is one of the first addresses he's had since February 28th, directed to the American people, which means all the other conversations were happening in the background. I think the fact that this was kind of a nothing burger is a bit of a testament to the fact that this is not a war. This is not a diplomatic effort that's playing out on our screens, it's ones that happening behind the scenes with conversations with the principals in Islamabad, between the Pakistani mediators, American and Iranian officials and in other channels.
PHILLIP: But, I mean, no insights into that either? No sense of what kind of relationship he's looking for, what kind of deal he'd like to -- you know, how he would like the Iranian people to behave -- the Iranian leadership, excuse me, to behave after all is said and done? I think that was the other part that to me was missing, is just this picture of what does a post-war Iran even look like and its relationship with the United States.
MAX BOOT, SENIOR FELLOW, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Yes. You know, Abby, this feels like the kind of speech that President Trump should have been delivering a month ago. This is explaining why he's going to war, but that's not what the American people and the people of the world want to hear now. They don't want to hear why he went to war. They want to hear how he's going to end the war, how he's going to get out of the war, what is his exit strategy, and he didn't have an exit strategy.
He just talked about claiming that Iran has been completely decimated, but, nevertheless, he's going to continue the war for two to three weeks, and he suggested nothing about how he's going to reopen the Strait up Hormuz, where 20 percent of the world's oil is trapped.
[22:05:01] And he said nothing about how he's going to secure nearly a thousand pounds of highly enriched uranium that Iran still has in its possession, much less his original goal of overthrowing the regime, which clearly is not happening.
So, yes, he's done some things and he was bragging about all the decimation he's inflicted on the Iranian armed forces. That's all true. But the other objectives have not been achieved, and his war of choice has caused a global energy crisis, and he doesn't seem to know how to get out of it, aside from trying to threaten our allies and get them to bail him out.
But if the U.S. Navy is not going to go in the Strait of Hormuz, and they're not right now, you're not going to find any allies who are going to go where the U.S. Navy will not go.
PHILLIP: Right. If we are not going to do it, who will? But on the nuclear piece, let me play what he said. He's talking about Operation Midnight Hammer and what happened to Iran's nuclear material that Max just referenced. Here's what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: In June, I ordered a strike on Iran's key nuclear facilities, an Operation Midnight Hammer. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. Those beautiful B-2 bombers performed magnificently. We totally obliterated those nuclear sites. The regime then sought to rebuild their nuclear program at a totally different location, making clear they had no intention of abandoning their pursuit of nuclear weapons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, he said that, but let me just remind you that about two weeks ago, Tulsi Gabbard testified under oath to Congress, as a result of Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran's nuclear enrichment program was obliterated. There have been no efforts since then to rebuild their enrichment capability. The entrances to the underground facilities that were bombed have been buried and shuttered with cement.
So, Tulsi Gabbard is under oath. The president is giving a speech at the White House, but I think it's an open question how truthful he was being about that particular statement. And it's important because the nuclear material is still in Iran. It is still in Iran, and we've done nothing to get it out.
ADAM MOCKLER, COMMENTATOR, MEIDASTOUCH NETWORK: If the goal of the war is to stop Iran from developing nukes, then we have no way to actually verify if they have enriched uranium. If the goal of the war is to defang their ability to fund proxies in the Middle East, they're now more rich because they're tolling people through the Strait of Hormuz, and that is making them a lot of money.
We've created an environment where Iran is gaining money due to those sanctions lifted on oil. Iran is gaining money because they're going to start tolling ships. And on top of that, this administration is not just changing objectives every single day. They're lowering the threshold for what victory is considered as.
So, first, it was regime change, as you said. Israel named this Operation Roaring Lion, which indicates the return of the shah. It's regime change. Then they realized that's a really hard task. We're going to just talk about weapons of mass destruction. Now, that one kind of works sometimes, and they realized, okay, we have no way to actually verify that as well.
So, now we're in a situation where people on T.V. are listing off, oh, we've destroyed their air force, we've destroyed their navy. Their air force was gifted to them 55 years ago by the United States, so was the Navy. Their air force and their navy were not significant threats to the United States. They were ancient. They were ancient as hell. They were old.
So, what have we gotten from this? We've destroyed their ancient fleets. We haven't actually secured the enriched uranium, and they're richer for it. They have control over the Strait of Hormuz, and continue to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz. I'm not seeing the victory here.
PHILLIP: Why can't Trump get a story straight about the nukes? That's so central to this whole thing. The administration is saying all kinds of different things about it and not leveling with the American people.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I saw the President's remarks, and I see what you said, Tulsi said. My understanding of how they positioned it was that the bombing we did last summer was at a specific location, but the president's remarks tonight I interpreted as they were trying to rebuild, or at least in the early stages of attempting to rebuild in a different location.
PHILLIP: Well, that would contradict what Tulsi Gabbard said.
JENNINGS: Look, I think what she said was that at the sites we bombed, those were shuttered, but they didn't try to rebuild --
PHILLIP: Well, I mean, the exact words are, there has been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capabilities. So, she's not talking about the sites. She's talking about their enrichment capability.
JENNINGS: Okay. Well, I heard the president tonight say that our belief is that they -- we bombed them. They tried to rebuild. And then, of course, we know they told our negotiators that they had enough enriched uranium to build 11 nuclear bombs. So, that is the data set that he was working off of when he made the decision.
I also heard him say tonight that we're planning to do at least initially, satellite monitoring on the nuclear material at the moment because it's buried. And so if they make a move towards it, we'll be able to know that.
Now, I think what went unsaid tonight, but what I assume is happening in the background in these diplomatic conversations, is that part of the way this is going to end is hostilities will cease at some point. We'll have some kind of diplomatic end that has to include getting the nuclear material.
[22:10:01]
He didn't say that tonight. I hope that would be a great scenario if it works out that way.
PHILLIP: He didn't say that.
JENNINGS: And he also didn't say troops on the ground.
PHILLIP: I mean, he did not say that. And it's more than just that he didn't say that. He actually proposed an alternative, which you just pointed out, which is that we would just perpetually surveil and bomb them if they ever attempted to get the nuclear material that is still in their territory.
Christiane Amanpour was on earlier tonight talking about this. It's called a mow the lawn scenario. That's great for Israel because they're right there. But for us, are we really going to just perpetually be poised to bomb Iran until the end of time?
MEIJER: I mean, at this point you have the Saudis and the Emiratis wanting to enter into this conflict, proposing resolutions at the U.N. Security Council to reopen the Strait of Hormuz through the United Nations. So, this is not just us going it alone. I mean, that monitoring is relatively easy. We don't even need to be there. You can have the B-2 flying from Missouri all the way across the pond with some KC-135s refueling them and mow that lawn relatively simply.
I think this is the challenge that I don't get about the black pill of the folks who would just think that this is all doom and gloom. I mean, when you were talking earlier, it's like the U.S. is losing. We could end it at any point.
MOCKLER: I never said we're losing. I just said there's a cost benefit analysis to happen here. And I see the cost is so high, and the benefit is we destroyed some 55-year-old air force. Like what's the benefit here?
MEIJER: And thousands of ballistic missiles.
MOCKLER: Wait. If the thousands of ballistic missiles?
MEIJER: (INAUDIBLE).
MOCKLER: If we have won so decisively, why can't we get a single ship through the Strait of Hormuz? Why won't we even try to escort a ship through the Strait of Hormuz?
NINAN: What tonight was about, ultimately, what really the president was trying to do tonight is to not box himself in, to try and declare a victory with a slow exit at some point. He is reading the polling right now. He may control the battlefield out in the Middle East. He's losing the living rooms across America. You look at polling, more than half of Americans do not believe they are benefiting financially because of this war. You look at Republicans and Democrats, they don't want this war. They want to get out of it as soon as possible. And when foreign policy is the thing over here and suddenly you see it showing up in your grocery bill, in your airline fees, and then also, you know, at home in the typical cost for home folks, they start to feel that. And when you feel it at the gas pump, it becomes a real issue for Americans.
PHILLIP: Yes.
BOOT: And, by the way, Abby, if I could just mention one thing which I did not hear in his speech. Remember, he set a deadline of this Monday telling Iran they had to reopen the Strait of Hormuz where he would bomb Iran's electrical plants. That was a deadline that he had moved once before. Now, he set it for Monday. It went completely unmentioned here, which suggests maybe it's kind of disappeared down the memory hole and it's not really a deadline.
PHILLIP: It's a good point. I mean, what is the status of that deadline and that threat?
JENNINGS: I think he didn't make much mention of this tonight and he obviously didn't want to get into the details. He did talk about it at the Easter lunch today. Obviously, there are conversations going on between our government through the Pakistanis and other countries to try to bring this to a diplomatic end. And I don't think he was in a position tonight to unroll all of that kind of sensitive conversation, but it is apparent that conversations are taking place.
So, if we've set deadlines or made threats about attacking certain infrastructure, I mean, it's a pretty delicate dance we're doing. But at the end of this, if you do wind up with a diplomatic end, you have decimated all of their military capabilities, you do wind up in a situation where you can, at a minimum, monitor the nuclear material, and at a maximum, go in and get it.
This ultimately is a good outcome for the region. It's a good outcome for the world to defang and de-nuke the world's largest supporter of terrorism.
BOOT: But it's only a good outcome if the Strait of Hormuz is open. Because, remember, the Strait of Hormuz was open before Trump launched his war. So, if the war winds up with Iran with a chokehold on 20 percent of the world's oil, that is not, in any way, a victory for the United States. That's actually a massive setback.
MEIJER: It's a massive defeat for China too. I mean, that's the reality. Like we are -- we always think we're at the center of things in a lot of ways that we are. But when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz, the amount of energy the U.S. is getting from that is, you know, negligible. It's in the low double digits.
Our natural gas cost --
BOOT: Our gas pump has gone up over $4 a gallon because of energy prices? MEIJER: Yes, yes. We're still below where we were when Russia invaded Ukraine.
PHILLIP: It's a full dollar. Look, the American people -- one of the interesting things is that it's not just that the war is unpopular. The war is becoming increasingly unpopular. At the start of the war is 59 percent who disapproved, now it's 66 percent.
And when you look at the support for some of these other conflicts that we've been engaged in over the last a hundred years or so, this is one of the most unpopular that we've ever been a part of, and that's saying a lot, considering that it's very clear that Americans understand the threat that Iran poses. They're just very clear-eyed that they don't like how this is going. They don't like how the war is being conducted. They don't like what it means for their pocketbooks. And that does matter in this democracy.
[22:15:00]
MOCKLER: Yes. Donald Trump had a very good chance tonight to explain his rationale to the American people and lay out what we've gotten. But, again, every single weapon system that was actually a threat to us is still intact. You just floated that we took out thousands of their missiles. Okay, so I keep hearing this line. We've taken out their missiles.
MEIJER: They don't have a navy now.
MOCKLER: We've taken -- okay. their navy and air force was 55 years old. What has taken --
JENNINGS: Then, why was it harassing people in the Gulf.
MOCKLER: What does taking out a 55-year-old baby mean?
JENNINGS: They were constantly harassing ships in the Gulf. Now, they can't do that.
PHILLIP: They're still harassing ships --
JENNINGS: They don't have any ships left.
PHILLIP: No. I'm saying -- my point is that the main thing that we care about, which is the Strait of Hormuz, which is the global oil supply, they are still, as Trump said, Trump made this point himself, it doesn't take a lot to terrorize ships in that strait, and they are currently doing it right now.
BOOT: And if you look at launchings of Iranian drones and missiles, it went down dramatically at the beginning of the war, but it's actually been pretty steady for the last several weeks. They're still able to launch a bunch of drones and missiles every day, and that's all it takes to prevent ships from going through the Strait of Hormuz.
MOCKLER: I've asked conservatives time and time again, if we've won so decisively, why can't we open the strait? And they can't give a sufficient answer. The real answer is because Iran has two separate navies. They have their conventional navy, which we've destroyed. Then they have the IRGC Navy, the Iran Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy. That one is the one that wages asymmetric warfare. And I guess I'll just say one more time, if we've really taken out both of their navies and one so decisively, how come gas prices are very likely to spike another, I don't know, 20, 30 cents?
PHILLIP: We're going to continue. We will continue at the other side of the break.
Trump tells allies to grow some delayed courage and take oil from the Strait of Hormuz. And just earlier today he said he would reconsider America's membership in a critical alliance, NATO. So, what's next for that alliance? That's ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: After a month of NATO allies rebuffing President Trump's calls to help with the war in Iran, he is again threatening to leave the alliance. In an interview with The Telegraph, he was asked about whether the U.S. could withdraw from NATO, and he said, oh, yes, I would say beyond reconsideration. He also called NATO a, quote, paper tiger, and added that Putin knows that too.
Part of his anger is because European allies, as we were just discussing, have so far said no to sending their navies to go into the Strait of Hormuz. Some of them have said no to allowing the United States to launch attacks from their territories, which is a pretty significant no. And as we were talking before the break, we have -- I think we have the oil futures or the gas prices right now and the Dow futures right now, gas prices are up. It was about 4 percent when I looked at it earlier, still 4 percent for crude oil and Brent Crude. The markets are basically saying, yes, we don't really think that this thing is going to get resolved anytime soon.
MEIJER: No, I do just have to remark looking at those oil numbers, and the president said this several times and it's hard to disaggregate what he's saying that is hyperbolic, what he's saying that is sincere. When he says we expected it to be way worse than this, I entirely believe them. The fact that oil is trading around a hundred with the Strait of Hormuz being closed now for four weeks is insane. This is so much less dramatic than I think the expectation was.
And it reminds me of the concerns about what Hezbollah would do against Israel if there was significant action, the tens of thousands of rockets that would rain down, and Israel was able to neutralize that threat without that doom and gloom. We were talking earlier about the popularity, about the polling, and that's something that strikes me is we have seen in the past four weeks one of the most significant, tactical military achievements since the Gulf War. I mean, just an incredible show of strength and a force, which I'm talking about the initial one the happy one that we like to talk about in '91, right? The shock and all that brought back the American sense of pride in the wake of Vietnam and the defeat there.
The fact that the American people are not supporting it has very little to do with what's happening, has everything to do with the fact that it is trailing in the polling to Donald Trump's approval rating, as is the operation of Venezuela. The operation of Venezuela is 30 points more popular in Venezuela than in the United States.
PHILLIP: So, wait, so what are you suggesting?
MEIJER: I'm saying that Donald Trump and he's --
PHILLIP: You think this is a Trump thing? That's because Trump is so unpopular?
MEIJER: I think that if the -- there was capitulation from day one and Trump was getting a parade down the Grand Boulevard in Tehran, he would still be sitting at the similar approval rating because of --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: But don't you think Americans are rational about paying a dollar more per gallon at the gas? I mean, that seems actually quite rational. I mean, I don't share your skepticism of the American people. I think they understand when they don't think that this -- I think they're saying very clearly they do not think that this step needed to be taken. And that's actually Trump's own fault because he told them a year ago that he had already done the job. He had already neutralized the nuclear program. So, then for him to come back and say, well, we need to wage a war, that seems like a bait and switch. I think Americans are rationally saying, what on Earth is that about?
NINAN: Well, you know, over in Europe, you heard Christine Lagarde already say last week, you're going to see the reverberations of this war. Everybody watches that oil number. It's not just that number to watch. I was just after the speech talking to somebody who's very brilliant on financial markets, and they said to me, Reena, you're going to see the shocks continue from fertilizer to Africa, to Asia, to Europe, and Europe understands that.
[22:25:06]
But they also did hear Trump loud and clear. They've already made moves on defense. They're creating their own defense ecosystem because Trump has made it clear that they don't know that they can rely on him at this point.
MEIJER: And they're doing what he wanted, which was getting closer to that 5 percent of GDP for defense spending.
NINAN: But this war has serious repercussions. Just the price of oil is not the only indicator for --
MEIJER: 100 percent and reverberation from the supply chain.
BOOT: One of the major repercussions of this war is it's turned not only to an energy crisis, it's turned into a transatlantic crisis that's threatening the future of NATO, which was already very much in doubt after Trump threatened to annex Greenland. And that really caused massive shock in Europe and loss of faith in the United States. And now that loss of faith is increasing because Trump did not consult with the Europeans before going into Iran.
But now he's browbeating and threatening the Europeans to say, you have to come in and take care of our mess. And they're saying, this is not our war. This is not what NATO was all about, because NATO is about self-defense and it's about collective defense if the territory of the NATO countries is attack. But it was an attack. This is Trump going out and starting another war and trying to drag the Europeans in.
And so this is -- and now Trump is starting to pull out of NATO if the Europeans don't come in and help them out. So, this is causing a major crisis within the most successful alliance in military history. That's very, very alarming. And the only beneficiary is going to be Vladimir Putin. And, by the way, Trump has nothing to say about the fact that Putin is helping Iran to target Americans.
PHILLIP: And when Trump says, NATO is a paper tiger, Putin's like, music to my ears. He loves to hear it.
MEIJER: He challenged them on that and show they're not a paper tiger.
MOCKLER: Can I just point out his defense? There's a fact that I learned the other day that I think is very interesting, when NATO is being negotiated in about 1948, the United States, specifically us, we asked for a new clause, Article 6, that limited the geography of the defense. So, the geography of NATO's defense is limited to Europe and the United States. So, this is not even a task that, number one, is in NATO. Number two, as you said, it's a defensive alliance.
Also, I just want to read off -- I think it's worth reading off some of the quotes we've gotten from Trump. In January of 2026, he said, it may be a choice between preserving NATO or seizing Greenland. He refused to rule out the use of military force. He also threatened or he actually threatened to impose a 25 percent import tax on all of the European Union if they didn't just give us Greenland.
MEIJER: Why was he concerned about Greenland? He was concerned because he was unsure whether or not the Europeans could be relied upon in a difficult moment where they were putting the squeeze to.
MOCKLER: When is the only time Article 5 has been invoked?
MEIJER: Yes, it was post-9/11.
MOCKLER: And who were they helping? Us. So, they're reliable.
MEIJER: You're talking about the geographic constraints. You know what is within the geographic constraint is Ukraine. We bore a lot of that heavy lifting, not working with NATO.
PHILLIP: Hang on a second. So, are you suggesting straight homeless that Trump was threatening to attack Greenland because he was worried that the United States or that Europe wasn't going to hold up its end of the NATO bargain? I'm not sure I'm following that argument.
MEIJER: No. The argument for why we needed to expand our facilities in Greenland was that the Danes were unwilling to expand on the current terms --
PHILLIP: No. That is actually not -- that is not --
MEIJER: In 2004 Igaliku amendment to the original defense --
PHILLIP: I'm sorry, Peter. That is revisionist. That is revisionist.
MEIJER: In what sense, please?
PHILLIP: Trump never once -- this is in the reporting. He never once brought up expanding our military engagement in Greenland with the Danes in private. Despite all of the public things that they were saying, it never came up once.
MEIJER: In 2019, Carla Sands, the ambassador to Denmark, did bring that up and it caused a massive rift.
PHILLIP: Trump never -- his administration never brought it up in conversations with the Danes, okay? And then on top of that, he could have asked for what he ended up getting. He backed down on his threats, because the Danes then said, let's just talk about expanding the base that you have an existing treaty that allows you to do that. And Trump said, okay, yes, I'm going to back down on the threats. Why would he do that if that was -- if he could have just had the conversation in the first place?
Trump wants Greenland --
MEIJER: They've been (INAUDIBLE) these conversations in 2019.
PHILLIP: Trump wants Greenland because he believed there were critical minerals in there. He claimed falsely that the Chinese and the Russians were already trying to get onto Greenland. That's not true, okay? There's an Arctic threat but it's not true that they are there, that they're trying to get into Greenland.
So, Trump created the Greenland problem. He could have asked the Danes to expand the bases. He didn't. He did not ask them to do it. And then he threatened them. And then when he was forced to back down, he then took the option that was always on the table. That is called -- that's why on Wall Street they call it the taco trade, because he is backing down every time.
[22:30:01]
And that's exactly what happened here.
JENNINGS: You know why NATO should care about this? It was just a couple of weeks ago that we learned that Iran has ballistic missile capabilities that can reach most of Europe. On top of that, does no one else here find it agitating that we spend billions and trillions of dollars over decades?
We have U.S. troops stationed on all these bases, with all these allies and then we decide that we need to do something that is in our national security interest, you have supposed friends of the United States saying you can't use these bases, were not going to permit this, we're not going to help you on it --
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: It is agitating.
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: But bottom line --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Don't they a say? But doesn't NATO have a say in how to deal with the threat --
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: Why doesn't Europe look at this ballistic missile threats a little more seriously.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: But hold on, Scott. How -- doesn't NATO -- don't you think NATO ought to have a say - European countries - ought to have a say on how you address that threat? I'm not disagreeing with you about the threat, but don't they -- shouldn't they be consulted? Are they not right to wonder why weren't they consulted before Trump decided to wage a war? It sounds like you think it's in their defense.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Shouldn't they have been consulted?
JENNINGS: It is in the defense of all of Europe now that we see that the ballistic missile threat is real. No one can deny that.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Should they have been consulted?
JENNINGS: Consulted? I mean, look, we decided it was in our national security interest.
PHILLIP: Oh, okay.
JENNINGS: Why they don't understand that it is in theirs is beyond me. And I think that's what leads to the President's agitation with them.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: If it's about our national security interest, that makes sense, right? But if it's in theirs, they should be consulted. If it is -- if this war is about Europe's security, shouldn't Europe be consulted?
JENNINGS: It's about our national security. But along the way here, what we've all learned is that Europe is under threat.
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: And my point is --
PHILLIP: If this is about us, this is our war.
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: -- why are they too dumb to realize that these ballistic missiles can reach most of Europe's --
(CROSSTALK)
ADAM MOCKLER, MEIDASTOUCH NETWORK COMMENTATOR: I thought the missiles were --
(CROSSTALK)
MOCKLER: The missiles were our national security --
JENNINGS: It is our national security --
MOCKLER: Okay, so then why is the onus on Europe to clean up our mess?
JENNINGS: The onus is on Europe to defend themselves, and the onus is on the President the United States to defend the national security of the United States. But Western civilization is in this together, and these fanatics have missiles that can strike most of Europe and they have nuclear material, as well.
PHILLIP: See, I think this is a disagreement about what alliances are. I mean, if we are really in this together, which is, I think you're right, that's what it's supposed to be. Shouldn't there be mutual trust? Shouldn't there be mutual consultation? Shouldn't there be an agreement, an alliance, a coalition that was formed beforehand, not after the fact?
MAX BOOT, SENIOR FELLOW, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: And I think that trust has really been broken in this -- by the Trump's attempts to seize Greenland and now in this current crisis. The Europeans have no faith in the United States anymore. And in the future, if Trump wants support, he should ask for it in advance, not just from the Europeans, but from the American people.
He made no attempt to rally the American public. He made no attempt to win congressional support because he thought this would be a short and fast war and the Iranians would capitulate after he killed the Supreme Leader. That clearly hasn't happened and he doesn't know what to do next. So, he's kind of floundering around looking for a way out. And in the past, he could just back down in whatever trade war,
whatever he had started and everything would be okay. But in this case, he can't back out of it because the Iranians won't let him. He doesn't --and the Iranians in many ways have the upper hand because they have a chokehold on 20 percent of the world's oil, and Trump doesn't know how to break -- how to break those trying to hold --
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: The upper hand? Max, we are flying B-2 bombers and refueling them over Iranian air space --
(CROSSTALK)
BOOT: -- and they have the -- and they have the upper hand?
(CROSSTALK)
BOOT: We're not moving any ships to the Strait of Hormuz, Scott. We're not moving any ships to the Strait of Hormuz.
PHILLIP: I think both things can be true at the same time that Iran's goals can be different from the United States is that it can involve keeping us there for much longer than we'd like to be there. And even while we have tactical control over Iranian territory, they're still --
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: They're winning.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: -- they state --
JENNINGS: Don't worry.
PHILLIP: No, no, listen.
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: We have control of the entire air space. Don't worry. It's all going well.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: They still have, I mean, Scott, you would agree they still have a vote in this to some extent.
JENNINGS: Of course.
PHILLIP: They are --
(CROSSTALK)
REENA NINAN, FOREIGN AFFAIRS ANALYST: It's Passover in Israel, and tonight there are people inside
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: (inaudible) raining down on --
NINAN: -- underneath the shopping centers in Israel, intense on the first night of Passover because the bombs are still coming. It's not just Israel. It's United Arab Emirates. It's Saudi Arabia. It's our U.S. bases in the Middle East have been hit.
JENNINGS: I agree with you.
NINAN: So, we can't say that this war is without a price tag. We went in.
JENNINGS: Oh, yes. Of course it is. All war has a price. All war has a price.
NINAN: The United States and Israel went in. And now the whole world has got the check and will pay the price.
PHILLIP: All right, we got to leave it there, Peter. All right. We'll have much more on the President's speech later in the show. It's two hours for us tonight. But next for us, Pam Bondi on thin ice. Sources say that Trump has privately talked about ousting her as attorney general, who he's thinking of replacing her with, in just a moment.
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[22:39:31]
PHILLIP: Tonight, multiple sources tell CNN that President Trump is considering another cabinet shakeup, Attorney General Pam Bondi. Among the president's top grievances about Bondi is her handling of the Epstein files investigation. That's an issue that has become a political liability among some of the President's most ardent supporters. So, who could be Bondi's potential replacement? Well, EPA Administrators Lee Zeldin's name has been coming up.
[22:40:02]
And sources say it remains unclear whether the President has actually made up his mind about this. Joining us in our fifth seat is former federal prosecutor Temidayo Aganga-Williams. Temidayo, is it surprising to you that the President wants to jettison Pam Bondi at this stage?
TEMIDAYO AGANGA-WILLIAMS, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: It's not surprising because I think she has been a terrible A.G. I think what's surprising is that the core of her issue is that she has been politically loyal to him and not the rule of law.
So, what does surprise me is that again and again, she has desecrated this Department. I served as a former federal prosecutor. As a federal prosecutor, I was proud -- I thought it was a patriotic job. And what she has done again and again is choose Trump over country. So for him to fire her and point to the Epstein files, that's actually
her standing behind him. She's completely -- she screwed the roll up of that. But it's not because she was trying to do the right thing. It's because again and again, she was trying to obstruct justice. Enrolling out the so-called client list, which just had existed. She said it was going to be released.
Now there's no list. And handling redactions and taking the amount of federal agents from doing things like counterterrorism, she put them on handling thousands of names, seeking President Trump's name and redacting him. So do I think he should fire her? Yes. But for the reasons that he's going to do it? Absolutely not.
PHILLIP: And let's not forget, he said on Truth Social that, "Pam, I've reviewed over 30 statements saying essentially same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey? Adam "Shifty" Schiff, Letitia? They're all guilty as hell, but nothing is being done."
PHILLIP: He wants political prosecutions and he -- I guess he was her -- to her defense, I guess she was attempting to, but we still have a justice system in this country that has a say in this, as well.
MOCKLER: Turns out Pam Bondi, Lindsey Halligan, none of these people are enough for Donald Trump to overcome the checks and balances that we have. I was going to cite that same Truth Social post because in that, he is directly making sure his attorney general is following his orders.
He named three people, two out of those three people were then indicted, were then targeted. It's such a clear, clear example of weaponization. Nothing like that existed under the Biden administration. Nothing like that has existed before. So, it's new.
PETER MEIJER (R) FORMER U.S. CONGRESSMAN, MICHIGAN: Who indicted them?
MOCKLER: The --
PHILLIP: Trump appointed attorney general.
MEIJER: The grand jury issued the indictment. Sorry.
MOCKLER: Well, no, the grand jury issued the indictment, but didn't Lindsay Halligan literally fudge up one of the charges. Am I right?
MEIJER: There's a question on her appointment and whether or not it was legal and not a --
MOCKLER: That was --
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: It's also that she gave incorrect law to the grand jury and I think citing the grand jury is somehow --
(CROSSTALK) MEIJER: Which the judge caught by the way and that was part of the reason she was removed from that case.
WILLIAMS: Yes. She's never should have been in the job in the first place. And I think it's wrong to point to the grand jury somehow a stamp of approval. As everyone says, you can indict the ham sandwich. So, saying that a grand jury approved something -- I've been in a lot of grand juries. There's only one person in there representing. That's the Government. There's no counter to your argument. It's not hard to indict people.
MEIJER: I just thought that was the standard --
PHILLIP: And weren't there a couple of instances where they failed to get the grand jury to actually indict and so they had to kind of chop it around, essentially?
JENNINGS: Yes, some grand juries have declined. So obviously, they do make judgments even when they're asked to do things. What I'm hearing broad agreement at the table is that we have a functioning government with checks and balances. And in fact, we don't have a king in this country, I guess. We just have a functioning constitutional democracy right now.
If I were in Pam Bondi's shoes, and obviously some people have had gripes with her, I think her best argument for why she has succeeded would be to tell the President, one of your biggest successes is the massive drop in crime in this country, homicides, robberies, all this violence. We have seen huge drops in crime. If I were in her shoes and giving her P.R. advice, that's what I would tell her to argue.
I don't know if it would be enough to assuage the concerns that apparently are being had. But that's how I'd probably argue it. Like on your watch with me as attorney general, you have overseen a historic drop in crime and in making this country safe. That would be a good argument.
Now on Zeldin, by the way, I'll just say for his part, highly respected, major accomplishments, and a lot of respect for him and what he's been able to do at EPA. So, I would say his stock is definitely --
(CROSSTALK)
MOCKLER: It's not a brag that our institutions are holding from the guy that you're defending trying to destroy them.
PHILLIP: Lee Zeldin would have a tough job ahead of him. I think that we can all agree on. Ahead, Trump shows the Supreme -- shows up to the Supreme Court during the arguments over his push to end birthright citizenship. But his presence didn't seem to sway the justices much, even some of the ones that he appointed. We'll be right back.
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[22:49:21] PHILLIP: President Trump started his day over at the Supreme Court where the justices heard his effort to end birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment establishes that nearly every person born in America is a citizen of the United States.
But the Trump administration argues that this line, subject to the jurisdiction thereof, should not apply to the children of undocumented immigrants. Basically, they're not under the jurisdiction of the U.S., so they can't be citizens is how the argument goes. But the justices didn't seem to buy that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN SAUER, SOLICITOR GENERAL: We're in a new world now, as Justice Alito pointed out to where eight billion people are one plane ride away from having a child as a U.S. citizen.
[22:50:04]
JOHN ROBERTS, CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, it's a new world. It's the same Constitution.
SAUER: It is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And you know, I actually would kind of take our -- take disagreement with this idea that people coming to the United States is new. It's actually fairly recent that we've even had immigration laws in the first place.
So, plenty of people, including Trump's parents, came here, basically just showed up. You don't need any papers. So, this whole argument seemed to be taken very skeptically by all the justices, nearly all of them, conservatives and liberals.
WILLIAMS: Yes, I think that the core challenge that the Trump administration has is that the text says what it says. Are you born here? Yes. And you subject to jurisdiction, which in plain meaning, everyone understands basically, does that authority here have power over you? And there's one exception that's been historically recognized, basically called the ambassador exception. You're an ambassador, you're here, you have a child.
Yes, there's a limitation or a carve out because that individual is not subject to the same authority in the United States. What the administration now is trying to do is to take their political objective, the policy objective, so how they think they should have immigration laws, and rewrite the Constitution by executive order. We've had law here for the last 160 years since this Constitution was passed that has been basically unchallenged.
So that means for the most part, for the last 130 at least, we've had one view. And now with the stroke of a pen, the administration is seeking to rewrite an entire jurisdictional framework. And I think the court was skeptical of that, and because it should be. Because again and again, they came back to the simple thing.
Look at the text of the 14th Amendment. It says what it says. If you were born here and in a jurisdiction, you are a citizen. If we don't like that, there is a process of constitutional amendment and Congress can pass new laws as well to execute that.
PHILLIP: So Trump responded to this today. He had a Truth Social post. But he also had these remarks that were kind of inadvertently posted by the White House. I'll play them for you.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Republicans, judges, and justices, they always want to show that they're independent. I can -- I don't care if Trump appointed me. I don't care if -- he doesn't make any difference to me. I'm voting against him because they want to show their independence, you know -- stupid people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NINAN: You know, someone should have walked him over and said, Abby, showed him some examples from recent history. Nixon is a great example when they tried to push for the tapes, Watergate tapes. And in that case, unanimously, the Supreme Court voted against -- voted for the release of these tapes. So, I think when you see in court systems, there's public pressure.
You see people pushing back, justice is pushing back, judges pushing back. Because what matters for our United States court system is that there is independence. And it has to be the appearance of independence. Once you lose that, you lose a people.
PHILLIP: I mean, it's also just like these are the originalist justices. He appointed them for that reason. They're looking at the original text and its meaning and its context. And they're like, we don't see it. We just don't see it.
MEIJER: Kind of goes a little bit against the narrative that I hear from the left that these are Trump appointed toadies who are just going to do his bidding left, right and center. What I heard in those oral arguments was an interesting, and deep and provocative conversation on the Wong Kim Ark case from the, I believe it was 1890s -- early 1890s.
And revisiting a question that had really been answered since but had, yes, in the past 20 years come into the four -- it's more something that you heard Republicans discussing in the early 2010s than of late. But I think additional clarity will be healthy. That's what I was hearing from the oral arguments on both sides.
JENNINGS: Yes, I have -- I thought the debates were interesting -- the back-and-forth was interesting. And you know, look, you'll know better than me about how you think the court's leaning. I do think it's -- there's a large conversation. This is part of it going on a country right now about who we're letting in here, and why they're here, and whether they are loyal to the United States of America. And that's a good conversation for us to have.
Now, whether it gets resolved in this court venue, or whether gets resolved in Congress, or in other ways. For instance, this conversation over birthright tourism is going on. When you have a foreign adversaries set with companies that are set up to help people facilitate births in the United States to exploit our system.
That is a worthwhile thing for the American people to know. It's a worthwhile debate for us to have. So, how the court comes out on this, I don't know, but that's information that we need to know because we do have foreign adversaries that are trying to infiltrate the country and exploit what's been our good nature for many years.
PHILLIP: Your thoughts on that?
WILLIAMS: Scott, what you're talking about is a political issue. And what the court is focused on, what is the (inaudible) -- Constitution says. And what it says if you are born here, you are a citizen, that is clear. If there's a congressional objective that Republicans have, they control the presidency in both Houses, they should go and pass new laws.
[22:55:01]
They want a new Constitution. We had an amendment that gave us the 14th, we can have more amendments as a process to go and do that. What we cannot do is rewrite the Constitution through executive order, and that's why the Court should strike that executive order down.
PHILLIP: All right, we got to leave it there. Next for us, President Trump tries to make his case for the Iran war in a national address to Americans by highlighting familiar grievances. But will the American people ultimately buy it? And what does this all mean for the tens of thousands of troops that are already in the region? We'll be back in just a moment with a second hour of "NewsNight."
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