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Top Officials Gather At White House Amid Uncertainty Over Iran; Some In MAGA Questioning Trump Assassination Attempt; Victims' Parents Hold Capitol Hill Vigil For Victims Of Online Dangers; Trump To Read Bible Verses As Part Of Week-Long Faith Event. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired April 21, 2026 - 15:30   ET

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

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[15:30:10]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Right now, a team of U.S. investigators, negotiators, I should say, is gathered at the White House amid uncertainty over the next steps in peace talks with Iran. Here to discuss these developments is Matt Miller. He's a former State Department spokesperson under President Biden, also a former National Security Council special adviser. Matt, thanks so much for being with us.

So these talks are apparently on hold. Vice President Vance, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner gathered at the White House, taking part in meetings, awaiting a phone call, perhaps from Tehran or from Islamabad to head over to Pakistan.

What do you think it'll take to kick start these discussions?

MATT MILLER, FORMER STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON UNDER BIDEN: I think right now the president really is in advice of his own making, where on the one hand, he desperately wants an end to this war. He needs it for economic reasons, he needs it for political reasons. But on the other hand, all the tools that he traditionally uses and that you've seen him use over the last few weeks, threats, bluster, misstatements about the status of negotiations, actually just make it harder to reach a deal. So if I were the White House, I would do a few things.

Number one, I'd stop talking so much publicly about these negotiations. Every time I think you see the president come out and say, for example, the Iranians have agreed to something that they haven't agreed to, it makes it that much harder for the Iranians to actually even enter into negotiations, let alone to reach an agreement that would be acceptable to the United States. That's the first thing I would do. I think after that, I would focus on just getting the Strait of Hormuz open as a primary matter.

We seem to have somehow coupled these two issues, the Strait of Hormuz and the status of the Iranian nuclear program that don't need to be coupled together. I would try to decouple them, focus on what's the emergency, which is the Strait being closed, and work on the status of the Iranian nuclear program as a more long term issue. But first they just have to get back to the table. And to do that, I

think the President needs to take down the tone a little bit and stop just talking so much and adding so much uncertainty to the status of negotiations.

SANCHEZ: You think that ending the blockade on the Gulf of Oman would be the right step forward? The administration is arguing that would likely bring Tehran closer to the negotiating table and would weaken their position because it would create more leverage. They couldn't profit as much from exports of oil. You don't see it that way.

MILLER: Look, I'm not sure it was the right step to impose that blockade in the first place, but now, having done it, I certainly wouldn't pull a blockade off or nothing. In the types of negotiations like this, you don't give up something for nothing. So I would want to make sure I got something for that. Perhaps the reopening of the strait.

Look, it looked like we had achieved. Looked like the administration had achieved the opening of the Strait of Hormuz.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

MILLER: You had the Iranian foreign minister come out and say that maybe as a lone actor, maybe without approval from the IRGC or other actors within Iran, we don't have a lot of clarity about how decision making is actually happening. But that lasted for less than 24 hours before it was clear the strait was closed again.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

MILLER: So that may be a bargaining chip to get it open. And it may be that you need some goodwill steps to get to negotiations. Sometimes in the course of diplomacy, you might have goodwill steps where the White House might say, we will temporarily suspend the blockade.

In return, Iran says it will temporarily open the strait, and that gets you to the table to negotiate something more permanent.

SANCHEZ: You alluded to a potential dynamic here. And the fact is, we don't have a ton of clarity on who exactly is making the decisions in Tehran because we haven't seen the new Ayatollah or heard from him directly.

Do you think that perhaps there's dissent within some of the diplomatic core in Tehran and the IRGC and these other factions? How does that complicate this process?

MILLER: I think there almost certainly is debate within the Iranian system. If you look at just the history of diplomacy between the United States and Iran over the past couple of decades, there has always been on the Iranian side a contest between the hardliners and the moderates. I shouldn't even call them moderates. The relative moderates inside the system.

SANCHEZ: Right. Like hardline and more hardliner.

MILLER: Yes, exactly. I mean, if you look at how the Iran nuclear deal was able to get over the line during the Obama administration, it was because the relative moderates inside the system won a debate and convinced the Supreme Leader to agree to that deal over the objections of the more hardline elements, especially the IRGC.

We have less certainty now because of the death of the supreme leader. The elevation of a new supreme leader whose health status we are not really sure of. We don't have -- we have less certainty now, at least on the outside. We don't know what intelligence the administration is seeing. But we have less uncertainty than we've ever had, I think, about who's actually calling the shots inside Iran.

But certainly, there has to be this kind of historical debate going on. And that gets back to this point of view about the president needing to talk less. There are things that the Iranians hold very dear, points of national pride for them. One of the points of national pride, one of the existential, the reasons of existence for this regime, is standing up against what they call the great Satan, standing up against America, holding the line on behalf of the entire Muslim world, as they would represent it on behalf of America.

So when the president comes out and says, the Iranians have caved, they've agreed to everything that we have.

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They've agreed to everything that we have that just empowers the hardliners over the moderates. And ultimately we need the moderates to win this contest inside the Iranian system if we were to get any kind of agreement that's acceptable to our interests.

SANCHEZ: Matt Miller, thanks so much for sharing your perspective.

MILLER: Yes, thanks for having me.

SANCHEZ: Coming up, a renewed push for online safety legislation. Victims' parents are in Washington demanding changes to social media platforms to better protect children. Stay with us.

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SANCHEZ: Conspiracy theories about President Trump's first assassination attempt have now infiltrated MAGA. Some liberals have always entertained conspiracies about the Butler shooting, but recently, notable figures on the right have started asking questions. Here's CNN's Donie O'Sullivan

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MARY MANN, ANTI-TRUMP PROTESTER: And what really frightens me and scares me and makes me angry suddenly, now I'm in on a conspiracy theory.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: If you want to really see something that said, take a look at what happened.

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Some liberals have long dabbled in conspiracy theories about the Trump assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.

MANN: The first thing that ran through my head is because we cannot believe this man ever that it was somehow fit.

O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Like these women I met at an anti-Trump protest outside the RNC a couple of days after Butler.

O'SULLIVAN: So you initially thought it was staged?

MANN: Yes, as we all did.

O'SULLIVAN: Do you -- do you still believe that?

MANN: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We don't know.

MANN: I'm not sure. It's not impossible, but I couldn't help but wonder because we've been lied to over and over by this man. The way he came up and raised his fist and acted like it was nothing.

O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Since the early days of the investigation, the FBI has repeatedly pushed back on conspiracy theories about Trump's would be assassin Thomas Crooks. Both Justice Departments under President Joe Biden and Donald Trump have found the same thing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just to be clear, did Thomas Crooks act alone?

KASH PATEL, FBI DIRECTOR: Yes, based on the evidence that we have. That is the conclusive finding of the matter.

O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): But over the last few weeks, as many are speaking out against the Iran war --

TIM DILLON, COMEDIAN: Just admit you staged it in Butler. It was the heat of the campaign. People do crazy things in campaigns.

O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Prominent people who supported Trump's reelection campaign, like comedian Tim Dillon, have started to express doubts about what happened in Butler that day. Trump survived, but Corey Comparator who was standing in the crowd behind him died.

DILLON: Now of course a real person died and that's terrible, RIP. And they should say that in high stakes things like this, stuff like that happens.

TUCKER CARLSON, CONSERVATIVE HOST: Joe, thanks a lot for joining us.

O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Butler conspiracy theories really started to pick up in the MAGA world after Joe Kent appeared on the Tucker Carlson show last month. Kent was a high ranking intelligence official who resigned in protest over the Iran war.

JOE KENT, FORMER TRUMP INTELLIGENCE OFFICIAL: I mean, we still don't know what happened in Butler. We don't know what happened with, with Charlie Kirk. And by no means am I saying like, you know, the Israelis did this or, or any of that, but I'm saying there's a lot of unanswered questions there.

O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Trisha Hope, who is a Trump delegate at the RNC in 2024, has been vocal online about her doubts posting, since the attempt on his life, Trump has shown no interest in investigating what really happened. He never mentions it as if it never happened except when he tells us he took a bullet for us.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has shared Trish's post and she added over the weekend, I'm not calling the Butler assassination a hoax, but there are a lot of questions that deserve public answers.

CARLSON: The far more involves the government, the DOJ and the FBI, which have hidden from the public what they know about Thomas Crooks.

O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Donie O'Sullivan, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Today, a group of parents and advocates were on Capitol Hill to fight for a better future. They held a vigil earlier sharing 150 roses in tribute to their children who they say were harmed or died because of online dangers, cyberbullying, extreme influencers and persuasive AI tools.

Now the parents are pressuring lawmakers to finally pass federal legislation to enhance Internet safety, trying to build on the momentum from recent wins in court against Big Tech. One advocate, a 25-year-old woman from Tennessee, said her generation needs Congress to act.

AVA SMITHING, DIRECTOR OF ADVOCACY, YOUNG PEOPLE'S ALLIANCE: And this might sound dramatic, but I don't think I've ever known a day of liberty in my whole life. Me and my entire generation have been told our entire life how to look. Our information has been tracked and sold. We've been told how to feel, how to dress. We've been exploited. We've been addicted.

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KEILAR: Our next guest also spoke out today. Christine McComas daughter Grace was 15 years old when she died by suicide after being cyberbullied and she inspired Grace's law in Maryland. Christine, thank you so much for being here and for carrying on your

daughter's memory for so many other children.

Tell us a little bit about Grace forever 15, forever beautiful and full of life in this picture we see her. Tell us about her. CHRISTINE MCCOMAS, DAUGHTER GRACE DIED BY SUICIDE AFTER CYBER BULLYING: Well, that's what makes things so difficult is she was a bright light from birth. You know, she had big blue eyes and a bubbly laugh and was really the most joy filled person I've ever known. And it wasn't a child that was at risk.

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And after a drug assisted sexual assault at 14 was followed by terrible death, wishing hatred online, including terroristic threats like snitches should have their fingers cut off one by one while they watch their families burn. And this was long ago at this point. She was -- she died on Easter Sunday of 2012. But we immediately began speaking out because I had never seen that kind of damage.

But also back then, it's hard to think back far enough before the time of social media and smartphones, but we didn't know how interconnected kids were and how inescapable because it's pervasive and just goes everywhere. And so Grace's Law in Maryland was made less than a year after she died. And it was updated in 2019 to cover some other things that are now problematic like sextortion and suicide baiting.

KEILAR: You were really on the frontier of that realization of just how pervasive this can be. I think parents are, they're starting to understand that. Right? And yet this attempt to really regulate through Congress has languished for so long.

I was up on the Hill a few years ago. I was covering a hearing where there was bipartisan buy in. Senators Blumenthal and Blackburn were pushing for the passage of the Kids Online Safety Act. And yet even though it passed the Senate in 2024, didn't come up for vote in the House. It's been reintroduced in 2025. Does it feel different right now to you?

MCCOMAS: It does. And I was at that same hearing when Zuckerberg stood up and turned around and apologized. And then he spent millions and millions fighting any kind of guardrails put around to protect children and their well-being and their privacy. And it has changed.

And what has changed lately is that there's a watershed of understanding that the products can be dangerous. It's the way they're designed. It's not because somebody else put something out there. It's the way.

Not unlike Big Tech back in the day. Big, I'm sorry, not unlike Big Tobacco back in the day. Big Tech intentionally is designing for attention for kids' attention that they cannot get off. It's addictive because they collect data points on them. Millions and millions. Like 72 million data points by the time they're 13. And then they sell that for billions of dollars in ads aimed at those same kids and the social media victims.

The addiction trials that just wrapped up in California and they were found guilty for those things as well as the AG of New Mexico. That case also came back against Big Tech. Those are huge. The documents that are brought forward in Discovery. And the whistleblowers that have come forward have made it very clear that these companies are acting in ways that they deny.

But now here's the documentation where they know it's addictive. They even laugh about it amongst themselves that it's a drug and they're pushers and, you know, so the Kids Online Safety Act is teed up and almost ready to go again.

The Senate version is what needs to pass. And we just don't have any more time to wait because we were in the gallery of the Senate when it passed 91 to 3, and we were elated. We were so excited. And then it went over to the House side and House leadership wouldn't ever meet with us and still hasn't, and then didn't bring it to the floor.

It had support to pass, but they killed the bill. And it's a -- it's a travesty.

KEILAR: We've seen, you know, in the 2010s, when you lost your daughter, how interconnected teens are, young people are. We're now in a new place with AI and I wonder, as you are fighting for other parents so that they are not in your place and you're fighting for other kids so they aren't in Grace's place. What are you worried that we are staring down here?

MCCOMAS: Well, I'm very worried about. The House did put a bill up that was watered down and wasn't strong and didn't have a duty of care and had preemption, which cannot happen. We've gotten multiple laws made in Maryland.

KEILAR: Explain.

MCCOMAS: Because of preemption. Preemption is that, let's say we got the Maryland Kids Code made in Maryland, which is similar to the Kids Online Safety Act at the federal level, or COSA, we call it. But there have been underhanded attempts to have preemption or an AI moratorium slipped into the back of a bill or where they can wipe any state laws off the books.

And then in one point, the AI moratorium was that no one could make any new laws against AI or enforce any that were already on the books for 10 years. And we can all know that with AI and now chatbots have been implicated in the deaths of multiple children.

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You know, the fact that anybody would think after we've learned personally what has happened when they let social media free without any guardrails that we would even consider doing that with AI because we don't even know what it can do yet.

KEILAR: Christine, thank you so much for being here and speaking with us about something that's so important and so many families are paying a lot of attention to. We really appreciate it.

MCCOMAS: I hope so. People need to let their representatives know that the Kids Online Safety Act needs to pass this year.

KEILAR: Christine, thanks for being with us. MCCOMAS: Thank you.

KEILAR: We'll be right back.

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KEILAR: Soon we will be hearing President Trump reading scripture. He is among hundreds of participants taking part in a week-long event called America Reads the Bible. The president actually recorded his message last week.

SANCHEZ: The context here, this is after his recent spat with the Pope over the war in Iran. Trump also receiving backlash for posting then deleting this AI generated picture of himself as Jesus, though the president said he thought that he was being depicted as a doctor in this photograph.

KEILAR: Let's bring in CNN Vatican analyst Katie McGrady. She's the host of the Katie McGrady Show on SiriusXM's the Catholic Channel and SiriusXM's the Catholic Channel, we should note, is operated by the Archdiocese of New York.

Katie, thanks for being with us. Why do you think organizers saved this passage for an elected official to read? This particular passage.

KATIE MCGRADY, CNN VATICAN ANALYST: It comes from 2 Chronicles and it's a passage of God speaking to leaders, specifically to King Solomon. And I hope that it was chosen to be read by the president, which I believe was the organizer's dream and hope and they got what they wanted with President Trump recording it.

Not because we want the president to sound like God, though he posted himself as that. I hope it's because they want the president to hear this call to repentance. That's what this passage is all about. Repent, follow me, turn back to God. Listen to my voice.

Look, I think it's a good thing for the Bible to be read publicly. I hope it's done from a place of piety and not performance. And it's not like we haven't had public shows of faith, especially in big celebration years or in times of great struggle. You know, famously Abraham Lincoln called for a period of prayer and fasting during the Civil War. But I would hope that this reading of Scripture is the use of the Bible as a call back to the Lord and not as like a bludgeon for political beliefs and opinions.

SANCHEZ: Katie, this back and forth with Pope Leo comes during this historic trip that the Pope has taken to Africa. He's pushing back on what he's calling a certain narrative about the trip. He says that he wasn't trying to have a debate with the President of the United States. What do you make of the Pope's comments?

MCGRADY: You know, I think he was right to clarify. You actually asked me last week, Boris, you know, how does the Pope decide what to say? Speeches on a trip like this are written with a group of advisors, with a team of people who kind of know the lay of the land with where he's visiting. And so we can't take things out of context.

At the same time, the Holy Father speaks globally. Anytime he speaks, even to the room he's in, the world should have ears to hear. So like today, he specifically said, I made note about it. The name of God should not be profaned by the will to dominate. We'd do well to hear that here in the States. Even though he was saying that to a room full of people who have had a lot of political strife and dictatorship that they faced.

So when he clarified that, I think it was because he wanted to ensure, look, I'm not fighting, I'm not in the spat. It all came from one side. The Pope's wrong, the Pope's weak on crime. The Holy Father is going to preach the gospel and he's going to say it regardless of where he happens to be in the world.

This trip to Africa, big crowds, excited crowds. The Holy Father has visited tons of places, schools and nursing homes. A university was named after him. He was there for the dedication of it today. It has been a triumphant apostolic journey and everything he said available on the Vatican website and well worth reading.

KEILAR: Katie, we'd be remiss if we didn't ask you this last question, which is that as today marks one year since Pope Francis passed, you have these tributes that are pouring in, including from Pope Leo. And in Francis, his home country of Argentina, a 50 something Catholic priest celebrated the late pontiff we with a rave. You know, I wonder what you think Francis would think of that.

MCGRADY: I think he'd be rocking and rolling with him. I had the great joy of being with Pope Francis back in 2018 at a gathering of youth and young adults. And I frequently tell the story. You know, Francis always showed up early, he always tried to beat the crowd and he showed up about a half hour early to our meeting and just kind of slipped in the back.

And of course we all went wild. 300 young adults excited to see the Pope. I think celebrations of his memory, of great happy memory. We miss him dearly. There is also a plaque unveiled in St Mary Major today making reference to how many times he went and prayed at his favorite Marian icon. His legacy is long lasting. Leo in Africa is an extension of how Francis challenged us all to go to the margins. And I think happy is his memory and we hope he's praying for us.

SANCHEZ: And Katie McGrady, thank you so much for sharing your perspective with us. Appreciate your time.

MCGRADY: Thank you, guys.

SANCHEZ: And thank you for sharing your afternoon with us.