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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Agrees To Two-Week Ceasefire With Iran Ahead Of Deadline; Trump Says, Iran's Ten-Point Proposal Is Workable Basis To Negotiate; Trump's Whole Civilization Will Die Threat Rattles World, Allies; Defense Secretary Accused Of Misleading Trump On The Reality Of War; MAGA Voices Divide On Trump's Vile Rhetoric And Actions On The Iran War. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired April 07, 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]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, a deal for now. Donald Trump announces a two-week ceasefire ahead of his deadline to strike Iran's most vulnerable target.
Plus, the president threatens an entire civilization, rhetoric that sends a shock through the world about America's values.
POPE LEO XIV: This is truly unacceptable.
PHILLIP: Also, MAGA unleashes on the man they say is breaking his promises.
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST, THE TUCKER CARLSON SHOW: Who do you think you are?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do we 25th Amendment his ass?
PHILLIP: And the defense secretary is accused of misleading Trump on this war, while Israel reportedly convinced him to launch it by promising a near certain victory.
Live at the table, Scott Jennings, Congressman Josh Gottheimer, Tara Setmayer, Chris Madel, Bobby Ghosh and Tara Palmeri.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening. I'm Abby Philip in New York.
President Trump backs off. Tonight, the U.S. avoided an extreme escalation in the war against Iran after Trump says that he agreed to suspend bombing in the country for the next two weeks. The president made that announcement at the 11th hour just before his 8:00 P.M. deadline tonight. It's based on the condition that Iran reopens the Strait of Hormuz. That critical shipping passage has been paralyzed for weeks now with Trump vowing to destroy Iranian power plants, bridges, and other civilian infrastructure if Iran refused to make a deal.
As the days passed, Trump pushed his deadline even further down the road. All of that culminating in today's stark warning where Trump threatened that, quote, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.
Iran's foreign minister responded to Trump's ceasefire announcement by suggesting the president had agreed to negotiate on the general framework of Iran's ten-point proposal, and he added that safe passage through the strait will be possible via coordination with Iran's armed forces, and that would give Iran more control over the strait and the global economy than it had before the war.
Now, tonight, Israeli sources say that its military is still carrying out strikes in Iran while air raid sirens have continued to sound throughout Israel hours after this announced ceasefire. And we should also note that as the world waits and watches while the next two weeks unfold, here's what Trump said just 24 hours ago about moving the goalposts.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Why'd you move the deadline, sir? Why did that move the deadline to tomorrow?
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Why did I move it? To give them a chance. It's not going to be moved again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: It's not going to be moved again, he said yesterday. It has been moved.
So, where are we now, Bobby, because this ten-point plan that presumptively is going to be the basis of negotiations is pretty extreme on the Iranian side, as one would expect? I mean, it gives them control over the Strait of Hormuz. It allows them to charge tolls. It calls for reparations, effectively. It asked for a lot of different things. So, where do we stand right now?
BOBBY GHOSH, COLUMNIST AND GEOPOLITICS ANALYST: Well, only yesterday the White House was briefing reporters and saying that the ten points that Iran had put forward were unacceptable, that they were maximalist, that was the term that was used, I think Axios was reporting that, and that it would not be considered. Today, Trump is saying that it's the basis of a conversation.
Now, it's not unusual for two sides in a negotiation to start from maximalist positions and then find their way to something that both sides can agree on, but we don't yet have anywhere near enough information. We've heard that there's a ten-point plan. The White House has not released this ten-point plan. The Iranians have not released the ten-point plan. An Iranian news agency, which is usually the mouthpiece of the government, has released only the sketchiest idea of a ten-point plan, and that includes the points that you make that they get to decide who goes through Hormuz. They get to -- the United States has to leave. All American military personnel have to leave from the region, that they get to decide on their nuclear uranium enrichment program. These are things that surely, after all of what we've seen take place of everything that the president has said over the last month-and-a-half, none of these things should be acceptable at face value to the Trump administration.
[22:05:07]
But now the president says at this late hour that it's a basis of a conversation.
PHILLIP: Yes. And, I mean, and all the things that you're saying were true yesterday, throughout the entire day yesterday. So, why move the goalpost tonight, just hours before his deadline?
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I agree with some of what was said there. We don't really know what's in the ten points. We haven't seen it. We also don't know what conversations have been had with a lot of other countries. There's a lot of reporting tonight that maybe China was involved, that maybe other countries got engaged here in mediating this. So, there's obviously a lot of players in the room having conversations that we're simply not privy to. So, I think we're all probably going to be watching over the next two weeks to see how the negotiations turnout.
What I'm most interested in is what happens to the nuclear program of Iran. To me, that was the biggest piece of why we were doing this. The president drew a red line they will never get a nuclear weapon. That's why we were doing this, along with taking away their ability to export terror, the missile program, the aggressive navy. But to me that's number one piece, when are we going to see the negotiating points around the development of nuclear weapons? And we'll find that out, I guess, in the coming days.
PHILLIP: No mention of that. Trump, by the way, and we shouldn't gloss over this, he started the warning with the threat of ending Iran's civilization and ended the day without any clarity on any of the things that Scott just pointed out. And especially the thing that presumptively we went into this war to get control over, which is the nuclear program.
REP. JOSH GOTTHEIMER (D-NJ): Pretty insane jump, right, from destroying civilization to seemingly using their ten-point maximalist plan as a baseline, right? And those are the kind of, just to your point, I really want to understand exactly what's been agreed to behind the scenes here. And if tolling is what's been agreed to, allowing Iran to actually charge a toll for ships to pass through, that would be actually a step backward for our country and for global passage of 20 percent of the world's oil and gas. That's a huge problem. And you add to that, and I'd like to really understand where we are on the uranium side, and I think the nuclear piece is very, very important. Where are we on the terror program? What's been agreed to there? And, of course, what's happened on the ballistic side and kind of what progress have we made? And I think that's a very important thing to understand. Well, hopefully, we'll hear from the president.
JENNINGS: I don't think anything's been agreed to, by the way, other than the --
PHILLIP: Then why did the goalpost move? Why did he call off his -- he set a red line. He called it off and nothing has been agreed to?
JENNINGS: Well, they've agreed to negotiate. And the one thing that he specifically mentioned was that Iran said they were going to open the strait. And this whole negotiation, this whole ceasefire is based on their willingness to do that, but they have a baseline for negotiation. So, I guess there's going to be a two-week period here where we find out if we can have a diplomatic agreement.
(CROSSTALKS)
JENNINGS: I think the agreement is to open it and then talk about the rest of it.
GHOSH: The strait was not even an issue at the start of this war. The strait perfectly was open and now that becomes -- the closing of the strait was a result of this war, and now that becomes the key to renegotiating with the Iranians. How did that become the key issue? That was never the key issue before the war began.
We've now shown the Iranians, and they, in turn, have showed the rest of the world, that they have the ability to put their hands on the neck of the global economy. And once that has been seen, it can't be unseen. Once that, you know --
JENNINGS: You don't think they realized that --
GHOSH: They had never done it in all these years.
JENNINGS: But you don't think they knew it was sitting there?
GHOSH: And it's a big difference between knowing it and demonstrating it now. Everybody in the world knows it. Trillions of dollars of the global economy depend on it. It's not enough to say, it was always going to be this way. It was not going to be this way on the 27th of last month. It's become this way because of this war.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: And just to be clear, this two-week period, in which there will be presumptively a stop to the bombing, Iran says that their military is going to control the Strait of Hormuz. So, they are still going to use, to your point, the threat of force to allow whoever they want to come through that passage. TARA SETMAYER, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, THE SENECA PROJECT: When was the last time we discussed the Iranians using military force to patrol the Strait of Hormuz? That was not on the table, to your point, before Donald Trump decided to do this. And, of course, reporting is coming out about all of the myriad of reasons why he shouldn't have done this and how he was warned not to do this. And then there were those who -- this is what happens when you don't have people who are experts, who are adults in the room making these decisions, unfortunately. This is what happens.
They didn't anticipate this part. They went, oh, wait a minute, the Strait of Hormuz controls all of this, you know, rite of passage for oil, for petrochemicals. Oh my gosh, our farmers are now freaking out because before they were suffering from tariffs and going bankrupt, now, it's planting season and they can't get their fertilizer.
[22:10:07]
And then, oh my gosh, oil is going through the roof per barrel. And the American people were paying $2.50 a gallon. Now, they're paying $4.15 cents, sometimes $7, depending on where you live, since Donald Trump did this.
We need to ask a question. How is this making America great again? If it was all about the nuclear program, which I agree with you, Scott, on, that was something that was very important. We haven't heard anything about that. If it was all about the ballistic missile program, we haven't heard anything about that in weeks. If this has all been about the Strait of Hormuz because Donald Trump has created chaos and instability and upset our allies and almost broke up NATO over all of this, and you can't undo the damage that he's already done.
We cannot just gloss over the fact that the president of the United States threatened genocide against a civilization because he threw a temper tantrum this morning because he wasn't getting his own way. There should be consequences for that kind of flippant language. That's not something we should just gloss over.
PHILLIP: We'll get to that in just -- in the next block.
CHRIS MADEL (R), FORMER GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE, MINNESOTA: Let's not really forget what Scott's point was though here. And I agree with you. When we're talking about messaging, you cannot possibly argue right now, it has changed from day to day to day. But let's just one time in our history, in our recent history, let's look at the long game for once. This is a country right now, one of the most evil nation states that has been on the planet. It has been severely degraded with respect to its nuclear capability. It's been severely degraded with respect to its missile capability. Its army has been severely degraded.
When they talk about trying to keep the Strait of Hormuz that we're going to keep it closed with their military, what navy? There is no Iranian Navy.
PHILLIP: But they're not keeping it closed with their navy. That's -- they're not --
(CROSSTALKS)
MADEL: Just for once, look at the long game here. We have made that region, we've made this place a safer place.
PHILLIP: But hold on, Chris, the thing that counters --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: The thing that counters your point is that the Strait of Horus right now, as we speak, is closed.
MADEL: It is.
PHILLIP: So, if you're saying that all the things that we have done, they have no power to close the strait, then why is it closed?
MADEL: We are talking about a very temporary situation right now.
PHILLIP: Okay.
MADEL: Do you think that this is going to continue forever, Abby? I mean, obviously, we have the strongest military in the world. We can take that Strait of Hormuz anytime --
PHILLIP: But let's actually contemplate --
(CROSSTALKS)
MADEL: I agree. But I am trying to look at the long game here.
PHILLIP: But five weeks into this --
MADEL: If we're looking at the long game --
GOTTHEIMER: Chris, you have to understand --
PHILLIP: Chris, hold on.
GOTTHEIMER: -- this is being argued as heads, I win, tails you lose. That's how this is argued.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Hold on a second. Hold on a second.
MADEL: I missed that memo.
PHILLIP: Hold on a second. How about you guys actually deal with reality?
SETMAYER: Yes.
PHILLIP: Five weeks into this --
MADEL: That's we're asking --
PHILLIP: Hold on. No. Let me just ask you a quick question. Five weeks into this war, Iran's military has been decimated. Nobody disagrees with that.
JENNINGS: True.
PHILLIP: Okay, its navy decimated, all of that. Five weeks into this war, first question, why is the Strait of Hormuz closed?
JENNINGS: It's closed because they're choosing to harass people going through.
PHILLIP: Okay.
SETMAYER: With what Navy? I thought they --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: It's closed. It's closed. You agree that Iran is keeping it closed?
JENNINGS: And apparently opened pending this --
PHILLIP: The United States has threatened to use force to reopen it. We have not. Why have we not done it?
JENNINGS: Well, the president asked international coalition to come in and deal with this and 40 countries met about it --
PHILLIP: He has also said, we don't need them. He said, we could do it ourselves. Why haven't we done it?
JENNINGS: He also asked an international coalition to show up and deal with this.
PHILLIP: You're not answering my question.
JENNINGS: And they're doing it.
PHILLIP: Why haven't we done it?
JENNINGS: Because he wants other countries to take some responsibility for it.
GHOSH: Literally, 48 --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: long-term, short-term, however you look at it, Iran has successfully, from a point of profound weakness, been able to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed. And the reason that we are in this moment, where the president is negotiating on their ten-point plan is because it is so important to him that that strait be reopened. And to Bobby's point, they have demonstrated to the world that they have economic leverage over the rest of the world. And so what does the United States do about that? That's the question that we are facing.
GOTTHEIMER: One thing I just think of is being left out of this, and to your point, which I think is right, listen, yes, their navy has been set back. The IRGC also has a navy and has resources, and that's caused us problems. The bottom line is we should not be in a position of weakness in the straits. And right now we -- the bottom line is it's very -- you asked a question, it's really complicated to basically to reopen it, right? And that's right.
However, the goal should be to crush the leading state sponsor of terror. We should want to massively set back as a country their ballistic missile program and their drone program. We should want to weaken their nuclear program. We've weakened it a bit last June. And I'm hoping when we get the reports here that we can have more. We should want to step back their terror program and they want to undermine our freedom and our democracy.
[22:15:00]
We shouldn't gloss over the goal that we should all share, which is crush --
PHILLIP: I don't think anybody's glossing over that.
GOTTHEIMER: Yes. But sometimes I think people are really for the wrong side here.
PHILLIP: No, I don't --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Hold on a second. I don't think anybody is rooting absolutely for the Iranian regime. I think that's completely off-base. What I think -- but what I think is -- listen, there are people -- hold a second. There are people in the world who --
JENNINGS: They want this to go poorly so they can blame it on Trump. Is that not true?
PHILLIP: The question now is, where do we go from here, okay? Where do we go from here? Those military goals, to your point, have been achieved, but what is the political solution to the nuclear problem? What is this political solution to the terror problem? We'll talk about more of this in our subsequent blocks, but stay with us.
Next, Trump's threat to end Iran's civilization draws backlash from Republicans to the pope. So, what does that mean for America's moral standing in the world?
Plus, MAGA stars are unleashing on the president tonight. They're even calling for the 25th Amendment. over his rhetoric and his actions. We'll debate. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, a question about American values after President Trump warned that a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. He has since delayed that threat now for two weeks, but it still sends shockwaves all over the world, including the Vatican.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
POPE LEO XIV: Today, as we all know, there was also this threat against all the people of Iran. This is truly unacceptable. There are certainly issues of international law here, but much more. It's a moral issue for the good of the people entirely
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: The pope has been weighing in on this conflict for a while now, but, you know, I think you described it as a genocidal threat. Other people have described it that way. I mean, there's this debate always, should you take Trump literally or seriously, but whether you take him literally or seriously, saying that you're going to end a civilization is a serious threat that no American president has ever issued before.
MADEL: And you shouldn't. And, honestly, those sorts of things when just really are very unhelpful. But I will also say we're not unaccustomed to him doing this. He did it with respect to North Korea. He said similar things with respect to China. He's made bluffs with respect to Canada. He's done it over and over again. And every time that he does this, I find that the media is running around chasing its tail with respect to him.
I get it, he's the president of the United States. He should not be saying any of that sort of thing. And it's wrong. It is absolutely wrong. At the same time, how many times are we going to do this with this guy? I mean, why? I mean, why are we engaging --
PHILLIP: You can blame the media, but it's also the pope.
SETMAYER: So, the onus is on us to say, oh, well, we'll just ignore him because he's making statements like a mad king, so we just normalize it as, well, that's just Trump being Trump and move on? Would you -- if -- I mean, would you -- is this someone that you would tell your kids that you should look up to this guy and believe what he says, you know, with the president of the United States, or just, well, he can go around to say whatever you want and threaten to, you know, annihilate civilizations and just it's the media chasing his tail every time he says something like that.
MADEL: In fact, I've said exactly the opposite to my kids. I said exactly the opposite --
SETMAYER: So, then why -- which I would -- I'm glad. So, why is the standard different for the president of the United States? You wouldn't let your kids get away with talking like that. MADEL: Because it's happened over and over and over again.
SETMAYER: So, should he be held accountable for it?
MADEL: Yes. And he wasn't. He is the president of the United States.
SETMAYER: So, isn't it the media's job to hold him accountable for it?
MADEL: So, you have to actually deal with what you have. And what we're dealing right now is with a president that, again, I take the view and I know it's a minority view, what he has done with respect to Iran has been good for society. It's been good for the world. Hamas has been de-gradated. Hezbollah has been de-gradated. The Iranian military, the nuclear, that it is an evil nation state, I look at the long game --
(CROSSTALKS)
GHOSH: We're not -- you know, like I said, we're doing the service to mad kings. Mad kings haven't said things like that since going back to Genghis Khan. This is not even unprecedented in modern times. It was unprecedented even in medieval times to say things like this.
And what a president says matters. It's not enough to say, well, that's just Trump and let's not exactly chase our tails around this. We have politicians on at this table. When politicians speak their, what they say, the way they say it matters and ought to matter. If -- when I was a child and came home and if I used a profanity, my parents didn't say, you know, that's just Bobby being Bobby, and we should go on with that. I got my punishment for that.
And the president should not get a free pass. He's an 80-year-old man. He's a grown adult. He cannot be just simply brushed -- this kind of behavior, this kind of language cannot simply be brushed away. A civilization? For crying out loud, we're not even allowed to say that about a town or a village. We are not supposed to use language like that.
George Bush went to Iraq and he used very different language. The language -- I covered that war, and it was not a war I was in support of, but I covered it as a journalist in Baghdad for five years. I distinctly remember George Bush saying, we come to Iraq with respect for your civilization, with respect for the faiths that were that are practiced here.
[22:25:02]
There's a difference. Presidential language goes down in history, and that's got to count for something and we cannot simply brush this away like this.
SETMAYER: Absolutely.
GOTTHEIMER: I mean, I don't have any respect for the government that, for this regime, but I'll tell you, unhinged and unhelpful is the only way when you read something like that. And you say, how does this advance the ball forward? And also there's only so many times you can cry wolf and say things like that are so extreme and crazy where people just blow you off, including other world leaders and don't take you seriously.
And I think the more this -- you know, yes, we desensitize it. You're right. And that's not a good thing. And, by the way, a little language, I'm from Jersey, so a little (INAUDIBLE).
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: So, let me just read this because this is Conservative Commentator Oren Cass. He's close to Vice President J.D. Vance. He says, simply put, what is the point of all of this? If these are empty threats that we all know he will not carry out, then they are ineffective threats. The Iranians are on X too, and merely making the president and our nation look foolish. If they're not empty threats, then president is asserting the American position that such actions are acceptable in this situation and ones that we are willing to take. We are not living in some quantum thought experiment where he's simultaneously is and is not serious.
JENNINGS: I don't agree that he's made empty threats as it relates to Iran. I don't think that the --
PHILLIP: This is literally an empty threat.
JENNINGS: I don't think the people that we decapitated at the top of their regime would call them empty threats either. We clearly demonstrated the interest in using the U.S. military to take drastic action.
PHILLIP: What do you call all the shifting deadlines? What do you call the threat this morning to end their civilization only to accept a ten-point plan that was put on the table yesterday as the basis for negotiations?
JENNINGS: You haven't seen the ten-point, A. B, all we know is that they said they would reopen the strait. Beyond that, we don't anything.
PHILLIP: Hold on a second. The president re-tweeted the Iranian foreign minister's statement, which said explicitly that they are using the ten-point plan as a basis of negotiation. I'm not making that up.
JENNINGS: Negotiation.
PHILLIP: The president reiterated that on an X post, Scott.
JENNINGS: We're negotiating. We haven't agreed to anything.
PHILLIP: My point is the threats from Trump to bomb their bridges, to bomb their desalination plants to bomb them out of their civilization off the face of the Earth, how are those not empty threats?
JENNINGS: Well, it looks like it brought them to the table tonight and got them in a place where they would agree to a ceasefire. I mean, I'll give you a counterargument to all these other positions, which is the president --
PHILLIP: Scott, that is not connected to reality.
JENNINGS: We have a ceasefire, Abby. Do we not?
SETMAYER: Tel Aviv is still under attack --
PHILLIP: The same table that we have tonight is the table that existed yesterday in large part. And, fundamentally, the only thing that has been agreed to is that Iran will continue to control the Strait of Hormuz and will allow ships to go through on their control. That is the only thing that has been agreed to.
JENNINGS: The strait is going to be reopened, and we're going to negotiate about the rest. Beyond that, we don't really know much of anything. But I will tell you yesterday, Iran was saying, we're cutting off, you know, talks. We're not going to continue the talks. The president uses some extreme language, and all of a sudden, voila, tonight, we have a ceasefire for two weeks.
Why can't we just say, you know what, maybe we have achieved military objectives, maybe we have taken down their military and their ability to export terror, maybe we have decimated their missiles, maybe we've buried the nuclear material and maybe we've got two weeks to make the world a safer place? Why can't we look at this as a glass half full moment as opposed to we have to make it negative for Donald Trump? That's all it is.
SETMAYER: But why can't you just acknowledge that what Donald Trump said this morning was abhorrent and that no president should ever threaten annihilating a civilization. Why can't you just acknowledge that?
JENNINGS: Look, he's talking to them in the way he thinks that he should to talk to them.
SETMAYER: Why can't you acknowledge that? That is something that no --
JENNINGS: Because I don't take orders from you, number one. And number two --
SETMAYER: I didn't say -- I'm asking you a simple question. You just asked us --
PHILLIP: All right. Well, let me just ask one final -- let me ask a final question, Scott. For the record, do you think it's acceptable for the president to threaten to annihilate a civilization?
JENNINGS: I think it's acceptable for the commander-in-chief to deal with these people in the best way that he can.
PHILLIP: Is that a yes or is it a no?
(CROSSTALKS) PHILLIP: Is that a yes or a no?
JENNINGS: I'm not going to second guess. He put out a statement. We now have a ceasefire.
PHILLIP: Okay.
JENNINGS: Those are the two things that I'm --
PHILLIP: I just wanted to ask for the record.
SETMAYER: Yes.
PHILLIP: A yes on your part. We'll leave it there.
Coming up next for us, did defense Secretary Pete Hegseth mislead the president on the reality of the war in Iran? An explosive new report has some new details. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:34:17]
PHILLIP: Tonight, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is being accused of misleading Donald Trump in his assessment of the war in Iran. In a new report from the "Washington Post," Hegseth has served as a top cheerleader for the war effort, often boasting of American military might. But after Iran shot down that F-15 at an A-10 fighter jet over the weekend, his repeated claims of American invulnerability in Iranian airspace are facing new scrutiny.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Starting last night and to be completed in a few days, in under a week, the two most powerful air forces in the world will have complete control of Iranian skies, uncontested airspace. Iran will be able to do nothing about it. We're hunting and striking
death and destruction from above.
[22:35:07]
Iran's air defenses flattened.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Tara Palmieri is with us at the table. And effectively, there's a difference between the types of air dominance that we have. I mean, the planes are able to fly largely over the airspace at certain altitudes.
But as was demonstrated on Friday, at lower altitudes, pretty more basic weapons can down a plane, which is what happened. I should read, this is the Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell.
He says that scrutiny of Hegseth's public messaging is lies and propaganda. He says Hegseth has provided the commander-in-chief with decisive military options to achieve our clear-scoped objectives. He says the "Washington Post" is pushing a fake news story.
Not surprising. But what do you make of Hegseth's public and private performance?
TARA PALMERI, PODCAST HOST, "THE TARA PALMERI SHOW", AND SUBSTACK AUTHOR, "THE RED LETTER": I think he is completely off-message every time he's speaking. I mean, anyone can tell that Iran still has the ability to shoot down our weapons.
They're able to shoot down our fighter pilots. I mean, this is not a country that has been obliterated, like the President said this summer. We can't really trust anything he says and I think we really can't trust anything the President says either.
And that's why so many people, their faith in the administration, it's completely lost, including among the President's closest allies, like you've seen in the podcast sphere. And really, across his base now, people just don't know who to believe anymore.
And when you can't trust anyone, I mean, you turn to conspiracy.
JENNINGS: Do you trust General Caine? He says we've destroyed like 13,000 military targets. You think that's a lie?
PALMERI: I'm not sure.
JENNINGS: The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Caine?
PALMERI: We have gotten so much disinformation.
JENNINGS: This is a career military officer, a man of high honor. What do you think? I mean, you sit in on the briefings.
Can we not trust what General Caine is telling us about the military devastation we have wrought on these terrorists?
GOTTHEIMER: We've got the best men and women serving us and the best generals and best intel. Day-to-day, those who work, these are career, who do an incredible job. I think part of the frustration I think that you're getting at, as a member of Congress and someone who sits on the Intelligence Committee, I will tell you that we have not been getting the briefings that we should be getting.
They haven't come and testified before any of the committees about the conflict. It's very difficult to get this information out. And the President hasn't laid out to the country in a clear way, or to the Congress, what are the objectives? How do we know what a win looks like?
And I think you were laying out a lot of the things of what we hope and hope to have accomplished or hope to accomplish in the future. And I know that I want to make sure we've gotten done.
Diminishment on the missiles, on the drone program, on the terror program, on our nuclear program. Those are all key objectives. We're just not getting the information that we need to be making some of these calls and to know really what to believe and what not to believe, and that's the frustration.
PHILLIP: Also worth noting, CNN just reported this week that Iran still maintains a lot of its ballistic missile capabilities, its drone capabilities, despite all of that devastation of those 13,000 targets. And then the "New York Times" had a deep piece today about, based on Maggie Haberman and John Swan's book, about how Trump got into this war, based on a briefing from Benjamin Netanyahu that made it sound like this would be easy.
SETMAYER: Again, you know, at what point do we say that the people who are in leadership are the problem?
We're not questioning the integrity of the career military folks, Scott. That's a red herring that you like to throw out any time we criticize the people who are at the subject.
JENNINGS: They're giving us the information. They're giving us the details.
SETMAYER: We're talking about you and Hegseth.
JENNINGS: At 8:00 in the morning, General Caine will stand there next to Hegseth and give us information. You either believe General Caine or you don't.
SETMAYER: Well, General Caine, what he's been saying is not what's in question. It's about what Hegseth is saying.
JENNINGS: They look pretty lockstep when they stand there together.
SETMAYER: Not all the time.
PALMERI: But they haven't been in lockstep.
SETMAYER: That's right.
And there was also the reporting about how he wasn't completely in agreement before we went into this war. And then all of a sudden that got real quiet again, because, you know, there's only so far they can go when you're a general or Pete Hegseth will fire you. But then again, General Caine's not black or a woman so I guess his job is safe.
So the problem here is also that the men and women who are the best in the world in our military, you know, we should apologize to them for having to serve under such incompetent leadership. I mean, the fact that we've got someone who is a morning show host, unserious, cosplaying G.I. Joe, wannabe crap boy.
JENNINGS: Won the popular vote. Won the electoral college.
SETMAYER: I'm talking about Pete Hegseth.
JENNINGS: Who's the commander in chief?
SETMAYER: I'm not talking about the draft dodger.
JENNINGS: Who's the commander in chief?
SETMAYER: I'm not talking about the draft dodger.
JENNINGS: Who's the commander in chief?
PHILLIP: It's a little disturbing that you're--
SETMAYER: I'm not talking about Donald Trump. Let's follow along.
[22:40:02]
I'm talking about Hegseth, who was credibly accused of sexual assault, who was credibly accused of running a veteran's organization to the ground, and who's never run anything as large as the Pentagon.
JENNINGS: You know, you lost the confirmation battle. You lost it. It's over.
You don't have to keep fighting it.
SETMAYER: You know what? If you want to keep defending, if you want to keep defending--
JENNINGS: You don't want to-- you lost it. These were the same talking points of last year.
SETMAYER: That's on you.
But the American people who are very upset with what's going on, and a lot of MAGA people who don't want their sons and daughters being sent into forever wars that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump and all these folks promised they wouldn't do, you can look at the polls and see how in trouble Republicans are, because the American people...
JENNINGS: Is that how you run foreign policy? By polls or--
PHILLIP: Let me-- let Chris have a word here before we go.
SETMAYER: No, I wouldn't run foreign policy with competent people, not morning show hosts.
PHILLIP: Go ahead, Chris.
MADEL: Well, I think, you know, first of all, I don't think it's very fair to have two terrorists from Jersey sitting next to you.
Again, I just think that we get into so many of these. I get it.
Hegseth said, we have absolute air superiority, nobody will ever be shot down. That's just ridiculous. I mean, there are shoulder-held surface-to-air missiles, I think this was an SA-7 that was Russian- made. These can easily be smuggled in. They're always going to exist there.
You cannot lose sight that we have, through our military, decimated what has happened in Iran right now. And it's a safer world because of that. It's safer in Israel, it's safer because Hamas is not going to be getting a bunch of weapons.
PALMERI: But not for anyone who is around Iran. Talk to Lebanon right now.
Do you think they think it's a safer world right now?
MADEL: Explain this to me. Why did Bahrain put forward a U.N. resolution that said, open the strait, and China and Russia said no? Why? Why do you think that is?
PALMERI: The rest of the world is going to have to now pay Iran to get their oil--
MADEL: -- in order to make us less safe. Do you think it was free?
PALMERI: Iran is richer now.
MADEL: Do you think it was free before?
PALMERI: Iran is richer now.
JENNINGS: Were they just giving it away for free? Was oil free before?
PHILLIP: Well, Scott--
Okay, Scott, we've got to go, but listen. Iran was selling oil at a huge discount because it was sanctioned.
That oil that is on the ocean has been unsanctioned by this administration. And now they are tolling votes coming through the Strait of Hormuz. So they are making, guys, they are making billions of dollars.
Don't take my word for it. You can go look it up.
Next for us, some of MAGA's biggest voices are furious now at the President and his handling of this war in Iran. There's even talk in their ranks about invoking the 25th Amendment. We'll discuss what that means next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:45:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Is President Trump too far gone for some of MAGA's biggest voices? Well, cracks in the base have been forming for months now, but the war with Iran appears to be the tipping point for many of them.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TUCKER CARLSON, CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR: It is vile on every level. It begins with a promise to use the U.S. military, our military, to destroy civilian infrastructure in another country, which is to say to commit a war crime, a moral crime against the people of the country. Because welfare, by the way, was one of the reasons we supposedly went into this war in the first place.
There will be nothing like it. Open the f--ing Strait. How dare you speak that way on Easter morning to the country? Who do you think you are?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: In response, Trump called Carlson a low-I.Q. person, and Trump claimed that Carlson calls him all the time, but Trump refuses to answer, adding, quote, "I like dealing with smart people, not fools."
But Carlson is not the only one who's souring on this war.
Matt Walsh says that Trump's second term has spent too much time on foreign adventures and that it's time to turn the attention back home.
Marjorie Taylor Greene called Trump's post evil and madness and said that it was time to invoke the 25th Amendment. Alex Jones apparently agrees.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALEX JONES, RADIO HOST, "THE ALEX JONES SHOW": How do we 25th Amendment his ass?
ROBERT BARNES, ATTORNEY: The problem is to get the 25th Amendment, it's harder than impeachment. You have to get two thirds of the House and two thirds of the Senate.
JONES: So what do we do?
BARNES: Tackle Trump and pretend, let him pretend he's President and publicly report that he's going through a health issue and may take over.
JONES: If I was the Democrats, I'd stop poking Trump and messing with him. That only makes it worse.
Like, you guys need to watch out. This isn't a guy acting like he's crazy. This is real.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, by no means am I suggesting that any of these people are authorities on much. But these are Trump's people. These are the people that Trump used to get elected the first time and the second time.
And so the turnaround here is really stark, Scott.
JENNINGS: Well, look, they're isolationists and he's not. He never has been. There's been a lot of people in that wing of our politics that wanted to ascribe or attach their views to him.
He just never has been, he wasn't in his first term. He hasn't been in his second term. He's been a hawk on Iran his entire adult life.
And I see some of these people now saying, gee whiz, we had no idea Donald Trump hated Iran and thought they shouldn't have a nuclear weapon. I mean, take the car key out of your ear for goodness sakes.
PALMERI: I don't know, Scott.
JENNINGS: This has literally been his position since he was like 30 years old when the regime took over. So I don't know what they've been listening to until now.
[22:50:04]
Other than this, they wanted always to try to get him to bend to their will. And what they don't understand about Trump is that people bend to his. He's the head of the party and he runs the country, not the podcast.
PALMERI: Except that he literally ran on the line, I will end all foreign wars and mocked Jeff Bush, by the way, for being related to George W. Bush and supporting the war.
PHILLIP: I'm glad that you're saying that for a change. I don't know how many times we need to pull the receipts of Trump arguing that Democrats would take us into war with Iran. Trump arguing that we've spent too much time on regime change in the Middle East.
They're not saying this because they made it up out of thin air, they're saying it because Trump ran on it.
PALMERI: I was just going to say that what should worry, Scott, is that the lines that President Trump uses, his base are now using against him, which shows that there is uncertainty right now in the core of his base. The people who actually feed on the media diet of Tucker Carlson and maybe some Alex Jones, these are the people.
JENNINGS: Let me just ask you a question. Are you suggesting that the elected President of the United States should run American foreign policy and national security based on the daily podcast rantings of Alex Jones?
PALMERI: He already runs it based on Fox News.
JENNINGS: That's crazy.
PALMERI: Everything he reads.
JENNINGS: He has to run it based on the circumstances. The circumstances are, I'm not going to let these fanatics get a nuclear weapon, period.
PALMERI: Why not actually listen to the American people, that only one in four Americans actually supports this war? One in four Republicans actually supports this war.
JENNINGS: That's false. Republicans support the President.
PHILLIP: Just to note, that despite what Trump said in that "New York Post" interview about Tucker Carlson, according to the "New York Times," he did speak with Carlson just a couple of weeks ago before this war began and tried to convince Carlson that it would be okay, he says, because it always is.
So they're still communicating. He hasn't disowned these folks. He's still trying to convince them to come over to his side on this war.
SETMAYER: Look, again, Donald Trump has prosecuted this war by way of Truth Social posts, okay? So to sit here and say that he doesn't take the word of the podcast pros or anything like that is asinine, because we all know that he doesn't read.
He doesn't read his Presidential daily briefings. He calls in people and rules by committee and asks random folks when he's dining in Mar- a-Lago what he should do on foreign policy.
This is not exactly an example of someone who is stable, who is focused, who actually has strategy. And it's clear by what we're seeing.
And the American people, including his MAGA base, is looking at this going, this is not what we voted for. They feel betrayed by him. MAGA has been betrayed by Donald Trump, and they're waking up and seeing that.
PHILLIP: So Tara, tell us a little bit quickly about your piece. You talked to family members who are Trump supporters.
PALMERI: Right. So over Christmas, my family, they are core MAGA supporters. They are not swing voters, they believe Trump.
It is part of their identity, okay?
When I saw them over Easter, four months later, all they could talk about was how they were betrayed. They were betrayed. They did not want to go into a war where there was no endgame.
They were fearful that there would be a draft, that their children would be drafted one day. They saw Afghanistan. They looked back at Iraq.
They thought, this is not what we signed up for. It's more expensive, inflation, none of the things that they thought that President Trump was going to do were actually happening. And there was uncertainty.
Things don't add up. That is what they kept saying. And they started asking me questions. And believe me, I'm a black sheep in the family. Okay?
PHILLIP: Josh, if you want to, 40 seconds.
GOTTHEIMER: No, I was just going to say, one thing that the crazies pointed out that I think is right is domestic stuff. And there's been a lot less focus on, people are struggling with high costs. They're getting crushed right now.
The tariffs, now the gas prices, rent, energy prices. And like, that is not part of the conversation. And that's got to be part of the conversation. I think that's been really, that's been lost, I think it's one of the things pissing everyone off (inaudible) on his base.
SETMAYER: Well also because the numbers show it, we have a record number of veteran foreclosures because Trump has cut what's going on at the V.A. We have record numbers of bankruptcies for farmers because Trump has betrayed them.
We have people that, we have less jobs created under Donald Trump than we did under Joe Biden. And he's betrayed our blue collar workers. So it's reflected in the polls, Scott.
And I don't think you're telling the American people they're stupid for what they're feeling, are you?
PHILLIP: We've got to leave it there. Thank you for being here tonight.
And next for us, a trend in how the President describes his cabinet officials. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:55:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: It's no surprise Donald Trump, who was a showman before he was President, still has a producer's eye in the Oval Office. Look no further than how he keeps describing people as, quote, "out of central casting." Here's a sampling.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: These are central casting. If I'm doing a movie, I pick you, General.
He's a real talent, a real guy, and he is central casting. Do we agree?
I'm going to nominate you for the United States Supreme Court. You are so central casting. Great marks, great schools, the best everything.
He's got 10 people standing behind him. Everyone is central casting.
He's central casting. I've never seen a group of people like this. Everyone's in perfect shape.
[23:00:00]
I once said to one of the pilots, he looked like central casting. He looked like Tom Cruise, but maybe better.
Guy's central casting. Let's put him in a movie. Look at him.
He was a central casting guy. Looks don't mean anything, but he's got the look.
He's central casting. Even the glasses are perfect.
The head of the CIA, and he is a man who, he's central casting, okay?
Is he central? Is he central casting? You would call it central casting if you were doing a movie for location.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And thank you very much for watching "NewsNight." "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
