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GOP Rebukes Trump on Iran War, $1.8 Billion Fund, Ballroom, Intel Pick; Outbreak in DRC May Have Started Months Before WHO was Alerted; Trump Admin Says It Will Dismantle Deep-Ocean Monitoring System. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired June 04, 2026 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:02]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: It's on the wrong trajectory right now.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA REPORTER: No, this is the wrong place. You want to be going up, not down.

BERMAN: How do people feel about the Congressional approval?

ENTEN: Yes, okay. How do people feel about the idea that military force needs Congressional approval? Okay, this is pretty simple. Against presidents using military force without Congress's approval, look at this, 63 percent overall are against the idea that, in fact, you can -- the president could just go willy-nilly without Congressional approval. How about independents? 72 percent, 72 percent, more than two in three independents are against the idea that the president can in fact use military force without Congressional approval.

So, the American people, independents, very much with that House vote yesterday, with the ideas, hey, the president actually has to come to Congress to use military force. And independents especially so, Johnny B., we're talking 72 percent there, and then, of course, my little footnote down here about how Independents feel about the war in general, going from -23 points to -40 points.

Independents, of course, have been such an important part of the president's decaying political coalition. They were pretty much even in the 2024 election, and they have shifted massively against him, and especially on this war.

BERMAN: That's a pretty esoteric notion, though, Congressional approval, because presidents do use military force without Congressional approval, whether or not people approve of it. And this has been going on for decades and decades.

Another esoteric notion is this idea of a ceasefire between the United States and Iran, right, because there is shooting going on back and forth. Nevertheless, what do people -- how do people feel about staying in this condition, this ceasefire?

ENTEN: Whatever exactly this ceasefire is, people want it to continue. Take a look here, and this is the rare trifecta. Continue the Iran ceasefire and the negotiations. Look at this, 77 percent of all Americans. Then you get the rare trifecta. Democrats 96 percent, Independents 81 percent, and even a majority of Republicans here, what we're essentially saying is, yes, they do in fact want the ceasefire to continue.

They like this idea. They do not, in fact, want a re-upstart of, let's say, much more force going on in the Middle East, much more force going on in Iran. They want the current condition to hold, whatever exactly you call it.

BERMAN: It is interesting that fewer Republicans approve of the status quo than Democrats in this case, when it's a president enforcing the status quo. Nevertheless, very interesting.

Harry Enten, thank you very much.

ENTEN: Thank you, Johnny B.

BERMAN: Kate?

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you so much. Joining us right now is Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton, Massachusetts. He's also running for Senate. Congressman, thank you for being here.

On those four Republicans that voted with Democrats yesterday to move forward with the War Powers Resolution, President Trump just socialed about it, calling the vote yesterday meaningless, calling the Republicans that voted with Democrats unpatriotic.

What does and doesn't this vote represent or do, in your view?

REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA): Well, first of all, it's no surprise that the president would have that reaction, because he does not care what Congress says, and he does not care what the Constitution says. This has been an illegal war from the very beginning, but it's also been a really dumb war.

And a lot of Republicans are saying that behind the scenes. A lot of Republicans recognize that we are losing this war, that we are actually giving Iran more leverage. They've never closed the Strait of Hormuz before. And so we've got to cut our losses and get out.

And while we can celebrate the four Republicans who had the courage to tell that truth publicly with their vote yesterday, let's not forget that 208 Republicans voted to rubber-stamp this war. So, 98 percent of the Republicans in the House of Representatives said, hey, we like President Trump's war. We don't mind that it's illegal. We don't mind that it's raising our gas prices. We don't mind that it's giving Iran billions of dollars. We don't mind that our allies in the Middle East have been attacked. We don't mind that 14 Americans are dead. We support this for the president. 98 percent of the Republicans are with the president on this. That's what we should take away.

BOLDUAN: One though -- another aspect of this is some Republicans are saying the timing of this vote just is a bad idea. Trump suggests the timing of the vote hurts his ability to negotiate. Pete Sessions was just on and says the same. He thinks the timing of the vote here is bad, especially when it's not likely to actually go through this many steps of getting -- actually reining in the president. Do you see that aspect of it?

MOULTON: Wait a minute. I thought you just told me, Kate, that the president said this vote was meaningless. So, now he's saying that it hurts negotiations?

BOLDUAN: In the same social media, he's saying both can be true at once, is what he is saying.

MOULTON: In his world. In the real world, Americans want this war to end.

BOLDUAN: Let me ask you about Bill Pulte, Trump's new director of national intelligence. He's facing a lot of questions about whether he has any qualifications to hold the job. In addition, Scott Bessent was asked yesterday about another aspect of his past and his resume, how the treasury secretary and Bill Pulte in his job as federal housing -- at the Federal Housing Authority, almost got into a fight.

[08:35:04]

Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): Did you actually tell Pulte you were going to punch him in the face?

SCOTT BESSENT, TREASURY SECRETARY: No, sir. I actually said I was going to kick his ass.

TILLIS: Good. Okay. Good. I share the emotion. Thank you.

BESSENT: And as I said, that was last summer, summer of '25, and many teams have fights in the locker room and then go out and win for the team on the field.

TILLIS: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: It's just an exchange that really requires being played again, but also the same question endures regardless of how long do you think Pulte is going to have this job?

MOULTON: I mean, God knows. His number one qualification seems to be that he created that meme of Trump as Jesus, and I guess that's what makes you qualified to be the director of National Intelligence. But the point I would make, Kate, is while that everybody is focused on how historically unqualified this total hack is, it's dangerous. This is not just about putting someone in a position that's not qualified for the position and it looks bad or whatever, this is dangerous for the United States of America. The director of National Intelligence is a position that was created after 9/11 because the intelligence agencies didn't coordinate well enough to prevent that attack that killed thousands of Americans. Well, we know there are terrorists out there today that still want Americans dead. We know that Iran is trying to assassinate Americans on our home soil because of what we're doing in Iran. We know that Russia is conducting gray zone attacks in Eastern Europe, and they are upset about our support for Ukraine, so they want to see Americans dead.

We have a lot of enemies around the globe, and when you put a hack in the position of director of National Intelligence, it makes every one of us here at home less safe.

BOLDUAN: You are running for Senate, as I mentioned. Another Democrat running for Senate is running in Maine, Graham Platner. He has faced controversy over a few things, over his tattoo, you defended him over that, I saw that. He's also facing controversy over exchanging sexually explicit text messages with multiple women, which his wife flagged to the campaign on her own.

When he was just in Washington, though, meeting with Democratic senators, seeming to want to allay concerns about his candidacy, they asked him, what if there is more? And that is a question, what if there is more? Is that -- do you think that would then be too much for Graham Platner to continue?

MOULTON: I mean, we just don't know. We just don't know what more can come out. But I do know this, that he's running against a senator who every single day rubber stamps Trump's agenda, a senator who, just like 98 percent of the Republican Party, supports this war in Iran that's raising everybody's gas prices, that's getting Americans killed, that's killing innocent people in the Middle East, that's hurting our allies, that's taking our eye off the ball when it comes to deterring and preventing a war with China in Asia.

So, all of these things that Susan Collins does every single day are bad. And I think voters in Maine are going to have to make a decision that only they can make weighing those two alternatives.

BOLDUAN: Part of this conversation gets to the direction of the Democratic Party and where it should head now. Jill Biden was on The View the other day and said that she -- and she was asked if she still thought that Joe Biden would have been in a good place to serve as president for another four years. She said, not from what I know now, and he is battling cancer now. But age and generational change has become a central focus of your Senate campaign against Senator Ed Markey. What do you make of what Jill Biden is saying now?

MOULTON: I think she's coming to the realization that all the rest of us knew that there comes a time and a place to pass the torch, to move on. You know, I have a lot of respect for Senator Markey. He served our country for half a century. In fact, he's been in Washington longer than every other member of the House and Senate except for Chuck Grassley, and we should thank him for that service. But he would be 86 at the end of his next term if he's reelected. And I'm just not sure that the voters of Massachusetts want that.

I think there comes a time to pass the torch to the next generation, and what better time than when the Democratic establishment is just not getting it done? I mean, if you honestly are a Democrat today who says, you know, Democrats are knocking it out of the park. You know, we're winning all across the board. We shouldn't change a thing, then vote for the establishment. Vote for Chuck Schumer. Vote for the status quo.

But if you think we should be doing better, if you think it's time for a new generation of Democratic leaders, if you think it's time for us to take the lead on the economy, to show that we are the party of national security, to show that we are the party that will fight Trump and MAGA Republicans every single day and win, then it's time for a new generation of Democrats, and that's why I'm running for Senate.

BOLDUAN: Congressman Seth Moulton, thank you for coming on.

[08:40:00]

I look forward to hearing Ed Markey's response. John?

BERMAN: All right. This morning CNN has learned that Ebola may have been spreading for months before health officials realized what they were dealing with.

With us now, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. And, Sanjay, the WHO says that, you know, the first known case was April, but it could've been spreading before that. What are the implications of that new timeline?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So, what we're talking about is maybe back to February, February 22nd, in fact, when a patient now got sick, had symptoms of Ebola and going back and looking at that, realize that that was probably the first case, or at least the first identified case. Clarissa Ward talked about this. That would make it 11 weeks earlier than was previously recognized.

So, the implications are, you know, when you look at this graph that you've been seeing for some time, you'd have to sort of move back the day zero, when you sort of -- when this sort of started, and also think about the fact that contact tracing, sort of understanding people who may have been affected by that initial patient or initial patients, may not have yet been identified.

So, that is the sort of hallmark of trying to control an epidemic or an outbreak in this case, trying to figure out who are those early cases, who might they potentially be spreading to, keeping in mind, you know, these are pretty remote areas. A lot of these patients have not yet been identified.

So, right now, John, it looks like around 40 to 50 percent of patients in that region are actually getting adequate contact tracing, which means the graph that you see there, the numbers that you hear, are still likely to change quite a bit, John.

BERMAN: It's very interesting. When you look at that graph, it really does put it in perspective.

Sanjay, one of the differences between this outbreak is Americans who have been infected or exposed, some of them are being treated abroad, not here at home, what are the implications of that?

GUPTA: Yes. This has been a big topic. You may remember back in 2014, there were patients, Americans who got Ebola in Africa. They were subsequently brought back to centers in the United States, given treatments, all of that back home. So far, you know, you've heard about patients going to other countries in Europe potentially, building a facility in Kenya. It's a challenging proposition.

I did get a chance to ask Dr. Jay Bhattacharya about this, he's head of NIH and acting director of the CDC, about the specifics around this. Listen to this exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: In 2014, the patients came home to great centers in Atlanta, Nebraska, other places around the country. Why not now? Is this public health, or is this more of a political sort of decision?

DR. JAY BATTACHARYA, NIH DIRECTOR AND CDC ACTING DIRECTOR: No, it's public health, Sanjay. So, first, the idea is that we have someplace in country if suppose a doctor goes in to treat a patient, people in DRC, right, an American doctor, as American doctor happened to go in. We want a place where they can safely quarantine if they are exposed, right? That provides confidence that they're going to be taken care of, that there isn't going to be like a last-minute, you know, sort of struggle to find a place that they can go, that which sometimes happened in 2014, 2015.

But we're not ruling out moving people out to the United States if things, you know, that we believe that that case requires, you know, sort of more intensive management.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: All right. So, you know, look, we're hearing a little bit of a change in the stance towards bringing Americans home, both from Dr. Bhattacharya and from Senator -- I should say Secretary Rubio, in terms of potentially bringing Americans home. At first, they completely ruled that out. But now, as you heard from Dr. Bhattacharya, if the condition warrants it, someone is sick enough and requires intensive care, they may bring Americans home to get them treated for Ebola, John.

BERMAN: So, Sanjay, this outbreak happening after the Trump administration made a lot of cuts a- and changes to public health programs. What's the impact of that been?

GUPTA: Well, you know, this is, again, a back and forth. Let me just outline some of these cuts, you know, and the potential impacts that we're talking about here. Obviously, you know the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization, dissolved the USAID. There's been cuts at the CDC, reduction in foreign aid overall. I think there was also a significant surging of some resources when this Ebola outbreak was identified, again, in May versus February, which, you know, again, the timeline has sort of moved up a bit. But I asked Dr. Bhattacharya about that specifically, what is the impact of these cuts in the midst of what we're seeing in Africa?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BATTACHARYA: I have not seen any diminishment in our capacity to manage the outbreak. What I do see is a massive challenge caused by just unfortunate physical reality of how Ebola spreads, and an environment where there really is a lot of sort of difficulty to reach local populations because it's a war-torn area controlled by warlords in many ways where the government itself doesn't have a tremendous amount of control.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[08:45:10]

GUPTA: Yes. Look, that's part of the issue, having spent a lot of time on the ground over there, John. I mean, it's hard to sort of convey just how remote some of these areas are, how challenging it is to care for some of these patients. They don't think that there's been an impact from these cuts.

You know, obviously, people on the ground feel a little bit differently about that. We'll see over the next several weeks how big this outbreak potentially becomes.

BERMAN: Yes, we're not through it yet.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, great to talk to you, thank you very much for your reporting on this. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Ahead for us, video of a scary crash. A teenager on a scooter colliding, being hit by a police car. We're learning now what happened, how they're doing.

Also, two iconic actresses, Keke Palmer and Sharon Stone, together for Actors on Actors.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHARON STONE, ACTRESS: I'd like you to stand on your head and fart the national anthem. Your response shouldn't be, my character wouldn't do that, but how would my character do that and why?

KEKE PALMER, ACTRESS: Okay.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:50:00] BERMAN: All right. This morning, scientists expressing alarm at a Trump administration decision to dismantle a critical ocean monitoring system that taxpayers have already paid for. It's already been installed. It's called the Ocean Observatories Initiative, OOI. It collects real-time data and helps scientists track all kinds of risks.

CNN Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir is with us now. What's this supposed to do, and what won't be happening anymore?

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is a very key moment in time John, for humans who've been paying attention to what's happening in the oceans. There're so many different forces at work, a super El Nino developing, sea level rise, underwater tsunamis, acidification.

And the Ocean Observatories Initiative is this U.S.-funded, the National Science Foundation-funded monitoring system. It uses some 900 different instruments to measure ocean conditions and forecast a whole host of things. Well, now the Trump administration, in keeping with their just complete dismantling of climate and earth science, they want to ditch this deep sea monitoring system.

This is a $368 million program. It was set up a couple years ago. It was supposed to be running for the next 30 years, but will now be dismantled over the next 15 months, removing instruments from the coastlines, both in the Pacific and the Atlantic. And this is -- the critics say will create major gaps in monitoring and our ability to understand what's happening to the deep oceans.

As for the motives of this, the White House or the National Science Foundation put out a statement that it's about budgets and shifting scientific priorities. Sheldon Whitehouse, of course, a Democratic critic, the Rhode Island senator, wrote that this is fossil fuel companies heating our oceans by the zettajoule, so Trump's corrupt fossil fuel stooges want to turn off the monitors. That's one allegation from Democrats.

Other former oceanographers and those who work for nonprofits say this is going to create an irreparable blind spot for the country, this, according to Chris Robbins from the Ocean Conservancy, a blind spot when it comes to predicting earthquakes and fishery health, storm forecasting, coastal flooding, and more, quote, it just doesn't make any sense.

We'll know, we'll see if there's any pushback from the public or for, from other states, as we've seen in the courts before, but this is just the latest example of the Trump administration really turning off the measurement systems that keep us abreast of so many forces of nature that feed economies and keep forms of life alive at every level. John?

BERMAN: Less data, less information, less knowledge to work with.

Bill Weir, thank you very much. Kate?

BOLDUAN: So, a warning today about what's described as a new class of cyber threat, something that could lead to an entirely new and supercharged era of computer hacking. Data scientists at the University of Toronto, in an effort to enhance security for A.I., created what they're calling a digital worm. It essentially is a self- replicating virus that can spread through computer networks without any human intervention and learn as it goes. The researchers on the project say this worm would be capable of targeting any known flaw in computer security, saying the idea of this worm has, quote, crossed from theoretical risk to demonstrated capability, a challenge that spans A.I. research, cybersecurity, and public policy.

Joining us now is the man who led the team behind this research and warning, Nicolas Papernot. He's a professor at the University of Toronto. Thank you for being here.

And this is one of those situations where I say, tell me everything, but don't tell me everything. I mean, can you explain how this works without revealing a blueprint to replicate the prototype you all built?

NICOLAS PAPERNOT, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO: Yes, thank you for having me. What we demonstrated in our research is that it's possible for attackers to use free, simple A.I. models that are available to download off the internet to create what's known as a computer worm. Computer worms are different from computer viruses in the sense that they not only infect machines and devices, but they also use these devices they compromise as a launchpad to attack other devices. And this is all done without human intervention.

The reason we are disclosing our findings here today is because we want to issue a warning. We are doing this research to keep the digital ecosystem safe, and we want people to be able to trust this digital ecosystem.

[08:55:04]

And this is why we've done this work to understand the threat and characterize what we need to be defending against.

BOLDUAN: Nicolas, what kind of danger are we talking about here that you saw with this prototype?

PAPERNOT: The important takeaway here is that the scale of cyberattacks that we're going to be facing is vastly increasing. This example that we've shown within our isolated test environment explains how cyber attackers can now attack a lot more devices at a much smaller cost. Once you launch something like an A.I. worm, essentially the machines that you are able to compromise come at no cost to the attacker beyond the initial launching. And that's because these worms are essentially hijacking computing that they are able to get access to as they spread on a network.

BOLDUAN: Look, this also isn't happening in a vacuum, right? Anthropic said in April its latest model, Claude Mythos, was too powerful to release to the public because of hackers could use it to exploit holes in computer security. So, this is a real here and now kind of question. But then the very urgent here and now question is, have you guys been in touch with major A.I. companies? If there isn't one fix, what is -- if there's no one single defense against this, what is the best fix?

PAPERNOT: I think here it's important to realize that the models that were used in this work are very different from models like Mythos. Mythos would take a whole data center to power, whereas the models that we use in our work can be downloaded off the internet and run on a single machine. So, we're looking at a very different threat and a threat that has been ignored until now in public discourse on A.I. safety.

And so that's one really important call to action that we're issuing along releasing our results is for everyone to mobilize and collaborate to address this threat. I'm thinking of industry, which needs to be more transparent and collaborative with academia to make sure that we can do this research and focus on countermeasures. If we had more access to A.I. models, we would've been able to work on countermeasures already. We also need collaborations with the governments around the globe to ensure that this kind of research can continue to happen, and that the regulatory frameworks that are put in place are informed by these findings.

And importantly, individuals also have a role to play here. It's really important for everybody to contribute to decreasing the attack surface that we're exposing to threats like this. So, I'm thinking about things like keeping devices up to date, because in the real world, the most cyber attacks target known vulnerabilities rather than vulnerabilities that are just newly discovered, and that's what we demonstrate with our work.

It's also important for people to use random passwords that are hard to guess, and use technology, like multi-factor authentication, to make it more difficult for A.I. worms to exploit these types of human errors in computer networks, and this is something we actually showed and observed in, in our test environment.

So, I think the short summary here is that we can't afford to be sloppy with our cybersecurity hygiene anymore.

BOLDUAN: And to say the very least, it seems, from your research.

Nicolas Papernot, thank you so much for your work and for coming on. John?

BERMAN: All right. New video of a 15-year-old on an electric scooter and a Florida deputy involved in a pretty serious crash. Investigators say the teen ran a stop sign and collided with a patrol vehicle going about 19 miles an hour. You can see it right there. That's really scary.

No one, luckily, was seriously injured. Officials are urging people to follow traffic rules, even on e-scooters and bikes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Carlos, I'm going to try to shoulder it and hit the throttle.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: In Florida Keys, a deputy and a Customs Border Patrol agent teamed up to stop a runaway boat. Authorities say the boat kept going at more than 35 miles an hour after several teenagers on board just fell off. The officers managed to slow the boat with some kind of an entangling device until they got close enough for one of the agents to jam the controls with a long boat hook. No one there was hurt. Kate?

BOLDUAN: CNN is teaming up with Variety for another round of Actors on Actors, where Hollywood superstars sit down together for one-on-one discussions.

[09:00:06]

In today's episode, Keke Palmer and Sharon Stone. Here's a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PALMER: I am so delighted that I had this opportunity to talk to you.

STONE: I feel that way about you because I've talked about you so much, and I've seen your work so much, and your -- we're not supposed to comment on people's appearances, but, Jesus, you're so beautiful.

PALMER: That's you.

STONE: You are beautiful.

PALMER: That's you. You are stunning. I kept saying that too, you know? I'm like, she probably think I'm crazy.

STONE: No, and your beauty is a light. It's what it is. It's a light. And I look at you and you do very different kinds of work, and I really like that because you are looking for purpose and meaning. You're not looking for, I'm this. You're looking for a journey through life that demonstrates purpose and meaning, and it's great, and it's valid, and it's interesting, and it's exciting, and I'm really happy to spend time with you.

PALMER: Thank you for seeing me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BOLDUAN: You can stream the full episode now on the CNN app.

A new hour of CNN News Central starts right now.