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Tom Kloza is Interviewed about Gas Prices; Tech Leaders Weigh Future of A.I. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired April 10, 2026 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:33:37]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking just a few minutes ago, brand new numbers on inflation. Inflation, way, way up. Biggest jump in two years on an annual basis. Biggest jump in about four years on a monthly basis. These are tough numbers. You can see right there, up 0.9 percent month to month, 3.3 percent year to year. Gas prices are up a record 21 percent in March. This is all because of the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

With us now is Tom Kloza, the chief energy advisor for Gulf Oil.

Tom, great to see you this morning.

What are you hearing about the Strait? How open is it?

TOM KLOZA, CHIEF ENERGY ADVISER, GULF OIL: It's not open at the moment. I mean, it's still closed. There's some hope that maybe these weekend talks will lead to some more transit through there. But, in the meantime, we're losing about 10 million barrels a day of product that normally exits there.

By the way, on those numbers you just cited, it's much worse than what those numbers show. By my count, gasoline prices are up by about 40 percent from where they were at the end of February. So, you know, it's -- the March numbers were pretty ugly and April numbers look to be similarly ugly for the public.

BERMAN: It's a -- it's an average over the course of the month.

[09:35:02]

So, there's a lag time between what has ended up as and what the number shows. But I certainly get your point there.

If the Strait remains as it is, I should note, gas prices actually ticked down a smidge today. Like basically, you know, a cent and a half. But if the Straits don't open up more, how likely are these decreases to continue?

KLOZA: I think we're going to see -- you know, the market is going to be doing the cha cha as opposed to the tango with these big dips and increases. We're seeing gas prices recede ever so slightly today. There's a definite rocket and feather to it. And you may see, you know, prices come off a bit. It's actually very typical this decade to peak in mid-April, but it all depends on the Strait. You know, if they don't get the Strait open, you're trading crude oil for $125 or $150 and gasoline, diesel, jet fuel will continue to be incredibly expensive.

BERMAN: So, there is a suggestion that Iran already is charging tolls. Of course it's unclear, hard to tell exactly, but they certainly -- it is something that they want to do going forward, charge these tankers for going through the Strait.

President Trump himself has floated the notion of the United States collecting some of that money, along with Iran. What would the impact be on the oil business if all of a sudden, you know, that 20-mile stretch became a toll booth?

KLOZA: Well, I think the impact under any circumstances will be that we'll pay more in the, you know, last seven months of 2026 than we would have without the war. But exactly how they would affect kind of an Iranian easy pass for tankers in the Strait, I have no idea.

Look, everybody can talk about this and they can come up with the greatest scholarship in the world, but to a great extent, everyone is making this up as they go along.

BERMAN: Yes. I mean, we've never seen anything quite like this before. And frankly, the Iranians are doing something they have never quite done before in the world. And traders now need to adjust for it.

But let's talk best case scenario. You know, they're going into talks tomorrow. Maybe it's the beginning of some kind of a peace deal. How long would things take to get back to, I suppose the word I wanted to use was normal, but a normal? How long would they take to settle somewhere? And where would that be?

KLOZA: OK. I think we've lost probably about 400 million barrels of crude. Now, before this all happened, we had a buffer and we had excess crude. They talked about a super glut. You know, the Strait was essentially the kryptonite for the super glut at this point,

I think we'd see prices moderate, particularly for gasoline, if they reopen the Strait right away. I don't think we're going to go back down to where we would have been in the second half of the year, which is less than $3 a gallon under any circumstances. It would take a crude oil price of less than $70 to bring back those numbers.

So, it's going to be more expensive. It could still be quite affordable if they reach some sort of accord here. But, you know, you're losing so much oil every day that time is of the essence.

BERMAN: Tom Kloza, I got to say, you do such a nice job explaining it in a way that allows us all to understand what's happening and what we see at the gas station but don't always know the components that are going into it. We appreciate your time this morning. Hopefully we can speak to you next week if there's some better news. So, President Trump goes nuclear on some of his political pals. What

he is saying about Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly.

And a smash and grab caught on camera at a jewelry store. How the owners of the shop tried to fight back.

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[09:43:42]

BERMAN: Overnight, President Trump going hard on some of his really political allies, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, others. This is what he wrote about Carlson. Again, they have been critical of the war in Iran. He wrote, "Carlson, who couldn't even finish college, he was a broken man when he got fired from Fox, and he's never been the same. Perhaps he should see a good psychiatrist." That was some of the nicer stuff he wrote.

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten is here right now.

So, the president attacking Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson going after the president on Iran and other things.

When voters were predisposed to like both of them, look at this, I suppose the question is, what do they see? How are they doing with Republicans and like Republican-leaning independents?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Yes, let's talk -- let's start off with Tucker Carlson, who has been in absolute freefall with Republicans. I mean just take a look at this. Look at this trend line. Tucker Carlson's net favorable.

Back in March of 2024, when he and Donald Trump were very close friends, look at this, he was at plus 54 points. Look at where he is today, at only plus seven points among Republicans. And that includes GOP-leaning independents. I mean that is a drop of, what, 47 percentage points. My goodness gracious. When you go up against Donald Trump and you want to appeal to the Republican base, to quote the movie "Good Burger," you go in the grinder.

[09:45:05]

And that is exactly what has happened to Tucker Carlson, who has absolutely collapsed among Republicans.

BERMAN: So, if it is a choice between the president and Tucker Carlson among these voters, what do they basically say?

ENTEN: Yes, they choose Donald Trump basically every single time. Look at this. OK, the exact same poll, this UMass Lowell poll. Look at this, net favorables among Republicans. Again, this is Republicans plus Republican-leaning independents. You see Carlson on the right side of your screen at plus seven points. Look at where Donald Trump is, at plus 61 points. And this is actually a little bit low for Donald Trump. In other polls around the same time, he was even higher than this. Again, he is crushing, crushing Tucker Carlson. What is this? This is a 54-point advantage for Donald Trump over Tucker Carlson when it comes to who is more popular among Republican voters.

And, of course, this isn't even just talking about the MAGA base where Donald Trump is running an approval rating somewhere between 97 and 100 percent.

BERMAN: OK. So, what does this mean for Tucker Carlson going forward? Say Tucker Carlson wanted to build some kind of a platform where he could run for office, say, president.

ENTEN: Yes, OK. So, you see Donald Trump crushing, crushing Tucker Carlson here. Take a look at this. Look at the Kalshi prediction markets when it comes to his chance, Tucker Carlson's chance to be the 2028 GOP nominee for president. It's just five. When you can put it on one hand, you know, it's low. It's just five percent that Tucker Carlson actually has enough support within the GOP, at least those who are putting their money where their mouth is to actually be the GOP nominee in 2028. Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance are running well ahead of him.

BERMAN: OK. So, again, in this -- in this imaginary world, you know, if the prediction markets are wrong, Tucker Carlson were to become a candidate, how might he do?

ENTEN: OK, why don't we take a look against the most likely Democratic nominee, Gavin Newsom? And this is, I think, so important because it's not just that Tucker Carlson struggles now with Republicans, he is electoral poison when it comes to general electorate.

So, Gavin Newsom versus potential GOP nominees in the 2028 presidential matchup. Against Tucker Carlson, look at this, Gavin Newsom crushes, crushes Tucker Carlson by 11 points. J.D. Vance actually beat -- actually beat Gavin Newsom in this poll by three. So, Tucker Carlson, very much struggling, runs way behind the GOP baseline in the general election as well.

BERMAN: You picked -- you picked Newsom because he's leading in some of these early, early polls.

ENTEN: He's the -- he's the most likely Democratic nominee in the prediction markets at this point.

BERMAN: Interesting. Vance beats him right now. But Tucker Carlson, not so much.

ENTEN: Not so much. Not well liked among Republicans and not well liked, hated among the general electorate.

BERMAN: Harry Enten, thank you very much.

ENTEN: Thank you.

BERMAN: Have a lovely weekend.

ENTEN: You have a lovely weekend as well, John.

BERMAN: We got a lot of news. We'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:51:59]

BOLDUAN: So, security camera video shows the moment thieves break into a family-owned jewelry store in NeJ jersey, smashing the front windows, then smashing the display cases, of course, in broad daylight. Just take a look at this. The stores owners were actually there and tried to stop them, but the robbers got away with reportedly $1 million worth of jewelry and they are still on the run. The owners, a mother and daughter, unfortunately, say they are not insured for this loss.

And talk about a wild drive. In the first round of Master -- of the Masters yesterday, Xander Schauffele, I'm going to pretend I said that right, his --

BERMAN: You did.

BOLDUAN: Thank you. His tee shot on the eighth hole didn't go where he was hoping, I'm guessing, but it still was awesome because it landed in a woman's merch bag from the Masters' golf shop. It was hilarious watching them inspect this, like, delicately. As if it's like a bomb squad and they're, like -- think it's going to explode. Ball in the bag. All the things. He was able to drop from the bag with no penalty. The two-time major champ actually thanked the woman, saying that he was fortunate the ball found its way into her bag because otherwise he thinks it would have kept going and put him in a worse position. Schauffele, again, I think I did that right --

BERMAN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: Starts today in a tie for sixth place.

KitKat is beefing up security on shipments right now. The candy company is even deploying escorts and hiring guards now with, quote, big break energy. This is from KitKat's -- KitKat Canada's -- come on, guys, this is hard -- Instagram. This is the aftermath of the massive overseas heist last month that has gotten so much attention. Nestle said 12 tons, or about 400,000 bars were stolen and are still missing. They also even launched a dedicated online tracker apparently where you can enter the barcode on your bar and check if your chocolate was part of the crime. Clearly KitKat is taking this wild threat or this heist and turning it into something very, very fun.

John.

BERMAN: Criminally good chocolate.

BOLDUAN: Oh.

BERMAN: All right, this week, more than 6,000 tech industry insiders gathered in San Francisco to discuss the future of artificial intelligence at the Human X Conference.

CNN tech reporter Clare Duffy was right in the middle of it all. You were there. What was it like? What was your biggest takeaway?

CLARE DUFFY, CNN TECH REPORTER: Well, so there were, as you said, thousands of people working in and around the tech industry gathered at this conference. Everyone from Dr. Fei-Fei Li, who's known as the godmother of A.I., the renowned computer scientist and author, Ray Kurzweil. You had executives from OpenAI and Anthropic. Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang made a video appearance.

And to me the question really at the heart of this conference was not so much what's happening or what's coming, but really, now that A.I. is here, how do we put it to work in a way that actually serves people? And there were a few key issues that came up again and again. One of them, just how do we make A.I. work inside of companies? I interviewed Airbnb CTO Ahmad Al-Dahle (ph), who talked about the fact that 97 percent of their engineers are now using A.I. for coding, saving on average six hours of work a week.

[09:55:02]

But he said even for him this act of managing six to eight A.I. agents that are all doing different tasks on his behalf, that is exhausting and is going to be something that business leaders have to think about as they roll out these tools more widely.

There is also the question of, how do we deal with the labor force changes that have already started to happen. And then this question of trust. How do we make sure that these models are working accurately, effectively, and on our behalf?

I interviewed Visa CTO Rajat Taneja alongside the hip-hop legend Questlove. Obviously, two very different perspectives, but they both came back to this question of trust. And Rajat talked about the fact that Visa is building out technical solutions so we can validate the outputs of these models and agents. And Questlove made the point that we really need more transparency around how these models work, how they're trained, and how do we make sure that the people whose work contributed to them get consent, and that they get compensation for that work?

So, interesting that we're talking a lot about these issues. I think there is a sense that we need to move more quickly towards action to address many of these things, whether through regulation or public pressure.

BERMAN: Yes, because it's not about what's coming anymore, it's about what's here at this point.

DUFFY: What is already here.

BERMAN: Clare Duffy, great to see you. Glad you got to be there for that.

DUFFY: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Thank you so much for being with us, everyone. BERMAN: I had to be.

BOLDUAN: Yes, I mean, you're required.

This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL. "THE SITUATION ROOM" is up next.

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