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One-On-One with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Netanyahu Responds to Declining U.S. Support for Israel; Questions Over Mitch McConnell's Health Amid Weekslong Hospitalization. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired July 07, 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]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Happening now, President Trump is in Turkey along with other world leaders for the annual NATO summit. And Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be keeping a close eye on Trump's interactions with Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan. President Trump says he is considering selling F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, which is something that Netanyahu adamantly opposes.

CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash spoke with the Israeli Prime Minister this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you so much for being here, sir. President Trump is in Turkey right now. He said this morning he will consider selling F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, which is a reversal of a ban he put in place.

You said yesterday that would, quote, upset the power balance in the Middle East. Have you made that clear to President Trump?

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: Yes, I have actually spoke to him several times about it. And I think that everybody understands that notwithstanding the personal friendship that President Trump has with Erdogan, it doesn't make Turkey a friendly or a friendly state to the United States. To the contrary, it's a regime that's infected with the Muslim Brotherhood, which hates the United States.

He harbors Hamas, the Hamas terrorists. He supports them. He finances them.

He's thrown his opponents in jail, all of them. He throws more journalists in jail than anyone can understand. So he's not exactly a model ally of the United States.

But even worse than that, he threatens Greece, a NATO ally. He occupies half of Cyprus, another NATO country. And the most important thing, and I put it right on the table, he threatens to destroy my country, the one and only Jewish state.

His number two says that we have no place among the nations. And you know what that means. And his number three, the interior minister, says that he's looking forward to be the governor of Jerusalem.

Hello? But, you know, we're a sovereign country.

BASH: Yes, but, Prime Minister, the president said this morning --

NETANYAHU: And we tend to stay independent.

BASH: President said this morning that they are great friends, and not just the two of them, the countries of the United States and Turkey, and that Turkey is perhaps a better ally than other so-called allies. So he is considering giving the country these planes, F-35s.

NETANYAHU: Well, as I said, it would destroy the power balance in the Middle East, because Turkey, I think, has aggressive aspirations. I mean, they openly say that. They want to restore the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire not only included Turkey, it included many other countries, included Syria, it included pieces of Jordan, included all of present-day Israel, included some Gulf countries. So this is not a force for peace and stability. And if you give, you know, this kind of radical regime, that admittedly smiles to America when it is necessary, or smiles to the president of the United States when it's necessary.

When you're given that power, you're going to see aggression in its wake. I wouldn't do that.

BASH: Prime Minister Netanyahu, the conversation that the president is having with Turkey today is just the latest in moves that he has made that are not making you happy. He obviously imposed ceasefires in Gaza, in Lebanon, on Iran. He made you turn fighters back from attacking Iran last summer.

He's told you what you can and can't do in Hezbollah. Who is calling the shots for Israel?

NETANYAHU: I think there's a wide misperception of everything you said, because a lot of these things, some of them were not true, and some of them were agreed in advance. And some of it, yes, we had occasional disagreements. Look, he is the president of the United States.

He does what is good for the United States. I'm the prime minister of Israel. I do what is important for, what is good for Israel.

[14:35:00]

And most of the time, these things are identical. I have to commend the president. He brought a huge American force to counter our common enemy, which is Iran, that chants death to Israel, death to America. Had they developed nuclear weapons, if we hadn't acted, they would have them already. They would eventually use them against America, not only against Israel.

So on the big things, we see eye to eye. And occasionally, we don't. But we're true allies. They call us -- the National Security Council issued a memorandum a few months ago. They called Israel the model ally.

And I can tell you that even allies can have their differences. But I think America has no greater ally in the world than Israel. And Israel has no greater ally than the United States. And I say that with complete recognition of the fact that we sometimes see things a bit differently. It's natural.

You're a big country. You're far away. We're a small country, beleaguered and close to these regimes that want to destroy us.

BASH: I want to talk specifically about Iran for a moment, sir. President Trump said the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran is probably an unconditional surrender. But the specific question is, under this MOU, the United States terminates all types of sanctions against Iran.

Is this a failure for your country, for Israel?

NETANYAHU: Look, I think it's too early to say what will happen. The president believes that he can stop Iran's nuclear program, which is a nuclear program to create atomic bombs. He believes that he can do this through negotiations --

BASH: Do you?

NETANYAHU: -- and various pressures. Look, I have my doubts. But I think he should be given the chance. And he's trying to achieve that. It remains to be seen.

But I have said, and by the way, I think President Trump has said too, that deal or no deal, I certainly will not let Iran have nuclear weapons. And that is also the president's position.

BASH: In 2015, I was there. I remember that you came to the U.S. and spoke to Congress over the objection of President Obama because of your opposition to that Iran deal, the JPCOA. You specifically mentioned the deal's sanction relief in that speech.

What's different about now?

NETANYAHU: I think Iran, look, our combined action, the U.S. and Israeli action today destroyed, I think the lowest estimates are $400 billion of the regime's infrastructure. And some say as much as three quarters of a trillion dollars or even a trillion dollars. So I think what is being discussed now are very small numbers.

Admittedly, any number is a high number as far as countries like Israel and others see it. But it's not going to allow Iran to reestablish itself. The question remains, at the end of the negotiations, if there's a deal struck, then you have to see, does the deal actually meet the main goals, the most important one being ending Iran's nuclear program, taking out the enriched material, dismantling the enrichment sites.

And there are other things that have to do with proxy warfare and ballistic missiles. If it achieves that, then yes, Iran will get sanctions relief, and that would help the regime resuscitate itself. But I don't see that happening yet.

And I hope that the president will do exactly as he promised to do, to make sure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Still to come, more of this interview. What does Netanyahu think about declining U.S. support for Israel. Dana Bash asked him about that and the ceasefire in Gaza. We'll have the rest after the break.

[14:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: We're back with more of our conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. CNN's Dana Bash asked him about his complex relationship with President Trump and the possibility that Trump could greenlight the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, despite the prime minister's objections.

She also asked him about declining U.S. support for Israel and where things stand with a ceasefire in Gaza.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: The issue of supporting Israel as a Jewish state and just U.S. support for Israel overall, they have become a central issue in American politics, really a litmus test right now in Democratic primaries here in the U.S. I want you to listen to how the mayor of New York City responded when he was asked if he supports Israel as a Jewish state.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI, NEW YORK CITY: I've said time and again that I support the state of Israel as a state with equal rights. I believe that any state that prefers --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But as a Jewish state is the question.

MAMDANI: I think any state that privileges one religion over the other is one that I can't tell you I support, whether it be Israel or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else. And a lot of that comes back to a fundamental belief that we should all be considered equal no matter what our faith is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Your response?

NETANYAHU: Well, he conveniently forgets that the only democracy in the Middle East is Israel. Twenty percent of our citizens are, in fact, Muslims. They're not Arabs, but they sit on the Supreme Court.

They are in the Knesset, our parliament. They share every walk of life. That's the only place in the Middle East where you actually have this equality that he's talking about.

But he has supported, or his supporters have supported Hamas. These people who murder people, who beheaded our men, raped our women, and then murdered them, burned babies alive, and so on.

[14:45:00]

He said, the river to the sea, he supports them. This is not mere cynicism. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's absurd.

There are always imperfect democracies. Israel is an imperfect democracy. The United States is an imperfect democracy. Why?

Because we live in the real world. But it's a hundred times better than these dictatorships and these horrible, horrible tyrannies that Mamdani and his supporters support. --

BASH: Let me ask you beyond Mamdani.

NETANYAHU: So yes, I stand with the Jewish state, the democratic Jewish state that fights for its life. But we also protect so many others by fighting these barbarians, who have no qualms whatsoever to murdering their own people and trying to terrorize everyone else.

BASH: Sir, some American Jews in Congress who support Israel and support what you just said, say that a lot of the actions by you and your government are making Jews in the United States unsafe. Congresswoman Haley Stevens, she's running for Senate in Michigan said, "Benjamin Netanyahu has made us less safe. He has, frankly, put Jews in an uncomfortable position across the country."

Have you?

NETANYAHU: Well, it's made her uncomfortable, because she can't stand up for the truth. She's trying to probably excuse anti-Semitism. You know, I --

BASH: She's not.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: She's -- I mean, I just want to explain, she's somebody who supports Israel. She supports funding Israel, which is diminishing big time among Democrats, and even some Republicans in the United States Congress.

NETANYAHU: Well, let me tell you, we track the support, and I'm obviously concerned when people raise that. And I've looked at the Gallup polls, OK, and they were interesting, and other polls. And you see the decline in support for Israel, OK?

And it's years before, several years before the Gaza war took place, OK? And you ask, why did that happen? Well, the one correlation you see, which is almost a perfect correlation, is the penetration of TikTok and other social media in the United States.

And as the penetration increases, the support for Israel decreases. And let me tell you something else. The support for America decreases.

The number of people who say they're not proud to be Americans, it's just correlation. So I think that what has happened here is that there are several countries and organizations that have penetrated the social media, have abused them by putting in bot farms and other things to -- especially directed at young Americans, not only to hate Israel, but also to hate America. And you know what?

Those who say they hate Israel usually end up hating America. They burn our flags.

BASH: Mr. Prime Minister, I think all things can be true. All things can be true. What you're saying about bots and about the internet, no question. But are you saying that Israel and you personally bear no responsibility?

Let's just talk about Gaza for one minute. Currently, Hamas is continuing to refuse to disarm. The IDF is also carrying out nearly daily airstrikes in Gaza.

You've taken over more territory there. And the Palestinian people are continuing to suffer, still displaced, dealing with intense heat, limited care, limited resources. Will you do more to help those suffering in Gaza?

And will you concede that the images that people are seeing on their phones as part of social media is very much contributing to the turnaround and the diminishment of support of your state of Israel and of you?

NETANYAHU: Yes, look, I think that the -- what you're raising is, how do you fight a war in the digital age when you have terrorists that embed themselves in civilian populations, in schools, in civilian neighborhoods, in apartment blocks, in mosques, and so on? How do you fight them? They send rockets to indiscriminately kill our people, and they hide behind -- they're targeting our civilians while hiding behind their own civilians.

So what are you going to do? What do you think would happen if this happened to New York City, say, from New Jersey? You think if they rocketed you with this firepower and murdered -- about 10,000 of your people murdered, raped, maimed, disemboweled, 10,000 Americans, what do you think the response of the United States would be?

BASH: But let me ask you about right now.

NETANYAHU: It would be a lot stronger than ours.

BASH: Yes.

NETANYAHU: I'm going to say right now --

BASH: Go ahead.

NETANYAHU: -- but I think it's important. I think it's important. We have taken unbelievable measures in order to avoid civilian casualties.

You know, we send millions of phone calls to the people, millions of text messages and so on. Please leave this neighborhood because we're going to try to eradicate Hamas.

BASH: But, sir, there's supposed to be a ceasefire right now.

NETANYAHU: And Hamas -- no, no, I'm talking about -- ceasefire, I'll talk about it in a minute. Well, obviously, there's no real fighting going on. There are occasional actions that they try to do against us and we do against them, but it's not the kind of broad warfare that we had before. Everybody understands that.

But I still come back to this point, Dana, and I insist on it, because people say, you know, Israel, how dare you? How come civilians are killed? Because Hamas did not let the civilians leave.

And when they try to leave at our behest, they would shoot them. They would actually kill their own people in order to keep them in a place where they wouldn't be injured by us. So when you have this cynicism and this horror, you don't support the terrorists.

You support Israel because you will end up being in the same place exactly. We're not fighting just our battle, we're fighting your battle, both against Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis. These people are bent on destroying our free society --

BASH: Will the cease fire -- will the cease fire take hold?

NETANYAHU: -- and they're bent on using internet media -- using the media for that end.

Well, look, it depends. Every time they try to kill our people, make a move on our people, obviously we act. But I think that the most important thing is the disarmament factor in the agreement, the 20- point agreement that President Trump put forward.

And the most important one is that Hamas has to disarm, and Gaza has to be demilitarized. You know, it's going to happen one way or the other. I prefer that it would happen without the need for the use of force, and the need for our use of force, because, Dana, I've been to war, you know?

I served five years in a special unit. My brother died while saving the hostages in Entebbe. I had an 18-year-old fellow soldier die in my arms.

That's not something that you forget. And I saw the grief of my parents and the grief of so many others. So I would prefer, if we could avoid the renewal of open combat, yes, I would prefer that, if we could achieve our aims of eliminating the Hamas threat from Gaza, with other means, by all means.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: Dana also pressed the Prime Minister on settler violence in the West Bank. You can see that portion of the interview at CNN.com.

Still to come, Senator Mitch McConnell has been in the hospital for three weeks now. His aides, though, are not releasing the reason why. What we're now hearing from people who say they've spoken to him.

[14:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Three weeks have passed since we learned that Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell was hospitalized. But why he's in the hospital and when he'll leave remain a mystery. Earlier this month, independent journalist Desiree Townsend shared an EMS audio recording on X for a call at McConnell's home address here in Washington, D.C. And McConnell's name was not mentioned, but the call was for an unconscious person and what the dispatcher described as a cardiac arrest. And a paramedic is heard saying CPR in progress.

SANCHEZ: McConnell's Republican colleagues have been fairly silent on his condition, fueling speculation about the senator's health. Today, former McConnell aide and CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings posted on X that he spoke with the Kentucky senator earlier for just shy of 20 minutes.

Let's get some insight from Leigh Ann Caldwell. She's the chief Washington correspondent for PUC News. Leigh Ann, great to see you as always. It's notable because among the lawmakers being asked about this is Utah Senator Mike Lee, who tweeted overnight quote, "Many of us aren't speaking about Mitch McConnell's condition because we know nothing about his condition."

Why do you think we haven't heard more? Why do you think they haven't heard more?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, PUCK NEWS: Well, first, this is how McConnell usually operates, how he operated when he was a Senate majority leader. He was very tight lipped, did not share a lot of information with his colleagues. And they are really his office is operating in the same way now.

He is not in touch with a lot of people, although he did speak with Senator John Brasso and Senate Majority Leader John Thune yesterday. He spoke with them both a couple of weeks ago as well, according to people familiar with those phone calls. But they have not been advertising this.

And still no one knows what exactly is going on. His office has not even confirmed that there was a cardiac arrest. And we don't know how long he's going to be in the hospital.

We don't know what condition he's in. We just do know now that the two top Republican leaders have spoken to him on the phone and that Scott Jennings, his former aide, has talked to him as well.

KEILAR: It's clear this was serious, right? I mean, I think that we can pick up from some of the facts that we're getting here. How are his aides?

I mean, I hear they're handling this in a way that they kind of always have. But are there potentially not just kind of personal considerations or a way that he likes to conduct himself or their potential political considerations in the way this is being handled?

CALDWELL: Well, I mean, it's hard to be silent in this day and age, right? It just doesn't work as well, especially when McConnell's health is at stake. We just went through this with a House member, Congressman Tom Kean of New Jersey, who was absent for months.

And no one knew what was going on there. He finally returned after three months and said it was depression. But when there's silence, there is speculation.

And there are absolutely political implications on if he's able to finish his term, which is up at the end of the year. He was already retiring. But really what it comes down to is he is an elected official.

He is responsible for the people of Kentucky. The Senate is trying to move appropriations funding bills.

[15:00:00]