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Trump: I'm Very Disappointed in NATO; Trump: Airman's Rescue Resulted in No U.S. Casualties; Trump: Every Bridge in Iran Will be Decimated If Deadline Not Met; Artemis II Breaking Apollo 13 Distance Record; Artemis II Crew Names Lunar Crater for Commander's Late Wife. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired April 06, 2026 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[14:30:00]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: ... or Australia didn't help us. You know who else didn't help us? Japan.

We've got 50,000 soldiers in Japan to protect them from North Korea. We have 45,000 soldiers in South Korea to protect us from Kim Jong-un, who I get along with very well, as you know. Do you notice he said very nice things about me?

He used to call Joe Biden a mentally retarded person. OK, so don't tell me about your stuff. Joe Biden, he said he's a mentally retarded person.

He was so nasty to Joe Biden. It was terrible. But to me, he likes Trump.

And do you notice how nice things are with North Korea? It's very nice. But we have 45,000 people, soldiers in harm's way and right next to Kim Jong-un with a lot of nuclear weapons, 45, which should have never happened.

If a certain president, I'm not going to mention this president because I happen to like him, believe it or not. But if a certain president did his job, Kim Jong-un would not have nuclear weapons right now. But they're all afraid to do their job properly.

But just to conclude and just to finish, Japan didn't help us. Australia didn't help us. South Korea didn't help us.

And then you get to NATO. NATO didn't help us. There were some countries that did.

Now, countries that have been good. Now, you could also say they're got to be a little bit more involved because they're in the territory. But Saudi Arabia has been excellent.

Qatar has been excellent. UAE has been excellent. Bahrain, Kuwait.

I mean, Kuwait did shoot down three of our planes. The only planes really that we lost with friendly fire, they call it. I call it unfriendly fire.

They unfortunately didn't know how to use our great Patriots. The pilots said, what kind of a missiles coming at us? Patriot.

Boom, they got out because they know a Patriot never misses. So they had beautiful Patriots. There were planes heading in their direction.

Unfortunately, they decided to shoot those planes. They were our planes. So no, NATO is a paper tiger.

Now he's coming to see me on Wednesday. As you know, he's a wonderful guy. Secretary General is great.

And Mark Rutte, he's a great person, but he's good. And, you know, it all began with, if you want to know the truth, Greenland. We want Greenland.

They don't want to give it to us. And I said, bye, bye. OK, thank you very much, everybody.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All right, we have been listening to the president having an appearance there in the briefing room about the war in Iran. And we heard them say, welcome home, Dude 44 Alpha and Bravo. Right.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Yes.

KEILAR: Let's talk about what we heard here, because a lot of this had to do with this amazing rescue. And audacity was a word that we heard over and over again, which I think is really apt here. But it was about the rescue, particularly of the second member of this crew, the weapons systems officer who was hiding in Iran for about three days before being rescued in this operation involving hundreds of special operations troops and 155 aircraft.

They revealed a lot of details about what happened, but he also took a lot of questions about the Iran war. He's saying he believes they're operating in good faith.

SANCHEZ: Yes, he said that he couldn't talk about a ceasefire or any talks that are leading to a potential ceasefire. He did say that he believes that Iran is an active, willing participant. He believes they are negotiating in good faith, even as he says almost in the same minute that the entire country can be taken out in one night.

That night may be tomorrow night. He hopes he doesn't have to. But there's very little in Iran that he says is off limits as he's threatening to blow them back to the Stone Age -- his words.

Let's go to Colonel Cedric Leighton to help break down the details that we just learned about this rescue operation. And initially we learned, Colonel, something that the president confirmed that the F-15 that was shot down was taken down by a heat seeking missile shot from a shoulder mounted weapon.

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes, Boris, that's exactly right. And so when you have a situation like this, where this is the crater of the F-15 that was downed, when you have a situation where that happens, you have to ask yourself, where exactly did that missile come from? You know, was this indigenous Iranian technology or was it coming from Russia or China?

And there's a lot of speculation that those two countries, one of those two countries, may have helped the Iranians actually put that together. And in this particular case, that then results in this kind of a situation because, and you see the crash debris here from the F- 15, because with a heat seeking missile, the radar warning receivers that an F-15 has are not capable of picking that kind of missile up, at least not to the extent that they can from a radar guided missile.

[08:05:00]

A radar guided missile is detectable and the weapons system officer, in this case, Dude 44 Bravo, would have been able to pick that up and deploy countermeasures against that missile so that this right here would not have happened.

So it's a very critical element here. And the fact that President Trump revealed that shows that there is, you know, clearly a concern within the, not only the intelligence community, but within the military, as well as in the White House, that the Iranians may in fact have a bunch of heat seeking missiles. And that could, of course, alter a lot of what we see in this war.

And when it comes to the kinds of strikes that we see right here throughout Iran and throughout the rest of the Middle East, there could be a lot more happening in that regard because of these different weapons systems that are now entering the theater.

KEILAR: All right, Cedric, thank you. If you could stand by for us, let's go to Jim Scuitto who is in Tel Aviv. Jim, what stood out to you from that press conference as we learned a lot about that rescue and also the president's thinking right now is this deadline.

It's been a sliding deadline, but as of now it is set for tomorrow. We're moving quickly toward it.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST AND ANCHOR: Listen, Brianna, it's a long list, hard to keep up with, but there were a lot of headlines in there of note. Let's start on the Iran war because the president appears to be sticking to this deadline of tomorrow night when he says that he repeated multiple times that the U.S. will strike all, he says, of Iran's bridges and their electrical power plants. He even revealed the timing of it, saying it would take place over the course of four hours.

Clearly, they've got a target list ready to do so. He brushed off questions about whether he believes that would be a war crime given we're talking about civilian infrastructure here. And if you think of the Ukraine war, how often have U.S. officials criticized Russia for its attacks on Ukraine's civilian infrastructure. Pete Hegseth, I think it's notable, he did say that today will be the largest volume of strikes since day one against Iran. So even before that deadline, the defense secretary there saying that the pace of U.S. attacks on Iran is picking up right now as we speak. In terms of Iran's attacks on Israel where we are, we've had a fair number of air raid warnings today with continuing incoming fire from Iran.

The other point I would make, Brianna and Boris, were the president's comments again complaining not just about NATO's insufficient support for the war in his view, but he also then singled out Japan, South Korea and Australia, all of whom have mutual defense treaties with the U.S. The president seeming to call into question the value of or the need for those alliances, because you heard him say multiple times the U.S. doesn't even need them. He was expressing frustration that they didn't come to the U.S.'s aid in this war. But then he said, well, we don't need their help anyway because the U.S. military is second to none.

SANCHEZ: Jim, please stand by. Phil, it was notable when he was asked by CNN's Kristen Holmes in the briefing whether reopening the Strait of Hormuz is necessary for any kind of ceasefire to actually be ratified. He effectively said that it's a top priority and then moments later talked about the U.S. charging tolls of vessels that cross the Strait of Hormuz. Obviously not realistic, but he says that the military is planning for it.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: A very significant shift. If you have been watching, trying to figure out and navigating the president's perspective on whether or not the Strait of Hormuz and a potential U.S. military operation to reopen what has been effectively shuttered and now entirely unilaterally managed by Iran over the course of the six weeks of this conflict, he has made very clear in the past couple of weeks that there is a very real possibility that because of the complexity and scale of an operation that would be required, not to mention the risks, he is willing to pull out or call an end to the U.S. role in the conflict without any effort to reopen. Today he made very clear any deal has to include a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

It has to include, as he said, a free flow of trade for oil and everything else that goes through it. To be very clear, that is not something that's happening right now. As you noted, he was asked, is Iran tolling vessels?

As they are currently doing to the tune of millions of dollars inside unilateral deals that they're striking with individual nations and individual shipping industry -- individuals who are making these deals, the president laughed it off, dismissed it, said the U.S. may be the one that charges tolls. Again, to your point, it's not something that's necessarily under consideration right now. As far as I'm aware, the reality is though, Iran has unilateral control and is deciding everything that goes through in this moment.

[08:10:00]

And the president is now saying, once again, the Strait and reopening the Strait is a critical priority. That will be something that will cause certainly GCC countries to exhale a little bit. But the process of getting from here, saying, making that statement to actually putting it into practice is very, very complex.

KEILAR: Kim, it's interesting that rhetorically, and I think this is the thing that it's very easy to pay attention to, rhetorically, he's actually entertaining doing things that many consider to be a war crime, which is targeting of essential civilian infrastructure, power plants. He wouldn't even -- he was asked, would you say that schools are off the table? I mean, it was presented to him, teed up for very clear civilian, and he would not bite on that.

I'm not going to say. But then he also said it seemed to be dangling a carrot. He was talking about helping rebuild Iran.

So it's easy to kind of get lost in the what's going on here where he's talking about bombing a civilian target. What is he talking about? What is his message to Iran with this dangling of the carrot?

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, look, this is why Iran has said today, or the last 24 hours, that it doesn't want to agree to a ceasefire. It wants to stop in the fighting altogether, because having this hanging over their head, that the U.S. could use its firepower to take out the entire electricity grid, desalination facilities and all the bridges really would cripple the country. Let's just think about the definition in the Geneva Conventions of what is allowed and what is not.

You can go after dual use stuff, electricity plants, et cetera, that are being used by the military if it doesn't cause excessive civilian harm. That's the legal term of art. And that's what the International Criminal Court has used to charge various Russian officials with bombing electricity plants and the grid structure in Ukraine. It's how much damage does it cause?

I got to say the other thing, and we're hearing in interviews from Iranians on the ground, they're really starting to shift in their public opinion because they know how hard it was to build this stuff. And they think they could be facing a country without a civilian infrastructure if Trump goes ahead with his plans.

SANCHEZ: That deadline again is tomorrow at 8 p.m. We'll see if ceasefire talks yield any results. Kim, Phil, Colonel Leighton and Jim Sciutto, thank you so much.

As the president was speaking, we have some major breaking news.

Artemis II has done something no humans have ever done before. They broke the new distance record previously set by the Apollo 13 mission. We're going to bring you the historic moment after a quick break.

Stay with us.

[08:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: We're following breaking news on the historic events unfolding in space at this hour. Just moments ago, the Artemis II crew traveled farther in space than any human has ever gone before, surpassing a record set by the Apollo 13 crew some 56 years ago.

KEILAR: Yes, these four NASA astronauts in the Orion capsule will soon be taking part in the highly anticipated lunar flyby as they're getting a glimpse of the far side of the moon with that. We have a panel of correspondents and experts who are covering this momentous day with us. CNN's Randi Kaye is at Johnson Space Center.

And we're also joined by Colonel Terry Virts, who is a retired NASA astronaut, and Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester. He's also the author of the Everyman's Universe newsletter.

Let's begin with you, Randi. Bring us up to speed on where things stand right now.

RANDI KAYE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they have a lot of work ahead of them today, Brianna. Certainly, the astronauts are busy while in space approaching the moon, but there was a little time to celebrate just around 1:56 p.m. today, just a short time ago. They were celebrating the fact that they did pass Apollo 13's distance record.

Here's that moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEREMY HANSEN, CANADIAN ARTEMIS ASTRONAUT: From the cabin of Integrity here, as we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from planet Earth, we do so in honoring the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors in human space exploration. We will continue our journey even further into space before Mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything that we hold dear. But we most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, Integrity, and congratulations to you and the rest of the Artemis II team.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAYE: It was a really, really special moment, and another special moment today we just have to share with you. It is when Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen suggested that they name one of the craters that they're going to find on the moon that they're going to observe after Carroll Wiseman.

Carroll Wiseman is Commander Reid Wiseman's wife who passed away in 2020 from cancer, and that moment had the crew in tears aboard Artemis II. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[08:20:00]

HENSEN: We lost a loved one. Her name was Carroll. The spouse of Reid, the mother, Janie and Ellie. And if you want to find this one, you look at GLUSCO and it's just to the northwest of that at the same latitude as home, and it's a bright spot on the map, and we would like to call it Carroll, and you spell that C-A-R-R-O-L-L.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAYE: That was a really special moment. Obviously, this crew has been together for years now training, and they are very, very close. And just to note here, very important that the lunar flyby window is officially open. It opened just a moment ago, so their lunar flyby is underway.

At about 6:44 p.m., we do expect that the crew of Artemis II is going to lose contact with mission control here at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. It's expected they'll lose contact for about 40 minutes when the Earth sets behind the moon, and they'll regain contact when the Earth rises again, and then at 7:02 p.m., they will have their closest approach to the moon. That will be about 4,070 miles away from the moon, and then at 7:07 p.m. tonight, they will reach their maximum distance from Earth, about 252,000 miles away. For some perspective, the International Space Station is about 250 miles away, so this is a heck of a lot further, and then the lunar flyby will conclude around 9 p.m. tonight.

SANCHEZ: Some storybook moments where no one has been before. Wow.

KEILAR: I have something in my eye.

SANCHEZ: Got to take a deep breath.

KEILAR: Something in my eye, Boris. Something in my eye.

SANCHEZ: Colonel Virts, to you, what does it mean for these astronauts to set this record and taking humanity further than it's ever been?

COL. TERRY VIRTS, RETIRED NASA ASTRONAUT: Well, that was a really special moment seeing that. I love that we're going to name a crater Carroll. I knew Carroll on Reid's first flight.

He flew with the Russians on a Soyuz. I was his backup, and we get to know all the families and stuff, and that was a really touching moment for me. That was kind of hard to watch, but it's such a significant thing.

What's actually happening flying furthest from Earth ever, you always see the graphic where the moon is sitting there, and they do this figure eight around it. That's not what's happening. What really happened is the capsule is going far away from Earth, and the moon is far away, and then the moon's going to fly by underneath them between us and the capsule, between Earth and the capsule, and then keep on going and pull it back.

So an actual graphic, that would be interesting for your CNN graphics team to show what they actually did. Think of it as the capsule goes up, the moon flies by underneath them, and then it pulls it back to Earth. So that's what's happening right now. Sir Isaac Newton is in charge. The rockets aren't firing to keep it there. It's just following gravity per Isaac Newton, as we used to say.

KEILAR: That's awesome. All right, we'll get our graphics team right on that. I think they're listening in, so we'll have them work on that.

Adam, astrophysics this for us, because that was fascinating to hear this sort of process that this is going to take.

ADAM FRANK, PROFESSOR OF ASTROPHYSICS, UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER: Yes, you know, the way I like to describe this is that we don't fly through space, we surf it, right? That they're these two deep gravity wells, and like a kid on a surfboard who's sort of playing, you know, in an empty pool, what you're ending up doing is you're dropping in, so to speak, and then surfing around the gravity well, popping over the lip into the moon's gravity well, and then coming around again.

So, you know, they fired the rockets a while back. They don't have to fire them again. Now it's just all the shape of space, so to speak, or the shape of gravity that is guiding them on this journey.

SANCHEZ: They are hanging 10 out there somewhere in the darkness. Colonel, help us put into perspective what this mission means for the broader goal that NASA has when it comes to space exploration.

VIRTS: Sure. I love that analogy, by the way. I'm going to use the surfing analogy from now on.

So, in the big picture of what we're doing for space exploration, this is just a steppingstone. I was a test pilot. Whenever you have a new aircraft, you don't just have it do everything on the first flight.

You have a buildup approach. So, this is a steppingstone, step one. The next mission, they're going to test out the lunar landers, hopefully two of them, in Earth orbit, and then hopefully on the mission after that, they'll actually go land on the moon.

There's a lot of flux right now, but that's the plan for now. But the bigger picture, I think, besides the technical, how we're getting to the moon, this is a great day for humanity. I mean, today's kind of a contrast of the best and worst of humanity.

[08:25:00]

And this is the best. And it's not just Americans. I'm very proud of America for all that we've done here.

But Jeremy Hansen's a Canadian astronaut, the service module, that's the big rocket engine that pushed them to go out to the moon is made by the Europeans. So it's a great day for all of humanity.

KEILAR: Yes, it's so exciting. And this moment where they're going to go no comms for 40 minutes, Adam, some people are so Zen about this. Some people are like chewing pencils in half. What do you think?

FRANK: Yes, I think we've done this before. So I'm not really too worried about it. What's exciting, though, is that some people sort of have also a hard time thinking about is that they're going to see the far side of the moon.

And why is that a big deal? Well, in the previous missions 50 years ago, we were always flying on when the far side of the moon was in the sun's shadow, so that nobody could see it, right? But this time because the mission is at a different time in the Earth moon orbit.

So the moon, in this case, the backside is partially illuminated. So they're going to see things that no one, no human eye has ever seen before directly. And there's some really interesting science to be done, particularly this giant crater that they're going to see that's hundreds of miles across and was from a like a 40 mile across asteroid that slammed into the moon billions of years ago.

SANCHEZ: Wow, can't wait to see the photos from that. Turn up some Pink Floyd and think about Artemis II just floating in space.

KEILAR: Surfing.

SANCHEZ: Colonel Terry Virts and Adam Frank, thank you both so much. We have much more on this historic moment right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

END