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Trump Sets Tuesday Deadline For Iran To "Open The Fkin' Strait; Oil Prices Climb After Trump Threatens Iran Over Hormuz; UCLA Wins First NCAA Basketball Championship. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired April 06, 2026 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:07]

DANNY FREEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The animated sequel pulls in about $372 million worldwide in its opening weekend, despite mixed reviews from critics. Mario and his beloved companions powered up and raked in $131 million in North America alone over the Easter weekend.

Audiences seem to be responding more positively than critics, giving the movie a rotten tomatoes popcorn meter score of 89 percent. I'll go see it.

All right. Thank you so much for joining us here on "Early Start." I'm Danny Freeman in New York. "CNN This Morning" starts right now.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: New deadline, new threats. President Trump demands the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz be lifted. Iran is not backing down.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ESMAIL BAGHAEI, IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY SPOKESMAN: In case Iran's infrastructure is attacked, we would react in kind.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So, can diplomatic talks prevail? Or will the president make good on his latest threat?

And the harrowing rescue this morning, we are learning about new details about the daring feat to get a missing U.S. airman back to safety.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE LAWLER (R-NY): I'm a yes for funding our military.

SEN. TIM KAINE (D-VA): I don't think Congress is going to be in a mood to write a blank check.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So, will they or won't they? President Trump wants money for his war in Iran, but will Congress approve it? (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The last few years has been tough enough. And then, of course, here we go with another war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Farmers feeling the pinch, first tariffs, now rising oil and fertilizer prices. So, how their pain could soon impact your wallet?

"CNN This Morning" starts right now.

So, a ticking clock, a new threat. President Trump puts Iran on notice, but will he follow through? Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. And we begin with our breaking news coverage with this latest ultimatum.

President Trump warning Iran they have just one day to, quote, open the effing Strait of Hormuz or they will be, quote, "living in hell."

The president threatened to drop bombs on power plants and other infrastructure if Tehran does not lift their blockade. Iran says it will respond to any attack in kind.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BAGHAEI: Our armed forces would target any similar infrastructure that is owned, or in any way, or manner related to the United States or contributes to their act of aggression against Iran.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So this morning comes just hours after the harrowing rescue of a U.S. airman whose F-15 fighter jet was shot down over Iran. The airman hid in the mountains until being rescued on Sunday.

A source tells CNN hundreds of U.S. special ops, military and intelligence personnel, were involved in the mission, as well as the CIA.

Now today, the president is set to brief the press on that operation, but does Trump's threats to Iran put U.S. troops in danger? Some Democrats think so.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAINE: No mercy, no quarter, death from above. They bomb you to the Stone Ages. This kind of rhetoric is really dangerous. If you send the message that there's no quarter for the folks on the other side, that -- that really encourages them to mistreat our folks.

And so I hope the White House, I doubt the president will, but please dial back the rhetoric because you don't need to put people like these pilots more at risk by the rhetoric that you use.

(END VIDEO CLIP) CORNISH: OK. So kicking off the group chat this week, Sara Fischer, CNN senior media analyst and senior media reporter at "Axios." Kim Dozier, CNN global affairs analyst. Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for "USA Today." And also the author of the new book, "The Queen and Her Presidents." And Sarah Fitzpatrick, staff writer at "The Atlantic."

You guys, thank you so much. This is a great mix of expertise that we need, even though most of this is being conducted by tweet and in curse words, but I'll still draw on your expertise.

So, first of all, there are supposed to be some sort of diplomatic talks going on. Pakistan is leading them. I can't imagine they're going well if we're back to threats online.

KIM DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yes. Pakistan is essentially acting as a shuttle for messages between the two. But look, the two sides are so far apart. And from Iran's perspective, why not wait for President Trump to crash into one of his own deadlines once again or move it onward?

Iran wins at home. Public opinion is shifting against Trump and his war. And they win in the international community.

CORNISH: Yes. Though it's hard to know what's going on in Iran given their crackdown, right, as the regime tries to take hold. But to your point of them digging in, when I look at the responses from Iranian embassies from around the world, because this is all being done by social media.

[06:05:06]

The one in South Africa says, seriously, think about the 25th Amendment Section Four. In Bulgaria, didn't know they had an Iranian embassy. Take it easy tiger.

In Austria saying he quotes, stoop to an unprecedented level of begging laced with bitter hollow rudeness and threats. The desperation is almost palpable.

Sara, can I come to you? Because they are speaking Trump's language in that they're doing it online. They're doing it in a very sort of memeable way. Can you talk about this response?

SARA FISCHER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA ANALYST: Yes. Well, one thing it's interesting always I'm thinking about the audience. So when you have Donald Trump who has millions of followers on X and it's a big global personality, I think there's a lot of visibility in terms of what his messages -- where his message is reaching.

I don't think anyone in America knows that those embassies are tweeting at us.

CORNISH: Yes. Nobody's laying in bed being like, what's Bulgaria saying? Sorry, Bulgaria.

FISCHER: No clue. So those threats sort of fall on deaf ears with the American public.

What Senator Kaine was saying, over the weekend, is that when Donald Trump's makes these types of threats, that doesn't fall on deaf ears, even with the internet blackouts in Iran.

When Donald Trump is saying something like that, the people in Iran are listening. And that matters because when you have a fighter who is being, you know, crashing down in the mountains of Iran, sometimes you need the response of the people to make a decision about how they're going to react.

Are they going to turn him in? Or they not? And so I don't think that this is the exact same thing.

When Donald Trump says something it's a pretty big effing deal in his words --

CORNISH: Yes.

FISCHER: When these embassies say something, I don't think that they have as much impact, even though they're trying to match that tone.

CORNISH: Well, let me just give the review from Hakeem Jeffries because as he was reading that Truth Social post, at one point, the president says praise be to Allah. And so this is how Jeffries responded.

Oh, no. Sorry. Not Jeffries. This is much better. This is how Stephen A. Smith talked about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN A. SMITH, SPORTS ANALYST: You go on social media with a profanity-laced tirades, and then you're going to end it by saying, praise be to Allah, how do you think that's going to help that -- how do you think that's going to help us throughout the world? I mean, seriously.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: One more for you. Marjorie Taylor Greene who has taken up a new religion sort of anti-Trump at this point. She also was commenting. Because there's been a lot of conversation about how the Pentagon uses religious language.

DOZIER: Yes.

CORNISH: Anyway. So, she was commenting. She says, "Everyone in his administration that claims to be Christian, needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshiping the president and intervene in Trump's madness."

And then she says, what we've heard a lot, "This is not what we promised the American people when they overwhelmingly voted in 2024."

Can you talk about either the messenger is here or the -- the message? SUSAN PAGE, AUTHOR, "THE QUEEN AND HER PRESIDENTS": Well, peace does not seem to be at hand in Iran. I'd say that. And the events over the weekend just seems to embolden both sides to stick it out and see what happens next.

We're not getting closer to a negotiated some -- some of them. We're getting farther away from them.

The rescue of the airman, for which we are all grateful, was a demonstration to Trump about we can do whatever we want militarily and succeed but at a great cost. And from Iran's point of view, that is a cost worth forcing the United States to pay again.

CORNISH: You know, one of the things I'm noticing now is Trump is talking about power infrastructure going against that.

And then I want to play one more thing for you. This is from some Israeli officials who are also talking about threatening infrastructure. It's Israel Katz, who's the defense minister.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ISRAEL KATZ, ISRAELI DEFENSE MINISTER (through translator): The terrorist regime in Iran continues to launch missiles at the Israeli home front, killing and harming Israeli civilians.

If they continue firing at civilians in Israel, we will strike and destroy Iran's national infrastructure. We have severely damaged the steel infrastructure and the petrochemical industry.

And today and every day, there will be more to come.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Before, there was a sense that the U.S. and Israel wanted to preserve something of Iran's infrastructure. Do I have that right?

SARAH FITZPATRICK, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Absolutely.

CORNISH: Is that shifting?

FITZPATRICK: Absolutely. And I -- but I think we see it to the -- to the points that we've been making here in a quarter reckless way, in a way that's not really thinking strategically about what are going to be the ramifications of doing this.

I was with a former NSC official over the weekend, and they were explaining that sometimes you choose not to strike certain targets because it's just not worth it -- one, it might be a war crime. And in these cases, I think this is a very legitimate question to be a thing about.

What kind of information is Pete Hegseth getting about what targets they're choosing and what the legal, not just the legal ramifications could be but the national security and the military ramifications. And I've spoken to so many officials who say, like, infrastructure like this for the whole population, when you are going to be turning off incubators for babies and things like that, that is a much, much more serious question to have. And that should be a topic of discussion with expertise.

[06:10:11]

I think this -- we're also seeing in this war kind of the death of expertise. Where are the experts who are coming in and saying, this may not be legal or this may not be the right thing? I don't think those people are getting (CROSSTALK).

CORNISH: Right. And with that -- strike that landed on a school. There was like, oh, what's -- OK. Maybe it's the early start now. We're deep in. And you have even people like Ann Coulter saying online, I really wish legal experts hadn't screamed bloody murder about every little thing Trump did, so they could speak with authority now that he's actually committing war crimes.

DOZIER: Yes. Hegseth saying that no mercy, no quarter towards the forces. And also now talking about, you know, there are international criminal court judgments against Russia for doing this in Ukraine.

You can, militarily, under the Geneva Conventions, hit some parts of the power grid if they're purely for military purposes.

CORNISH: Right.

DOZIER: But if you do it on an extended basis, and you add in things like desalination plants, which is what Trump is threatening to do, that gets you straight into the territory of war crimes.

The U.S. helped write the update of the Geneva Conventions after World War Two to go against this kind of action.

CORNISH: And never mind that they're struggling with the Strait of Hormuz right now, right? So as you try to expand knowing Iran will retaliate in every direction.

All right. We're going to talk more about this because whatever it involves, it will cost you money because they are bringing a budget to Congress.

In the meantime, I want to bring in CNN business correspondent Eleni Giokos in Dubai. Eleni, we started to get into your territory when we talked about the Strait of Hormuz here and the sort of costs of threatening at the time oil infrastructure. Now, he's threatening in a more broader way. How are markets responding?

ELENI GIOKOS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Really interesting and really good to hear this conversation, Audie, because frankly, where I am here in Dubai, in the UAE, we're stuck in the middle of all of this.

So when Iran says they're going to strike back, they're going to strike back on the Gulf region. And they have been striking relentlessly over the last 38 days.

And we're talking about critical energy infrastructure, you know, gas fields, oil fields, U.S. assets. And that has basically caused what I believe is sort of like a COVID lockdown for us. So that's just a bit of a sense of what we're experiencing.

And when we saw the social media posts from President Trump, you know, one market participant told me, this isn't exactly the Easter Sunday message that people were anticipating because this is escalatory language and it leads down the road that is very dangerous.

You know, I -- I was looking at Brent Crude prices, which, of course, the international benchmark versus the U.S. benchmark, which is WTI. WTI, yesterday, reached $114 a barrel. This is the sweet Brent Crude, the sweet crude that the United States produces.

And you've got to understand from a U.S. perspective, President Trump keeps saying, we don't need oil out of the Strait of Hormuz. Then he changes it and he says, well, they've got to open it up and this is why.

Because you've got gas prices that have increased, they're up at 4.11 a gallon right now. And then where it really gets interesting is diesel prices, because diesel prices are right now at 5.60 a gallon.

And if I compare that to the 2022 high when Russia invaded Ukraine, that was at 5.80 a gallon, so we're so close to that. And that is because the United States imports the sour crude, the Brent Crude for diesel.

So just to give you an understanding that this is a global energy shock, it's touching everyone and opening up the Strait of Hormuz it's become such an important pressure point for the United States and for everyone around.

CORNISH: OK. Eleni Giokos, as always, thank you for your analysis.

Coming up on "CNN This Morning," we're not just talking about the price of oil. We're going to talk about how the war in Iran could also force food prices up too.

Plus, will President Trump's order to limit mail-in voting across the board actually survive the courts? Some election officials weigh in.

And the crew of Artemis II celebrate Easter as they head deeper into space than any human has gone in decades.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We did hide a few eggs around the cabin. They were the dehydrated scrambled egg variety, but we're all pretty happy with them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [06:15:51]

CORNISH: OK. It's now 18 minutes past the hour. Here are five things to know to get your day going.

The Artemis crew now in the Lunar Sphere of Influence. That's where the pull of the moon's gravity is greater than Earth's. So later today, they're going to loop around the moon's far side, and this is the deepest into space humans have gone in decades.

In the meantime, a key Republican secretary of state predicts that President Trump's mail-in voting executive order will be overturned.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AL SCHMIDT, PENNSYLVANIA SECRETARY OF STATE: Americans should rest assured, despite all the back and forth in the courts that we will inevitably see, despite all the back and forth in the press, that Pennsylvania, the birthplace of our republic and Governor Shapiro, are going to stand up for our voters and know that the Constitution is on our side.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Now, it's just last week that Trump signed an executive order aimed at cracking down on mail-in voting as part of his argument that elections are rife with fraud. Now that order is already being challenged with at least four lawsuits.

And the Secret Service investigating reports of gunshots at a park across from the White House that's happened early Sunday morning. Now, no one was injured, but authorities are searching for a person of interest and a vehicle that may be connected to the shooting. The White House has yet to comment.

[06:20:08]

And Savannah Guthrie returns to the today's show this morning, even as the search for her mother Nancy enters its third month.

Yesterday, Savannah shared a deeply personal Easter message at her church reflecting on faith in a season of uniquely cruel uncertainty.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, HOST, "THE TODAY SHOW": I have questioned whether Jesus really ever experienced this particular wound that I feel. This grievous and uniquely cruel injury of not knowing, of uncertainty and confusion and answers withheld.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: In the meantime, America's bald eagle power couple are now proud parents. Once again, Jackie and Shadow saw both their eggs hatch over the weekend. The two chicks are believed to be healthy but will remain nameless until a vote by local third graders. And after the break on "CNN This Morning," President Trump wants to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, is boots on the ground the only way he can accomplish that?

Plus, it's the final day of March Madness, who will come out on top, Michigan or UConn? Good luck with your brackets.

And good morning, Boston. A live look at sunrise over the city.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[06:25:44]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's beyond my wildest dreams, but it's meaningful because of the people I've gotten to share with. It's all about the heart. And it would be shallow without an amazing village and incredible people that have poured into me my whole life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: UCLA are NCAA champions for the first time in women's basketball history.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's deficit South Carolina's face this season. As Betts comes up with a rejection, harkens the way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So the Bruins crushed South Carolina in yesterday's national title game, blowing them out 79-51 in front of a sellout crowd in Phoenix.

U.S. -- UCLA took care of business this time, avenging its heartbreaking loss in the finals last year.

Sports journalist and CNN contributor and a tender of the Phoenix game and UCLA alum, Cari Champion, here to discuss.

All right, girl, I don't know how you are up and looking so bright, but it must be a wonderful moment for you.

CARI CHAMPION, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: It -- it really was a wonderful moment. And I'll -- and I'll say this because the entire weekend was just a wonderful illustration of where this movement in sports is for women.

And I -- and I really truly appreciate being able to see these two women go head to head in Dawn Staley and coach Cori Close.

But what Cori has done, since she's been at UCLA, which has been for 16 years, is that I say she's taken the stairs all the way up to excellence. She did it her way, she did look at anybody else's paper, she wasn't worried about what other teams are doing.

She also said when NIL came around, this name, image and likeness, she didn't know how much longer she could coach in that type of environment. And here we are some three, four years later, and she brings the very first NCAA championship to the program. And I'm just really proud of her. And I am a proud alumni, obviously, at the moment.

CORNISH: And the spotlight is so bright. I mean, with South Carolina, there was this other element with Coach Staley, where she kind of got into it in a previous game with Geno Auriemma.

Now, this went around the internet, some images of it. And at one point, Geno, over the last couple of days, issued an apology to South Carolina, saying, quote, "There's no excuse for how I handled the end of the game versus South Carolina. I want to apologize to the staff and the team at South Carolina. It was uncalled for in how I reacted."

I don't see the name of the coach here. But can you talk about what happened there? And whether or not it affected South Carolina later on.

CHAMPION: Well, first of all, I think his apology was a day late and a dollar short. And I also think it was really rude that he did not mention Dawn at all, because he, obviously, they're at the game. He said that he was upset that she didn't -- or she waited too long to shake his hand. At first, he said she didn't shake his hand. And then he said one of his players got her jersey ripped. That player then later said her name was Sarah Strong. I accidentally ripped my jersey. No one ripped it.

And so Geno was making all of these excuses. But there's a lot of different theories going around.

First of all, clearly he was a sore loser. But there's this take that he wanted to take the attention away from South Carolina winning. And that would, in turn, affect everyone's new cycle, which it did. And that type of exhaustion and attention that that team, South Carolina, was paying attention to for 24 hours, they were under the microscope.

I do believe it did distract them. And Dawn, as a head coach, has been here before, and she did not want to be distracted. I'm not making any excuses because UCLA beat them soundly.

But I do believe that that was still in their mind. And it's really unfortunate that we had to witness this from someone who was an ambassador, or so someone who's considered an ambassador of the game.

CORNISH: Also, the kind of thing that makes you exhausted with Yukon, just going to put that out there. Everyone from Deion Sanders, Skit Bayless, people were just, like, not happy with Geno. This didn't go over well.

All right. Enough about him. We're going to go back to the hers.

CHAMPION: OK. CORNISH: One of the things about all of these women, the college sports influence, including Dawn, is it's really like, as we've talked about, you and I, it's helped the women's sports so much. And the WNBA just inked a new deal with the players.

Can you talk about that deal and how significant this is?

CHAMPION: And what -- it's a very significant deal.