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Trump Ousts Kristi Noem As Homeland Security Secretary; House Oversight Votes To Subpoena Atty. Gen. Bondi; Trump: "Must Be Involved" In Picking Iran's Next Leader; House Rejects Measure To Limit Trump's War Powers; Oil Hits Highest Level Since End Of Biden Administration. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired March 06, 2026 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Ron Brownstein joins us now. He's seen a senior political analyst and an opinion columnist for Bloomberg.

Ron, always good to talk to you. So we've got Kristi Noem out ish, I guess, if you will. And then also --

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

HILL: This week, I think we can't ignore what else happened and that the GOP led House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena the attorney general, Pam Bondi, over her handling of the Epstein files. What is your read on these two moments and what they say about where this administration is headed?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, you know, I don't think anyone, Erica, believed that Kristi Noem was the architect of the administration's immigration policy. That's Stephen Miller in the White House. But she was the face of it. And as the face of it, her instincts were kind of almost uniformly bad. I mean, both in terms of spending a lot of time, effort and money on promoting herself. And that's one thing we know that Donald Trump does not really like a lot of other stars shining brightly in his orbit.

But also in the way that she reacted to the killings of the -- of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, her kind of vision that to be almost to play a kind of an exaggerated tough guy in the role and become a very polarizing figure and spend a lot of money promoting herself.

I think, you know, her departure shows that, you know, this administration is not completely immune to the laws of political gravity. She had clearly become a liability and in fact, the administration is already, I think, change direction on how they are executing their kind of mass deportation program as a result of Minneapolis. And Pam Bondi, I think, with Kristi Noem gone is the most obvious next target for critics, particularly over our handling of the Epstein files, which, you know, bipartisan criticism. So I think it puts her in the spotlight. HILL: As we look at what's happening with the war in Iran, I was struck by comments, I think a number of people were from President Trump yesterday saying he must be, in his words, involved in the appointment of Iran's next leader. So went from Trump saying, hey, look, it's up to you, everybody, take to the streets, right? Let's have a democratic uprising to -- it's impossible honestly to ignore the comparisons to "The Apprentice" that somehow now President Trump says he needs to anoint Iran's next leader and he's also talking about Cuba being next. There is a real disconnect happening in this moment in Iran.

BROWNSTEIN: Well, this kind of fits in with the story from the beginning that the goals of the war have kind of been evolving almost by the hour, you know. It started off as kind of regime change seemed to be the goal that he talked about initially. Then the administration seemed to, and I think probably still has settled around the principal idea being that the goal was to degrade the military capacity of Iran and its ability to project power in the region. But here we are back to a kind of Venezuela style regime change where the government essentially agrees to, you know, transform at his whim.

And, you know, all of this kind of moving target nature of the way that he is talking about the war reinforces the problem he's got in public opinion, which is, you know, a majority, a significant majority of Americans say they do not believe there is a clear plan or a clear set of goals.

Look, he is operating, I think, on an extraordinarily narrow ledge in public opinion when it comes to this war, so long as the costs appear relatively manageable in terms of casualties, damage in the region, higher oil prices. Republican voters, and therefore Republican elected officials are sticking with him enough to prevent any serious pressure to pull the plug, as we saw in the votes in Congress this week.

But I believe he has basically no cushion for costs from the public here because this is not something they really supported in the first place. And even sustain --

HILL: Right. Yes.

BROWNSTEIN: -- increasing gas prices, I think will begin to put pressure on him to define a way to end this.

HILL: Right. And he is focused on gas prices, right? We heard talk -- him talk about them in the State of the Union going down. Yesterday he said, well, if they rise, they rise. Stay with me for one minute on the money angle of this because as we know, not unexpected, this war powers resolution did not pass the House and the Senate.

But there is going to have to be a request for supplemental funding when it comes to this war, which is estimated to have cost in the first 100 hours, $3.7 billion. That's from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. More than three and a half billion of that would need additional congressional approval. We're also talking about an estimated cost of 30 million a day in terms of the air response, 15 million a day for the naval response. How does that play out when you have a Congress saying, we don't want to be involved in checking the war powers of the president.

But, oh, by the way, now the Department of Defense is going to say, hey, Congress, we need a lot more money.

BROWNSTEIN: Well, look, I mean, you know, Democrats are already preparing to make one of their central arguments in the2026 midterm election that President Trump imposed the largest cuts ever on Medicaid and ended the enhanced subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, knocking 16 million people off of health care eventually in order to fund tax cuts for the rich. It's a pretty easy just a comma in the sentence to add and to fund this war of choice in the Mideast that most Americans do not support. And it's going to be a difficult -- you know, I think the vast, vast majority of Democrats are going to vote against supplemental funding for the war. Some might support it, but I think for Republicans, you know, this kind of goes to a general problem, both of priorities and kind of where he is investing his time.

[04:35:37]

You know, you can't overstate, Erica, the degree to which he was elected because people thought their cost of living was out of control. And one of the big problems he has is that most Americans believe that he is focusing on almost anything else. Tearing down the East Wing, cutting healthcare programs, these wars of choice. Then what they elected him above all to do two thirds in that CNN poll right before the State of the Union said he is not focused on the things that are most important to them. And I, you know, and I think this war just reinforces that perception.

And Republicans are going to be pulled into a position of basically secondary -- you know, seconding, as they already have with the war powers vote, but certainly with the funding, you know, his shift in priorities toward this as opposed to some of the domestic programs that have been cut under the One Big Beautiful Bill and DOGE.

HILL: Ron, always good to have your analysis. Thank you.

BROWNSTEIN: Thanks for having me.

HILL: Well, President Trump says he's not concerned with rising costs at the pump as we were just discussing. As the war with Iran continues to drive the price of oil to new highs, many investors do not share Trump's confidence. We'll take a closer look at the reaction from the global markets ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN ANCHOR: Well, days into the war with Iran, oil prices hitting their highest levels since President Trump started his second term, Brent had climbed to $85 on the barrel. That would be the highest intraday level since the final days of the Biden administration. Right now, Brent down at 82. We've got WTI at 83 if my charts are correct.

[04:40:21] Eleni, Eleni, sorry, Giokos, joining me now here with more. What are you looking at?

ELENI GIOKOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we are seeing Brent and WTI rising once again and listen, there's going to be winners and losers in this scenario that we're seeing. So we've spoken about the Strait. We know that critical infrastructure has been hit. We saw that Bahraini refinery hit once again. So we're seeing an assault on capacity and logistics.

So those are the two big issues. But Russia is going to be a winner in this because we know that the U.S. has given India a 30-day leeway to buy oil from Russia and there's a lot of Russian oil floating around in tankers right now. Then of course, the losers are going to be the likes of Asia where we've seen some refineries. They declaring force majeure, everyone trying to see the strategic reserves to ride it out.

President Trump saying he's not very concerned. We're going to see a bit of a rise, he says, but then prices are going to drop. But traders are telling me we're underestimating the impact of the swap because it wasn't priced in. Becky, I want you to take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FELIPE ELINK SCHUURMAN, CEO, SPARTA: It is scary. It is scary. This is something that no one -- no one has a game plan for. You know, we -- we've always talked about. I mean, I was at trading for 20 years and everyone sort of thought that the Iran conflict was the one conflict that would never.

So no one really has a game plan. We're one week in and we're already talking about force majeure and refineries in Asia, some countries in Asia asking rationing the supply.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GIOKOS: So what he says we should be looking at and not so much the Brent crude and WTI, which he anticipates is going to hit triple digits, is that jet fuel prices have doubled in the past week. He says that's going to have a direct impact, obviously on booking flights and so forth. He says it's the refined products that we're underestimating right now because there's a shortage of that. He says it's going to have an inflationary impact. It's going to affect American consumers and consumers around the world.

ANDERSON: That's fascinating. All right, well, let's pursue that with our next guest. Thank you.

I want to bring in Carsten Brzeski, who's the chief economist and global head of macro research at ING Germany. So this war on Iran clearly having a global impact now, how much of a risk do you believe is priced into these markets?

CARSTEN BRZESKI, CHIEF ECONOMIST, ING GERMANY: I think markets currently are pricing in still a bit of a benign scenario in the sense that this will last a couple of more weeks, but then should normalize again. Maybe that in a month from now we would see this Strait of Hormuz opening up again. I think that is what's currently priced in also means if things would become more severe, if the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz would last much longer, then I think we should be prepared to see oil prices rise to $100 per barrel or even further.

ANDERSON: The E.U. Thursday met to discuss energy and security and prices in Europe. They say they don't see immediate risks on the security of supply. But that of course could change, as you rightly point out, as developments evolve. What do you make of American messages, very specifically, Trump administration messages of assurance at this point?

BRZESKI: I think there are a couple of issues. There's indeed the story that there might be assurances or kind of naval insurance to company boats from the Straits of Hormuz. I think that is very unlikely from what I see right now, because there are no ships going right now. It's also that insurance premium have gone up through the roof, which also means that it has become completely economically inefficient to do these transportations through the Strait of Hormuz. So I really think we need some kind of calming of the military action to see uncertainty fade away and then also an opening up of the Strait of Hormuz.

What U.S. consumers will clearly be facing is much higher oil prices. The difference between the U.S. and Europe, however, is that the U.S. is also an oil exporter. So the U.S. there will be also beneficiaries to higher oil prices in the U.S. economy. It's not U.S. consumers because they are facing the same higher oil prices as consumers around the world.

ANDERSON: I want to just close, Carsten, if I can, then with the Asian markets this the trading day there. This Friday, of course, we are now seven days into the U.S. Israeli war on Iran. This is the picture. These markets higher. They had a miserable start to the trading week, but both the Thursday and Friday sessions better.

[04:45:07]

Let's have a look at the futures market. Of course, the Asian markets generally provide a steer an indication, as do these U.S. Futures markets on the action that we might see at 9:30 local time in New York when the U.S. markets open and down at present. So should this be the story on the open, you'll see these markets lower but not significantly so at this point.

All right, Carsten, thank you for that. Carsten Brzeski with us here on CNN.

We are going to take a short break. Before we do that, the war with Iran is putting European powers in a tricky spot and some are being bashed by President Trump. We are live in London with how Europe is responding after this short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANDERSON: As the war with Iran approaches the one week mark, Europe getting more involved. Some European powers are providing military support to protect their allies' interests and repatriate their citizens. Some, like Spain and Italy, are growing more critical of the U.S. Israel attack. And others are trying to strike a delicate balance, placating Washington without getting sucked into the conflict. The British prime minister's cautious reaction has come under fire from President Trump who said he's no Winston Churchill.

Well, CNN Salma Abdelaziz following this live from London.

And Salma, this U.S. Israeli war on Iran which has had a massive spillover effect here in the Gulf, is now having global ramifications, not least because of the potential for energy exports from this region to grind to a halt. We've seen a European GCC meeting just in the 24 hours, the last 24 hours. These are not countries, European countries that are throwing their weight behind this Israel, U.S. war on Iran. But they are providing support both verbally and physically to many of these Gulf nations. Can you just explain how?

[04:50:26]

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, they're balancing quite a range of demands and interest, of course. And what you're seeing from the continent is largely quite a divided country by country response. Europe generally tries to find a unified voice. It simply has not.

In this instance, you have every country dealing with evacuations. For example, here in the U.K. we understand that about 140,000 British nationals have registered their interests. France says 400,000 French nationals are in the region and may need additional support. We've seen the use of defensive positions. So, for example, France again sending a warship to the Mediterranean.

You've seen the deployment or the sending of defensive systems by Italy, the U.K. and France. And we've also seen back home this need, of course, to reassure. This need, of course, to let people know that not only are the geopolitical relationships in place, but that also leaders are focused on the cost of living back home, on the rise of energy costs. You mentioned Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who of course, has been on the sharp end of President Trump's criticism for what he sees as not enough involvement in the conflict. I want you to take a listen to how he defended it in a press conference yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEIR STARMER, U.K. PRIME MINISTER: Clearly, it's for the President to take decisions that he considers in the national interest, the right decisions for the U.S. I understand that. I respect that. But equally, it's for me, as the British Prime Minister, to take decisions that I consider to be in the best interest of the United Kingdom.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ABDELAZIZ: I think the argument that most European leaders have against this conflict, Becky, really comes down to two things. Does it have an international law component? That is something that French President Emmanuel Macron has said, absolutely not. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez of Spain has said, absolutely not. And secondly, and you're hearing this as well, in Prime Minister Keir Starmer's comments, there is, what is the objective?

What is the aim? What is the game plan here? And many European leaders simply feel that there is not a clear game plan from the White House. So what they are doing in the meanwhile is protecting assets abroad. For example, again, a base, a British base in Cyprus was struck by drones.

Britain acted to fortify that base. You've seen similar acts from other European countries. And then back home here, four men were arrested on suspicion of spying for Iran back here in the U.K. So again, those interests in protecting national security don't just land in the Gulf. They're also here on British soil while they're trying to reassure yet again their own citizens that their involvement will only be in the level that is to the best national interest.

But President Trump has had none of this middle ground. He has absolutely hit back at anyone he sees is not fairly involved.

ANDERSON: It's good to have you, Salma. Thank you very much indeed. Right.

You're watching CNN's breaking news coverage of the U.S. Israeli war on Iran. I'm Becky Anderson here in Abu Dhabi in the UAE. Back with more after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:57:17]

HILL: Nearly a week into the ongoing war with Iran and the U.S. and Israel are ramping up strike. Explosions echoing throughout the capital of Tehran early Friday morning. In the latest barrage, CNN team in Tehran witnessed explosions and billowing smoke from heavy airstrikes. This was just before dawn. Israel is also carrying out fresh strikes in southern Beirut as it targets Hezbollah in Lebanon.

And Israel and the Gulf States are fending off retaliatory drone and missile attacks from Iran, which has been targeting bases used by U.S. forces in the region.

I'm Erica Hill in New York. Our coverage continues at the top of the hour with Becky Anderson in Abu Dhabi. Stay with us. Much more to come after this quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)