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Senate Convenes Today Amid Mourning for Sen. Lindsey Graham; Sen. Graham's Death Comes at Critical Point for GOP and Trump; U.S. and Iran Trade New Strikes Amid Strait of Hormuz Tensions; Bangkok Bar Inferno Kills at Least 27, Dozens Injured; Decades-Old VFW Cartoon Sparks Calls for Federal Investigation. Aired 8:00-8:30a ET

Aired July 13, 2026 - 08:00   ET

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

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KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Is this going to -- is this trajectory going to continue?

LISA EADICICCO, CNN TECH EDITOR: Exactly, so those companies are in the process of putting up new fabrication plants to make more memory. But that takes a long time. This is a really complex manufacturing process.

So the earliest that a lot of analysts are predicting is 2028. But even then, that may be a bit soon. So we're expecting to see more price hikes.

The good news is that this initial wave of price hikes that we're likely going to see now and through the end of the year will probably be the biggest one. But they do expect prices to keep going up.

BOLDUAN: Definitely something to watch. Lisa, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The new challenges facing Republicans in the Senate this morning following the death of Lindsey Graham including how to replace him.

Breaking this morning escalating attacks between the U.S. and Iran oil prices spiking overnight. Questions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz now plaguing the White House.

And calls for a veterans group to be investigated over a cartoon. Why some say it crosses the line?

Sara is out today. I'm John Berman with Kate Bolduan and this is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

Today the Senate grapples with the death of longtime Republican Senator Lindsey Graham in very real ways. Just this week Graham was expected to be a key supporter of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche as Blanche faces the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation fight. A bipartisan sanctions bill that Graham had worked on with Democratic

Senator Richard Blumenthal that had just received the green light from President Trump. What happens to that now? It's a bill that aims to impose crippling tariffs on countries that import Russian oil.

And the Senate is also set to consider a White House request for more defense funding amid the Iran war something that Senator Graham would have been a huge supporter of.

I want to get to see it in Washington bureau chief and political director David Chalian who is with us now. And I know every one of the Senate has very personal feelings about the loss of Senator Graham. But there's a very practical impact they're feeling right now, David.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF AND POLITICAL DIRECTOR: There's no doubt about it. I mean you mentioned that Russia's sanctions bill. This is something you know, John.

Senator Graham was pushing for, for quite some time not able to get the traction he was hoping for on it. And then it just announced on Friday that he had the White House on board with it. I think one of his Republican colleagues in the House, Mike McCaul, suggested renaming the bill in memory of Senator Graham now.

So we'll see how something like that on the world stage where Senator Graham spent so much of his public time as a more traditional sort of interventionist you would imagine in the Republican side. Not really part of that America First vision of foreign policy that perhaps Donald Trump has displayed at times or J.D. Vance and others in the MAGA movement. But this was a this was like a real pet project of his.

And then you noted the confirmation hearing. You'll feel that this week.

BERMAN: Oh yes.

CHALIAN: Who has been a bigger defender of, you know, of Donald Trump's nominees at the moments that counted most than Lindsey Graham during this Trump era. He used that microphone while in these very high profile hearings to really be a soldier for the president and those people, he's trying to get over the finish line of confirmation. So his voice will no doubt be missed in terms of Todd Blanche's effort to sail through the Senate hearing.

BERMAN: You know it's interesting. His role certainly has changed over the last 10 or 15 years in the Senate from when he was one of the three amigos. That's not exactly the role he plays now.

But still Lindsey Graham possesses a kind of soft power or did in the U.S. Senate. You know in sports terms I think some people would call him a glue guy with a lot of different coalitions including on the Republican side. He had Donald Trump's ear in and out of office.

He can call up a Democrat and say can I have a drink with you. And the Democrats would do that willingly. His absence will be felt in that way too, I think David. CHALIAN: Yes, no doubt about it. Senator Cory Booker, the Democrat of New Jersey, talked about yesterday in his remembrance about Lindsey Graham in the First Step Act that was from Donald Trump's first term dealing with incarceration and criminal justice reform. And you know, he said flat out that Lindsey Graham told Booker to not bother calling him during Graham's primary season.

He understood the politics of this, but that when the primary was over, he came back to Booker and he fought and got the white -- pushed the White House to accept some of Booker's changes to that bill that they weren't interested in. You are right. He was able to work with almost anyone in the Senate.

He didn't always get his way and he wasn't always on sort of the right side of majority popular opinion on stuff. But he did have a way of being able to form coalitions whether within his party or across the aisle to pursue some of his long term strategic goals while serving in the United States Congress.

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BERMAN: It'll be interesting to watch how that absence is felt going forward. And finally David Lindsey Graham was 71, which in Senate terms is young. But when you couple that with the illness that Mitch McConnell has been dealing with and everything else, it really does seem as if the age issue could very well have different political impacts than we've seen in a long time.

CHALIAN: And we're seeing it in both parties, right? I mean you're seeing it play out in different ways. We just saw, you know, before Graham Platner imploded as a candidate he dispatched with the popular incumbent governor largely over an age issue. We obviously saw it with Joe Biden in 2024.

To your point right now though, that when the age impacts the current working members that can lead to absences. So obviously, the sudden death of Lindsey Graham, as you noted Mitch McConnell is still in rehabilitation and not coming to the Senate to vote this week, it impacts numbers in narrow majorities for the leaders of these parties to navigate some of these absences. But there's no doubt that the public is hungry for a new generation of leadership.

They tell it in polls and they tell it in how they're casting their ballots.

BERMAN: It is something to watch as the summer and the fall we move into that political season. David Chalian, great to see you this morning. Thank you very much.

CHALIAN: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Let's turn the focus now to Iran. Overnight there's escalating attacks between the United States and Iran as the fight for the control of the Strait of Hormuz continues and intensifies. There's a new analysis from CNN showing that the frequency of U.S. strikes is increasing and hitting deeper inside the country than before. Oil prices are on the rise after the fresh attacks for a second

straight night. U.S. Central Command says it hit dozens of targets. Part of its push to try to get Iran to stop attacking commercial ships in the Strait. Iran today is saying that it is going after U.S. military targets claiming it hit a U.S. base in Bahrain. CNN has not been able to independently verify those reports.

But Tehran is also vowing to not stop and promising to keep up strikes on U.S. allies in the region. Yes, raising the question once again of what ceasefire.

CNN's Betsy Klein live from the White House with the very latest on this. Betsy what are you hearing from there this morning? And you think of the big question of like, well, does this continue to intensify now for a third day?

BETSY KLEIN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well what is very clear right now is that this moment is posing a major test for that Memorandum of Understanding signed just about a month ago. But what's not clear is how and if this is going to get resolved. President Trump said last week that the ceasefire was essentially over.

But he did say at the same time that negotiations toward a diplomatic solution would continue. Since then we have just seen a steady escalation in this conflict. At the root of this issue here is the Strait of Hormuz that critical oil thoroughfare.

And prior to this conflict no one had full authority or control over that strait. Now it has become a key point of leverage for Iran since then. Iran says that they control the Strait of Hormuz.

They control this waterway and that launching -- they've been launching attacks on commercial vessels in recent days. They say that the passage of ships is not possible without their permission.

Now the U.S. position according to CENTCOM is the following quote, "Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz. It remains an international waterway. U.S. forces are positioned and prepared to keep it that way." Now we saw overnight Saturday into Sunday as the U.S. launched strikes on dozens of Iranian military targets after they say that Iran targeted one of those commercial shipping vessels. Then the U.S. launching another round of strikes overnight both aerial and sea drones.

Now Iran has subsequently retaliated with attacks on U.S. military bases in Gulf countries. But as we think about a path forward, the White House view here is that there is a division amongst Iranian leadership. There are the moderates who believe that there should be a diplomatic path forward and there are the hardliners which say that Iran shouldn't have agreed to this Memorandum of Understanding in the first place. Now critically oil prices are continuing to rise after a brief reprieve up about 10 cents in the last week or so. The price of crude oil about 3 percent up.

So the midterm elections just about four months away. This all weighing on President Trump as he weighs his path forward -- Kate. BOLDUAN: Yes, some critical decisions that need to be made very soon. It's good to see you, Betsy. Thank you very much. Live from the White House for us this morning.

Also still ahead, a deadly fire rips through a packed bar. Twenty seven people at least killed. Look at the flames shooting out of the door. There are big questions right now about what happened here.

And there's also new CNN reporting. Calls for an investigation into one of America's oldest veterans groups. All over the use of a cartoon.

Plus robot surgeons. They are here for the first time ever. Robots that look like humans humanoid robots have successfully performed surgery on a live patient.

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One of the scientists behind all of this is our guest.

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BERMAN: All right, this morning new details about a horrific fire that tore through a popular bar and music venue in Bangkok. At least 27 people were killed. Dozens more injured.

Some of the images coming out are disturbing. You can see the flames shooting out of the front door there.

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That's where customers tried to flee once the fire started. Police say many of the dead were found trapped in windowless bathrooms inside the bar.

Let's get right to seeing as Mike Valerio tracking this for us. Mike, what's the latest?

MIKE VALERIO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. John, it's astonishing. I mean the latest that we have is certainly good news that 32 people in that have gone home.

Can you imagine, I mean seeing that video looking like a volcano and the fire accelerating so quickly have managed to go home. But we will say that 25 people are still in intensive care. Twenty seven are dead.

This is big enough, John, for the country that Thailand's Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, is at the scene, briefed reporters this morning. And this is essentially what he told all of the press corps gathered at the scene. He talked to a musical performer who was on stage and one of those people see some kind of spark, something in the circuit breaker sparking.

Then the power goes out. Then there is an explosion. And then the fire travels throughout the venue. Fire officials later said that they believed an air conditioning unit actually short circuited. And then that fire spread on the ceiling. So really the question is what exactly was on that ceiling.

You know we've had similar cases certainly in Taiwan 2009 when 66 people, John, died on New Year's Eve. Closer to now in 2022, 14 people also lost their lives in a corner of Thailand southeast of Bangkok for flammable material close to where musicians were performing and fire standards not adhered to at all of these venues. So it matters of course the bigger picture.

First of all the families. Second of all this is the most visited city in the entire world. So our reporting target throughout the day today, what's left of it, and into tomorrow and the rest of the week, is going to be whether or not, John, any changes come from this, in Thailand, because of relatively lax safety standards and all these people that are still in the hospital.

Twenty five of them, how they are doing. Some of their injuries are bad enough. Specifically, 16 of them that is undetermined whether they were male or female coming into the ER. That certainly moved the prime minister of Thailand. All of us working on this story on this side of the world.

So it's still certainly not a story that's over yet -- John.

BERMAN: No, and again, the images of those flames shooting out like flamethrowers to the door. They're terrifying. And we've seen things like this before.

It's just a constant reminder when you go into a venue like this. Know where the exits are. Look around you. You know anything could happen.

Mike Valerio, thank you very much for that.

All right, we are preparing for a key hearing for Todd Blanche, who very much wants to be a full-time confirmed Attorney General, where the vote count stands this morning.

And new calls for an investigation over a cartoon that a veterans advocacy group has been using for decades.

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BOLDUAN: A political storm is brewing right now between lawmakers and one of America's oldest veterans organizations. It's all over a political cartoon. The image in question shows a firing squad aiming their weapons at U.S. veterans. What was intended to be a commentary on cuts to VA benefits. The image was printed on T-shirts for the group Veterans of Foreign Wars. And now the chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee is demanding an investigation.

CNN's Brian Todd has brand new reporting on this when he joins us now. Brian, what are you learning about this?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, this has really sparked this debate over free speech for political satire. First, we're going to show you the cartoon in question, the latest version from this year appearing on T-shirts being sold by the group Veterans of Foreign Wars, VFW. It depicts a firing squad of men in business suits labeled bureaucrats and media aiming their rifles at veterans.

It has the phrase honor the contract and captions saying punishing service, removing benefits and waste and fraud. You see it right there. Now, the VFW, which has 1.3 million members, says it's used the cartoon in different variations since the 1930s to protest proposed cuts to veterans' benefits. We're showing you one version from 1956 there and another from 1933, almost 100 years ago.

Now, Republican Congressman Mike Bost, he is the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, he's written a letter to the Department of Veterans Affairs asking the VA to investigate VFW over this cartoon, asking the VA to review the VFW's accreditation and its financing arrangements for merchandising. Bost says the imagery in question in the cartoon here can be interpreted as, quote, glorifying or normalizing political violence.

The VFW and other veteran service organizations, we have to say, have recently come out against a bill introduced by Bost and his Republican counterpart in the Senate that bill would alter veterans' benefits in ways the VFW disagrees with. The VFW says the latest cartoon and the sale of the T-shirts were not done specifically to protest Bost's bill, but Christina Keegan from the VFW said on the group's podcast that the timing of Bost's letter to the VA coming just after the rollout of the sale of those T-shirts, they don't believe it's coincidental.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KRISTINA KEENAN, NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE SERVICE DIRECTOR, VFW: Whether you like the image and the T-shirt or whether you hate it, you know, it's a little ironic that it's become an issue today because we are not in support of the chairman's bill.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

KEENAN: So, you know, obviously, the timing is unfortunate, and had there been an issue when we first started using the image, I think we would have -- or had his staff come and talk to us about the image being problematic, we could have had a conversation about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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TODD: Now, the VFW stresses that this cartoon is not a depiction of violence, and in a statement regarding Bost's request for its accreditation to be reviewed, VFW says Bost's letter quote, "... identifies no allegation that the VFW or any of our accredited representatives violated VA accreditation standards, acted unethically, or failed a single veteran. Instead, it seeks to question our fitness because we disagreed with pending legislation. That should concern every veteran," end quote. Now, in a statement to CNN, Congressman Bost's office said, this,

quote, "is not about silencing any organization or discouraging debate. Chairman Bost welcomes strong policy disagreements and values the role veteran service organizations play in informing Congress. His concern is that our public discourse remains factual, respectful, and free from rhetoric that could be interpreted as encouraging violence."

We reached out to the VA to ask them how they would respond to Congressman Bost's letter, and whether the agency will review the VFW's accreditation and financing. The VA has not responded -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Not the end of this, for sure, though, as we've seen these political cartoons have been happening, I see, here on the wall since 1933. It's good to see you.

Thank you so much, Brian. Great reporting on this. We'll stay close to this one.

Also, this morning, the unexpected death of Senator Lindsey Graham is sending shockwaves through the Senate, for sure. What we know now about the now-urgent search to fill his Senate seat.

Plus, we're also standing by for autopsy results in the death of the Mississippi teenager who was found dead after a July 4th boating trip with friends.

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